I’d rather die than let them put me on that plane.
The thought of dying snapped her out of her despair. Maybe she had misjudged the brothers, but they were still just a couple of small-time thugs. Jenna had survived more than one attempt on her life this night, from people a lot tougher and a lot smarter than Carlos and Raul, and she was not about to let these assholes stop her from figuring out who was after her and why.
As the ringing in her ears relented, she realized that Raul was almost face to face with her, shouting threats and obscenities, showering her face with spittle.
“Okay!” she shouted, or rather tried to. Blood and saliva had gathered at the back of her throat, and when she opened her mouth, it triggered her gag reflex. She turned her head, spat and then tried again. “Okay. I give up.”
Like hell I do.
Raul seemed to hit the pause button on his rage. “I warned you what would happen.”
“I know you did. I’m sorry.” It was another lie, but she didn’t care if he believed it or not. What mattered was his reaction to what came next. “I didn’t tell you the truth about Noah. About my father.”
“You think I care about that?”
“You should,” she said, choking on another mouthful of blood. Her tongue probed the inside of one cheek where Raul’s blow had shredded it against her teeth. “He’s dead.”
All the fight went out of Raul, but he did not move, did not release her. “Dead?”
“Someone killed him. Some very bad, very connected people, and they’re after me now. That’s why I came to you.” Jenna paused, partly to let the words sink in, and partly because she wasn’t sure exactly how to play this wild card.
The pressure at her chest abruptly vanished, but before she could think about trying to turn it to her advantage, Raul knotted his hand in her hair and hauled her erect. A whimper of pain escaped her lips, the motion aggravating all of her injuries all at once. He yanked her forward, striding away. She had no choice but to follow, jogging to keep up, a dog on a leash.
She had run much further than she realized. The Corvette’s headlamps were just pinpricks of light, far down the landing strip, a beacon guiding them onward. The trek was an excruciating ordeal. Raul kept tugging the handful of hair in his fist. But Jenna used the time to concentrate on what she would say next. If she got this wrong, she would have very few options left, and all of them were of a very final nature.
I won’t die without knowing why Noah was killed, she promised herself.
Carlos met them halfway, and even in the darkness, Jenna could see the laughter in his eyes. “This one’s a tiger. She almost got away from you, hermanito.”
“Maybe I need to tame her,” Raul answered. His words were clipped, his breathing rapid, whether from the exertion of the chase or from anticipation, Jenna could not say.
“Better not,” Carlos answered. “She’s worth a lot more if she’s still got her cherry.” He pushed his face close to Jenna. “How ‘bout it, girl? You still a virgin?”
Jenna almost spat in his cold, calculating face, but stopped herself. Angry people were easy to manipulate but only if the anger wasn’t directed at the person trying to do the manipulating.
“She says her old man is dead,” Raul intoned. “Someone offed him.”
“Yeah? Damn, all of a sudden it’s like Christmas. I’ll send a ‘thank you’ card to whoever did it.”
“You don’t want to mess with the people who did it,” Jenna managed to say. She hoped she had judged the brothers correctly. A taunt like that might very well push them away from the thing she planned to use as bait.
“Oh?” Carlos made a clucking noise. “The captain made some very bad friends, did he? I’ll bet he wishes he’d done business with us instead.”
“They’re looking for me now,” Jenna went on. “They think I can lead them to their money.”
Jenna thought it sounded contrived, but maybe that was because she knew it was a falsehood. Or is it? Suddenly, she wasn’t sure anymore. What if Mercy had gotten it wrong? Maybe Noah had been involved in something illegal? Maybe the attack on the boat had been some kind of organized crime vendetta? The fact that she could not easily dismiss the notion ate at Jenna’s resolve like a cancer. I have to know the truth. I have to get to Noah’s fire alarm.
Carlos had heard only one word, and he repeated it almost breathlessly. “Money?”
She let the seed of the idea germinate in silence as she allowed herself to be drawn closer to the shining headlights. What she needed to do next would work better if she could see their faces, though she was in no hurry to get closer to the waiting airplane. When she could finally look her tormentors in the eyes, she elaborated. “A lot of money. Noah hid it somewhere in the ‘Glades.”
Carlos gestured for Raul to release Jenna, and then he gripped her arms and held her so he could study her face. She realized that he was using the same lie detecting techniques she had — reading eye movements to detect intention and duplicity — and she made a willful effort to control her reactions. The look of fear came easily enough. Then she tapped into the possibilities of what Noah might have concealed in Homestead, making her fabrication feel authentic, even to herself.
“How much?”
Jenna shrugged. “I don’t know. A lot, I guess. Enough to kill for.” She looked up as if hit by a lightning bolt of inspiration. “I’ll take you to it, if you let me go.”
Carlos shook his head. “Why don’t you just tell me where it is? If it’s there, then maybe we can make a deal.”
His eyes did not betray the lie she knew he was telling. He had no intention of letting her go. Nevertheless, she smiled as if she believed him. “I can’t tell you exactly how to get there. I’d have to show you. But it’s all yours if you want it. Just promise to let me go.”
Raul was shaking his head, looking at the screen of his smartphone. He held it up, revealing a news report about shots being fired at the marina. “This is messed up, hermano. Her story is legit. Someone killed the old guy because of it. That’s heat we don’t need.”
Carlos ignored his brother. “The Everglades. That’s pretty vague. Narrow it down for me.”
“If you promise to let me go.” Jenna needed him to believe that she was desperate enough to trust his word.
“I don’t make promises like that, little girl. But I promise that if you’re screwing with me, you’re going to wish we’d just stuck to the plan and sold your ass. Now, where in the ‘Glades?”
“Near Homestead.” She let her lip quiver a little, as if she wanted to say more but knew better. Carlos snapped his fingers in a ‘tell me more’ gesture, but she just shook her head.
He stared at her a moment longer, then turned to Raul. “Get your car off the runway.”
It took Jenna a moment to comprehend the significance of this. “We’re flying?”
“We can be at Homestead in less than an hour by air,” Carlos replied. He didn’t seem irritated by the question, but when he grabbed her arm and pulled her toward the airplane, his forcefulness silenced her. He shoved her onto the plane’s wing and opened the door that lay just above it. “Get in.”
She complied, squirming through the opening into the claustrophobic confines of the cabin. It was her first time in any kind of aircraft. She had expected it to be more spacious, but then she could not have imagined that her first flight would be under these circumstances. As she settled into a seat just behind the cockpit, she surveyed every detail of her environment like a general studying a battlefield in anticipation of a fight. As a last resort, she was prepared to crash the plane by attacking the pilot — presumably Carlos — on take-off or landing.