2

Daria Villalobos briefly closed her eyes and inhaled, breathing in the heady blend of primal male musk, sweat, and fear. Her designer boots stirred tiny puffs of dust from the compacted dirt floor as she took measured steps behind the circle of men. Her men. She had ordered them to what she referred to as “the pit building” to teach them the consequences of failure. She intended today’s lesson to fill their every waking moment with dread. And haunt their dreams.

Under her guidance, twelve of her men had recently constructed the barn-sized prefabricated building on a vast plot of scrub-covered desert at the foot of South Mountain on the outskirts of Phoenix. Heavily sound-proofed and situated beside a nature preserve, outsiders seldom came near the area. Barbed wire fencing and dense chaparral kept wayward hikers away.

When designing the building, Daria had included a service door at the back to vent fumes or make a fast exit. Equal parts science lab, demolition site, and personal fortress, the functional external structure hadn’t been her focus. What lay inside, however, had taken a great deal of time and money over the past few weeks.

No one reported any disturbances when the men used her specially designed explosives and jackhammers to blast through the rock-hard layers of caliche just below the desert floor. Created by thousands of years of calcium carbonate deposits, the caliche around the mountain was particularly dense, but she had ordered them to dig a deep pit to her exact specifications.

Now her men stood in silence around the perimeter of the hole they had toiled to create. She stopped circling behind them and drew near enough to lay a hand on the nape of a damp neck, a smile curling her lips when the man flinched. She addressed him in Spanish. “You were too slow, Pedro.”

When the bomb in the storage unit failed to explode, she had turned to Pedro for the backup detonator to the device. While the idiot fumbled through a box of equipment, Veranda Cruz had managed to push everyone out to safety. Two hours later, Daria’s anger hadn’t cooled in the slightest.

Pedro began to turn his head toward her, then appeared to recall himself and returned his gaze to the dirt floor. “I could not find it, Señorita Daria.”

She gave him a slight nudge, and the treads of his worn leather work boots scraped the ground, sliding forward. The scuffed toes were now only inches from the edge of the pit. He sucked in a horrified gasp.

“You should have been prepared for emergencies. That bitch would be dead right now if you had done your job.” She said nothing for several awkward moments, aware that silence could terrify more than words. She finally spoke again, allowing anger to sharpen her words. “But you are not the only one to blame.”

Dropping her hand, she moved on. Eighteen of her men surrounded the pit. Over twelve feet deep and just as wide across, she had designed it for a specific purpose. Now one of them would be the first to test her new invention.

She paused behind another man’s back. “Julio, where were you when I examined the wires?”

“By your side, Señorita, double checking. Everything was good.”

“And yet … no boom.” She reached out to stroke his quivering shoulder blade before moving on to the next man. “Which leads me to you, Guillermo.” She watched a trickle of perspiration course down from under his dark ponytail to disappear inside the collar of his damp shirt.

“I did as you told me, Señorita,” he said, voice thick with strain.

“And what was that, Guillermo?”

“I put the bomb inside Oscar after he was dead.”

She twisted the smooth hair of his ponytail around her fingers, relishing the terror permeating the open area surrounding the yawning hole in the ground. She could drag this out all morning, and probably would have, but the pit beckoned. Curiosity spurred her decision.

She let the man’s hair slide from her grasp and used her index finger to trail a leisurely path down his spine. “Did you push it in hard, Guillermo?”

His voice elevated an octave. “I had to … to get it deep enough inside not to fall out.”

She kept her finger moving down until she reached his belt. “Perhaps a wire came loose with all that shoving.” She rotated her hand and placed it gently on his back pocket. “You have to be careful when you push.” She cupped his bottom. “Especially here.”

His legs shook violently. “Please, Señorita Daria.”

She lowered her voice to a whisper. “But you weren’t careful, were you?” His rising panic intoxicated her. “You pushed too hard.” She gave his backside a shove that toppled him forward. “Like that.”

He pitched forward over the edge, arms windmilling in desperate circles. His guttural shriek ended with a thud.

Daria leaned over to peer down at him, hoping the fall hadn’t knocked him unconscious. That wouldn’t do. Relief rushed through her when he scrambled to his feet on the pit’s earthen floor. She ordered her men to watch Guillermo scamper in a circle, picking his way around the pressure plates surrounding the metal pole in the center. He cast pleading eyes upward and placed his hands against the curved wall of reinforced cement that lined the pit’s sides.

Daria spared Guillermo another glance before scanning the stunned faces of the men surrounding the hole. They didn’t like her, didn’t respect her, but they feared her. She had made sure of that.

Born into her father’s patriarchy, she’d carved out a place for herself among her three older brothers. Their status as leaders in the family business was their birthright, but hers had come at a very steep price. Hector Villalobos had been upset that his youngest child wished to play what he thought was a man’s game. He had devised a brutal test before allowing her into the inner sanctum. Only fifteen years old, her victory had surprised everyone. And irrevocably changed her.

A rueful smile twisted her lush mouth. Her trial by fire had ended more than ten years ago, but she’d been forced to prove her mettle every day since. Guillermo’s punishment would ensure the remaining seventeen men would follow her orders without hesitation.

She cleared her throat, and even Guillermo stopped his frantic scrabbling. All eyes turned to her. “Guillermo will be the first to test my newest invention.” She crossed her arms. “For those of you who weren’t part of the construction crew at this site, I’ll explain.”

The men watched in rapt silence as she continued. “The pole in the center is an upgrade to the classic Claymore mine. Instead of targeting one direction, my version launches a shower of nails and ball bearings in a three-sixty spread.” She warmed to her subject. “If I’ve designed it right, a bit of C-4 will detonate, sending shrapnel in every direction.” She stopped and looked down. “There’s nowhere to hide when you’ve disappointed me.”

She drank in the stark horror on Guillermo’s face as he wrung his hands. He took a step toward the metal pole, extending his arm as if he intended to disconnect the multicolored wires sticking out at odd angles.

Did he really believe she hadn’t thought of that? “You can’t get near the device without stepping on the metal plates,” she called down to him. “Which will detonate it instantly.”

The front of Guillermo’s jeans darkened as urine leaked from his pant legs, soaking into the dirt at his feet.

She looked past him at the digital display timer mounted near the top of the pole for all to see. “Twelve seconds left. Any last words?”

“Please, Señorita Daria. I swear it will never happen again!”

“No, Guillermo.” She signaled the men to back away from the pit and jammed an index finger into each ear. “It won’t.”

The explosion shook the building, vibrating through every part of her body from the soles of her feet to the fillings in her teeth. The pit’s mouth vomited up a plume of pebbled cement. In the eerie stillness that followed, the men crept to the edge, waving away curling clouds of dust and squinting down. When several of them retched, she knew Guillermo’s death had served its purpose.

“Scrub down the inside wall and wash the smaller pieces down the drain,” she said, pointing to a circular metal grate the size of a manhole cover that concealed a waste disposal chute.

Daria reflected on the lessons gleaned from her father about disciplining subordinates. El Lobo extracted maximum value from every death sentence he ordered, selecting each participant with care and purpose. The condemned, the executioner, and the person who disposed of the body carried meaning and significance.

Her gaze locked on one of her men, singling him out. “Pedro, bag what’s left of Guillermo and dispose of it on the other side of town. I don’t want anyone tying the remains back to this location.”

Pedro might have joined Guillermo in the pit. Mopping up bits and pieces of his friend would drive that point home as nothing else could.

Trembling, Pedro inclined his head. “Sí, Señorita.”

She strode from the building, reassessing her predicament. Determined to find a way to salvage this morning’s disaster, her feet hurried toward a nearby Jeep waiting in the barren dirt lot next to the building.

She wrenched open the driver’s door and slid onto the utilitarian vinyl seat. The weight of impending judgment settled on her shoulders as she recalled the meeting in her father’s office at their family compound in Mexico seven weeks ago, when the course of her life had changed for the second time.

Because she was female, her father had given her rightful place in the family business to Salazar, his trusted fixer and right-hand man. When she objected, he promised to reconsider if she eliminated Cruz. El Lobo didn’t specify the method, but the kill order had to be carried out personally. Expecting quick results, he hadn’t understood why Daria insisted on a bomb rather than a bullet.

Any idiot could pull a trigger, but she’d engineered the pit, a thing of beauty designed to carry out her personal agenda. She had kept her reasons to herself, letting her father believe a fondness for explosives drove her choice of method.

The Jeep’s engine sputtered awake at the second twist of her key in the ignition, pulling her thoughts back to her present situation. Her father’s impatience had forced her hand. He had called yesterday threatening to send Salazar to carry out her assignment if she didn’t act this morning. Her men worked through the night, but the pit wasn’t ready until an hour ago, well after her deadline. The storage unit bomb had been her backup plan.

As she drove out of the lot, the beginnings of an idea slipped into her awareness. She had taken pains to frame Salazar for Cruz’s death. Now that Cruz had survived, the planted evidence took on a new role. While the police chased Salazar, occupying his time and theirs, Daria would be free to implement the alternative plan uncoiling in her mind like a viper preparing to strike.