Page 132 of The Lost Guardian

Santiago scanned the sky. The sun was rising too quickly. She was right. They didn’t have enough time. He swallowed.

She shivered, and Santiago let her go long enough to fish out his old flannel from his pack. The one she had borrowed and never returned, the one that had led him to her when she fell from the cliff. It was more than a little worse for wear, but he slid it over her shoulders. A button popped off, and Santiago absent-mindedly pocketed it.

“Go,” Ali said.

The crunch of river reeds under heavy boots met their ears. They turned in time to see Leo and Mario, guns in hand, step around the bend.

It was too late to hide. The men had spotted them.

Mario gasped, tightening the grip on his gun.

Leo only smiled.

“Well, isn’t this a pretty picture,” he called out, and Santiago turned, placing himself between the men and Ali. She gripped the fabric at his back, holding herself up.

There was a static clicking sound, and Mario spoke into a walkie.

“We found them,” he said in Spanish.

Santiago couldn’t make out the response, only that it was a question.

Mario nodded.

And then, catching himself, he added a verbal affirmation. Leo’s eyes rolled beneath his tactical visor.

“Let’s go,” Mario barked at them. “The boss wants to see you now.”

45

It took everything in Santiago not to smash his fist into Mario’s smug face as the young mercenary relieved him of his backpack. Santiago would likely catch a bullet if he did, but the urge was still surprisingly difficult to quell. He was painfully aware of the fact that Mario was now in possession of his grandfather’s ashes, but he didn’t want to alert Torres’s men to the fact that they had something of value to him.

The huaqueros marched them upstream to two abandoned ATVs. They rode back the rest of the way, Santiago held by Leo and Mario propping up Ali.

Had they not been prisoners, the transportation would have been a relief, as Ali was fading fast. But they were prisoners. And Santiago was painfully aware of the vehicle configurations. Yesterday, they didn’t have a quad each.

Which meant that backup supplies must have arrived at some point in the night. How many more of Torres’s men now swarmed the valley? Santiago had his answer soon.

He hadn’t really believed their assailants would miss the massive, hand-carved snake head at the mouth of the river, but any lingering hopes that might have remained were dashed to pieces when they reached it.

Santiago saw five mercenaries, each with black tactical gear and a massive semiautomatic gun. He was oddly relieved that Leo and Mario had been the ones to find them.

Something about the devil you know?

Beyond the mercenaries, there was also someone strange among the newcomers. Someone markedly different from the rest. Santiago noticed him instantly.

He was of average height and build but wore a suit that would have been more at home in a Havana nightclub than the middle of the Andean rainforest. His hair was short and artfully styled; a close-cropped mustache and beard framed his strong jaw and high cheekbones. There was a spattering of gray at his temples and over his chin, but even that looked intentionally curated.

“Torres,” Ali whimpered, confirming Santiago’s suspicion.

So, this was Bernardo Torres, billionaire several times over, a grave robber and the lead Huáscaro…

And the reason his abuelo was dead.

“You son of a bitch,” Santiago spat, leaping off the ATV and rushing toward him. The guards immediately trained their weapons on him.

Leo caught him hard by the back of the neck, scruffing Santi like an unruly kitten. Before Santiago could do something else to get himself killed, Torres raised his hands in a gesture of peace.

“Calm, calm,” he said, voice light and cheerful, which only served to infuriate Santiago further. “We wouldn’t want any accidents to happen, especially now. Not when we’re so close to the end.”