Dangerous in Training (Aegis Group, #2) (15 page)

“This is all precautionary, Hannah. The fridge won’t stop someone, but it would slow them down long enough for you to get a head start. Sometimes that’s all you need.”

“Where would I go?”

“Let me look at the area. I’ll find something and call you back. Everything’s going to be fine, Hannah.”

Mason and Zain kept saying that, but her gut said otherwise.

Mason hung back in the shadows. Liquor bottles and cases of beer lined the shelves, ready to be used to booze up whatever the drink of the night was. He could see out through the bamboo slats into the empty bar front. According to the schedule, the beach bar should open for the afternoon any minute now.

He checked the time, holstered his gun, and performed a quick search of the small storage area. Hannah had specifically said this was the only bar open last night, but whatever drug the drink had been laced with wasn’t there. Then again, he didn’t expect there to be a bag of narcotics sitting around. Still, he had to cover every possibility.

A key jangled outside the door.

Mason stepped into the space behind the door and drew his weapon.

Light spilled in and the hinges squeaked. A man’s figure cast a long shadow on the ground, stretching away from Mason. He waited until the door swung shut to raise his gun, leveling it at the man’s chest.

The hotel employee froze, one hand clenching for the doorknob as it slipped out of his grasp. The door shut with a thud, plunging them into darkness.

“I don’t want to shoot you,” Mason said. He squinted at the brass name plate on the man’s chest.

Luis.

Luck was with Mason today.

“I want to ask you a few questions, understand?”

Luis tensed, and his gaze slid away from Mason.

Don’t do it, man...

Luis ducked and dove sideways.

Mason swung with his right hand and connected with the side of Luis’ face hard enough it jarred all the way up Mason’s arm into his shoulder. Luis grunted and staggered back, sucking in a deep breath. Mason wrapped his arm around Luis’ neck and squeezed, gun pressed against Luis’ temple.

“That was the wrong move, hombre.” Mason hauled Luis deeper into the bar. It wasn’t big, but there was enough space to suit his needs. “Sit or I blow your fucking brains out, understand?”

“I didn’t do it.” Luis plopped down into the metal folding chair. His English was good, heavily accented, but the average American would understand him. Probably what made him a valuable link in the chain of things.

“Put those on one wrist.” Mason tossed the handcuffs Abraham had thrown in as a bonus into Luis’ lap.

“What do you want?” He clicked one cuff around his left wrist, eyeing the gun.

“Arms behind your back, now.”

Luis did as Mason directed. He secured Luis’s other wrist to the chair with the remaining cuff and then emptied the man’s pockets. The cash Mason outright stole, while the rest went back into Luis’s wallet.

“You put a date rape drug in my friend’s drink.” Mason unlocked Luis’ phone and scrolled through the contacts.

“What? No, no, not me.” Luis shook his head.

“You know how bad life would get if I blew out your knee? I’d hazard a guess that you couldn’t get surgery to fix it like you could in America. You lie to me again, I blow your knee out, and Cruz won’t have any use for you.” Mason pointed the gun at Luis’ knee.

“If I talk to you, Cruz will kill me.”

“Might. Besides, I’m not going to tell him we had this chat. Who do you want to piss off right now Luis? Cruz or me?”

Luis swallowed. Sweat poured off the man in buckets.

“All I want to know is who gave you the drugs, and who picks up the girls? I know someone is paying you to drug them, I just want to know who, and how they get the girls.”

“It’s a guy.” Luis leaned forward, straining at the cuffs and shrugged. His breath was coming faster now and he made a retching, almost gagging sound.

“What guy?” Mason knelt so he could stare Luis in the eye and pressed the muzzle of the gun against his temple.

“A guy, I don’t know his name, it was just a guy.”

Mason slapped Luis with his left hand. Luis’s eyes bugged out of his skull.

“A name.” Mason traded the gun to his left hand.

He couldn’t shoot Luis, even if he wanted to. Shooting him would just mean people heard, and there would be blood. The cops would show up. No, Mason needed to give the guy motivation to answer the questions.

“I don’t know his name, man.”

Mason hauled back and punched Luis in the stomach. The fucker deserved a lot worse.

Luis wheezed.

“A name,” Mason ground out between clenched teeth.

“He was a white guy. Some white guy.”

Mason decked Luis in the jaw so hard he felt Luis’ teeth crack together. Blood dribbled down the man’s lip and onto his chin.

“Who does he work with? You gotta know someone’s name.” Mason lifted his arm again. If the physical violence didn’t work, he’d have to switch tactics.

Luis flinched and seemed to crumple in on himself.

“Just Rogelio, man. Rogelio.”

“Rogelio?” Mason shook out his hand and grabbed the phone.

Sure enough, there was a Rogelio in Luis’ contacts.

“Who is Rogelio? What does he do?”

“He picks them up.”

“Who? The girls?”

“Yeah, I put the drug in their drink, make sure they end up in their rooms, then Rogelio comes by an hour later and picks them up. That’s it. I don’t know what happens next. I swear.”

He didn’t know? What a load of bullshit.

“Here’s what I’m going to do, Luis. I’m going to take your phone and you’re going to clean up this mess. I’m going to take the handcuffs off and you’re going to go to your manager and tell them you quit. If I come back here and you’re still here, I’ll drag you onto the beach, shoot you, and toss you in the ocean. Understand? I don’t give a fuck if someone catches me. What I care about is that you’ll be dead. Got it?”

Luis nodded. Saliva and blood dripped onto his pants.

“And Luis, I have your phone. I know the numbers of the people you love. The people I work for? They can tell me where they live. If you think I’m lying, I won’t stop with you. I’ll kill you, and then I’ll make their lives miserable—because of you. And I’ll make sure they know why. That you helped kidnap girls. I’m sure you have a cousin or a sister that would be as disgusted with you as I am. What about your mother? So think real hard about what you do next, okay?”

Again Luis nodded.

Mason fished the key out of his pocket and released Luis’s wrists. The man huddled in his seat, doubled over, while Mason pocketed the phone and gun before letting himself out through the back door.

At best, Luis was a victim of circumstance, forced into participating in a crime he didn’t want any part of. At worst, Luis knew exactly what he was doing and didn’t care so long as he got a paycheck. He wasn’t an innocent either way. He hadn’t tried to avoid doing his job. He played his part and as far as Mason cared, these were the consequences.

He strolled across the sand, skirted the sunbathing area, and headed for the parking lot.

First, he needed to move Hannah, then he could find out more about this Rogelio, and from there—the girls. Luis had a lot to pay for, but so did the people he worked for.

And Mason planned on holding them accountable.

T
he sun was starting to set. The building’s shadows stretched across the street, casting everything in an ominous lack of light.

Hannah paced the darkened room.

Zain had said to trust her gut. Well, her gut was telling her she was A, hungry and B, something very bad was going to happen.

She grabbed the ball cap from the bed. At Zain’s urging she’d gone through Mason’s things, depositing a handful of items into the Most Absolutely Necessary bag. One thing Zain had coached her on was hiding. A blonde woman would stick out on the streets of Mexico. Hiding her hair was the first step in blending in. After that his tips sort of blurred together. But the hair thing, that she at least remembered.

Hannah coiled her ponytail into a flat bun, pinned it into place, and jammed the hat on her head. The sense of dread was worse. She was practically sick with it—or hunger. At this point it was hard to tell.

Back and forth she paced the room. Her hands were sweaty, her chest ached and her pulse hadn’t slowed since the moment Mason left. She couldn’t sustain this much longer. The constant strain of adrenaline on her system would make her crash. She was burning out.

If only Mason would get back—or better yet, turn his phone on.

She crept back to the window and peered out at the street.

A group of three men strolled across the street. Were they headed to the hotel?

She gulped.

They were the kind of big, intimidating guys she didn’t want to run into on a dark street at night. Like tonight. Or ever, really.

She pressed her nose to the glass in an effort to keep them in her line of sight.

Shit.

They were entering the hotel.

Her rational mind said it was silly to freak out over people entering a hotel. The rest of her screamed,
Run now
!

Hannah bit her lip.

It wouldn’t hurt to crack the window a bit, just in case she needed to shove it open fast.

She loosened the catch and forced it open a good six inches. The pane didn’t move easily, she’d already learned that lesson.

Voices echoed down the hall.

Yeah, she wasn’t going to stick around for this. It was time to make a break for it and meet up with Mason later.

Hannah grabbed the Most Absolutely Necessary bag, looped the strap across her upper body, and crawled up onto the desk. One good shove and the window slid open another ten inches.

The doorknob rattled.

She froze, listening to muted voices, the scrape of feet on the concrete.

They were there for her.

Her worst fear was right.

She swallowed and gripped the window tighter. Another push and she could slither through.

Boom!

Something—or someone—hit the hotel door.

“Shit.”

Hannah threw herself through the open space. Her elbow rammed into the wall, she head butted the window casing, but managed to get a leg and her upper body through the opening.

Boom!

The refrigerator rattled, scooting forward a bit.

She lurched forward, throwing all her weight out the window and somersaulted out, somehow managing to land on her ass, driving all the oxygen out of her lungs. Inside, the fridge topped over with another loud bang and splintering of wood.

Hannah scrambled to her feet and sprinted, fear giving her feet flight.

“
Ahí
!” A man standing at the end of the walkway pointed at her, waving at the end of the hotel.

She put on a burst of speed, glancing back—at the open emergency exit and three men fighting each other to get out first.

“Oh, God.”

They were going to get her. They were going to find her and capture her and Mason would never know where she was. Her father would kill him. And it would all be her fault.

Hannah took the first right turn, desperate to break the line of sight, to lose the men—and turned into a dead end alley. She slid to a stop, whirling around as three shadows reached toward her.

She backed away from the men, groping in the side pocket of the bag for the gun.

Her father had spoke of the
me-or-them
mindset before. The mentality that allowed soldiers to fire without guilt because someone was going to die.

And she didn’t want it to be her.

Hannah pulled the gun out, firing blind. The men dove out of the way, throwing themselves into garbage and against the walls. The bullet sent up sparks and bits of stone from where it hit the ground just in front of them.

Now.

She put on a burst of speed, sprinting by them and back into the street. Headlights blinded her, a car horn honked and she threw her weight to the right, swerving as a car slid forward, breaks locking up. She narrowly avoided getting hit. Another foot and she could have been a human pancake.

Hannah didn’t stop. She couldn’t. Her legs pumped, sending her forward. Down a side road, hooking another right, then left. She kept running, blindly, because if she stopped she knew they’d be there.

Mason kept his hands in his pockets and his head up. It’d taken him much longer to get back to the hotel than he’d have liked. His knuckles still stung from where he’d hit Luis, but hopefully the man got the message. Sure, some other lowlife would step in to till the spot, but hopefully he’d just stopped at least one girl from getting grabbed.

Now, he wanted to hold Hannah, to know she was okay, and find somewhere quiet to hole up for the night. After that, they could make a plan.

He turned the corner onto the street with the hotel and his pace slowed.

A cop car sat out front of the hotel, lights on. A cluster of people stood around the officer. People yelled, others waved their hands.

Hannah.

Mason’s blood pressure shot up and he ground his teeth together.

Was she okay? Alive? Safe? Where was she?

He glanced at the windows, searching for their room.

There.

The window was open.

Had she gotten free? Escaped? Or had someone broken in and taken her?

Mason switched directions and pulled out his phone. Did he chance calling Hannah directly?

Yes, yes he did.

He jabbed her contact and listened to it ring. And ring. And ring. Straight to voicemail.

“Damn it.”

Mason ended the call and tapped Zain’s contact, glancing over his shoulder. No one paid him any mind.

“Took you long enough,” Zain said.

“Hannah’s gone.”

“What?”

“I just got back to the hotel. There’s cops everywhere.”

“Could you see the room?”

“Kind of.”

“Was the window open?”

“Yeah. Why?” Mason didn’t dare to breathe. He wasn’t going to like this answer.

“Because I had her block the door with the fridge and prep the window to escape that way if she needed to. Abraham split late afternoon. She was terrified.” Zain’s voice was grim. They both knew what the chances were should Hannah end up captured.