Come on, Nate. Where the hell are you?

Harv heard them before he saw the source. Footsteps. Coming from his left. He watched a man appear in dark clothing, hands in pockets, walking down the center of Gleason Road. What the hell is he doing out here at this hour? And alone? He ducked deeper into the cover of the hedge.

***

Silently moving forward, the man with the stun gun smiled.

***

Since the yacht had passed his position, Harvey wasn’t worried about being seen from that direction. He needed to check this new arrival, make sure it was only someone taking a late-night stroll. He looked behind before moving away from the cover of the palms, crouching low to take advantage of a boxed hedge. The guy looked harmless enough, but the timing felt wrong.

The man in the street doubled over, dropped to his knees, and began labored coughing. Harvey stared for a few seconds, wondering if he should offer assistance. The man didn’t look well at all.

He turned to check his blind spot again and caught the faint odor of tobacco a fraction of a second too late.

Shit!

A hideous electric charge ripped through the left side of his neck and short-circuited his muscle control. He recognized the crippling sensation from his Taser training.

His nervous system exploded in fiery agony as hundreds of on-off electrical pulses shot through his spinal column. An instant before falling to his side, a single thought glowed, then faded in his mind. Oh, Nathan. I’m so sorry I let you down.…

***

Juan Montez de Oca, former colonel of the Sandinista National Liberation Front, plunged the stun gun against the man’s neck and pulled the trigger. He delivered a full five seconds of juice with a glorious result. The man went stiff, issued a grunt of pain, and keeled over. Tall and Latino, this was almost certainly one of the two men associated with the helicopter from Bullfrog Bay.

Harvey Fontana, I presume?

Arturo ended his phony coughing and ran over. Within seconds they had their captive’s wrists and ankles secured with duct tape.

Montez scanned the area. All quiet.

He kept his voice low and addressed his captive. “How are you feeling? Not well, I trust. Well, we’ll be sure to let you recover a little bit before our discussion. We have much to talk about.”

“Up yours.”

“I think not.” He removed the man’s sidearm and tossed it several feet away. “We’re going to become good friends, you and I. As a matter of fact, I’m going to become your best friend. From now on, you’ll be totally dependent on me. For everything. I’ll control when you eat, drink, sleep, use the bathroom, and your level of discomfort, of course. Breaking you will be a challenge, of that I have no doubt, but I’ll break you. I always do.”

“You’re shit under my boot, Montez.”