Sinclair Justice (Texas Rangers #2)(54)
Two minutes left to the blackout. Yancy heard the study doors open and then male voices coming into the hallway. Now. No more time. She jerked Jennifer up and led her to the wall. She boosted her onto the lowest part, but Jennifer’s heels gave her no purchase. She slipped back down. Yancy knelt and undid the heels, then did the same with her own, leaving them sparkling on the grass.
This time Jennifer made it up and over, though there was a tearing sound as she struggled against the rough wall in her fragile silk. Yancy’s dress was looser at the hem, and she lifted it around her waist without a second thought, scaling the wall with the ease of someone physically and emotionally tough. Both women dropped down behind the bushes next to the road, staying in the shadow of the wall. The road was quiet, vacant. No sound of an approaching car. She checked the time: 12:30 exactly.
Her heart hammering against her ribs, Yancy pushed Jennifer down so they were both crouching behind the shrubs, waiting another interminable minute. Still only a moonlit, quiet road, no opening of the electric gate. 12:32.
Yancy debated whether they should take their chances and run, but she knew people were likely to start leaving soon, so they’d be seen unless they took to the wooded hillside . . . with no shoes. Another two minutes and then finally, the gate opened and a black limo eased onto the road in front of the mansion. As it passed them, she couldn’t see the driver or the passenger in the tinted bulletproof windows, but the trunk clicked open. Yancy led Jennifer around it and was moving to help her in when the moon appeared from behind the clouds and shone brightly enough for her to see inside the trunk.
Something was huddled inside already. A pile of rags in this expensive vehicle? Yancy bent her head to peer more closely, and only then did she see the dark, wet stain still spreading on the pile of fabric.
She reared back. The pile of fabric was an expensive tuxedo.
Suddenly, the truth hit her. She didn’t need to see the face to know it was Jesús, or that he was dead. Somehow he’d either betrayed her or been discovered . . . Every instinct bade her run, but she knew it was too late.
Both limo doors opened. Tomás got out of the driver seat and Arturo got out of the other side. She lifted her chin and met flat black eyes that didn’t catch a glimmer of the moonlight. She’d seen that look before, but it had never been directed at her.
Jennifer shrank away against her mother, and Yancy automatically put her arm around her daughter.
“So, you arranged this, sí, mujer?” Arturo asked almost conversationally. Two more men got out of the limo, and her heart sank when she saw the two Chechens. Both held machine guns. “How enterprising. Well, what are you waiting for? Get in. Your carriage awaits.”
Yancy looked down into the occupied trunk, back at him. “I was playing along, trying to get more information from Jesús.”
An ugly smile stretched his sensual mouth. “Good lie, but still a lie.” He held up a tiny book.
Yancy’s spine wilted when she recognized her tiny log of his illegal activities.
“You were so busy, querida, it was easy to send my men to search your room after Jesús told me you were paying him to smuggle you out after the party.”
Run, run, Yancy’s instincts screamed, but she looked at the two Chechens, who had tightened their grips on their machine guns. She stayed put.
A cynical smile stretched Arturo’s full lips as he continued with satisfaction, “My men have had the pleasure of Jesús’s company in private for the last twenty minutes. He was as weak as he was disloyal. It was obvious to me in the study that he was enamored of you. Under . . . persuasion, he told us everything. All the times you slept with him, the bribes you intended to make him with the jewels I gave you.” He took a small switchblade from his jacket pocket and snicked it open. “We are being watched, so we mustn’t disappoint them, no?”
Yancy shrank away, so panicked she didn’t give much thought to his last comment, but he only cut a small piece of fabric from the hem of her dress and then did the same with Jennifer’s gown. He gave both scraps to the Chechens, who nodded, as if they knew what to do with them.
A gun poked Yancy in the ribs. “Get in,” said the older Chechen in his accented Spanish.
Her stomach roiling, Yancy hiked up her skirt and clambered into the trunk, moving as far away from what used to be Jesús as she could. Jennifer soon followed, over Yancy’s pleas and protests that her sick daughter be allowed to get into the car. Jennifer retched as she climbed, so unsteady that Tomás had to lift her inside the trunk. He was not gentle. Red marks appeared on Jennifer’s arm and leg where he gripped her, forcing her over the lip of the trunk.
Arturo hovered against the fitful moonlight like the shade he was. With rough hands, he jerked off Yancy’s necklace and earrings, sticking them in his pocket. Then, with a cold smile at his new associates, he said, “Enjoy them, compadres. Use them and then discard them at your leisure, or take them home with you, if you like the taste of treachery. I don’t want to see them again.”
The trunk slammed closed, leaving Yancy in the dark with her sobbing, retching daughter. The bitter taste of her own failure blended with the copper scent of blood. She felt the stickiness of it everywhere, no matter how she shifted away, along with a few heavier, slimier bits that she didn’t want to identify. Only by biting down on her lip to stop herself from screaming was she able to face the knowledge of what would happen to them next.