Mercy Killing (Affairs of State Book 1) (28 page)

“Done,” she said

He gave her a blank look she interpreted as startled disbelief. “Fine.” He hesitated then reached for his beer. “Then that’s the plan.” Maybe he was thinking he should have asked for more. She’d stake her life on the fact that a considerable percentage of the money would never leave his pocket.

But he’d probably come back for more anyway. She’d read somewhere that most blackmailers did. The money didn’t matter to her. This was a way of keeping him busy, making him assume she was still under his thumb and had no other option. She took out her checkbook and wrote him a check for the full amount.

“I’ll get the ball rolling.” He sounded suddenly cheerful as he tucked the check into his jacket pocket. “Meanwhile, I need something more from you, with regard to the Don.”

She sat back in her chair, wary again. “Like what?”

“The abandoned truck,” he said. “You’re sure it was his?”

“Hidalgo admitted it,” she said. “Though he denied any knowledge of its contents.”

“Did you notice anything other than people inside?”

“Like?”

“Drugs, weapons, any other sort of contraband.” He was, she could tell, working at making his questions sound casual, and that made her all the more cautious.

“I saw nothing like that. It was just women, children, a few men. Desperate, dying people.”

He nodded, looking thoughtful. “What about other trucks leaving the hacienda? Locked storage sheds or guarded warehouses on the property?”

“I found nothing that isn’t related to work on a cattle ranch.” She didn’t tell him about her confrontation with Sebastian the night she’d broken into his office, or about Sebastian’s blow up when he’d appeared in the city and warned her off from seeing Maria.

“Nothing,” he mused. “Interesting. So they must be outside of the hacienda.”

“What’s outside?” she asked.

His bland eyes swept surrounding tables as if to make sure no one sat within hearing range. “His cargo…the slaves of course. He must have a secret holding area. How’s about you pay another visit to Ranchero Hidalgo?”

“Absolutely not.” She drank from her tepid coffee, as much from nervousness as thirst. “I'm convinced the man will kill me if I get anywhere near his property. His guards probably have shoot-on-sight orders.”

Lucius grinned at her. “Oh, I don’t believe that.”

“Why not?”
I sure as heck do!

“Such a clever and attractive young woman should have no difficulty enticing a lonely widower into changing his mind about her.”

34

Seduce Sebastian Hidalgo. That was clearly Clay’s suggestion.

She couldn’t claim that this idea turned her off. Sebastian was a sexy, powerful, rich, and intelligent man. She'd felt drawn to him from the first. And, in a strange way, she enjoyed matching wits with him.

Unfortunately, he just happened to be a flesh trader and murderer. Not traits easily overlooked when shopping for a lover. Nevertheless, Clay had planted a seed in her imagination. Mercy had walked nearly all of the way home from the café before she was able to shove aside images of a naked, aroused Sebastian.             

Lupe met her at the door. “
Ay,
dios mio
! I am so glad you is home. Señorita Hidalgo, she been calling. That child, so sad. She crying, Señora.”

“What’s the problem?” Mercy asked, following Lupe back into the kitchen.

She had told no one of Sebastian’s banning her from contact with his daughter, although she was pretty sure the entire household staff must have overheard him shouting at her.

“She would not tell me.” Lupe went back to kneading a maize dough that would eventually turn into her wonderful tortillas. “It is, she say, for you ears.”

“Thank you, Lupe. I’ll call her.”

It wasn’t that Mercy took Sebastian’s threats lightly. She just couldn’t ignore the girl. This would give her a chance to explain to Maria why they couldn’t communicate.

Upstairs in her suite, she dialed Maria’s private line, hoping Sebastian hadn’t cut it off or, worse yet, tapped it.

One ring, then a breathless, “
Si
?”

“Maria, it’s Mercy. Are you all right?”

“
Si, si…ye
s,” the girl gasped. “Oh,
Madre de Dios
. I don’t know what to do!”

“What’s happened?”

“I am so frightened. Please, come and take me away.”

Mercy felt as if a hand had grabbed her heart and squeezed it. “What’s going on?”

“It’s true. It’s really true…everything they say about Papa!” Maria sobbed.

Was she talking about the slave truck and her father’s role in trafficking? Or something new? “Calm down,” Mercy whispered into the phone.

“I can’t!” the girl wailed. “It’s disgusting.
He
is disgusting. My own father.”

“But you are safe. He won’t hurt you.” Mercy had never doubted this much. Sebastian might be a bastard and a cruel capo of a cartel, but he loved his daughter.

Maria rushed on. “I saw him give a bribe to the police officer, the same one who asked us all those questions the night we found the truck. The police came to the hacienda, and I watched them from my bedroom window. I begged my father to tell me what was going on, but he refused. He got very angry and said I must stay out of his business!”

“Maria, I don’t know that I can do anything to help you right now. But I promise that as soon as—”

“I’m leaving this house,” Maria declared. “He pays for it and everything else we own with his filthy money.”

Mercy’s heart stopped. “You can’t. Maria, it’s too dangerous. You must stay where you are.”

“I won’t!” she was sobbing again. “I will dress up like a boy, like I did when we went shopping. I will sneak out when no one is watching and hitchhike into the city.”

“Maria, please, no!”

“Meet me at the café overlooking the Angel. You know where I mean, right? The big statue in the
Zona Rosa
. I will be there tonight.”

“Maria—”

The line went dead.

Mercy tried calling her back. The phone rang once, then stopped abruptly. She dialed again—nothing. The same thing happened when she tried the main line to the house. Had the girl pulled out the plugs on the phones? Whatever. Maria was making sure Mercy couldn’t warn her father.             

They met at
Café Ortega
and sat at a table well back from the street entrance.

Mercy could see that, this time, Maria had put much less effort into concealing her identity. The young woman obviously enjoyed flying solo in the city, flaunting her freedom. Although she still wore a baseball cap, her long dark hair tucked up beneath it, the disguise was half-hearted at best. Maria wore fitted designer jeans, a t-shirt tight enough to reveal she had breasts, and lip gloss. She'd polished her fingernails a pearlescent blue.

The young believe they are immortal.
Mercy sighed.

“You need to return to the hacienda immediately. You are risking your life,” Mercy whispered her across the table.

“My father is risking more than his life.” Maria crossed her thin arms over her chest and slid down in her chair—the image of defiance. “He is destroying our proud family name. He is a criminal.”

“You have to give him the benefit of doubt. No one should be assumed guilty. He deserves a trial like anyone else accused of a crime.” How feeble her argument sounded. Even she didn’t believe it. “He loves you, Maria. I can’t believe he’d do anything to hurt you.”

“What about those poor people in his truck? He has destroyed so many lives.” Maria buried her face in her hands, boldness and fury suddenly drowning in tears. “I am so ashamed of him.”

People seated at the end of the bar nearest their table peered curiously at them. Mercy scooted her chair around to Maria’s side and pulled the girl into her arms. “It will be all right. The important thing is that you won't be in danger as long as you stay on the ranch. If you’re patient, things may work out on their own. I’m doing what I can. But here, in the city, or out on the road by yourself, your father’s enemies might—”

Mercy lost her train of thought at a sudden commotion from the front of the restaurant.

Maria moved out of her embrace and turned to stare the length of the narrow dining room.

Mercy watched as a quartet of men pushed past a startled hostess holding a stack of menus. Two carried guns. They shoved people out of the way, overturned chairs in their rush toward the back of the café. Big heads swiveled. Menacing eyes searched the dim room.

Maria's eyes widened, as if she recognized them. “Don’t let them take me!” she shrieked.

Mercy leaped to her feet. “Run. The back door.”

But it was too late, she knew, even then. The men were on top of them before Mercy could move more than a few steps. From up close, she recognized all four. Carlos and Fredo, Sebastian’s personal bodyguards, and two ranch hands she’d seen lurking around the stables with their rifles while she and Maria had painted in the yard.

“Leave her alone!” Mercy shouted when Carlos seized Maria roughly by the arm.

The giant ignored her. He barked something to Maria in Spanish.

“No! I won’t go with you.” Maria tried to pull away. She kicked at his ankles, but she might as well have been a gnat for all the effect she had on him. He hauled her effortlessly up and onto his massive shoulder.

Fredo jerked his thumb at Mercy, and the two other thugs converged on her. She swung at one, taking him by surprise, her fist connecting with his nose. A satisfying crunch of knuckles against cartilage produced a spurt of blood.

“Call the U.S. Embassy!” Mercy shouted at shocked waiters and customers. “
Mi esposo
Peter Davis. Please call and—”

Fredo dove at her, burying his shoulder in her stomach. He knocked her flat onto her back on the hard wood floor and landed on top of her. Something snapped.
A rib? He broke my rib!
The two ranch hands dragged her to her feet. She gasped at the pain that cut short her next breath. They shoved her out through the cafe's rear door. She stumbled down two steps and into an alley.

Mercy could hear Maria screaming in Spanish as she was being carried off. “My father will kill you for touching me. Pigs! Fucking beasts! Let me go!”

An implacable Carlos dumped Maria into the back seat of a dark sedan.

A hand reached down to pull Mercy up from the ground. She latched onto it with her teeth. The man released her with a wail of pain. She scrambled to her feet and bolted away but didn’t get far. An arm shot up, out of nowhere. Her right cheek slammed into bone and muscle. She crashed to the ground again, stars jangling in her head. Almost at once she felt herself being lifted and tossed into the air.

From what seemed miles away, Maria’s cries wafted more faintly to her, “Please don’t hurt my friend!”

Mercy landed with a metallic thunk in the back of a pickup truck. Another jolt of pain caromed through her ribs. Engines roared. The two vehicles accelerated with a squeal of tires. Then they were speeding, swerving, bouncing through city streets.

She tried to push herself up off the steel truck bed, but one of the goon boys had joined her in the back of the truck. He pushed her down again then threw a burlap sack over her and leaned heavily on her.

Sebastian warned me,
she thought. To his mind, he’d played fair. Was this how her life ended?

“My husband’s family is very rich,” she choked out, peering from beneath the scratchy fabric. She could see the left side of the man’s unshaven face and not much more. “I have lots of money of my own.” When he didn’t respond, she repeated her offer in Spanish.

“Shut up!” he roared.

“If I’m dead, the only one who gets rich will be my husband and a few charities. If you let me go, I’ll pay you whatever you ask. A hundred-thousand dollars…more if you want.”

She sensed hesitation in the flickering of his eye. “I follow orders,” he said at last. “
El jefe
, you no cross him.”

And
that
, she thought, was a lesson she should have learned before now.

35

Sebastian heard the guttural sound of an engine then gravel spitting from tires as a car raced into the hacienda's courtyard. He shut down his computer, left his office then walked with heavy tread and reluctant heart down the stairs to wait in the foyer for his delivery.

Car doors slammed. Voices shouted orders. Above it all he heard the soul-wrenching wail of his daughter. Sebastian hardened his heart. It had to be this way. There was no other. He opened the door then stepped back.

Carlos carried Maria, shrieking like a sacrificial virgin, through the open doorway.

“Put her down,” Sebastian said quietly.