Promises to Keep (25 page)

Sixty-Four

One of the armed
men swung his AR-15 to his back and came forward, barking at her in Spanish. Sabrina lifted her arms, holding them out while he ran his hands over her body so he could check her for weapons. He reached her breasts, his hands molding along her curves as he squeezed before running them down the length of her torso and between her legs, a leering grin on his face as he ran rough fingers along the center seam of her jeans.

“You can't save Leo if you're shot dead before you get there,” Courtney said into her ear, reading her perfectly. The roar of the rotor blade ensured that what she said was kept between them.

Sabrina looked past the man in front of her to his partner, who was standing next to the still-grinning Alberto Reyes, his AR-15 aimed directly at her face.

“If we come for you, it'll be at night. Give it twenty-four hours. If we don't show, you'll have to get the Maddox boy out alone.”

Sabrina didn't acknowledge what Courtney said, just brought her hands together and held them out to the guard, who slipped zip-cuffs onto her wrists and pulled them so tight they cut into her skin. He grabbed her by the arm and hauled her toward the waiting helo. She waited for Reyes and the remaining guard to board before allowing herself to be shoved through the open door.

As soon as the door slid closed, the helicopter lifted off, and she looked down. Courtney stood at the edge of the pad, looking up at her. She looked worried, like she wasn't sure she was up to saving Leo Maddox on her own.

That made two of them.

“I hope you'll forgive the precautions, Sabrina. I've heard many wonderfully dangerous things about you.”

Sabrina turned away from the window and looked at the man sitting across from her. He'd removed his sunglasses to reveal eyes that were just as she imagined: small and cruel, the intensity behind them almost crippling. She'd seen that look before; Wade and David both had it—right before she killed them.

She looked down at the thick plastic cuffs that bound her wrists before lifting her gaze to the two armed men who sat on either side of her. “I'm flattered.”

Reyes chuckled. “Yes, yes. This is what I've looked forward to the most. Your biting wit.” He leaned across the small space between them. “Tell me, what did she say to you? The woman who brought you, she was whispering in your ear.”

“She was warning me not to break your man's neck for putting his dirty hands on me,” she said evenly.

Reyes's chuckle deepened into a full-fledged laugh. “We are going to have great fun, you and I,” he said, giving her a friendly smile that was an absolute lie. “I hope
Cartero
takes his time in coming for you.”

She looked away from him. “Michael won't come.”

“You're right—
Michael
will not come for you,” Reyes said the intensity in his eyes sharpening into something close to fanaticism. “What will come for you is a completely different animal, one I'm quite certain you've never met. But he
will
come for you, and when he does, the fun truly begins.”

She didn't answer, thinking of where she'd been just a few hours ago—pinned naked against her bedroom wall, Michael's hands, suddenly rough and careless, his knee shoved into the juncture of her thighs as he worked the fly of his pants open between them.

You wanted
Cartero
, Sabrina—well, now you've got him.

She shrugged, aiming her gaze out the window. Below them, green and brown had given way to glittering blue. “You. Shaw. You both sorely overestimate my worth to him. He doesn't care what you do to me.”

“We will see just how much you are worth, won't we?” he said to her, his easy words smoothed over a solicitous tone. “We go to my private island, Cofre del Tesoro. Do you know what that means, Sabrina?”

“Treasure chest.” She spoke to the window. In the rapidly approaching distance she saw a dot of green, fat and wide, surrounded by blue.

“You speak Spanish?” he said as if the thought delighted him.

“A little. Not much,” she said with a shrug.

“This is where I keep my most prized possessions.” He gave her a smug look. “The things I treasure above all others.”

“Is this where you kept Lydia?” she said.

It took him a moment to answer her. “
Cartero
told you of my Lydia? This surprises me.”

She flicked him a dismissive look
and lied: “He told me every-
thing.”

“Everything? This I doubt.” That smug look gave way to something that resembled a snarl. “Did he tell you that while he was supposed to be watching over my daughter, he was also fucking my wife?”

The helicopter touched down gently, jostling her in her seat. “He told me she was a child when you bought her from her family and that you killed her because you're a raging dickbag.”

Reyes's right hand shot out, his palm connecting with her face, so fast and hard that her head rocked back on her neck. Blood, warm and salty, burst in her mouth and Sabrina had to grind her boot heels into the floor beneath her to keep from launching herself at him. Courtney's words echoed in her ears:
You can't save Leo if you're shot dead before you get there.

“I killed her because she defied me.” He jerked his chin at the door, and the guard closest to it nearly fell over himself to open it onto a manicured lawn and garden.

Reyes exited the helo, and Sabrina was yanked out next. He stood staring at her for a moment before reaching into his pocket to pull out a large folding knife. He flicked it open and she tensed, thoughts and memories flooding her system.

“Yes, this is where I kept Lydia; this is also where I keep Leo Maddox. But I think you already know that.” He slipped the knife between her wrists and the plastic cuff, giving it an upward twist. The blade slid through the sturdy plastic like it was slicing nothing but air. “If I hear even a whisper of trouble from you, the very first thing I will do is kill him, and believe me when I tell you that he will suffer for your insolence while I make you watch. After that, I will give you to my guards.” He smiled at her while he refolded the knife and dropped it into his pocket. “You'll surely manage to kill more than a few, but not all of them. They'll eventually subdue you, and then they will rape you to death. I'll videotape it of course, so that
Cartero
will see how much you suffered before you died. That isn't the end I have planned for you, but it will work just as well. Hopefully you understand how much is depending on your choice to behave.”

“I understand,” she said, nearly choking on the words. The humiliation of submission tingled along her jawline, mingling with the sting of the slap.

“Very good. Take her to her room,” he said to the guard next to him. “And make sure no one touches her … for now.”

Sixty-Five

FSS had a fleet
of planes and as soon as Ben's Lear took off with Sabrina inside, Michael was hustled onto one of them. Within minutes they were airborne, flying in another direction.

He was alone, but that didn't mean he was unobserved. A quick scan of the jet's interior revealed several security cameras. Mapping out their trajectories, he took a seat to the right of the main entrance. There was a camera aimed directly at him, but the visual would be obstructed by the high-backed leather seats in front of him. Taking the window seat, he slumped into it, casually reaching into the breast pocket of the suit jacket Ben had insisted that he take with him.

His fingers closed around the same small metal case the Pip had been shaking only an hour before. He pulled it out. Nothing inside it would help him now unless he was interested in killing the pilot and crashing into the ocean.

Keeping his movements as small as possible, he pulled off his boot. Reaching inside, he lifted the insert that covered the heel. Hidden inside the molded compartment was a satellite phone. When Ben had given him the boots for his birthday a few months ago, he'd thought they were a gag gift. Now he was convinced of their practical applications.

Powering it on, the cell's screen came to life. There was only one number programmed into the phone. Rather than place a call he knew would be overheard, he used the keypad to punch out a text message.

Your father took Sabrina.

He hit send and waited. After a few minutes, he tried again.

He's taking her to Reyes.

No response.
Fuck.

Ben. Answer me.

He dropped the cell into his lap and stared out the window. It had been Ben's plane that Shaw used to take her. Maybe Ben knew everything.

Maybe he was in on it.

Ben, I swear if you had anything to do with this, I'll kill you.

Calm down, Mikey. WTF are you talking about?

Only one person called him Mikey. Lark. He swiped a hand over his face. Just what he needed.

Go get him, Lark. Now.

Hold up … Shaw took her? To Reyes?

Quit talking and do what you're told.

You quit being a bitch and let me help.

He focused on the words—what they meant. Once upon a time, Lark had been the only person he trusted. That trust had nearly cost him everything and here he was, being forced to trust him again.

Come on, man. Let me help.

Shit.

Find me everything you can about Pia Cordova. Known contacts. Where's she's been in the past six months. Financial activity. Surveillance photos. Everything.

If he was going to have any sort of chance at saving Sabrina, he'd need all the help he could get. There was a reason Reyes wanted Pia Cordova dead so bad. On the surface she was nothing but an overindulged party girl who spent her days working out her Black AmEx Card so hard you'd think shopping was an Olympic sport and her nights dropping ecstasy and doing lines of coke off the glass tables in the VIP lounge of whatever club she was at. Why she mattered was a mystery, but Pia Cordova posed some sort of threat that he couldn't quite see. Not yet anyway.

The phone buzzed in his hand and he took a look at the screen.

Give me thirty minutes.

Sixty-Six

Cofre del Tesoro, Colombia
August 2012

Christina covered her eyes,
tiny fingers splayed across a face that
was pressed into the wall. “It's your turn to hide, Michael. One,
two, three …” She kept counting slowly while he moved down one of the upstairs hall, trying doors as he went. Some opened onto empty guest quarters while some opened onto bathrooms or closets. A few seconds before she landed on ten, he stepped into a random room and waited for her to find him.

Colombia's wet season was in full swing, so their daily trips to the beach had been replaced by games of hide-and-seek and Disney movie marathons. They hadn't seen Lydia in over a year. Not since Christina's eighth birthday.

As soon as Reyes left the island last June, he knocked on her door, tried to coax her out, but she wouldn't answer. When he finally broke down and picked the lock, he understood why.

She'd been gone.

From somewhere down the hall he heard Christina yell “Ten!” She was nine and a half now and as fearless as her mother. He listened while she threw open doors, talking to him as if she knew exactly where he was.

The sound of a doorknob jiggling came from directly across the hall from the closet where he hid. “Locked doors are against the rules, Michael,” she said, rapping her fist against the hardwood. “I found you, fair and—”

Her protest stopped abruptly when he opened the door behind her, her hand falling to her side. “There you are. I tried the knob, but it's locked. That's weird, right?”

He looked down at the crack between the door and the floor and caught the split-second shift—a shadow sliding across the floor, that told him that someone was behind it, listening. He jerked his shoulder into a haphazard shrug. “Weird? Not really. One of the maids probably locked it on accident and can't find a key is all.” He shut the closet door behind him, cocking his head toward the stairs. “Ice cream sundae break?”

Christina's mouth quirked into a rueful smile and for a second, he was sure he'd been caught. “Promise not to spray the whipped cream
directly
into your mouth this time?”

He grinned at her, holding out his hand to cover up the relief that coursed through him. “I promise no such thing. That's the best part.”

“It's gross,” she sniffed at him as she slipped her hand into his with a barely suppressed smile. “That's why I asked Rosa to buy you your own can.”

“You love me.” The words slipped out before he could reel them back in. They hung there for a moment, exposed and untried, sending him scrambling for cover. But before he could pull back, she squeezed her fingers around his palm.

“I do, even though you don't have a mustache,” she said. “And don't even get me started on your knock-knock jokes.”

“They're not that bad,” he said, letting go of the panic, letting is slide right through him.

“They really are,” she said, laughing while she pulled him down the stairs toward the kitchen. “But I don't mind, as long as you're here to keep telling them.”

Two sundaes and four Disney movies later, Christina was tucked
safely into her bed. Michael waited for the slow, even draw of
breath to move her chest before he made his way back to the upstairs hall they'd been playing in earlier.

There were so many doors, so many hallways, he wasn't even sure he had the right one until he reached the third-floor landing and saw light leaking from beneath the door Christina had found.

He didn't knock. Didn't want to alert anyone who might be inside that he was there. Not yet anyway. Instead he pressed his ear against the door and listened. No talking. No murmur of voices. He listened harder for the smaller sounds within the room. The pad of bare feet across a carpeted floor. The faint rustle of a page being turned in a book. It was Lydia. It had to be.

And she was alone.

Before he could talk himself out of it, Michael pulled his picks from his pocket, fitting them into the lock and giving them a few twists. The metal clicked and gave way. She must've heard him because the book hit a hard surface seconds before he pushed the door open to find her standing behind a high-back chair, fists bunched and raised. When she saw him, her hands relaxed, dropping to her sides. Her expression was lost, swept away in an uncountable number of emotions—confusion, relief, hope­—before settling on fear.

“I've been looking everywhere for you,” he said, taking a look around the room. “How did you get in here?”

“He moves me a lot,” she said. “Every week or so. He knows you're looking for me.”

She wasn't making any sense. Reyes hadn't been on the island for months now.

“I'd hoped when you led Christina away today, that meant you understood … you can't be here. He will kill you both if he finds you here.” She was shaking, her fingers knotted together against the chair's upholstery.

Michael took a step forward, shaking his head. “Alberto? He's not here. He's been gone for months. It's safe. You're safe—”

Lydia lifted a hand, stopping him in his tracks. “No.” Her voice broke, the hand she'd used to ward him off trembling against her mouth. “I'm sorry. I'm so sorry, Michael. I just wanted … You need to leave.” She sounded terrified. Desperate to make him understand. “Not this room—this
place
. Tonight. Right now. You need to leave and never come back.”

Her fear reached out and slapped him, cold and bracing. Something was happening. Something he didn't understand. Something she was trying to protect him from. “Okay. We'll all leave. Right now. We'll take one of the boats to El Valle and—”

“No, Michael. Just you. You need to go alone. If we go with you, he'll never stop looking for us.” She unknotted her hands, smoothing them across the back of the chair she stood behind. “You can't protect us from him. You have to leave us. Let us go.”

She was right. He knew that. He was a fugitive, a deserter, and worse, a traitor to his own country. He had nowhere to take Lydia and Christina. No way to keep them safe, but in that moment, none of that mattered. “I'm not leaving you,” he said through gritted teeth. He could still feel the weight of Christina's hand in his. Feel her fingers squeezing around his palm, a rare smile lifting the corners of a mouth that had grown too serious over the years. “I'm not leaving
her
. You don't understand. I did that once before and … I can't. I
can't
do it again.”

Lydia sighed, dropping her head as she stepped from behind the chair to reveal a belly that was large and swollen. She was pregnant. How far along he couldn't tell, but it didn't matter. She was right. There was no way Alberto would let her just
go
. Not with his unborn child.

“Then you're going to die,” she said quietly, as she looked up at him, tears welling in her eyes to spill down her cheeks. “We both are.”

He stared at her. “I don't understand. Why—”

She laughed, a slightly crazed sound that worried him. “I know you don't. You don't understand because you're a good man, Michael.” She rubbed a soothing hand over her stomach and shook her head as if to clear it. She looked up at him. “I need you to promise me something.”

He nodded. “Anything.”

She sighed, her hands going still on her unborn child. “When Alberto kills me … promise me you'll let him.”