Hunters, Matt Rogers [pdf ebook reader .txt] 📗

the countertop and rested them there, calloused and tanned. ‘So what do we do?’

Alonzo went quiet as he mentally ran through a list of options. Then he said, ‘I can get you out of the country.’

The ramifications of the position they were in hadn’t hit King until those words. His arm still around Violetta’s shoulders, he looked down and met her eyes. She was just as shaken.

Violetta said, ‘Is that necessary?’

Alonzo said, ‘In my opinion, absolutely. They’ll have every surveillance camera in the U.S. looking for you. If you fled Vegas on a main road they probably already have your scent. And I don’t know how many there are. Most of the troops they sent to hit your estate were from the Special Activities Centre of the CIA, but Onyx will embed hunters in every wave until you’re broken for good. I’m sure of it.’

‘You said you don’t know him.’

‘I don’t know his identity,’ Alonzo clarified. ‘I’ve never met the man personally, or spoken to him. But his actions? His track record? I know what type of man he is. In his eyes you’re a stain on the clandestine community’s reputation. He won’t relent until he has you in his trophy case.’

King said, ‘Drop the rhetoric.’

‘It’s not rhetoric, Jason. It’s who he is.’

‘Where do you want us to go?’

A long pause. ‘I have a friend in South America. I’ve been in touch with her recently, and I’d trust her with my life. She could help you lay low until the heat is off.’

‘A “friend”?’

‘That’s all it is now,’ Alonzo answered.

King paused. Thought about it. What other options did they have?

He said, ‘Where in South America?’

32

Santa Ana

El Salvador

Fabio Torres was having the time of his life.

He sent a silent prayer of gratitude to the only god he cared about: the god of money. It would be foolish to send his appreciation anywhere else, and if he didn’t admit that he was delusional.

He had to look at it objectively. He was five-foot-six, pale, fat, old, hairy. Genetically unfortunate, cursed with an ugly face. The naked woman on top of him in the bed was thirty years younger, curvy in all the right places, tanned, her skin smooth as butter, her face beautiful, her black hair straight and silky. He’d taken a near-overdose of Viagra just to be able to get the job done, and he could tell she was still forced to fake the enjoyment. He was genetically unfortunate in more ways than one.

But the woman was giving the performance of a lifetime. She’d worked up a sweat gyrating on top of him, and now she moaned as she pretended to approach climax. Torres didn’t care that it was a ruse. It excited him all the same, and he felt himself getting close to the edge.

She felt it too.

‘Yes, baby,’ she said in Spanish. ‘Yes.’

She gripped him tighter with her hips.

He usually kept an unwavering awareness of his surroundings. The ornate four-poster bed, the priceless artwork adorning the walls of his bedchamber, the porte fenétre doors leading to the sweeping balcony overlooking the grounds of his mansion. He kept an exit in his peripheral vision at all times. He stayed vigilant, always on guard, never lazy.

Again, he wasn’t a fool.

Seven hundred thousand families in this beautiful country survived on less than a dollar a day. Torres was worth sixty million. That left room for violent men with no hope to risk everything for a small shot at stealing a fortune.

But he had guards and alarms and cameras and the small country’s entire military on speed dial, so he released himself for a brief moment and gave in to the climax.

It was incredible.

He squeezed his eyes shut as it happened, relishing the smoothness of the woman straddling his groin.

When he opened them again, she wasn’t enjoying herself anymore.

Her face was cold and her eyes were hard, and she had a switchblade gripped in her right hand which she pressed to his jugular vein, pinning him to the pillow.

Panting for breath, he squirmed, but he didn’t dare cry out for help.

He tried to slow his racing heart but he couldn’t, so he tried to distract himself with conversation. ‘Who are you?’

‘My name is Antônia,’ she said in that rich deep voice that had seduced him in the first place.

‘I know,’ he panted. ‘You told me that. But you’re not a whore.’

‘That depends on your definition of “whore.”’

‘You don’t sleep with men for money.’

‘If the job requires it,’ she said. ‘But I’m a whore in the sense that I sell myself. It just so happens I sell myself to America.’

His heart clenched in his chest, further straining his clogged veins. ‘Shit.’

Antônia smiled. ‘Exactly. That’s what I was looking for. Now, Fabio, it’s come to my attention that you’ve been a very bad boy.’

‘Says who?’

‘Says my employers. And that’s all that matters.’

‘Do they have proof of these baseless allega—’

She pressed the blade harder into his throat.

He cut himself off and whimpered.

She shushed him, like a mother soothing her small child. ‘There, there, Fabio. I’m told you’re in bed with Cártel de Texis.’

‘Lies!’ Fabio gasped. ‘I swear. I promise you, I would never—’

‘Shut your mouth and look at me,’ she said, her steely eyes boring into his. She hadn’t budged from her position, still straddling him, still naked, but somehow horrifying. ‘I’m not some dumb bitch. I know these things. I’m not here to hear you confirm or deny them. I’m telling you how it is.’

His heart triple-timed in his chest. Boom-boom-boom, boom-boom-boom.

He wanted to reach up and wipe the rivulets of sweat running from his forehead into his brows, but he didn’t dare. He gulped. ‘Okay. Okay.’

Her deep voice was almost soothing as she said, ‘You’ve done very well for yourself, papi. I applaud you for that. You were in coffee and sugar cane in the eighties, but agriculture profits dried up, so you pivoted into commercial infrastructure and finance. You have a bank, you own office towers, apartment complexes, shopping centres. And now