20. Vaughn
20
VAUGHN
“ W ould you calm down?” Brandon said from the passenger seat of the van as I peeled away to follow Ortega’s SUV. “Everything is going according to plan.”
What had gone down inside the church had made my blood boil. It’d taken all my willpower not to charge in there, send bullets straight into the skulls of Ortega and his men, then haul Hope out of the building, out of Mexico, and back to Montana where I could keep her safe. This op was killing me.
My jaw ached from how hard I clenched my molars. “No, I will not calm down, and you know exactly why. Two words. Jorge fucking Ortega.”
Brandon adjusted his black-framed glasses. “That’s three.”
I aimed a seething look at my teammate, then returned my eyes to the dark street. “I swear to God, I’ve murdered men for being less annoying than you.”
“You sound like my wife.”
The black SUV turned left a block ahead, so I positioned our van to do the same.
“Were you even listening to their conversation?” I strangled the steering wheel in a death grip. “That shit stain still thinks he can marry Hope. Jesus Christ, he wants to breed her.” The fierce growl that erupted from me didn’t sound remotely human.
“Then take satisfaction in knowing that Ortega will be dead long before either of those things can happen.” Brandon tapped keys on the laptop resting on his thighs. “Why don’t you channel that lethal energy toward our enemy? You’ll get your chance at Ortega. Just be patient.”
Be patient? After the way that asshole had treated Hope, I was ready to dismember him and any motherfucker we came across in Espinoza’s compound. Those oxygen thieves at the church door hadn’t even looked in Hope’s direction when she’d cried out in pain. I’d wanted to yell at them to do something, to make him fucking stop hurting her. Anyone okay with working for a piece of shit who got off on making women suffer was fair game for my wrath. Period.
A short while later, Ortega’s SUV arrived at the Acapulco airport, where he bundled Hope onto a Gulfstream private jet. This came as no surprise. We’d monitored all aircraft leaving Manzanillo, expecting Espinoza might dispatch one of his senior colleagues to pick up his daughter, and had tracked this one since its departure. We’d never imagined the future leader of the Pacific Coast Cartel would be on board until Sage had relayed the intel from her position at the Manzanillo airport. So while I’d been helpless watching Hope wait to be picked up, I’d known who she’d have to face long before she had. I’d been going out of my mind ever since.
On the other side of the airport terminal, we made our way to the C-130. We had another pilot at the controls to free me up for the op, which was lucky because I wasn’t in the right headspace to fly a dozen people and seventy-five thousand pounds of aircraft. We had wheels up less than fifteen minutes after the Gulfstream’s takeoff.
Brandon was right about one thing. Comms from Ortega’s jet indicated it was indeed returning to Manzanillo, which meant so far, the op was going according to plan. Still, I hated the idea that I was farther from Hope than I’d been since the day we met, and her being trapped with the psycho she was once engaged to was eating me alive.
The sun rose while we were still in the air. Sage, Owen, Shep, and a half dozen others waited in cars at the Manzanillo airport for the imminent arrival of Ortega’s jet. Sage already had a drone up and waiting just outside the airport’s restricted zone. Hope’s trackers were functioning perfectly, sending out a ping every minute as Ortega’s jet cruised toward its destination.
Manzanillo had a small airport with only a handful of large aircraft arriving each day. If we were to follow Ortega’s Gulfstream and touch down immediately after it, we could raise suspicion. So our C-130 would land in the city of Colima, roughly a hundred klicks northeast of Manzanillo, and we’d make the remainder of the journey by road.
I sat beside Brandon on the row of red-netting jump seats that ran the length of the cargo bay. Across from us, Kane had his eyes closed and legs outstretched, one ankle crossed over the other. A few of the other guys in the team either read or spoke among themselves while a couple of the logistics crew members checked over the equipment we’d need as soon as we arrived.
“Do you think he’ll try anything?” I asked.
Brandon glanced away from his laptop and aimed an arched brow at me. “Who? Ortega?”
“Yeah. Hope’s stuck on that plane with him. Do you think he’ll…” Goddammit, I could hardly say the words. “Do you think he’ll touch her? Maybe we should’ve pulled her out when we had the chance. ”
“Hope never gave the signal. She knows Ortega better than us, so if she thought going with him was a risk, she’d have let us know.”
Would she, though? I’d seen the determined look in her eyes before we parted. Hope was dead set on seeing this op through no matter what. Even knowing there was little chance of her asking for an extraction, I’d glued myself to the live video feed on Brandon’s laptop, anxiously waiting for her signal so I could sweep in and put an end to this madness.
Brandon’s gaze briefly shifted to my bouncing leg. “Ortega said he was going to wait until he put a ring on it.”
A stipulation Espinoza had made before agreeing to the union, Hope had told me. Never thought I’d feel gratitude toward the cartel boss for anything, but today, I did.
I grunted. “There are still a lot of disgusting things he can do without putting his dick inside her.”
Revulsion and fury coursed through me as I thought about how much Hope would loathe Ortega’s filthy hands on her. She wouldn’t let him. My little spitfire would fight back, and then what would he do to her?
Brandon shifted his laptop to the vacant seat beside him and faced me. “Brother, you’re going to drive yourself insane if you keep thinking about things that are out of your control. You need to trust Hope. She’s smart, brave, and has experience handling Ortega on her own. And don’t forget how pissed Daddy dearest will be if he finds out his second-in-command assaulted his precious daughter who, as far as Espinoza is concerned, has just returned from the grave.”
“But Ortega did assault her.”
“He manhandled her. He didn’t strike Hope, or Kane would’ve neutralized the asshole before he had a chance to take his next breath.”
“I don’t like how rough he was.” I rubbed the back of my neck, trying to relieve the tension in my muscles. “Did Ortega seem worried about pissing off Espinoza to you? What if he suspects this is a trap?”
Brandon frowned, and before he could answer, Sage’s voice sounded over our comms. “One to TOC. We have eyes on the Gulfstream on its approach to the runway. Standing by.”
“Copy that,” Brandon responded.
The Manzanillo team’s binoculars must have a much clearer view of the aircraft than the terminal’s shitty CCTV streaming on Brandon’s laptop.
“Gulfstream has touched down,” said Sage. “There are three white vans waiting on the apron in convoy formation. My bet is that’s where the jet will park.”
Minutes later, the aircraft came to a stop exactly where she’d predicted. “Stairs descending. Okay, I’ve got eyes on our girl. She’s with Ortega and his two guards.”
“Is she okay?” I snapped, desperately needing an answer to that question.
“She looks fine, but…”
“What?” I shot up from my seat and tightened my comms headset. “What’s wrong? Talk to me.”
“Hope’s hair is loose. She hasn’t signaled she’s in danger, but I can’t see the hair-clip tracker.” Sage couldn’t hide her concerned tone.
Brandon straightened in his seat. “That’s why we have two. She’s still wearing the belt buckle, isn’t she?”
“I can’t see,” Sage replied. “Hope and Ortega just got in the middle van. The convoy is already leaving the airport.”
I snapped my fingers at Brandon. “Her trackers. Check them.”
He tapped away at the laptop. “Last transmitted location is where the Gulfstream pulled up. It’ll be another thirty seconds until we get the next ping.”
I paced the cargo bay. There were probably a dozen innocuous reasons for why the hair clip wouldn’t be in place. I just couldn’t think of any right now.
Brandon froze, and his eyes came to mine. “Both trackers are still on the Gulfstream.”
“What?” I yelled. “How could they have found them? How could they even know what they are?”
“They couldn’t.” Brandon shook his head with bewilderment. “Someone would have to bust them open to find the tech inside. They’re designed so that if the outer casing is breached, they send a distress signal, which I haven’t received. The trackers are intact and functioning.”
What did this mean? Why would Ortega take away those two specific items when he had no way of knowing what they were?
I thought back to my final conversation with Hope. How she’d felt the need to tell me what our time together had meant to her. How sadness had shone in her eyes when we’d shared our parting kiss, like we might never see each other again.
“No.” I clutched my hair as my stomach plummeted through the floor of the plane. “No, no, no!”
Hope felt responsible for the deaths of Simon, Natalie, and Mari. The whole reason she’d volunteered for this op was that she couldn’t stand the thought of more people getting hurt. And now, I wondered if that sentiment extended to me and the team, a bunch of battle-hardened, highly trained operators. Was she out of her goddamned mind?
“What is it?” Brandon asked. The concern in his tone only heightened my anxiety. “What are we missing?”
“She took the trackers off herself.” I braced my hand on the fuselage when a bout of dizziness hit me. “She doesn’t want us to follow her.”
Stunned silence met my theory. Kane and the rest of the team watched me as though I were a strung out terrorist with my thumb on the detonator of an S-vest. If one more thing went wrong on this op, I’d explode.
Brandon’s frown deepened. “Why wouldn’t she want us to follow her?”
“So she can do something stupid like try to carry out this mission all on her own.”
He blinked a bunch of times. “You think Hope intends to kill her father?”
“If it means the team won’t have to storm the compound and do it, yeah. Think about it. She handed herself over to Alvarez when he had her friend. This kind of self-sacrificing behavior isn’t out of character.” Shaking my head, I added, “She’s going to sabotage the whole goddamn mission to protect us.”
I should’ve thought of it sooner, but I’d been so busy analyzing all the ways to keep Hope safe from her father that I’d neglected to consider how she might be a danger to herself.
Brandon adjusted his comms mike. “One, do you still have eyes on the convoy?”
“Affirmative,” Sage replied. “Not letting them out of our sight. I’ll lock the drone onto the convoy as soon as it clears restricted airspace.”
Brandon’s eyes cut to mine. “We won’t lose her.”
“These slippery narco fuckers have gotten away from us before.” When it came to transport, cartels frequently used evasive tactics, especially when they had a VIP on board.
Fuck my life. If Hope survived this, I was going to kill her.
“TOC, this is Four,” came Shep’s gravelly voice. “Are any of you going to consider that the narco spawn might’ve switched teams?”
I froze, eye twitching, jaw locked tight. “You don’t know what the hell you’re talking about,” I growled over the radio.
Shep thought Hope would so easily flip allegiances? That she’d leave me ?
I didn’t care if the hit man was a vicious son of a bitch. When I caught up to the rest of the team, I was going to make him hurt.
“That’s”—Brandon pinched the bridge of his nose—“an unhelpful opinion right now, Four.”
“I’m just sayin’ what we’re all thinking.”
This motherfucker.
Brandon exhaled a deep breath. “It doesn’t matter why the trackers are out of play. Our objective stays the same. Follow Hope to the compound and complete the mission. Copy?”
The radio was silent for too long before Shep responded with “Yeah. Copy that.”
My ears popped as our plane descended. All the while, Sage relayed updates on the convoy and Brandon tracked the location of our team’s vehicles from his laptop. Our cars had left the airport and tailed the vans toward central Manzanillo, then followed them along the highway that bypassed the city.
As we were about to land, Sage’s voice came over the radio. “TOC, this is One. We’re getting off the highway. Sign says this exit leads toward Centro Histórico .”
“What’s there?” I asked, all but snatching the computer from Brandon so I could get a better look.
He shrugged, zooming in on the map area. “Looks like a waterfront, restaurants, shopping.”
“Wait,” Sage said. “The convoy is slowing up. Shit. They’re not going to Centro Histórico.”
“What?” I snapped. “What’s going on?”
“They’re pulling off the highway,” she said. “All three vans are passing through the security checkpoint of a trucking depot. We have to back off, but we still have the drone in play.”
Goddammit. This was exactly the kind of nightmare I’d dreaded since hearing about this bullshit mission.
With each passing second, I felt Hope slipping away from me.