Spiders in the Grove (In the Company of Killers #7)(44)

Once the theatre is nearly emptied, Joaquin orders guards to seize Naeva first—he holds Leo Moreno still with the gun pressed to his head. “If you try anything,” Joaquin warns, “my men will kill your woman. Do you understand—do you understand?!” Spit spews from Joaquin’s mouth onto Leo’s enraged face.

“Si. Entiendo,” Leo replies, calmly, coldly, with Death himself in his eyes.

Naeva and Leo are dragged away; Leo in front, and guns always pointed mostly at her in case Leo tries anything. Naeva looks back at me once before being shoved through the exit. “Thank you, Sarai,” she mouths, and a tear slips down her cheek.

In the split-second I was distracted by her, I see a flash of Cesara’s enraged face coming at me. Weaponless, and taken by surprise, she throws me to the floor; the back of my head bangs against the wood; spots spring before my vision.

“YOU!” One hand winds violently within the top of my hair; the other holds a gun underneath my chin, forcing my head back painfully against the floor. Straddling my waist, Cesara’s eyes swirl with fury as she bears down on me. “It was you! IT WAS YOU!” she roars.

“Get off of her!” Joaquin’s voice rips through the air.

He grabs her from behind to pull her off; drags her by her hair onto the floor where his size-fourteen shoe makes contact with her ribs. Cesara drops the gun and recoils against the pain.

And then he comes after me.

I don’t struggle. I don’t scream. I move willingly with the flow of the raging waters that will take me downstream to the place I’ve always dreaded, but knew I would have to face one day.





Fredrik


“I-I-I-I can’t fucking do this anymore, boss—” Dante stops to clear his throat again; I hear the rustling of a napkin or cloth rubbing against the phone. “Just l-l-let me catch my breath.”

I’m trying to be patient and let him pull himself together, but the anticipation of whatever he’s called to tell me—and the vomiting and the breath-catching—is quickly trying that patience.

“Calm down, Dante,” I say. “Take your time.”

Hurry the hell up, already!

He clears his throat once more.

And then he tells me everything that happened.

Stunned into silence, for a moment I can’t see anything but the streak on the window beside my table in the diner.

“Are you absolutely sure she said Javier Ruiz?”

“Yes, boss—one hundred percent.”

The silence still has me; I breathe in and out deeply.

“Where are you right now?” I gather my things from the table and put them away in my briefcase.

“I’m still in the mansion.”

“Listen to me, Dante,” I begin, “you need to get out of there right now. Do you think your vomiting episode has compromised you?”

“N-No, I don’t think so,” he says. “No one was paying any attention to me by that time—nobody was paying attention to anyone except the girl and the one they called Leo Something-Or-Another. And your girl, Izabel. A bomb could’ve went off in that place and no one would’ve noticed. She’s in trouble, boss; she’s in some serious shit.”

“OK,” I say, and leave the diner in a rush, “leave the mansion and take the first flight back here.”

“What are you gonna do?”

“Don’t worry about it,” I tell him. “Just leave that place before you get yourself killed.”

We hang up and I drop my phone in my jacket pocket, heading straight for the airport, my tires squealing on the asphalt.





Niklas


“Jackie,” I say sharply into the phone—she’s a blubbering mess. “Get the hell out of that hotel, get to the airport and come back here. Don’t waste another minute.”

“But what about the girls, Nik? Not one of them has ID; how am I going to get them on the plane?” Her voice shudders; she tries choking back tears, but it only makes her cry more.

“Leave them there,” I say. “At the airport. In a parking lot somewhere. At a restaurant—it doesn’t matter; you did the hard part and got them out of there; leave them somewhere and they’ll find their way home. Now stop crying, and get to the fuckin’ airport.”

“But—”

“Now, Jackie—please.”

“OK.”

I look across the room at Mr. Lockhart sitting smugly on the sofa.

“Sounds like things didn’t go as planned,” he says with a smirk.

I light up a cigarette in his sterile-clean, non-smoking house. “Looks like I didn’t need you, after all,” I tell him, ignoring his jab. “I have a gunman outside”—I point at the window—“if you as much as move from that spot for the next six hours—either of you—he’ll kill you both. Do we have an understanding?”

The real Frances Lockhart sits next to her father on the sofa, her trembling shoulder touching his, her hands pressed together between her knees; tears track down her face, streaking black mascara.

“Yeah, we understand,” Mr. Lockhart says with gritted teeth; he pulls his daughter closer.

I confiscated their phones, and all manner of communication inside the house when I arrived three days ago. I kept them here, just in case Jackie wasn’t convincing enough and the sellers might’ve called Mr. Lockhart to verify that Jackie, as Frances, was his daughter. I had planned to stay until Jackie boarded her plane safely, but with the unexpected news of Javier Ruiz—Javier Fucking Ruiz!—and Izabel being neck-deep in shit, I can’t stay behind and wait for Jackie. I have to go to Mexico myself—now. The gunman waiting outside doesn’t exist, but I’m confident the Lockhart’s won’t budge. I hope. At least until Jackie is forty-thousand-feet in the air where the Ruiz family can’t get to her if her cover is blown.