As the Jeep slid from one side of the dirt road to the other, Jana dialed Stone. When he picked up, she yelled into the phone. “Go now! I’ll be at the house in four minutes and I won’t be there more than two before I head to Rojas’s. You’ve got to be in position.”
“Jesus, Jana. What happened to you tonight? Nineteen-hundred hours, remember? We have to plan.”
“Move!” she screamed, then hung up the call.
When she arrived at the safe house, Stone had already left. She jammed the brakes and skid across the parking area, then ran inside.
Cade was on his feet. “What happened? Why are we going right now and not later tonight?”
She blew past him and into the back bedroom. “What do you mean, we? You’re not going anywhere.” She flung open a wooden louvered closet door which slammed into its frame and began to wobble. She then yanked a dress off its hanger.
“I have to go,” Cade said as he stood in the doorway. “You can’t expect just you and Stone are going to pull this off. What if you need help?” His voice faltered as he watched Jana throw her shirt and shorts to the floor. “What if you need a diversion or a secondary vehicle to get away?”
Jana turned her back and dropped her bra to the ground, then threw the little black dress over her head and snugged into it. Cade tried to avert his eyes but couldn’t.
“Where is Ames?” she said.
“Your father? It might help if you could at least call him that.”
“Where?”
“Gone. I don’t know. When Stone took off, I turned around and he was nowhere.”
Jana pulled out a small black purse then reached behind a chest of drawers. Her hand fumbled for a moment, then Cade heard the sound of Velcro ripping as she pulled out a fully-framed Glock 9 mm handgun.
Cade said, “You don’t think you’re going to tuck that thing into that tiny dress, do you?”
“No, nimrod, just grabbed the wrong handle, that’s all.” She reached behind the dresser again and placed the weapon back. Then she withdrew another, much smaller one. It was identical to the weapon she had used to teach her attacker, Montes Lima Perez, a lesson. She tightened the silencer and ensured a round was in the chamber, then tucked it into her purse. She pulled out a black Velcro strap that housed two extra magazines. Cade again tried unsuccessfully to avert his eyes as she propped her leg on the bed and pulled her skirt high enough so she could wrap the strap around her upper thigh. When she saw Cade staring, she said, “Get a good look?”
“You offering?” he jabbed back.
“No.”
“So what’s changed? I’m going with you,” he said as he went out into the main room and grabbed a handgun from Stone’s bag.
“Whatever, but you’re going to keep out of there. I can’t pull Kyle out and have to go back and get your ass too.”
As they went out to the Jeep, Cade got in the driver’s seat. He said, “What did Pete Buck tell you this time? Why the sudden rush?”
Jana looked into a mirror and dabbed her makeup and hair. “There’s a terrorist on his way. He and Rojas are going to consummate their business relationship.”
“Which is?”
“Money laundering to the tune of hundreds of millions.”
“Lovely,” Cade said as he accelerated. “But that doesn’t explain the urgency. Why does this have to happen right now?”
“Oh,” she said, “did I forget to mention that Gaviria’s body just showed up at the compound of Oficina de Envigado?”
Cade nearly lost control of the vehicle. “What? He’s dead? How did—”
“I don’t have time to draw you a picture. But once they see that body, there’s going to be a shitload of angry drug runners crashing the gates at Rojas’s place. It will be an all-out war. I’ve got to get Kyle out now, no matter what.”
“Christ, Jana. We need backup. We can’t fend off fifty heavily armed men while you traipse inside to grab Kyle, from a locked cell, I might add. We need Uncle Bill. He could task a strike force down here in a heartbeat.”
“Well since we still can’t so much as place a damned phone call to him, that point is moot.”
“How are we going to play this? I mean, you’re going to, what, talk your way past the front gate?”
“When we get close, you’re hopping out. I don’t stand a chance of getting past that guard with someone else in the car.”
“How are you going to get past him in the first place? You aren’t supposed to be there until tonight.”
Jana put her lipstick away and glanced at herself in the mirror one last time. She looked down at her exposed cleavage and said, “I’ll think of something.”