“They just gave you a rifle?” Gibson said.
“I think those boys might be a touch depressed,” Hendricks said and sighted the rifle along the top of the laser bridge. Adjusting the scope, Hendricks surveyed the landscape until he brought something into focus. Then he stood back and held the rifle steady so Gibson could see for himself.
A little more than a mile to the northeast stood a cluster of three industrial buildings with blue rooftops. Gibson pressed his eye to the scope, then looked over the top of the rifle. Nothing significant stood between here and there, and the three buildings blocked any line of sight beyond—one of them had to be where the children were being held. Had been held, Gibson corrected himself.
“If they’ve left already, they could be anywhere,” he said.
“Only so many ways north from here,” Hendricks said, unusually optimistic now that they’d finally caught a break. “Don’t overthink it. We go there and figure it out.”
“Okay, but we’ll need a car.”
Hendricks grinned at him. “Don’t think Fernando will be needing that Porsche no more.”
He had a point.
CHAPTER FORTY-ONE
Jenn watched Gibson and Hendricks head for the roof. There was something a little bit sweet about seeing the two of them working together after all their differences. Who’d have thought it? There’d been times in Pennsylvania when she’d been afraid one would kill the other. And while there were still vestiges of that old antagonism, it had softened and morphed into something else. It made her smile for some dumb reason.
Luisa signaled the crews standing by that it was safe to begin repackaging the shipment for transport. In minutes, the warehouse would be overrun with workers on a frantic scramble drill to do in hours what usually took three days. It gave Jenn a moment to say good-bye to George.
“I’m not going with you.”
George nodded thoughtfully. “I know. Why didn’t you say good-bye to the others?”
She swallowed a phantom knot that had become lodged in her throat. “Because I’m chickenshit.”
George embraced her firmly and held her there a long while. “I’ll let them know.”
“Thank you, sir.”
“Hush with that. Thank you, Jennifer. I owe you my life many times over.”
“The least I could do,” she said because she wasn’t good with the kind of words he deserved to hear.
“I wish you good luck. Make a life.”
She kissed his cheek and felt him let her go. She ran to where Fernando lay. A sinking feeling told her the bullet that had killed him had probably also destroyed his phone. That was the kind of luck she’d been having lately. But when she dug the phone out of his jacket pocket, it was in one piece and working fine. For all the good it did her. Jenn didn’t know his passcode, and he’d been careful to turn off notifications to his lock screen. There was no way to tell how long it had been since Fernando had spoken to Tomas, or how much time she had left.
Before he’d died, Fernando had made it abundantly clear that his regular calls to Tomas were the only thing keeping Sebastião alive. Well, there wouldn’t be any more of those, so the clock was ticking now. Fernando had been dead almost fifteen minutes—how long did that leave? It was at least an hour to Lagos. No way she would make it in time.
She found Luisa out on the loading dock, directing traffic and organizing teams for the impossible task ahead of them. Jenn butted in and cut right to the chase. “I need a car and a weapon.”
To her credit, Luisa barely blinked an eye. It was possible that the last two days had pushed her past the point of surprise.
“Tell me why.”
Jenn gave her the abridged version—Tomas, golf club, Sebastião, Fernando’s call-ins. That got Luisa’s undivided attention. She cursed and strode away from Jenn and the workers, who frankly looked relieved to see her go.
Jenn followed Luisa’s beeline for a black SUV.
“Where are you going?” Jenn asked, hurrying to keep up.
“With you. Apparently, I’m not done killing today. Get in.”
“Why don’t you just call over there and tell Tomas to stand down?” Jenn asked.
“Because in the last day, I’ve killed Carlito Peres, Branca Silva, and Anibal Ferro. Word has no doubt spread that Baltasar and Fernando are dead—how long before the rumors begin that I killed them too? So I don’t know yet who is with me and who will come for my head. But Anibal was Tomas’s uncle. I think I can guess which side he will be on.”
Luisa’s two guards sprinted up to the SUV. They’d rearmed themselves and tried to get in the back, determined to accompany their boss. But Luisa locked the doors on them and ordered them to stay behind.
“You’re in charge now. Protect the warehouse and keep the men working. The shipment leaves on schedule. Everything else depends on that.”
Grudgingly, the men nodded and stepped back from the SUV. You couldn’t buy the kind of loyalty Jenn saw in their faces. If Luisa could bring the rest of her uncle’s organization under her control, it boded well for the future of the Algarve. In the short term, though, Jenn imagined she would miss that loyalty when they got to Baltasar’s estate.
Luisa drove like hell, both hands on the wheel and a grim expression on her face. Jenn didn’t know how fast 190 kph was in miles, but it felt too fucking fast. Especially given how busy the highway was. It didn’t seem to bother Luisa, though. If a car blocked her way, she drove up on its bumper and leaned on the horn until it got right with God. Two times a car moved too slow to suit Luisa, and she nudged it with her bumper like she was asking to squeeze past in a tight supermarket aisle. Jenn, accustomed to Dan’s smooth, almost effortless driving, clutched the grab handle for dear life and remembered why she hated being a passenger.
“So, you really care for Sebastião?” Luisa asked out of nowhere.
Jenn didn’t answer, conditioned to expect something biting from Luisa. When it didn’t come, she realized Luisa was asking sincerely.
“It seems so,” Jenn said.
Luisa appeared to give that answer its due. “Good, then.”
And that was it. Question answered and apparently satisfactorily, Luisa finished their white-knuckle drive in silence. Jenn had thought Luisa’s animosity was personal, but she realized now that Luisa had her own feelings for Sebastião. It gave Jenn a different perspective on the woman and also encouraged her. She’d seen firsthand what Luisa was capable of when angry—that might come in handy shortly.
When they pulled up to Baltasar’s estate, it was clear that something was wrong. The gate stood conspicuously open. Not a soul in sight. Luisa stopped the car as if the gate had been closed and sat in the idling vehicle, staring over the steering wheel, up the road toward the house.
“It looks like you were right about word spreading,” Jenn said.
“So it would seem.”
“I don’t want to toot my own horn here, but this will go better if I’m armed.”
Luisa threw the SUV into park and popped the hatch. They walked around to the back, where she unzipped two bulky canvas bags filled with rifles and assorted pistols. Luisa had not gone to Quarteira unprepared. She told Jenn to help herself.
“Damn. I like how you shop,” Jenn said.
Luisa selected a black combat shotgun and set to loading it. To complement it, Jenn picked a compact bullpup rifle that she knew and was qualified on. There were a lot to choose from, but she was a firm believer in going with what you knew, especially into combat. She was also happy to see the familiar grip of a Sig Sauer P226 peering up at her from its holster. It even had a suppressor already fitted. Checking the magazine was full, she slipped the holster onto her belt. She had felt naked without it.
“Good choice,” Luisa said approvingly.
Compliments now. What a weird day it had been.
Jenn felt Fernando’s phone buzz in her pocket. The screen showed an incoming call from Tomas Ferro. Was that a good sign, or only Tomas confirming
that Sebastião was dead? She showed the phone to Luisa, who shook her head and said not to answer.
“Question—is this your car?” Jenn asked.
“Yes, why?”
“‘Yes,’ it’s a car you use, or ‘yes,’ they’ll know it’s you coming?”
Luisa realized what Jenn was asking. “Know it’s me coming.”
“It wouldn’t happen to be bulletproof, would it?”
Luisa shook her head as they got back in the vehicle.
“Well, you can’t have everything,” Jenn said.
They went slowly up the long, curving driveway to the house. Jenn rested her rifle on the windowsill, but the only motion she saw was a cluster of birds feeding in the lush green grass of the rolling lawns. Otherwise, she saw no one and nothing. After the heavily armed presence around the property yesterday, it was more than a little disconcerting. It had the eerie vibe of one of those postapocalyptic movies in which survivors wandered through abandoned buildings that had once been teeming with activity. It bothered Luisa as well, who muttered in hushed Portuguese.
Rounding the last bend, Jenn saw a score of men at the front door of the house. They were all armed, and Jenn wouldn’t have described their reaction to the SUV’s arrival as exactly friendly. The men fanned out, taking intelligent positions behind parked cars that took good advantage of their numbers. Nevertheless, Jenn felt a jolt of hope. One of those cars was Sebastião’s electric-blue Audi R8 Spyder.
Luisa pulled over sharply, bringing the SUV to a lurching halt inches from a tree. She was thinking hard, and Jenn saw her reach a hard, lonely conclusion. “If Sebastião’s alive, he will be in the greenhouse along the cliffs.”
“What are you going to do?”
“Talk to the men. I have to invite them to join me.”
“They don’t look to be in a joining mood,” Jenn said.
Luisa took a deep breath. “No, but I have to try. The Algarve can’t afford a civil war.”
“I can back you up.”
Luisa looked surprised by the offer, then smiled gratefully. “Thank you, Jennifer, but there are too many. Even for us,” she said, summoning all her bravado. “If they mean to kill me, they will kill me. I won’t need your help for that.”
“Are you sure?”
Luisa pointed along the side of the house. “Give me ten seconds to draw their attention, then go that way. They won’t see you from this angle.”
Luisa eased slowly out of the car, hands in plain sight, leaving the shotgun across her seat. She gave it a lingering last look before shutting the door.
“Tell Sebastião that I am ashamed at what my family has done and that I am truly sorry,” Luisa said. “If you hear gunfire, send flowers. And be careful on your way out.”
Jenn wished her luck and watched Luisa walk up the driveway toward the house. At the count of ten, she slipped out of the SUV and made a low run to the edge of the house. She knelt and listened. No gunfire yet. That Luisa hadn’t been shot on sight was a promising sign. Working her way quickly to the far corner of Baltasar’s enormous mansion, Jenn encountered no resistance. Beyond the pool and clay tennis court, the roof of the greenhouse rose above the hedge that mostly hid it from view.
Taking a steadying breath, she sprinted across the open space by the pool and disappeared down a flight of steps that split the hedge. At the bottom of the stairs, the low murmur of men’s voices brought her up short. The voices were coming from around the corner hedge from the direction of the greenhouse. Crouching, she propped the rifle against the hedge and drew the Sig Sauer with its suppressor. She would have killed for a tactical mirror to give her some sense of what lay around this corner, but she’d left her SWAT gear in her other pants. Going in blind against an unknown number of hostiles was a lousy option. Going in blind and alone verged on suicidal. There had to be another way. Could she negotiate with Tomas?
A bellow of pain rendered the question irrelevant. It was Sebastião. He was alive. He was in agony. Her tongue snaked across her front teeth. The hell with this, she thought. Maybe George could have found a peaceful resolution, but she didn’t have his way with words. She wanted the fight. An old, familiar coldness descended over her. As far as she was concerned, anyone near this greenhouse had made their choice; they would all have to live and die with it.
Jenn came around the corner, gun raised, rising out of her crouch. Two men stood guard at the door. They both saw her at the same time. The first panicked and struggled to draw his pistol; Jenn shot him twice center mass and sent him tumbling over a crude wooden bench. He lay there, unmoving.
The second man didn’t panic. He had the eyes of someone who had been shot at before and knew there was nothing to be gained in hurrying. Calmly, he shouldered his rifle and brought it up, trying to bring it to bear on the intruder. Fortunately for Jenn, it had a long barrel that wasn’t designed for close quarters. In the time it took him to train it on her, Jenn fired twice. And missed twice. Both to his right. She overadjusted and missed a third time, this time to his left. Behind him, panes of glass to either side shattered, along with the element of surprise. This was what six months of rust won you—the terrifying ability to miss water from the end of a pier. That and the parting gift of a large-caliber bullet in the head.
Her fourth shot coincided with his first. He missed. She didn’t. Shouldn’t have been possible, but he did. She had no idea by how much—could have been an inch or a mile—only that she was alive by sheer, dumb luck. She’d done everything to get herself killed, and then an experienced killer had pointed a cannon squarely at her and simply missed. She shot him a second time as he staggered back, trying to catch the blossom of blood flowering from his clavicle. He took a weak step to his right, stumbled, lost his feet, and went down.
Confirming that her mind hadn’t deceived her into believing she was uninjured, she fought adrenaline’s whispering lie that she was unkillable. But it was so seductive, and she felt the rising euphoria that only came after surviving a brush with death. She willed herself to focus. Sebastião was inside. He was alive. She could still save him. Her magazine was only half empty, but she ejected it and slapped a fresh one into place. Then she kicked in the greenhouse door.
Sebastião sat lashed to the same chair from the video they had shown her on the beach this morning. Had he been here all day? The mottled scrum of his sweat- and blood-soaked clothes spoke to his barbaric treatment. His surgically repaired leg had been stretched out and bound by a taut length of rope. And it looked as if Tomas had been getting himself a workout, because the knee itself was purple and grotesquely deformed. When Sebastião looked up at her, she wasn’t sure if he even recognized her. There was nothing in his eyes but anguish.
Tomas Ferro crouched behind Sebastião, using him as a shield. He’d traded his golf club for a pistol that he pressed to Sebastião’s temple. Only the top of Tomas’s head was clearly visible. Six months ago, Jenn would have shot him without a second thought. The idea of accidentally hitting Sebastião wouldn’t have entered her mind. It was all she could imagine now. But she’d left all faith in her aim outside.
In a shaky voice, Tomas threatened to kill Sebastião if she didn’t drop her weapon. He said it in Portuguese, though, so by the time her brain translated and reacted, Jenn had already taken three more steps. And after those three steps, Tomas still hadn’t made good on his threat to kill Sebastião. That he hadn’t told her everything she needed to know.
Don’t give him time to think.
The longer this played out, the more likely it ended with Sebastião dead. Her mind went quiet, and she took a single step toward Tomas. He repeated his threat even as she took another and another and another. A confused and terrified expression crept onto his face, as if even though he knew what was happening, he was paralyzed from stopping it. When she reached Sebastião, she stopped and in one easy motion put the gun to Tomas’s forehead like she was brushing away a strand of his hair. Even she couldn’t miss from this range.
S
he didn’t.
CHAPTER FORTY-TWO
The red Porsche slalomed in and out of traffic as if the other cars were bolted to the roadway. It was a beautiful, nimble automobile, but it was a tight squeeze for three. With Hendricks driving and George in the passenger seat, Gibson had been left to wedge himself into the back. He snorted. Porsche had a lot of nerve calling this padded coffin a back seat. To fit, Gibson had to turn sideways with his knees up against his chest. Hendricks had made about three different sardine jokes in the five minutes since they’d left Fresco Mar. It was his way of not dwelling on Jenn’s absence. They were all in shock at her decision. Even as crowded as it was, the car felt strangely empty to Gibson.
The three blue roofs came up fast on their left. Hendricks eased off the gas as they made a drive-by. All three buildings were part of a single complex that had once been a medium-size construction-supply business. Judging from the condition of the exterior, it had been closed a long time. Closed but not abandoned. The exterior fences that circled the property were well maintained, and Gibson saw several places that had been repaired and reinforced. Coils of razor wire snaked along the top of the fence. From down on the road, Gibson couldn’t spot a laser bridge on any of the roofs, but that didn’t mean one wasn’t up there.
Something about this place gave him a bad feeling.
“A lot of security for a bankrupt construction company,” George observed.
“Almost like they’re more interested in keeping people in than keeping them out,” Hendricks said.
After they’d driven the length of the property, the Porsche made a looping U-turn and went back for another pass. The main gate was open. A pickup blocked the way. Its doors were ajar, and four men stood staring at the buildings expectantly.
“Pull in,” George said, laying a pistol across his thigh that he’d taken out of Anibal’s hand. “Nice and easy. Let’s see what they do.”
Hendricks slowed and turned into the driveway. One of the men by the pickup turned to see who had arrived. A flash of recognition crossed his face at the sight of the Porsche, and he raised a hand in surprised greeting. There was only one reason the man would know this car, or its former owner. Gibson didn’t need to check the roof now; this was definitely the right place. The only thing he didn’t understand was what the four men were doing there. They were facing the wrong way to be guarding the place. There was a sense of anticipation, as if they were waiting. But for what?
Debris Line (Gibson Vaughn) Page 27