Fifty-Eight

Cofre del Tesoro, Colombia
June 2011

Reyes was back.

He’d flown in just days after Christina’s birthday, his helicopter touching down only yards away while she practiced riding the bike Michael had given her. He stepped down from the Black Hawk, barely sparing them a glance before disappearing into the house. Wedged between two guards was a slouching figure with a black bag over its head.

“Is that man in trouble?”

He’d looked down to see Christina standing next to him, feet flat on the ground, bike balanced between her knobby knees. She looked worried. Like she wanted him to do something about it.

“Probably.” He frowned. “I think it’s time to go inside.”

For once she hadn’t argued. Wheeling her bike over to the set of stone steps that led to the veranda, she leaned it onto its kickstand while he watched and waited. When she was finished, they went inside.

That had been months ago. Reyes was still on the island and he’d shown no signs of leaving. Michael and Christina went on with their daily routine of trips to the beach and bike rides, both doing their best to ignore the fact that the longer her father stayed, the more eggshells they seemed to walk upon.

It was late. The small wind-up clock on the bookshelf that served as his nightstand told him it was past midnight. He’d put Christina to bed hours ago before retreating to his own room.

His sleeping quarters had originally been a three-room suite on the opposite side of the house. Not long after he’d accepted the job, he’d relocated himself to the closest room outside of Christina’s apartments. He suspected that it’d been a closet before he moved in. It was barely big enough to hold the twin bed, shelf, and dresser he’d hauled in, but that didn’t matter. There was a two-by-two window set high into the exterior wall that offered him a view of the grounds and ocean. That was good enough for him.

He stood there now, studying the thick, hulking lines of the Black Hawk squatting on its pad, willing it to come to life. To take Reyes away so that he could go back to pretending he wasn’t hiding from the things he’d done. That he wasn’t ashamed of what he was.

The loud knock on his door moved him away from the window and he pulled it open to see Hector, Reyes’s second-in-command standing on the other side.

“Hefe sent me. He wants to see you,” Hector said, craning his neck a bit to see into the room behind him. No doubt the man was wondering the same thing everyone else did: Why would a man like Cartero choose to sleep in a glorified closet?

Michael made a show of looking at his watch, forcing his face into a mask of irritation. “I’m off the clock. If the kid needs something, get her mother to—”

“This isn’t about Christina.” Hector moved to the side, making it obvious that Michael was to follow him whether he wanted to or not. “Oh, and Hefe says for you to bring your knife.”

Hector led him to Reyes’s office before stationing himself beside the door, hands clasped in front of him, leaving him to enter the room alone.

In the pair of chairs in front of the desk were two men he’d never seen before. One was dark complected, with eyes and hair to match, while the other had sandy blond hair and pale eyes, his skin tone several shades lighter than his friend. Their differing looks didn’t matter. Both sported fleur de lis tattoos on the back of their hands. That made them brothers in the Cordova cadre.

Stretched across the floor between him and the men was a wide square of plastic sheeting. It crinkled beneath his boots every time he shifted. Michael had little doubt what he’d been called here to do.

“Thank you for joining us, Cartero,” Reyes said from behind his desk, as if he’d been given a choice. Estefan stood behind his father’s desk, literally at his right hand, glaring at him with a mixture of disdain and self-importance that he’d come to recognize as the kid’s natural state of being.

“Of course, Mr. Reyes,” he said, careful to keep his tone respectful while choosing his words wisely. “Hector said you wanted to see me.”

Reyes smiled. “I’d like you to meet Javier and Enrique—they work for an overseas competitor to whom I’d like to deliver a message.”

He felt the length of his spine stiffen as he watched the two men seated in front of him shift uncomfortably in their seats, each wondering who would be chosen to be message and who would be messenger. With barely a nod, Michael reached behind him, into the small of his back, and found his blade. Pulling it from its sheath, he stood with it held casually, the flat of it tucked against his thigh … and waited.

Without warning, an interior door tucked into the corner of the room opened. Two of Reyes’s men entered, dragging a third behind them. They dumped him onto the plastic before situating themselves on either side. His captive audience.

Michael recognized him instantly as the man who’d been pulled from the helicopter the day Reyes arrived. The black sack was still in place, soured with the stench of sweat and fear that wafted around him as he was forced to his knees in the middle of the plastic sheet but it was him, Michael was sure of it.

Is that man in trouble?

He gazed down at the hand that held his knife. The same hand that’d held Frankie as a baby. Had soothed her through nightmares after their parents died, before he’d given up completely. The same hand that’d held onto the back of Christina’s bike seat and guided her down the garden path while she pedaled, struggling to find her balance. The same hand that’d tucked her in no more than a few hours ago.

Michael looked up from the hooded man kneeling in front of him to find Reyes watching him closely, like he was an animal being examined for disease or defect. One that would be culled from the pack if he didn’t prove to be as vicious as he’d once been.

He was being tested and failure meant death.

He cocked his head, forcing the corners of his mouth into the semblance of a smile before stepping forward to yank the hood off the figure in front of him. His shirt was expensive beneath the grime, his dark eyes wide and sharp, words fumbling against his lips as soon as he saw him. Beyond him, the blond one—Enrique, let out an outraged bark, trying to lunge from his seat, across the plastic. He was corralled by Reyes’s goon, cuffed viciously with the butt of a gun before the barrel of it was jammed into his ear. His rebellion was quelled before it even really began.

The young man in front of him started to beg. “Please, I’ll give you anything you want. I’ll do whatever—”

Michael didn’t let him finish. He fisted his hand in hair, jamming his knife into the side of the young man’s neck, following the curve of his jaw until a river of red poured from its underside. The man in front of him gurgled, spewing and spitting as he choked on his own blood. Michael shifted his hold, reaching his fingers into the gaping wound he’d just carved into the man’s throat. Finding and gripping the tongue, he pulled it though the wound, yanking and tearing until it hung, flapping, against the underside of his chin.

As soon as it was done, he let the young man drop onto the plastic, where cooling blood continued to weep from the gash in his throat. He looked at the two men seated no more than four feet away. Close enough to touch, Michael reached out and wiped the flat of his blade against the shirt of the man sitting closest to him. Enrique. His name was Enrique.

“You make sure your boss gets Mr. Reyes’s message,” he said, flipping his knife over to drag the other side across the man’s shirt. Now he looked up at Reyes. “Will that be all?”

Reyes shot his son a smug look and stood. “Yes, Cartero. I think that’s everything,” he said, and Michael had the insane urge to dirty up his newly cleaned knife by jamming it into his boss’s eye socket. If Reyes read the impulse as it ghosted through him, he said nothing.

He turned and left the room, walking past Hector without a backward glance. What happened after was never his concern.

Ducking into the first bathroom he found, he dropped his knife in the sink and turned it on, running the water as hot as he could stand before slushing the bar of soap over his hands and forearms, doing his best to wash off the red stain that covered them.

Michael scrubbed until his hands were clean, letting the water run ice cold before he was finally satisfied. Relieved, he looked up into the mirror above the sink to see that it wasn’t just his hands.

The blood was everywhere. He was covered in it, and he had a feeling that no matter how long or how hard he scrubbed, he always would be.