“I doubt they’ll think to look on the roof, but if they do, they’ll have to step onto the patio to reach you,” Zach had told her. “Shoot to kill.”
And she would, without hesitation.
But no matter how hard she blinked, she couldn’t keep the rain out of her eyes. Teeth chattering, she got to her hands and knees, tried to crawl closer to the patio, gasping and falling flat again as a powerful gust caught her, pushing her across the roof like a hydroplaning car. She lay there for a moment, heart hammering, then she looked up into the gray and sodden sky.
“I-I’m from N-new Orleans!” she shouted, her words vanishing in the gale. “I-I survived H-hurricane Katrina. Ththere’s nothing y-you can throw at m-me that I can’t h-handle! Y-you’re nothing but a puny th-thunderstorm!”
Then she did the only thing she could do.
She held on—and prayed.
HIS GAZE FIXED on the stairs, Zach took a minute to catch his breath, his hand pressed against his aching ribs. Just his luck to get kicked there again. He wiped the sweat out of his eyes, saw streaks of blood on the back of his hand. Shrapnel from the flash grenade must have nicked his face. Well, that wasn’t the only place he was bleeding. His right shoulder had been creased, but it was nothing serious.
You’re good to go, McBride.
Wulfe had sent seven operatives. And now all but one of them—Cárdenas—was dead. Or dying, he corrected himself, as the man whose throat he’d been forced to cut finished bleeding out, his eyes rolling back in his skull, his body convulsing.
Zach wiped the blood off his knife, stuck it back in his ankle rig, then popped a fresh magazine into his M16 and got to his feet, still astonished that Cárdenas was here. The bastard hadn’t set foot on U.S. soil since his days at AMINTAC. He must want Natalie more than Zach had realized. But was he still alive, waiting for a chance to use the AK Zach had seen in his hands, or had a stray round killed him?
And where the hell was the cavalry?
Warned by Darcangelo’s text message, Zach had helped Natalie onto the roof and asked her to call for backup—and an ambulance—the moment she’d gotten to a safe position. Of course, for all Zach knew, there could be a hundred police sirens blaring in the streets below. He couldn’t hear a damned thing over this thunderstorm.
Hang on, angel. It’s almost over.
Zach grabbed a couple of flash grenades off the belt of the man he’d just killed—now officially dead—and made his way carefully toward the stairs.
From down below, he could just make out the sound of someone breathing. Quietly, he moved down the stairs, his back to the wall. When he was near the bottom, he tossed the first grenade, closing his eyes and turning his face away from the blast.
BAM!
A flash of light. Smoke.
He jumped to the bottom of the stairs and rushed at Cárdenas, who held up the AK and fired blindly, one steel-core round grazing Zach’s left thigh, the others going wild. He kicked the weapon out of the bastard’s hands, then drove his boot into Cárdenas’s gut and pressed the barrel of the M16 against his skull.
“Lie flat on your stomach! Do it!” A part of Zach wanted to tear Cárdenas apart, but he was supposed to be one of the good guys. “Arturo César Cárdenas, you are under arrest for the distribution and sale of schedule one narcotics, human trafficking, the murders of U.S. nationals on U.S. soil, the kidnapping and attempted murder of American journalist Natalie Benoit—and a whole lot of other sick shit.”
He said the words in English and in Spanish, then worked quickly, cuffing and Mirandizing Cárdenas, stripping him of his weapons, cell phone, shoes, then double-checking to see whether any of the others in the room were still alive. They weren’t.
He cleared the hallway, the stairwell, and the elevator, stopping when he saw a bloodysomethingon the floor near the door.
Darcangelo’s thumb.
He picked it up and carried it inside, where he quickly wrapped it in a paper towel and put it in the refrigerator. In the living room, Cardenas struggled to get to his feet. Zach walked over to him and raised the Glock. “Stay down!”
“So where is my littleputa?” Cárdenas looked over his shoulder at Zach. “Did you enjoy fucking what was mine?”
Zach crossed the room, nudged the toe of his boot beneath Cárdenas’s chin, and forced the son of a bitch’s neck back, looking down into his eyes, M16 still in hand. When he spoke it was with years worth of disgust and loathing. “She was never yours. Like all women, she belongs to herself. You willneverlay a hand on her. So shut thefuckup!”
There was genuine fear in Cárdenas’s eyes now.
Good.
Zach took a step back. “If you want to chat, why don’t you tell me about your relationship with Edward Wulfe. You met him at AMINTAC, and you’ve been doing business with him since at least 1993. So what is it? Drugs? Arms? Both?”
“Why don’t you ask me?”
Zach whirled, dropped to one knee, and fired, hitting another black-clad figure in the chest, but not before the men standing on either side of Wulfe fired at him. He felt a round strike his temple, and then . . .