I will never forget her, and I will always protect my family.

Tom says, “What now, hon?”

“Now?” I ask. “Now we relax. We have fun. We sleep late. You find another book project to work on and me…well, we’ll see. But one more thing.”

“What’s that?” he asks.

“Never, ever do anything like this again, Tom Cornwall,” I say. “Or I’ll kill you and make it look like an accident.”

A hesitant smile comes across my beloved’s face.

“That’s one heck of a threat,” he says.

I kiss his forehead.

“Tom, you know me by now,” I say. “I don’t make threats. I make promises.”

CHAPTER 94

CHAPTER 94

THE LEARJET slowly taxis into a large and nearly empty hangar, and Pelayo glances out, sees a line of his men out there, waiting for him. The engines whine down and a stairway is wheeled up. A member of the flight crew unlatches the door, and Pelayo nearly prances down the stairs.

Home. Safe. And ready to go back to work.

Casper is behind him, and he strolls to his men, looks around for one of his armored Ford Expedition SUVs to take him to one of his expensive ranches.

There are no vehicles in the hangar.

Just his men and Casper, and the jet.

He turns to Casper.

“What’s going on?”

“A readjustment,” comes a voice, and Pelayo turns as a man emerges through the line of those he has paid, has trained, and once trusted.

The slim man wears cowboy boots, blue jeans, and a plain white shirt. The man’s skin is the same color as his own, his hair is black, but unlike Pelayo, this man has a closely trimmed beard.

“Hello, cousin,” the man says.

Pelayo feels like one of those carnival balloons, the helium emptying out, making the firm shape collapse upon itself, dying and never to recover.

“Miguel,” he says.

“Pelayo,” his cousin nods.

Once more, back to Casper. “Why?” he asks.

Casper spits on the concrete floor. “I have done so much for you, bloody year after bloody year. Always at your side. But…you became crazed, looking to kill your father. Crazed with your plans to go to Afghanistan. Afghanistan! And then you asked me to shoot a little girl. A little girl, as young as my own!” He steps forward, spits again, close to Pelayo’s boots.

“I’m done with you, Abboud. And so is everyone else.”

Pelayo slowly turns back to his smiling cousin.

“Please,” Pelayo says. “Make it quick.”

At some point Pelayo regains consciousness. His life now is nothing but pain, pain, and more pain. He is naked, secured in a heavy metal chair, and his chest is one burning mass where one by one, Miguel invited Pelayo’s lieutenants to come up with a knife and carve their initials into his chest. All he knows is that he’s in a small basement below the aircraft hangar’s floor.