Tony fumbled the screwdriver up from the floor, but as soon as he fixed it to the first screw in the secondary panel, his hand went rock steady.
Eleven, ten…
No time to yell at Ronnie for just diving behind the desk instead of hauling ass all the way out of the den.
Eight…
He unscrewed the panel in record time, and—
His stomach crashed down. Oh, fuck me. There were four wires here, too, but this time…
They were all black.
Not a single color to help him out. No, no, no.
Five…
Sweat gushed down his forehead, and suddenly he was back in Iraq, Joey peering down on him with a pleading look as Tony worked to disarm the IED under the poor kid’s dusty boot. If Tony had ignored his book learning and gone with his gut that day, he might’ve felt the wires and caught the backward wiring…
Four, three…
He quickly rolled each black wire between his thumb and forefinger as he snatched up the wire cutters.
One…
He snipped the thickest wire.
The LED flicked out.
He stared in uncomprehending disbelief at the blank screen. His flesh was not currently being incinerated off his bones, so…
He did it. He disarmed the bomb.
The wire cutters tumbled to the floor. Relief hit him so hard his hamstrings quivered. Still on his haunches, he leaned his butt back against the wall, braced his elbows on his knees, and buried his head in his hands. He gulped and struggled to draw in air. “Ronnie,” he croaked.
He heard her scramble out from behind the desk.
“Maybe…you could search for the formula. I need a second.”
Thankfully, she didn’t comment on his unmanly display of freak-out. He heard her approach the safe, heard the steel door swing open, heard the blood pounding in his ears, heard papers being riffled, heard himself breathing too harshly.
Pull yourself together. She’s okay. Her beauty mark wasn’t splatted against the far wall. Her sensual eyes hadn’t been rocketed into a meaty orbit. She hadn’t been mixer-mashed into a clump of bloody Mrs. Potato Head parts. She. Was. Okay.
He heard more papers…
“I found it.” She slipped a hand around his forearm and gave it a soft squeeze. “Thank God you were here, Tony.”
He made a sound in his chest. Yeah, what the hell… His decision to stay in this op hadn’t backfired on him. He hadn’t made things worse, but better.
He heaved a huge breath and finally managed to lever his chin up. He looked into Ronnie’s eyes, whole and intact, eyes that would now someday be able to see more things on her bucket list, and wasn’t it funny how he wanted to see those things with her? Almost dying put interesting ideas into a man’s brain.
Her lips tipped into an off-center smile. “I’m ready to get out of here now. How about you?”
The villa’s garage resembled a wooden barn, with an A-frame roof and two large doors in front that slid side-to-side on rails, rather than the typical up-and-down swing. The left-side door was partially open, showing glimpses of the chauffeur moving around inside.
“Nunzio!” Tony called out.
Nunzio exited the garage, his focus rushing everywhere in the rat-like way of his before settling on the suitcases Tony and Ronnie carried.
Nunzio frowned.
Tony strode up to him and punched him right in the frown.
Nunzio toppled backward and sprawled in the dirt, assuming a convenient knocked-out position. Hey, it’s not like the guy was just going to lend me a car.
Tony shoved the left-side door the rest of the way open.
There were two cars inside.
An armored black sedan with tinted windows made of ballistic glass sat low on its shocks and sported the kind of wide, beefy hood that housed a supercharged, eight-cylinder engine underneath. It was Cuntrera’s most powerful vehicle, but… It was currently hiked up on jacks.
“The Jag,” Tony told Ronnie.
He tossed their bags into the back seat of a 1959 Jaguar XK150 drophead coupé then they both hopped in.
Tony drove out of the villa’s front gate and pointed the car in the direction of the ferry docks, where they would go to catch a boat from Isla Margarita to the mainland. Even though Isla Margarita was a mere twenty miles off the coast of Venezuela, it was a good one hundred to Caracas, where the airport was.
Despite the need to hurry, the sports car’s engine was cold, and Tony drove at a reasonable speed—he was physically incapable of abusing such a fine automobile. He nursed the old girl along, keeping an eye on the temp and the tach, careful not to over-rev the motor, and increased his rate of sweating—not that it was noticeable with his shirt already plastered to his body.
“Shit,” he growled when a black dot appeared in his rearview mirror. “Nunzio squealed.” His bad. He’d been pulling punches so much lately he hadn’t hit the chauffeur hard enough.
Ronnie twisted in her seat to check behind them.
Evidently, the sedan hadn’t been up on jacks for out-of-commission reasons.
Tony swore again. “We needed to be on the mainland before they came after us. We’ll be sitting ducks on a slow-moving ferry.” He changed gears and added weight to the accelerator, but the small dot steadily became a larger dot. Not good. In a battle of Jag versus a V-8 sedan, the Jag—as sweet as she was—would come out on the losing end, and then one of Tony’s strict operational rules would get broken: that he and his partner should not end the day in a bucket of lye.
Ronnie pointed a straight finger at a cross street. “Turn there.”
He didn’t ask why, just cranked on the wheel. He also didn’t bother applying any brakes. Tires screamed, smoke billowed out from the wheel wells, the Jag’s body hard-leaned, and Ronnie white-knuckled the door handle. Well, fuck it. The Jag’s engine was warm now. “Where are we going?”
Ronnie righted herself. “Jefe Santiago Mariño.”
That was short for Aeropuerto Internacional General en Jefe “Santiago Mariño,” Isla Margarita’s airport. He glanced at her.
“We can steal Gaetano’s airplane,” she explained.
He arched a brow. “We can?”
She smiled serenely at him. “I know how to fly a Cessna.”
He paused, then smiled back, then even chuckled. “Well, aren’t you handy?” He crushed the gas pedal and punched it down the road at a hundred miles per hour.