Page 5 of Leading Conviction
“¡Fue lo primero que hice! No podemos arriesgarnos después de que esa pobre mujer fuera asesinada la semana pasada.”
It was the first thing I did! We can’t take any chances after that poor woman was murdered last week.
The woman’s assurance translated in Hannah’s head effortlessly thanks to her mother’s insistence she learned her heritage and months now of actually living it. But the words made her heart twist.
The murderer who’d killed the woman a fewbarriosover still hadn’t been caught and the crime had left a beautiful little boy an orphan.
“Bueno. Gracias por eso.” Hannah’s voice came out hoarse as she thanked the woman for protecting their neighborhood.
It was probably nothing. Mérida is one of the best tourist destinations in Mexico due to its history and culture, not to mention how safe it is. Those were the reasons why she chose the city, after all.
But she’d had it too good for too long, and her body had been on edge, waiting for the other shoe to drop. She hoped to God whoever this stranger was sniffing around their neighborhood, wasn’t a bad sign.
It’s not a big deal. It’s fine. We’ll be okay.
Even as she said it, even as she tried to convince herself, the words were useless against her anxiety. Instead of folding each article of clothing as she usually did, she bent to extract the entire pile of clothes out of the dryer and shoved them all in her laundry bag. She’d deal with the wrinkles later… if there was even alaterto deal with.
As she packed up, the little old ladies kept talking about anything and everything, as if they hadn’t just ignited yet another bout of terror Hannah somehow still hadn’t become immune to.
She kept listening, trying to hear whether they knew anything else about the mysterious outsider. What he looked like, his height, whether he had an accent. Her smallbarriowas off the beaten tourist path, so newcomers in her neighborhood rarely went unnoticed. Even her own Mexican American roots didn’t keep her as under the radar as she’d hoped since she’d dyed her hair dark blonde. If she could’ve kept it the glossy black she adored, she would’ve, but the man who’d been hunting her had a type and she couldn’t risk it.
So far, all she gathered from the women’s gossip was that the man was tall, blond, clean-shaven andmuy guapo. The first two descriptors could very well be one of the men that had been sent to rattle her over the years. Granted, none of the ones she’d fled from in the past could remotely pass forguapo, or good-looking. The sudden appearance of an outsider after all this time of peace still had her worried, though.
Was this man one of his?
She’d been running from him for two years and afraid of him for longer than she could remember. If this was one of his men, what would that mean for her this time? Would it be another creepy present on the front porch? A letter in the mailbox? Something as mundane as “I’m still watching you,” or something as terrifyingly soul wrenching as the dead hawk left on her doorstep last year. It was as if they were truly playing a game of cat and mouse and he was just fucking with her until he had her right where he wanted her.
But what would he do with her once he finally decided to catch her?
Thatwas an answer she never wanted to find out. She’d learned over the years he was a monster in his own right. That’s all she needed to know.
As soon as all the clothes were piled into the bag, she slung the laundry over her shoulder, not bothering to close the dryer door. The ladies wished her well, and she muttered “hasta luego,” back as she power walked to the door.
“Últimas noticias en la parte superior de la hora—”
Something on the screen popped up in the corner of Hannah’s vision and she stopped in her tracks. Her eyes shot to the TV as the news commercial forTele Yucatánpromised a scintillating story after the Braves game. Her father’s picture positioned in the corner of the screen was enough to make her gag, so much so she nearly missed the rest of the report.
“Un poderoso miembro del ejército de los Estados Unidos, el general Richard Smithers, ha sido declarado desaparecido—”
Everything afterward got lost in the excruciatingly loud heartbeat pumping in her ears. Her bag slid out of her hands seemingly in slow motion as she stared blankly. Its loudslapagainst the tile flooring knocked her out of her dazed terror, spurring her into movement.
And she ran.
CHAPTERTWO
“It’s hot as balls down here. I know you don’t want to fade your ink, but I don’t know how you can stand being in long sleeves,” Draco grumbled as he tapped the car’s air conditioning dial like that would make it blow harder, even though it was already at its highest setting. His lightly tanned skin was already flushed from the heat and sun.
“It’s all about commitment, my man. I got used to it years ago.” Hawk chuckled as he turned onto one of the smaller roads in a neighborhood outside thecentroof Mérida, Yucatán, in Mexico. “Besides, we’ve had AC the entire trip. It’s not so bad.”
It’d been half a day of traveling, but they thankfully hadn’t needed to drive the whole way or fly commercial. One of BlackStone’s wealthier clients owed them a favor and had offered their private plane from Ashland County’s little metropolitan airport, so the trip to Mexico hadn’t been nearly as long as it could’ve been.
The mix of colonial and modern houses adorned in vibrant colors and history looked exactly like the backdrop of the café Hannah had been sitting in when the surveillance photo was taken. The loud, bustling streets and rich aesthetic reminded him of the free spirit he knew nearly a decade ago. It was perfect for her, but back then, she’d never once mentioned wanting to relocate from Atlanta to Mexico. Something had to have prompted the move, but racking his brain over what that could’ve been made him sweat with dread.
A sharp, sudden sting in his lip had him wincing. He balled his hand into a fist and laved his injured bottom lip with his tongue to keep from compulsively tracing it with his fingers. Never before had he realized how bad the habit was, but his mouth was having a hard time withstanding all the thinking he’d been doing lately.
Why was she in Mexico? He knew her grandparents had emigrated in the fifties, but they’d died when Hannah was still a kid. If she was living in Mexico, why would her own father have to get coordinates to look for her? From what he could tell, Hannah and her father had always had a strained relationship, so if she finally cut all ties with him, why would he be looking for her in the first place? She was an art teacher who was fucking good at her job. Would she really pick up and leave everything behind just to escape her own father?
On second thought, that was probably exactly what happened. Hawk had only just learned the depths of the General’s betrayal and depravity last week. What if Hannah had figured it out before they had? It wasn’t hard for Hawk to believe she’d run away from her father after everything he’d learned about the monster.
