“Let’s dig in,” Gage said. “A day or two of luxury is the most we’re going to get.”
* * *
“They are here.” Paulo Escobar stood in the doorway of the study.
“Here? In Sacniete?” The town’s name was a Mayan word that meant White Flower. Hardly fitting, Arturo thought, considering the criminal element that did business in the small, inconsequential village.
“They arrived in Mérida two days ago,” Paulo explained. He was dark-haired and thin-faced, nothing but lean, sinewy muscle. He had been working for Arturo since the glory days when Arturo had money to burn, an inheritance from his wealthy father. Those days were past, but Paulo and some of Arturo’s most trusted men had stayed with him, certain the good times would come again.
Maybe they finally had.
“The girl and the others are staying at the Hacienda San José.” It was a well-known hotel in the Yucatán.
“So the old man was right.” Arturo rose from the chair behind the ornate desk in his study, one of the last few pieces of original furniture he hadn’t been forced to sell. “It wasn’t just more of his lunatic ranting and raving.”
“It is true he was feverish, nearly out of his mind, but Zuma believed him from the start. The old man talked about the gold. He said the girl would come. Now she is here.”
“She has come to retrieve the gold,” Arturo said. Just as the old man had believed she would.
“Perhaps all we need to do is follow where she leads,” Paulo suggested.
“And if she and Logan are smart enough to elude our watchdogs and manage to find the gold?”
Paulo was wise enough not to reply.
“Send a man to watch the hotel. Have him report their movements back to me.”
Paulo left the study, and Arturo leaned back in his chair. Through the arched windows, he could see what used to be a magnificent garden with a rectangular pool off to one side. Now the garden was overgrown, long stringy weeds poking up through the ancient carved stones taken from the ruins of a Mayan temple, stones that were used to build the floors and terraces of the house.
The pool was now empty, its interior walls crumbling, just like the rest of the Velásquez family’s once-beautiful estate.
As the oldest son, he had inherited Hacienda Cieba through his father, who expected him to be its guardian, to pass it down to future generations. Instead, he had invested his inheritance unwisely in one scheme after another, until his father’s fortune had dwindled to almost nothing.
The hacienda and the property around it were all he had left. He had sold off the furnishings in the once-magnificent bedrooms, library, and gallery, even several hectares of land. He had kept the main salon and his study as they were, a façade for the few visitors that still came to the house.
The rest of the hacienda had fallen into disrepair, and he didn’t have the money to return it to its once-glorious state.
Worse yet, he was dependent on his younger brother’s charity just to maintain what he had left. Ramón was a powerful cartel leader and even more ruthless than Arturo. Ramón wielded the sword of money and authority, and Arturo had no choice but to bow to his commands.
The muscles in Arturo’s neck tightened. He had failed his father, failed his grandfather and his ancestors before them.
Unless . . .
Unless the sick old man that Zuma had brought to him had been telling the truth. In his delirium, he had spoken of a great fortune, a treasure he had been hunting for years.
He had found it, he’d said in his barely lucid ramblings. Gold worth millions of dollars.
Arturo needed to speak to Zuma, confirm what they knew so far. Then he could move forward with his plan.
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
ABBY RODE NEXT TOGAGE IN THE SECONDHUMMER, WHICHbumped and swayed over the dirt road leading to their destination, Alux’ob, the tiny town closest to the ruins of the Hacienda del Oro Verde, fifteen miles away.
Mateo drove the Hummer in front of them, Edge riding shotgun.Shotgun, she mentally repeated, smiling since the men in both vehicles were armed to the teeth.
Edge and Gage each carried a pair of semiautomatic pistols; Edge was also armed with a Mossberg Thunder Ranch shotgun, or so she’d been told, and Gage had his big knife strapped to his thigh. No one ever seemed to know what weapons Mateo carried, but she was sure he had something.
All of them were strong men, and tough enough to take on cartel members—or anyone else—if it came to that. With the scruff of beard along Gage’s square jaw and an olive drab T-shirt stretched over his massive chest, he looked capable and determined, and sexy as hell.
