Sneaking out without awakening Colleen had taken half an hour.
Hailing a rideshare car from the hotel on a Sunday night had taken only a few minutes and few winks from the driver about why Tristan was leaving a hotel in the middle of the night without luggage.
The coordinates specified in the text that Tristan had received was a vacant field, so he told the driver that his buddy had meant to meet him at the convenience store at the next intersection. As they passed, faint movements shifted in the dark, blocking the city lights like waving bushes.
No flashlights, he noted. No floodlamps or lanterns. Just darker shapes moving quietly in the faint starlight and glow from the city that spread out downhill of that neighborhood.
Farther uphill in this mountain pass, monoliths blotted out the smooth sheet of stars halfway up the sky. No moon interrupted the darkness.
Uphill and a mile away, spotlights glared on the Boulders Resort, a sleek building embedded in a red rock mountain like a spaceship crash-landed on rusty Mars.
Tristan walked along the road from the convenience store toward the desert field in the oppressively warm night. His long trousers trapped the heat, plastering it against his skin.
When Tristan stepped off the asphalt, gravelly dirt crunched under his running shoes. He took out his cell phone and used the screen, not the flashlight, to cast a dim glow on the thorny bushes and cacti in his path.
A man, clad all in black, loomed out of the darkness.
Tristen hopped sideways but didn’t make a sound.
Goggles covered the man’s eyes, and a long tube emerged from the bridge of his nose like a medieval plague mask. “You are?”
Spanish accent, Tristan noted. “Tristan King. I’m expected.”
The man nodded and handed a pair of similar goggles to Tristan.
He shoved his phone in his pocket and stretched the straps over his head.
As Tristan brought the mask down over his eyes, the world revealed itself in tones of electric green. The sky blazed with the light of a thousand suns, casting gray light through the air and over the band of thirty or so men standing in clusters farther from the road.
A scorpion was lurking on the ground beside Tristan’s left foot. He stepped away.
“Come on,” the guy said and motioned toward the others.
Tristan followed him around bushes and rocks lit eerie green by the night-vision goggles.
As they approached, the others turned toward him, their proboscises bobbing as they appraised him.
One of them walked forward, hand outstretched. “Tristan King, I’m Magnus Jensen.”
Yep, he still had the northern European lilt to his speech.
Tristan clasped his hand. “Pleased to meet you.”
“May I see your surveillance of the location’s interior?”
Tristan came up with his phone and opened the app.
The glare was like holding a star in the palm of his hand.
Everyone pulled back, arms over their eyes.
Tristan tapped the screen and reduced the screen’s brightness, but even the lowest level was too bright to look at with the night-vision scopes.
Magnus had already ripped his mask off his head, so Tristan handed the phone to him so he could take off his goggles and wipe his streaming eyes.
The commandos, for that is what they were, gathered around and stood shoulder to wide shoulder, watching the screen. Faint light glowed on their chins and cheekbones.
The view was swinging wildly again as Sergey walked through the suite.
Rough black cloth filled the screen. He was probably holding the phone at his side as he walked.
With a burst of light, Jian and Anjali came into view. They were lying on the bed, back to back, with their hands tied behind them and to each other.
Magnus sighed, “Okay.”
Sergey’s voice barked orders in Russian. Several of the guys standing in the circle around the phone, including Magnus, nodded.
Another man walked into view from behind Sergey, possibly having followed him into the bedroom. He walked over to the bed and yelled something unintelligible at Jian, who didn’t respond. The man grabbed Jian’s jaw and shook him around. Something dark stained the pillow where Jian had been lying.
Tristan was going to kill those guys. He was going to take them apart with his bare hands. That asshole should not touch Jian. Even though Jian had only worked for Tristan for a few months, Tristan was responsible for him and had gotten him into this shit. The responsibility for Jian’s kidnapping swamped him again, and he was going to dismember that guy who’d touched him.
A shiver crawled down the sweat on his back. Those assholes had broken into Colleen’s apartment at exactly the same time as they’d invaded the presidential suite at The Boulders, and it had just been stupid luck that she and Tristan had been breaking and entering at GameShack instead of sleeping in her bed. The thought that it might have been Colleen that the goon had hit, that it could have been Colleen’s blood on that pillow, devastated him.
Magnus asked Tristan, “What have you learned during your surveillance?”
He gritted his teeth. “Jian and Anjali are being held in the bedroom of the suite, tied up except for bathroom breaks. Do you have a floor plan?”
“Yes.”
Magnus handed the phone back to Tristan, and he clicked it off and shoved it in his pocket. Tristan shoved the night-vision goggles over his head again. The electric green and gray world settled into view. The other commandos were putting theirs on and adjusting their straps and knobs.
Tristan said to Magnus, “Sergey, the head bad guy, seems to be keeping Jian’s phone with him most of the time.”
Magnus waited, watching him, and then nodded, the long tube between his eyes oscillating.
“There are at least four other people in the suite. All seem to be Russian and male.”
Magnus just waited, so Tristan kept talking.
“They’ve been watching TV a lot. When he walks around with the phone, it looks like some of the guys are sitting in chairs. They don’t seem to be vigilant, but it’s hard to tell. Someone might be standing and watching whilst the others sit. They seem to have semi-automatic handguns, not rifles.”
Again, Magnus waited, unspeaking.
“The several times Sergey has entered the bedroom where they’re keeping Jian and Anjali, we didn’t see anyone in there standing over them, but that’s not for sure. We just couldn’t see.” Tristan trailed off.
“Anything else?”
Tristan shrugged. “Sergey needs to eat more fiber.”
Magnus nodded. “Good. You will stay here during the operation. Our IT support technician will coordinate with you for surveillance and operational strategy.” He touched his ear and whispered, “Blaise, our contact is here.”
Blaze? Had Magnus said Blaze?