Page 20 of Stolen

Gunn asked, “How reliable is this source?”

“Pilot I know,” Switch replied. “He flew the private jet with the brother and the lieutenants.”

Gunn gave a whistle. “Okay, that’s about as reliable as it gets.” He frowned. “De León has to have his own pilots. I wonder why he didn’t use one of them? Instead of a stranger who could overhear his plans?”

Switch said drily, “Probably because he was planning on disposing of the stranger shortly after they landed? On account of, this is a very secret mission. My source barely got out of there with a whole skin. Had to go puma and take off across the desert. Now he’s going into hiding for, like, ever.”

“Good plan. I’m surprised he confided in you.”

“I think he has hopes that someone will kill De León before he has time to hunt my source down. We’d both consider it a personal favor if you’d do that.”

“I was hoping not to be there,” Gunn said. He glanced over at Michelangela, who was pretending to be intent on her French toast while listening to the conversation with all the power of her wolf hearing.

He knew she was going to be pissed, but he walked into the bathroom and shut the door.

Switch was saying, “As with most things in life, I doubt you’re going to get your wish. I think your friend in New York state is going to need all the help he can get.”

“What was their projected ETA on the east coast?”

“Depends on how long it took De León to set up his ground transport. Today or tomorrow, most likely.”

“Fuck.” Gunn tapped the phone, thinking. “Mid-Atlantic is pretty vague. Maryland, Delaware, New Jersey, even eastern Pennsylvania. Too big an area for satellite surveillance.”

Switch said, “Yeah, but what about helicopter surveillance? They’re headed for the Adirondacks, right? There’s only a couple of major routes they can take, and a troop transport convoy would be easily visible from the air. If you send me the destination coordinates, I could take one route, and get a buddy of mine to take the other, starting from the target and flying south. If they’re on the way, we’ll see them.”

“Unless they move overnight.”

“That many vehicles all in a row? Their headlights would stand out like a sore thumb in the dark, once they left the main highway. That would still give the targets a few hours’ notice.” He paused. “Or, I could stay home, drink beer and watch the playoffs. Your call.”

“If you can get birds in the air and find those bastards, I’ll buy you beer for a year. I have people I care about up there.”

“And there’s my fifty bucks, too,” Switch said. “I’ll get on it.”

“Keep me posted.”

After the call ended, Gunn stared at his phone for a minute, thinking.

Hawk was the one who had brought him in on this, who’d asked him to check into things when Thanatos’s intelligence sources—and his own—had come up dry.

More accurately, they’d been wrong.

Hawk had asked for Gunn’s help as a friend, and what went on between him and Thanatos was his own affair.

On the other hand, it was possible that a small army of South American cartel soldiers—who had no qualms about burning villages to the ground to get what they wanted—were heading for Outlaw Ridge.

As much as Gunn had left the place behind, and for good reason, he still had roots there. And Thanatos still signed his paychecks, metaphorically speaking.

He owed it to Thanatos and everyone on the Ridge to give them a direct heads-up, before he talked to Hawk.

With a sigh, he dialed Thanatos’s main assistant at the Ridge, a former cocaine trafficker known only by his street name—Sugar.

Sugar answered the phone on the third ring. Sugar always answered the phone on the third ring, day or night, Sundays and holidays. He was never eating, or taking a shower, or on the crapper. At least, not that Gunn could tell.

After a minor contest of wills, he put Gunn through directly to Thanatos.

His boss’s gravelly, not-quite-human voice came on the line. Not for the first time, Gunn wondered exactly what kind of creature he was.

“Gunnar,” Thanatos said. “Azúcar gave me to believe there is some kind of crisis?” He always called Sugar by his Spanish name.