I shifted on the sand, her words suggesting—but not confirming—my dark suspicion. “Suppose you’re right. If he is involved, I’ll be aiming to bring him down myself.”

  “If you mean by that what I think you mean by that, then the sooner we can get you out the better for everyone. Bringing down Carlos is something best left to me.”

  “And why’s that?”

  “Because I can get him to testify.”

  “In exchange for what? Leniency?”

  “That is how it works.”

  “Yeah,” I drawled. “Just what we need. Carlos turning state’s evidence to save his own skin. You want justice for Carlos, you don’t give him a lighter sentence. If he’s as bad as you say he is, you either kill him outright, or you give him what he wants most of all.”

  She frowned. “And what’s that?”

  “A one way ticket back to Cuba.”

  She cocked her head. “Interesting. That might be something we could make happen. He’s got refugee status, as do most Cuban immigrants. A conviction and some key phone calls to INS could revoke his status, and we could send him back.”

  I snorted. “You’re way too easy to convince.”

  “And if you really believed that, then you would be, too.”

  “Exactly.”

  She straightened and ran a hand through her hair. “I won’t ask your approval of what we do. Frankly, I don’t need it. I made you an offer in good faith because it looked to me like you were in over your head. And you are. If you help Carlos, then you become an accessory to his crimes. If you stop Carlos, then you’re guilty of hindering a federal investigation, and I will have no qualms about turning you in. I’m offering you a life line here. My advice? Take the rope.”

  I shoved my hands in my pockets and stared back up the beach at the mansion aglow with the morning sun. A bite from the wind made me shiver. “I’ll consider your offer.”

  Chapter 36

  When I returned to the house, after being greeted by a disinterested grunt from Brueger, I found Mel and Hector in the upstairs room, both looking anxious.

  Evidently, Hector had explained to Mel what I wanted to do. She looked frightened, just not frightened enough. “Will it work?” she asked.

  I turned first to Hector. “Did you get what I asked?”

  He nodded. “How’d you know he’d have this stuff?”

  “Cooking spray? Who doesn’t. It’ll go a lot better with the rest of it, though.”

  “I meant this.” He fished a plastic bag full of white powder from his front pocket.

  “Perfect.” I took it from him and clapped his shoulder. “Lucky guess,” I explained, in answer to his question.

  “Will it kill them?” Mel asked.

  “Keep your voice down!”

  She crossed her arms, an almost defiant look in her eyes. I suspected she already knew the answer, but I gave it anyway, speaking in a low voice I hoped Carlos’s microphones couldn’t pick up. Candi seemed to think they were everywhere, but I’d realized after the incident with Vic on the stairs that Carlos had been ignorant of the whole thing.

  “Depends on how much they ingest,” I told her. “I don’t expect it to, though.”

  She shook her head. “Then what’s the point?”

  “Agitation. Paranoia. Extreme muscle pain and difficulty breathing. That plus this equals a way out. They won’t stop us, and they won’t want to.”

  She threw up her hands. “It just means they’ll come after us later.”

  She was right, of course. “You don’t know that.”

  “And you don’t know that he won’t! People like Carlos, Gill—they’re all the same. They get what they want, or they get revenge.”

  “If it comes to that, we’ll be ready for them. He took us unawares this time. Won’t happen again. Look,” I put my arms on her elbows and gently pulled her to me, “I know you’re mad. And I know you want payback. But trust me, we don’t want to do it here. There’s just too many ways this can go wrong.” Not the least of which is having a horde of DEA agents descending on us, sweeping us into custody and trucking me back off to prison.

  She pulled away from me, though, disappoint filling her eyes. “You’re wrong.”

  With that, she hurried from the room.

  “Man,” breathed Hector, “you wanna know what I think?”

  “No.”

  I thrust the cooking spray and bag of white powder into his hands and headed for the door.

  “She’s easy dealing death. That’s what I think,” he muttered.

  It was the last thing I wanted to hear.

  ***

  “Excellent!” Carlos met me at the bottom of the stairs. “Brueger mentioned you went to the beach. Said you and Candi were…” he made swaying motions with his hands. “Like hula dance, no?” He grinned devilishly.

  “Tai Chi,” I huffed.

  “Of course. Come,” he waved me toward the dining room. “Breakfast is ready, and we have much to discuss.”

  “Have you seen Mel?”

  “Sí, sí. She has already gone ahead. Will your friend Hector be joining us?”

  I hazarded a glance toward the room. “If he’s hungry.”

  “Ah. He will follow his nose?”

  “Expect so.”

  “Very good. Come. It is time I fill you in on your mission, sí?”

  “If you’re set on me doing it, I suppose you’d better.”

  He led me into the dining room.

  ***

  After a decent breakfast of eggs, bacon and toast with coffee, Carlos got down to business. Mel sat beside me at my insistence (to her and Carlos, frankly), and Carlos began.

  “I need you to blow something up.”

  “Okay.”

  “There is a business in downtown Jacksonville. A bank.”

  “A bank.”

  “Sí. A bank. I want you to blow it up.”

  I shrugged. “Why?”

  “What difference does it make? This is what I have for you to do.”

  “It makes a hell of a lot of difference. What do you want to do it for?” When he didn’t respond right away, I put my hands on the table. “Look, I’m not asking to know your business. Frankly, I don’t care. I just want to understand the parameters of this assignment. Are we talking vandalism, sabotage or wholesale destruction? Is there something in particular you want destroyed, or are you trying to gain access to something?”

  He nodded slowly. “Sí, sí. I must consider how to answer your question.”

  “So for example, if you’re looking to wipe out information, most of that stuff’s computerized anyway. You take out a single branch, big deal. They’ve got that stuff on back-up drives all over the place. In the, uh…”

  “Cloud,” Mel finished.

  “Yeah. The cloud. Floating around up there.”

  “No, no, no. It is not information I wish to destroy. It is the bank itself. I have an associate. Not one of mine. A competitor, if you will. He manages this bank, sí?”

  I nodded.

  “So. When you blow up this bank, I want you to bring it down on top of his head.”

  He grinned.

  I stared in return. When I blinked, I turned to Mel, but she gazed assiduously in the other direction. I would find no support there. I turned back to Carlos. “I’m assuming this man is… the sort of person one would want to drop a building on?”

  He shrugged. “Is that a problem?”

  “Why a building? Why not just a bullet to the head?”

  “You ask many questions, Señor Smith. To make it plain: it will not suffice simply to assassinate the man. Killing is simply too good for him. I want him obliterated. All he represents brought to nothing, down upon his ears. I want him to suffer when it does—only then, when he and all who would follow in his footsteps see the utter ruin I have wrought—only then will I be assured that his sins will never be committed again.”

  I pursed my lips. “You said you wanted to stay clean in this.”

  “True. I must remain utterly untouchable. Unassailable in my integrity. For certain, there will be inquiries. Investigations. Allegations. Perhaps even a trial!” Abruptly he shook his head. “No, there will not be a trial. The District Attorney will find it impossible to bring to trial, because there will not be a shred of evidence linking me to this crime. I will walk out of that courthouse in the full light of the cameras a free man, innocent of the charges, and utterly vindicated both in the eyes of the law and for those who know how I have been wronged. You,” he reached his hands out toward me, as if embracing my chin, “are my avenging angel! My wrath of God!”

  I leaned back in the seat and tapped the table. Carlos’s coffee burned in the back of my throat. “I need detailed architectural plans for the building, a complete assessment of the bank’s security, and a write up of the bank manager’s itinerary—including all scheduled appointments—for the next month.”

  “And the bomb? How will you do that?”

  “Need the plans, first. You want to bring a building down, you can’t just fill it with explosives and let ‘er rip. You’ve got to mine the structural weak points, set up a wave of cascading charges to actually cause the building’s collapse. For instance, this house.” I waved my arm at the room. “Has a basement, right? A little unusual, but not uncommon. Down there you have a steel I-beam runs the length of the house. If I wanted to bring this house down, I’d use a double thermite charge, one on either side of the main support pole, to take out the beam. Then use the heat of that to set off two groups of ANFO drums on either side of the basement. The resulting explosion would lift the house off the foundation and cause it to collapse in the middle and fold in on itself, turning the whole mess into one hell of a bonfire.”

  He laughed nervously. “You would be a powerful adversary, Señor Smith.”

  “So I’m told. You’re just lucky I haven’t done it already.”

  He stared at me a moment, and then started laughing. I joined him in his laughter, and we saluted each other with our coffees.

  Yeah, damn lucky, you son of a bitch, I thought.

  ***

  Carlos gave us a little more room after breakfast. Wish I could’ve said the same for Candi. She caught my eye as we were leaving the dining room. Her expression clearly indicated she wanted an update. But I had no idea how to get one to her, nor did I feel any particular urgency.

  Mel, on the other hand, was positively icy. This, I did have to address.

  “Let’s go for a walk on the beach.” I reached down and took her hand. She jerked it away, but I retrieved it and held it fast. “Come on,” I insisted. “It’s a beautiful day.”

  Brueger was back in his usual place by the stairs, but he barely gave us a second glance as we went outside.

  “Let go,” she insisted once we’d cleared the house.

  “No.”

  “Damn it, Gerrold! Let go!” She actually reached around and struck me on the chest.

  That’s how I knew she didn’t really mean it. I’d seen her in action, and knew that if she really wanted to put up a fight, she could.

  “No. Stop it, Mel. Stop it!” I caught her fists in my own. “You need to trust me in this!”

  She suddenly came in real close, whispering, “Likewise,” before shrieking again and resuming her fit. When she smacked me across the face, I saw a sudden flash of red. I backhanded her, knocking her to the sand.

  I stared at her a moment, too stunned by what she’d done—what I’d done. Then I dropped to her side, picking her up in my arms, swearing and apologizing.

  She looked up at me, a trickle of blood running from her nose. “Keep apologizing,” she muttered, turning away from me. “Make it look good.”

  I shook my head. “What are you doing?”

  “Playing the part of the angry bitch,” she muttered.

  “Convincing.”

  “And you’re proving to me, Carlos and the rest of them what sort of man you are.”

  “What kind is that?”

  “The kind that can do the sort of thing Carlos thinks you’re going to do.”

  “So you knew I was acting.”

  “No. You were stalling. I was acting.”

  I pressed my face to her back. “I didn’t mean—”

  “Yes you did. You’d better have. Carlos has to believe it, or he’ll never trust you. Make him think you’re keeping me in line. By the way, I think you should do it.”

  “What’s that?”

  Her words sent a thrill up my spine. “Bring his house down. Just like you said.”

  Chapter 37

  We stayed on the beach a little while longer, then Mel informed me it was time to go back inside. As we reached the door, though, once again I spied Candi glancing toward me anxiously from the living room. Mel squeezed my hand, evidently seeing her, too. “What is it with her?” she muttered.

  I hesitated. “Tell you later.”

  She gave me a haunted look, and I returned her a confused stare. I could no longer tell if she was faking it or not. I decided to act as if she was. “Go on, now. Wait for me upstairs.”

  Brueger gave her a disdainful sneer as she passed him by. “Carlos wishes you to know he’ll have what you require by the end of the day.”

  “Okay.”

  He sighed. “And that I am to make myself at your disposal.”

  “Wonderful.”

  “So we are clear: this changes nothing between us. I work for Mr. Santiago. Not you.”

  “Still anxious for that match, are ya?”

  He answered with a steel glare.

  “Sorry to disappoint.”

  At last he shrugged. I shifted my foot and decided to press my luck. “I’m gonna need a place to work. Somewhere out of the way, preferably where—you know—prying eyes?”

  “Whose prying eyes?”

  I thought quickly. “Anyone who shouldn’t be messing around with explosives. That’s who.”

  He snorted. “The upstairs bedroom has—”

  “No. Carpet on the floor. Static shock.”

  Brueger frowned, as if trying to puzzle out a solution.

  “What about the basement?”

  “What of it?”

  “Not carpeted, is it? And out of the way?”

  After a moment, he shrugged and rose to his feet. “If that is what you want.”

  I followed him to the steps.

  The door, not surprisingly, was on the other side of the stairs to the upper floor. It opened with a key Brueger kept on his key ring, and revealed a darkened staircase to the lower levels. He flicked a switch on the wall and started down the steps. The wood groaned as he made his way down. I followed close behind.

  At the bottom, I saw that the basement was lit with bare, incandescent bulbs that could be lit by pull chain. The I-beam I’d suspected ran above our heads, with what looked like at least three supports holding it in place. The floor joists themselves were built of particle board I-joists instead of two by eights. Good, I thought. Convenient.

  Brueger irritably shoved a cobweb out of his hair, frowned, and gave me a nod. “Basement.”

  “Is there a table I could use? I’m also gonna need a chair, some power, and some basic tools.”

  He grunted. “There are folding tables over there.” He pointed a meaty finger at the back wall. “Chairs, too. Tools I can have brought down. Depending on what you need.”

  “Needle nose pliers. Powered screwdriver. Wire strippers and cutters. Soldering iron. Battery tester—”

  He held up his palm. “Make me a list. I will bring you what you need.”

  “And about a hundred pounds of ammonium nitrate, couple drums of fuel oil, or barring that, several bricks of Semtex. Better living through chemistry, y’know?”

  He sighed. “Make the list.”

  With that, he turned and hulked back upstairs. I watched him go, then turned and moved toward the tables stacked against the far wall. As I did so, I passed by an alcove I hadn’t seen when I first came down. My steps faltered, and I felt my heart drop to my chest when I saw it.

  The walls and ceiling were built of chicken wire bolted to two-by-fours, with a makeshift door in the center. Within the room, a single incandescent bulb hung down over a chair bolted to the floor. There were straps on the legs, and a thick leather band draped down over the back of the chair—clearly intended to go around someone’s throat. It had a wing nut on the side where it could be tightened. Or loosened, and then tightened again. As many times as desired.

  The floor around the chair was stained red with blood. At least some of it, I was sure, belonged to Mel.

  In the corner nearest me a camera stood on a tripod, aimed at the chair.

  This is where they did it. Where they tortured her.

  Carlos said it was the action of an overzealous associate, and Mel hadn’t contradicted him. But that was a lie, wasn’t it?

  A steel trashcan stood near the door. I glanced at it, and then reached down and pawed at the contents. Blood-soaked rags filled the can, along with spent hypodermic needles.

  Not only did they beat her, but they drugged her, too.

  I grimaced and stepped back, my hands shaking. I clenched and unclenched my fists.

  “Okay, babe,” I muttered through my teeth. “You got it. Right down to the frickin’ foundation, so help me God!”

  “Foundation of what?”

  I whirled around, my heart in my throat. Candi stood there, studying me carefully. How much had she seen?

  “What are you doing down here?”

  “I should ask you the same.”

  “Carlos has given me his assignment.”

  “Great.” She folded her arms. “You can tell me what it is.”

  I shook my head. “No. Not yet.”

  “The sooner we know, the sooner we can act. Get you guys out of here.”

  “And straight into the hands of the Federal Marshalls? I don’t think so.”

  She shook her head. “It won’t be like that. I promise.”

  “You can’t make any promise I’ll believe. Cops lie to suspects all the time to get ‘em to talk or do what they want, and it’s totally allowed by law. So tell me how can I trust you?”