Page 106 of Hours to Kill
He ended the call, and Mack checked his GPS before texting the information to Eisenhower. Mack finally understood how the what3words app would have been easier to let him know via words where she was located instead of a bunch of numbers that would be easy to make a mistake with.
Mack shoved his phone into his pocket and tried to formulate a plan to rescue Addy, but he didn’t know enough about where Razo had taken her to begin to do so. He looked at Kiley. “Can you get me a ground-level view of the location?”
“Already done.” She held out her phone. “There’s only one way in and out.”
The map on her screen showed a narrow drive that wound up the mountain. At the top, the drive circled around several buildings, then ran back down to connect with the same road.
Mack looked up. “The single driveway makes our rescue far more difficult and dangerous for Addy.”
“We sure can’t land a helo up there,” Kiley said. “I mean, there’s plenty of room, but it wouldn’t be a secret, and we would likely put Addy in a hostage scenario.”
“Exactly.” Mack studied the map again. “We’ll land in the foothills. Drive up. Use our drone to get eyes on them.”
“Might work,” she said, looking like she was trying to play the scenario out in her mind. “The drone can fly high enough not to be detected. And you can even load it with a weapon if needed.”
Mack nodded, but his stomach clenched. He was going to come face-to-face with his worst fear. Use a tool he hated to save the most important person in the world to him.
Was he up to taking someone out with a drone again, or would he fail the love of his life?
Chapter 27
DESPITE THE COLD TEMPERATURE,Addy was sweating nervous bullets. Her back was soaked, and yet she shivered in the cold wind and the snow and ice under her body. Razo was going to kill her up here on this mountain. Likely shoot her in the head. Or maybe in the back like a coward would do.
She’d been shot once before, but she hadn’t had time to sit around and wait, not knowing it was coming then. No time to think about dying. No time to think about never seeing Mack again. No time to think about not seeing her friends on the RED team again. Because they were her friends, and Mack was her husband. She knew that now. Not that she remembered, but that feeling that kept coming to her, screaming at her to pay attention, was stronger than ever. She might never remember, but she could start over. Begin again with all of them. If they would let her.
“We do it my way,” Razo shouted and stabbed a finger into Holt’s chest. “You’ve messed things up enough as it is.”
Holt firmed his stance, surprising Addy with his fortitude in front of Razo. “Wedidn’t mess up. It was LeRoy.”
“And yet you let him live.” Razo turned and curled his finger at LeRoy. “Come here, man.”
Eyes wary, LeRoy got up from the log. He crossed to the men, his feet dragging. “You want something?”
“Yeah,” Razo said and drew his gun. “This.”
He pointed the barrel at LeRoy’s head and fired.
Addy screamed, but nothing came out of her mouth. Blood and brain matter spurted over the white snow—over Addy.
LeRoy dropped to the ground near her feet.
Addy clamped a hand over her mouth and stared. She’d known Razo was a cold-blooded killer, but to see it in person?
Her stomach convulsed, and she thought she might be sick. She swallowed hard and watched the two men. Holt gaped at Razo but remained standing next to him. His eyes darted around, likely looking for an escape before he met the same fate as LeRoy.
“You’ll take over for Zamora.” Razo frowned, his already sharp features looking more pointed. “I want those cables cut at San Ysidro for tomorrow’s shipment. We got five minis ready to roll, and three buyers on the hook. One possible in the wings. If I miss my deadline for delivering these bad boys to those sovereign-citizen nuts, heads will roll.”
Holt’s face blanched. “But I don’t know how Dante was cutting those cables with Yahontov.”
“Then you better find out real quick or you’ll be joining LeRoy here.”
So theywereworking with Yahontov, and they planned to cut cables. She’d been right all along. And they were also right about the sovereign-citizen guys. She couldn’t let this shipment make its way into the U.S., with the guns finding their way into the hands of these fanatics. Somehow she had to get away and stop them.
Razo turned his attention to her. “I want to kill the woman right now, but we’ll be better off if she serves as a warning. Anyone who might think about messing with me will think again before acting. I can’t get to Zamora just yet, so she’ll have to stand in for him. Carry my message that betrayal never pays.”
Addy cringed. She could only imagine what he had planned for her. She’d seen terrible, horrible videos where people were mutilated and paraded through villages in Mexico to showothers what happened when you crossed the cartels, and Razo was as brutal as the cartel leaders.
“You’re the boss,” Holt said.
