"No, but the point, Jack, is that it will help if I can find out what they want you to do. That will tell us who's pulling the strings, and then Evelyn and I can scour our contact lists for someone who can get inside information. Go through the back door."
"Right," Jack said. "Okay. Good. Appreciate it."
"I know you do, and while I won't turn down a return favor, this is mostly for Dee and Quinn. Yes, I know you aren't a fan of Quinn's, but he's saved my skin a few times. I owe him. Let me see what the news is on the grapevine for cartels and political assassination jobs."
"Thanks."
"You're welcome. Evelyn? Let's put our heads together on this while Jack drives."
As soon as they neared the GPS spot, Jack knew what had happened. It didn't take Sherlock Holmes to read the signs. Skid marks suggested a hard braking on the road. Then tire treads led into a partly overgrown laneway, the undergrowth mowed down. When Jack slowed driving past, he could peer down that lane and see the rear bumper of a car.
"They ran her off the road," Evelyn said.
Jack kept driving. "No. She led them off. That's not her car. Too big. Not a rental either. She made them. Braked. Drove down there. They got stuck."
"And you're doubting that she can handle herself?"
"Never said that. Everyone can use help."
He found another pull-in farther down and drove the rental in as far as he could and then pulled off to the side, rolling over the rough ground until he was sure the car couldn't be spotted from the road.
"We need to be ready for a trap, Jack," Evelyn said as he opened the door.
"Know that. But her phone's on. Gotta be a reason."
The reason he hoped was that Nadia had known she was about to be taken and ditched the phone so Evelyn would contact Felix and unlock the GPS. But there was also a good chance that whoever took her had left that phone on intentionally, to see who might come looking.
Jack checked his watch. Just under ninety minutes until the cartel goons would call "Cillian" again.
He got out and looked around. Everything seemed quiet, but that didn't mean shit. He started in the direction of the GPS signal, his own phone out, using a tracker Felix had installed remotely. Evelyn followed. They were about five hundred feet out from the signal now.
They'd barely gone another dozen paces before voices floated over, men speaking Spanish. Evelyn tried to catch his eye, but he ignored her. The men weren't whispering so it wasn't a trap. Maybe they'd come back for Nadia's missing cell phone. Or a missing comrade she'd killed. Trap or not, Jack would still approach with care.
He covered half the distance to the voices. He'd picked up some Spanish over the years--couldn't really avoid it, living in the States--but fuck, it wasn't like he'd studied it or anything. He wasn't like Nadia, who learned new things just because she found them interesting. While he was more likely to pick up a novel than turn on the TV, he'd never been good at school. He'd dropped out to become a mechanic. That's what he was good at--figuring out stuff like engines. Or how to kill people without them knowing they were about to be killed.
From what he could pick up, the men were hunting for something or someone, which he'd already guessed. He looked at Evelyn. She knew more Spanish, but she was frowning, head tilted, and he suspected it wasn't so much a language barrier as the fact she couldn't hear the voices as well as he could. She was too vain to wear a hearing aid until her doctor recommended one. Which meant she got along fine in day-to-day conversation. But ask her to decipher one a few hundred feet away and she struggled.
Jack hunkered down. Evelyn motioned to say she wanted to get closer. He raised his hand, telling her to hold on. He picked apart the voices and the sounds of movement. Two men talking. What sounded like a third searching without adding to the dialogue.
He lifted three fingers and then pointed in each direction. Moving to the side, he scanned the best view of the playing field. Then he indicated a route they'd take. Evelyn didn't argue, which was as sure a sign as any that she needed to rely on him to hear from this distance.
Jack aimed for the silent guy first. When he drew close enough, he motioned for Evelyn to continue toward the other two, in hopes she'd overhear their conversation better, though he knew not to say so. Pointing out Evelyn's weaknesses was like intentionally stepping on a tiger's tail.
He slipped through the woods until he could see the third man. It was a young guy, maybe mid-twenties. Not Hispanic, which may have explained why he wasn't joining the conversation--most likely local hired help, not considered a real part of the team. He was clearly hunting for something, doubled over and pulling back shrubs and undergrowth. Paying absolutely no attention to his surrounding. That preoccupation meant Jack could get within ten feet. He lined up his shot and put a bullet through the back of the guy's head, dropping him to the ground with a thump no louder than the suppressed shot. His two comrades continued talking, oblivious.
Jack pulled brush over the dead man's head to hide his light hair. As for the guy himself, the only thought Jack spared him was to wonder, for a moment, whether he ought to spare him a thought. Whether Nadia would. You couldn't be a philosopher in this job. Or much of a humanist, for that matter. Only now
that he was with Nadia did he pause to contemplate what she'd think. Because that was still the only criterion that mattered. Not whether it was right or wrong, but whether it might bother her. This wouldn't. Yeah, the guy was young, but he wasn't a child. He knew what he was getting into, and if he didn't believe it could cost him his life, that was just stupidity. No cure for that.
Jack remembered the first time he'd really understood the risks himself. He'd been sixteen when the group recruited him, and all he'd cared about was showing his brothers he wasn't a little kid. Second mission, he took out his mark with ease and then realized one of the other recruits had been made. Jack killed the guy who made him, but not before the guy popped off a shot. Wasn't fatal, and Jack dragged his comrade into an empty building. That's when his handler came along, decided the guy needed serious medical care and popped him two in the head.
The kid had been six months older than Jack. Signed up because his infant daughter was sick and he needed money for medicine.
"Too fucking bad," his handler said when Jack protested. "He wanted safe? Shoulda stayed on the farm."
That was when Jack realized that not only could he die, but if he fucked up, his termination papers would be the permanent variety. And all he'd taken from that lesson? That he had to make himself less disposable. Had to be so fucking good that if he'd been shot, they'd have gotten him to a fucking hospital.
As for the rest? Well, if he wanted safe, he could go back to being a mechanic's apprentice, making a couple bucks an hour and praying the boss's rusted hoist didn't drop a car on him. You make your choices. You live with them. Or die with them.