“I need you to barricade yourself inside here. The only time you answer the door is when food arrives. Keep to the bungalow for the next one . . . no, two days. I’ll need two days, and afterward, I’ll guarantee you’ll be safely headed home.”
I frown. “I’d like to leave tomorrow.” I am leaving tomorrow.
“You’re a distraction. Dios, I shouldn’t even be offering you help.” He shakes his head. “But I’m giving you the benefit of the doubt in trusting you.”
“What do you do for Mendoza?” I demand. Trust me? He’s deciding to trust me? “What’s going to take two days that you don’t want me to know about?”
“If you are who you say you are, this is the best solution I can think of to keep you safe. Two days, Aubrey. That’s what I’m asking for.”
With that, he slips out the door.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Diego
In Mexicali, a boy becomes a man after his first fuck.
After he fucks up his first rival.
After he fucks over his enemy, especially one who calls him friend. His liaison into an underbelly of crime, murder, lies.
After he fucks his first woman.
I became a man three times over all in the same night. Beating the shit out of Martinez. Sliding a knife in the kidney of his asshole brother, Filipe. Then adding a cherry to the motherfucking top of it all, fucking not one but both their women. Nothing like blood, murder, and my rivals’ willing, eager girlfriends to pop my thirteen-year-old cherry.
I haven’t stopped since.
Yeah, Mexicali was a school of hard knocks. Gangs ruined the place. It was swim with the sharks or die.
Funny how this crosses my mind as I dive headfirst into the living-room pool and force my body to relax as the waterfall sweeps me over and out, down to the secluded pool below and just outside the cave I need access to.
I’ve learned to hold my breath for long periods of time.
A handy skill, both in and away from the water.
And as I plunge to the depths beneath the waterfall, I swim toward the narrow shelf I discovered the other day, located just inside the waterfall and at the outside entrance to the cave.
I pull myself up enough to blink the water out of my eyes and get a good look around. The early-morning sky is pitch-black, clouds from today rolling back in to overwhelm the dwindling rays of moonlight. Making it hard to spot if Mendoza’s men are watching over the cave. The waterfall’s churning drowns everything else out. Gut instinct is all I have to work on.
Which is telling me right now to hurry the fuck up.
I lift myself out of the water and climb over the ledge, slithering on my stomach like I’m in one of Hayden’s Hell Camp Marine drills.
A useful skill I’ve mastered. Two of Hayden’s training camps will do that to a guy. The second one I’d been forced to complete after the one and only time I failed in an assignment.
That Bastard Hayden is as hard-core as they come.
Yet there’ll be no failed attempts with this assignment. An order’s an order.
Fortunately for me, I’m alone.
There are three ways down to the cave but two entrances. A door at the top of a narrow set of stairs leading down from the living room. Bad choice, given the attention to security in place. Like I’m an untrained amateur on his first gig.
The steep path down through the gardens, the same path his men used to drag the crates to the cave, is too obvious as well as heavily patrolled after Aubrey’s little episode of spy and dash. Tomorrow, after I’ve had time to check the monitors and when the threat of exposure has passed, I’ll arrange for a trustworthy car service to pick her up.
No one is anticipating anyone would dare take an invisible barrel ride over the waterfall.
Low-key. Quiet. I’m doing exactly as ordered. Yet a hit man can still get his adrenaline rush in.
The cave is cold. I’m shirtless and barefoot, wearing only my swim trunks and my small waterproof bag, which rests around my waist. Can’t leave home without my guns, now, can I?
In addition, I’ve brought extra ammo, a small flashlight, ten small sheets of pretaped black construction paper, and Little-Man’s driver’s license, which I pinched from his wallet while in the process of paying a rather successful visit to his bungalow.
I pause and listen carefully for any sign I’ve company.
And grin. Sure, I love a challenge but this is proving to be far too easy of a job. Yet unlike Mendoza, I’m nobody’s fool. Sometimes the easiest tasks end up being your downfall. And fuck knows, I’ve been down that path before. Been there, done that.
Coming to a stand, I resist the urge to turn on the flashlight. First, I need to address the cameras. By waiting . . . for my little black box to do its magic. I’ve set it up for a two-minute pause in power. Long enough to cover the cameras but not long enough to piss Mendoza off. Can’t have the fool calling for an electrical upgrade now. Or a generator.
Before my twenty-foot plunge, I broke back into the surveillance room to review the cameras inside the cave. I recorded careful notes as to where they are and how well they work in complete darkness—as luck would have it, the answer is they don’t.
So as I come to my feet, I’m feeling confident yet cautious, quietly moving around the room and hugging the walls as I do so.
Finding the first camera, I pause. A few seconds later, there’s a high-pitched noise. Electricity’s out and I’m in. Two minutes, I’ve got to move quick. I fasten black paper over the lenses, moving from one camera to another until I’m done. On the next power outage in five minutes flat and counting, I’ll do the reverse before I depart. Don’t want to be leaving any evidence that I’ve been snooping around, now do I?
I flick my flashlight on, point the beam toward the floor, and walk over to the crates.
No wonder Mendoza’s men had been bitching. It must have taken them all day to unload the twenty-four crates, stacked two high, three wide, and four long.
Come to Diego, mis bebés.
I test one of the boards on the nearest crate then the others, searching for a loose one to pry off so I can see inside. A few attempts later, I’ve ripped one off with my hands.
I smile. If all jobs were this simple.
I raise my flashlight and peer inside. The crate is only a third full, not packed to the gills as expected. Which means whatever is inside is heavy. Not weapons. Not drugs.
The flashlight illuminates a jagged object. Rocks for the gardens? Dios, wouldn’t that be the mindfuck of epic proportions?
Lifting myself up, I rest my stomach on the edge of the crate while I reach deep inside. My fingers wrap around the first object—a round, roughly shaped rock. It’s cool to the touch and easy to handle.
Climbing off the crate, I settle onto my feet then examine my prize.
Crates full of rocks? Not even pretty-colored ones, like marble or slate. The damn thing looks like something you’d drag out of a riverbed, smooth and grayish-brown in color, and without crevices, peaks, or jagged ends.
Why would Mendoza go to all the trouble to hide rocks? His family is part of a global wave of assholes raising money through local gangs by either trading drugs for profit or purchasing black-market weapons. Hayden fears this money is helping fund a lone, yet-to-be-identified radical militant group that, based on the growth of middlemen involved, is quickly rising to power. Western governments, those that hire us for our quiet expertise and to do their dirty work, seem unaware of this bigger threat, each dealing with more immediate, homegrown problems like Fahder, or in this case, his son Mendoza. It’s only after a recent series of events that transpired in Paris that Hayden began to suspect there’s a bigger, unknown enemy out there. I was ordered to Mexico City, to preempt the arrival of a shipment of weapons coming from Marseille to Acapulco and to “interview” the middleman identified through a paper trail. Not immediately in tune with the hostile family dynamics in play, I hoped Fahder would visit his bastard son. After it became cl
ear Papí was more comfortable at his heavily guarded downtown estate, I decided to flush him out.
But instead of Casa Bella, Fahder went to Mexico City. To the guns.
While his bastard son Mendoza is stockpiling crates of rocks. Rocks he’s willing to kill for.
No intelligence on the shipment, how the crates arrived, where they came from. No paper trail. No Papí around to ensure the delivery is safely stored inside the cave. Only Mendoza seems to be fired up about their arrival.
My instincts tell me a double cross is in play.
But what exactly is the game?
I shine the flashlight on the object in my hand. And with one single motion, an answer takes shape inside my mind.
Qué la chingada. Talk about a nuclear explosion. Hayden’s going to bust a nut over this news.
Uranium. It has to be. During training, I’d seen pictures of it along with pictures of what it looks like when it’s radioactive properties are activated. Enriched uranium is the main ingredient for any loser looking to make a nuclear weapon. A Molotov cocktail for any amateur bomb maker looking to cause multiple deaths and destruction.
Bad, fucked-up news. Drug money and weapons would have been better than this.
But enriched uranium? Who is Mendoza sending this to? Or is he planning something himself? Something massive. Something that threatens national, global, the whole goddamn world’s security.
No. The man doesn’t have the mental capacity let alone the imagination for something like that. He’s a middleman, I’d bet money on it.
Now that I’ve identified what I’m holding, I don’t waste time standing around and staring at the thing. I can’t—me and my little black box are on a tight schedule. I secure the enriched uranium inside my bag, pausing to wonder if I should wrap the black paper around it, given its radioactive properties. There’s no time. And if Hayden wants proof of a bigger plot in play, I’ve just found it.
The electricity falters and I quickly yet methodically remove paper after paper from the lenses, fisting them into balls and nestling them around the uranium inside my pack.
When I’m done, I pull out the pièce de résistance, Little-Man’s driver’s license. Dropping it on the stone floor, I use the tip of my toe to partially wedge it beneath a crate.
Covering my tracks.
Planting bigger asshole tracks. Just in case.
Last time around, I exited to my left, using the cracks in the rocky surface to pull myself up. But I’m better prepared. I’ve already tossed a rope over the side of the cliff, which landed behind a large bolder. I’ll retrieve it and use it to make my ascent.
A shitty, wet climb, all the same.
With a sigh, I jump back into the pool and swim across to the bolder. Exiting the water, I find the rope. It takes only three tries to snap the loop I’ve made around a rock close to the top. I pray it holds as I begin my climb, swinging slightly until I find my footing on the rock wall. One hand after the other, one step at a time. Over and over, with my feet sliding out from under me on occasion, though mercifully not at the same time.
The rope holds.
I reach the top and haul myself over. Almost stunned by how quickly . . . how goddamn efficiently . . . I scaled that wet beast of a cliff. Damn, I’ve got moves.
And so far, that’s the most challenging part of this whole operation.
Yet there’s no time for a mental high five. Power outage number three is about to begin. Giving me enough time to make it across the lawn and back to the path leading toward the bungalows.
I feel great. Feel confident. Feel safe in my assumption that no one will be patrolling the grassy field. Because Mendoza, in his infinite wisdom, has now set up trip wires around the area. No more snooping around at nighttime. Not if you want sirens going off like a WWII air-strike warning.
Unless you’re me, that is.
I step over the first one easily. Part of my planning had been to memorize each and every placement.
Truth is, I’m a cocky bastard who relishes outsmarting his enemy, even a lightweight like Mendoza. I get off on the rush of adrenaline I feel at outmaneuvering him. A little excitement in one of the easiest tasks I’ve ever tackled. And a huge motherfucking step forward in our investigation of this family.
Looks like I just beat the leprechaun to the pot of gold.
I smile. Nothing is more satisfying, except for wild, raucous sex, than my outperforming McDuff.
The lights go out, casting the grounds into complete blackness.
I feel like whistling as I calmly pick my way across the field. Lifting my legs every so often, one wire, two. Twenty more to go and I’ve barely broken a sweat.
No one killed.
Everything low-key and quiet.
At the halfway point, I contemplate doing the unthinkable. I might tidy up, secure my newfound prize, and drop in on Aubrey. What would she do if I entered through the bungalow skylight and crawled between her thighs. What would she do if I told her I’ve been missing the taste of her on my tongue? What would she do if we fucked bareback and I came on her stomach? I’d like to see that, my juices coating her smooth skin.
And as the dreamy image of my come wetting her lower abdomen clears my mind . . . I see her.
I fucking see her.
Running.
Dragging a large suitcase behind her, a purse over her shoulder, and headed like a bat out of hell straight for the lawn.
Knock me down then run me over twice. I’m screwed. So fucking screwed.
And there’s not a goddamn thing I can do about it.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Aubrey
One second, I’m crossing the darkened lawn toward freedom and in the next second, my ankle is caught up in a tree branch and I’m face-planting onto the lawn. And in a half second afterward, the early-morning quiet becomes an instant memory as multiple, high-pitched tornado sirens go off in warning. A terrifying sound that’s loud enough to wake up Sacramento along with Mexico City.
I come up onto all fours and lift my head.
That’s when I notice him.
Frozen like Zeus in the middle of the lawn. Shirtless, barefoot, and even at this distance I can safely say . . . furious.
The nerve of him, running about in the dark, clearly up to his late-night business tricks yet pissed off at me. Like I expected to catch my ankle on a trip wire and set off dozens of sirens—because that’s what happened, right? Juan Carlos laid out a booby-trap for wandering guests and I’m the unfortunate person to fall victim to it?
I rise, as do my eyebrows, as he does an about-face, drops onto his stomach, and proceeds to army-crawl back across the lawn. Lightning-quick and except for a sharp, fleeting glare, without even acknowledging me.
I cover my ears but the sirens are violently loud.
Violently . . .
I scramble over to my suitcase, grabbing whatever I can from inside and shoving the lot inside my purse. I’ve no choice but to leave the fine, expensive gift behind.
Like the devil’s at my heels, I take off in a mad sprint across the lawn, following the same direction Diego’s taken. I race toward the front of the mansion, toward the entry gate, and toward the unseen cab. I’m too anxious to sleep and, though it’s early, prefer to wait outside the gate for the cab to arrive.
By the time I reach the driveway, I’m winded. There’s no sign of the cab or Diego.
And just my poor luck, the electricity decides to kick in.
I’m flooded in light with only a few things going in my favor.
My sneakers—smart, sensible choice. I’m also dressed head to toe in black, with tight black skinny jeans, a high-riding cropped black T-shirt, and black sweater meant more for show than keeping the chill off.
The gate is open. A crack, yet enough to squeeze through, its thick chain laying in broken pieces on the ground. A broken lock right there next to it.
I bite my lip, staring at it. I hadn’t considered the gate would be locked tight, making it impossibl
e to walk out of here via the driveway.
I inhale sharply and almost choke. There’s a strange smell in the air. Gunpowder, like there’s a firing range nearby. The last place I want to be caught nearby.
Escape.
The thought spurs me on.
I’m unsure why I pick up the chain and refasten it behind me, hooking what remains of the lock over it. Too many B-rate suspense movies perhaps, where prison escapees always cover their tracks? But those sirens are no joke. Those sirens terrify the heck out of me. Leaving me with no choice but to follow my instincts.
And my instincts say flee. Go. Run.
I hear shouting, but I’m already moving.
Wrapping my fingers tightly around my purse handle, I hurry away, following the driveway down its winding, twisting path.
Casa Bella seems to come to life behind me.
More shouts beneath the pauses in the sirens.
More anger and violence and screwed-up terror that no one in their lifetime should ever have to face.
Engines roaring to life.
And it’s that sound that really has me terrified because there’s only one way out of here.
By follow the long, winding driveway.
If I stay on this driveway, they’ll find me. Who knows, they might run me down. Plow right over me then drop me off this mountainside just like what happened to their guest.
So I’ll find another way. But do I go left or right?
It’s dark out here so far away from the house. I’ve no idea what the landscape is like off to either side, my focus during our arrival being on the architectural wonder at the mountaintop.
Boulders stacked higher than my head flank both sides of the driveway. Impossible to climb over without injury. No choice but to hurry on straight, the ground beneath me beginning to rumble from the trucks behind me.
Move it. Go.
I desperately glance around, and spy a few breaks in the rocks. One large one to the left and a little farther along on the drive, one tight squeeze to the right.
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