“I couldn’t go to Langley,” I say, trying to keep my voice calm. “I couldn’t just listen. That’s not what I’m wired to do. But more important, I was the original target. People are dying because of me. I need to be here and you know it.”
Sam shakes her head, her eyes fixated on the dirty cement floor. She inhales deeply and quietly says, “If it wasn’t more dangerous to put you two on a plane back to the United States, I’d be doing it in one second. But it’s too late.”
“Plus, we need them,” Cooper says, walking closer to us, a satellite phone in his hand. “The DC team is not going to make it in time. We can’t get Elizabeth and Jonathan off that ranch with just me, you, Laz, and Eduardo. I’m not happy they’re here. Thomas isn’t happy they’re here. But at least it gives us two other bodies that can run intel from the truck. Help us in the field.”
“I’m trained for that,” I say and nod. “And Luke has had military training his entire life. He will do anything and everything you ask of him.”
“Fine,” Sam says, lowering her hunched, tight shoulders. She pulls at a clump of her blond hair before pointing her finger back in my face. “But you will do exactly what I say, do you understand me?”
“Sam, I—” I begin but she cuts me off.
“Exactly what I say,” she says again, her voice ballooning around the first word.
“Yes,” I reply with a small nod, and then look over my shoulder to where I know Luke is quietly watching. “We’ll do whatever you say, right, Luke?”
“Of course,” Luke answers and walks closer to us.
“This is all fucking ridiculous but I don’t have time to yell at the two of you anymore. We’ve got work to do,” Sam says, crossing her arms and walking back toward a black moving truck parked in the corner of the warehouse. The back door of the moving truck has been rolled open and satellite phones, laptops, monitors, and other equipment have been positioned at the end of the bed, setting up a makeshift intel center.
Luke and Eduardo begin unloading weapons and extra satellite equipment from the backs of the two beat-up trucks, transferring them to the moving van. Cooper stands and types at his laptop while Sam gets back on one of the satellite phones. She’s shaking her head, I’m sure talking about me.
Laz puts his hand on my shoulder and leans in. “I think you need to be here,” he says quietly in my ear.
“You do?” I ask, raising my eyebrows. He seems to be the only one.
“Por supuesto,” Lazaro says and nods. His dark ponytail swings between his shoulder blades. “Your parents would be very proud of you. This is all they’ve ever wanted for you, mi querido.”
Laz wraps his arm around my shoulder and gives it a squeeze. I nod, hoping his words are true and that I am doing the right thing.
Eduardo drops my bag from the back of the truck at my feet. I lean down and sling it over my shoulder.
“We’ll find them,” Laz says softly as I head for the moving truck. I turn around, my eyes meeting his. His eyes are sad but determined. He nods, his hands tightening around an assault rifle.
We’ll find them. I let his words puncture my skin, sink into my veins, and pump through my body. I hold on to the promise of a complete stranger as I grip the worn straps of my go-bag and walk across the warehouse to the waiting truck.
Sam is on one of the satellite phones. She pulls it from her ear and cups her hand over the mouthpiece.
“Hey, guys, can we all huddle up for a second?” Sam calls out to Eduardo and Luke, reassembling the hollow trucks. They throw down the boards and jog across the warehouse. Sam pushes a button and puts the phone down on the edge of the truck.
“All right, Thomas, we’re all here,” she says, pulling out her tablet and turning it on.
“Okay, here is the latest,” a thin voice says on the other side of the phone. The connection is hollow and the line is scratchy. These phones are untraceable, so it’s a sacrifice the Black Angels are always willing to make. “We’ve gotten satellite images of Elizabeth and Jonathan being led into the back barn, about five hundred yards away from the main house,” Thomas says and my tense shoulders drop, a cold breath passing through my lips. They’re alive. “They were handcuffed and had bags over their heads when they were pulled off the truck. But we have every reason to believe it was them.”
My jaw clenches and my teeth bite down so hard I’m afraid they’ll break at the thought of my parents handcuffed and blindfolded, treated like criminals.
“An important note. Elizabeth was limping very badly when they pulled her off the truck. We don’t know if she was injured during the gunfight at the airport or on the plane down to Colombia, but…” Thomas takes a breath and sighs into the phone. “We have reason to believe that she is gravely injured.”
I lower my eyelids and stare at the ground so no one can see my reaction; a flood of rage cripples my veins and I swear it’s turned the whites of my eyes devil red. I dig my nails into the flesh of my hips and concentrate on the sting. What have they done to her? I’ve seen my mother bruised, cut up, stitched up, and sprained, but never truly injured. The image of her limping across a field, her foot dragging across the dirt, makes the knot in my stomach feel like a knife wound. I know my mother. She would never limp, never, ever, unless she was truly unable to put one foot in front of the other. She’d gather every ounce of strength, grind her teeth, and endure the worst pain possible before showing her enemies that she was anything less than superhuman.
“We will need to make sure we get all the guards down before we grab her because she cannot run. She will need to be carried,” Thomas continues. I don’t know if I’m allowed to speak, but right now, I don’t really care.
“I can carry her,” I volunteer. My voice is louder than I expected it to be and it echoes in the open space. Cooper flicks his glaring eyes up at me as the satellite phone cracks and squeaks.
“Reagan, is that you?” Thomas asks after a beat.
“Yes, it’s me,” I say, shifting my weight and hugging my arms to my body. The entire group has turned their heads. Their eyes are on me. “I can carry her out of there while the rest of the team secures the guards.”
“Absolutely not, Reagan,” Thomas answers, the harshness in his voice impaling my skin. “You were the original target. In fact, he’s contacted us twice now, saying he wants you in exchange for their lives. We at CORE are all obviously pretty enraged about you breaking multiple layers of protocol to get down to Colombia. You’ve broken pretty much every Black Angel Directive we have so far and you’re not even a full Black Angel agent.”
“I know,” I say, pushing my voice forward, stopping it from shrinking into my body, accepting defeat. “I just can’t sit by and watch. I need to be here to help.”
“Sit by and watch you still will, Miss Hillis,” Thomas says, his voice stern and angry. “I have half my mind to put you on the next flight back but we can’t risk tipping off Torres. So you will help. But you will absolutely stay in that truck and help run intel, do you understand me?”
“I understand but I am a trained fighter and I—” I protest but he cuts me off.
“Reagan, do not question me,” Thomas pushes back. “Half the Black Angel tribunal wants to pull Eduardo off this mission so he can guard you in that warehouse. And then we’ll have an even smaller team in the field to rescue your parents. Do you want that?”
“Of course not,” I answer.
“I respect the fact that you want to help save your parents,” Thomas continues. “But this is extremely dangerous. It’s pretty much guaranteed that if they capture you, you will die. There will be no amount of negotiating or promising to release a prisoner in the United States for your life. Are you sure you want to play a part in this mission?”
“The risk is enormous,” Cooper adds with a nod.
“If they grab you, they won’t hold you like they’re holding your parents,” Sam says, turning around and facing me. “They’ve made that extremely clear. You are their revenge ki
lling. It’s not enough for Torres just to kill your parents. He wants to kill their spirits. So you have to understand that if something happens to you, we won’t be able to get you back. Just think about that, Reagan.”
My fingers are pressing down so hard on my charm, I’m shocked the hearts aren’t bending in the heat. I swallow the fury and fear that has broken out of its box and crawled, like black poison, through my veins, polluting my lungs, my heart, my mind. I breathe in, push it back down, and let the numbness take over my body.
“I understand the risk,” I say, my voice tangled in my throat. I clear it and press my lips together. “I’m done with the questions. Don’t ask me if I’m sure I’m doing the right thing. Don’t ask me if my parents would want me to do this or if I realize the risk I’m taking, because right now, I do not care. I’ll do whatever it takes to get them back home safe, and if that means that I might get hurt or die, then so be it. You can’t change my mind, so save your breath.”
Sam’s and Cooper’s eyes widen. Luke has taken a step back from me. Eduardo’s mouth comes unhinged and Laz … Laz is smiling.
“All right, Reagan.” Thomas finally breaks the heavy silence. I feel my hands begin to tingle. I shake them out as Thomas breaks down the positions of the guards, the guns they’re carrying, the time we’ll hit the compound.
I search the faces of the rest of the team. They are nodding, listening intently to CORE’s instructions. Cooper and Eduardo are crouched down in the truck. Laz and Luke stand side by side, their arms crossed, their muscles rigid. Sam stands with her hands confidently pressed to her hips. No one looks afraid. And I realize just how powerful and amazing the Black Angels are, how impressive their network is, to be able to pull something as complicated and dangerous as this in under twenty-four hours. I see now why my parents love being a part of this team.
“Thomas, the sun is beginning to set here and we’ve got at least an hour’s drive to the ranch,” Sam says, turning around to look out the windows. “We’d better get loaded up. Anything else we need to know?”
“Yes, one more crucial bit of information,” Thomas says. The line crackles, then comes back. “We’ve intercepted a message between Torres and his team about a half hour ago. We are under a definite time crunch. Torres is planning on leaving the ranch sometime tonight with Jonathan and Elizabeth and moving them to another location. We have no idea where. He hasn’t given up that information, and you all know that moving victims is usually a bad sign. We do not have time to waste here. It looks like we’ve only got one shot to get this right.”
“Shit,” I hear Laz say under his breath.
One shot. I watch as the team’s determined, hard faces squirm with worry, their steady breaths deepen. On missions, it’s about watching and waiting for that perfect moment, calculating the right time to attack. Rush a compound too soon or too late and Black Angels come home in body bags. I look out the warehouse windows. The sky is streaked pink as the sun dips into the west; the world is darkening, and with it, our chances of bringing my mom and dad home alive.
TWENTY-SEVEN
Icy goose bumps prick my skin. The truck’s walls are cold and hard but I refuse to dig into my bag to find a sweatshirt. It’s a waste of time to do anything but study these files as we drive to the ranch.
I pull up the map of the property. The red dots represent a guard. One on each side of the barn, eight guards around the house, one patrolling the guest house and pool house. The plan is to hit at 8:30 when most of the guards will have gone inside for dinner. The barn will still be surrounded and the guards will eat with their weapons on their laps, ready for any sign of trouble. If we have any chance of getting everyone out of there alive, we have to be quick and we have to be quiet.
My fingers swipe right across the tablet and into the weaponry file. The guards are carrying Heckler & Koch MP5s. My mind quickly flips through its mental database of guns. MP5 … German, developed in the sixties, the most widely used submachine gun in the world, powerful, but not as accurate as the M4 carbines we carry.
I flip through to Torres’s file; his cold, dark eyes stare back at me and a shiver runs through my freezing body. I scan his profile. Fifty-two years old. Four children. One wife. One mistress. Three brothers. One in jail, one overseeing cartel operations in South America, and one stationed in Central America. Five suspected residences. Billion-dollar drug enterprise. Twenty bodyguards. Six years in the Colombian army.
The next stat stops me cold. I pull the tablet closer to my face and read it over and over again. Am I hallucinating? Every muscle in my body tightens and my head throbs with the implausibility of what I’m reading. But I read it again. Foreign Black Angel agent. Five years.
“What the hell is this?” I ask, my voice on the verge of shaking. I look up from my tablet. Luke and Sam continue working behind their monitors. Laz and Cooper are inspecting each weapon, snapping magazines and ammunition into place.
“What the hell is what?” Sam asks without stopping her typing.
“Foreign Black Angel agent,” I spit out. “Torres was a foreign Black Angel agent? This is a typo, right?”
Cooper and Laz look up from the weapons. Sam and Luke stop typing. Silence expands in huge rings around us until it fills the entire truck. Everyone stares at me, their mouths tight, waiting for someone to explain.
“Someone tell me this is a mistake,” I say, my eyes bouncing from one tense face to the next.
Laz clears his throat and runs his right hand along his long, smooth braid. “It’s true. Seventeen years ago, Torres was a foreign Black Angel agent. Like me. He was one of us.”
His confirmation knocks every last molecule of oxygen from my lungs and sends my entire body backward. I hit my head against the steel wall, shake it out, and breathe again. “Are you serious?” I ask, even though it’s clear from their anxious eyes, they are telling the truth.
Laz slowly nods. “Santino and I were from the same town. Knew each other in school. Rose up the ranks of the Colombian military and were both recruited by the Black Angels in our twenties to be foreign agents. He was my partner for five years. I went on more missions with him than I can count. He was an amazing fighter. One of the best foreign agents they’d ever had. And then one day after a big mission in South America, he just disappeared. Took about half a million dollars’ worth of guns and ammunition and equipment from the agency and went rogue.”
“He went completely underground and didn’t surface for another three years,” Sam continues, biting at her thumbnail between thoughts. “We knew about a rising drug lord in Colombia known as the Hammer, but we had no idea it was him until the National Security Agency put two and two together. We should have killed him then when we still had the chance but he grew too powerful. Took everything he knew from the Black Angels and applied it to his criminal enterprise. He even calls his guards the White Angels, just to rub it in our faces.”
“I don’t understand,” I reply, my voice fighting to rise out of its stunned fog. “How could he have spent all that time as a Black Angel and then turn on everyone?”
“He became a Black Angel knowing he was going to turn on us,” Cooper replies and looks back down at his M4 carbine. “He is a master manipulator. The only reason he joined the Colombian military was to learn how to fight and use weapons. How to run an army for the drug kingdom he wanted to build.”
“He used us,” Laz says, his eyes narrowing with anger. “He used every single last one of us. The Black Angels turned him into one of the best fighters and shooters in the world. He’s been able to train his teams to be exactly like us. And the scariest part is he knows all of our secrets.”
“That’s how he was able to get to your parents, Reagan,” Sam speaks. “He knows how the Black Angels operate. We’ve tried to change our security since he went rogue but he’s still figured out how we arm our homes. He knows about the alarms on every property, about the security cameras.…”
“He knows about the basements…” I say, my
voice trailing off, my mind flashing back to last year. The young hitman, pulling at our metal tool chest. That’s how he knew a secret door was there. Torres told him where we’d be hiding.
Sam nods. “That was one of Torres’s men. Your parents were part of a raid in Ecuador that killed his cousin. Santino wanted everyone involved dead, including your parents. He sent that hitman to your house with orders to kill them. And to kidnap you.”
“Did he know my parents?” I ask, grasping the gun at my side so hard, my hand is beginning to cramp. I shake it out and tuck it into the long sleeve of my oversize sweatshirt.
“Yeah, he knew them,” Laz replies. “They had only been Black Angels a short time when he went rogue, but he knew them well enough to stay under their skin.”
“To stay under all our skin,” Sam replies, her voice so soft, I think I’m the only one who heard her.
I shake my head, stretch my legs out in front of me, and cross my arms over my chest. “I thought this was supposed to be the best agency in the world. I just don’t understand how he could get inside this group and fool all of you.”
“He’s the only one who’s ever done it,” Laz says, memories of betrayal changing the tone of his voice, the expression on his face. “He was just that good.”
Silence envelops the back of the truck. There is nothing more to say. Eventually everyone returns to their work. I stare blankly at my tablet, Torres’s face gaping back at me. I knew Torres was evil, but this takes it to an entirely new level. How he could go through all the strenuous training, pass all the psychological tests, and not get red flagged is beyond me. But I guess it takes a real sociopath to fake his way through five years of being a Black Angel. To go on missions and save people’s lives, to befriend his colleagues, to always have their backs and then turn around and stab them there.
I used to believe that every person was good or at least started out good. It’s people like Torres who have forced me to lose that innocence. Some people are just born evil. They are born with that bad seed. And it just grows and becomes bigger and all-consuming until it manifests into hate and then harm and then torture and then murder. Humans are capable of stuff that scares the shit out of me. I just hope we get to the ranch before my parents become two more bodies on Torres’s very long kill list.
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