Chapter Seventeen
Santos had never pushed the Harley to its real limit. But now he forced the big bike past that point as it flew down the dark highway toward Las Lomas. Like a horse commanded to do better, go faster, jump higher, the motorcycle not only responded to his urgings, it surpassed them. The starry sky overhead and the empty road before him added to the impression of speed. On another day at another time, he wasn’t sure he would have been able to control the Harley.
In the distance ahead, Dan’s taillights flashed, and the truck swerved to the right, the vehicle fishtailing to a stop as soon as it was off the blacktop. Santos followed. The hunting guide stumbled from his vehicle, then sprinted toward the gate where he wrestled the chain that secured the heavy barrier to a concrete post off to one side. As Dan worked the lock’s combination, Santos stuffed stainless steel scouring pads in the pipes of the Harley before the baffles. He couldn’t make the motorcycle completely silent, but he could dampen the roar.
Hoping to go undetected, they’d agreed the best route would be to go in through Dan’s lease then cut through the back acres to Las Lomas. If Enrique wasn’t holding Rose there, Santos feared she might already be across the border. He’d called Padilla as he’d raced toward the ranch and told the federale to be on the lookout, but the border was long and dark. There were a thousand places where Enrique could take her over, and no one would ever know.
Santos hadn’t thought it possible for the night to get any darker. As they bounced over the deer lease’s gravel road without their lights on, he realized he’d been wrong. The highway’s reflective stripes had at least given him an idea of where they road was; now the bike was climbing up a barren, rock-filled track not much wider than a sidewalk, and doing so blindly. He dodged a cactus looming over the tortured maze, realizing the bike was heading straight for a pair of massive boulders. Yanking the Harley to the center, he managed to clear the obstacles at the last minute.Then the road leveled out.
A barbed wire fence stretched both ways before him for as far as he could see. In the inky night, a pale yellow light winked dimly in the distance. A mile? Maybe a little less. Dan pulled to a stop, and Santos followed. The only other team member with them, Joaquim, eased his bike in behind Santos’s. He had positioned the remaining ACES at various strategic spots along the ranch’s perimeter.
They climbed off their bikes, and Dan hopped out of the truck. Their boots scraped over the rocks as they approached the fence line. Santos’s pulse thrummed in the silence, a harsh fear coursing through his blood. Rose had to be terrified if she was in this isolated spot at the mercy of the psychopath who held her—whoever it was. Santos knew he’d be scared spitless. Right now, all he wanted was to get his hands around the throat of her captor.
Behind them, Joaquim opened the long scabbard mounted near his saddlebags. The zipper sounded louder than it was, and Santos flinched. There was no way anyone at the cabin could hear it, he told himself.
He and Dan each lifted a pair of night vision binoculars. A hut covered with roughhewn stone jumped into focus. Santos twisted the lens, and a window came into view. Flanking it were two chairs, and each held a man with a weapon stretched across his lap. The chairs were tilted with their backs against the building’s exterior. Their remoteness had made them careless.
Dan grunted. “I haven’t seen guns like that before. They look nasty.”
“Those are the weapons Ortega’s selling,” Santos muttered.
A trail of smoke gently drifted above a glowing ember as the men passed something between them. As Santos watched, one lifted a bottle then handed it over, too. They were clearly at ease, thinking they were safe way out here.
Santos clinched the glasses. He intended to prove them wrong.
…
Enrique’s men kicked Rose to her feet and grasped her elbows, half-dragging, half-prodding her up two steps and over a threshold into the cabin. She managed a quick look around, the smells of fried meat and musty furnishing telling her they hadn’t been holed up in the abandoned home for very long. A filthy kitchen, a blackened fireplace, one window, nothing more. Five more steps, then a fist landed in the center of her back and shoved her forward. She stumbled, almost falling. The man behind her laughed and slammed the door.
Why hadn’t they simply killed her and been done with it?
This isn’t just a career choice for these guys—they enjoy this kind of crap. Inside her head, Santos’s words suddenly pulsed like a blinking neon sign. Was that what Enrique had in mind for her?
She turned around slowly and surveyed her surroundings. This room was as nasty as the one they’d just passed through. A mixture of dirt and dried grass had collected in one corner. She lifted her eyes to the slats of tin that served as roof and ceiling. The panels, some rusted through completely, rose to a ragged peak about seven feet above her, a broken light fixture dangling from its apex. Right above her head, so low she could almost touch it, a weathered beam spanned the room. There was no furniture in the room except a lopsided chest and a soiled cot leaning against one of the flaking plaster walls like drunken soldiers.
Her gaze went to the blurry window that faced the front porch. Twisted metal rods covered the opening, and she could see the two men who’d grabbed her sitting outside, their guns on their laps. She forced down the voice inside of her that cried “hopeless” and walked closer to the window. The bars looked as new as the house was old. The welded crosspieces were attached with screws sunk into the window frame, and they weren’t coming out without some serious effort. And tools she didn’t have. She remembered the bathroom they’d found at Enrique’s house. The one with the broken fingernails and bloody claw marks. Did he make it a habit of locking up women? Her mother had said she hadn’t been inside. Had it even be his home? Maybe it belonged to the poor bastard whose body he’d butchered and left in the bedroom to rot. Maybe the blood and nails had belonged to him, as well.
On the horizon, a blink of light unexpectedly flashed then disappeared, the whispering whine of a vehicle fading with it. Hope surged through her.
Had she imagined it? She held her breath and watched. Once they’d turned off the highway, the men had driven the SUV at least twenty minutes before stopping. And from the silence that had blanketed them once they’d stepped out of the vehicle, she was sure they were somewhere extremely isolated, maybe even over the border.
Could Santos be out there, somewhere in the dark? Had she seen the Harley’s light? Heard its growl?
She gripped the windowsill and stared at the shadow of the mountains, willing the lights to return, but they didn’t. Deciding she’d best depend on herself, she turned away and focused her attention on the door.
Crouching until her eyes were level with its two locks, the plastic tie that held her wrists biting into her skin, she studied the shiny metal. They were keyed deadbolts, brand new and sturdy. She had as much of a chance at getting them open as she did getting past the burglar bars.
Abandoning that idea, she switched her gaze to the opposite edge of the door and the hinges. They were rusted and old. With the right kind of instrument and enough time, she might be able to work out the pins, but it wouldn’t be a quiet endeavor or a fast one.
She leaned back on her haunches and reevaluated the situation. One step at a time, she told herself. First things first. Cross that bridge when you come to it. The clichés were silly, but they worked, and she stood up.
Widening her stance, she bent deeply from the waist, her hair falling over her face to brush the floor. She’d practiced the move for what had felt like a hundred times in a tactical class she’d taken three years earlier. At the time, she’d complained about the sore wrists the exercise had left behind. Now that pain seemed an insignificant price to pay.
Raising her tied hands as far above her as possible, she took a deep breath, closed her eyes, and slashed her hands down to her butt with a grunt, pushing outward at the same time.
The tie didn’t break.
She did the maneuver again.
The second time, it snapped. The broken pieces of plastic flew into different corners of the room and she sucked in the sting that razored across her wrists, swallowing a silent gasp as she straightened.
Rubbing her raw skin, she concentrated on her next move. All she had to do now was get Enrique to open the door. As soon as she figured out how to do that, she’d take down the guards, find her mother, and then save the rest of the world.
No problemo.
…
“What do you think?”
Joaquim’s rifle had a folding stock to make it easier to carry on his motorcycle. Extending it completely, he snapped it in place with a soft click and steadied the compact bipod that held it up, stretching out behind the weapon to stare through the scope.
“Well?” Santos prodded after a few long minutes.
Joaquim didn’t move. “Might work, might not.”
The team sniper adjusted the eyepiece and looked again. Santos trained his own binoculars back on the house. A shadow suddenly filled his view, and he sucked in a breath. “Rose just passed by the window. I saw her. Did you catch her, Joaquim? She’s inside the front room, to the left of the door.”
“I got her,” Joaquim said. “See anyone else inside?”
“I can’t tell.”
In two hurried steps, Dan was beside them. “I just saw Rose.”
“We did, too.” Santos kept the glasses pressed to his eyes. “What do you think, Joaquim?”
Joaquim plucked up a blade of dried grass, then dropped it, the wind catching the straw and gently setting it adrift. He did that two more times. Returning to his scope, he stared for another long minute. Santos could feel his heart ticking down the minutes. Every second they waited was another second of danger for Rose. He wanted to hurry the sniper’s decision, but he held himself back. Joaquim wasn’t the kind of man you pressured.
After an eternity, Joaquim lifted his gaze. Disappointment swamped Santos as he read the sniper’s answer in his eyes.
“It’s too dangerous, Santos.” Joaquim shook his head. “That far away, this much wind… I might hit her. Plus the walls on that place are like paper. Any caliber bullet could penetrate them. I’m not going to risk it.”
“You’re too good to make that kind of mistake,” Santos insisted. Even though he knew it was dangerous to push for the wrong answer, he couldn’t hold back with Rose’s life on the line. “Are you absolutely sure? We could give it a little time, let the wind die down, maybe move closer? You could get the guys on the porch. That would draw out anyone else who’s inside.”
For the very briefest moment, Joaquim’s expression opened up, and Santos caught a glimpse of the silent man behind the mask. The other man understood his desperation. In fact, Santos knew Joaquim felt the same way, but history had taught him the bitter results of doing something that uncertain. Santos also knew nothing would change his mind.
“Too risky.” Reaching for his weapon without another word, the sniper rose to his feet and walked back to his bike.
Dan stared at Joaquim’s back in disbelief. “He’s not even going to try?”
“He can’t,” Santos answered. “It’d be pointless. He might even wind up hitting Rose. If Joaquim says it can’t be done, I’m not about to argue with him.”
“Then what are you gonna do? Just stand here and watch it play out?”
Gritting his teeth, he fought down his first reply. “No. I’m not going to stand here and do nothing. I’m going down there and getting her out.”
“How?”
“I don’t know,” he said. “I’ll decide after I get there.”
…
Gunfire that sounded as if it would never stop broke out just as Rose saw a glint of something in the corner. Kicking over the dirt and grass, she uncovered the treasure, a jagged piece of glass that matched the hole in the light fixture overhead. She paused as the sound continued, but she didn’t stop. Squatting down she hastily picked up the six-inch shard, then jumped to her feet.
A set of rapid boot steps pounded over the wooden floor outside her prison. Her mouth went dry. Then she realized Enrique was rushing outside instead of toward her. His footsteps made the rotting wooden floor beneath her rise and fall in an earthquake-like wave. She heard him throw open the front door, the doorknob smashing into the wall behind it. She watched in horror as the corresponding spot flexed on her side of the room. The whole wall suddenly seemed in jeopardy of collapse, and hope washed over her.
“Go to the gate,” she heard him cry in Spanish. “Someone has found us, you idiots. Don’t just stand there, go see who it is!”
Rose’s gaze flew to the window. Grabbing their weapons, the men jumped to their feet, their inelegant seating arrangement crashing to the rickety porch. The chairs landed together on the wooden slats, where a hole instantly opened. A shower of splinters flew up from the rotting boards, and Rose lurched backward in alarm, throwing her arms up to protect her eyes.
She should have been prepared, but she wasn’t.
The floor beneath her feet trembled, groaned, then crumbled just like the rotting boards outside. Stifling a scream, she tumbled through the breech and fell to the stony ground beneath the house.
She landed awkwardly, the two-foot drop jolting the air from her lungs with a whoosh. Dust billowed instantly around her in a cloud, and she snapped her eyes shut against it, sharp rocks and gravel digging into her back where her T-shirt had ripped on the way down. Racked with coughing, she instinctively turned away, raising her head.
And smacked her temple straight into one of the beams under the house. She cursed in pain, and lifted her hand to her head. It came back wet. Her vision still swimming, she finally managed to open her eyes. The rough cedar brace just above her had a stain that matched the one on her fingers. The crawlspace was claustrophobically close, with barely enough room for her to move. At least there was no one pointing a gun to her head, she thought groggily. Compared to falling off a water tower, this tumble had been nothing.
Then again, maybe not.
As her eyes adjusted to the darkness, she spied a pile of wind-driven garbage that had collected between a creosote bush outside and one of the pilings underneath the house. A faded plastic bag caught her eye first, then an empty beer can rattling beside it. About a foot away, a length of short rope slowly uncoiled itself at the disturbance. A sick realization came to her immediately.
It wasn’t short, and it definitely wasn’t a rope.
The snake was at least five and a half feet long, maybe a little bit more. The telltale black and brown diamonds painted along its spine shimmered in the dawn’s yellow glow spilling over the nearest mountain ridge and under the house. Empty black eyes stared at her from a triangle-shaped head, dark diagonal lines painted on either side of it, flowing back toward the tail. As she stared, the snake raised its head off the ground, the striped bands just above the rattles undulating slowly.
Fear filled her mouth, horror blocking out everything else, including the distant gunfire. Rattlesnakes were common in the area. But she’d never been this close to one and he definitely didn’t look happy at having his home disturbed. She measured the gap between them with her eyes and guessed it to be four feet, maybe less. She tried to reassure herself. Even if the snake were six feet long, it would be hard-pressed to strike her from that distance.
She might be okay.
Unless it was longer.
Or the space was shorter.
She inched backward, her movement so slow it was almost invisible. The snake watched with an unblinking stare. Suddenly her foot caught on a larger rock and slipped. The rattler’s eyes flicked, his tongue darting out as if to see what had happened, and figure out how he could take advantage of it.
Rose’s pulse took an extra beat as she held her breath.
She reminded herself of the facts. They had a bad reputation for sure, but rattlers avoided people, like most snakes, and biting was rare. She’d been called out only once to a ranch where the owner had been bitten by one. The man had survived, but his ranch had been too remote for him to get the attention he’d needed quickly enough. A bad heart condition hadn’t helped. He’d lost his leg, the venom too potent to overcome. He’d considered himself lucky at that. Licking her lips, she wondered if she’d be that fortunate.
Releasing her breath, she started moving again, widening the distance another foot. She was almost at the edge of the house when she heard the door of the room above her fly open. Enrique’s Spanish curses filled the air as he realized what happened. Rose didn’t waste another second. With the snake momentarily distracted, she abandoned her crawl and scrabbled backward with panic-fueled speed. Just as she reached the edge of the house, the rotten floorboards creaked again. More of them suddenly gave way with a horrible moan, and Enrique’s legs came crashing through the hole. The snake’s head turned, and then he struck.
…
After a five-minute ride, Santos left the Harley on a ridge closer to the ramshackle cabin than the one where he’d been standing before. He didn’t want to risk Enrique hearing the bike, even though the exchange of gunfire by the gate where he’d posted the ACES team had destroyed any hope of catching the occupants by surprise. Hopefully, Enrique still wouldn’t expect Santos to appear at the house so quickly, and that’s how he wanted to keep it.
Running through the brush toward the porch, he let images of Rose fill his head. He saw her in her kitchen questioning him, and he saw her straddling the back of his bike in the moonlight. He thought about how she’d looked naked in the bed at Reina’s, her face flushed after they’d made love, her lips red from kissing him. He recalled her expression when she’d told him she’d killed Mike Slider. Most of all, he remembered how she stared at him in misery when he’d arrested her mother.
She’d never forgive him, and maybe he didn’t even deserve her absolution, but he’d done what he had to do. And he’d love her forever, regardless of how she felt about him.
Spotting a boulder halfway between him and the cabin, he ran for it and slid to a stop, taking advantage of the protection. Whipping the binoculars out of his pocket, he brought them to his eyes.
The SUV—and hopefully the guards—were gone.
The place looked abandoned. But unless Enrique had taken her into the desert, Rose must still be there. Santos swept the glasses over the surrounding area. It looked as empty as the rest of the desert. A sudden movement caught his peripheral vision, and he jerked the glasses back toward the cabin and squinted. The crawlspace under the house was barely visible, yet that’s where he’d seen something. Probably an animal. Maybe a coyote or a javelina scrounging for food. He wasted a few more precious seconds staring, finally deciding he’d imagined it.
Jumping up and zigzagging through the scrub, he ran for the porch light once again. When a high-pitched scream split the silence, his heart stopped. But his feet didn’t.
…
Enrique bellowed as he slithered through the opening, the sound of a cracking bone coming a heartbeat later. Slashing at the rattler with a knife he gripped in one hand, he reached for Rose’s leg with the other.
The drug dealer was tall, broad shouldered, and crazy with fear. Trapped on his back and unable to turn, he latched on and pulled.
Rose blinked away the blood still trickling from her temple and lifted her free foot as high as she could. A solid jolt ripped through her body as she slammed her tennis shoe into Enrique’s head. It bounced off, and she smashed down on his collarbone even harder. Bone ground against bone, and he shrieked in pain. But he held onto her even tighter.
Desperate to escape the enraged man and the even more pissed-off snake, she clawed at the loose gravel, dragging Enrique with her. In a haze of disbelief, she almost laughed, imagining the snake holding onto Enrique’s ankle like he gripped hers.
Sweet air rushed over her face as she reached the edge of the house. With her last ounce of strength, she managed to reach back and swing her arms above her head, sinking her fingernails into the soft wood siding above her. Splinters pierced her fingertips. Grunting with effort, she dragged her shoulders over the rocky, unlevel ground underneath the house.
At the same time, Enrique managed to get his other hand around her ankle. He wanted out from under the house as much as she did, and was using her as his rope. Her fingers were torn from her grip on the siding, and he started dragging her backward instead. Shadow enveloped her again as he pulled her back, her head slipping past the edge of the house. She screeched and kicked violently and, stretching out her fingers, frantically felt for a rock, a stick, even a clod of dirt she could use against him before he could gain complete control over her.
Instead of a weapon, she found a pair of familiar hands. Slipping his fingers beneath her shoulders, Santos leaned down and yanked her free.
She’d never been as happy to see him as she was at that very second.