Chapter 4
Camille was ready. She rolled her shoulders and felt the slide of her muscles against her camisole. Maybe it was only the effect of the adrenaline surging through her system, but she felt her position of power all the way to her toes. This random fate that had befallen her, to die at the hands of a bunch of criminals for a cause that wasn’t her own, was about to get the shaft.
She walked to the door. “Ready?”
Aaron stood behind her, the .38 Special brushing her shoulder. “Let’s do it.”
She opened the door a crack, listening. A television set blared from the direction she and Aaron had been brought into the building, with a woman shouting in Spanish like a game show announcer might, against a background of hooting and cheers from an audience. Unable to hear anything above the din, she nosed her head through the doorway.
Somewhere nearby, a door banged closed. Camille flinched and pulled back, listening until she picked up the barely audible sound of a man’s voice amid the television’s noise. Then a second person spoke. A child. At the sound of Rosalia’s pixie voice, Camille ached. She wanted to scoop the little girl up and run with her back to California, straight to the loving arms of her mother. But instead of acting impetuously and getting them all killed in a firefight, the best she could do for Rosalia was escape and tell U.S. authorities where to find her. Still, it was heart wrenching to leave her behind.
They crept into the hallway and turned right, toward three closed doors. It felt like Russian roulette, picking a door to open not knowing who or what was on the other side, but they had no other options.
Camille turned the knob of the first door. Aaron placed a hand on the small of her back and the barrel of his gun on her shoulder, angling it through the opening. She scanned the darkness. Someone slept on a cot along the wall. He stirred and rolled on his side. Holding her breath, she closed the door.
They tiptoed to the next room, though the blaring television program masked the sound of their movement. Aaron placed his hand on the doorknob. Camille wasn’t tall enough to aim her weapon over his shoulder, so she slid it along his side, under his arm. The knob turned; the seconds ticked by. Aaron stuck his face through the crack. He smiled at Camille and stepped inside. Camille followed, closing the door behind her.
This room was not as dark as the first. The window was uncurtained and unbarred. A row of wooden crates identical to those pushed out of the plane sat along one wall, stacked two high. On another wall stood a table weighed down with piles of American cash.
Camille walked to the crates and tried to lift one. “Help me with this.”
“What are you doing?”
“These guys are weapons smugglers, right? So what do you think’s in these boxes, donations to Goodwill?”
“You guard the door. I’ll look inside.” He tucked the gun into his waistband. Camille tried to ignore the zing of desire that hit her at that maneuver. What a stupid thing to think about when their lives were in danger. On second thought, it was a stupid thing to think about at any time. She had no business ever thinking about Aaron’s pants or what he put in them.
He lifted a box to the ground and dumped packing peanuts on the floor.
“This was the best idea you’ve ever had, Blondie.”
With her rifle aimed at the closed door, she walked backward until she stood over the box. Aaron was right. This was the best idea she’d ever had. She didn’t even care that he’d called her that terrible name again because in the box, nestled in a black nylon bag, were ten Smith & Wesson M&P 9 mm pistols. With silencers. And boxes of ammunition.
Aaron moved the .38 from the front of his waistband to the back. He screwed a silencer on to a 9 mm and loaded the magazine. Repeating the process with a second pistol, he handed it to Camille. She tucked it into her jeans.
“Don’t you want to trade up for the silent model?” Aaron asked with honest surprise.
Camille wasn’t about to admit her gun-handling defect. “Like you said, size matters.”
He snorted and moved the bag to the table. “I’ll look in the next box. You load this with cash.”
They set to work. Within the span of a few minutes, their luck had improved tenfold. Instead of two guns with limited ammunition, they now had two AR-15 assault rifles, four 9 mm pistols with silencers, countless rounds of ammo, four grenades and—by Camille’s hasty count—two hundred and fifty thousand U.S. dollars.
The grenades were an interesting find. Camille would have had no moral qualms against blowing up the compound and everyone in it if Rosalia hadn’t been present. Then she had another idea. It would be extremely risky, but still, it might work.
“Aaron, are there any more grenades in those boxes?”
The woman had balls, figuratively of course. Aaron was sure he couldn’t have come up with a better plan if given a week to think about it. He rummaged through the boxes until he found another grenade, which he handed to Camille. Replacing the lid, he moved the box under the window to use as a step.
“I’ll be right back,” she whispered.
Her destination was across the hall, to the room that had been their prison. They were about to kill two people and Aaron couldn’t find it in his heart to be upset. He was more disturbed that it didn’t bother him.
Rifle in hand and the game-changing bag of booty slung over his shoulder, he stood on the box. From the looks of it, the rear wall of the house ran parallel to the western wall of the compound, with about three feet between the two. Plenty of room to jump and run.
Camille returned, sprinting through the door and kicking it shut as the grenade detonated. The explosion was earth-rattling. Aaron’s ears rang and the door nearly came off its hinges. He slammed the rifle butt into the glass. He couldn’t hear it break over the din of the explosion but felt the pane give way. After sweeping the rifle across the window to clear it of glass, he moved out of Camille’s way.
In a flash of golden mane and lithe limbs, she jumped out the window. Aaron landed behind her and they ran, staying low under the windows along the north side of the building. Aaron peered around the corner at the crowd in the courtyard surrounding the crater that used to be their hostage-holding room.
A five-foot gap loomed between the house and a shed. Though Camille’s ruse was working, it was still a leap of faith to zip between the buildings in plain sight. If only one man looked in their direction, they were dead. Aaron went first, holding his breath for the three steps it took to make the pass. They followed the path of the compound wall to the end of the shed, which still left them with a solid two car lengths of empty space to reach the entrance gate.
A burly man with a full beard and a rifle was standing inside the locked gate, yelling and gesturing to the men at the explosion site. Aaron knew what needed to be done and said a prayer for forgiveness. He’d never been a particularly religious man, but he was about to murder someone pointblank. At least with the grenade, Aaron didn’t have to watch anyone die. This time, though, he was going to look a man in the eyes and shoot him.
“I got this.” He picked up a rock and threw it against the wall, waiting for the guard to investigate. His heart pounded out of control and his hands were sweaty, but he wiped them on his jeans and manned up. Their lives depended on this and he wasn’t going to act like a sissy by getting all shaky and nervous.
The guard’s shadow gave him away first. His stomach came into view, then his arms and gun. Aaron fired two rounds, one into his head and the other into his chest. Though the sound of the shots was blunted by a silencer, the plunk plunk still echoed between the shed and the compound wall.
Aaron worked hard to ignore the significance of what he’d done as he frisked the dead man for keys, finding them in