“Me? You want me to drive?”
He jams the muzzle of the gun into my ribcage, and I don’t ask again. I climb into the vehicle, and I go to slide the key into the ignition, only there is no ignition. A small START button brings the engine roaring into life the moment I hit it. Ocho grunts again, slamming the passenger door closed behind him, and then he’s pointing, gesturing for me to go left. I do as I’m told. We pass back through the town of Orellana, and then head over the river via a narrow, unstable looking bridge. The landscape whips by in a blur, and Ocho says nothing. Only points. Eventually he directs me to take yet another dirt track off the pot-holed, bumpy road we’ve been traveling down, and we drive for a short period of time before the roadway suddenly becomes paved, and we’re winding our way up a bare, exposed hillside, into the mountains.
I count fourteen hairpin turns before we’re spat out on top of the mountain, and we’re faced with the biggest, grandest, most over the top villa I have ever seen in my life. And I’ve seen some ridiculously big houses. Huge, the building stands three stories tall, with five-foot high windows on the upper floors. A row of ostentatious pillars prop up the fa?ade, twelve of them all evenly spaced out in a row, bared like teeth against the cool blue sky that seems to stretch on forever into the distance behind the mansion. God knows how they got the building materials up here to create such a monstrosity. The road was barely enough to take the Escalade. There’s no way heavy lifting machinery made it up here. No way in hell. Ocho stabs his finger toward the right, gesturing for me to take a small pathway that leads around the side of the house, and I take it, pulling up around the back into a fully constructed motherfucking parking lot, filled with four-by-four vehicles and, unbelievably, golf carts.
“Lot of people live here, huh?” I ask. Ocho probably doesn’t hear me over his Walkman. He gets out of the car and walks around the vehicle, opening my door for me and jerking his head back toward the house. Still, not a word comes out of his mouth. I could speak to him in Spanish, but I don’t think he’s in a very chatty mood. And besides, Fernando doesn’t know I understand Spanish yet. Better to keep that card up my sleeve. Might be useful if he takes any calls or talks to his men in his native tongue, expecting me to be oblivious to his words. I follow Ocho, allowing him to shepherd me into the mansion through the back door, through what once would have been the servant’s entrance. The place looks old enough to have once been staffed, in any case. Orellana was very little more than a shanti boat town kind of affair, and yet this mansion would be quite at home in Victorian England.
Inside, the floors are pale, polished marble, shot through with threads and fractures of gold and gray. It looks wet somehow. Liquid, like the calm, flat surface of a milk bath, yet it’s reassuringly solid underfoot. There are more pillars in the foyer, and strange, musty paintings on the walls of austere military figures in colorful, unfamiliar uniforms. Sabres are mounted to the walls. Bronze cast busts of angry looking men with moustaches rest on walnut sideboards, and ceramics of graceful and elegant naked women pose an on shelves—all of which seem to be headless. A woman in a full-blown black and white maid’s outfit hurries into the foyer, a tray of empty glasses in her hand; she looks up, sees Ocho, sees me, yelps, and nearly drops the tray.
“Dios Mio!”
Ocho growls at her, and the woman crosses herself, as if the mere sight of us is enough to put the fear of god into her. She turns on her heel and disappears back the way she came, muttering frantically under her breath.
“I am not the first white man that woman has seen,” I mutter under my own breath.
Another sharp prod from Ocho. He places a hand on my shoulder, and he hurries me down a wide, beautifully decorated hallway, until we round a corner and we’re faced with a massive sweeping staircase, carpeted in a plush, rich cream. Ocho’s eyes flicker upwards, and I get moving. No point in hanging around, pretending like I don’t know what he wants from me. I need to behave myself until I’ve been able to recon the entire house, search every room, and find Laura. That’s going to take time. More time than I anticipated, now I’ve seen the size of the damn place.