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

sure. Whatever the case, he made it out of the bedroom without assistance, and gazed at Slater for a long beat.

‘What happened?’ he mumbled.

‘Later,’ Slater said.

He’d induced tunnel vision to prevent the exhaustion overwhelming him.

Before they left, Slater combed the spare room and all the drawers and cabinets, but found no other weapons. Wherever Antônia’s arsenal was stashed, it wasn’t here. Some secure location close by, he figured, but that didn’t help. There was no time to search the entire walk-up building. They had to be out of Santa Ana fast, in case she had backup in-country she could muster.

She has all the backup she needs, he realised. She has Fabio Torres.

The severity of the situation began to dawn on him, but he mentally thrust it aside. In one of the last drawers he searched he found a dirty dossier of printed files, apparently the only physical intel Antônia kept in her safe house. He took it with him without looking at it — there would be time for that later. But he breathed thanks that she was somewhat old-school. She liked perusing papers instead of swiping at a screen.

He went back to the kitchen and ushered them all out.

The quartet left the apartment, taking only the meagre belongings they’d brought to El Salvador and the MEU(SOC) Antônia had left behind. As soon as they reached the ground floor and burst onto a side street Slater found pain and fatigue had killed his patience. A car trundled past, and he stepped in front of it. The driver stamped on the brakes.

Without a word Slater rounded to the open window and stuck the gun in through the frame.

‘Out,’ he growled.

The driver was a Salvadoran man in his forties and the car was a station wagon. The vehicle was on death’s door. The driver looked composed, well put-together, neat. His livelihood likely wasn’t riding on this rustbucket. Even if it was, Slater and the people he loved most would die if they didn’t get out of this neighbourhood within the next couple of minutes, so that meagre justification would have to do.

The driver clambered out, hands above his head, and the four of them slipped in. Violetta had to help King into the back seat. He could walk on his own, but his fine motor skills needed work.

Slater got behind the wheel and gunned it away.

He drove south into the centre of Santa Ana and stopped outside an electronics store. Violetta ran in, and five minutes later hustled back out with a laptop computer and a crumpled receipt. She tore the box open once she was back in the car, and immediately set to work leaching off a nearby restaurant’s Wi-Fi.

Slater kept his eyes peeled on the dusty street as she tapped away at the keyboard. She was zoned in with wide eyes.

Only a few minutes had passed when she said, ‘Okay. Rented a place under a false name. Two-bedroom house in Ciudad Real. Couple miles west of here.’

Slater didn’t waste time.

Every man and woman teeming past down the street was a potential threat. He threw the car into gear and sped away from the electronics store.

When he reached the outskirts of Santa Ana, he gave himself permission to let a little tension out.

If his nervous system was any tighter, he’d explode.

They reached their destination in a hair over ten minutes and parked the stolen car far enough away to prevent it being traced to their new safe house. Then they hobbled up the quiet street. Ciudad Real was a world away from the grimier barrios — the houses were new, the lot sizes were respectable, and the fences were taller. Their rented house was a white two-storey number with columns propping up the portico and security bars over the windows.

Compared to Antônia’s building, it was the height of luxury.

Violetta carried the laptop in one hand and squinted to make out the check-in instructions. She found the key in a small capsule under a pot plant that required a four-digit combination to unlock. She got it open, took out the key, shoved it in the front door, and twisted.

The door spilled open, and the artificial scent of a newly cleaned vacation rental washed over them.

Mind-numbing relief.

Slater helped King through the door and they both collapsed on the small sofa just inside the entrance. Strangely, the front door opened straight onto the living room.

They sat side-by-side for at least fifty long breaths, slumped down so they practically sunk into the deep cushions.

Violetta and Alexis hovered over them, mutually concerned.

Then, one by one, they came back to life.

Only then did they discuss their predicament.

King contributed first. ‘We’re fucked.’

75

Alexis looked down at King. ‘You sound like Will. Aren’t you usually optimistic?’

‘Maybe it’s the comedown from the drugs,’ King mumbled, shaking his head to compose himself. ‘Maybe not.’

Violetta said, ‘I’m in agreement with him, and I’m not drugged.’

Slater said, ‘There’s always a way.’

Violetta said, ‘I’m all ears.’

Slater made to speak, but King interrupted, his social sensibilities eroded by the oxycodone. ‘How does any of this make even … the slightest bit of sense?’

Slater raised an eyebrow.

King sat on the sofa, groggy, but getting closer to reality with each passing moment. ‘Antônia told me what happened … at Joya de Cerén. The hunters ran into her, recognised her, and they planned to do … all of this. She was faking it the whole time.’

‘Right.’

‘But why?’ King said, his brow furrowed in confusion. ‘The Armed Forces had us … in custody. They were handing us back to America. If Antônia was a hunter this whole time … why did she get Torres to release us?’

Alexis cut in. ‘Maybe El Salvador was going about it the wrong way. They might have wanted to make a spectacle of it, flaunting their ability to apprehend the world’s most dangerous fugitives. Then they’d have handed us back publicly, with a fanfare of PR and news stories. The secret world would have despised that. All their dirty secrets laid bare.’

Slater shook his