This place was a maze, but he ran through a dining room and the kitchen was straight ahead. It was huge. There were no knives sitting on the counter, and he didn’t have time to search. He ran out the service door expecting to be attacked, but no one was there. Two steps later the yard burst alive with spotlights shining from what seemed like every corner of the house. Shouts came from everywhere. There was no place to hide.
Two men rounded the corner, guns drawn, aimed at Sean.
A small explosion shook the ground, and every light went off simultaneously-the spotlights and the house-lights. Adrenaline made his ears ring and Sean hesitated, just for a moment… what if Kane and Jesse were still inside?
Trust your brother. That’s why you brought him.
A second small explosion came thirty seconds later and propelled Sean toward the rendezvous point in the southeast corner.
Sean couldn’t see anything, but he’d memorized the layout of the house and the compound grounds. He knew exactly where he had to be. And prayed Kane was there, with Jesse.
Gunfire behind him was closer than he expected. There was no place to hide, but the shooters couldn’t see him, either. He was in the middle of a sick game of Russian roulette. Anything that hit him would be out of sheer luck, but there was still the chance that a bullet would hit the back of his head and he’d be dead, here in Guadalajara.
Not tonight. You’re not going to die tonight.
He zigzagged, kept as low as he possibly could, stumbled, kept moving toward the southeast corner. But in the dark and with all the noise, he was losing his sense of direction. Was he heading to the right corner? Had he messed up? Shouldn’t he be there by now?
He slowed down, listened, and heard a whistle. Kane’s unique whistle.
He turned to the right and bolted through the new hole in Flores’s stone and metal wall, courtesy of Jack and JT.
“We have a problem,” Jack said.
“Jesse,” was the only thing Sean could say as he gasped for air.
Please don’t tell me he’s dead. Please don’t.
“He’s here,” Kane said.
Sean glanced over. Standing behind Kane was his son. His son.
He didn’t know what to say. Thank you to Kane was inadequate. Hello to Jesse, likewise. He just stared.
“We need to retrieve Spade,” JT said.
“What the hell for?” Sean snapped back to attention. “He made his bed, let him die in it.”
Then he looked at Jesse. This boy considered Carson his father. The man who had raised him. The only father he knew.
“Rick Stockton needs him in the States,” JT said. “Rick has covered our ass many times and asks for little in return; we’re doing this. There’s no way they’ll get him extradited before he slips away. He has far too many assets and properties. He’s not just a small-time accountant laundering money for a crime boss. He’s the only accountant for the entire Flores crime syndicate. He knows everything.”
“But we’re on a clock,” Kane said. “If Dante did what I expected him to do, the Velasquez crime family has sent a team to take care of business. We don’t want to be here for that battle.”
A female voice said, “You made a promise to me, Jack Kincaid.”
Sean looked over and saw Gabriella Romero. Tall, slender, beautiful. Exotic would be the right word.
Jack said, “Sean, Matt Elliott is at the rendezvous point, and he has the coordinates you need to pick us up.”
JT handed Sean a.45. “You’ll have a tricky landing and takeoff, but you’re the best.”
“That I am,” Sean said, though he didn’t feel at all confident at this moment. Then he spotted the duffel bag that had the bearer bonds and cash. “What-you got it back.”
“Took out Flores’s goons before they arrived at the gate. We can’t let anyone have these bonds. Take them with you. The cash is going to Romero-he earned it.”
Kane grunted. Sean didn’t know what Dante actually had done, but clearly JT and Kane didn’t see eye-to-eye on this.
“Go,” Kane told Sean. He glanced down at Jesse. “Trust us, kid.” He handed Jesse a phone. “When this beeps, call Carson’s cell phone.”
Jesse nodded. He was pale as a ghost, but he stood tall.
Kane, Jack, JT, and Gabriella went back into the compound. Sean wanted to go with them.
But it was just him and Jesse, and he would do anything to protect his son.
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
For all her flaws-mostly criminal flaws-Gabriella had done everything she said she would and more. It had been Jack’s plan to take out the lights, but Gabriella had taken care of the backup generators first. Kane was going to owe her and Dante big time, and he didn’t like owing criminals anything. He and Dante were going to have a heart-to-heart when this was all said and done. If Dante could recuse himself from some of the shadier businesses, Kane could look away from the other shit. But he didn’t think Dante could turn down the money. He wasn’t a distributor, smuggler, or grower… he was a moneyman. A negotiator. The arbitrator when two crime families-like the Flores and the Velasquez families-had a disagreement.
And sometimes, like now, it paid for Dante to know everyone’s secrets.
But Kane sure as hell didn’t like him knowing the Rogan family secrets.
Kane and JT split off from Gabriella and Jack. They had their own plan, and it didn’t include grabbing Carson Spade.
JT didn’t work in the field anymore, but there were some things that were so ingrained, it was like they’d been working together for years. They didn’t need words. A nod, subtle body movement, hand signs. It was like old times, but Kane was acutely aware that JT was rusty. Just because he had once been among the elite didn’t mean his reaction time was the same. Kane hadn’t thought Jack would bring in JT and Matt Elliott to implement Kane’s plan-Matt was a fucking prosecutor and hadn’t run an op since he left the Navy SEALs umpteen years ago. JT-he was more in the game, but not from this side of the war.
But that was a conversation for another day. Today was about survival. And finding that bastard Carson Spade.
He looked at the countdown on his watch. When Jesse called Carson, whether or not he answered his phone, Kane would have his exact location. Sean was brilliant, though Kane stopped telling him that long ago. Why inflate his ego any more? Sean had created an app so that even if the person had GPS turned off, if they were called from a phone with the app, any other phone with that app could track them to a ten-foot radius. If they answered the phone, a virus wormed its way in so the individual could be tracked even when they terminated the call.
Unless of course they took out the battery. But Kane didn’t think Carson would suspect anything. And he would absolutely answer a phone when the caller ID had been programmed to show the name JESSE.
JT held up his hand and Kane stopped. They were flush against the back wall of the house, partly obscured by scraggly oak trees. Kane looked at the watch again. One minute. He held up one finger to JT, who nodded.
A group of four guards ran past them toward the back wall.
Thirty seconds.
Kane and JT entered through the same service door that Sean had escaped from. A guard stood there as sentry, but hesitated just a second, surprised that the man who had escaped had returned. Kane hit him in his neck and broke his windpipe. Quiet, effective, deadly.
They ran through the kitchen and stood in the butler’s pantry. Kane looked at his watch. Ten seconds. He took out the small tablet Sean had given him. The light was so dim he almost couldn’t see the screen, but he didn’t dare turn it up. He launched the app and waited. Listened. There was still chaos outside, but inside the atrium there was only a shouting match between Jasmine and Dominick.