He stared out the window, listening to the long distance hiss between rings. Not really worried that Frankie wasn’t answering—it was barely 3 a.m. and a Monday so that meant she’d worked a dinner shift at the diner the night before. She’d probably gotten home late and stayed up until God knew when, studying or doing homework. He hung up without leaving a voice mail, tossing the SAT-phone on the bed.
Lydia was gone but Christina was still here.
He’d made her a promise—one that until now, had been easy enough to keep. He’d promised to stay. To take care of her. She wouldn’t understand and she’d be hurt but there was nothing he could do, was there? He wasn’t her father. He wasn’t anyone. Just some Merc her father hired to watch over her.
The phone rang quietly, its volume turned down and he snatched it up, instantly recognizing the number on the display screen.
“Hey, kiddo. I didn’t mean to wake you up—”
“Who is this?”
The voice on the other end didn’t belong to Frankie but he recognized it. His Aunt Gina.
He almost hung up, silently cursing his sister’s carelessness at leaving the phone where their aunt could find it.
“Please… who is this? Do you know where she is?” his aunt sobbed into the phone, not so much desperate as she was hysterical. “I’ll give you anything you want, just—please let her come home.”
The level ground beneath his feet shifted, tilting him forward, banging his forehead against the glass he stared through. “Gina. What are you saying? Where’s Frankie? What’s happening?”
His aunt’s sobbing quietly into something that sounded like humming, the line between them crackling. “Mikey.” The moment she said it, he knew. She never called him that—not ever.
“Oh no. No, Gina. Don’t say it. Don’t you fucking—”
“Mikey, you’ve got to come home, Frankie is missing,” she said.
Frankie is missing.
“How long?” she was crying again so he yelled, determined to be heard over the keening sobs that vibrated against his ear. “Damn it, Gina, how long?”
“A week. She didn’t come home from work last Friday night and I thought maybe…” Her words dissolved into another round of sobs. “I thought—”
“I’m coming. Do you hear me? I’m coming.”
A soft breath, like a relieved sigh. “Hurry.”
And then she was gone.
He held the phone, staring at it for what felt like hours. It took him a few minutes to figure out what he hadn’t been able to place before. His aunt hadn’t sounded surprised to hear the voice of her supposedly dead nephew. She knew he was alive. For a moment he allowed himself to believe that it was a trap. That DHS or the CIA or whoever the fuck was looking for him these days had figured out that he’d been in contact with Frankie and that they were using her to lure him home.
It was possible. His Aunt Gina had never been his biggest fan. She’d do just about anything if she thought it meant keeping Frankie safe. He allowed himself to believe it. Let relief wash over him… but only for a moment.
She’d been frantic, teetering on the edge of hysteria. There was no faking that kind of emotion.
Questions like how and how long didn’t matter. Not now.
Michael dropped the phone in his pocket and reached under the bed to pull out his duffle. Yanking drawers open, he threw his clothes inside, wadding and stuffing as fast as he could. Rifling through the books he kept on his shelf he pulled out small fortune in cash and a clean passport, tucking both into his boot. Buying his way onto a container ship or smuggling outfit would take time he didn’t have. He’d have to fly direct. That meant international airports. Customs. Almost certain capture but it didn’t matter. He still had to try.
Home. He needed to get home. To Frankie. He needed—
The little window he’d been staring out of only minutes before started to rattle softly in its frame. He didn’t have to look to understand what it meant. He imagined the modified Black Hawk lowering itself onto the pad, almost directly under him, signaling the last thing he needed right now.
Reyes had returned.
78
El Valle, Columbia
2015
Michael stepped off the plane, his boots sinking into the thick, damp soil, his gaze going directly to the sturdy-looking outbuilding about twenty-five yards south of the runway. Next to it was Ben’s Westwind, alongside a smaller plane. One he’d never seen before. As soon as he was clear of the plane it turned itself around on the runway and taxied down the strip of dirt he stood, flying back to Spain or wherever it was supposed to go next.
The bay door on the shed rolled up, its sharp metal clang loud enough to scatter a flock of sunbitterns, their large wings lifting them in the air to carry them away.
“You catch any sleep?” Ben said, meeting him halfway between the shed and the airstrip.
“Some,” he said, looking at his watch, doing a quick calculation in his head. It was 7 a.m. which meant they has about twelve hours to plan out and execute a full-scale assault on an island fortress, fifty miles away. “We should probably get started.”
“We already have,” Ben said, falling into step beside him. Michael was about to ask who we was but a few steps closer and he didn’t have to. The kid must’ve read his expression because he started talking—fast. “Look, I know it’s not ideal but—”
Michael looked at the small group of people clustered around a map they had spread out a work table. Lark and Strickland he recognized right away—and the woman too but the other man he could only vaguely recall. “Ideal? Is that code for we’re all gonna die?”
“Speak for yourself,” the woman he knew as Mary said, straightening her bent posture to give him the once over. “I happen to enjoy living and have no intention of dying for some broody cop and a snot-nose kid.”
“Yeah, let’s start with you.” He looked at Ben who was rubbing the back of his neck like it hurt. “Why is she here?”
“I never left,” she said, leaning her hip up against the table. “Someone had to keep an eye on the situation while you were busy cleaning up the mess you made in Spain.”
“Being Livingston Shaw’s personal pet doesn’t make you bullet-proof—Church,” he all but growled at her. “Yeah. I know who you are.”
She laughed, her hand settling on the Glock strapped to her hip. “You kill one chick and suddenly—”
“Both of you need to shut the fuck up,” Strickland said, still bent over the map they’d been studying. “Because neither one of you are helping. Now…” He looked up, aiming his narrowed glare directly at him. “Why don’t you get your ass over here and tell us the best place to do a night drop on the island.”
Michael approached the table to see that that they were studying a map of the island. “Where’d you get this?” he said, recognizing the layout and shape of the beach, the dense jungle between there and the house.
“It was here,” Lark said. “This is Reyes’ private airfield. There’s all kinds of shit here.”
“And he just left it unguarded?” Michael looked around before letting his gaze land on Ben “That doesn’t sound like Reyes at all.”
“There were six of them when landed yesterday but they started getting antsy when we didn’t take off right away,” Church said, distracted by the map.
“So…”
She looked up at him. “So I killed them,” she said, dropping her finger on the map near along the coastline. “What about here? I think it’s a good drop zone but Officer Friendly here thinks it’s too open.”
Michael looked where she was pointing. “He’s right,” he said, trailing his fingers up the line where water met sand. “Reyes’ compound is less than a mile from here.” He tapped his finger on the spot on the map that marked the house. “I’ll have to drop on the other side of the island and pack it in.”
“We.”
He looked up from the map to see Strickland watching him. “Look. I get that you care ab
out her and I get that—”
“Save it. Your sidekick over there already gave me the we’re gonna kill ‘em, not arrest ‘em speech and you know what?” Strickland gave him a cool smile. “I’m down with that.”
He studied Sabrina’s partner for a few seconds, trying to find out if this facet of his personality was a new development or if it’d been there all along, buried beneath the rumpled suits and mustard-stained ties before deciding it really didn’t matter. He was here and he knew what he was asking for. Michael decided to give it to him.
“We’ll drop in here,” he said. “It’s about a two miles jungle hike to the base of the mountain the compound sits on.” He bounced a look between Lark and Church, not liking his choices. Not one fucking bit. Finally he settled on Lark. “You can set up comms—”
“Sorry, partner. Green Mile’s already spoken for,” Ben said, a look passing between him and his former partner. “There’s some shit he’s got to straighten out for me. I’m running comms so you’ll have to take Super Spy.”
Church must’ve read the fuck that all over his face because she smiled. “I realize I’m not Miss Popularity but I am on your side.”
“Today,” he said, the word flexing against the hard set of his jaw. “What about yesterday when you handed her over to Reyes? Were you on my side then?”
“Believe it or not, yes.” She stopped smiling, the glint in her eyes dimming just a bit. “But unlike the rest of you fuck-wits, I follow orders. I did what I could for her within the parameters I was given. She’s armed and has an approximate mission window—if she’s as badass as everyone thinks she is that’s plenty.”
With Ben running comms and Lark working on whatever it was Ben had him doing, his choices were slim. As in he didn’t have one. “Fine.”
“I have a question…”
They all turned to look at the man who’d so far remained quiet. A quick flash of recognition brought Michael a memory. It was the pilot. The same one who’d medevaced Sabrina out of those woods the day she’d killed Wade. Harrison. His name was Harrison and he was apparently not rotting away in a hole or enjoying a fat pile of hush money like he’d envisioned. He was Ben’s pilot. He looked at his partner for confirmation.
Ben shrugged. “I told you I’d take care of it, didn’t I?” he said before looking at Harrison. “What’s your question?”
“How are you going to get in the house?” the pilot said. “We did a flyover on the way here. It looked like security is pretty tight.”
“That’s the easiest part of this whole thing.” Michael rocked back on his heels and smiled. “I’m gonna walk right in.”
79
The guard who escorted her back to her room after dinner kept a wide birth. He wouldn’t even look at her—just kept his slightly panicked gaze aimed down the hall as they walked. Sabrina couldn’t blame him.
She’d spent her day with Christina and Leo. Watching them take turns on the tire swing and play tag in the wide stretch of grass that surrounded the trees they played under. It would have been a good day if not for the armed guards on the roof and the turrets that dotted the retaining wall that looked out over the ocean below. Everywhere she looked there were guards and guns—security woven together so tight that she was beginning to have serious doubts that even Michael could find his way in. She began to worry that she was on her own here. That it was up to her to save Leo. And Christina.
Somewhere between breakfast and walking down that long stretch of hallway after dinner, she’d decided that if she got out of this mess, she’d be taking the girl with her.
The guard stopped in front of her door and took a step back so she could open it. Shutting it in his face she leaned against it for a moment, just as relieved as he was that his assignment had ended with his brains splattered across the lawn in front of her bedroom window. Twenty-four hours had come and gone and no one had come for her. She was on her own.
We ain’t alone, darlin’.
The warning came seconds before the voice spoke in the dark. “I take it Pablo kept his hands to himself.”
Somewhere, a light clicked on and she turned to find Estefan lounging on the settee, shoulders relaxed, knees parted as if he’d made himself comfortable while waiting for her. As if he’d done this exact thing before.
Careful, now—this one’s got teeth and he’s itchin’ to use ‘em.
She listened to the voice inside her head. A predator always recognized their own kind. The gun in her boot was useless. No way she’d be able to get to it in time. She thought of her bracelet. The one Michael had given her. “What are you doing here?” she said, walking into the room, careful to make sure he didn’t see the apprehension his sudden appearance caused her. A casual glance cast to the corners of the room told her that the security cameras were still active. As long as they were recording, she was relatively safe… and so was he.
“I wanted to make sure that you have everything you needed, Sabrina.” He smiled at her, his eyes flat and dark, tracking her movements across the room. “We are not savages, my father and I. We wish you to be comfortable.”
She stopped in front of the ornate dressing table tucked into the corner near the bathroom door. On its glossy surface lay the heavy silver brush and mirror that had once belonged to Lydia, Christina’s mother.
“Pretty sure my comfort isn’t very high on his list of. Your father plans on killing me in front of Michael….” She reached out and rocked the brush on its rounded back like Christina had the night before. Like the night before, something rattled inside its handle. “Just like he killed his wife.”
Estefan draped his arm across the back of the settee and smiled. “Lydia was a fickle whore who got what she deserved.”
“Lydia was twelve when your father married her. How old was she when you started raping her?” She did her best to strain the anger from her voice before she spoke but it seeped through anyway and his smile turned into laughter.
“She was nineteen… and I would hardly call it rape.” He shook his head, the picture of exasperated amusement. “Is that what Cartero told you? That I forced myself on his beloved Lydia?” he said with a shrug. “I supposed believing that would make her manner of death easier for him to swallow...”
“You loved her.” She watched him closely, the traces of bitterness and envy that surfaced in the flat pools of his eyes before being pulled under again. “But she hated your guts, didn’t she? You disgusted her.”
“When I realized she was pregnant, I offered to kill my father so that we could be together… do you know what she said to me?” he said, leaning into her just a bit like they were sharing a juicy secret. “She said, Michael will take care of us.” For a moment, he looked toxic—like nothing more than a simple touch from him could kill.
Sabrina imagined them standing face-to-face like they were now. Lydia, outwardly defiant even while facing down her own rapist. Estefan, so sick he couldn’t even recognize that what he was doing to her was wrong.
“Michael.” He spat the word at her, his lips twisted into an ugly smile. “I realized then that he was the reason she would never love me.”
“From a female perspective, I gotta tell you,” she said quietly. “It was all the raping that made it impossible for her to love you.”
If they’d been standing face to face, he would have hit her—and not an open-palmed slap like his father had given her either. He would have hit her with a closed fist and more than once. He stood and she took a step back, dropping in a defensive stance that told him that the violence he had in mind would not go as smoothly as he was used to. Her hip bumped into the vanity, her sudden movement answered by that faint rattling again.
“Lydia believed he was her savior. That he could protect her from my father.” He smirked, reading her posture perfectly, and changed courses. “From me.” He reached up to finger the scar that ran down the length of his face and for a moment she could see just how much he hated both men. How twisted he had grown, living in their s
hadows.
You’re runnin’ out of time here, darlin’… tick tock.
As if on cue, a metallic click filled the silence between them and her eyes automatically darted to the clock perched on the mantle, just over his shoulder. It was nine o’clock and the sound she’d just heard was the auto-lock engaging on her bedroom door.
80
The receiver he’d put in his ear hissed and crackled, seconds before Ben’s voice came online. “You ready for this?”
Michael adjusted the straps on his parachute while watching Church do a pre-jump check on Strickland’s rig. He was about to jump out of an airplane with a hapless cop and Livingston Shaw’s pet spy. “I was ready an hour ago.”
“So you keep saying.” Ben chuckled. “If you had your way, you’d have swum to the island hours ago with a K-BAR clenched in your teeth and live grenade in each fist.”
His partner was right. It was what his instincts were telling him to do. What they always told him to do. Save her. Protect her. He’d been ready to go the second he stepped foot off the plane and he would have if Ben hadn’t been there to stop him.
“There’s no way to tap into the compound’s security feed—I’m going to have to cut the cameras completely so once you’re in, I can’t be your eyes.” Ben said, going over the plan for what seemed like the fiftieth time. “Give me a check-in when you hit the island and another when you make the mountain. I’ll kill comms and cameras then.”
“Got it,” he said. “What I don’t got is an explanation on why you’re running interference while Lark rides the pine?” When they’d left, Lark had been nothing more than a pair of hulking shoulders hunched over a bank of computer screens, so intent on what he was doing that he hadn’t even looked up when they left.
“I told you—he’s got more important things to do,” Ben said. “Trust me.”
The Sabrina Vaughn series Set 2 Page 30