Glee was alight in the eyes of that damaged visage, and delight twisted its lips into a smile.
“Hello, Mistress. Do you remember me?”
Nancie didn’t remember her name, but yes, she remembered her. And she recalled that she herself was the one who had wielded the blade that had spawned the face she saw before her.
“The name is Vicky Denton. And it’s so good to finally see you again.”
Vicky Denton lunged at Nancie then. Nancie tried to defend herself, but it was like trying to fend off a wildcat. Fists battered Nancie into unconsciousness, and as she slipped into blackness, she heard Vicky Denton’s maniacal laughter follow her down into the dark.
8
Fancy Meeting You Here
Tanner and Bo had watched the firefight unfold. Or at least what they could see of it. Most of the action took place inside the house, but they had seen a few battles occur between men out front and those on the upper floor of Nancie Ventura’s house.
The shotguns of the invaders were wreaking damage on the windows and the men behind them. At the same time, the automatic weapons of the men in the house gave them a temporary advantage over their opponents.
The men attacking were all white and had spoken English. The men inside the home were swarthy, likely Mexicans, and spoke Spanish.
In the end, two of the attackers remained. They came out of the house and got into the van. Both had been wounded; one in the chest, and the other in the right leg.
One of the defenders from the house came outside as they were backing out of the driveway. He took aim at the driver and released a single round before his weapon ran dry. The round must have missed its target. The driver stopped the van, put it in drive, and mashed the pedal. The man with the empty rifle was frozen for a moment before going into action. That instant of hesitation cost him his life. The van struck him as he was about to jump to the side. It sent him slamming back against the metal railing of the house with enough force to shatter his spine.
With the threat defeated, the van backed onto the street and headed off toward the avenue. All along the street, people were peeking out of windows and standing at their open front doors while wondering what the hell had just happened.
Across the way, all was quiet. If there was someone in that house alive, their moans couldn’t be heard from the attic.
“I guess we should get out of here,” Bo said.
“You go,” Tanner said. “I want to get a look at that house. We need to know if Nancie Ventura is in there.”
“I’ll come with you.”
“No. Go out the back and get the car where we left it, then drive three blocks east of here and pick me up. And be careful. I’m sure there are cops on the way here.”
“You like to work alone, don’t you?”
“I’ll move faster on my own. And we can’t risk having the police cordoning off the area where we left the car.”
“You’re right about that.”
They exited the home through the window Michael Barlow had left unlocked. Bo headed to the block behind the house while Tanner sprinted across the street. He had his gun out and was keeping watch for movement from the house.
Tanner had sunglasses on and was aware that one of the people in the neighborhood might be filming him. It couldn’t be helped, but he doubted anyone was close enough to capture him well.
He moved past the guy who had been struck by the van and entered through the front door. He had already viewed the inside of the home through a shattered window. Six men were lying dead in the living room, with two more visible on the staircase, and another along a hallway. A moan came from the kitchen. Tanner found a man in there with so much damage done to his midsection that he marveled that he was still alive. He bent down beside him. The guy was Mexican, so Tanner spoke to him in Spanish.
“I’m not one of the men you fought. What happened here?”
The guy opened his mouth to say something and blood poured out of it. Tanner was considering giving him a mercy round when the man went limp and died.
There were four more dead men upstairs. In the master bedroom suite, there was evidence that a woman had been in the home recently. Hair spray and makeup were on the sink in the bathroom and the toothbrush was still damp. A look inside a nightstand revealed a purse. Tanner dumped the contents of the purse onto the bed. There was nothing interesting, so he pocketed the wallet and headed out of the house through the back as sirens approached.
He was taking the same path Nancie Ventura had taken and saw the bearded man who had confronted Nancie. The guy was breathing but unconscious and bleeding from a wound to his right side. There was a round white stone beside him that had a speck of blood on it. Seeing that, Tanner looked for and found the spot on the side of the man’s head where the rock had struck him. It was no wonder he was out cold.
Tanner noticed something colorful in the grass a few feet away. It was a cell phone with a pink cover. He wondered if it had belonged to Nancie Ventura and stuck it in his shirt pocket. At the fence, he spotted a smear of blood where Nancie had scraped her knee.
Tanner gripped the top of the fence with both hands and bounded over it, strolled past the kiddie pool and play set, then continued cutting through yards until he was three blocks east of the scene of battle.
Bo pulled up beside him and smiled. “You look like you could use a lift.”
“I wouldn’t mind one,” Tanner said as he climbed in.
“Any survivors back there?”
“There’s a guy lying in the yard who might make it. I think he was one of the attackers. If he lives, he’ll be able to tell us who hired him and the others.”
“What about the woman, Ventura. She wasn’t killed, was she?”
“I think she might have escaped. If it wasn’t a risk that we might run into the cops, I would drive around the area and look for her.” Tanner removed the pink phone and the wallet from his pockets. “There may be something in her phone or wallet that might help us find her.”
Tanner and Bo met up with the others and told them about the firefight. When Tanner said that he thought Nancie Ventura had been in the house and had escaped, Maxwell wondered if perhaps she had been taken by someone instead.
“Why do you think that?” Tanner asked.
“I don’t have a reason, just stating a possibility. If I had staged an attack like that, I would have left someone behind to keep watch for the police. If there was someone filling that role, they might have come upon Nancie while she was getting away.”
“You have a point,” Tanner said. “Then again, if that had happened, they probably would have killed Ventura like they killed Nick and his cousin, Regina.”
“But Regina was tortured. Maybe the person behind this would want to torture Nancie Ventura as well.”
“That’s another good point. The problem is that we don’t know who’s behind this or why? We need to find that out.”
The wallet held a fake ID that had a photo of Nancie Ventura on it. Maxwell sent the photo off in a text to Inga Olson. She replied immediately that the woman in the photo was the one who called herself Mistress.
Nancie’s wallet contained nothing else of value, other than a few thousand pesos. As for the phone, Kate went to work breaking the password. A short time later she had access and discovered that Nancie had only called one number over the last two days. It was to a burner phone in the United States.
Ali had been busy on another phone gathering information. She determined that the wounded man Tanner had come across at the rear of the house had survived his injuries.
When Tanner heard that, he turned to Michael. “I have a job for you.”
The wounded man was named Paul Lawrence. He’d taken a round to the side that had broken a rib and had sustained a concussion from being hit with a rock. There were bandages wrapped around his midsection and a smaller one at the side of his head.
Michael Barlow entered the hospital by sneaking in through the loading dock area and mad
e his way up to the fifth floor where Lawrence was being treated. Michael wore a suit, a pair of glasses, and was carrying a briefcase.
As he approached Lawrence’s room, he was pleased to see that there were no police personnel posted outside. Inside the room, Lawrence was lying in bed with one wrist handcuffed to it. Michael thought he was asleep at first, but then the man opened his eyes. Paul Lawrence was around thirty-five, an American, and had a bushy beard and eyebrows. His gaze looked glassy, and Michael understood that he was probably feeling the effects of whatever painkiller he’d been given. That would either make him too groggy to answer questions or make it easier to fool him. It was Michael’s job to find out from Lawrence who had hired him to attack the house. If they could find out, it might lead to locating Ventura. And they needed Ventura to locate the missing women.
Tanner reasoned that if the house had been a trap, that there was no way that the group would still hold the auction in Tampico. It had likely been moved to a new location, and Nancie Ventura would know where that was. Although the location had changed, the timing of the auction might have remained the same. If that was true, it would take place the next day. They had to find Nancie soon or risk losing their chance to free the women.
Michael grabbed a cheap, orange plastic chair and settled beside the bed in it. When Paul Lawrence’s eyes focused on him, he smiled.
“Mr. Lawrence, my name is Delmonico. I’m an attorney hired by your employer to represent you.”
Lawrence stared at Michael with his glassy gaze. When he spoke, Michael heard a rasp in his voice, along with a southern accent that might have been from Georgia.
“How many of us are here in the hospital?”
“I’m sorry to say that you were the only survivor.” It wasn’t true. Tanner and Bo had seen two of the other attackers leave the scene. But Michael didn’t know anything about them; it was safer to say that everyone else was dead.
Lawrence released a sigh of disgust and slammed a fist into the mattress. He then winced as his wound sent a spike of pain through him.
Michael cleared his throat. “The charges against you are serious but your employer wanted to let you know that you weren’t abandoned.”
“Can I get bail, or whatever they call it here in Mexico?”
“That’s what we’re going to try for.”
“What was your name again?”
“Delmonico.”
“Well, Mr. Delmonico, I’m surprised that she sent you here. I would have thought that crazy bitch would have left me out to dry.”
It’s a woman, Michael thought. And one he thinks is crazy.
Playing a hunch, Michael leaned closer and whispered to Lawrence.
“Were you there when she paid a visit to Regina Collins?”
Lawrence licked his lips as he shook his head in disgust. “It was the damnedest thing I’d ever seen. The way she took that knife to her. Let me tell you, I don’t ever want to get on Miss Angel’s bad side.”
Miss Angel? It sounds like an alias, Michael thought.
“Did she explain why she did it?”
“Hell, you can guess, can’t you? I figured that Regina chick was the one who carved up her face like that. Nancie Ventura must have been involved too, or else why go to so much trouble to grab her.”
Michael opened his briefcase and started flipping through papers. “If I can get you released on bail once you’re healed, we’ll need to meet at Miss Angel’s place. It’s um, hold on a second, I wrote the address down here somewhere.”
“You mean the villa at the end of Carril de la Fortuna?”
“That’s it. Yes, come to the villa. In the meantime, don’t tell the police anything and direct all their questions toward me.”
“This is so fucked up. There were ten of us. We figured we might have to deal with a bodyguard or two, but nothing like the force we found there. And I almost had the Ventura woman… before I got shot.”
“You did everything you could. Miss Angel appreciates that.”
“I’m glad I had a chance to warn her to stay back, or she might have gotten hurt.”
“Right,” Michael said as he stood. “I’ll stay in touch.”
“Thanks, Mr. Delmonico. I’d hate to face this shit alone.”
“It’s all going to work out, Mr. Lawrence. Goodbye.”
Michael left the hospital by the front door after handing a visitor’s pass to the guard at the front desk. He had stolen the pass from a room he went by on his way out. Whoever it had belonged to had left it sitting at the foot of a bed when they went to the bathroom. The patient had been an old woman who was asleep and saw nothing.
Kate and Tanner were out front waiting for him in Tanner’s car. Michael climbed into the back seat and loosened his tie.
“We’re looking for a woman with a scarred face. Does that sound familiar to anyone?”
Tanner nodded. He remembered Inga Olson’s account of what had happened to her, and the sad fate of Vicky Denton.
“Denton must have gotten free somehow and is out for revenge.”
“Vicky Denton?” Kate said. “But there’s no record of her ever being found.”
“Does she have any close family still living?” Tanner asked.
“I don’t think so. I remember reading that her mother had died when she was eleven and that her father raised her alone.”
“A father that this group killed,” Michael said. “And if that wasn’t bad enough, she was disfigured by them too.”
“And sent to a brothel described as hell,” Kate said. “That would explain the rage.”
“I know where we might be able to find her, Tanner,” Michael said, “And she might also have Ventura with her. Paul Lawrence said that his employer was in that neighborhood this afternoon. It’s possible that she grabbed Ventura when she fled from that house.”
“You do good work, Michael. What’s that address?”
Michael relayed the address Paul Lawrence had mentioned.
Tanner put the car in gear. “Fortune Lane. Let’s hope we have some good fortune there.”
Tanner and Bo checked out the area around the villa where they believed Nancie Ventura might be held. Vicky Denton may have had Ventura for hours. They hoped she was still in good enough shape to tell them where the auction was being held. It would be better if she was unharmed. They could use her as their ticket to get inside the auction.
Johan had revealed the port where the ship was supposed to dock in a few hours. Tanner doubted that it would be there. If they didn’t find out where the ship had been diverted to, they would be out of luck, and soon run out of time.
The rear of the villa was on the water. Its front sat far back from the road and was surrounded by a rusted wrought iron fence. The property was rundown but likely rented for a lot of money because it was near water. It had been many years since it was painted, and the wooden railing of the porch had a few spindles missing. What it didn’t seem to have were any guards posted outside.
Tanner and Bo split up, with Bo going around the rear of the home and Tanner taking the front. Once they were in position, they would break in at the same time and surprise Vicky Denton.
Bo was pausing at windows as he passed them, hoping to hear something coming from inside or find a window that was unlocked. He’d had no luck and continued on to locate a rear door that he could kick in. Beyond the house, at the end of the winding driveway, there sat a garage. Bo went over to it and took a quick look in a window. There was a blue SUV in there.
He found a rear entrance for the house at the top of a set of steps that led to a deck. The deck was newer than the rest of the house and had a view of the beach. As Bo neared the door, a dark shape slithered off the roof and fell on him. He had only an instant to glimpse the man’s face.
Bo felt a flash of brilliant pain before his legs went weak and he crumpled to the floor of the deck. There was something around his throat cutting off his air supply. He tried throwing an elbow back at his attacker and failed
to connect. As consciousness fled him, Bo wondered if he’d ever wake again.
When Bo failed to send a text saying that he was in position, Tanner assumed the worst. There was at least one guard, and he had detected their presence. After finding one intruder, they would have to make sure that there were no others. Tanner pressed his back to the trunk of a wide tree at the left side of the house and listened carefully for the approach of someone. It was more difficult than it normally would be because of the sound of the nearby waves crashing against the shore.
He never did hear the man, but he did catch sight of him as he passed by the rear of the tree. He was a man with a build similar to his own with jet black hair. In his right hand was a gun with a silencer attached.
Tanner crept up behind him and pressed the tip of his own silenced weapon against the nape of his neck.
“Drop the gun or I drop you.”
The man had stiffened when he felt the gun, but then relaxed as Tanner spoke.
“I know your voice,” the man said as he let his gun drop onto the grass. When he turned his head, he was smiling at Tanner. “We don’t seem to ever meet under normal circumstances.”
Tanner lowered his gun and smiled back at him. The man was the Japanese assassin, Taran. He was a friend, and someone Spenser had saved when he was a child.
The smile left Tanner as he asked a question. “Did you harm the big man?”
“He is fine. I merely choked him until he lost consciousness, then I tied him up.”
“You’re the one who killed Nick Collins, aren’t you?”
“Yes. Ah, that is where I saw the big man before. And you were the other man?”
“I was. I was wearing sunglasses because of the glare.” Tanner picked up Taran’s gun and handed it back to him. They both unscrewed their silencers and holstered their weapons.
“Why are you here, Tanner?”
Sins of the Father and Mother (A Tanner Novel Book 42) Page 8