Liberty At Last (The Liberty Series) (47 page)

They looked ready to kill.

Matamoros was much nicer when you weren’t being held captive there. It was sunny and hot, and some parts were dusty and desolate looking. But the people in the markets smiled and called to us, thinking we were tourists. Of course, we were anything but.

I felt weirdly exposed walking through the downtown market. I was petrified that someone would recognize me from the summer, when I’d wandered the same streets looking for
Los Morales.
No one looked at me twice — or if they did, they hid it. I had a feeling the people who lived here had gotten pretty good at hiding things.

John hadn’t given Ethan our travel information, fearing that somehow Ethan’s phone had been hacked. So we’d taken a cab from the airport to downtown, and we were headed to the one big chain hotel in town. We checked in and went to our room. John had us all together. He hadn’t said as much, but you could tell that he was tense, worried about everything.

“This is no
Byzantine
,” Corey said, trying to bounce on the sparse mattress. John shot him a look and he shut up immediately.

“Matthew,” John said. “I need you to call Sofia. Tell her we need weapons. I’ll pay her whatever she wants.”

“Okay,” Matthew said, getting out his phone. “Don’t you want me to call Ethan first?” John just shook his head, no. “John,” Matthew said. “Ethan hasn’t done anything.”

“No, he hasn’t, has he?” John asked, looking out the window.

I heard Matthew sigh and then he called Sofia. There was talk about guns, talk about a drop off, and some other stuff, but I tuned it out and curled up on the one chair the room offered. I looked at John and his face was pale, resigned.
Ian was here somewhere,
I thought,
and Catherine was here, hurt.

We couldn’t be having that. We couldn’t be having
any
of that.

I wondered where Ian was and if he was safe. He was so brave, so loyal — but he was also delicate. He had to be in his late 70’s, if not older. To say that I was worried about him was an egregious understatement. I thought of what Catherine did to me…
but she wouldn’t do that to her own grandfather, would she? Especially not after Angel had hurt her?

“We’re meeting Sofia in an hour,” Matthew said, putting his phone down. He looked at John.

“Good,” John said. “After that, we’re going back in.”

We bought a beat-up truck from a guy in the marketplace. “
Efectivo, efectivo
,” John assured him. John handed him a large wad of cash, but the guy kept looking around, worried.

You should be worried,
I thought.
If Angel gets wind of this, you’re so dead.

We took the weathered truck to meet Sofia at a run-down house outside of downtown. She had lots of guns, and they paid her lots of money.

I was tired of guns.

“We’re not going to the compound,” John said a little while later, as we drove towards the other side of town. “We’re going to Angel and Catherine’s house.”

I shot him a look as Matthew took over, explaining the layout to the guys. “It’s two miles outside of town. There’s a security system, and he always has at least a dozen armed guards on the premises. This isn’t going to be pretty,” he said. “The good news is, there’s a pool area out back that the house opens up on. So we need to get back there. That’ll be our entryway.”

“Shouldn’t we wait until tonight?” Corey asked from the back.

“We should,” John said. “But I’m worried Ian won’t make it that long. Your direct orders are to shoot anyone you come into contact with. I don’t care how many.”

We were all quiet after that, as we bounced along the hazy, dusty streets.

I cringed at the idea of shooting the guards, but for once, I didn’t object.
What the hell did I know anyway?
I wondered.
I’d wanted Darius and Cruz to have a sit-down, and Matthew almost got killed. Matthew and a whole lot of other people.
Some people couldn’t be reasoned with. As far as I knew, Angel Morales was evil to his core. He ran an empire that brought terror to the land. He’d kept Catherine from her family for years, he’d beaten her, and now Ian was missing.

What could there possibly be to talk about?

I shuddered against myself. I didn’t want to be this person. I didn’t want to be a person who acknowledged that there was a need for violence. Who agreed that some people were beyond rehabilitation. That seemed savage to me, and I didn’t want to be savage.

But here I was.

I shook a little as we drove. I hadn’t ever expected to come back here, to this place that was so filled with misery and fear for me. And the thought that Ian might be here, poor, kind, loyal Ian. Seeing me with my arms curled around myself, obviously agitated, John put his hand briefly on my leg. “Are you okay?” he asked. I nodded at him.

“I’m just worried,” I said, looking out the window at the green, scrubby landscape rolling by. We were woefully outnumbered and the stakes were very, very high.

“It’s gonna be okay,” John said, his jaw set. “We’re leaving with both of them. What happens after that,
I don’t know,” he said, shrugging, and I knew he was talking about Catherine. I nodded and went back to looking out the window.

We drove to the outskirts of town, earning plenty of funny looks from the locals. Five white people in a beater of a truck, heading out of town. At least they couldn’t see our guns, which were flat in the truck bed.

Angel probably already knew we were here. The thought caused sweat to pour off me and I could hear my heartbeat pounding in my temples. There was no sign of life on the road as we left town. We drove slowly and I could see a large building on a hill up to our right. It looked more like a stucco bunker than the mansion I’d imagined; we drove past it, about a mile further down the road when a closed-top jeep appeared, going the opposite direction. John grabbed a pistol and slowed as the jeep pulled up to him. When the driver rolled down the window, Jake, Corey and Matthew popped up from the back and aimed their rifles at him.

“Mierda, mierda, mierda,”
he cursed.

“Turn your car off!” Matthew hollered and hopped down. The jeep went off as Matthew put the rifle against the guard’s forehead. The other guys surrounded the jeep. “Who else is in there?” Matthew asked, but the guard shut his mouth. “Out you go,” Matthew said, pulling him out roughly. John got out and cuffed him as Matthew patted him down, pocketing his cell phone and wallet and taking his pistol. Just then I heard shots coming from the other side and Corey screamed in pain.

“Fucker!” he yelled, and there were more shots as John raced to him.

“One more,” John called. “Corey got him.” Jake and John came back around, dragging the limp body of the other guard, and I had to close my eyes as I watched them toss him to the side of the road. The guard who was still alive didn’t blink. Corey hopped back into the truck, his shoulder bleeding through his camouflaged shirt.

“Are you okay?” I asked, stupidly.

“I’m not going to bleed out, so yeah, I’m fine,” Corey said, checking his shoulder. We didn’t have a medical kit with us. I didn’t even know if it would have helped.

Matthew was about to place masking tape over the guard’s mouth.
“Solo tiene que disparar me,”
the guard said, looking up at Matthew resignedly.

“Nah, I’ll let your own people shoot you,” Matthew said and slapped the tape over his mouth. He cuffed his feet, too, and then picked him up and unceremoniously threw him next to the dead guard on the side of the road. “In the jeep, people,” Matthew said. “I think we just got our lucky break.”

Jake and Matthew grabbed the guns out of the truck and Corey climbed into the jeep. John grabbed the dead guard and Jake helped him toss him into the truck bed, they did the same with the guard who was still alive, who didn’t bother to struggle. John hopped back into the truck with me and drove it down the road about a half mile and parked it in a ravine. Matthew pulled up in the jeep right behind us. John looked at me. “Can I convince you to stay here? With Corey?” he asked.

“Corey is okay to fight. You can’t spare a babysitter,” I said. “I can stay here by myself.”

“Absolutely not,” John said. “You’ll come with us. Just stay with me. Promise you’ll do exactly what I say.”

“I promise,” I said.

We hopped into the jeep with the others; Jake was checking Corey’s wound. “He’ll live,” Jake pronounced. “At least until he gets shot again.” They all laughed and I looked at them like they were crazy.

“Call Ethan,” John said to Jake. “Tell him to be ready, and to circle the house if he can. Tell him to shoot anyone he sees and also to toss his cell phone, just in case it’s been traced.”

“What’s the plan?” Matthew asked, scanning the house as it came back into view.

“Like you said, this jeep is our ticket in. We’re going straight up the driveway, just like those guards would have done.” He turned around and looked back at us. “We’re basing this on an insurgent strategy that’s worked in the past. They’re expecting us, but not right this minute, not in this car. So we have a limited window of surprise, and we’re going to maximize that. We’re going in there, and my orders are to shoot anyone and everyone that you see, immediately, except for Catherine and Ian. Make sure your silencers are on. Ethan reported that there were always several guards out front, so Jake and I will go out there and take care of them while you three enter the house through the back. Liberty,” he said, looking at me, “you stay with Matthew. Do what he says, and I’ll meet you inside.”

I nodded at him, my heart thudding with adrenaline and fear.

“Do we have any idea where they are in the house?” Corey asked. He looked pale and sweaty, but he also looked determined.

“Ethan said that other prisoners were brought here from the compound. He said he couldn’t see them through the windows after that, and that he never saw any of them come back out. Which makes me think there are holding cells here, maybe below ground.”

Awesome,
I thought, but I kept it to myself.

The driveway was quickly approaching. There was a closed gate at the bottom and a security camera. Matthew rolled down his window and shoved the guard’s ID at the camera. The gate rolled open, and none of us knew if it was because the ID worked or they were waiting to kill us. “Get ready,” John said, as we ascended. “As soon as he puts in park, move out.” I saw at least three guards wearing sunglasses and wielding machine guns at the front of the house, standing at staggered intervals. And there was one in the driveway. My heart stopped. And then before I was ready, with my heart thudding and the light too bright, we’d made it to the top and Matthew threw the car into park behind another jeep and some trucks. “Now,” John said, calmly, and he popped out of the car and shot the guard in the head before he had a chance to raise his weapon.

And then he and Jake were gone. Matthew grabbed my hand and dragged me around the back of the house as I watched in horror as John’s back disappeared around the front. I didn’t even have time to pray for his safety, because there were three guards out back and Corey and Matthew were shooting them, all of them. I stood frozen in the harsh sunlight, looking at the gorgeous infinity pool and enormous potted palms, and the world got a little black around the edges.