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

to get to the Mustang, and Alonzo followed.

Slater knew there were eyes passing over him. A chunk of the drivers around him, and some of the pedestrians, and maybe some people looking down from windows facing the street. But they wouldn’t really notice him. Everyone was trying to catch a glimpse of the crime scene a few hundred feet further down.

Slater rounded the hood and slipped behind the wheel.

Alonzo was already in the passenger seat.

They slammed their doors.

‘Where’s he going?’ Alonzo said, jerking his head at the dealer who’d given up his car without a second thought.

Slater said, ‘Anywhere but here.’

Slater didn’t crane his neck to watch the dealer walk away at risk of attracting suspicion, but studied the man in the driver’s side mirror. He was hunched over, wired with fear.

Walking too fast.

Slater clenched his teeth. ‘Slow down.’

Alonzo said, ‘What?’

‘Not you.’

From somewhere nearby there came a frantic shout.

Slater jerked his head left and right, searching for the source.

Couldn’t place it.

When he looked back in the side mirror, the dealer wasn’t there anymore.

Slater lowered a hand to his waist, brushing the HK45CT.

Ready to shoot it out, if that’s what it came to.

Then he spotted the dealer again. The guy was a dozen feet further up the sidewalk, and pedestrians were leaping away, because there were two burly men clad in bulletproof vests on top of him, wrenching his arms behind his back. They must have had eyes on him already.

Slater didn’t need to see anything else.

He already knew they were coming, without having to look around and spot the muscled operatives weaving between stationary cars, hunting the Mustang.

He took his hand off his pistol, put it on the handbrake, and released it.

The El Salvadoran Consulate General was on Park Avenue, less than a mile north. Only two blocks diagonally northeast from the Empire State Building.

They could make it.

They had to.

Alonzo shouted, ‘Will, get down!’

He’d already ducked.

But Slater knew, no matter how desperately the secret world wanted his head on a stick, they wouldn’t fire automatic weapons in gridlock traffic. The media shitstorm would be monumental, incalculable. Which is why, even though there were carbines in their hands, the clusters of operatives were still sprinting toward the vehicle instead of shooting at it.

Slater checked the side mirror one last time, to make sure the sidewalk was clear.

It was.

Relatively.

The dealer had been violently tackled trying to flee, and the brutality with which he’d hit the pavement had scattered the rush hour commuters all around them.

Slater put the Mustang in “Drive,” twisted the wheel, and floored it.

89

Alexis whispered, ‘Is that him?’

Crouched in the bushes beside her, Violetta muttered, ‘Must be.’

‘If it’s not?’

‘We don’t have time.’

They rose out of the foliage and strode across the wide road. Alexis’ jeans were ripped and her shirt was stained with mud, sweat, and blood. Violetta was in similar condition, although physically unhurt. Together they walked up to the guard who had stepped out of the front gate.

He watched them approach with hawkish eyes. He was deeply tanned and solidly built. He loomed over them.

They stopped in front of him and waited. Neither spoke a word.

The guard held out a pair of pristine garment bags and Violetta took them without a word. Then he jerked his head to the right. That way.

Violetta nodded to him, trying to convey respect.

It must have worked, because he nodded in return. Then he turned and walked back into Fabio Torres’ mansion.

They took the garment bags back into the undergrowth and found a small clearing to get changed in.

They didn’t have a hope of convincing César Vásquez they were anything other than beggars if they showed up in their current state. King had forced Torres to give up some of his mistresses’ evening wear, and now they pulled two gorgeous off-the-shoulder dresses from the garment bags. They shed their old clothes, slipped the dresses over their frames, then used the makeup kit buried in one of the bags to touch themselves up and coated themselves in perfume Torres had also included. Both dresses ended at the calves, so there was no danger of dragging them in the mud of the clearing floor.

They checked each other over, came away satisfied, and stepped back out onto the road before they slipped into the outrageous stilettos Torres had buried at the bottom of the garment bags alongside the makeup and perfume.

They set off, adopting the cocky, carefree strut of professional call girls.

The world’s best.

That’s what they had to be.

Violetta kept her fear under control as they walked next door to the Vásquez mansion. It took far longer than she anticipated. The lots were inconceivably big. There was clearly a surplus of land for those who could afford it. As they sauntered through the dark, she said, ‘Play up the American accent. I think that’s what he’s expecting. We’re good ol’ country girls.’

‘Like this?’ Alexis said, morphing her voice into a Texan drawl.

It was flawless.

Violetta smiled and nodded. ‘Yes, baby. Like that there.’

They were fifty feet from Vásquez’ front gate when the guards noticed them. The rifles slung over their shoulders didn’t come up, because it was clear from the tottering stilettos and the curve of their hips that the approaching women offered no threat.

Violetta thought, Good. Keep thinking that.

She approached the closest guard with Alexis right behind her. ‘Hey, honey. We’re right on time, ain’t we?’

She smiled as wide as she could, letting the full red lipstick speak for her.

Alexis smiled coyly over her shoulder.

The guard registered the American accent and switched to broken English. ‘What you doing here?’

Loud enough for the guards to hear, Alexis spoke into Violetta’s ear. ‘They ain’t expectin’ us.’

Violetta extended her pinky finger and thumb in the universal “phone” gesture and lifted it to her ear. ‘Call your boss.’

Her presence was so commanding that they didn’t argue or screw her around. She exuded the aura that she cost a staggering hourly rate, and when she tapped her watch they practically squirmed, not wanting to leave their boss further out of