Breaking Point (32 page)

And after the commanding officer got his men organized, one of the first things he’d do was knock out the security cameras. Provided he knew that there were security cameras that needed knocking out.

Max had to assume someone knew—that Emilio was still alive. It was highly likely that the man who’d built this house would be willing and eager to point out its vulnerabilities.

Which meant he’d also reveal the location of that freaking escape route—which, had they not underestimated the man, they would have thought to search for a half an hour ago.

Gina spoke—loudly enough for everyone to hear this time. “Why don’t we just stay put until Jules brings help?”

Jones shot Max a look that asked,
You want to answer that, or should I?

Max took it. He cleared his throat a few times as he figured out how to soften his response. “Jules . . . may not be able to get help,” he told her. “He, uh, is probably going to have more trouble than we originally thought making it to the embassy. Those soldiers out there, Gina—they were shooting at us. That’s not SOP—standard operating procedure. Firing on civilians without issuing a challenge or warning? No, someone high up their chain of command is involved in this, in the kidnapping, in all of it. Whoever they are, they also had the ability to take out whatever cell towers were on this island. These are some powerful people.” He shook his head, knowing that however soft he made this, she could see the hard truth on his face.

She didn’t mince words. “You think Jules is dead.”

Think? “I hope not,” Max said. “I think he’s probably . . . in trouble.” He cleared his throat again, watching Jones help Molly move the refrigerator on the off chance that there was a secret passageway behind it. That was ridiculous. The entrance had to be easily accessible. Still, they were being thorough. “But I hope not.”

Gina took his hand. Squeezed it. “He’s good, you know. People underestimate Jules because he’s always making jokes. And because he’s so good-looking. He’s cute and he looks so young, so they think . . . But he’s going to be okay.”

“Yeah,” Max agreed. There were tears in Gina’s eyes again, but she was trying to smile, trying to stay positive. But try as he might, he couldn’t smile, too.

The fridge wasn’t hiding anything. Nor was the stove.

Jones got onto his knees, examining the bottom of the cabinet under the sink. “If I had unlimited funds,” he was telling Molly, “and I were putting in an escape route, I’d put it in the least likely place. Keep my ene-mies guessing.”

Boom.

Over on the monitors, wisps of smoke drifted across one of the screens.

“That one sounded louder,” Molly said.

Max went into the other room, looking at the furniture Jones had already dragged away from the walls in his search. Again, it was obvious that money had been spent on this place.

“It’s not,” Jones reassured Molly, his voice carrying from the kitchen. “Don’t let it get to you.”

“This isn’t your fault.” Gina had followed Max, touching his arm to get his attention. “I know I said that you shouldn’t have let Jules go with Emilio, but you were right. You didn’t
let
him go. You wouldn’t have been able to stop him.”

Max nodded. Right. “I have that problem with all of my friends, don’t I?”

“I hate that word,” she said through gritted teeth. “I’m sorry, Max, but come
on.
Didn’t I have, I don’t know, even just
slightly
higher status than Jules?”

“Yeah,” he said, unable to keep from noting her pointed past tense. So he used it, too, as once again his own temper flared. “You were the best friend I ever had. And as far as letting you go—honey, I was cheering you on when you walked out that door. I was—” He shut his mouth and turned around, and went back into the kitchen, because just like that, from out of the storm of his anger and frustration, he knew.

Clarity.

“Least likely place is up on the second floor,” Max told Jones. “Listen—if someone’s chasing you, and you run upstairs? They’re going to take their time because they think they’ve got you cornered. It’s upstairs. Gotta be.”

Jones dusted off his hands as he stood up. He looked at Gina and then back to Max, clearly uncomfortable about interrupting their argument.

“You said the interior walls were thick,” Max persisted. “He’s probably got a staircase going through the house, and then tunneling down the mountain . . .” He pointed to that seventh video camera’s jungle view as it came up on the monitor. “To here.”

He glanced at Gina, who had an expression on her face that he couldn’t identify. Ah, please God, don’t let it be pity . . .

“It’s just crazy enough,” Jones said. “Expensive as shit, but maybe that’s also what we should be asking. Where’s the most costly place to put the entrance to an escape route?” He laughed his disgust. “Wish I had money to burn.”

“You okay?” Max heard Molly ask Gina, as he followed Jones far more slowly up the stairs.

“Actually,” he heard Gina say, “Yeah. I’m . . . Yeah.”

“Jackpot,” Jones called from the second floor. “Here it is. Fake freaking bookcase and everything.”

Maybe—just maybe—their luck was about to change.

Emilio was all the way on the other side of the wreck and slightly uphill—close enough to the car to use it for cover.

“Hands where I can see them,” he ordered.

Jules, sadly, had moved far enough away on the off chance that the car might explode. He was in a clearing—if you could call it that, considering the canopy of leaves and branches overhead completely blocked the sun. He’d always thought of the jungle as being dense—with the kind of underbrush that needed a machete to cut through. But since the sun didn’t shine down here, there wasn’t that much capable of growing. A few very undernourished ferns and some other plants that—with his luck—were probably the local equivalent of poison ivy.

He had nothing to hide behind, considering his ability to do more than roll was seriously limited. And in the time he’d take to roll to the nearest cluster of trunks and roots, Emilio would fill him with lead.

Jules dropped his cell phone, holding his right hand out and open. Think,
think.
Crap, his vision was starting to fade out around the edges—not a good sign.

But he wasn’t dead yet. His weapon was heavy on his chest, hidden from Emilio by the voluminous sleeve of that leather flight jacket. All he had to do was grab it and . . .

Except, how was he going to walk out of here, with tunnel vision? Forget the tunnel vision, how was he going to walk on a leg that was useless and heavy? Broken in God knows how many places. Okay, whoa. Getting ahead of himself—

“Hands!” Emilio repeated. “Both of them out, right now!”

“My left arm’s broken,” he told Emilio with a stroke of genius. Part of him was aware that it was a miracle the man hadn’t already shot him. But maybe the E-man had hit his head, too, so Jules’s time delay seemed normal to him. “I can’t move it. At all. Unless you want me to move it, you know, with my right hand . . .”

At which point he could grab his weapon and . . .

“Just don’t move,” Emilio ordered.

And Jules realized he must look to be in even worse shape than he truly was. He glanced down to see that blood stained his shirt and jeans, and even pooled beneath him and . . . Shit, he
was
in bad shape.

As far as Emilio . . . As the man got closer, Jules could see that he had blood on his face and neck. He must’ve broken his nose, because his shirt had been sprayed. His right arm was wrapped around his torso, like he was holding himself together. He’d probably injured his shoulder or collarbone. Or maybe he’d broken some ribs.

Either way, he was moving as if he were really hurt.

Good.

Because unless a team of Navy SEALs dropped from the sky to save his ass, it seemed likely Jules was going to die by Emilio’s hand.

Okay, God. Send that helicopter. Any time now would be good . . .

But the only sound he heard was distant gunfire.

It was not a happy sound. The implication was that Max wouldn’t be coming to his rescue in the very near future either.

Which meant that whether Jules lived or died was down to sheer luck. There was nothing left for him to do but grab for his sidearm—which would result in Emilio’s shooting him immediately in the head.

Most likely before Jules could get his own weapon up and aimed.

The odds of his winning that kind of a quick draw, so to speak, were not in his favor.

It didn’t help that his vision was blurring and he was so freaking cold. Shock from loss of blood.

Talking this guy into surrendering was definitely a long shot, but he couldn’t just lie there and wait to die.

“Don’t do this,” Jules tried, working to keep from slurring. It was hard—his teeth were chattering. “Whatever you’ve gotten into, I can help you get out.”

“You can help me?” Emilio laughed, limping slowly, painfully closer.

What was wrong with this picture?

There was something here Jules knew he should be paying attention to. This was more than just a situation to which he had never given much thought—a scenario that could and probably would result in his own death.

There were beads of sweat on E’s upper lip, and his gun hand shook, but only very slightly as he continued to advance.

“I doubt you can help me,” the man continued. “But I’m going to help you. Your associates aren’t so lucky, I’m afraid. Once they fall into Colonel Subandrio’s hands, they’ll beg for the mercy of a bullet to the brain.”

Colonel Who?

And okay. Jules so couldn’t die now. He absolutely refused. That was way too melodramatic—like this guy had studied Evil Overlord technique, sitting at the feet of famous James Bond movies villains. It would be just too pathetic if this conversation with this idiot was the last thing Jules did on earth.

God couldn’t be that unfair.

But then he thought of his ex-partner, Adam, who’d hooked up with Robin—Robin being the first person in years that Jules had been seriously interested in . . .

Yeah, actually God
could
be that unfair.

So okay. If Jules was going to go down, he was going to go fighting.

Still, he had to wait until Mr. Drama cleared the car before he went for his own gun. It wouldn’t do to lose his one chance at a Hail-Mary shot because the son of a bitch ducked behind the fender.

“You don’t know my
associates
very well,” Jules told him, trying to keep Emilio talking, trying to keep himself alert. Jesus, he was cold. “I don’t think Max has ever begged for anything in his entire life.”

“So who is he?” Emilio asked, dragging himself even closer. “He’s obviously more than a diplomat, as he told me he was.”

Yeah, like Jules was going to say anything about their connection to the FBI to
this
prick.

And, it was obvious that Emilio didn’t give a damn who or what Max was. He was just making noise, killing time. Which was fine with Jules. Every step Emilio took shifted the odds in Jules’s favor. It shifted them infinitesimally, sure. But he’d take whatever he could get.

“Max is actually unemployed right now,” Jules told him, keeping the conversation going. “Although he has a history of his boss refusing to accept his resignation letters. I think, though, after he kills you and Colonel Whosis and everyone else that you’re working with . . . ? He’s going to take some time off. Spend a month on the beach somewhere, with Gina.”

“Ah,” Emilio said. “The lovely Gina. Perhaps the Colonel will use Gina to help Max learn how to beg.”

Fuck you.
Jules clenched his teeth over the words. “Don’t you feel really bad,” he said instead, “when you have to kill someone? I mean, to waste a life like that?”

“That’s the problem with you Americans,” Emilio said. Blah, blah, blah. Jules stopped listening.

Because Emilio was close enough to pop Jules with a head shot—he had been for quite some time. He was plenty close, plus he had the car to use as cover.

Unless . . .

It was entirely possible that, unlike Jules, Emilio hadn’t spent time learning to shoot with his nondominant hand.

The winner buzzer sounded in Jules’s spinning head.

What
was wrong with this picture?

Even with a freaking concussion, Jules had figured it out. Emilio, who’d done everything right-handed up to this point—talk on the phone, brandish a handgun—was now holding his weapon in his left.

It was likely dude was low on ammo, too. So he had to get very close to make sure he didn’t miss as he used his less-practiced hand to fire that so-called mercy bullet into Jules’s waiting brain.

A brain that was finally done waiting, as, still talking, Emilio stepped around the front of the car to finish him off.

But Jules was ready. He rolled, reaching for his weapon, pulling it up as he squeezed the trigger once, twice.

And Emilio fell like a stone, two small round holes in the center of his very dead forehead.

Jules shot him again, just in case he was still seeing double.

Sometimes, when he shot and killed someone, he felt bad, like he felt right now. Except the thing that he felt bad about now was that someone else hadn’t rid the world of this scumbag years earlier.

Okay. Breathe. Oxygen was good.

There wasn’t enough time to celebrate his victory by falling unconscious. Keep it together, Cassidy.

Step one. Don’t bleed to death. He maneuvered himself out of that jacket. His T-shirt was even harder to get off, but he succeeded. He tore it into pieces, using it as a bandage.

By the time he was finished, jacket back on and zipped up, he was exhausted. His head was swimming worse than ever, and blackness was descending.

Still, he knew what he had to do. Appropriate Emilio’s weapon. Pocket his own, along with his cell, which he had to search for by feel on the spongy jungle floor, because the vision thing was more and more cloudy with every second that ticked by. He had to find it. Because maybe someone would get those towers up and working . . .

His fingers bumped against it and he grabbed it, still sticky with his own blood.