really proved himself to be a solid ally when I needed him. I guessed that he and Navarro had had some face time together, which was probably how Navarro’s men got to us at the safe house. And the bastard wasn’t in the business of leaving behind any witnesses.
The hacienda itself had kicked in some decent news. The scientists who’d been kidnapped from Santa Barbara were found in the basement lab complex, along with two others who’d been grabbed previously. They were in as good shape as could be expected for people who’d been held captive like that for months.
Closer to home, Stephenson had offered to work with me and Tess on helping Alex work through everything that had happened.
But I didn’t think the book was yet closed on that front.
A few things were bothering me, starting with the drone.
I knew drones. We’d had one circling over us the night we hit McKinnon’s lab, but more relevantly, I’d made use of a Predator much more recently, in Turkey, in broad daylight, while chasing the sadistic Iranian agent Zahed. I knew what they looked like. And in that perfect azure dome that towered over us down in Merida that morning, I didn’t see a thing. Not a glint, not a spot, nothing. Admittedly, I hadn’t had all the time in the world to sit and stargaze to look for it. But I knew I should have seen it and it really bugged me. It bugged me enough to look into it with the guys over at the 9th Reconnaissance Wing at Beale Air Force Base in California, from where the drones were controlled. I knew it wasn’t easy for the DEA to run a drone over Mexico. They’d done so a couple of times over the last year or so, and it had caused a big stink with the
Which meant Munro was lying.
Which meant that if Munro didn’t track us that way, he had to have used something else. And the only other way to track us would have been to track something we had on us—specifically, something either Navarro or Alex had on them, given that the tracker on Munro’s screen was showing their live position. It didn’t seem possible he had a tracker on Navarro. If Munro had managed that, he’d have hauled El Brujo’s ass in and sold him out to the narcos before pocketing the cash and retiring into a mojito-fueled, perma-tanned sunset.
Which meant the tracker had to be on Alex.
Which meant Munro somehow knew that Navarro would come after Alex.
Which is where my pesky little rule about coincidences starts doing its thing and turns into a real nag.
Which is why I was now getting out of my car and walking up to a mountain cabin at the edge of the Sequoia National Forest.
Hank Corliss’s cabin.
71
The cabin was a steeply raked oak A-frame that was dwarfed by trees that were more than a hundred feet tall. I found Corliss sitting on the back deck of the split-level cabin, looking out over a fast- flowing creek and mile after mile of dense forest. The loud calls of warblers and swallows filled the air.
Corliss had clearly heard me drive in and pull up to the house, but he hadn’t made any effort to get up and see who it was. I suspected he knew it was me, just as I suspected he’d been expecting me to show up at some point.
He didn’t even look over as I stepped out to join him.
It had just fit too perfectly. Alex happens to be the reincarnation of McKinnon. Munro happens to get wind of that somehow. He then decides to use that to bait Navarro out of hiding—the one thing he knew Navarro couldn’t possibly resist going after.
Like I said, it was a coincidence too far, and although my horizons had broadened about the so-called nonphysical world in the last few days, that was one coincidence I wasn’t prepared to believe. Not when it fit that perfectly.
I’m not into perfect fits.
Life doesn’t work that way.
And if it wasn’t a rare alignment of stars, if it wasn’t serendipity spreading its wings and giving Jesse Munro the gift of a lifetime, then it had to be something else. Something more human. Which then got me wondering about how much Munro could pull off by himself. And that got me wondering about Corliss.
Whoever did this had to know Navarro was obsessed with reincarnation. He also had to know what McKinnon’s drug was all about. And he needed to be, in my eyes anyway, insanely desperate to get Navarro.
Which brought me back to Corliss and to something Munro had said, out in Merida, by the chopper.
His words had been rattling inside me ever since he said them.
I thought I knew what they’d done. What I didn’t know was, how long had it been going on?
That, and the how, was what I was here for.
There was no point in getting into any pleasantries.
“Did you know Munro was running his own game?” I asked him.
That got his attention.
He turned to face me, and he looked even more tired than I remembered. The lines across his forehead were like furrows, and he had dark pouches under eyes that already looked like they’d had all life drained out of them.
“He wasn’t going to bring him back to you, you know,” I added. “He was going to sell him on to the cartel for fifteen million dollars. And you know what the worst part is? You probably never would have known. He’d have come up with some story about Navarro being killed out there, and you’d be sitting here thinking you pulled off your plan perfectly.”
He shrugged, impassive. “I doubt they would have kept him alive too long,” he replied.
If I still had a smidgen of doubt about Corliss’s involvement, his reaction killed it there and then. “True, but that’s not what this was about, was it? This was about revenge. You, getting your revenge. And I can’t imagine it would have been anywhere near as satisfying for you not to have him right there in front of you and be able to stare into his eyes when you did whatever you were planning to do with him.”
He didn’t reply. He just kept his tenebrous gaze on me while he breathed out slowly through a half-open mouth.
“It would have all worked out, too. If Michelle hadn’t fought them off at the house. That was the plan, right? He’d grab them. And Alex would lead you right back to him.”
I reached into my pocket and pulled out Alex’s Omnitrix wristband and chucked it onto the side table by his side.
I’d had it checked.
It’s where the tracker was.
“You knew Navarro believed in reincarnation,” I told him. “You had the journal. You knew Eusebio’s story. And you knew Navarro didn’t just believe in it. He was obsessed with it, and he was obsessed with getting McKinnon’s formula back. So you decided to use that to flush him out. And what better way to flush him out than to have him think McKinnon had been reincarnated.”
I saw a reaction flicker in his eyes.
“Then you decided to load the dice,” I continued. “You decided it couldn’t be just any kid. You wanted to be sure he’d believe it, you wanted him so motivated that he’d definitely come after this kid. And who better for the job than the son of the guy who shot McKinnon? Which you knew, because Munro knew that Michelle was pregnant with my son.”
The reaction calmed, and I saw that he was already wondering about the consequences.
“Are you here to kill me?” he asked
“I should. And maybe I will. I mean, you got Michelle killed. And Villaverde. And Fugate. And Michelle’s boyfriend. And all the rest of them.” I couldn’t control my temper and my tone blew. “And you put my son at risk.
