Hostage Zero

Antonio’s expression grew colder. “Mister Evan Guinn, we do not know each other good yet, but in the coming years, we will get to know each other very good, and as we do you will find that I am not a nice man. I am a mean man who does not mind hurting people. I do not mind hurting you.”

Evan’s stomach iced over. Did he just say in the coming years? Could that possibly be true?

“Evan Guinn, you will smile for this picture one way or the other, but I promise you that it is far harder to smile when you are in pain.”

Evan stood tall, raised the paper next to his head, and smiled.

The camera flashed a total of five times as Antonio took the same picture again and again.

When he was done, he slipped the camera back into the envelope, and he snatched the newspaper out of the boy’s hands. “Give me back the shirt,” he said.

Evan nearly asked why, but stopped himself. He retracted his arms from the sleeves, then slipped the neck ring over his head and handed it back.

“Very good,” Antonio said. He carefully folded the shirt and eased it back into the envelope, which he then placed on a nearby table.

“It’s good to have that done,” Antonio went on. “Now we put you to work.”

CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

Mitch Ponder ordered a Modelo beer to go along with his fourth club soda and lime. With his guest running late and the restaurant filling up around him, he figured he had to order something with a price tag just to keep from getting thrown out.

The fact that he hadn’t yet heard from Jose meant that the man had either had a change of heart, or he had gone to the other side. Either way, his family would be dead by morning. A promise is a promise, after all, and actions must have consequences. Mitch wouldn’t handle the details himself, of course-finding street thugs willing to kill was not a challenge in this godforsaken country-but they would be handled. Mitch intentionally did not immerse himself in the minutiae. Whatever itch he had for taking lives was more than adequately scratched by people who were willing to pay for the service.

Continued good pay, however, required continued competent service, and by any measure he’d come up short of that on the Lincoln Hines hit. Who knew that something that happened so long ago could have legs for so many years?

It wasn’t even a complicated hit. Sure, it was high-profile, the guy being a Senate wannabe and all, and the guy who paid for the hit was naturally the first suspect, but engineering a fake suicide was the easiest thing in the world. You plant a few distressed e-mails in the guy’s past, establish a tawdry double life he never had, and then make sure that someone finds the bogus blackmail letters that drove him to do the dirty deed. With the pieces in place, you follow him closely enough to know when he’s going to be alone, and then you pop him. People find the body, they find the fake evidence, they force two and two to equal four, and you’re done.

The fact that the financier-Jacques Leger, in this case-was such an obvious suspect actually worked in his favor in the end. Everyone assumed that no one would be foolish enough to bring that kind of attention down on himself.

Mitch had been doing this shit for years, and he was damn good at it. Good enough that on the rare occasion when things went wrong, he readily and easily cleaned up after himself. Where third parties were involved-like today, for Jose’s family-the hoods who jumped at the opportunity to work for El Matador were so paranoid about ending up on Mitch’s shit list that they would figure out a way to violate the laws of physics and chemistry if they had to, to make sure that nothing went wrong.

Mitch had worked long and hard to establish his reputation as a harsh master. In his business, fear kept you alive. That universal business truth explained why he’d always been comfortable working for Sammy Bell and the Slater family. People were at least as afraid of them as they were of Mitch Ponder. With fear up and down the chain of command, things worked like clockwork.

Given all the moving parts that are involved in a hit, who would have ever thought that a smooth operation would break down at the payment phase? What special breed of idiot would a person have to be to abscond with money from a crime family on its way to a hired killer? And who would ever have guessed that that special breed of idiot could actually get away with it?

The Slater organization made good on covering the debt to Mitch, of course, but it was a stupid career decision on the part of the lawyer who took it. Bruce Navarro.

Except Navarro wasn’t the thief.