Chapter 8 - The Hostage Exchange
The rain came down in freezing sheets, plastering my hair to my face as I lay pinned in the mud beneath the cedar ferns.
Ethan’s terrified whimpers cut through the sound of the rain, reaching across the clearing like a dagger to my heart.
“Don't move, Aurora,” Lorenzo whispered in my ear, his hand clamping around my bicep like a steel band. “He wants a trade. If you step out, he shoots us both.”
“He has my brother, Lorenzo!” I sobbed quietly, my chest heaving. “He’s going to execute him!”
“Look at his men,” Lorenzo commanded, his voice deadly and steady. “They aren't cartel soldiers. Look at their boots, their stance. They’re private military contractors. Morales hired mercenaries because he knows his own men wouldn't stand against the Costa family.”
Across the clearing, Morales raised a chrome-plated .45, resting the barrel against the burlap covering Ethan’s skull.
“Three!” Morales yelled. “Four!”
“Lorenzo, please!” I begged, tears burning my cold cheeks. “Kill me if you have to, but save my brother!”
Lorenzo looked at me. In the pitch-black darkness of the forest, his eyes burned with an unholy fire.
“I am not letting either of you die,” he whispered. He reached into his tactical pouch, pulled out a small black ceramic cylinder no larger than a fountain pen, and pressed it into my palm.
“What is this?”
“Your father’s drive,” Lorenzo said. “I’ve had it since the night Elena was taken. I didn't need your blood to unlock it, Aurora. I had Dr. Marchetti synthesize your genetic sequence from your hospital hairbrush two days ago.”
My breath caught. “You… you had it all along?”
“I kept you close to protect you, not to use you,” Lorenzo said, his thumb brushing across my lip one last time. “Now listen to me carefully. When I step out, Morales’s snipers will track my center mass. You stay low. Crawl twenty yards east along the drainage ditch. There is an ATV concealed under a camouflage tarp. Get Ethan. Drive east toward the highway.”
“What about you?!”
Lorenzo gave me that faint, devastating smirk—the look of a king walking willingly into hell.
“I told you, tesoro. Men like me hold the line.”
Before I could scream, Lorenzo stood up from the brush, tossing his submachine gun into the mud.
“Morales!” Lorenzo’s voice echoed across the mountain clearing like thunder. “Let the boy go! You want the head of the Costa family? Here I am!”
Every red laser dot in the clearing snapped from the brush to Lorenzo’s chest. Half a dozen sniper beams danced across his tactical vest and heart.
Morales laughed, lowering the gun from Ethan’s head. “Look at that! The great Don Lorenzo, bowing down for a pathetic little nurse and her brat brother!”
“Cut the boy loose,” Lorenzo commanded, taking slow, deliberate steps toward the center of the clearing. “You have five snipers zeroed on me. Let him walk to the road, and I’ll give you the master decryption cipher.”
“Search him!” Morales barked at two mercenaries.
The men advanced on Lorenzo, kicking his legs apart, slamming him against the hood of an SUV to pat him down.
While every eye in the clearing was glued to the mafia boss, I began to crawl.
The mud was freezing, soaking through my trousers and sweater, but adrenaline numbed the pain. I dragged myself along the shallow irrigation ditch, inch by agonizing inch, keeping the heavy ferns between me and the headlights.
Protect the baby. Save Ethan.
The mantra pounded in my skull with every beat of my heart.
I reached the camouflage tarp. Beneath it sat a heavy-duty Yamaha utility quad, its keys already in the ignition, prepped by Lorenzo’s men before the ambush.
Across the clearing, Morales shoved his hand into Lorenzo’s coat, retrieving a fake encrypted storage device.
“Is this it?” Morales sneered.
“Enter the code,” Lorenzo said coldly. “Four-zero-nine-two.”
Morales tapped the keypad.
A high-pitched tone sounded.
DEVICE CORRUPTED. CIPHER REJECTED.
Morales’s face twisted into demonic rage. “You son of a bitch!” He raised his pistol, aiming straight at Lorenzo’s forehead.
“NOW!” Lorenzo roared.
He didn't duck. He grabbed the wrist of the mercenary beside him, twisted the man’s rifle upward, and pulled the trigger. A burst of automatic fire ripped through the two snipers in the tree line.
At the same instant, I hit the starter on the ATV.
The engine roared to life. I slammed the throttle forward, bursting out from the wood line at forty miles per hour, aiming the heavy steel bumper straight at the two men holding Ethan.
The mercenaries turned, eyes widening in the headlights, but it was too late.
The quad slammed into them with bone-shattering force, hurling both men into the brush.
I locked the brakes, sliding sideways in the mud. “Ethan! GET ON!”
Ethan ripped the burlap from his head, blinking wildly, and threw himself onto the rear rack of the quad, his arms locking around my waist.
“Go, Rory! GO!”
Gunfire erupted across the clearing.
Through the chaos, I looked back.
Lorenzo had disarmed Morales’s lieutenant, using the man’s body as a human shield while firing a heavy combat shotgun into the remaining mercenaries. But Morales had scrambled behind an armored vehicle, leveling a scoped rifle at Lorenzo’s exposed flank.
“LORENZO!” I screamed.
Lorenzo turned. He saw Morales.
Instead of diving for cover, Lorenzo looked across the clearing directly at me. His eyes held an unmistakable, ferocious command:
RUN.
A rifle shot rang out.
I saw the kinetic impact shudder through Lorenzo’s shoulder, spinning him halfway around. Blood sprayed against the white headlights.
“NO!” I shrieked, tears blinding me.
Ethan grabbed my arms, his voice cracking with hysteria. “Rory, drive! He told us to run! DRIVE!”
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Torn between the man carrying my heart and the child carrying my blood, instinct seized the handlebars.
I pinned the throttle, the rear tires tearing through the mud, launching us into the black maze of the forest as the sounds of war faded into the roaring rain.
