Hunt Them Down(45)

Anna was just a little girl when it happened. She didn’t understand what her father did for a living. She knew people were scared of him, though, and that he commanded respect, because nobody bothered her at school. She had good grades, and the teachers never yelled at her. Her brother, Tony, was the most popular kid in the entire school. Everybody wanted to be friends with them for a chance to get invited to the next birthday party at the Garcias’ mansion. Birthdays and Christmases were a big deal when she was growing up.

More often than not, her family vacationed at their large Colorado estate, less than a fifteen-minute drive from the Vail Ski Resort. Anna and Tony spent most of the days with their ski coaches while Vicente and their mother, Graciela, stayed behind doing whatever adults did.

One cold February weekend, her father had invited four friends from Mexico to spend a long weekend with them. The four men were well dressed and looked important. There was also a teenager with them. Anna still recalled how beautiful she was. An argument had flared up during dinner, and voices were raised. At some point, her father had sent her and Tony to their rooms with one of his bodyguards. Even from their rooms they could hear the yelling from the grand dining room. She remembered Tony holding her in his arms and how afraid she was. Then she heard the first shot. Three more followed in quick succession. She was screaming by then, terrified.

The bodyguard opened the door and told them to stay there, before running down the stairs with a gun in hand.

After he left, Tony had looked at her and said, “Daddy is in trouble. He needs me.”

“Don’t go, Tony,” she pleaded. But he was already gone.



“So what happened next?” Hunt asked.

Anna was crying now. “I didn’t know. He just . . . Tony just told me before we left.”

Hunt searched for a box of tissues but didn’t find one. “Tell me, Anna.”

“Vicente, he . . . he forced the girl to set fire to her dad with her own hands,” she finally said before bursting into tears.

Hunt was appalled. Of all the worst ways to die, this was the cruelest. He couldn’t even begin to understand the damaging psychological effect this must have had on the young woman. No wonder the Black Tosca was a twisted witch.

Things were starting to fall into place in Hunt’s mind. He was now convinced that even if Tony were to commit suicide, the Black Tosca would murder Leila and Sophia. It wasn’t the Garcias’ criminal organization she was after—though that was a nice bonus. She wanted revenge.

His throat had turned dry; finding the girls soon felt more urgent than ever. He grabbed his backpack from the rear seat and pulled out his 9 mm Glock. He screwed a silencer onto the end of the barrel and chambered a round. The bottom of his backpack had a sizable pocket, and Hunt used it to slide the pistol in, silencer first, before he unlocked the SUV’s doors.

“Get in the driver’s seat, Anna,” he said, climbing out of the SRT.

At this point, Anna was going through the motions like a preprogrammed zombie. She exited the SUV and walked around to join Hunt next to the driver’s door. Her eyes were puffy from all the crying. Small lines of tension creased her forehead.

“We’ll get through this,” Hunt said, even though he was barely holding himself together.

He put the Jeep’s keys in her hand. “I’ll let you know where to pick me up.”

He was already across the street when she called his name.

He turned to glance her way.

“I’m glad you couldn’t save my father,” she said. “I’m happy the son of a bitch is dead.”





CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT

South Beach, Florida

Hunt approached the condominium building. It was four stories high, and the developer’s website indicated there were only four condos, all of them sprawling across two floors. The building had a minimalist look that Hunt didn’t like. He noted two security cameras aimed to cover the area around the front door. From the real estate files he had downloaded at Tony’s house, he’d studied the layout of the building carefully. The unit he was interested in occupied the third and fourth floors on the north side of the building. This was both a blessing and a curse. The unit would be more difficult to access since it was on the third floor, but the upside was that more people left their doors unlocked on higher floors than on the first or second floors.

Especially drug dealers looking for a quick exit.

There was no point waiting outside and trying to slip in behind someone. With only four condos, the owners or tenants knew each other and wouldn’t hold the door open for someone they didn’t know. So Hunt continued to explore the exterior of the building while making sure to keep his face away from the cameras. Since the front of the building was sleek and contemporary with lots of glass and steel, and the pedestrian traffic showed no sign of abating despite the late hour, climbing the facade on the east side or the wall on the northern side of the building was out of the question. The back of the building was a different matter. It was accessible through a small path between the building and the restaurant next door. The path led back toward an alleyway with no sidewalk. It was darker in the alley than on Ocean Drive, and the smell was different too, thanks to the open lids of the two dumpsters.

Hunt didn’t care about the reek coming out of the dumpsters; he had found a drainpipe. He scanned his surroundings. He was alone. He grabbed hold of the drainpipe and pulled himself up like a spider. By the time he reached the third floor, his arms and lungs were burning, and his neck was slick with sweat. Hunt cursed under his breath. There were no entry points on the third floor, only a large window ten feet to his left. He had to keep going. His arms started to shake, but he continued, grimacing through the pain, until he reached the fourth floor. Three feet to his left was a small balcony overlooking the alleyway. A ledge—maybe three inches in width—ran from the drainpipe to the balcony. Hunt had his left foot on the ledge when he heard the back door of the restaurant open. He looked down and to his right and saw that a cook had lit up a cigarette. That couldn’t have happened at a worse time. Any sudden movement he made could attract the cook’s attention and prompt him to call the cops. Who wouldn’t?