There was a short lull.
“That could work,” Kane finally said. “But are you certain the servants aren’t searched?”
“I’m pretty certain.” She bit her lip. “But maybe one of you can hide in the hills with a sniper rifle just in case. If the guards discover the weapons on Inez, just take them out.”
“And alert Blanco to the fact that he has company, thus taking away the element of surprise, and thus no extraction,” Morgan said ruefully.
“Isabel and Trevor can’t do this without weapons,” Abby pointed out. “If we can’t get those weapons to them, there won’t be an extraction anyway.”
“It could work,” Kane said again.
“That is, assuming Inez Alvaro would be willing to help,” Morgan countered.
“She will,” Abby said, confidence ringing in her voice. “Her daughter is missing. Her husband fled like a rat on a sinking ship when Blanco found out he was stealing from him. Inez is all alone, and she’s desperate to get Lucia back.”
“Is there a way we can contact her?” Isabel asked.
Abby slowly shook her head. “Corturo is a tiny village, where most of the villagers live in huts. Indoor plumbing is about as modern as they get.” She paused. “But I think the church has a telephone.” She searched her memory, trying to picture the village she’d visited. “Yes, there’s a phone there. The priest uses it to contact the relief foundation that brings food and medical supplies about twice a year.”
“If we could contact her, could she leave the village without rousing suspicion?”
Abby thought it over. “Blanco has men all over the area, definitely has some in the village. But… Inez has a sister here in the city. She mentioned her the first time we met. I’m sure if her sister told her there was some emergency, she would make the trip here.”
“In the car she probably doesn’t own?” Kane said with a sigh.
“She’d take a taxi. Or the bus.”
Luke rolled his eyes. “And village buses are so reliable,” he said sarcastically. “For all we know, she’ll show up two days from now and the auction will already be over.”
Ignoring the remark, Morgan pulled his cell phone from his pocket. “Then we’ll just have to make sure she gets here today.”
“You’re seriously going to recruit the housekeeper as an undercover operative?” D said in disbelief.
“It’s worth a shot.” Morgan punched in a number. “Holden,” he barked a moment later. “I need you to find me a telephone number.”
Inez Alvaro talked like an auctioneer on speed. Kane could barely keep up with the plump, dark-skinned woman, whose words fired out of her mouth like an endless stream of bullets from a machine gun. From the moment she’d walked into the house, she’d alternated between loud sobs and hurried sentences. Didn’t help that she was speaking Spanish too.
His head spun like a merry-go-round as he watched Isabel and Abby attempt to soothe the hysterical woman. They’d been at it for ten minutes, yet she still didn’t seem ready to calm down. Thinking her sister had been in a gruesome car accident hadn’t helped the poor woman’s mood. It was the ruse Abby had used to get Alvaro to leave her village. Conveniently, a taxi had been waiting right near the bus stop the woman had raced toward, and when she’d heaved herself into the backseat, she’d nearly had a coronary when she found Kane and Abby sitting there.
Fortunately, Inez recognized Abby, and she eagerly agreed to meet with the people who were trying to get her daughter back. She’d mumbled the word milagro so many times that Kane had finally asked Abby for a translation. She’d quietly told him it meant miracle.
It didn’t surprise him that Abby spoke fluent Spanish. It had surprised Inez, though, who’d met Abby as Erica, the American mistress of Señor Blanco. Inez had recovered quickly from the shock, though, and ever since she’d climbed into the cab, she’d been crying like a hormonal pregnant chick.
“What’s she saying?” Kane said from his perch by the doorway. Only he and Luke were present at the moment; Morgan and the others had retreated to the den, trying not to overwhelm the distraught mother.
“She said she wants to cut off Blanco’s balls and feed them to the goat,” Isabel said with a barely contained smile.
“I hear that.” Luke sighed. “I wish I owned a goat I could feed that dirtbag’s balls to.”
Isabel turned her attention back to the wailing woman, gently rubbing Inez’s shoulders. She spoke softly in Spanish, and the soothing note to her voice seemed to have an effect on the woman. Kane noted with interest that Abby made no move to embrace Inez Alvaro. And her tone was not as gentle as Isabel’s. She sounded strained, almost awkward.
His heart tightened in his chest. Opening up wasn’t something Abby did easily, which made him all the more grateful that she’d allowed herself to get close to him. And not just in bed. He thought of their talk last night, when she’d quietly insisted she wasn’t normal. He knew there was some truth to that. Abby Sinclair wasn’t normal by society’s standards. She was a warrior. A killer. A woman willing to use any weapon at her disposal to get the job done.
But she was also more than that. She cared about others, no matter how much she insisted she didn’t. She’d risked her neck—literally—to try to save those girls. And when she’d clung to him after sex, she’d felt so fragile, so small and helpless. A part of him wanted to take her into his arms and never let her go. Another part simply wanted to push her away. He hadn’t felt this close to a woman since Emily. But Emily had abandoned him.
And Abby… no matter how hard he tried to convince himself otherwise, he suspected she would abandon him too.
“You… help?”
Kane’s head jerked up as he realized those two awkward words had been directed at him. He looked into Inez’s hopeful brown eyes, and his throat felt tight. “Yes, we’re going to help,” he said gruffly.
“You bring Lucia to me? Take back?”
Her broken English was hard to decipher, but the emotions flickering across her face were unmistakable. “We’re going to try,” Kane said. “But we’ll need your help.”
Inez didn’t seem to understand. She looked at Isabel in confusion and asked something in Spanish. Isabel answered with a nod, along with another gentle squeeze of the older woman’s arm. Kane listened blankly as Isabel continued speaking, evidently explaining what they required of Inez. The woman started to nod in earnest.
“She says they don’t search her at the gate,” Isabel translated. She paused, listening. “And she left some clothing and photographs in the bedroom she used whenever she was ordered to stay the night.”
Abby quietly posed another question to Inez and received an enthusiastic nod in return. “She says Blanco gave her permission to come back for her things.”
Inez’s eyes flashed at the sound of Blanco’s name, which sent her on another muttering rampage. Kane picked up on the word serpiente—he knew that one. Snake. Yep, Blanco fit that bill.
“She wants him to suffer,” Abby said flatly. “She wants him dead.”
“Don’t we all,” Luke mumbled.
The women spoke to Inez for several more minutes. By the end, steel had sharpened Inez’s dark eyes. Her tanned face became grave, intent as she listened to Isabel and Abby.
“Sí,” she said firmly. “Sí… I help.”
“She’ll do it?” Kane asked, satisfaction sweeping through him.
“She’ll do it,” Abby confirmed.
Inez focused those bottomless brown eyes on Kane. “Señor Blanco… serpiente.” She pointed a plump finger at him. “You bring Lucia. You save Lucia. Ayudaré… I help.”
“She scares me.”
Kane shot Luke a sidelong glance, grinning at his friend’s ashen face. Across the room, Abby was teaching Ethan about the art of knife fighting, and the kid looked as pale as Luke did. He supposed it was an appropriate reaction when an angry redhead was pointing a blade at you.
Trevor and Isabel had left for their hotel an h
our before, and D had taken Inez Alvaro back to her village, leaving Kane and the others to be tortured by Abby Sinclair all afternoon. She’d already forced them go over the blueprints of Blanco’s compound seven times, quizzed them about every weapon being brought on the extraction, and when Ethan had misguidedly revealed that he didn’t have much use for knives, she’d been so horrified that she’d raided the armory in the safe house and returned with a selection of nasty-looking blades, determined to give Ethan a thorough lesson.
Needless to say, she was driving everyone crazy with her preparations, including Morgan, who’d stormed off after Abby complained that it was a shame his prized helicopter didn’t have more than one rocket launcher. Morgan had locked himself in the den and hadn’t come out since.
Kane knew he could try to derail the obsession train Abby had decided to board, maybe seduce her into distraction, but he was loath to do so. She was already pissed about being left out of the rescue. If overanalyzing every detail and jabbing a knife around made her feel better, he was willing to indulge her. Besides, it wouldn’t hurt Ethan to learn some new tricks.
Luke was right, though. It was scary, how good she was with a knife. And graceful. She looked like a damn ballerina as she showed Ethan the proper way to shove a sharp blade into someone’s heart.
“No,” she said in aggravation when Ethan yet again blundered the task. “You’ll hit bone if you enter from there. Jeez, who trained you?”
Ethan’s face went beet red. “The Marines.”
Abby grumbled something under her breath, then tugged on the hem of her tight T-shirt and pulled it over her head. She wore a black sports bra underneath, and though it wasn’t indecent by any standards, Kane didn’t appreciate the way she stripped so readily in front of his men.
“Here, feel this,” she told Ethan.
Kane’s shoulders stiffened. Uh, no fucking way was he letting Ethan, kid or not, get his hands on Abby’s chest. He took a step forward, but Abby turned to scowl at him, making him stop in his tracks. As she took Ethan’s hand, Kane clenched his teeth so hard his jaw began to ache.
“You stick it here,” Abby explained. “Under the sternum. And you aim upward and toward the spine. You’ll usually hit the heart, but if you don’t, you’ll most likely connect with an artery and the guy will drown in his own blood.”
She spoke so matter-of-factly that Kane found himself gulping. So did Ethan, whose hand seemed to be trembling against Abby’s chest.
“If you’re coming from behind, your best bet is to stick the knife here, right below the ribs.” Abby offered Ethan her back, using her hand to indicate the right spot. “Hit this and you take out a kidney. Hit higher and you puncture a lung. And if all that fails, use your backup blade to slit the bastard’s throat.” Abby grinned. “Any questions?”
Looking terrified, Ethan shook his head.
“Good. Then let’s try it again.”
Half an hour later, Ethan had succeeded in earning a silver star from Abby. Kane didn’t want to know what it would take to get a gold star. Abby gave Ethan a brisk nod of approval and strode off, leaving the kid standing in the middle of the room, the knife dangling from his hand. As Luke broke out in mock applause, Kane smothered a smile and trailed after Abby. He found her in the bathroom of their bedroom, and watched from the doorway as she turned on the faucet and splashed water on her face.
“You could have gone easy on him,” he remarked.
She scrunched up her face, as if she were truly perplexed. “Why? Blanco’s men won’t.”
She had a point. “True, but chances are, this won’t turn into some gang knife fight. We’ll have guns. Really big guns.”
To his surprise, she grinned. “I know, but… is it awful for me to say that I have fun toying with Ethan?”
Kane threw his head back and laughed.
“He just acts like he’s so damn scared of me,” she said, sounding defensive. “I figured I’d give him a reason to be.”
“And you also want to feel like you’re part of the rescue.”
“It was my mission,” she said fiercely.
“It’s still yours. But it’s ours now too.” He stepped into the bathroom and wrapped his arms around her from behind. “I promise you, we’ll save those girls.”
She met his reflection in the small mirror. “I know you will. It just feels wrong, you know? Not being able to go in and rescue them myself. I know Isabel can get the job done, but…”
“But you can’t sit idle. Trust me, I know. We’re built for action, you and I. It’s normal to want to be right in the midst of it.” Unable to stop himself, he slid his hands up her belly and cupped her breasts. “But there’s another kind of action we can partake in, you know.”
A faint smile crossed her lips, then faded abruptly. Disentangling from his embrace, she turned to face him, and he glimpsed the apprehension on her face. “What is it?” he demanded.
“I did something before, when Isabel and I were talking to Inez.” She visibly swallowed, as if admitting it took a physical toll on her. “I asked Inez to plant another gun in the common room.”
Kane narrowed his eyes. Earlier, when they’d told Inez that the girls would most likely be taken to the servants’ area, the woman had said that the only room large enough to accommodate them would probably be the break room, which apparently had some couches, a crooked pool table, and a small kitchenette. “Why would you ask her to do that?” he asked carefully.
Abby averted her eyes. “So if the girls are in there, they won’t be unarmed. They can use the gun to take out the guard at the door, and then—”
“Jesus,” he interrupted.
Her features hardened. “Just hear me out, okay? Look, Inez used to bring Lucia to work with her every now and then. Lucia knows the layout of the servants’ quarters.”
“So?” Kane asked with deep suspicion.
“So maybe Lucia can get herself and the others to the storage room that leads to the rear exit. That way Isabel can meet them there at an arranged time, instead of roaming the halls and opening doors until she finds where they’re being kept.”
“Lucia Alvaro is thirteen years old,” Kane said stiffly. “And there will certainly be a guard or two posted at their door. You can’t expect a little girl to—”
“Yes, I can,” she cut in, her voice cold and even.
He let out a curse. “Christ, Abby. Do you honestly think a thirteen-year-old girl is going to be able to murder a man in cold blood?”
“I think a thirteen-year-old girl will do anything she needs to in order to save her own life.”
Chapter 18
“I’m really going to miss this suite,” Isabel remarked as they walked through the door.
Trevor tried not to smile as he watched her gaze sweep around the room. The disappointment in her eyes was evident. “It’s just another hotel room,” he pointed out.
“Compared to the other rooms I’ve stayed in, this is a palace.” She kicked off her stilettos and collapsed on one of the love seats.
“What about your home? It must be better than all those hotel rooms.”
“I have a place in New York, but it’s just a small walk-up. Nothing as elegant as this. And besides, I’m hardly ever there.”
“Too busy pretending to be a jet-setting Brazilian heiress?”
“Sure beats my regular old life.”
Trevor found himself grinning. Isabel Roma really was one of a kind. Intelligent, beautiful, and completely unaffected by the evils of this world. She took everything in stride—the good, the bad, the seriously shitty. He wished he possessed that kind of attitude.
“I wanted to discuss something with you,” she said suddenly. “Abby came up with an idea earlier, which I think has merit.”
Trevor frowned. “I’m listening.”
Isabel quickly explained Abby’s plan to arrange for the captured girls to find their way to the storage room at a predetermined time. His frown deepened when she told him about the gun planted i
n the servants’ break room. When she finished, Trevor leaned forward in his chair and rubbed his jaw. The idea definitely had merit; he had to admit that. But he still wasn’t sold on recruiting Lucia Alvaro to help them.
“Lucia would need to know about the gun, along with where to meet us and what time. How do you propose we do that? Like you said, the girls are going to be locked up in the servants’ quarters.”
“Blanco said we were entitled to a closer look,” Isabel reminded him.
His breath came out in a soft hiss. “If there’s an item we’re interested in, he said he’d bring it to our room.”
“We can ask for a closer look at Lucia. She’ll be brought to our room, and we can tell her what we need her to do.”
He paused, thinking. “It could work.”
“We just need to make sure the timing is on our side. Bahar said the auction starts at seven. We have an hour to examine the merchandise, and that’s when we’ll request to see Lucia. At eight the bids go in, and I imagine it’ll take about an hour for all the bids and money to be processed. We tell Lucia to move at, say, eight twenty, and arrange for the chopper to launch its attack at eight thirty.”
Trevor mulled it over. “That gives us a thirty-minute window. The girls get themselves to the storage room, you meet them at eight twenty, and I make my way over there at eight thirty, just in time for us to make a run for it.”
“It could work,” Isabel said. “You know it could.”
“Depending on whether Lucia is able or willing to help.”
“Abby says she will. And I’m inclined to agree.” Confidence rang in her tone. “Lucia has been locked up in Blanco’s dungeon for more than a week. The girl will fight to survive, Trevor. I know she will.”
Their gazes locked, and Trevor felt a sizzle of heat course from him to her, her to him. No, not now. Not ever. This growing attraction toward Isabel wasn’t something he was entirely comfortable with. Hell, he would never be comfortable with it.