He had a vintage Zippo lighter in his jacket pocket. He didn’t smoke, but he’d found it handy to carry a lighter anyway. There was always a chance you might come across a beautiful woman who needed a light—or a Molotov cocktail. And because they were designed to withstand the rigors of combat, Zippos were extremely reliable. He fished his out now, flipped open the top, and spun the wheel as he held it to the gas-soaked piece of shirt.
The flame caught instantly, flaring up. Cierra glanced over her shoulder and cried out in alarm.
Gabriel was already tossing the gas can out the back of the jeep, though. He heaved it hard, knowing that it would explode in seconds and wanting to be as far away when it did as possible. The can hit the road, bounced once as the motorcyclists saw it and tried to steer around it.
Then a ball of fire bloomed in the night like a red and orange and blue flower, covering the road almost from one side to the other. Gabriel caught a glimpse of two of the bikes being engulfed in it, and then he couldn’t see them anymore.
The fourth and final man zoomed his bike toward the hillside, though, driving up on the slope to avoid the burst of flame. Gabriel grimaced as he watched the man wrestle the motorcycle back onto the road, past the fire. The pitch of the bike’s engine rose even more as its rider accelerated in pursuit of the jeep.
A horn blared from the other direction, and Cierra said, “Gabriel!”
He twisted around, saw some sort of big, heavy luxury car coming up the hill straight at them. During the last turn, Cierra had been forced to drift out of her lane and into the facing one. They were seconds away from a head-on collision, with a vicious killer coming up behind them.
“Brake!” Gabriel shouted. “Stand on it!”
Cierra slammed both feet on the brake pedal. Rubber screamed against the pavement. Smoke rose from the tires as they locked and skidded. The other vehicle was trying to stop, too.
But the motorcycle was going too fast. Gabriel saw it coming and ducked. At the last second the rider tried to lay the bike down, but he was too late. It slammed into the back of the jeep but the rider kept going, soaring into the air and flying completely over Cierra’s niño, screaming every bit of the way.
That scream was cut off as the man crunched into the front grille of the luxury car. The car was still moving, and the impact must have pulped every bone in the assassin’s body. The car finally rocked to a stop, but not before running over the man as well.
“Go around them,” Gabriel told Cierra. She sat hunched over the wheel, breathing heavily.
“What? But shouldn’t we check on those people in the car?”
“More of Esparza’s men may be on their way. Go around them.” He stuck his head out the back window and checked the damage the motorcycle had done when it rear-ended the jeep. The fender was bashed in, but that appeared to be the extent of it.
“Go!” he said again to Cierra, and this time she complied. The jeep was still running. She gave it gas, veered around the stopped car, and shot down the hillside.
A minute later they reached the bottom of the slope. Paseo de la Reforma was nearby, and once they got onto the boulevard, they could blend into the heavy traffic that hardly ever let up, night or day.
“We need a place where Esparza can’t find us,” Gabriel said.
“Us?” Cierra repeated.
“I didn’t want you in the middle of this, but you are. Now that Esparza’s seen you with me, he’s written you off. Clearly he told those bikers to kill us both.”
“Then we should go to the police. We can tell them what happened…” Cierra’s voice trailed off, and after a moment she said in a dull tone, “That won’t work, will it? As much money as Vladimir has, the authorities would never believe us. Even if they did, they wouldn’t go against him.”
Gabriel nodded. “That’s right. I’d say our only chance is to get out of Mexico City and beat Esparza to whatever it is he’s after.”
“You mean…”
“I’m sorry, Cierra.”
“We’re going to Chiapas, aren’t we?”
“And wherever the trail leads us from there.”
“Chiapas,” he heard her mutter as her hands tightly gripped the wheel. “You know how to make a girl’s night, Gabriel Hunt.”
Going back to the hotel would be too risky, Gabriel decided, and returning to the museum was out of the question. The police would still be there, and Esparza might have men watching both places. Cierra’s apartment wasn’t safe either, since Esparza knew where she lived.
“He’s never been there, though,” she snapped. “So get what ever you were thinking out of your head.”
“I wasn’t thinking anything,” Gabriel lied. “Is there somewhere else we can go that he wouldn’t know about?”
Cierra thought it over for a moment, then said, “The old man who was the foreman on the plantation when I was a little girl lives here in Mexico City now. I’ve tried to keep in touch with him. He’s really the closest thing to family I have left from that time. I’m sure I’ve never mentioned him to Vladimir. And he retired from the plantation so long ago, even if Vladimir investigated my background he wouldn’t have turned up Pancho’s name.”
Gabriel nodded. “He sounds perfect. That is, if you don’t mind involving him in this.”
“I don’t know where else to go.” She laughed softly. “And Pancho is a fierce old buzzard. He would feel insulted if he ever found out that I was in trouble and didn’t come to him.”
“All right. Let’s go there now, before Esparza has a chance to pick up our trail again.”
A few minutes later Cierra left Paseo de la Reforma and turned onto a highway that led out of the city. “Pancho lives in a colonia on the southern edge of town,” she explained.
“Does he live alone?” Gabriel asked.
Cierra laughed. “Oh, no. His wife and their children and their grandchildren and great-grandchildren live with him. It’s a very extended family.”
Gabriel hated to get that many more innocent people involved. “It would probably be a good idea to tell this old friend of yours as little as possible about what’s going on,” he suggested.
“I’d trust Pancho with my life,” she said.
“That’s exactly what you’ll be doing…but I was thinking more for his sake than ours. If he can just give us a place to stay for the night, in the morning we can leave for Chiapas.”
Cierra nodded. She was still taking things awfully well, Gabriel thought, considering that just a few hours ago she hadn’t thought that the night held anything more than another boring cocktail party among the rich and beautiful at Esparza’s villa. The possibility of being surrounded by violence and death had surely never entered her head. Normal people just didn’t think about such things.
Which just went to show you, Gabriel thought wryly, how far from normal his life was…
It took quite a while in the heavy traffic to reach the colonia where Pancho Guzman lived with his large family. It was a lower-middle-class neighborhood with narrow, winding streets but what appeared to be fairly spacious, well-kept houses behind narrow lawns. Cierra brought the jeep to a stop behind a rusty old pickup, in front of a house where one light still burned in a front window. Most of the houses along the street were already dark, because this was a working neighborhood where people turned in early so they could get up and go to their jobs the next morning.
When Gabriel and Cierra got out, Cierra went to the back of the jeep and examined the damage the motorcycle had done when it crashed into the vehicle. With a look of dismay, she shook her head.