Hunt Them Down(59)
CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE
South of Hypoluxo, Florida
Hector wasn’t worried, but he wondered why Emilio hadn’t called him yet. The application on his phone that monitored the Hallandale Beach safe house wasn’t working. He loved new technologies, but he was frustrated when they didn’t work as advertised.
Leila and Sophia—blindfolded, gagged, and with their hands tied behind their backs—were in the back of the Ford Transit. He touched his ear. To help with the extreme bruising and tenderness, he’d swallowed four two-hundred-milligram tablets of Advil. Still, his entire head rumbled with the worst headache he’d ever had. He would have ripped the girl’s throat out right on the spot if it wasn’t for his cousin, who’d insisted on keeping the little pest alive for a few more hours. Despite the constant pain, Hector laughed at his own stupidity. Never before in his life, whether in the military or at the service of his cousin, had he underestimated an adversary. And here he was, in total agony, because he had misjudged an unarmed fifteen-year-old teenager. Serves me right.
Hector reached up and flipped open the mirror on the sun visor and angled it so that he could look at the bandage wrapped around his head. Blood had already begun to darken the white bandage. A little blood loss wouldn’t kill him, but damned if it didn’t hurt like hell. He checked his watch and decided to call Emilio for a situation report.
Why isn’t he answering his phone? Emilio always picked up, usually on the first ring. Hector checked that he’d dialed the right number. He had. He punched the number a second time. Nothing.
He tried the mobile application again, but he was still unable to connect with the safe house’s Wi-Fi. Hector murmured a curse and dialed another number. This time his call was picked up right away.
CHAPTER FORTY-SIX
Hallandale Beach, Florida
The nondescript gray van was parked on a quiet side street with a direct view of the front gate of the Black Tosca’s Hallandale Beach safe house. Inside the van, Egan pressed his sniper rifle to his shoulder. He peered through the scope, his finger on the frame, not yet caressing the trigger. He’d stolen the van from a twenty-four-hour grocery store in Aventura. He’d then stopped at a Walgreens in Fort Lauderdale and pinched a license plate from an identical van.
His phone, placed on the van’s floor next to his SIG Sauer P229, chirped twice.
“Where are you?” Hector growled.
“Across the street from your Hallandale Beach safe house.”
When Hector replied, his voice was clear and calm, but there was an added urgency to it. “Emilio isn’t picking up. Have you been inside the house?”
Egan centered his scope’s crosshairs on a large window on the second floor of the house. “No, I haven’t.”
“I’m getting tired of having to squeeze every simple answer out of you, Mr. Granger. Fucking exhausted, in fact!”
“Are you done with your tantrum?” Egan asked, keeping his voice even.
Here you are, Egan thought, adjusting his aim. The lights were on, but most of the curtains and drapes were closed. Egan switched to infrared, and through a heavy curtain he saw someone, but only for a fraction of a second.
“You asked me if I’ve been inside the house. I said no. What else do you want to know?”
“You’re a fucking pain in the ass,” Hector said, the heat of his anger sizzling through every word. “Did you see anything unusual? Did anyone else enter the house?”
“I told you to pull your guys out, didn’t I?” Egan replied matter-of-factly. “I warned you, Hector, but you hung up on me instead.”
If there was one thing he knew and respected about Hector, it was his commitment to his men. If Hector was as good of a leader as Egan believed him to be, he was sure Hector was feeling pretty miserable right now. Egan’s objective wasn’t to torture Hector about the probable death of the team he had left behind to ambush Hunt; his goal was to make him realize that when it came to Pierce Hunt, he’d better listen to what Egan had to say.
Egan heard Hector take deep breaths, hold them for a second or two, and then let them out slowly, just as though he was laboring to control something gargantuan. His anger.
“You were right,” Hector finally admitted. “I made an error.”
“Don’t feel too bad about yourself, Hector,” Egan said. “You know what they say, right?”
“What are you talking about?”
“A mistake admitted is a mistake half-forgiven.”
“Are you done?”
Whoever was moving from room to room on the second floor of the safe house knew not to hang around a window for too long. “There’s movement inside the house.”
“Hunt?”
“Most likely. Anna Garcia picked up her brother a couple minutes ago. Poor Tony looked like he was in bad shape.”
“You saw them, and you didn’t engage?” Hector sounded annoyed again.
“They aren’t under contract, Hector.”
Hector cursed in Spanish, and Egan could almost imagine the big man shaking his head.
“Anything else?” Egan asked.
“Call me when it’s done.”
Hector hung up. He was furious. What a fucking twat! But he knew his anger was directed mostly at himself. Mr. Granger had been right. Hunt was indeed a dangerous man. Too bad he hadn’t been able to put him down at the ambush site. If Hunt had killed Emilio and the two other shooters, he couldn’t ignore the possibility that the Hypoluxo safe house was compromised too.