20. Chapter 20
Chapter twenty
The servant stairs were barely wide enough for Lachlan’s shoulders.
I took them fast anyway, knowing he’d manage.
The walls pressed close on both sides, rough stone catching at my backpack as I proceeded. Behind me, Lachlan’s boots landed heavier than mine, his breathing controlled despite the pain his injuries must be causing.
Rafael’s radio crackled before we reached the top.
“South gate is closed and under our control.”
Another voice cut over it.
“No one closes anything without Marcela Reyes’s authority.”
“Reyes murdered Ciro,” another cut in.
Then three men began shouting at once.
Rafael lowered the volume until the voices became a murmur.
“Left,” I whispered.
Lachlan’s hand settled briefly against my hip as I cut around the corner.
The passage opened into the rear of the main floor’s storage rooms.
I stopped before another hidden panel, and Lachlan nearly walked into me.
“What?” he whispered.
“Voices.”
He went silent.
Two men were arguing somewhere just beyond the wall.
One wanted to get to the armory.
The other wanted a truck and whatever cash he could find before all the gates closed.
Their footsteps moved away.
I counted to three.
“Okay, let’s go.”
I pushed the panel open.
Lachlan slipped past me before I could take the first step into the room, his pistol already raised.
He checked the aisles between the rows of supplies and wooden crates, then looked back at me.
“Clear,” he mouthed.
Rafael emerged behind us.
We moved.
The storage room had always seemed enormous when I came through it alone at night. Now every aisle felt too narrow, every turn too exposed.
A burst of gunfire cracked somewhere above us.
I flinched, but kept going.
At the far end, there were two doors. Lachlan reached for the wrong door.
“No, wait.”
He turned.
“The other one.”
“What’s behind this?”
“Main kitchen corridor. It’s too open.”
I hurried to the smaller door beside a stack of empty coffee sacks.
“This one goes behind the laundry room.”
Lachlan gave me one quick look.
Approval.
Then he opened it and went through first.
The south utility corridor stretched ahead of us with no one in sight.
“Move,” Rafael whispered.
We hurried down the corridor, keeping our steps as quiet as possible.
Lachlan stayed close enough that I could hear the slight irregularity in his stride whenever his left foot hit the floor, but he never asked us to slow down.
At the first intersection, we heard fast-approaching footsteps.
I pointed toward a recessed doorway, and the three of us pressed into it.
A young guard ran past with an assault rifle clutched against his chest.
He never looked our way.
Rafael’s radio came alive again with the faint sound of a voice.
“Mateo has men at the west armory entrance.”
“Then fucking shoot them.”
“Who gave that order?”
“Rafael did.”
A pause.
He keyed the radio.
“Anyone still loyal to Ciro, detain Marcela Reyes.”
Someone cursed him.
Another man answered immediately.
“Understood.”
Rafael released the button.
“They’re choosing sides fast. Sounds like more of Ciro’s men are falling in behind Mateo and Reyes.”
“We don’t need much longer,” Lachlan said.
A few steps farther, Lachlan opened the door at the end of the corridor and eased out beneath the covered loading bay.
Daylight hit me hard after the darkness below.
I stopped just inside the doorway.
The loading bay was big enough to handle supplies for the entire finca, with pallets and wooden crates stacked beneath the metal roof. A forklift sat abandoned beside a jeep, and several work trucks had been left wherever their drivers happened to be when the shooting started.
Beyond the covered loading bay, the concrete lot stretched roughly sixty yards to the retaining wall at the lower edge of the compound.
A service road ran along the wall, climbing toward the higher northern buildings in one direction and dropping farther down the mountain in the other.
Our way out was almost directly across from us.
A maintenance door had been built into the retaining wall, giving access to the drainage channel on the other side.
A large box truck sat crooked beside it, its rear jutting into the loading area and its cab angled closer to the service door.
The driver’s door hung open, and a dead man sagged halfway out of the cab.
Wonderful.
At least the truck gave us cover once we got there.
Getting there was the problem.
A row of five work trucks stretched partway across the loading area. Beyond the last one was a wide section of open concrete, then a pallet stacked chest-high with wooden supply crates near the middle of the yard.
After that, nothing stood between the crates and the truck beside the service door.
Men ran between the surrounding buildings, carrying rifles and ammunition boxes. I noticed one of the gardeners sprinting toward the fields. Someone shouted from the upper walkway, and another gunshot cracked somewhere closer to the main house.
Rafael came up behind me.
“The trucks will get us partway across. We’ll use the crates after that, then make the last run to the wall.”
Lachlan studied the open ground.
“Where exactly are we going?”
I pointed. “See the door behind the abandoned truck?”
“Aye.”
“That opens into the maintenance access for the drainage channel. Once we’re through there, we can follow it down the mountain.”
“It’s about sixty yards across the yard.”
Lachlan looked across it again.
“Longest fucking sixty yards I’ve ever seen.”
Despite myself, I almost smiled.
Rafael moved first.
We slipped along the edge of the loading bay and reached the first truck without anyone noticing us.
Then the second.
I counted the vehicles as we moved, because apparently my brain had decided numbers were preferable to thinking about how many armed men were trying to kill one another around us.
Three.
Four.
We were almost to the fifth when Lachlan caught my shoulder.
“Stay.”
A man stepped out from behind the truck.
His attention landed on Lachlan.
Confusion lasted less than a second, then recognition hit.
His rifle started to come up, but Lachlan fired first.
The man dropped beside the rear tire.
Everything changed.
Someone shouted from across the yard, and another voice answered.
Then bullets started hitting the concrete.
“Move,” Lachlan ordered.
Lachlan caught my hand as we broke from cover, keeping me beside him as we ran.
His limp was gone. Or maybe he was just good at ignoring pain.
Rafael fired toward a man near the utility building while Lachlan surged ahead of me with his pistol low in one hand.
We cleared the last truck.
The pallet of crates suddenly looked a hell of a lot farther away than it had from the door.
A bullet struck the concrete off to my right.
Another chipped the pavement behind my boot.
I ran harder.
Lachlan reached the crates first and turned.
His hand caught the back of my backpack and hauled me the final step behind the pallet just as another shot cracked past us.
I dropped into a crouch beside him.
“Stay down.”
“I know.”
“Aye, I’m learning that.”
Rafael slid in behind the crates beside us, breathing hard but still holding his gun at the ready.
I eased up enough to peek over the top of the crates, but Lachlan jerked me back down.
The abandoned truck beside the retaining wall was our last cover before the service door. Its driver was already dead, one more body added to the chaos. I wondered how many more would die before this day was over.
Between us and it was nothing but open concrete.
Lachlan followed my gaze.
“The service door’s right behind that truck,” I said.
“Then let’s go.” He nodded.
Rafael crouched beside us and checked the courtyard behind us.
“I’ll cover the rear.”
Lachlan shifted closer to me. “You stay close to me.”
“I have been.”
His mouth twitched despite the gunfire.
“Good girl.”
Under any other circumstances, those two words would have done terrible things to my concentration.
At the moment, I was mostly trying not to get shot.
Lachlan leaned out from behind the crates.
A man moved near the road along the retaining wall.
Lachlan brought his pistol up and fired.
The man stumbled backward and went down beside the retaining wall.
“Now!”
Lachlan reached for me without looking back. I put my hand in his, and we took off toward the truck.
Rafael followed close behind us, firing once toward someone moving along the upper level.
The truck looked impossibly far away.
Bullets struck the concrete somewhere behind us.
I ran harder.
Lachlan stayed slightly ahead of me without letting go, his body naturally taking the more exposed side.
Another shot cracked from our left.
Lachlan released my hand long enough to turn and fire toward where the round had come from.
“Keep going.”
I did.
Rafael fired behind us.
I was suddenly running between the two of them, Lachlan covering the area ahead while Rafael protected our backs. Neither man had discussed it. They had simply arranged themselves around me as though keeping me out of the line of fire had become another part of the escape plan.
The truck was twenty yards away.
Then ten.
I could see the maintenance door behind it now.
Lachlan reached the back of the truck first and grabbed the top of my backpack, hauling me behind the rear corner.
I stumbled against him.
“Stay down.”
“I know.”
“I know you know. Do it anyway.”
Rafael came in behind us.
I couldn’t believe we’d made it.
The long cargo box gave us cover from most of the courtyard, but the service door was still several yards ahead beside the cab.
Rafael started along the side of the truck toward it, already pulling out a leather strap with a key.
“Rafael!” a man shouted.
He turned.
The man stood on the upper walkway with a rifle braced against his shoulder.
His attention wasn’t on Lachlan or me.
He was aiming directly at Rafael.
“Ciro’s dead, old man. You picked the wrong side. Die with him.”
The rifle fired.
Rafael’s body lurched beside me.
“No!”
Blood spread almost instantly across his shirt beneath his ribs.
Lachlan’s pistol snapped up and fired.
The man above jerked backward into the railing and disappeared from sight.