She supposed there might be an area of the house dedicated to the security staff—certainly the place was big enough for it—but based on what she had seen of Juan Gonzalez, fraternizing with the hired help didn’t seem to be his style.
Either way, she was going to have to clear the building before entering the main house. Approaching the mansion without doing so would mean exposing her back to a potential threat, and prudence—not to mention self-preservation—dictated she ensure it was empty.
She continued along the edge of the underbrush until reaching a point diagonal to the southwest corner of the building. She was very near the water now, and the pounding of the waves onto the shore provided excellent cover for any noise she might make during her approach.
Also, while there would be no way to cross the open portion of yard toward the structure without making herself visible to at least one window, coming at it from the rear should—theoretically, at least—offer the greatest chance of remaining unseen. Any security personnel inside the building should have the majority of his attention focused in the opposite direction: toward the house.
She crouched in the underbrush, remaining perfectly still, watching the outbuilding with the patience of a cat hunting a bird. Like the rest of the estate’s exterior, the shed—or whatever it was—was lit up like a Christmas tree. Lights shone through each of its windows, and she watched through them for any sign of activity.
After five minutes with nothing, she decided it was time to move. She rose out of her crouch, gun drawn, and moved to the edge of the underbrush. Broke cover and sprinted toward the building, tensing for a shouted challenge, or worse, a gunshot that would knock her off her feet.
But nothing came, and seconds later she pressed her back against the side wall. The sound of the waves breaking over the sand made it feel like the water was practically lapping at her feet, although it was still a good fifteen to twenty feet away.
She waited for a moment, getting her breathing under control, and then crept along the rear wall to the nearest window.
Paused when she reached the side of it.
And then eased along the frame until she could peer inside.
There were no security guards monitoring closed-circuit footage of the property. No command center with a second sentry, prepared to spring into action and shoot Tracie in the back the moment she approached Gonzalez’s home.
It was a simple storage shed, filled not just with gardening and lawn care supplies, but also with various leisure toys and watercraft: a pair of Jet Skis, an inflatable boat that looked as though it might be similar to the one Gonzalez’s man had used to bring Tracie ashore outside Havana.
She leaned against the side of the shed, grateful for the knowledge she was truly alone out here and would not have to neutralize a second guard before entering Juan Gonzalez’s palatial estate.
But this was no time to relax. She would be walking into an unknown situation with no backup and precious little intel. She breathed deeply and turned toward the mansion.
It was time to get some answers.
30
Tracie had broken into more buildings than she could recall over the course of her career. Armories, government offices, military barracks, private homes. Most had been in and around Russia and various Soviet satellites. None had been as easy to access as this one.
She took her time before entering, examining every window at the rear of the house for anything that might indicate Gonzalez and/or his girlfriend or other resident—who may or may not be inside—were still awake and wandering around the interior.
In contrast to the home’s exterior grounds, which had been lit up so brightly it felt like midday, the inside appeared mostly dark. A couple of lamps had been left on in different locations, but her surveillance revealed no signs that anyone was awake.
With nothing left to learn from the outside, Tracie moved through the lights to the back door. Stealth would be impossible, given the lack of cover and the unrelenting brightness, so she didn’t bother trying to achieve it. She walked calmly but at a brisk pace, reaching the door in seconds. Then she pulled Andres’s key ring from the top of her backpack and inserted the keys, one after the other, into the lock until she found the one that would open the door.
The lock turned with a barely perceptible click. Gonzalez would have had to be standing just on the other side of the door to hear it, but Tracie winced anyway, her body tensing. After a moment it became apparent Gonzalez wasn’t just on the other side of the door and she slipped inside.
The house was dimly lit and deathly silent. She moved through the first floor quickly. Thanks to her impromptu interrogation of Security Guard Andres, Tracie expected to encounter no one on the ground floor and did not. In a matter of minutes she was ready to move upstairs.
***
Tracie found him in the master bedroom at the end of a long hallway. Gonzalez lay on his back, snoring quietly through his open mouth. A young woman, much younger than Gonzalez, lay on her side next to him, one arm flung over his chest.
Both were sleeping on top of the bedcovers on this warm, humid night. The woman’s short nightgown had bunched up around her waist, revealing more of her than Tracie had any desire to see, especially since the girlfriend had chosen not to wear underwear to bed.
Gonzalez’s seeming obsession with driving away the darkness was just as apparent in his bedroom as everywhere else on his estate. A pair of nightlights, one on each side of the room, provided a soft illumination that was more than enough to allow Tracie to see clearly.
She slipped her backpack off her shoulder and set it quietly onto the floor.
Padded to the bed.
Leaned down over Gonzalez.
Placed the barrel of her gun inside the sleeping man’s mouth.
And then she shoved it hard, pushing his head into the pillow.
His eyes flew open and he coughed and gagged and sputtered. A second’s worth of sleep-addled confusion showed in his eyes, followed by the shock of sudden recognition.
Tracie’s sudden, violent movement with her gun woke the sleeping woman next to Gonzalez and almost instantly she began to scream. The sound was sharp and panicked, a quick yelp that sounded almost like the bark of a small dog, and then she sucked in a breath to scream again, and Tracie leaned down until her face was almost touching Gonzalez’s.
“Shut her up,” she said, her voice intense. “Now.”
She leaned back and removed her gun from his mouth and he turned to his girlfriend.
“Enough!” he said, and the girl stopped screaming in mid-breath. She simply closed her mouth and all sound ceased, although the redness in her face and the shaking of her body made clear that her terror at awakening to discover a woman with a gun in the bedroom had not begun to abate.
The girlfriend began sliding toward the side of the bed, kicking at the covers, desperate to escape the threat. Her eyes remained glued to the gun with the feral expression of a caged animal.
Her feet hit the floor and she stood and backed away, but Tracie kept the gun trained on Gonzalez. She was certain that the second she directed her attention away from the man he would make a play for her weapon. Based on what she had seen and learned of the man first-hand, she doubted he would let a small matter like his girlfriend potentially getting shot and killed stop him from trying to save himself.
“That’s far enough,” she said, without even glancing at the young woman. “Stop right there.”
The girlfriend kept moving, backing along the bedroom wall. Tracie had no idea where she thought she was going, since to get out of the room she would have to reverse course and walk past the gun she was trying so determinedly to escape, but she had had enough.
She was losing control of the situation and she had to turn things around.
She pivoted, moving quickly, turning the gun toward the girlfriend.
Then she fired.
A slug thudded into the wall and almost before it did, Tracie had returned her gun t
o its original position, aimed squarely at Juan Gonzalez of Omega 7.
All movement stopped, the girlfriend frozen in fear. “You shot me,” she said, her voice a mixture of indignation and shock. “You actually shot me.”
“No,” Tracie corrected. “I shot near you. That’s a key distinction, and one you’ll learn about first-hand if you try to move again.”
The girlfriend crinkled her forehead. “What?”
“Explain it to her,” she told Gonzalez, her gun never wavering.
The man glared at her but directed his words to the frightened woman standing near the bed. “If you move again she’ll shoot you in the head.”
Tracie shook her head. “In the heart.”
“In the heart,” Gonzalez repeated.
Color rose in the girlfriend’s face and she blurted, “Well, then do something! This is—”
“Enough!” Gonzalez shouted the word this time and once more the girlfriend shut her mouth instantly, although the look on her face made clear there was plenty more she wanted to say.
“You,” Gonzalez said to Tracie, his eyes glittering and cold. “How did you—”
“Awww,” she said, smiling tightly. “You remembered. Did you miss me?”
“How did you—”
Her voice turned cold. “That’s not important right now. Let’s try to focus, shall we, Juan? What’s important is that you lied to me, and if you don’t start setting the record straight in, oh, let’s say three seconds, I’m going to start shooting, and guess who’s going to be the first to eat a bullet?”
Gonzalez didn’t answer and she said, “I’ll give you a hint. It’s not going to be Little Miss Victoria’s Secret over there.”
There was a short delay, during which nothing happened.
Nobody spoke. Nobody moved.
Then Gonzalez said, “What do you mean, I lied? I don’t know what you are talking about.”
“Come on, Juan, you can do better than that.”
“You came charging into my office, ranting and raving about Castro murdering American citizens, and about me being an expert in the workings of the Cuban government. You came to me for help, remember?”
“All true,” Tracie admitted. “And yet you sent me to Havana on a wild goose chase, knowing I’d likely never survive the night. And then, on the off chance I did survive, you had your men abandon me on the island.”
Gonzalez affected an innocent look. Tracie had to admit, he was one cool customer; to be able to remain so calm and collected with the business end of a 9mm pistol pointed at his face was a rare gift.
“I only gave you what you asked for,” he said, conveniently ignoring her point about being left in Cuba to die.
“But all the while, you knew Castro wasn’t responsible for the murders at NCC, didn’t you? You knew it because you were responsible.”
“I don’t deny giving you what you wanted—a ride to Havana. But me, responsible for killing the executive staff at National Circuit Corporation? Ridiculous.”
She rapped the gun against the side of Gonzalez’s head and said, “Don’t play games, Juan. We’re well past that point. I saw your little Omega symbol with the funky-looking stick figures inside it, in Havana. Care to guess where in Havana? Oh, wait. You don’t need to guess, do you? Because Omega 7 was responsible, just like your organization was responsible for the NCC killings.”
“That symbol doesn’t prove the Castro government wasn’t responsible.”
“Oh, really?” Tracie scoffed. “You’re telling me Castro sent a team over here to wipe out NCC after cleverly bombing more than a half-dozen of his own office buildings in order to build an air-tight alibi? You know, just in case we came sniffing around Havana? Is that really what you expect me to believe?”
Gonzalez didn’t bother replying. Apparently even he realized how ridiculous his story sounded.
“Now,” Tracie continued. “I know that—”
Out of the corner of her eye, she noticed the girlfriend beginning to shuffle backward away from the bed, and she bit off her sentence. Instead, she said, “Victoria’s Secret girl, get your ass into this bed next to your lying boyfriend. Do it now, or the next shot I take is going to go right through you.”
The girlfriend froze and Tracie said, “Now!” She barked it out with authority and the girl moved slowly, reluctantly, toward the bed. It was clearly the last place in the world she wanted to be. She climbed in and sat rigid, as far away from Tracie and the gun as she could get and still be on the bed.
“Where were we?” Tracie said to Gonzalez, who didn’t answer.
“Oh, I remember. We were discussing your story, or rather your flimsy excuse for a story. I know that you didn’t personally travel to Havana and blow up buildings, just like you didn’t personally fly up to Washington and decimate the ranks of National Circuit. You’re too big and too important to sully your hands by doing the dirty work, isn’t that right, Juan?”
Gonzalez’s eyes had narrowed and he was watching her closely, but still he said nothing.
“So what I want to know,” Tracie continued, “is who did do the dirty work?”
The leader of Omega 7 remained silent.
“I’ll help you out. I know it’s a woman. It’s a young woman, and pretty. Not in a slutty way like Victoria’s Secret girl, here,” she gestured at the girlfriend with her gun before returning it to bear on Gonzalez, “but in a sick, psycho, slaughtering-innocent-civilians way.”
A flicker of surprise passed across his eyes and was gone in an instant. Tracie was watching closely for it, though, and didn’t miss it. She had known—or at least, strongly suspected—that the hooker who had poisoned Allan Nesbitt was involved in the murder plot against the upper ranks of NCC. But her suspicion had been that the young woman in Nesbitt’s room was nothing more than an accomplice, maybe even a hired gun, who had been sent to take out Nesbitt while the bombing was being carried out simultaneously by a different perpetrator.
She was beginning to suspect that wasn’t the case.
She was beginning to suspect the young woman who had killed Allan Nesbitt by poisoning his cocaine with strychnine was the key to everything.
And Tracie wasn’t leaving until she got some answers.
31
“We’re wasting time here,” Tracie said, fully aware that that was exactly Gonzalez’s intention. If he could stall her long enough for the cavalry to arrive—in the form of the day shift security detail, not to mention whatever cooks, maids and groundskeepers he employed—he knew full well she would have to either beat a hasty retreat or risk a prolonged standoff.
She could not allow that to happen.
“I want answers,” she said. “But first, you’re going to restrain Little Miss Victoria’s Secret, and then you and I are going to have a heart-to-heart.”
“Restrain her? How am I going to do that?”
“Easy,” Tracie said. She indicated an antique stuffed chair in the corner. It was plushly upholstered in maroon and gold velour, with rosewood legs and arms carved in an intricate Oriental pattern. The chair wouldn’t exactly function as a jail cell, but it looked fairly solid. She guessed it would be strong enough to hold Gonzalez’s girlfriend, who was even smaller than Tracie. “She’s going to sit in that chair and you’re going to duct-tape her to it.”
Gonzalez’s face tightened in anger and Tracie said, “The alternative is I shoot her now. She may or may not survive if we go with that option, but I guarantee she won’t be running off anywhere, which would serve my purposes perfectly. It’s your choice, but make up your mind because my patience is running thin.”
The Omega 7 leader blew out a breath in frustration. He turned his head toward his girlfriend. “Do as she says,” he said in a low voice, refusing to look at Tracie.
“What?” Her voice was shaking from fear and rage. She clearly had not expected those particular words to come out of Gonzalez’s mouth.
“You heard what she said. I don’t see that we have many optio
ns, do you?”
The young woman mumbled something under her breath that Tracie could not make out, but she slid off the bed and began padding across the room. When she reached the chair, she slumped into it and sat with her arms crossed under her breasts, a petulant look on her face. Tracie thought she looked exactly like a spoiled child who had not gotten her way.
“Get over there and tape her down,” she said to Gonzalez.
“How?” He spread his hands in confusion. “I do not have any duct tape.”
“Don’t worry about that. By the time you get over there, you’ll have duct tape.”
She stepped away from the bed, giving the man room to get up, holding her Beretta in two hands trained center-mass on his body. She backed up to allow plenty of clearance and then flicked the gun at his girlfriend. Get moving.
He clambered out of bed and lumbered past. When he reached the chair, Tracie knelt down and unzipped her backpack. She rummaged around in it with one hand while keeping her gun aimed in the general direction of her two prisoners until finding her roll of tape. Then she pulled it out and tossed it to Gonzalez.
“Do it,” she said. “And don’t be stingy with the tape. I can always get more.”
He dragged the process out as long as he could, not even bothering to try to disguise his intentions. Still, within minutes his girlfriend’s arms and legs had been securely fastened to the chair. Even from across the room, Tracie could see she wouldn’t be going anywhere.
“Now, move back to your bed. Get all the way in, feet off the floor, and face me.”
“Worried that I will attack you and take your weapon away, little girl?”
“Sure. Good luck with that. Just shut up and do what I tell you.”
Gonzalez shrugged. Climbed onto the bed. Then he looked at Tracie expectantly. “I’m not going to give you any information. I cannot tell you what I do not know.”
Tracie Tanner Thrillers Box Set Page 66