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  A dozen snipers could easily remain concealed here for hours. He didn’t have fucking hours. Perhaps not even minutes. All it would take was one killer to double back to the house—

  Cruz focused. Take out the four he knew about, trust Mia had done as instructed. Get back to her alive.

  Who was he dealing with? Strengths? Weaknesses? Skill level?

  Richard Lemon. Cruz ID’d him when he got a brief glimpse of the guy’s frizzy orange hair as he darted behind a large headstone before getting off two shots in quick succession, covering his shit-for-brains partner so he could get closer. Dick’s clown hair made him easy to spot among the moldy, mottled-gray tombs. Dumb fuck should have worn his customary knit cap.

  The moonlight spotlighted Lemon’s partner as he disappeared off to the left behind a tall tomb with chipped plaster and a watchful guardian angel perched on top. Medium height. Bent shoulders. Thin, dark hair, dramatically receding hairline, bald spot. Beak of a nose. Kevin Muncie. Yeah. That fit.

  The ex-military sharpshooters usually tag-teamed. They were crack shots. If a client wanted a clean hit, they were the two to do it. They weren’t the brightest bulbs in the pack, but they knew the business end of their Lapua Magnum sniper rifles.

  They’d never met, but Cruz had studied them, seen their pictures and rap sheets, just as he did with anyone in his line of work. Knowledge was power.

  Their MO: gunshot to the back of the head. Always accurate. They were good, damn good. When they were sober they were considered the best snipers for hire. But word on the street was Muncie had a drinking problem, and Lemon liked his nose candy. As indicated by their miss tonight, one or both of them were impaired.

  Or the shooter had been one of the unknown others.

  Fuck. Who were the other two, and where the hell were they? The hair on the back of his neck prickled, imagining them sneaking into the house to confront Mia. . . . Cruz’s heartbeat kicked up, pounding in his throat, and he consciously lowered it.

  Four men working together? Or a fucking coincidence that they’d all converged tonight? One of the quartet thought he’d be the last man standing for the huge payout after they hit Mia. Or planned to make sure he was. It occurred to Cruz that there might be more than just the four of them.

  Which begged the fucking question: How had the four killers found Mia in this backwater? She trusted the cousin, Todd, and Blush’s security guy. Neither, she claimed, knew her present location.

  Michael Ordway at Davis and Kent had received the mailing address in New Orleans yesterday, but had not put anything in the mail because of the new development. One of the three men had betrayed Mia. One of them wanted her dead. One of them had hired at least five hit men to do the job: himself and whoever else was out here. Clouds drifted over the bright light of the moon, creating moving shadows in the black-and-white cityscape to deceive the eye.

  Time to draw everyone out into the open where he could deal with them. Fast. “Give it up, Dickhead,” Cruz yelled from behind an enormous ivy-covered mausoleum with a kneeling angel at prayer atop the arch over the ornate, rusty scrolled wrought-iron door. It was the biggest and most elaborate crypt in the forgotten Louisiana country cemetery. “This hit is mine. Fuck off. Go back to your hole in Laredo.”

  Lemon’s hiss of surprise sawed through the thick night air. “How the fuck do you know where I li—”

  “Shut it, asshole!” Muncie hissed. Much closer now. Up ahead fifty feet.

  Cruz listened to the asinine exchange as he tuned in to other footfalls. A slight breeze came up to ruffle his hair with damp fingers, sending a swirl of leaves rustling down the walkway in front of the concrete bone house. Between the lightly dancing leaf shadows across the way, he glimpsed, rather than heard, a man hiding two hundred feet north of his location. He was crouched near a dark gray crumbling tomb with Debeneaux engraved along the top face of it. A family crest was centered below the name.

  Two solid granite panels sealing the tomb had etchings of the people’s names and birth and death dates engraved on the front. It looked decades newer than the shadowy pockmarked tomb behind him. Cruz crouched in a wedge of denser blackness, as still and dark as the shadow itself.

  The man sneaking up behind him smelled faintly of Brut cologne—moron. His tread disturbed the small twigs in the damp weeds. Under two hundred pounds, slight limp. Thus far he hadn’t gotten off any shots. Maybe the guy was smarter than Lemon and Muncie. Maybe. Maybe he was smart enough to bring a handgun to the party instead of a long-distance rifle. Maybe.

  He’d be dead before the night was over.

  Definitely.

  “Looked pretty fucking cozy to me, back there in the kitchen,” Lemon taunted, revealing his exact position. Cruz stepped back lightly, moving slowly, his feet making very little sound on the hard stone surround of the crypt. “What happened? Suddenly decided you’d rather fuck the mark than off her? Maybe we’ll take a turn before we finish the job. No hard feelings.”

  “Apparently the client didn’t trust you.” Cruz used his shoulder to get his hair out of his eyes. Sweat from the muggy heat prickled his skin. “I was hired to do what you two couldn’t. Did you snipe her in her office seven weeks ago? Couldn’t make your mark from two hundred feet? Fuck, man, you’re slipping. The job should’ve been done, and you two could be holding hands, sipping mai tais in the Bahamas right about now.” Cruz thought of the long, livid scar on Mia’s arm. Thought about how close she’d been to death, and felt the thick, cold chill of his blood pumping through his veins.

  “We’re not g—”

  “He’s baiting you. Shut the fuck up, Dick,” Muncie snapped. Feet scraping across the same stone surround where Cruz stood. “He’s yanking your chain.”

  “We were all paid to do the job.” Cruz didn’t bother to lower his voice. He wanted their attention diverted here—away from the house—so he needed to keep the party going in the graveyard. “She’ll only die once. And I’m the one who’ll do the job. She knows me. Trusts me. And I’m smart enough not to bring the cops down on me. The rest of you will still have your dicks in your hands when I finish the job. You won’t get another opportunity to get off a shot,” Cruz said easily, attuned to the stealthy footfall coming up on his left. No point masking his location.

  He knew if he could see Muncie ahead of him, the guy in back of him saw him. “Piss off,” he told Lemon. “Keep your up-front money and walk the fuck away while you have the chance. I won’t offer again.”

  “Who the fuck are you?” Lemon shouted, moonlight glinting off the long barrel of his Lapua.

  “The man who’s going to collect the balance of my fee, and put in a request for the balance of yours as well. Still banking in the Caymans, Dickhead?” A wild guess.

  “Holy fuck! How do you know where we—”

  “Jesus, Dick!” Muncie groused, sounding even more incensed as he crouched low, the Lapua Magnum cradled in his arms like a baby, forming an elongated silhouette on the stones behind him. The guy needed a shower and a gallon of deodorant. He reeked of cigarettes and stale perspiration, a surefire gotcha.

  They sure as shit weren’t going to get lucky tonight.

  Cruz tested the ledge of the stone foundation that ran around the base of the mausoleum. Solid. Muncie and his nose a lighter black in the shadows. Moonlight glared on the small bald spot on the back of his head, making a nice bull’s-eye. Cruz stepped closer to the man without making a sound. He edged almost within touching distance, directly behind him. Oblivious to his imminent death, the man bitched, “You’re telling the prick everyth—”

  A sniper rifle was no contest in close combat, and the hand was faster than a bullet in this case. A quick, practiced twist of the guy’s neck, and Muncie was permanently out of the picture. Not the way Cruz liked to do things. But it was expedient, and he felt a pulse pounding with growing urgency to get back to Mia. He didn’t like that she was alone and unprotected in that big, empty fucking house.

  “Kev?” Lemon prodded a
fter several minutes of throbbing silence. He sounded justifiably nervous.

  Cruz ignored him. Someone else was closer. Someone weighing in excess of two fifty, judging by the sound of his stealthy footfalls. Heavy smoker by the sound of his ragged breathing in the thick, muggy night air. Number three? Smart enough not to join in the convo as he closed in on Cruz’s location.

  Cruz stepped over Muncie’s slumped body, keeping his back to the stone wall, turned the corner, then waited in the deep shadows, breath held. He didn’t have long to wait. Number three’s sausage-like fingers curled around the stone corner less then a minute later.

  Cruz grabbed his thick wrist, yanked hard, and jettisoned him out in the open.

  Arms outstretched for balance, and with an involuntary yell of surprise, the guy stumbled into the narrow dirt alley between the tombs and into full, stark white moonlight, a small handgun still clutched in his hand. Antonio Romero. Cruz knew him to be a small-time contractor with no conscience and a rep for brutality.

  The moment the big guy fell to one knee, Lemon got off a head shot. Romero toppled. The blood pooling beneath his head looked black against the gravel. Lemon gave a victory yell. “See that, Kev? I got him.”

  Cruz shook his head. Idiot. The muzzle flash gave him pinpoint accuracy as his own shot followed Lemon’s within a half a heartbeat. “Wrong him, Dickhead.”

  Three down. One to go.

  The fourth man, silent and now invisible, lurked. Cruz scanned the surrounding area for any telltale movement. But the still, mottled darkness revealed no secrets.

  The hair on the back of his neck lifted at the faint, almost imperceptible brush of a soft-soled shoe on rock. By the weight of his movements over the crushed shells and patches of weeds. Light. Agile. Sure-footed. But when Cruz tuned his sharp hearing toward the sound, all he heard was the susurrus of the breeze through the trees and a distant croak of a frog.

  Cruz’s own breath was as quiet as he’d trained it to be. He didn’t move so much as a muscle. He might not know where number four was, but number four knew, he was sure, with pinpoint accuracy where he was. All Cruz had to do was patiently wait for the man to come and get him.

  If there were more fuckers sent for Mia, Cruz would deal with them. If or when the time came. He hoped they weren’t there now, because for the moment he had his hands full with upping the body count in the city of the dead.

  • • •

  Mia hid behind a half-open stone door. It was dark and creepy as hell wandering around the ancient graveyard alone, especially with bullets flying. She was scared out of her mind. If not for hearing Cruz’s familiar voice, the one solid, comfortable, good thing in this bizarre situation, she would’ve had some smarts and hightailed it back to the house to wait for the police.

  She’d heard some of the conversation, but hadn’t processed it. Mostly they’d just been unintelligible words exchanged. Until she’d crept closer. Just enough to know Cruz was still alive. Hard to catch her breath in the circumstances, especially with the weight of the dark, damp night air pressing in on her.

  She flinched at the sound of a bullet hitting something solid, followed by a cut-off cry.

  “See that, Kev?” a man shouted, sounding pleased with himself. “I got him. Money in the bank, dude. Money in the bank!”

  Oh, God . . .

  “Wrong him, Dickhead.” Cruz’s voice cut through the darkness.

  Mia released the anticipatory breath she’d sucked in. What the hell was going on? Cruz clearly knew these men. A few phrases seeped into her consciousness. This hit is mine. Fuck off. Go back to your hole in Laredo.

  She’d thought that was Cruz’s voice, but sound bent at night, especially when she was scared out of her mind.

  He certainly wasn’t friends with them—not from the tone of their voices and the exchange of bullets. But they all seemed to know one another. It didn’t make any damned sense.

  She had been waiting for the other shoe to drop, anticipating it for months. She knew someone would come to kill her. That day was now. Thank God he had missed—again. Cruz had saved her. Now he was out here alone in this awful, creepy, desperate place trying to protect her. Who would protect him?

  The police were on their way. She’d called them while running. Seven minutes, she’d been told. Hadn’t seven minutes come and gone a dozen times since she’d made the damn call?

  Hoping to hear sirens, and lots of them, she heard nothing but frogs, and leaves rustling, and the distracting, hard thump-thump-thump of her blood pounding in her ears. Mia wiped her damp palms on the legs of her pants and tried to press herself closer to the stone door so she could get a better view without exposing herself.

  Comeoncomeoncomeon.

  She could delay a boardroom decision on her own for several hours, but she was at a loss as to what to do now. A fairly good shot, she wasn’t so sure about her skills in this weird black-and-white real-time situation. Could she shoot the assassin and make it count? Even given the dire circumstances. Could she shoot an actual human being? This wasn’t the instance where she could hope to wing him. If he was a killer, he meant business—and his business was to make sure she was good and dead. It was either him or her.

  She chose him.

  She lifted the barrel of the Beretta another fraction of an inch. She might have only one chance to take him down. And as much as she’d rather be back at the house following Cruz’s directive, this wasn’t his fight to fight. He was the innocent bystander. She knew he could take care of himself, but if he got hurt, she’d never forgive herself.

  This hit is mine. Fuck off.

  She leaned forward a fraction more and peered around the sharp stone edge of the door. More voices. Cruz and the killer. Ignore them. There’d be time to make sense of the surreal conversation later. Now she had to know her surroundings as well as she knew her own body. There, on the ground in the moonlight, she saw a dead man sprawled in the open space between the rows of crypts, a shiny black pool on the gravel as it spread out from beneath his head. Another man slumped half in, half out of the shadows.

  Dear God, there was more than one. More than two. Someone else was still out there with Cruz. She sucked in the hard breath squeezing her lungs. The coppery smell of blood and a drift of whispered new death made the hair on the back of her neck prickle in warning.

  This hit is mine.

  This hit is mine.

  This. Hit. Is. Mine.

  A muggy breeze tinged with the musty odors of swamp and rotting things ruffled her hair, and she shivered as if cold, dead fingers stroked her cheek. Crap. She wished she hadn’t put that image into her mind. There was enough non-woo-woo shit going on to freak her out without thinking about ghostly skeletal fingers touching her.

  Hit. Mine.

  It was downright fucking unnerving. She wanted to run. Run out of this haunted graveyard, run from the gunfight with what might be an army of assassins trying to kill her. . . .

  And leave Cruz to fight her battle for her? Hell no.

  She’d identified Cruz by his long hair and the shape of his darker shadow on the shadowy wall behind him and, after getting confirmation by the sound of his voice, kept him in sight.

  Her eyes narrowed. Shit shit shit. There was a shadowy figure sneaking up behind him. Her gun felt heavy and unwieldy in her tense grip, but she tightened her fingers and slowly—very, very slowly—raised the barrel, training the muzzle on the man’s thick silhouette. Her hand trembled from the weight and the gnaw of fear and indecision.

  Mine. Mine. Mine.

  This hit is mine.

  Was it possible? Was Cruz the hit man? Dear God. She didn’t want to believe it.

  The tableau across from her had Mia riveted, dry-eyed, as she followed the man’s stealthy approach. Didn’t Cruz hear him? Sense the killer was there? In the time they’d spent together, she had learned that he had the hearing and instincts of a panther. He had to know, she reasoned. So, was Cruz fucking insane standing there, just waiting for the
man following him to shoot him? Damn it. Maybe he wasn’t aware this one time when he most needed to be. The guy was less than twenty feet from him with a gun pointed at his head.

  Her racing heartbeat made her dizzy with fear. Sweat itched a path down her temple and made her fingers, clamped around the grip of the Beretta, slick. Dear God, the man lifted his arm and out of the shadows and the moonlight caught the blue-gray metal of his gun.

  He was going to shoot Cruz. The moon and all of the ghosts now shoving their dead, stubby cold hands on her back urged her to do something.

  Flicking on the laser pointer she used in presentations that she’d grabbed at the last second as she was running from the house, she shined it between the two crypts.

  The small red dot gave Cruz’s stalker a laser-bright bindi right between his eyes.

  Chapter Eighteen

  This is the police,” Mia shouted with authority, holding the dot steady between his eyes. He wouldn’t see the dot, but he’d see the beam and think it was a laser gun sight. If nothing else, her action would warn Cruz and give him time to protect himself.

  “We have you surrounded. Drop your weapon and come out into the ope—”

  Her foot came down on a loose stone as she shifted her weight to adjust her weakening gun hand. The incredibly loud blast of the bullet exploding into the cement door inches from her head almost gave her a coronary.

  Stone and concrete flew off the wall behind her in a stinging shrapnel of sharp fragments and dust.

  The first shot was instantly followed by another blast, which added another tone of ringing to the first high-pitched whine in her ears. Staggering backward, she stepped farther into the pitch-dark crypt, pressing herself against the mossy door. She froze. Not breathing. Not blinking.

  “Mia!” The voice sounded muted and far away.