24/7 (25 page)

I love you, Luisa, she thought. Come for me.

When the double doors near the front of the room swung open, she instantly regretted her silent plea.

Luisa walked into the theater with her arms outstretched and her gloved hands facing the ceiling. The pose made her look more than a little like the bird girl statue on the cover of the infamous tell-all that had made Savannah, Georgia, even more of a tourist mecca than it already was prior to the book’s publication. She was in full uniform. In spite of the helmet on her head, the bulky bulletproof vest protecting her upper body, and the knee pads with a hard exoskeleton strapped around her legs, she looked vulnerable. Defenseless.

“Is that your girl?” Ryan asked. “The cop you were talking to on the bus?”

Finn nodded.

“What is she doing here?” Jill asked.

“What she does best: putting herself at risk in order to save someone else. I can’t let her do this. I can’t let her put her life on the line for me.”

Finn tried to go to Luisa—to stop her—but several pairs of strong hands dragged her back into her seat. And an almost imperceptible shake of Luisa’s head held her there. Finn’s heart lurched in her chest when Javier pointed his gun at Luisa’s head. Her helmet looked sturdy, but could it stop a bullet at such close range? Finn didn’t want to look, but she couldn’t turn away.

“Where’s Manuel?” Javier asked in Spanish.

“Counting your money,” Luisa replied in kind. “One hundred million dollars is a lot of bills. That takes time. I’m sure he’ll call you when he’s done.”

Finn didn’t know which was sexier, hearing Luisa speak her native language or watching her stand up to the man who had been tormenting them for hours on end.

Javier cocked his head. “You’re awful calm for someone who’s about to die a slow, painful death. You’ve got a large set of balls on you, Moreno.”

“Is that why your grandmother tried to hook us up, so I could show you how to grow a pair?”

A corner of Luisa’s mouth quirked up into an insouciant smile that charmed Finn but enraged Javier. He roared in anger and backhanded Luisa across the face. The butt of his gun struck her on her cheek, opening up a sizable cut on the right side of her face. Her helmet went flying, and her goggles skittered across the hardwood floor. Blood poured down her cheek, but she didn’t wipe it away. She kept her eyes on Javier. Watching him. Waiting for his next move. And, Finn hoped, planning her own.

“Is she trying to piss him off?” Katie asked.

“If she is,” Finn said, “she’s doing a hell of a good job.”

“You got everything you asked for,” Luisa said as a rivulet of blood dripped down the side of her neck and seeped into the collar of her uniform. “Let the hostages go.”

After the Spanish speakers in the room translated the conversation for those who didn’t understand or couldn’t hear what was being said, an excited buzz filled the air at the prospect of freedom. But Javier quickly dashed everyone’s nascent hopes.

“I can’t let them go yet. I want them to witness your execution first. That’s a vacation memory that should last a lifetime, don’t you think?” He forced Luisa to her knees and pressed the gun to the back of her head. “Do you have any last words before I do what my grandmother couldn’t?”

“Just one.”

Luisa scanned the crowd, her eyes taking in the sea of faces staring back at her. Then she turned her eyes toward Finn, her gaze as warm and tender as a caress.

“Now.”

A single gunshot rang out as the room went dark. In addition to frightened screams, Finn heard the distinctive chop of helicopter rotors, a jumble of voices yelling commands, and the staccato bursts of automatic gunfire.

She threw herself on the floor and wrapped her arms around her head. Others near her did the same. She assumed Jill and Ryan were curled up next to her, but she couldn’t see anything in the inky darkness that enveloped them.

All around the room, bullets ricocheted off hard surfaces or thumped into soft ones. Finn heard screams of fear, cries of pain, and the thud of bodies hitting the floor.

She started to crawl away—to feel her way in the dark until she reached the nearest exit—but she forced herself to remain where she was. She couldn’t see well enough to avoid getting caught in the crossfire.

So she closed her eyes and waited for it to be over. She waited for her nightmare to finally come to an end.

❖

Luisa didn’t take time to think. As soon as she gave the signal to her colleagues monitoring the feed from the hidden camera, she pitched forward and rolled to her left. She felt the bullet from Javier’s gun graze her shoulder. The missile tore through her uniform shirt and seared her flesh, but as far as she could tell, didn’t pierce her skin.

She scrabbled on the floor like a crab, blindly sweeping her arms across the terrain in front of her. Her left hand struck what felt like her helmet. She started to put it on, but the chin strap was too damaged to keep it in place so she tossed it aside and kept searching for what she really needed—her night vision goggles. She nearly cried with relief when the fingers of her right hand slid across one of the polycarbonate lenses.

She placed the goggles over her eyes and cinched the adjustable strap to secure them into place. The room that had been pitch-black seconds before now glowed neon green. She squinted to protect her eyes from the bright white flashes of muzzle fire as Javier’s men and the Federal Police tried to gun each other down.

As she slowly scanned the room, she saw the hostages diving under their chairs to seek cover. She saw her colleagues rushing in to save them. And she saw Javier’s men fighting to hold their ground. What she didn’t see was what she wanted to see the most: Javier Villalobos. She pulled her pistol from its hiding place in the back of her waistband and joined the fray.

The vans Director Chavez had called for didn’t contain the ransom Villalobos had demanded but reinforcements. When Manuel had opened the rear doors to inspect the cargo, he had been greeted not by the riches he had been expecting to see but twenty armed men drawing down on him. He had tried to turn and run, but Director Chavez had held him in place by draping a beefy arm across his shoulders.

“Act like everything’s okay,” Director Chavez had said, “or my men will kill you before you take two steps.”

Manuel had nodded like a bobblehead doll and flashed a thumbs-up sign to his fellow gunmen.

“Good,” Director Chavez had said. “Now pretend to search Officer Moreno for weapons and send her inside. Then climb into the van to ‘count your loot.’”

Manuel had reluctantly acted as instructed. When he climbed in the van, an officer had taken his weapons, handcuffed him, and placed a muzzle over his mouth so he wouldn’t be tempted to call out a warning to the rest of his fellow gunmen.

As Luisa walked toward the theater, she had heard a helicopter in the distance. Javier’s men had probably thought the chopper was just another news crew covering the standoff, but she had known it contained the remaining members of her team. The ones who had lowered themselves to the roof of the theater and worked their way inside while the troops on the ground advanced on the gunmen outside.

The battle was fierce but brief. It lasted only a few minutes, but for the hostages, it probably felt like hours. After the command came to cease fire, the emergency lights were turned on, and Luisa removed her night vision goggles so she could inspect the damage.

The room was in shambles. Bullet holes pockmarked the ceiling, walls, and floor. Dozens of gunmen lay dead or dying. Others held their hands over their heads and pleaded for mercy. Some of the hostages were wounded, too, though none of the injuries appeared to be mortal. Thankfully. Luisa didn’t want to imagine the fallout if one of the hostages had been killed by friendly fire. After Javier’s men were ushered out and herded into the waiting vans, officers began ushering the hostages who could walk to safety and directed medical personnel to tend to the ones who couldn’t.

Luisa tried to locate Finn in the chaos but didn’t see her. Then she heard Finn yell her name. She turned toward the sound just in time to see Javier Villalobos using Finn as a human shield as he backed out of the room. Luisa drew down on him.

“Javier Villalobos, you’re under arrest. Release your hostage, drop your weapon, and put your hands over your head.”

“If you want me, Moreno, you have to come get me. Make it fast or your girlfriend and I will get this party started without you.”

He kept going despite her admonitions for him to stop so she gave chase. Despite her desperate desire to apprehend him and free Finn, her pursuit was controlled rather than reckless. She slowly advanced toward him while he dragged Finn through a phalanx of officers helpless to halt his progress. They couldn’t fire on him without risking hitting Finn—or causing the gun he was holding on her to accidentally discharge.

“Give it up, Villalobos,” she said as she continued her steady pursuit. “It ends here.”

“It ends when I say it does.”

Luisa tightened her finger on the trigger of her gun but didn’t squeeze. For an absurd moment, she wished she could be like a character in one of Angelina Jolie’s action films. The one where Angelina and her crew of assassins had defied the laws of physics by getting bullets to curl instead of traveling in a straight line. If she could do that, she could save Finn from this madman once and for all. Instead, she watched helplessly as Villalobos backed toward the speedboat moored in the lagoon and climbed aboard.

Using a pair of plastic handcuffs he must have stolen from a fallen officer, Villalobos tried to bind Finn’s wrists to the boat’s railing. She resisted his efforts to restrain her, so he was able to tie only one of her hands, not both. As Finn tried in vain to free herself, Villalobos started the engine and gunned the throttle.

Luisa didn’t hesitate. She holstered her gun, jumped into a second speedboat moored nearby, and went after him.

The boats’ lights illuminated the dark lagoon as waves from the churning engines crashed against the shore. Luisa registered the rows of empty hotel rooms looming dark and abandoned on her left and right, but her main focus was on the boat in front of her. On the fleeing suspect behind the wheel and the woman he had forced to accompany him. She was determined to capture both. So she could put Javier Villalobos away for the rest of his life, and love Finn Chamberlain for the rest of hers.

“Fuck you, Moreno,” Villalobos yelled, the words nearly drowned out by the wind whipping in Luisa’s ears.

He stuck one arm out and fired off a series of wild shots. Luisa ducked behind the Plexiglas mounted in front of the steering wheel of the boat she was driving, all too aware the thin composite material she was hiding behind was designed to protect the boat’s driver from nothing more serious than wind, rain, and the occasional low-flying bird. Where was her riot shield when she needed it?

As she began to gain ground on Villalobos, she heard Director Chavez yelling commands in the receiver wedged in her left ear.

“Let him go, Moreno. The navy can handle it from here.”

Navy warships were waiting in the Caribbean, but they were so far offshore they wouldn’t be able to scramble the smaller crafts on board in time to intercept Villalobos’s speedboat. She had to catch him before he reached open water. If she didn’t, he would be gone. He would be the most wanted man in Mexico, but thanks to the folk-hero status he would achieve with the rather large segment of society who deified criminals, he would have plenty of places to hide.

“No can do, sir.”

“Are you refusing a direct order?”

“I won’t give up my pursuit, sir.” Luisa had always done everything her superiors had commanded her to do, but not this time. She couldn’t give Javier Villalobos a chance to escape. Not when so much had already been lost. Not when so much was still at stake. “I want to finish the job Carlos Ramos didn’t get a chance to.”

Director Chavez was quiet for a moment. When he finally spoke, he sounded more like a proud father than an angry commanding officer.

“In that case, go get your man.”

“Yes, sir.”

Luisa opened up the throttle even more. As the boat picked up speed, she braced her legs to keep from falling over. The hull bounced over the roiling wake trailing behind Villalobos’s boat. She felt like she was riding a Jet Ski each time the boat went airborne and crashed back to the surface of the water. She gripped the steering wheel as hard as she could, praying the boat wouldn’t take on too much air and flip end over end.

Overhead, news and police helicopters followed the chase. Thanks to the bright spotlights playing across the water, Luisa could see a small island in the distance. If she could steer Villalobos toward it, she could pursue him on solid ground, buying time for the navy to back her up and decreasing his chances of getting away. But if she got too close to him, he might ram his boat into hers and both vehicles could capsize—if they didn’t go up in a ball of flames first.

She had to take a chance. A calculated risk that, if it didn’t pan out, could end up being the worst move she had ever made.

She reached for her gun and told herself not to miss.

She aimed low, trying to avoid a ricochet that could hit the gas tank. Or even worse, Finn. When she was sure she had the shot she wanted, she fired three times in rapid succession at the speedboat’s motor. All three shots must have hit home because the boat’s engine began to spew thick plumes of bluish-gray smoke.

Villalobos’s boat started to lose speed. When the engine sputtered and died, the boat drifted to a stop. Luisa pulled up beside him, her gun still drawn.

“It’s over, Villalobos. Let me see your hands,” she ordered.

He turned toward her but didn’t comply with her command.

“Don’t make me kill you.”

“All right. You got me.”

Villalobos showed his hands. His left hand was empty, but his right still held a gun.

“Drop the weapon.” Luisa slowly enunciated each word as she tightened her grip on her own pistol. “Toss your gun in the water and place your hands behind your head.”