Page 62

He gestures toward a neatly made bed across the room. “Get some sleep, or you’ll be useless to Marisol. And trust me when I say I won’t hesitate to put a bullet in your brain if you get that niña hurt.”
Ruiz turns his back on me to focus on his computers.
Knot steps away from Ruiz, blocking the man’s sight of me. “He’s right. You’re already twenty-four hours without sleep. You won’t make it much longer.”
Knot reaches for the small bag attached to my pack, Piper’s bag. “I’ll take care of Piper. You get some sleep.”
Five hours later, a door slams, waking me in the unfamiliar bed. I spring up, only moving my hand from my gun when I notice Knot’s calm demeanor. Ruiz hugs the visitor and starts making introductions. “Gentlemen, this is Ozzie.”
The younger man wastes no time on pleasantries. In heavily accented English, he says, “The niña is okay. She’s locked in a room on the top floor of the main hacienda. The marriage is to take place in the morning. At eleven. Cruz is setting everything up in the garden.”
While he speaks, I step forward, loaded with questions. “How many guests are to be in attendance?”
Ozzie doesn’t understand the question, so Ruiz repeats it in Spanish.
“Ah. maybe cincuenta.”
“Fifty,” Ruiz interprets.
I shift my eyes toward Knot, a brilliant military strategist.
“That the wedding isn’t in a secondary location makes this more difficult.”
I agree. Cruz has home-field advantage. Sneaking inside the private estate will be more difficult, and his security people will be more likely to employ lethal force on intruders. “What about Borrero? He’s the only leverage Cruz has against Marisol. Who’s on him?”
Ruiz is quiet for a moment. “It’s supposed to be me.”
My eyes grow big as saucers. Losing her father would hurt Marisol. “Then who the hell is watching him?!”
“No one. I didn’t know who I could trust. Believe me, Cirilo wants me here. When I spoke to him last, he said to save Marisol, no matter the cost.”
Since I don’t disagree, I turn to Ozzie. “Tell us everything you know so we can figure out how.”
The man nods and points to Ruiz’s computer screen. Over the next two hours, he walks us through the entire Cruz property layout, pointing out security beats, camera locations, and gates. We learn what time the different staff members arrive, when the trash is picked up, and the typical security schedule.
Of course, security will be stepped up for tomorrow, but he even has a schematic for that. He informed us that sneaking onto the property would have been difficult, even without the extra patrols. “What about the wedding vendors? Can we breeze in with them?”
“No. Cruz is only using those in his inner circle. They would out you before you could even get close to the gate. It’ll be risky, but your only chance is to sneak onto the property far from the main and service entrances. The dogs will be put away at seven to allow the vendors in. Security will be focused on the side gate to check those coming in,” he says, pointing to a symbol on the property survey. Shifting his aim to another point, he adds, “You should enter here. Security will be minimal. It’s your only chance.”
“You won’t have a patrol watching that gate?”
Ozzie smiles. “Si. Me.”
“Cruz is bound to find out you helped us. Are you willing to risk your life for us?”
“I’m not doing it for you. I’m doing it for the mija. She is part of my family.”
“Then that’s our in,” I agree.
“Ok, so we know how to get in, but we’re no closer to figuring out how to locate and extract Marisol,” Knot points out. “Ozzie?”
He shakes his head. “She’ll have four guards outside her door, and her balcony is too high to reach, not to mention being on the back of the house in plain view of the wedding setup.”
How the hell are we supposed to do this? “We’re not going to be able to get her out in time.”
Nothing we’ve heard gives anyone the confidence to contradict me. Knot reaches out and squeezes my shoulder. “It doesn’t matter. We can undo the legal shit once we get her out.”
He’s right, but I don’t care. When Marisol says, ‘I do,’ I want it to be for me.