From other corners of the house I heard screams of pain, Chuch shouting in Spanish, and the staccato report of automatic weapons. Pausing by a window while Jesse scouted ahead, I caught a glimpse of Chance slipping through an open doorway across the courtyard, gun blazing. Then I remembered it was stupid to stand in front of a window at a time like this and dove around the corner.
“We should move along, see if we can find Min,” I said. “Sounds like the others are cleaning house.”
“You’ve got some scary friends, Corine.”
If I hadn’t been so nervous I would have laughed. He didn’t know the half of it. Inside the house, someone screamed in pain.
Jesse shot three more guys and nearly took a bullet himself as we fought our way up the stairs. I tried to stay out of the way, but I did whack one with my flashlight as he stumbled past Saldana. He staggered and Jesse lashed out with a neat kick that sent him spinning over the railing. At the halfway point up the stairway, the lights showered sparks and gave out entirely. Finally, there was something I could do.
I turned my Maglite on. “Better?”
“Much.”
The house had a strange, spooky air, the dark split only by my yellow beam. I heard staccato gunfire in the distance and screams that were often cut off abruptly. Around each turn I never knew what we’d find: bad guys, our crew, or nothing at all.
“Booke said the only other way off this mountain was to fly,” Jesse whispered. “So he’ll have a chopper somewhere on grounds and maybe a panic room. We should be looking for both.”
That lit a fire under me. We searched room to room, looking for any sign of more kidnapped girls or Yi Min-chin. We found evidence of Kel’s or Chance’s passage in several corridors, strewn bodies and pools of blood where they had swept through and cleared the way for us. Jesse and I had covered almost the whole second story when we entered a lavish bedroom. It looked like a woman would sleep here, and as I stepped inside, I smelled Min’s perfume, White Linen.
“She was here,” I said. “I’m sure of it.”
Saldana held the light for me while I searched. I went through the room like a blind person, touching everything. When we opened up the desk drawer, my fingers grazed a metal object that threw a spark.
“Something?”
Chance and Eva stood in the doorway. I hadn’t noticed their arrival. Kel and Chuch crouched behind them, keeping watch for more of Montoya’s men. The mechanic muttered beneath his breath about the need to hurry. “Yeah. Something,” I replied.
Drawing a deep breath, I curled my hand around the pen, accepted the pain as the price of my gift. Agony sizzled through me, echoes of fire, and then I saw a simple image. Min sat at this desk, writing a note. I watched her, and then she rose, folded the thin paper into a tiny square, and slipped it into the frame of the painting that hung beside the window.
The pen slipped from my fingers, struck the floor. Wordlessly I beckoned to Jesse, who aimed the flashlight for me. My hands shook as I delved for what she’d left behind.
Yes, here.
In the circle of light I read her words with him. The shepherdess.
“What the...?” I took the Maglite from Jesse and shone it around the room until I found a white and blue statuette on a high shelf.
“What did it say?” Chance asked.
I sensed his tension as he came toward me. I passed him the note as I moved toward the far wall. And the corridor exploded.
“Incoming!” Chuch shouted.
Oh, Christ, not fire. Not. Fire. Despite my near-prayer, the hall blazed, flames licking up the wall. Shit, they were trying to burn us out. Smoke filled the room in a deadly haze. Chuch fired at Montoya’s men, who were running away. They’d turn this building into our pyre, which meant Montoya was safe somewhere.
Jesse had mentioned something about a panic room. Well, I needed to be there because I could feel terror rising in my brain, threatening my ability to think and reason. A scream caught in my throat, choking me.
I staggered toward the shepherdess. Min had found it important enough to mention, so I’d take a look at it if it was the last thing I did. And it might be.
Eyes watering, I reached up to the shelf and touched it. Tried to pick it up, but it wouldn’t budge. The room swam, and the heat threatened to blister my skin. I could hear the others coughing. I pitched forward and the statue slid forward as in a groove. Through distance roaring in my ears, I heard a click.
Then someone said, “Corine found a door. Let’s go.”
If These Shadows Have Offended
I did what now?
I felt dimly aware of an arm wrapping around my shoulders to guide me down some stairs, but I’d inhaled too much smoke to see anything but a bizarre whorl of messy colors. My flashlight spun around the walls until someone took it from me.
“Close the door!” I thought Saldana said that. “It’s reinforced steel behind the plaster; it’ll provide a fire break for us.”
“Everyone okay?” I tried to ask.
One foot after the other. I could do this. We’d reached the bottom of the staircase before I had all my wits about me again.
“Chuch got burned.” I heard Eva’s voice, but I couldn’t see her until the Maglite shone on her face, now covered with blood and soot. Her eyes glistened with tears, rage, or both. “I don’t know how bad.”
“Molotov cocktails are a bitch,” Chuch grunted. “But I’m okay. Just need some aloe. Don’t worry about me, nena. I’m tough.”
If Chuch got burned, Kel probably did too. But nobody gave a shit about him. In a weird way, that saddened me.
She sniffed. “That’s exactly why I worry about you. You’re too ‘tough’ to admit how bad you’re hurt.”
Kel rejoined us then. I hadn’t even realized he’d slipped off to scout. “It’s like a vault down here,” he reported. “There’s another reinforced door down at the end of this corridor, and it’s locked. Nothing else. There might be another exit from inside the room.”
“Panic room. He probably dug himself an escape tunnel to where they keep the chopper,” Saldana said. “I know I would.”
“The hijo de la chingada better be in there,” Chuch growled. “He owes me some skin and blood.”
Chance had been oddly silent. I sensed his tamped fear and anguish, but we could only move forward. We’d find Min here, one way or another.
“I have a grenade,” I said then. “Any way that’ll get us through the door?”
“Not without a little luck,” Chance said.
Saldana had the flashlight, so he shone it on my ex, and in the beam of light, I saw Chance smile.
So be it.
“Take cover in the staircase,” Saldana ordered.
The others complied. I pulled the pin, took aim, tossed, and then dove around the corner. The subsequent boom certainly alerted Montoya that we’d found his hidey-hole, if he hadn’t already fled, but we couldn’t help that. Time to finish this: for Maris, for Lenny, for those unknown girls, and, not least of all, for Min.
When debris stopped raining down, other than a dusty trickle of plaster, Chuch led the way down the hall. To my disappointment, the metal door stood intact, charred but solid. Then Jesse ran the light along the edges where it joined the cement.
“I never would’ve believed it,” Chuch said, jubilant. “The wall’s starting to crack.”
Thanks, Chance.
Eva took up his train of thought in the seamless way married couples sometimes had. “If we put our backs into it—” She trailed off, probably thinking it was better we just got to it.
After a good minute of solid shoving, the plaster and cement crumbled away and the heavy door toppled inward. I shouted in warning, hoping Min would stand clear. As one, we rushed into the room.