Well, maybe not as unremarkable as all that, but still. . . just a girl. Had to be messing with his sense of machismo that a girl had trounced him so thoroughly.
As Soto approached me, I sent the nanomites out to find Emilio and complete their recon.
A frown twisted Soto’s face. He lifted one languid shoulder, mocking me. “You? You are the one? You do not look like much to me.”
He stepped closer. Too close. In my face.
“Say something. I must be sure.”
“As you wish. Where’s the boy? That was the deal.”
His mouth widened into a smile. “So! It is you.” With his free hand, he first caressed my cheek, then gripped my chin and jaws. Squeezed hard. Kept squeezing and laughed as his fingers dug into my skin. “You believed I would set the boy free? That was foolish of you, don’t you agree? I think you will watch him die—and I will enjoy your pain.”
I ignored his threat; I was waiting on the nanomites. “Where is Emilio, Arnaldo?”
Gemma Keyes, he is here, two rooms away. Second door on the left.
“Thank you, Nano.”
That was the information I’d been waiting to hear; now it was time to tweak the tiger’s nose and set things in motion.
I lifted one shoulder, a perfect mimicry of Soto’s own cold, cruel mannerism. “Hey. So, Arnaldo, speaking of pain, how’s the hand? I understand you haven’t been able to get an orthopedic surgeon to tend it for you. I bet all those crunched up bones, all those painful nerve endings grinding and scraping together, really hurt. Am I right?”
Stung, Soto jerked and took a step back. Then fury sent blood boiling up his neck into his face. With an open palm, he slapped me and cursed in Spanish. He raged against me, alternating slaps and curses, going on for about thirty seconds.
My ears rang, my eyes watered. It was difficult to restrain the nanomites, to keep them from acting until I was ready.
Gemma Keyes, he said—
“Never mind the translation, Nano. I get the idea.”
But, it was untrue as well as uncomplimentary, Gemma Keyes. We are certain your mother never—
“Drop it, Nano. Pay attention.”
Ignoring my swelling, stinging face, I smiled a wicked taunt. I arched a brow in Soto’s direction, but addressed his men. “Ooooh, looky here, boys! Arnaldo’s still the spoiled little rich kid, isn’t he?” Then I took slow, deliberate aim at Soto. “Like I said the last time we met, Arny baby, you know how to dish it out, but you can’t take it—and everyone here knows you can’t.”
I glanced toward his men. “Right? Am I right?”
I sent a knowing smirk toward Soto’s right-hand man—who caught himself before he grinned back. The man’s gaze skittered away, but not before Soto noticed—and not before I laughed.
A vein throbbed in Soto’s temple; he breathed with quick, heavy gasps. But as I continued to show no emotion other than bored indifference, he calmed.
“So. You wish to know if my hand hurts? If it pains me? You are very confident in yourself, my dear, but you will find out soon enough how ‘crunched up bone’ and ‘grinding, scraping nerve endings’ feel.”
He held out his undamaged hand and received a thick stick of wood, a reasonable facsimile of an escrima stick—decent enough if you were unfamiliar with escrima sticks but had been on the receiving end of an invisible one.
He slammed the stick on the edge of a nearby table: The edge splintered under the blow.
“Cut the tie from her wrists, then hold her hand on this table. I wish her to see—as well as feel—each blow coming.”
Soto was positively bubbling with gleeful anticipation as one of his thugs slipped a blade between my wrists. With a snick, the tie parted. The two men who’d sat beside me on the ride to the quarry grabbed my arms.
“Which hand, Señor Soto?”
“Oh, her right one. Yes. On the table, just so.”
“I don’t think so. Not today.”
Soto leered at me. “What do you mean, ‘not today’?”
“Let me show you.”
The two men holding me yelped, convulsed, and fell away as the nanomites sent voltage through them.
My hands opened. The overhead lights flickered as I pulled electricity into me and began to emanate a throbbing, vibrating aura, the glow of fiery heat.
I thrust my palms in Soto’s direction. Current shot from me into him; he screamed as he flew across the room, slammed into a wall, and crumpled to the floor.
Pandemonium erupted.
I waited with placid patience while Soto’s thugs scattered and regrouped on one side of the room with me on the other. They reached for their weapons and, as men in panic tend to do, they gave no thought as to how .45 caliber handgun and 5.56 NATO rifle ammo might behave in close quarters.
No matter how good your aim, rounds fired in a concrete room will ricochet.
In the microsecond before the men opened fire, the nanomites drew a dome of pulsing power over me. I could hear shouts and gunfire—the muffled and distant-sounding thuds of rounds as they hit the dome and were repulsed—but I turned my back on their assault and moved with purpose down the hall.
I had but one task before me: Get to Emilio.
When I opened the door to the room where he was, he jumped up.
“Gemma! I knew you’d come!”
“And here I am. Come inside with me where it’s safe.”
My arms reached for him and drew him into the protective dome. He grabbed me hard around the waist and hung on. I wanted to stay right there; I wanted to just hold him, but it wasn’t the time.
We walked through the large room, toward the stairs that led upward.
“Close your eyes, Emilio. Don’t look.” He did as I told him, but I asked the nanomites to make sure he would not give in to the temptation to peek.
Of the five men who had been with Soto in the room when I left, two were dead—including the traitorous APD officer, Don Benally. The thug who’d yanked me from the car lay bleeding against a wall.
The casualties of their own ill-advised gunfire.
I heard staccato footsteps at the top of the stairs. Since Soto and his lieutenant were no longer in the room, it had to be them.
“Come on.” I pulled Emilio toward the stairs, and I reminded the nanomites of their instructions while we climbed out of the basement.
The scene as we stood in the building’s doorway was worse than downstairs. Every one of Soto’s men sprawled in the blood-soaked gravel yard. My “reinforcements,” the soldiers of Soto’s Mexican family, had used their three vehicles as shields as they plowed through the gate and mowed down Arnaldo’s men. It was a slaughter, and I tried not to fixate on it.
Arnaldo himself stood alone where the fight had raged, his lieutenant crumpled nearby.
He screamed at me, “You did this? You brought them here?”
Two soldiers left the cover of their vehicle and moved toward Soto. Realizing they were coming for him, Soto decided to run back into the building. Bullets spat gravel around his feet, and he skidded to a stop. The men reached Soto, and the taller of the two began to zip-tie his hands together. When Soto screamed in pain, they settled for binding his arms at the elbow.
That’s when they noticed me. The tall guy waggled his tactical rifle, indicating I should move toward the middle car, the one farthest from the building. I started walking, keeping Emilio snugged to my side.
I was about ten yards from the vehicle when a tall, raven-haired woman stepped from the rear of the car in one graceful, fluid movement. Her stylish espadrilles crunched on the gravel as she walked toward me; her long legs made each step seem languorous. Unhurried.
I recognized her from the pictures the nanomites had shown me.
Esperanza Duvall appraised me, up one side and down the other. She was an elegant woman, perhaps on the far side of thirty-five. She wasn’t beautiful, but she was striking, and she was accustomed to the accoutrements of wealth and power. Even in the middle of an
abandoned gravel quarry, she radiated sophistication and confidence.
I wondered what she saw when she looked at me.
She spoke. “You are who sent the emails?”
I nodded.
“What is your name?”
“Of course, I would rather not say.” I thought for a moment. “You may call me Jewel.”
“We are grateful to you for returning Arnaldo to his family, Jewel.”
Her soldiers, in the same unhurried fashion she had used when she walked toward me, began to fan out behind her. As the men on either end of the line edged farther into my peripheral vision, I nudged Emilio behind me.
“I think you have an odd way of expressing appreciation . . . Esperanza. You have nothing to fear from me—I’ve played this straight and haven’t ‘jerked you around.’”
“As they say in the movies, it is not personal; it is business.”
“I wish no trouble with you.”
She shrugged and stared into the desert. “Life often does not give us what we wish.”
“I only came for the child. I don’t care about the bounty.”
She seemed surprised. “Indeed? Is that so?”
“Yes. When you leave, I will take the child and go. That will be the end of it.”
She seemed to think on my words.
I decided to change the subject. To stall.
Because I needed more. More incriminating information for the nanomites to record and upload to their library.
“Your brother. I call him Dead Eyes.”
A glint of humor flared on her face. “Verdadero. Our doctors tell us he is quite without conscience. A sociopath. He was always different, even as a child.”
“I understand. I have a sister afflicted with the same condition.”
“You have my sympathies.”
“Thank you.” I pushed ahead. “Arnaldo has been busy since he arrived in New Mexico. I understand that he really upset your applecart.”
“This applecart? I am not familiar with the idiom.”
“It means that it bothered you when he hijacked your suppliers and trafficking routes. It means that his stealing your drug revenue in the Southwest created problems. Angered the family.”
“Our anger was to be expected, no? Arnaldo is impetuous, but not unaware of the consequences of such an action.”
I jumped back in. “I was surprised that the family sent you, personally, to fetch him home.”
“Why? Cannot a woman do this job? I thought all American women were ambitious. Emancipated.”
“Sorry. I just figured it would be your brother.”
She smiled. “Ah, but Estevan is not married to an American as I am. My husband and I own a home in California, another in Washington State, and a third in Hawaii. I also hold permanent U.S. resident status. The ‘green card.’ I am often back and forth from casa la familia in Mexico and our homes in the States.”
“That must make running the Pacific Coast portion of the family drug business much easier.”
“It has its practical advantages.”
“What will you do with him, with Arnaldo, when you take him home? Will you force him to give a kidney to his uncle?”
Her mouth hinted at a smile. “No, I think not. I believe my little hermano will donate both of his kidneys.”
I flinched, and my face must have reflected my horror, because she laughed—and at that moment, the gleam sparkling in her eye looked too much like her brother’s.
“You’re as much a sociopath as he is.”
“Ah, no, Jewel! You are merely too soft. Too compassionate. One cannot be tenderhearted in this business.”
Her tone and demeanor abruptly changed. “I wish to see the boy, first. Show him to me.”
“Boy?”
“Yes, the child.”
“I don’t have a boy. The child is a girl.”
Behind me, Emilio squirmed but, as much as he wanted and tried to, he couldn’t protest aloud. The nanomites had sealed his mouth. And down in the basement, while the firefight between Soto’s thugs and his sister’s men had taken place? At my command, the mites had altered Emilio’s looks.
Considerably.
“What is this? I was told Arnaldo took a boy, the nephew of a previous teniente.”
“I’m sorry to disappoint you.”
I pulled Emilio forward. He was outraged that I’d labeled him a girl, and he was scared because the nanomites had sealed his mouth shut. He fought me until the nanomites did their thing, sent neurotransmitters flooding into his bloodstream to calm him down. When he stood passively by my side, I saw that they’d transformed him into a very pretty girl—even in jeans and a dirty polo shirt.
Frankly, it kind of freaked me out. So wrong!
“This is, um, Dahlia. My foster daughter.”
Esperanza Soto pursed her lips and frowned. I gave her credit for her surprise and distress. I had hoped that the picture of a sweet, innocent little girl would make it harder for her to give the order to kill us. I preferred that Esperanza and her soldiers drive away, leaving us unscathed.
It wasn’t that I was worried about our safety or how Esperanza Soto felt; I only cared that she remembered—in vivid detail—how the child I’d rescued from her demented brother was not the nephew of Mateo, former lieutenant to the Soto cartel, not Emilio, whose whereabouts—for enough money—could be traced through the New Mexico State CYFD system.
I wanted Esperanza to recollect the pretty, feminine girl I pulled from behind me. Esperanza could send her most trusted people and bribe anyone she chose, but she’d never find a trace of me or my “foster daughter.”
Esperanza sighed, as though making up her mind. “I am quite beside myself, Jewel, but, alas, I must be true to my orders.”
She lifted her chin to her men and stepped back as they racked their guns.
Before she’d decided, the nanomites had jetted from me. Now they formed a barrier—not of themselves but of pure energy, a wall of current to repel the deadly rounds. Through the hail of bullets, I flicked my fingers toward the closest soldier. His gun flew from his hands, and I sent it high into the air. He shouted as the gun arced far overhead, straightened, and soared like a missile into the deep gravel pit. Another gun followed, then two more, and another, then the last.
The soldiers shouted and babbled and pointed at the swirling, crackling dome surrounding me and Emilio. One of them pulled an amulet on a chain from his shirt and held it toward me. Another drew a handgun, tossed it aside, and held up his hands.
Arnaldo Soto screamed aloud, “It’s her! It’s her! She’s the invisible woman! Kill her!”
Instead, the men backed away. Even Esperanza’s face and body language reflected her disbelief. “What power is this? What magic?”
“Whatever it is, Esperanza, you are outmatched.”
I lifted my arms again and held out my hands, palms facing up. Current jumped from my fingers into the air to coagulate into a jumble of crackling fire. The fire congealed into a blue orb that throbbed and vibrated and grew larger and larger.
The air around us charged; my hair lifted and stood out from my head, a glowing halo, a portent of danger, and I began to rise, to slowly lift from the ground. The aura around me intensified—as did the mighty weapon I held between my palms.
Esperanza’s men gaped at the flashing, blazing sight—of my transfigured features and form elevating six feet above the parking lot. Then I threw the sphere! Nanomites shot from me to push the bolus of energy faster, to blast it toward my target.
The orb of power struck Soto’s line of cars and detonated. Vehicles exploded and hurled their parts into the air only to crash to the earth as fiery debris. Flaming shrapnel and shards of shattered glass rained down over the burning piles.
Esperanza, her face a mask of terror, turned and ran. I had the nanomites shove her—just a little. She stumbled and recovered; they shoved her again, just for good measure. She fell to her knees.
She held out her hands in supp
lication. “Please!”
“Go, Esperanza,” I ordered. “Take your men and your evil brother with you and go. Don’t ever return.”
She hesitated. “Our weapons.”
“You won’t need them—if you leave now.”
She glanced at the heaps and mounds of burning scrap metal and nodded. She waved her men in. “Ven! Put my brother in the trunk of my car. Ahora!”
In thirty seconds, Emilio and I were staring at the dust of their departing vehicles. The nanomites returned Emilio’s appearance to normal and released his mouth. In his glee over our defeat of the Sotos, he forgot that he was mad at me for calling him a girl.
“Are they gone? Can we go?”
“Yes, and yes. But first?” I wrapped my arms around him and held him close. He hugged me back with a ferocity that made my heart glad.
Then I took his face in my hand and turned his cheek into the light. “Are you all right? Are you hurt anywhere else?”
“Nope.” Emilio lifted his chin. “Dead Eyes din’t hurt me much, but I hurt him. Bit him hard.”
I grinned. “Good job. You are so brave, Emilio.”
He blushed, but I could tell he was pleased.
I put my hand on his shoulder and pointed him toward the gate. “Let’s go, shall we?” I didn’t want him to dwell on the carnage about us, on the bodies scattered throughout the yard where they’d fallen, the pools of blood staining the sand. The sooner I got him away from this place, the better.
“We gonna walk all the way home?”
“No, just for a little bit. Until the FBI sends a car for us.”
His eyes bugged out of his head. “The FBI?”
“Yeah. I have a good friend in the FBI. Nice guy—you’ll like him! Anyway, as soon as they arrest all those gangsters—” I waved in the direction Esperanza Duvall’s caravan had gone “—he will send a car for us.”
Emilio pulled me to a stop. “The FBI’s gonna get ’em?”
I laughed a little. “Yup. My friend and his FBI team are waiting for them down the road a couple of miles. Don’t know how much of a fight Esperanza’s men can put up since most of their guns are at the bottom of the gravel pit, but we’ll have to wait until the FBI puts them in handcuffs and stuff. We’ll mosey along until my friend sends a car for us.”
Stealth Retribution Page 17