Blush(95)

The hair on the back of his neck lifted at the faint, almost imperceptible brush of a soft-soled shoe on rock. By the weight of his movements over the crushed shells and patches of weeds. Light. Agile. Sure-footed. But when Cruz tuned his sharp hearing toward the sound, all he heard was the susurrus of the breeze through the trees and a distant croak of a frog.

Cruz’s own breath was as quiet as he’d trained it to be. He didn’t move so much as a muscle. He might not know where number four was, but number four knew, he was sure, with pinpoint accuracy where he was. All Cruz had to do was patiently wait for the man to come and get him.

If there were more fuckers sent for Mia, Cruz would deal with them. If or when the time came. He hoped they weren’t there now, because for the moment he had his hands full with upping the body count in the city of the dead.

• • •

Mia hid behind a half-open stone door. It was dark and creepy as hell wandering around the ancient graveyard alone, especially with bullets flying. She was scared out of her mind. If not for hearing Cruz’s familiar voice, the one solid, comfortable, good thing in this bizarre situation, she would’ve had some smarts and hightailed it back to the house to wait for the police.

She’d heard some of the conversation, but hadn’t processed it. Mostly they’d just been unintelligible words exchanged. Until she’d crept closer. Just enough to know Cruz was still alive. Hard to catch her breath in the circumstances, especially with the weight of the dark, damp night air pressing in on her.

She flinched at the sound of a bullet hitting something solid, followed by a cut-off cry.

“See that, Kev?” a man shouted, sounding pleased with himself. “I got him. Money in the bank, dude. Money in the bank!”

Oh, God . . .

“Wrong him, Dickhead.” Cruz’s voice cut through the darkness.

Mia released the anticipatory breath she’d sucked in. What the hell was going on? Cruz clearly knew these men. A few phrases seeped into her consciousness. This hit is mine. Fuck off. Go back to your hole in Laredo.

She’d thought that was Cruz’s voice, but sound bent at night, especially when she was scared out of her mind.

He certainly wasn’t friends with them—not from the tone of their voices and the exchange of bullets. But they all seemed to know one another. It didn’t make any damned sense.

She had been waiting for the other shoe to drop, anticipating it for months. She knew someone would come to kill her. That day was now. Thank God he had missed—again. Cruz had saved her. Now he was out here alone in this awful, creepy, desperate place trying to protect her. Who would protect him?

The police were on their way. She’d called them while running. Seven minutes, she’d been told. Hadn’t seven minutes come and gone a dozen times since she’d made the damn call?

Hoping to hear sirens, and lots of them, she heard nothing but frogs, and leaves rustling, and the distracting, hard thump-thump-thump of her blood pounding in her ears. Mia wiped her damp palms on the legs of her pants and tried to press herself closer to the stone door so she could get a better view without exposing herself.

Comeoncomeoncomeon.

She could delay a boardroom decision on her own for several hours, but she was at a loss as to what to do now. A fairly good shot, she wasn’t so sure about her skills in this weird black-and-white real-time situation. Could she shoot the assassin and make it count? Even given the dire circumstances. Could she shoot an actual human being? This wasn’t the instance where she could hope to wing him. If he was a killer, he meant business—and his business was to make sure she was good and dead. It was either him or her.

She chose him.

She lifted the barrel of the Beretta another fraction of an inch. She might have only one chance to take him down. And as much as she’d rather be back at the house following Cruz’s directive, this wasn’t his fight to fight. He was the innocent bystander. She knew he could take care of himself, but if he got hurt, she’d never forgive herself.

This hit is mine. Fuck off.

She leaned forward a fraction more and peered around the sharp stone edge of the door. More voices. Cruz and the killer. Ignore them. There’d be time to make sense of the surreal conversation later. Now she had to know her surroundings as well as she knew her own body. There, on the ground in the moonlight, she saw a dead man sprawled in the open space between the rows of crypts, a shiny black pool on the gravel as it spread out from beneath his head. Another man slumped half in, half out of the shadows.

Dear God, there was more than one. More than two. Someone else was still out there with Cruz. She sucked in the hard breath squeezing her lungs. The coppery smell of blood and a drift of whispered new death made the hair on the back of her neck prickle in warning.