Immune (The Rho Agenda #2)(126)

The guards certainly didn’t appear concerned about the two high school kids walking toward them, not reacting until Mark touched the gate.

“Hey, what are you kids doing there?” the guard on the left yelled in Spanish, not bothering to raise the submachine gun cradled in his arm. “Get away from the gate!”

Mark responded with flawless Spanish of his own. “We’re here to see Don Espe?osa.”

This brought a round of loud laughter. “And what makes you think he wants to see you?”

Mark took another deep breath. Here it was. “Because he has my sister.”

The change in the guards was immediate, their machine gun muzzles rising in unison. Mark had never before looked directly down the barrel of a loaded weapon, certainly not one gripped with a twitchy trigger finger. Now, with two of those round black holes pointed directly into his face, he decided he didn’t like it.

The gate opened and one of the guards grabbed Mark’s arm, shoving him face-first against the railing as the other motioned for Heather to face the fence beside him. Covered by his partner’s weapon, the swarthy fellow with the Che Guevara hairdo frisked him, cuffed his hands behind his back with a plastic tie, then repeated the procedure with Heather.

A quick glance at Heather showed tension in her face, but no white eyes. Everything was still on plan. Wonderful. That made him feel so much better.

Mark and Heather were pulled inside the compound, and while one guard placed a call on his cell phone, the other pushed them along the driveway leading up to a sprawling two-story house with arches that opened into a central patio area. At the base of the steps leading up to a pair of twelve-foot-tall wooden doors, the guard brought them to a stop.

“Where are you taking us?” Mark asked, drawing a sharp jab in the back from the muzzle of the machine gun.

As if in response to the question, the huge doors opened outward, revealing an elegantly dressed man sporting a Fu Manchu mustache and a thick cigar clamped in his teeth. Five khaki-clad bodyguards as big as pro wrestlers moved down to take charge of the prisoners.

“Thank you, Umberto,” the man said, taking a puff on the cigar as he stepped closer to Mark. “You may return to your post.”

The guard gave a stiff salute, pivoted, and walked rapidly back toward the now-closed gate.

Don Espe?osa smiled. “So, you are Mark Smythe. Your sister has told me so much about you. And this must be Heather McFarland.”

Heather was the first to react. “Where is Jennifer? Can we see her? It’s safe. No one knows we’re here.”

If anything, the drug lord’s smile grew broader. “Oh, I know. You two have been all over the American news channels. The mentally unstable friend and the distraught brother searching for his runaway sister. Quite a tabloid story.”

The smile faded from the Don’s face. “Take them to the gym and wait until I get there.”

Mark felt himself grabbed by each arm as he and Heather were dragged forward, not into the house, but through the arches that led into the beautiful central patio. Mark’s mind whirled. Despite the unpleasant tone he had heard in the Don’s last command, it was still possible that he was having them taken to the room where Jen was being held. Or maybe he had gone to get Jennifer.

The gym turned out to be a large room on the west side of the patio. Unlike the tile that had covered the entranceway and the walkway under the overhanging porch, black rubber mats covered the floor. Two mirrored walls reflected the racks of dumbbells and Nautilus equipment that filled the right side of the workout room. A chrome bar ran along the left wall, the kind ballet dancers used for stretching their legs, and that part of the floor was clear of equipment. A closed door in the far wall apparently gave access from within the main house.

Mark felt a metal handcuff slapped onto his right wrist just above the plastic tie. Then his back was shoved up against the weight rack and the second cuff applied, securing him to the equipment. Another drug thug cuffed Heather’s wrists to the dancer’s bar.

Anticipation hung in the air like campfire smoke, an anticipation that didn’t feel right. The bodyguards looked like kids waiting to open their Christmas presents. Before Mark had time to think about that, Don Espe?osa entered the room, closing the door behind him.

No Jennifer.

He walked directly up to Heather. “So, you two thought you could just walk up to my estate and demand to see Jennifer Smythe. I guess word of my fabled good nature has reached your ears.”

Two of the bodyguards snickered.

The don lifted Heather’s chin with his hand. “What’s wrong with her? Some kind of fit or something?”

Mark caught sight of the milky-white of Heather’s eyes. Shit. She’d gone deep.

“No matter,” the don said, nodding toward Mark. “Kill the boy, then we’ll have some fun with this one.”

Before the bodyguards could turn to comply, Heather’s brown eyes rolled back into place. With a noisy hawking sound, she spat directly in the Don’s face, the wad of spittle splashing his nose and left eye.

Don Espe?osa’s lip curled into an ugly grimace as he wiped at his face.

“Wait!” His command brought the bodyguard who had begun to advance toward Mark to a halt.

The drug lord turned his attention back to Heather. “So you care about this boy, huh? Okay. Then we’ll let him watch before we kill him.”