Where Evil Waits (20 page)

W
AIT,”
G
IBSON SCREECHED, BUT
Varón took Kara’s cue seamlessly. He leaned down and gathered a handful of Gibson’s shirt at the back. Started to hoist the man up.

“Whatever the lady wants,” he said.

Gibson wailed. “Okay, okay,” he said. “His name was Alexander.”

Kara’s heart came to a halt.
Alexander.
Adrenaline washed through her limbs. Her mind raced, trying to match the name to someone who hated her, someone who wanted to terrorize her and was willing to kill to do it. She couldn’t come up with anyone.
Alexander. Alexander.

“Was that a first name or last name?” Varón asked.

“I dunno. I swear. He just said ‘Alexander.’ He only said it once, when he called to tell me where to meet him. He said, ‘This is Alexander,’ and then we set it up.”

“What did he look like?”

“Big dude. Not so tall, like you, but built wide. Like a gym freak.”

“Go on.”

“Light. Light hair, but army-short. Almost shaved
clean. Always wore long sleeves. I remember that. It was summer, but he was in long sleeves.”

Varón’s brow wrinkled. “How did you meet? How come he fingered you to do the prison riot?”

“I dunno.” Gibson shrugged a little. “There ain’t that many of us to choose from.”

“You’d never met him before.”

“No. Except he knew me. He knew my hangouts an’ stuff.”

“Did you ever get in touch with him?”

“No. He always found me.”

“When? What times of day?”

“Different ones. Morning, night. Once at the gun range on a Sunday afternoon.”

“Like he had an eye on you.”

That made Gibson frown. “Yeah, sorta. He was
around.
For a while, anyway. After it was over, I never saw him again. He gave me half the money the day Wolff was transferred in. The other half he left in one of those charcoal grills at a park, the day after. Scared me to death to go pick it up.”

Kara worked to even out her breathing. Varón had taken over the interview with adroit questioning that would have impressed a seasoned detective. He fired one question right after another, as quickly as Kara could think them.

The prosecutor kicked in. “How much money?” she asked. “How much was it worth to you to make sure an innocent man got killed
by accident
in a brawl?”

Gibson blinked up at her, still on his knees. He was insulted. “Wolff was a convicted criminal. I needed the money, bitch.”

Varón rapped him on the side of the head with the heel of the knife.

“Aachk…”
Gibson dropped back. When he rubbed his head, he found blood. “What the fu—”

“That’s my woman you’re talking to,” Varón said. “Treat her with respect.”

“The cunt has a fucking gun in my—”

This time Varón kicked him and he rolled on the ground. Kara gaped at Varón, who calmly stepped one foot over the prone body of Gibson and stood straddling him with the knife. “That’s not respect. And that’s the last warning you’ll get.”

Gibson quailed, laying back his head.

“Who was the prisoner on the inside?” Varón demanded. “Who cut Wolff?”

“A guy named Pinkham. In for drugs. Got some mental shit. He’s crazy.”

“How much did you pay him?”

Gibson shook his head on the ground, his mouth working on words. He didn’t want to answer.

Varón touched the tip of the knife to his cheek. “And you were doing so well.”

Gibson nearly choked on his own breath. “Cigarettes. That’s all Pinkham wanted, I swear. I just promised him cigarettes every week until he gets out.”

Kara felt sick. “You’re telling me he was willing to stab a man in the throat in exchange for cigarettes?”

Gibson shrugged, as much as a man can shrug while slowly curling into a fetal position between Luke Varón’s legs. “Some character of his needs them. Like some split personality shit. He
needs
them, man.”

Varón cursed. “You’re a real sensitive soul, you know that, Gibson?” he asked, then looked at Kara. “Any further questions?”

She swallowed. He didn’t follow his question with
Counselor,
but she knew that’s what he was thinking. She’d taken over the interview as a DA would. Bad for her disguise, worse because Varón had told her to stay out of it.

But she couldn’t think about that just now. The truth was, illogically, she was glad Varón had been there. Having him at her side gave her more courage than having the pistol in her hand. “No,” she said.

“Okay, then,” he said, stepping back over Gibson. He straightened and let his knife hand hang by his side. “Get up.”

The man hesitated.

“I don’t like to repeat myself,” Varón said, his voice dangerously calm.

Gibson got up, seeming to stagger toward Varón, then—

“Fuck you.” He lunged, catching Varón around the waist, pinning Varón’s knife hand to his hip. Varón twisted and stumbled backward, and Gibson rode him to the ground. The two men rolled and grunted. Kara didn’t dare take a shot in the darkness for fear of hitting Varón.

She didn’t need to. A minute after it started, it ended: She heard the unmistakable smack of a punch against flesh and Gibson groaned. Varón climbed to his feet and dragged him up. Gibson’s nose gushed blood.

“That was a stupid thing to do,” Varón said, breathing hard. He held his upper arm with a hand. Kara’s heart dropped to the pit of her stomach. She moved closer, angling her view with what little light there was, and her breath caught. He was cut.

“Varón?” she said.

“Not now, Krista,” he growled. He never took his eyes off Gibson. A finger of panic touched her heart. She knew about Varón’s temper, and Ronald Gibson was about to be at the other end of it. She adjusted her grip on the gun,
wondering if she could stop Varón if he decided to exact a hit man’s sort of retribution. Instead, he gave Gibson a shove toward the lake. “Walk, you asshole,” he said. “Down to the water.”

Gibson wavered, then took a couple of steps.

“Not to the dock,” Varón said, shoving him in a different direction. “To the water.”

Gibson got his feet moving and began walking, whimpering, his knees sagging like a tired six-year-old. Varón herded him down the bank, favoring his right leg, Kara noticed, then stopped and watched him walk through the sand. “Keep going,” he ordered, when Gibson hesitated.

Gibson stopped at the water’s edge. He was nothing more than a black shadow in the darkness, a silhouette cast by a moon that hung low in the sky above the water. Kara tensed. Dear God. She might be about to witness Varón stabbing this man in the back or putting a bullet in the back of his head.

“I didn’t tell you to stop,” Varón called to him. “Go on in the water. Farther.”

“Varón,” Kara shouted. “We need to go.”

“I’ll be there in a minute, darling,” he called over his shoulder, his voice tight with anger. Or maybe with pain. His gait was stiff again but he followed Gibson to the lip of the lake, then watched the man wade deeper into the inky water. Gibson was nearly sobbing now.

Kara held her breath. “Luke, don’t. Let him go.”

Varón stood like a statue. He watched Gibson begin to tread water, then said, “Stay there for ten minutes. If you come out before then, I’ll know because I have eyes all over this lake. Do you understand, Ronald?” Nothing. “I said, do you understand?”

There was a splash and a choked sound that reminded Kara more of a baby than a man.

“I’ll take that as a yes.”

He turned and headed back up the bank, limping slightly, but releasing his arm. A dark splotch stained his sleeve. When he came to the lane, he wrenched the gun from Kara’s hand and took her by the elbow. The anger in his frame was a palpable thing, tension pouring through his fingertips. Despite the faint limp, his strides were long enough that Kara had to jog to keep up with him.

A twig snapped in the woods and she stopped. “What was that?” she asked.

He didn’t break stride or bat an eye. “Nothing. Let’s go.”

I have eyes all over these woods.
Varón’s words floated through Kara’s mind.
Stay there for ten minutes.

They loaded the weapons in the back of the SUV, Kara searching the edge of the woods. For a moment after Gibson cut Varón, she’d thought she was going to be an accessory to Gibson’s murder. But then Varón demonstrated restraint that didn’t fit with what she knew about him. She caught him bending his right leg experimentally, saw the slight wince of pain when he used his left arm, and couldn’t believe Gibson had lived through the night.

A thought popped in the back of her head like a kernel of popcorn.
Dear God
.

She picked up the keys Varón had set on the bumper. When the guns were stowed away, she held back the keys.

“I’ll drive,” she said.

“I’m fine,” he said, reaching to take the keys.

On impulse, she stuck them behind the brooch in her cleavage. A reckless move on her part and Varón’s gaze followed, then he looked into her eyes as if she’d just begun a game he was perfectly willing to play. Screw his injuries.

“Do you really want me to come after those?” he asked.

She swallowed, and their kiss came back to her in a flood of sensation. “No,” she managed, but was sure that somewhere deep inside, she didn’t mean it. If he bent down to her again right now, smelling of lake water and blood, she wouldn’t push him away. “Your leg hurts and your arm is bleeding. I’ll drive. Go get in the car.”

L
UKE WOULD HAVE RATHER
gone after the keys, but it was more important to get out of here. The place was swarming with Feds and Luke wasn’t sure how long Gibson could tread water.

So, let her have this one.

“Go out the same way we came in,” he said, climbing into the passenger seat. He spared a look at his arm. When he was rolling around with Gibson, he’d felt the blade catch his bicep, but the cut didn’t hurt as much as his thigh. The bastard had landed on him just right. Between the run from the house and the fight with Gibson, it felt as if Luke’s bone was in pieces again.

Kara pulled the SUV out of the parking lot and onto the lane, moving up the hill toward the main road. “What happened to your leg?” she asked.

He tipped his head back against the headrest of the passenger seat. “Took a bullet a couple of years ago. Chipped up the bone.”

“Is it still there?” she asked. “The bullet.”

“No,” Luke said, remembering its removal only through the fog of fever and dehydration and pain: a cell in a Colombian
prison, a 50-caliber bullet jammed in his femur, and Luke digging with a stick into the mass of infected, rotting flesh to try to pry out the bullet.

Collado laughing.

“But it still hurts,” Kara said.

“Let’s just say the surgeon’s skill left something to be desired,” Luke said, then noticed her turning left. “No. You want to keep going straight here.”

“I think I dropped something in the parking lot. I’m going back.”

Luke straightened. “Forget it. Let’s go.”

But she ignored him, making a U-turn and gunning the gas, hard enough to make the tires spin.

“Damn it, there’s nothing you dropped that you need to get,” he argued, but she picked up speed. Her knuckles tightened on the steering wheel. “What the hell—” But a second later, he knew. “Stop, Kara,” he demanded, and when she didn’t, he went for the wheel. She swerved, nearly fishtailing off the side of the road but holding on, and he cursed. She stepped on the gas and made it to the rise in the road they had just come over, saw figures of men dart across the road ten yards in front of her, and slammed on the brakes.

Her headlights gave shape to the silhouettes. They carried machine rifles.

She stared down the road where the figures melted into the edge of the woods and her chest rose and fell in great heaves. Luke could almost hear her heart pounding as the pieces of a puzzle fell into place in her mind… A clear-cut murder case against him that fell apart like a house of cards… A District Attorney who, without explanation, suddenly refused to file charges against Montiel in a case he’d been preparing for months… The cell phones and safe houses, the “network” that was so well-organized
and well-equipped it rivaled the best police force… Even the tow truck that had blocked her from getting back to her house before he did.

And the fact that he’d protected Aidan and hadn’t hurt her.

“Kara,” he said, his voice low. He could feel her confusion. She’d suspected already—enough to go back and check. She might have even hoped, especially since he’d taken Aidan away. But discovering it for herself had left her in shock.

“Honey, we need to leave. Let them do their jobs.”

She looked at him. Relief and shock and
hope
in her eyes. Her breaths shivered past her lips as if she were trembling with excitement.

“You’re one of them?” she asked. It was almost a prayer.

Luke looked toward the lake where he knew a half dozen armed Federal agents were now moving into position to surround Ronald Gibson. He could deny it; she would expect him to, even if she came to believe it herself. And no matter how smart Kara was, he could sell the guise of Varón to her if he wanted to.

But he didn’t want to. His work with Collado was over. Except for making sure nothing waylaid the shipment, then flashing his credentials to Collado and watching his face go white with shock as they hauled him off to prison, Luke was finished.

And there was a woman and a teenage boy who needed him. It was a heady sensation.

“FBI,” he said, and unfastened his seat belt. “Which means, I drive.”

Sasha had to get out of the tack room. The pain was intense, nausea churning in his belly, but he had to go.
What if the little bitch ran to Daddy and told him she’d been accosted by a stable hand? What if her friends put together a story about rape? He’d be tried and convicted without ever getting to tell his side:
She
came to
him.
It was a game, and she knew the rules. She’d agreed to them.

No one would ever believe that.

Fear set in. He tugged on his pants as carefully as he could, then hobbled around the tack room making sure things were back in order.… Hung the crop on the wall, threw the bloody towel in the laundry basket, re-positioned the coil of barbed wire to appear undisturbed. The burn in his crotch was unbearable—Christ, was the barbed wire rusty? He went back to it and looked. No, of course not. It was shiny new and pristine, like everything else at Montgomery Manor.

He glanced around the room, a grimace twisting his face. Jesus, he hurt. He could feel the moisture gathering in his pants. Blood from pinpricks of barbed wire.

He had to go. Had to get home. Find a doctor? For God’s sake, what would he say? “I was trying to make Kara Montgomery suck dick and she pushed me into barbed wire.”

He smothered the swell of panic unraveling in his mind, peeked out the door, and waited until there was no one between him and freedom. He bit back the pain and hobbled outside, then hit a run as best as he could until he got to his house. He ran a warm shower and stripped down. Jesus, there were five places the barbs had gone in. Felt like fucking… barbed wire.

Kara.
She
did this.

He cleaned up, forcing himself to use soap though it hurt like a bitch. Just as he turned off the water, his father’s voice boomed through the bathroom door.

“Sasha! Sasha.
Vystupit.
”

Sasha pulled back the shower curtain to grab a towel. Shit, what was his father doing he—

“Sasha,” he called again, and without warning, the bathroom door flew open.