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“Francis—” Mia stepped forward, then stopped as he skewered her under his glare. She raised her hands.
“Do not Francis me. I’m not what you think. I’m not what any of you think. I’ve been pushed from one crisis to another, shot at, kidnapped, abused, beaten, betrayed, and I am done. I am not going to stand back and let you people tell me what I can and cannot do. Vitari is mine. I am getting him back. Call Serpiente.”
Miguel held Francis’s stare. Those dark, sharklike eyes pierced Francis’s soul.
He wasn’t backing down. Everything was at stake. Miguel could laugh at him all he liked, but Francis wasn’t laughing. These people had no idea the depths of darkness he’d plunder to save Vitari.
Miguel stubbed his cigarette out on the step.
Francis eyed him down the gun sights. The panic faded, his racing heart slowed, and his manic thoughts calmed. It was simple. All this man had to do was make a call, and the gun in Francis’s hand would ensure that happened.
If he did not make the call, then Francis just might shoot him. He would not be laughing then.
“I underestimated you,” Miguel said. He rose slowly, and Francis raised the gun with him. “Mia, you have a phone?”
“You don’t own a phone?” Francis asked him.
“I left the world behind long ago, Padre.” He gestured at the smiling scar from his mouth to his cheek as though that explained everything.
Who was he, that he lived out here in a hut, without a phone, and answered the door carrying a machete? It didn’t matter. He was going to help.
Mia handed Miguel her phone. He dialed a number and raised it to his ear.
Francis lowered the gun but kept it visible at his side. He swallowed, trying to moisten his dry throat. He hadn’t wanted to aim a gun at anyone, but what choice did he have? Mia was eyeing him as though she didn’t know him, which, he supposed, she didn’t. He wasn’t even sure he recognized himself. But it didn’t matter because they were getting Vitari back.
Miguel spoke rapidly into the phone. Francis caught his own name and enough Spanish to know whoever he spoke to wasn’t this Serpiente man, but it was someone who was going to help.
Miguel ended the call and handed the phone back to Mia.
“Well?” Francis asked when he couldn’t stand Miguel’s deliberate silence a second longer.
“They will come. They are meeting off the coast. We wait.”
“Wait?”
“Yes, wait. Some advice, Padre Blanco?” Miguel asked, thick eyebrows lifting.
“Advice?”
“Better hide your emotions. If they know how much you want your man, the price increases.”
That was probably good advice, but he’d never been very good at mind games. “I’m going to meet Serpiente? He’ll come?”
“Yes.”
He tucked the gun away and dropped into one of the plastic chairs by the firepit. Everything was going to be all right. He had to believe that.
“Beer?”
“I don’t drink,” he mumbled, although that wasn’t true. He did drink now, and he waved guns around, and threatened mean-looking men with machetes in jungle shacks. Who even was he anymore?
“Sorry about the gun,” Francis said.
Miguel’s laugh rumbled. “I like you, Padre Blanco.”
CHAPTER TEN
Vitari
