Sixth Grave on the Edge(99)

“Would you remove that ridiculous wig,” a man with a heavy Mexican accent said to me. I had no idea who. My sunglasses were so dark and the windows of the sedan had been tinted, so it was impossible to see. But I could tell as the tires screeched beneath me that I was facing the wrong direction.

We were in a stretched car with two backseats facing each other when someone ripped off my wig and glasses. It was very uncalled for. I could only assume the man sitting across from me was Mendoza himself. It surprised me that he would come in person.

“That was a nice try, Ms. Davison,” he said as he clipped the end of a cigar.

He wore a white suit, impeccably tailored, and yet he didn’t look at home in it at all. He was overweight and wore enough gold to require an armored car service to sport him about town. He was like cheap cologne on a billionaire. He didn’t belong. Everything about him screamed cliché, like he’d taken his cues from ’80s movies about Colombian drug lords.

I smoothed my hair down after having half of it ripped out by one of the men on either side of me. Clearly they had never heard of bobby pins. I’d wedged that wig on, thinking it would be there awhile.

Mendoza wasn’t taking any chances with me. Both his men had pistols jammed into my rib cage, and I recognized one of the guns as the one that had been pointed at my head. I glared at the man holding it. He smirked.

We took the onramp to I-25.

“You were quite the challenge, but after everything I’d heard about you, I had expected no less.”

“I feel challenging,” I said for the sole sake of being a smart-ass. I could afford to be. And I didn’t like being manhandled against my will. Or having pistols jammed into my sides. One bump, one reflexive squeeze, and there would be no way to dodge a bullet from a gun that close, no matter how fast I could slow time. Perhaps it was time to summon my ace in the hole. But I still didn’t really have anything incriminating on him. And I never would. All the recording equipment was back at the hotel room. If I could get to my phone, I could at least record our conversation, but how I was going to manage that with Dumb and Dumber on my ass, I had no idea. Maybe if I pointed out the window and said, Look! A bird!

Nah, that wouldn’t give me enough time. I needed a major distraction. Where was a runaway semi when I needed one? The bad guys always confessed all their sins right before they killed the good guys on TV, and I had no way of recording it.

“Still,” he continued as he lit the cigar.

I crinkled my nose. I actually loved the scent of cigar smoke, but I wasn’t about to let him know that.

“You led us directly to her. I never dreamed you had that kind of pull.”

I stilled. Directly to her? What was he talking about?

“You must have some kind of mojo to get the FBI to set up a meet. I didn’t think it could be done.”

The world fell out from under me.

“You don’t have enough faith in me, boss,” the gorilla to my right said. The one who’d held the gun to my head.

Stunned speechless, all I could think was that I needed to warn Agent Carson. I’d led them into a trap.

“No smart-ass comeback?” Mendoza asked. “And here I thought that was your thing. Didn’t you tell me that was her thing?” he asked the other gorilla.

“It’s her thing. She doesn’t know when to shut the fuck up. I think you surprised her.”

“I think I did,” he agreed. He blew out a thick puff of smoke.

My eyes watered, but not because of the smoke. What had I done?

“Unfortunately for you, we had taken measures to make sure you’d give this little mission your all. Too bad they weren’t necessary. Now we have to kill everyone involved.”

We were driving south and took the Broadway exit, heading toward a sparse industrial area. After a few minutes of my mind racing, trying to figure out how to get to the phone in my bag, we pulled into a closed grain elevator. It had three tall cylindrical silos and a few other outbuildings scattered across the grounds. We stopped in front of an armed guard. There were two more armed men in the shadows of the elevator.

Mendoza slid down his window. “Where is Ricardo?”

“They’re all still up there, boss. We didn’t know what you wanted us to do with them.”

Them? My head swarmed with worry.

“That will work. Tell Burro to save his ammunition. I want to see this.”

The guard laughed and spoke Spanish into a handheld radio, telling the man on the other end to hold where he was.

The gorillas led me inside to an actual elevator. Mendoza followed and we rode to the top of the silos, taking a set of stairs up to the last level. When we emerged onto the cone-shaped roof of the biggest silo, I gasped and my knees buckled beneath me. Not because of the height or the fact that the wind pushed at us, urging us to the edge, but because they had two people up there with them: Jessica Guinn and Reyes Farrow. My Reyes Farrow. It was impossible. Was he messing around? Pretending to let them take him?