Harrison smirks, and I know all too well that he’s going to make a big deal out of the files he finds in my gallery. He’s in for a fucking surprise. When he rifles through my phone, he’ll find about seventy pictures of a naked eighty-three year old woman at various stages of undress as she obviously performs a strip tease. It’s quite disturbing. In the text messages, he’ll find the most sordid, graphic sexts between myself and Mavis—texts so nasty and dirty they’d even make Carnie, the Widow Makers’ recently promoted prospect, blush. In my emails, he’ll find eighteen folders of spam, and a number of coded, confusing messages from a contact called “Trident,” that will leave him scratching his head for days.
What he won’t find is anything incriminating about Laura, or any correspondence between Jamie and me. It’ll drive him crazy. The code I just gave him is the key. If the code “five eight, five nine” is entered into my cell, my real phone screen isn’t unlocked, but a proxy screen complete with apps, contacts, notes and photos. He’ll never be able to tell it’s not real. And he’ll never gain access to the stored information I have on countless different South American cartels, the places I’ve buried bodies, or the entire towns I’ve razed to the ground on my journey to find my sister.
Harrison taps the code into the phone and swells up when it unlocks, his chest puffing up with pride, like he hacked into the damn thing himself. “I’m sure Fernando will be discreet,” he says, but he and I both know Fernando will only be looking at it once he’s been through it with a fine tooth comb. “Get dressed,” he tells me. “Everyone’s gathering outside. Fernando wants you down there, too.”
“What for?”
Harrison rolls his eyes, pocketing my cell phone. “Just do it, man. He doesn’t like to be kept waiting.”
It’s only after he leaves, the rest of his men following behind him, that I realize how badly this could have gone. I’ve been facing Harrison and his guys the whole time. I didn’t turn around, and none of them tried to sneak up behind me to get a jump on me. If they had, they would have immediately known I was lying to them.
They would have seen the huge Widow Makers MC tattoo that sprawls across my shoulder blades, and I, my friends, would have been fucked.
CHAPTER SEVEN
THE HOUSE OF WOLVES
I find some clothes that haven’t been completely destroyed, and I head outside. On the lawn in front of the huge mansion, a small crowd of people are gathered together, looking uncomfortable and frightened. It hits me then—at least five or six of them have red hair. How strange. They’re dressed in white robes, men and women both, clutching the material tightly closed up around their chins. Their feet are bare in the short, neatly cut grass. These are Fernando’s Servicio, as Plato called them.
Off to the right, another crowd of people hover—a mix of men, all dressed in expensive clothes from suits to leather jackets, jeans to Georgio Armani slacks. They have this lean, hungry look about them that sets them apart from the other group. These are obviously Fernando’s guests, his players? the men who have paid to use and abuse the other human beings a few feet away from them.
On the far stretches of the lawn, Fernando is talking to a line of guys who are all carrying rifles. He appears to be giving them orders. A moment passes, and then the men run off across the lawn, disappearing into the vegetation line, where the land turns from well-maintained country garden to overgrown, wild rainforest.
I’m scanning the scene before me, hunting for Plato, sure I’m going to find him in chains, tied up and butt naked in the dirt, when I see him standing in amongst the Servicio. Our gazes meet, and I see that his bottom lip is badly split open, and there’s a violent purple bruise under his right eye. In spite of the injuries, he smiles broadly and gives me a thumbs up, which sets my mind at ease. He wouldn’t be so happy if he thought Fernando was about to feed him to a pack of wolves, surely?
Alone, standing on her own to one side, Natalia is shivering in the cool night air, arms wrapped around herself as she stares off into the dark. I’m about to make my way over to her when I see a shadow shift close to the house, and Ocho emerges, still carrying that damn rifle of his. I’m reminded of Fernando’s warning not to speak to his daughter unless someone else is present. And I’m reminded of what happened to Ocho when he broke that rule.
I like my tongue. I like being able to speak. Most importantly, I like making girls come with it, and I can’t do that very well if it’s been cut out of my fucking head with a blunt knife. I forget about making my way over to Natalia and stay put instead.
“A wise move, my friend.” Harrison spits into the grass, grinning at me wildly like a mad man. “Live to fuck another day. It’s a good motto to have around here.”
“I’m sure you could give two shits if I live to fuck another day,” I mutter.
“Don’t be so sulky. I was just doing my job. I’m sure you can understand what that’s like.” When I don’t say anything, he continues. “You’re ex-military. You know what it’s like to take orders. You weren’t just fucking around in the desert, doing whatever the fuck you wanted there, either.”
“How do you know I’m ex-military?”