Page 98 of South of Justice

Back at the vantage point above the airfield, Ryan racked the charging handle on the salvaged rifle and slung it over his back, adjusting the strap so it wouldn’t thump against his bad leg. Gates had a shotgun they’d yanked from the SUV’s rear, plus his Glock.

Ryan crouched behind a boulder and slid the binoculars up. “Three on the gate. Two by the fuel tanks. Another doing circles near the hangar. No clear path in.”

“Listen,” Gates said, holding up the radio.

They both stilled. A voice came through—crackled Spanish, but clear enough.

“Bravo team rotating. East quadrant clear. Lights cycling in fifteen.”

Ryan’s eyes narrowed. “That’s our window.”

They watched for five more minutes. Patrols shifted. The east side—near the service access gate—dropped to one man. The lights along that section flickered, then went dark.

“Let’s move,” Gates said.

They ghosted through the brush, moving like shadows. The stolen radio buzzed again: routine check-ins, minor updates. No hint yet of trouble.

At the fence, Gates clipped the wire with bolt cutters Ryan had salvaged from the old pickup’s toolkit. It took them less than thirty seconds to breach and slip inside. Once past the perimeter, the compound swallowed them whole.

Ryan knelt by a low crate, listening. The place was alive, but only in pockets.

Ryan said, “I’m going in. You cover me, keep eyes on the perimeter. Let me know when we have an out.”

Gates nodded, and Ryan took off at a limping jog, heading for the cluster of attached buildings beside the hangar. The door he chose was half ajar, light seeping through. He moved room to room, through storage closets, mechanical rooms, a gutted kitchen. Finally, he reached a tiny guard post at the end of the corridor. It was empty, but terminal screens lit the darkness. They showed surveillance feed on monitors, from different locations around the airstrip.

He crept closer. There. Top left.

Lucía.

She sat in a hard-backed chair, completely naked. Her hands were bound again, her posture straight. A tall figure loomed in front of her.

Ryan didn’t recognize the man, but something about the way he was standing over her suggested he wasn’t some grunt tasked with extracting information from her.

No, he looked like this was personal to him, and that he was enjoying every moment.

The pistol grip of the rifle was sweaty in Ryan’s hand. If he could have raised it and fired at the man through the screen, he’d have unloaded the entire clip, then reloaded and emptied that one, too.

But he couldn’t. All he could do was watch.

FIFTY-FIVE

The door shutwith a soft click.

Lucía didn’t flinch, but her spine stiffened. She sat in the center of the large room, wrists bound to the arms of a metal chair, feet strapped at the ankles. There were no windows. Just one bare bulb above her and a drain in the floor that whispered its own implications.

She’d been waiting nearly an hour. The restraints bit at her wrists. Her shoulder throbbed where the gunshot wound had reopened during the struggle. Her mouth was dry, but her mind was clear. Sharp. She had catalogued every sound in the building: the scuff of boots on tile, the clack of a radio clipped to someone’s vest, the low murmur of Spanish outside the door. But not his voice. Not yet.

Then: the latch had turned. The door had opened. And in Javier Esquivel had walked. Strolled, actually, like it was a wine bar and not a torture chamber.

He was alone, and he appeared to be unarmed. Somehow, he looked exactly as she remembered, and yet nothing like she remembered. The silver at his temples had grown and there were more lines on his face. And yet that squared-jawed, movie-starhandsomeness was still intact. His shirt was custom-made, crisp and elegant, sleeves rolled with surgical precision.

And he was carrying her ghost laptop, which she’d last seen… Where? In their SUV back at the abandoned motel?

He didn’t smile, and his tone was business-like. “Lucía.”

She didn’t respond.

He stepped closer. His cologne reached her: something expensive, citrus, cedar. Not the same as before, and yet so like him it seemed to slot into her memory of him with ease.