“Jesus Christ. Angel and Jacinto’s missing sister.” How the fuck had they all missed that connection? His first instinct was to get back to Audrey as fast as his bum foot could carry him. Second was to shoot Chloe Van Amee on principle because he suddenly knew who set up Bryson’s abduction and caused Audrey so much anguish. Chloe may not have been the mastermind, but she was in this shitstorm up to her liposuctioned rear end.
“I tried to get away from them,” Claudia sobbed. “I didn’t want any part of my family, but they dragged me back. Rorro called me a year ago and said he’d tell Bryson who I was and what I’d done in Colombia if I didn’t go along with his plans. I had no choice. I didn’t want to lose my husband. My house.”
She said nothing about her sons, and inwardly, Gabe ached for the poor boys. He knew exactly what it was like to grow up with a mother who put on all the right appearances, but really didn’t care about anyone but herself. At least Grayson and Ashton still had a loving aunt and father.
Maybe.
“What plans?” Gabe demanded.
“At first he only wanted money,” Claudia said. “But he bled me dry. The allowance Bryson gave me wasn’t enough, and I couldn’t draw from our joint accounts without making him suspicious. When I explained that to Rorro, he said we had to come up with another way for me to pay. Then he saw a stupid action movie and it gave him an idea to kidnap Bryson for ransom and blame it on the EPC. He had me call Jacinto with the plan because he didn’t want anyone to know he isn’t as dumb as he pretends to be. He likes when people underestimate him.”
Gabe thought back to the raid and hell, that’s exactly what he’d done, even after Luis Mena warned him that Rorro was vicious and not to be underestimated.
They all thought Rorro had tossed his cousin to the wolves out of fear, but it had been a more calculated move than that. He had deemed Jacinto’s usefulness tapped out and disposed of him like a rancher putting down a lame horse.
A chill shot down Gabe’s spine and nailed him in the ass. “Where is he now?”
Claudia gazed over at him. In the light of the fat white moon overhead, her plasticized face took on the macabre look of a skull with sunken cheeks and a peculiar hollowness in her eyes. It was the same thousand-yard stare he’d seen in soldiers who had looked death in the face and walked away alive. The same empty, lonely stare Gabe saw every time he looked at Quinn.
“Claudia. Where. Is. He?”
“He thinks it’s Audrey’s fault he didn’t get the ransom money because she called the FBI and ruined everything.” She moistened her lips and looked away. Guilt thickened her voice. “He’s going to kill her.”
Chapter Twenty-five
Weapon. She needed a weapon.
Audrey looked around, spotted the bedside lamp. It had worked when she thought Jean-Luc was attacking her in Bryson’s apartment in Bogotá, but Jean-Luc hadn’t really wanted to harm her. Somehow, she didn’t think the man banging against the door that she’d barricaded with her dresser felt the same way. His sole purpose was to harm.
Where was Gabe? Had this man harmed him?
Oh God.
Okay, think. There had to be something in here she could use as a weapon.
Steadying herself with a fortifying breath, she took another look around. Besides the lamp, she had framed photos of Bryson, her nephews, and her parents on the nightstand. Bottles of perfume and lotion rattled on her dresser, more falling with each heave of the man on the other side of the door. The scent from the broken bottles was cloying, flowers and fruits and spices filling her head, making her dizzy, and she promised she’d never put on another drop of the stuff if she lived through this.
Her closet. She must have something in there. She ripped open the door. Hangers. And none of them were even metal. An iron and ironing board. She grabbed the iron and plugged it in. If all else failed, she could hit him with it when it was still hot.
The banging on the bedroom door stopped. She paused for a half second and listened, didn’t hear anything on the other side but didn’t dare hope that he was gone. That’s how people got killed in horror movies. She dived back into the closet and found a broken palette knife missing half of its wooden handle.
Better than nothing.
Up on the shelf: Plastic containers filled with all the miscellaneous junk that she had shoved out of sight, out of mind to sort on some rainy day in the future. Loose screws, plastic thingamajigs, and cords to who knows what. Old birthday cards, tax returns, random junk mail she never threw away. None of this was going to help her.
Oh, why couldn’t she be in the kitchen? She had all sorts of weapons in there. Butcher knives, frying pans. Her X-Acto knives, carving sets, files, and palette knives three times the size of the one in her hand. Shards of sculpture metal and welding supplies. Primers, glues, and—