by Logan Fox
“They’re hundreds of miles apart.” Finn shifted his weight. “We’d be taking a huge risk choosing any of them over the other.”
“So let’s split up,” Bailey chimed in from behind. “We can each take—”
Finn lifted his hand, the back facing toward Bailey, and the man cut off mid-sentence.
Zachary West—and the dozens of shell corporations and business entities he was involved in—owned close to eighty properties. Those included manufacturing plants, small businesses, real estate…and three islands.
Granted, they were so small that Google Maps didn’t even have names for them, but when Kane had zoomed in on the satellite footage, it had been clear two of the islands had a runway.
The only difference between this island and the other two was one insignificant spot of white.
“That could be nothing,” Lars waved a hand toward the monitor. “It is nothing. I say we wait for someone to call us back.”
Lars had gone through Duncan’s entire call history, trying to build an itinerary of the man’s flight plan. All he’d been able to come up with was that Duncan had rented a helicopter from Lajitas that had taken Zachary to an airport in Tamaulipas, Mexico.
A private airport whose sole owner wasn’t answering their phone.
“Look, either way, we have to get ourselves to that airport,” Kane said, tapping the mouse button as he rose to his feet. “That’s where the trail leads.”
“And if we get there and they’re all hard ass about telling us anything?”
Kane shrugged, and looked straight at Finn. “Then we’ll have to extract it from them.”
He didn’t like the way Kane seemed to assume he knew Finn. That they were simpatico or some kind of shit. But Kane had been the one to track down the islands, using some data filtering tactic he’d been taught in the early days of his DEA training.
Bailey had called bullshit. Then again, Bailey had been calling bullshit since they’d left Zachary’s farmhouse behind.
Finn nodded at Kane. His argument was logical to a fault; the airport was the end of the road. They’d either find more clues there, or realize they’d finally lost all hope of tracking down Cora.
But which was worse: giving up now, or dragging out their failure for another few hours?
“Road trip,” Lars said, but with hardly a trace of his usual enthusiasm.
Kane came past Finn, and clapped him on a shoulder blade. “We’re going to find her,” he said, giving Finn a warm, encouraging smile. “We just gotta keep looking until we do.”
His eyes tracked Kane across the small study until he disappeared down the hallway. Finn was about to follow, when Bailey tugged at his sleeve.
“You sure we can trust him?” Bailey asked.
Finn stared Bailey up and down for a moment before replying. “I don’t know what his reasons are, but I know he wants to find Cora as badly as we do.” Finn gave a small shrug. “Either way, he’s an extra set of hands. Trained hands. We’ll use him until he stops being useful.”
Bailey’s expression hardened, but Finn didn’t wait to hear his reply.
He knew there was something wrong with Kane; his beast skulked in a distant corner of his mind, fearful of leaving the shadows whenever the man was around.
As if something worse waited in the light.
43
Carbon to diamond
Cora pushed back her chair, shooting to her feet and tugging away her hand from Zachary’s caress.
Closure.
The word repeated like a mantra in her head.
“What do you mean?” she asked, hating the way her voice shook.
Zachary also got to his feet, but he didn’t seem interested if she tried to run again. Instead, he moved past her as he headed for the kitchen with his empty plate.
“When he contacted me sixteen years ago,” Zachary said, aiming his voice over his shoulder as he strode into the hall, “I couldn’t believe his arrogance. El Calacas Vivo was an upstart cartel back then. Peddling low quality weed throughout Mexico. They hadn’t even broken ground in any of the southern states of the US yet.”
His voice grew fainter. There was a clink of dishes, and then footsteps.
Cora followed him hesitantly, peering back at Lady. The dog lifted her head, and then rose, shook herself, and came after Cora with a small swish of her tail.
Lady was Zachary’s dog. She would probably rip out Cora’s throat if he commanded it. But she felt safer with the dog around.
At least there would be a witness if Zachary tried anything. That had to count in Cora’s favor.
“At first,” Zachary went on, his voice now coming from the bedroom, “Javier insisted he wanted to form a super cartel. That his business partner at the time was reluctant, which was why he was reaching out to me. I laughed at him; an international drug smuggling operation when his cartel hadn’t even penetrated the border?” Zachary laughed, as if remembering the conversation in precise detail.
Floorboards creaked under Cora’s weight as she moved down the hallway after Zachary.
“But he had excellent connections in Mexico. More so even than Plata o Plomo back then.”
Cora stepped into the bedroom’s doorway.
Zachary glanced at her over his shoulder, and then turned his back to her again. He was fiddling with something out of sight.
“So you made a deal with him?” Cora prompted. She shouldn’t have been fascinated by Zachary’s oration, but she was.
If he could explain why her life had been so fucked up, she’d take it. Hell, maybe this would be her closure too, not just his.
“An arrangement, Zachary murmured. He paused, arms moving as if he was trying to fit the wrong pieces of puzzle together. “One that would take Antonio Rivera out of the equation, while keeping ECV whole.”
Her heart fluttered at the sound of her father’s name. Cora stopped, unable to force her feet forward.
“The kidnapping,” she said quietly. “It was you who—”
“I was only a lieutenant back then,” Zachary interrupted quietly. “But I took Javier’s deal to my capo, and he agreed to go forward with it. If Javier could provide the location for Antonio’s family, he’d take them and use them to break Antonio’s spirit.”
“Javier expected him to leave the cartel,” Cora said in a voice that sounded like it came from a mile away. “But he didn’t.”
“He didn’t,” Zachary agreed. “Even after we killed Sofia.”
He turned to look at her over his shoulder, searching her face. “You were next in line. Javier was leaving Naomie till last.”
Her heart lodged in her throat, pounding so hard that she couldn’t breathe.
“Unfortunately…” Zachary shrugged. “You escaped.”
Cora swallowed hard. “Who killed my mother?”
Another shrug. Something clicked—plastic—and Zachary dropped his arm to his side. Whatever he’d been busy with, it was small enough that she couldn’t see it while he cupped it in his palm.
“Javier. It was part of the arrangement.” He faced her, and a slow smile grew on his lips. “And I would have been your reaper, if you hadn’t escaped.”
Cora fell back a step, ice flashing over her skin.
Closure.
Her shoulder struck the side of the door, and she twisted away. Lady was behind her, staring up at her with godlike patience. She ran headlong into the creature, tripping over the pitbull’s stout body. Lady yelped, jumping to the side as if wondering what she’d done to deserve a knee to her ribs.
Cora scrambled up, a scream bubbling in her throat, but she was so terrified in that moment that she couldn’t let out anything but a low whine.
She struck the wall, caught off balance by her collision with the dog, and pushed away again.
No footsteps came after her. No yell for her to stop.
She ran all the way out of the beach house. Down the steps. Over the soft sand that sucked at her feet like wet concrete.
The ocean splashed up around her ankles. Her calves. Her thighs.
A wave tugged at her clothes, and then dragged at her, toppling her. Spluttering, she fought her way free from the water. She spun back, staring at the white beach house. From here, she could see the circumference of Zachary’s tiny island. It was long and thin, perhaps a mile by three.
A shadow moved in the beach house’s front entrance. Then a spark of light.
Zachary, lighting a cigarette. Leaning against the door jamb and staring out at her.
Watching.
Waiting.
Because there was nowhere to run. Nowhere to hide.
She’d have to kill him if she wanted to survive. And, even if she did, it would mean she’d be all alone on this scrap of land.
No—not alone.
She’d have Lady.
44
A real DEA agent
The boat’s engine cut out. Kane glanced back at Cora’s three bodyguards, giving them a curt nod. He guided the boat into a lagoon—in reality, a small sand bank beyond which the ocean’s waves couldn’t really penetrate—and hopped up onto the sandy beach. He lashed the boat to the closest palm tree and beckoned the men to follow.
Milo had seemed happy to let him lead their sortie ever since they’d left the airport.
That briefcase full of money they’d found? The pilot had developed a stutter how eager he’d been to tell them exactly where he’d taken Zachary and his ‘passenger.’
Finn had looked ready to smash his face in when he heard the pilot say the ‘pretty young thing’ had been unconscious at the time.
Kane moved forward through the trees, picking his way using what moonlight made it past the overgrown canopy above.
Cora’s men were silent behind him, except where they stirred foliage and rustled brush underfoot.
Their trip here hadn’t been this idyllic. Bailey—the fucker—had accused him of lying. Said that Kane had mentioned something about working for the FBI.
Kane gave his head a shake, and snorted quietly to himself.
As if. He was a DEA man at heart.
The others hadn’t seemed too interested in Bailey’s accusations; they’d been more concerned with how they were going to reach the island without attracting attention.
William — Willy, for short — had been so grateful for the payout, he’d lent them his four-seater yacht. It had taken close to five hours to reach the island and midnight was mere minutes away.
He should have been exhausted, given that he hadn’t had a full night’s sleep in several weeks, but instead he buzzed with adrenalin.
What was better than an upstart of a girl pretending to be capo?
Why, the infamous El Lobo, of course.
He would get a medal of honor for this; bringing in Zachary West.
Fredericks would have no choice but to give him back his badge. His real badge.
A real badge, for a real DEA agent.
Kane smiled to himself, and stroked a finger down the barrel of his gun.
45
Not Enough Glasses
Zachary wasn’t in the doorway anymore when she trudged back up the beach. Twilight had already settled on the island; the sky was a dark purple, a handful of streaky gray clouds the only decoration in an otherwise pristine sky.
She left wet, sandy footprints on the hall floor when she went inside.
Cora followed the smell of cigarettes to the living area. Zachary crouched at the heart of a large stone fireplace, building a fire. She watched him for a few seconds.
“Can I use your bathroom?” she asked quietly. Her voice shuddered, but that was from the coldness seeping into her bones.
The ocean had been ice cold. The breeze that had picked up on her way from the shore to the beach house, even colder.
“You don’t have to ask.” Zachary didn’t look up. “But leave it in the condition you found it.”
She clenched her jaw, and trudged down to the bedroom.
There was a strange smell inside the room, like the stuff they used to clean hospital floors with. It made her nose wrinkle. The room looked the same as it had all day. Neat. Bed made. Window open a slit so the cool breeze could toy with the lace curtain.
She opened one of the closets. It was full of Zachary’s clothes. The next one had women’s clothes inside.
Not hers.
Not the right size, either.
A shiver trickled down her spine, along with a drip of icy water.
Whose were they?
Cora pulled out a pair of sweatpants and a long sleeved t-shirt. She glanced at the underwear, but the thought that they might belong to someone else freaked her out too much for her to be able to wear them.
She had to get dry. Then she could formulate some kind of plan to kill Zachary. The shower took long to warm up. As she waited, she stared at herself in the mirror and rubbed at a streak of face paint in her hairline.
Zachary had washed her face sometime in the past day. Judging from the lack of sweat she smelled on herself, he might have washed her too.
Goosebumps broke out over her skin, and she had to force bile down her throat.
She was about to strip and step into the shower when she heard Zachary’s voice. Immediately freezing, Cora strained to make out what he was saying. Slowly turning off the faucet, she crept closer to the living area, wincing every time her deliberately slow steps creaked a floor board.
“…another day or…leaving anytime…make…that…dropping off supplies.”
Cora’s breath hitched in her throat. She stopped moving, stopped breathing, tried to flatten herself against the hallway. Icy water trickled down her neck, making her shiver violently.
Zachary was moving closer.
“No, that’s not what I said. No more supplies.”
He walked past her, less than a yard away, a bulky phone with an aerial pressed to his ear.
A satellite phone.
Her pulse raced.
Zachary turned and headed into the kitchen.
“I will call you in two days. Until then, no one is to come through under any circumstances. Understood?”
Two days? No supplies?
Her fingertips trembled, and she hurriedly squeezed her hands into fists. Then she crept over the boards, trying her best to get closer in case his voice dipped again.
“No one will be hearing from them.” A long pause. “Because they’re all dead.”
What? Who?
Cora’s mind fled to Finn, Lars, Bailey. Had he…had Zachary somehow—
“Because I made sure of it,” Zachary’s voice dipped low. “Did you hear from Duncan yet?”
Cora backed up again, turning to head for the living room. A fire smoked in the hearth, still messy in its infancy.
“Keep looking.”
Zachary spoke with a finality, and she turned when she heard how close his voice was.
He stood right behind her. How he’d moved so silently amazed her—perhaps he knew exactly which floorboards in the house creaked and which didn’t. The phone dangled from one hand.
“You’re still wet,” he said, his eyes moving over her face as if he was assessing her mental health as much as her physical.
She managed a nod. He moved around her and sank into one of the armchairs. He set the phone down on the side table and let out a long sigh as he took up his box of cigarettes.
As she came around the sofa, the box gaped in her direction.
Only two cigarettes left.
Zachary lit one, and then offered the box to her. She shook her head. The fire popped, and she jerked in fright. Zachary’s lips curled into a smile around the filter of his cigarette.
“Terrible habit,” he said, turning the cigarette so he could look at it. “But life is so short. Why deny yourself its pleasures?”
This had to end. Now. She would go crazy if she had to spend one more minute with Zachary. She couldn’t stand the way he messed with her mind; despite everything, in this moment, there seemed n
othing wrong with the fact that she was on a deserted island with a rival cartel leader who’d been instrumental in her kidnapping and torture when she was six years old.
“Can I have some more wine?” Cora asked, voice shaking.
“Of course.” Zachary gave her a pleasant smile. “Help yourself.”
She blinked at him, incredulous that it had been that easy. Her feet slapped wetly on the wooden boards as she walked into the kitchen and opened the fridge.
Cream. Butter. Two bottles of white wine.
She slid a bottle out, her eyes moving over the empty fridge for a moment before closing it.
Had she heard wrong? Had Zachary said he’d needed supplies, or they didn’t?
She opened a drawer.
Cutlery. A corkscrew. A few steak knives.
Glancing over her shoulder, she stuck one of the knives behind the waistband of her soggy pants. The tip grazed against the top of her thigh when she moved.
The skin between her shoulder blades itched, and she spun around. No one stood in the doorway. She glanced around the kitchen, peeked out the window.
Why the hell did she feel eyes on her?
Movement. She narrowed her eyes, staring through the window to the darkness of the jungle. Was something moving there, or was it just her imagination? Maybe those were the eyes she—
Her gaze travelled up.
A camera sat in one corner of the kitchen, its red eye blinking at her.
“Where are the glasses?” she asked slowly.
“They’re in the cupboard right in front of you,” Zachary called out. “You can leave the knife in the kitchen.”
Were there cameras throughout the house? The whole island? Was that why he couldn’t have cared less if she ran, because he’d always know where she was?
When she got back into the living room, she saw a small tablet computer beside the satellite phone. Its screen was dark.
Zachary smiled up at her. “You didn’t bring enough glasses,” he said, quiet reproach in his voice.