“Officer? That guy over there—the one across the street—I saw him inside with a gun!”
The freelancer seems surprised that I’m blatantly pointing him out.
The cop, already on high alert, snaps his focus to the crowd across the street.
“Who? Where?”
I point.
“There!”
The freelancer turns away and starts walking down the block, which is the last thing you want to do when somebody’s pointing a police officer in your direction.
The cop doesn’t say anything else to me. He starts running, shouting at another cop nearby, who also starts running. The freelancer, realizing he’s been made, starts running, too.
I drift away from the crowd as more police cars arrive. A fire truck is headed down the street, blaring its horn. I head in the direction the two cops went. They’ve disappeared around a corner. I hear shouts, then gunfire. I pick up my pace, worried that the freelancer has taken out the cops, but when I turn the corner, prepared to grab the Beretta, both officers are still standing and the freelancer is on the ground. Dead.
I say into the phone, “Okay, I think that’s all of them.”
Atticus releases a breath, like he’s been holding it this entire time.
“Where are you now?”
I check the street sign and tell him.
Atticus says, “I can make a call and have somebody pick you up in five minutes.”
I keep walking down the street as two more police cars zoom past headed in the opposite direction.
“Not yet. This isn’t quite over.”
“What do you mean?”
“I was brought here to assassinate President Cortez.”
Atticus releases another breath.
“Yes, I suspected it was him.”
“He’s supposed to arrive at a hotel a couple blocks away any minute now.”
Hurrying down the sidewalk, I spot two crowds outside the hotel, one close to the entrance and one across the street. The one across the street has signboards and are chanting.
Protestors.
Atticus says, “I can make another call. Make sure he’s alerted.”
I pause.
“How many friends in high places do you have?”
“It depends. What are you thinking?”
I tell him. He’s quiet for a moment, then sighs again.
“I’m not sure the plan is realistic.”
“He has people inside his cabinet who are working against him. It’s the only way Hayward and his people knew about the change in schedule.”
“There are other ways they could have learned about the change in schedule.”
“Call it a gut feeling, Atticus. Somebody close to him is dirty. There’s only one way to sniff them out.”
Atticus doesn’t speak for another moment.
“I can make a call, but I can’t make any promises. Besides, what makes you think President Cortez will even give you the time of day?”
As I join the crowd outside the hotel entrance, I think about the night just outside La Miserias, in Fernando Sanchez Morales’s mansion, stepping into the master bedroom to find Morales’s wife and son cowering in the corner while the man known as the Devil stood over them.
“Trust me, Atticus. He’ll want to hear what I have to say.”
Forty-Four
President Eduardo Cortez sat in the back of the armored SUV. He watched the tall buildings slide by outside the window and tried not to yawn.
He wasn’t successful.
Imna Rodriguez, his closest aide and confidant, smirked at him.
“Try not to do that once we get there.”
“Is that your professional advice?”
“It’s what I get paid for.”
Cortez smiled and shifted his focus out his window again. Their entourage consisted of two other armored SUVs—one leading them, one tailing them—as well as a handful of police cars. One of his bodyguards sat in the passenger seat up front, while his other security detail rode in the other vehicles. The middle seat in the SUV had been taken out and flipped around so it faced the rear back seat; Imna sat in this front seat facing him.
They’d left LAX a half hour ago and would be arriving at the hotel soon. And then, after a brief speech and a photo op with the state’s governor, it would be back to the airport to continue on to Canada.
“Tell me again why we needed to squeeze this trip in?”
Imna was ten years his junior though she sometimes treated him like she was his mother. She adjusted her glasses as she frowned at him.
“It’s good PR.”
“For the governor, maybe. Not sure the President of the United States appreciates it.”
Imna shrugged.
“You win some, you lose some.”
Cortez yawned again. He couldn’t help it.
Imna said, “Why are you so tired, anyway?”
“I haven’t been able to sleep the past couple days.”
“Why?”
“I don’t know.”
He was lying, of course. Cortez trusted Imna with practically everything—every little secret—but not the truth about his son … though he sometimes wondered if she knew, deep down inside, like a few of his other aides. Many of them had access to the same intelligence reports he did. While Alejandro was never publicly named as the one targeting cartel families—called El Diablo by the news media and the rest of the nation—many suspected it was his son. Only Cortez knew for sure. He knew that his son had been out there, still alive, hunting down the wives and children of the cartel families, and while he didn’t approve of such means, he certainly hadn’t gone out of his way to stop his son.
And then it was over. Almost a year ago this week. A skirmish outside a small town an hour south of Culiacán. A cartel head and his men murdered. While the cartel head’s wife and son were unharmed—though he knew two people had intervened at the last second, a woman and man who took his son’s body away. That was all they managed to get from the cartel head’s wife. She had been so frightened she could barely describe them more than that.
The driver answered his cell phone, listened for a few seconds, then said they would be making a detour.
Imna asked, “What’s going on?”
“There’s an ongoing incident a couple blocks away from the hotel. The police want us to steer clear.”
At the next intersection, the convoy made a right. Soon they were speeding down a side street, and Cortez leaned forward to look out the other window but couldn’t see much except a fire truck headed in the opposite direction on another street, and then the convoy turned at the next intersection.
The driver said, “Almost there.”
Imna sighed when she spotted the protestors. There looked to be fifty of them, maybe more. Along with a few news vans parked along the street and a few other police cars and a friendlier crowd gathered around the hotel’s entrance.
Cortez smiled, always one to try to make the best out of a bad situation.
“Quite the welcoming party.”
Imna eyed him hesitantly.
“Maybe we should have skipped this event, after all.”
He shrugged and smiled again.
“We’re already here. Canceling now would be rude.”
“What would be rude is yawning in front of the governor. Try not to do that.”
“I won’t make any promises.”
The SUV halted in front of the hotel. The bodyguard stepped out and waited for the security detail to move into position before he opened the back door. Shouts could be heard outside—the friendlier crowd near the hotel as well as boos and chants from the protestors across the street.
Cortez waited for Imna to exit first, as she always did, but she was now staring down at her cell phone.
He said, “Ready?”
She glanced up at him, her fingers tapping at the phone.
“I have to answer this email. I’ll be right behind you.”
He nodded and sli
d out of his seat and stepped outside. Both crowds became even louder, a raucous noise, and he thought it might be funny if he were to yawn right now, in front of everyone, but then he imagined the photos that would stream across the Internet and cable news and how Imna would be furious with him.
Cortez waved to the people near the entrance as he followed his security detail toward the open doors. He ignored the boos and chants across the street and some of the people on this side calling out his name—a skill he’d perfected over the years, just filter the noise from his mind and focus on the task at hand—and he only paused when a new name managed to push through all the rest, a name he’d been thinking about for the past couple days but one he didn’t expect to hear this morning.
Somebody was shouting his son’s name.
Forty-Five
At first I’m not sure he hears me, what with everybody shouting and the crowd across the street chanting and booing, but then his stride starts to slow, and he turns my way, searching the crowd, until he spots me.
A woman steps out of the SUV, dressed in a pantsuit and glasses. She looks confused, like she isn’t sure why President Cortez has stopped. His security detail looks just as confused. One of them steps close to him, whispers in his ear. President Cortez blinks, shakes his head, and looks like he’s ready to keep moving forward into the hotel.
So I repeat the name, not shouting it like before but still saying it loudly and with force.
“Alejandro.”
President Cortez pauses again. Stands there staring at me. I hold his gaze, aware of his security detail and the police all around me, and the Beretta digging into my back. There’s a good chance I’ll be thrown to the ground and arrested. But I’ve decided I have no choice but to take that chance.
The same bodyguard whispers again to President Cortez, touches his arm to try to get him moving, but the older man waves him off.
President Cortez approaches me, slowly, still holding my gaze. When he’s only a few feet away, I speak again, this time not as loud but still with enough force so he’ll hear it over the crowd noise.
“I knew your son.”
The man says nothing, studying my face.
“I was there that night.”
His eyes go flat with understanding, but still he says nothing.
“I can tell you where to find him.”
He’s only a couple feet away now, his security detail hovering on both sides, ready to draw their weapons if need be. The crowd keeps shouting and chanting, but all of it has become background noise, a soft distant humming like a fly at a screen door.
I lean forward, slowly raise my hand and motion with a finger for him to come even closer.
He does, despite another warning from his security detail. The bodyguard who tried moving the president along has had enough. He tries to intervene, to step between me and the president, but Cortez holds up a hand, stopping him.
“It’s okay.”
“But, sir—”
“I said it’s okay.”
He’s so close to me now, I could easily reach out and touch him. If I were indeed here to kill him, I could do it within a second. But I’m not here to kill him; I’m here to save him.
I speak into his ear, not a whisper but still loud enough so he can hear me over the noise.
“Somebody close to you wants you dead. They tried to force me to kill you.”
President Cortez doesn’t move for a long time, and then he tilts his head to speak into my ear.
“Did you kill him?”
Not looking at him, I nod.
“Did you bury him?”
I nod again.
“Will you tell me where you buried him?”
Another nod.
President Cortez is silent for another moment, then asks a final question.
“What do you need from me?”
I look up and see the security detail hovering, just feet away, as well as the aide still lingering back by the SUV. I lean forward again, this time my lips almost touching the man’s ear.
“I need you to trust me.”
Forty-Six
Imna Rodriguez was doing everything she could to remain calm. She had her cell phone out and was staring down at the screen as if reading an email or text message when in reality it was so she could focus her attention on something other than the fact President Cortez was supposed to be dead.
She was squeezing the phone so tightly she wouldn’t be surprised if the thing cracked, and she had to take a moment to breathe, to try to center herself, and figure out what the fuck this girl was doing here.
Imna knew just as much as had been passed on to Oliver Hayward—the girl’s name, her location in Alden, the fact she had once been a non-sanctioned assassin for the United States government, and that she was the one who killed Alejandro Cortez last year.
The cartels were certainly happy that Alejandro Cortez was no longer in play, but his father remained a thorn in their side. Which was why they’d wanted him dead for several years now. And which was why once they tracked down Holly Lin and then learned that President Cortez would be visiting California, everything seemed to fall into place.
By now Cortez should be dead on the sidewalk, blood pooling from his head wound, police going into overdrive to secure the scene and try to determine from which direction the bullet had come. One of the sicarios who passed through Hayward’s only days ago would have been ready to take out the girl and the rest of Hayward’s men, just like the sicario they sent to D.C. would have taken out the girl’s family, as well as the men watching them.
No loose ends—that was the trick in a situation like this, the kind that was supposed to eliminate the head of state in another country, but something was wrong. She’d sensed it when their convoy made the detour to avoid the hotel with the fire trucks and police cars. The police were to swarm on the hotel eventually, but that was after the girl had taken out Cortez, not before.
Speaking of the girl, where did she go?
Imna realized President Cortez was moving again, heading into the hotel lobby, and she hurried to keep up with him, scanning the crowd as she went.
The girl was gone.
Sidling up next to Cortez, she asked, “What was that about?”
President Cortez shook his head. He looked pale. She couldn’t begin to imagine what the girl said to him. Had she told him anything close to the truth, surely he would have had the security detail detain her, or have the police arrest her, or something. But none of that happened, and the girl was gone, and now they were in the lobby and a man in a gray suit approached them, some bigwig whose name Imna momentarily forgot, the man’s shiny shoes echoing on the marble floor as he strode up to them with his hand extended.
“President Cortez, thank you for coming today.”
The man spoke in Spanish, though it was clearly not his first language, and Cortez smiled and responded in kind, and then Cortez asked where the closest restroom was located.
The man in the gray suit pointed down the hallway. Cortez thanked him and said he would be back soon. Before he could head in that direction, though, Imna touched his arm.
“Are you feeling okay?”
He forced a smile at her.
“Just a little lightheaded. I’ll be right back.”
Before he could take a step, she tried again.
“Who was the woman outside?”
Another forced smile.
“I’ll be right back, Imna. Wait here.”
She watched him depart, three bodyguards trailing him. The man in the gray suit turned to her and started speaking, again in that faltering Spanish. Part of her wanted to ask him who he was, but she knew she should already know his name, that it was her job to know such things, and before she knew it she cut him off with a curt smile.
“I need to make a phone call. Please give me one minute?”
The man smiled and nodded, and she stepped away, using the encrypted app on her phone.
Oliver Hayward answered a
fter two rings, his tone wary.
“Why are you calling? Isn’t it done yet?”
She wandered over to the corner of the lobby, by a table and some potted plants, and made sure nobody was nearby when she dropped her voice to a harsh whisper.
“No, it’s not done. The girl’s still alive.”
This got Hayward’s attention.
“What? No, that’s impossible. That—”
She cut him off.
“We had a deal, and you fucked it up.”
“I didn’t fuck anything up. It’s not my fault—”
“Cortez is still alive. And the girl just spoke with him outside the hotel.”
Haywood didn’t respond, thinking about it. He hadn’t heard from any of his men, which had concerned him, but now hearing that both the girl and President Cortez were still alive, he began to panic.
Obviously, Hayward didn’t know the two sicarios who passed through his place only days ago had been tasked with taking out his men. Imna had looked forward to telling him about it once Cortez was dead and she stepped away to cry in private—in an empty bathroom, perhaps, just herself and the cell phone and Oliver Hayward on the other end, at first happy that he had come through and then crestfallen once he learned about his men. She hadn’t imagined he would be too angry—they were freelancers, from what Imna understood—but he would still feel betrayed. He should have known any trace to this hit would need to be eliminated; the cartels would want nobody left alive as witnesses, maybe not even Hayward himself despite the other service he provided.
Imna wanted to say something else, something to rub the salt in Hayward’s fresh wounds, but that was when an alarm went off and strobes all around the lobby began flickering.
Hayward said, “What is that?”
Before she could answer, the man in the gray suit hurried over to her.
“Fire alarm, Ms. Rodriguez. We need to head outside.”
She opened her mouth, not sure what to say but wanting to say something, when along with the blaring alarm and flashing strobes came a series of sudden gunshots somewhere in the hotel.
Holly Lin Box Set | Books 1-3 Page 66