“She told the cops she saw one of your men outside the newspaper. From her description, it must be your nephew, José-Luis.”
Arturo stopped, shifted the phone to his other ear, the laughter dying inside him. “José-Luis? Perhaps . . . I don’t know where he is.Sí. Yes, he is there, I think.”
A low chuckle. “We know he’s there, Arturo. If his presence were to blame for our failure, we’d have sent him back to you in pieces. Instead, it’s convinced every cop and agent in Denver that the Zetas are there on the streets hunting for her. Nice work.”
Arturo could hear the mocking tone in his voice. The stupidcabrón.
“The good news is that we may have use for your nephew. And for you. How soon can you meet us in Denver?”
CHAPTER 26
ZACH FINISHED READING the forensics report on Natalie’s car, rage on slow boil in his gut. “It wasn’t a VBIED. The trace amounts of C4 are too low for that, and the blast didn’t crater the pavement. They wanted to kill her. They weren’t interested in destroying anything else.”
He’d decided to take advantage of the fact that Natalie was asleep to hold a briefing with the men. Now that they’d gotten her safely here, it was time to start the next phase of the operation—finding and eliminating the Zetas. He looked up from the page to find the others still reading.
“Agreed.” Darcangelo met his gaze, nodding. “The blast was carefully channeled upward—the work of a pro.”
“You think it was a tilt fuse?” Rossiter asked, still reading.
“That’s what the Zetas typically use,” Zach answered.
“The victim gets in the car, starts driving, and the car’s motion rocks the fuse, sending the mercury to the other end to close the circuit and set off the explosion. It’s a way to make sure the victim is in the vehicle before detonation.”
“And she would have been right where they wanted her, if not for the wind.” Hunter shook his head, set his copy of the report down on the coffee table. “This fucker Cárdenas—what’s his obsession with her?”
“She’s the one who got away.” That was Zach’s best theory at the moment. “He has what I guess you’d call a death fetish. His men kidnap young women and bring them to him. He rapes them, brutalizes them. Then, when they’re almost dead, he sacrifices them to La Santa Muerte, getting his ultimate thrill as that last breath leaves their bodies. We know this because one of his victims wasn’t as dead as he thought she was. Tourists found her in the desert. She was sixteen.”
Rossiter looked up from the page, his gaze hard. “And that’s what this sick son of a bitch had planned for Natalie?”
“Yeah.” It turned Zach’s stomach even to think about it. “One of the Zetas told her that Cárdenas planned to enjoy her and then sacrifice her.”
“I really want to get my hands on thischingadero, show him a few things about pain he might have forgotten.” The tight set of Darcangelo’s jaw told Zach that he wasn’t kidding.
“I doubt he’ll set foot north of the line, especially now. He has people do his dirty work for him, like his nephew José-Luis Quintana.” Zach handed out color printouts of Quintana’s face, having gotten an ID on him late this afternoon from Interpol. “This is the man Natalie saw in the newspaper parking lot—the man who assaulted her.”
Darcangelo looked up. “And who tortured you.”
Zach nodded, shoving those memories aside.
“So what is this La Santa Muerte?” Hunter pronounced the name with uncertainty. “Is this a real Catholic saint?”
“No.” Zach and Darcangelo answered at the same time.
“It’s a narco-saint,” Darcangelo added.
Zach deferred to Darcangelo, let him explain it, his own thoughts drifting back to Cárdenas and his motives. By planting those explosives in Natalie’s car, the Zetas had done something they’d never done before. They’d tried to kill someone who wasn’t mixed up in drug trafficking—and they’d come deep into the U.S. to do it.
What had driven them to act?
Maybe this was revenge for the humiliation Cárdenas had suffered when she and Zach escaped. Perhaps she was the first woman to escape him in quite that way. Maybe this was about the cocaine Zach hadn’t stolen. God only knew what Gisella had told them before they’d killed her. Or maybe Cárdenas was trying to keep a vow to his favorite sick icon. But if that were true, why not try to reacquire Natalie and carry out his original plan?
Zach shook his head in frustration and tossed the report onto the coffee table. He wouldn’t find the answers he needed in its pages.
Hunter watched him. “What is it?”
Zach leaned back, stretched his arms out along the back of the leather sofa. “Something feels off about this. I can’t quite explain it, but it’s not like the Zetas to strike this deep into the U.S. or to try to kill someone who isn’t into the drug trade. Zebras don’t change their stripes.”
“Zebras don’t, but maybe Zetas do.” Hunter shrugged and met Zach’s gaze head on. “Just because you couldn’t predict it and were therefore unable to prevent it doesn’t mean it didn’t happen.”