Three, she had weapons. Her Sig 9mm as well as the Glock and plenty of extra ammo and, of course, her knives. They wouldn’t hold up against an army, but a guard or two, she could handle. And then there was Vincent. Given the way he’d managed to throw Reyes across the bar, even after being sliced and diced, she figured he was their best weapon. But it might be worth checking his duffel to see if he had anything else stashed—
Lana blinked in sudden realization. Vincent was their best weapon. She stared at the hillside in front of her, at the million and one details revealed in the pink light of a new day. Okay, so she had to break in during the daylight, but what if she didn’t break out until after dark? If she could get into the shack with no one seeing her, she could be there when Vincent woke up and they could break out together. Of course, he’d probably need . . . Fuck. He was going to need blood, and somehow, she didn’t think the nice drug traffickers would have left a bag of blood on a doily-covered tray for his dinner.
She was going to have to be his dinner. Damn. Vincent was going to laugh his ass off about this. He’d be lucky if she didn’t stake him in his sleep when this was all over with.
But first, she had to rescue him.
LANA CHECKED Google maps again, wanting to verify her position relative to the compound. She wasn’t too worried about the hike in. She was an experienced hiker, in good shape, and her combat boots were worn in and good for walking long distances. But if she and Vincent were racing for their lives on the way out, it would be better if they didn’t have to run a mile or more across the open desert to get to their escape vehicle.
The terrain wasn’t completely flat in this part of Mexico. The Sierra Madre mountain range ran parallel to the coast between the ocean and the interior, and the men who were holding Vincent had built their compound so that it was tucked right up against the foothills of those mountains. It probably gave the back courtyard of the hacienda some shade in the afternoon, and having the bulk of the hills at their back likely provided the crooks with a false sense of security. Lana looked at those hills and saw a convenient place from which to spy on the compound. But most of the people who lived around here were probably either too afraid to do any spying, or worked for the cartel and so not inclined to do so.
She studied the map until she was confident she knew where her vehicle was relative to the compound, and had mapped out a trail that would take her there. She knew it was rough—Google’s view of this remote location didn’t include the kind of ground obstacles that could screw up a hiker—but it would at least keep her going in the right direction. Satisfied she’d done everything she could to prepare, she climbed into the backseat and stretched out. She didn’t really expect to sleep, but figured she could at least close her eyes and find her inner Zen for a few hours. Not that there was much chance of that. She was eager to get started, impatient to get her first real look at the compound, since she couldn’t fully plan until she saw what she was dealing with. She set her phone alarm for two hours and closed her eyes.
Twenty minutes later, she was still awake. Apparently, it didn’t matter how tired she was. Her brain had refused to shut down. So rather than drive herself crazy counting sheep, she’d given up. Standing in front of the open cargo hatch, she exchanged her Levis for her black combat-style pants, needing the extra pockets for supplies, and replaced her long-sleeved T-shirt with one that was sleeveless. It was going to get hot before the morning was over, and while she couldn’t do without the jacket, the shirt at least would be cooler. A small bottle of water went into one of her jacket pockets. It was the bare minimum she’d need, but anything more and she’d need a separate backpack. One of the spare mags for her Sig went into the pouch on her harness, the others into the deep pocket on her thigh. Her compact first-aid kit, fairly complete for all its size, went into her other thigh pocket, along with a small Maglite. Her Sig was holstered on the harness, with a silencer zipped into the inside pocket of her jacket. She considered taking the Glock, but decided against it. She only had so many pockets and, besides, she was aiming for stealth not firepower. That meant knives, and she had plenty of those. The nine-inch stiletto went into her boot, a six-inch fixed-blade in a sheath on her thigh, and the three-and-a-half inch push button in her pocket. But while she hadn’t exactly come on this trip prepared for combat operations, she was a bounty hunter. Half of her job description was surveillance, and she was prepared for that.
Unzipping one of the inner compartments of her duffel, she shoved her hand deep into the pocket, mouthing a silent aha when her fingers touched her binoculars. They were compact, but amazingly powerful, very handy when sitting outside an apartment waiting for her fugitive to show. She went to grab them, but her fingers closed in on something else, too. Something she only vaguely recognized because she’d bought it a few months ago on a whim, in Mexico, as a matter of fact. But she’d never used it. It was a morphine-filled auto-injector, similar to an EpiPen in form, but with the entirely opposite effect. At the time she’d bought it, Lana had been coming off a retrieval where the skip had been big and mean and not at all happy to discover he was not only being brought in, but by a woman. She’d had a partner for that job, but as often as not, she worked alone. The episode had made her consider what might have happened if she’d been alone and the big guy had decided to fight back. So when she’d seen the morphine auto-injector only a few days later, she hadn’t thought twice. She’d picked up three of them and shoved one in her duffel. The other two were still sitting in her refrigerator back home. But this one was going to come in very handy indeed.
It took her the better part of four hours to climb the hill and make her way down the other side and around to a position where she could see into the compound. She moved slowly, careful to avoid standing out against the hill, thankful for the sun which was rising behind the hill and casting her into shadow. When she found a good position, she settled down to watch. Surveillance work was both tedious and exhausting. Sitting in one place, staring at the same thing for hours, might seem easy, but the boredom got to you after a while, eating into your concentration, making your body stiffen up as muscles demanded movement.
There was a lot of activity in the compound, despite Fidelia Reyes’s insistence that most of the guards were gone. Lana identified the shack easily enough, although, since it was constructed of concrete block, she wouldn’t have called it that. To her a shack was something rickety and made of wood.
But the single armed guard was right where he was supposed to be, sitting on a chair only a few feet from the “shack’s” only door. A patio-style umbrella in a metal stand gave him a circle of protection from the sun, but angled the way it was, it would cut into his line of sight, too. She wondered why they had a guard at all, since the vampires weren’t going anywhere during the day. But then, she assumed it was force of habit. If there was a prisoner, there must be a guard, even if that prisoner was a vampire and thus completely immobilized by sunshine.
Either that or the guard was designed to keep possible allies, like Lana, out, rather than keep the vampires in.
In any event, at least that much of Reyes’s intel was accurate. Lana used her binocs to zoom in on the details of the shack, including those damn shutters. As far as she could see, the slats were all closed down tight, so Vincent’s captors hadn’t decided to torture him yet. Maybe they hoped to persuade him to their way of thinking. Or maybe they really didn’t understand the difference between their current vampire slave and a vampire powerful enough to be second-in-command of an entire territory. She had a feeling they were going to find out before this was over.
Satisfied that the shutters were no threat, she focused on the door, or, more importantly, its lock. Among the many illicit skills she’d been taught by her father’s hunters over the years was lock picking. The guys had treated her like a clever pet, or, more charitably, a mascot, teaching her all sorts of tricks. Most locks were easy enough for a reasonably smart child to get through, but she was better than that. Way better. Her dad thought her skill at lock picking came from the fact that she was a woman, that her fingers were more delicate, and also more sensitive. She didn’t know whether that was true, but she did know she could open a lock faster than any of the guys in her dad’s office.
The trick in this case would be getting inside the shack without anyone realizing she had done so. If it was a padlock, she was out of luck. It might be easy to get through, but it would be impossible to make the lock appear engaged from inside the shack. She scooted several feet to her left, trying to get a better angle on the locking mechanism. She was still moving, in a bent-over half-crouch when there was a sudden flurry of activity down below. Dropping where she stood, she watched as three SUVs appeared from around one of the out-buildings and pulled up to the entrance of the main building. The wrought-iron gate clanged open and two children came rushing out of the house, followed at a more sedate pace by a couple who were obviously dressed for church. The woman’s skirt fell a modest two inches below her knee, and she wore a lacy cardigan that covered her bare arms, while a black lace mantilla covered half of her long, dark hair. The man wore a pale suit with a tie, and the children, both boys, wore miniature versions of the same thing.
Lana frowned, trying to remember what day of the week it was. Traveling all night and sleeping all day confused her calendar, but she’d arrived at Vincent’s office on Sunday, which made this . . . Wednesday. Maybe the day was a religious holiday. Mexico was mostly Catholic, but despite both of her parents being nominally of the same faith, Lana hadn’t been raised with any religion.
Whatever was happening down below, however, was good for her. The man about to go off with his family was obviously someone important, maybe even the big boss, because he was taking a whole bunch of guards with him. Two went in the SUV that the family climbed into, and another six piled into the remaining vehicles. The guard manning the shack had risen to his feet as soon as the family had appeared, and he stayed that way, standing stiff and straight as if at attention, until the SUVs had exited the compound and sped down the dirt road, leaving a plume of dust behind them. Almost immediately, the guard slumped back into his chair, looking more bored than ever.
Lana’s heart sped up as she contemplated what the boss’s departure meant for her. This could be her best chance to get inside the shack. With the big man gone, everyone would relax, especially the guy guarding the shack, who hadn’t appeared that alert to begin with. He had to know there was no chance of anyone trying to escape. But even more importantly, there were now eight fewer armed guards in the compound.
She switched her focus to the surrounding wall. It was at least ten feet tall and was constructed with the same kind of blocks used to build the shack. Except that the shack walls had been left bare, while the perimeter wall had been painted a suitably pleasing shade of pale yellow. There were plenty of foot and handholds between the blocks, if one knew how to make use of them. But while Lana was a passable climber, scaling the wall wasn’t her first choice. She started looking for a shortcut, something that would give her a step up onto the wall, so she wouldn’t have to climb the whole thing. It didn’t look good. The best she could hope for was a pile of mossy rocks that never saw the sun. They would be slippery as hell, but they were close enough to the wall at one point that she could use them as a starting point. Unfortunately, she’d still have to climb the rest of the way.
She sighed, staring down the hill and pursing her lips in irritation. Damn Vincent. Why couldn’t he have been an asshole, someone she could leave behind without a thought? She began repacking her gear, securing it for a quick descent, followed by a damn wall climb. She was so fucked. She was probably going to end up the prisoner of a Mexican drug cartel. If she was lucky, they’d ransom her back to her father. If not . . . well, she didn’t want to think about that. Not when she was about to launch what was probably the riskiest venture of her entire life.
Damn Vincent.
LANA’S CLIMB DOWN to the edge of the compound was unexpectedly easy. She moved slowly, checking every foothold, because she couldn’t afford to let something as avoidable as a twisted ankle ruin everything. But between the uneven terrain, the morning shadows, and the rough scrub growing between the rocks, there was enough cover that she was never in danger of being tracked unless someone was specifically watching her location. But it didn’t seem as if anyone was. There were guards, but their focus was clearly on the main gate and the open desert and road beyond it.
In no time at all, Lana found herself balancing on the very slick and uneven surface of the rocks she’d identified from above. They were even shorter than she’d hoped, giving her maybe two feet of a start on the ten foot wall. Stretching her arms straight up, she could touch the flat top of the wall, but just barely. She’d need to climb at least another two feet in order to lever herself up and over, and once there, she’d have to move quickly. The guards might not be paying much attention, but they were far more likely to notice her sitting on top of the wall than they had been when she was creeping down the hillside.
Zipping her various pockets closed, she flexed her fingers and started up. Her first effort was unsuccessful, succeeding only in sending her slamming back down to crack her knee painfully on the slick rocks. She hunched down, rubbing her knee and telling herself she could do this. That she had to because Vincent was in there and as unlikely as it seemed, he needed her. She stretched her leg out, putting her foot on the ground and bending the knee experimentally. It hurt like hell, and the feeling of tightness told her it was probably swelling, but it still worked. So she stood, balanced herself on the rocks, and tried again.
She dug her fingers into the cracks, her boots sliding over the smooth, painted surface. Eventually, she managed to throw one forearm over the top. It wasn’t enough to pull herself over, but she hung on, muscles straining as she used the little bit of leverage she had to lessen the weight on her legs. Finally, with a maneuver that was both awkward and painful, she got both arms over the top of the wall, and there she hung for several minutes, waiting to be discovered, listening for the shouts and gunfire that would end her life.
But the outcry didn’t come. She’d worried that there might be guards she hadn’t spotted, someone taking a break among the heavy greenery of the garden or sitting behind one of the chimneys on the roof. When no one reacted, she swallowed a grunt of effort and dragged the top half of her body all the way over, quickly forcing her legs to follow, and then half-fell, half-dropped down to the dusty ground where she froze. No one sounded an alarm, but she remained still for several minutes, checking out her surroundings. There was an iron gate to her right, and she could see the gardens on the back of the house through its weathered bars. To her left was a windowless building that she thought was a garage. The SUVs she’d seen earlier had come from this direction, and it matched the mental map she’d made of the place after studying the image on her iPad. It was pure, good fortune, but she’d stumbled on an excellent spot. The forecourt where she needed to go was just around the corner, with the shack about thirty feet beyond that. She could hug the shadows between the garage and the main house until she reached the courtyard, then use the landscaping close to the house itself for several more yards as she came up behind the lone guard.
Working as silently as possible, she rearranged her gear, unzipping the pockets holding her backup mag and morphine, and checking everything else to be sure it was secure. She drew her 9mm, retrieved the silencer from her pocket, and threaded it on. She didn’t plan on shooting anyone, but if it came to that, she didn’t want to alert the entire compound.
With the Sig in one hand, she stood and began making her way along the garage wall to the forecourt. Once she got there, a quick peek showed it was as quiet as it had been ever since the SUVs took off. The guard was slumped in his chair, his submachine gun resting on an ample belly, a hat pulled low over his brow. If Lana were an optimist, she might have thought he was asleep. If she could have counted on that, she’d have skipped the skulking around, walked directly up behind him, and slapped him with the morphine auto-injector. But she wasn’t much on optimism. It was too much like wishful thinking, and that could get a hunter killed.
So, she stuck to her original plan, sneaking along the wall of the main house, ducking beneath windows with their decorative iron bars, slipping behind bushes, stepping over cacti, until she was nerve-rackingly close to the guard. He was sitting roughly fifteen feet to her left and no more than six feet ahead of her.