Delgano: The Intro - Page 94

He rounded the back of the estate, where he spotted another guard, rifle across his chest, looking out into the darkness. That was when he realized that power outages were probably a common occurrence for them. None of them looked concerned, as if danger could be lurking in the woods—or, in this instance, on the ground floor, a few steps away from the pool.

He scanned for additional bodies.

Finding none, he took out the guard and climbed the back steps. From what he could make out through the numerous windows that lined the first floor, there was no one on the ground level. Then Trevor entered the main living area, drinking a brown-orange beverage from a glass, and he understood why the bottom floor was empty.

“What are you drinking?” Lee asked, entering from another direction.

“Mint tea.” Trevor pointed behind them. “Kitchen’s back that way. There’s more. It’s amazing. Refreshing, perks you up.”

“You had me at more,” Lee said, heading for the kitchen.

Adrían frowned. “What if it was poisoned?”

Trevor shrugged and made a non-committal noise, taking another sip from his glass. When Lee returned with his own glass, Adrían studied them, wondering why either of these men thought he was the dangerous one.

Because he could detach?

Detachment was to be expected in situations like these. If he ever went downstairs in his own house and found strange men carrying rifles and drinking his mint tea, he would probably be more concerned than if they were pointing the rifles at him.

“Sure you don’t want any, Gano?” Lee asked.

He shook his head. “Pretty sure.”

“There’s coffee. What do they call it, here again, Mason?”

“Arabische koffie,” Trevor replied. “Sophisticated, right?”

A deep yawn and what sounded like slippers slapping against marble on the second floor grabbed their attention.

A door opened and closed.

For a while, there was nothing. Then, a toilet flushed, a door opened, and the yawning and footsteps returned until they were muffled by a second door.

Lee, shaking his head, pointed to the stairs. “Did anybody hear a faucet? No, right? Hope they didn’t touch this tea.”

“Those slippers don’t sound like they belong to someone who makes their own tea,” Trevor said, holding his glass close to his face. “But, I do believe that’s the last target. Go on up, Gano. We’ll wait down here. You’re clearly not the type to play with your meals, so I’ll go now to see if I can find a cup with a lid or something similar.”

Adrían headed up to the second floor via a winding staircase. The stairs neither creaked nor shook, but it wasn’t as if he was trying to be quiet. There was no need to sneak when he didn’t care about being discovered or ambushed. Plus, Trevor was right; he wouldn’t be taking hostages or asking for last words anytime soon.

The stairs took him to a long hallway that ended in a floor-to-ceiling window. Several doors, all shut, lined the dark corridor.

Back in the favela, he and his mother never worried about losing electricity. Rolling blackouts happened frequently during the summer, but she would make the best of it by bringing out candles, and he would sleep in her bed. She would regale him with folktales, both traditional and made-up. The made-up ones, she would swear were real, but he was always skeptical about a heroic boy who saved an entire village from a ferocious giant, especially when the boy happened to look like him and share his first and last name.

Closing his eyes, he thought back to the footsteps from earlier and the order of the doors opening and closing. Then, he went to the third door on the left.

The bathroom.

Next, the person had traveled down to the bathroom—he turned and walked back the way he came—for seven paces. Unless he was dealing with a small child with an unnaturally deep yawn, the door he stopped in front of housed the nameless, faceless person he’d gone there not expecting to see.

He turned the handle and pushed.

Much of the villa had been styled to look like something out of Bali. A large bed centered the room, draped all around by white netting. Beams created a dream catcher pattern along the ceiling in solid dark wood. Lamps turned down to their lowest setting flickered, tossing light back and forth. The room smelled like leaves and soil with a hint of incense that carried a latent smokiness, as if it was time for all the sticks to be changed. And, in the middle of the bed, he spotted four outlines.

At first, he’d intended to make it quick, but there was something about those outlines, something about the thought of this asshole’s last experience being pleasure of the most primal kind. So, he raised his gun and lodged a bullet in the nearest lump.

Someone gasped—feminine.

The gasp roused two additional figures.