it?”
It took her time to realize she’d lost her com unit back in the rubble where she’d fallen. Alexa knew her decision to search for Kinkaid alone hadn’t been her finest hour. She wasn’t thinking straight, but it was only her ass on the line now. Whatever consequences there would be, she would face them alone, and she could accept that. The last thing she wanted was to be responsible for anyone else getting dragged into the risk she was about to take.
“Kinkaid, I swear, you better be alive, so I can kill you myself.”
Kinkaid stared into the vacant eyes of Miguel Rosas. The crazed, bloodthirsty lunatic still had a gun pointed at his head.
Outside, the war raged on. Secondary explosions mixed with the staccato sounds of automatic gunfire. And dust and smoke clouded the stone cell. Wide-eyed, Estella stood frozen in place, staring at the man with the gun. Even Guerrero had stopped at the cell door. He had Perez’s arm over his shoulder as he helped the man escape, leaving a trail of the drug dealer’s blood on the ground. He was bleeding like the stuck pig he was.
But all eyes were on Miguel Rosas.
And Kinkaid could do nothing except wait for the man to pull the trigger. He was too far away to lunge for the weapon. And he had nothing else to fight with.
“Kill him, Miguel. Do it!” Perez demanded. “Pull the trigger!”
Rosas blinked. He gripped his weapon tighter and steadied his aim. That left Kinkaid with nothing left to do but open his mouth.
“You’re done, Perez. This isn’t the only place we hit tonight.” Kinkaid forced a weak grin. If he was going down, he wanted the drug-cartel boss to know what he’d done. “We wiped you out.”
MQ-9 Reaper UAVs had arrived in time to annihilate Perez and his entire operation. Kinkaid’s men had staged more than one attack, at multiple locations. By now, the second drug cartel that Perez had worked years to rebuild was nothing more than massive holes in the ground.
Kinkaid and his men had been researching the drug dealer’s strongholds and supply connections for years. Every key target that could be destroyed without jeopardizing innocent lives had been hit in simultaneous assaults across Mexico.
His taunt had been enough to force Perez to make his move. The man grabbed for the gun Guerrero had stuffed into the waistband of his pants. He cursed and took aim. When Miguel Rosas saw his boss move, he turned and lowered his weapon as another missile tore through the stone wall near the makeshift cell.
That was the break Kinkaid needed.
As flames billowed through the barred window, and rocks rained down on them, Kinkaid lunged for Rosas and shoved him to the ground. He grabbed for the gun as he rolled behind the man. When Perez fired his weapon, Kinkaid returned fire. And the only protection he had was Miguel Rosas. He heard the bullets as they riddled the man’s body. And when he could, he shot back. He saw the drug boss stagger when he put a hole in his chest, but in the chaos, Kinkaid didn’t know what happened.
He felt a punch in his shoulder, but kept shooting. Estella screamed and cringed in a corner, covering her head. When Kinkaid heard her, he got to his knees and shielded her from fire. And Guerrero had used the fat body of his boss to cower behind. Everything happened in slow motion.
Bullets ricocheted off stone, splintering wood and spraying shards of rock into the room. And when another blast shook the foundation, and the roof started to crack and break free, Guerrero had had enough.
“Let’s go . . . let’s go. Now!” The man urged his boss to move. And when the big man stumbled, Guerrero grabbed him by the collar and pulled him into the corridor, making a run for it. His motivation wasn’t difficult to figure. Guerrero had no weapon. Perez had taken it.
Guerrero had no choice but to get his boss moving, the man who was big enough to use as a human shield. And with the hacienda coming down, if they didn’t get out now, the odds were they’d be buried alive where they stood.
“Move it! Now!” Guerrero yelled.
Kinkaid stood and looked for Estella in the haze of black smoke and suffocating dust. When he found her, he knelt beside her.
“Are you okay? Can you move?” When the girl nodded, he said, “We have to get out of here.”
But it was too late. The minute Kinkaid had the girl on her feet, heading for the only way out, the roof caved in. He pulled her back and put his body between her and the falling rock. It was all he had time to do.
“Get down. Cover your head.” He shielded the girl as best he could. Every stone that hammered his body sent a shock wave of pain through him. And after a brilliant burst of light blinded him, his body went limp. He fought to stay conscious, but lost his battle.
Darkness swallowed him whole.
Chapter 14
“The whole place is a house of cards, ready to come down. Heads up, people.” Over his com unit, Garrett warned his men as they walked through the fallen stone wall at the entrance to the hacienda. They’d split into three-man teams and spread out, making tougher targets.
“Anyone who finds Martini One, sing out.”
When the UAV had stopped firing, Garrett and his men breached the perimeter and went hunting for survivors. Most of Perez’s men had split, running for the foothills. And there had been only the occasional skirmish between his men and those still hiding within the walls of the estate.
The UAV flew wide circles around the vast property. Soon, the drone would have to leave. Once Mexican authorities detected the battle, they’d have to evade capture. The longer they were there, the greater the chance of them getting caught, but Garrett hadn’t found Kinkaid or Alexa yet. No matter how one-sided the attack might have been, any victory would be tainted if Jackson and Alexa had been killed in the assault.
And if he didn’t have enough to worry about, what Alexa had told him about Donovan Cross had disturbed him. What was Cross up to? And who was backing him for the number one slot? One man couldn’t do it alone. He had no doubt that Cross had help, but how far would Garrett have to go to protect his back? Returning to his old life, as head of the Sentinels, might be dangerous, especially when he had no idea who had supported Cross in his apparent attempt at a takeover. Someone within the Sentinels had made it easy.
“Found something. Over here.” The voice of Hank Lewis came over his earbud, a much needed distraction from the conspiracies filling his head. When Garrett looked for Hank, he saw him waving in the glow of the burning hacienda. By the time he got to him, Hank was kneeling near a large pile of rubble, holding something in his hand.
“Found Martini One’s com unit.” Hank held the gear up toward the light and showed it to Garrett. “She didn’t respond because she couldn’t.”
Finding her com link didn’t mean she was alive. Her body could be under the pile of stones at their feet, but since they hadn’t secured the compound, Garrett couldn’t divert his men into a rescue mission for one agent. As he saw it, he had only one option.
“Put a team on this spot,” he told Hank. “Have them trade off. Two men dig through this pile and one stands guard. Call out if they . . . find her.”
“Will do, sir.”
Garrett didn’t want to think that Alexa was dead. She was a force of nature, a strong, intelligent woman who was a borderline adrenaline junkie. She thrived in his world, living on the razor’s edge of danger. Imagining her dying before he had taken his last breath was something he couldn’t handle. Even though he gave his order to Hank, it pained him to pretend he could conduct business as usual.
