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  Hammett watched them approach her room, handguns out. The three men in dark suits were standard muscle. Maybe mafia, or Darling’s bodyguards, or maybe he’d gotten them at rent-a-thug. They were semi-pro, scoping out the parking lot, covering the guy who kicked in the door.

  Darling stayed back a few paces and watched. His suit was different than the hired help, loud and flashy, a slick lavender color that matched what had to be a custom-dyed Stetson on his head. He was soft in the middle, and had a bulge in the back of his belt where he kept his gun. Or, considering Darling’s appearance, he probably called it a roscoe.

  It took them less than a minute to case the tiny room and determine she wasn’t inside, and then they engaged in a henchmen huddle, apparently deciding one would stay behind and wait while Darling and the other two went back to their vehicle.

  That’s when Hammett stepped out of her rental. Adopting a rock-solid Weaver stance, she dropped the three goons with head shots and Darling by blowing out his right knee.

  Four down in less than two seconds. Darling clutched at his leg and screamed rather than trying to reach his piece. Idiot. Hammett was on him in ten strides, kicking him in the face, stepping on his neck, and picking up his gun.

  “I have money!” His voice was high pitched, frantic.

  “It won’t help. I want information. Your distributor.”

  Darling made a face like a dog who didn’t understand a command. Hammett placed her boot on what was left of his right knee and gave it a little weight. When Darling finished screaming, Hammett tried again.

  “Who distributes your kiddie movies?”

  “His name is Guterez! He’s in Tijuana!”

  “Call him. Set up a meeting for tonight.”

  Another confused expression. Another pain motivator. Darling quickly got the hint and dug his cell phone out of his silly, expensive suit jacket.

  “Speaker phone,” Hammett ordered. “Tell him you’ve got some hot stuff to give him.”

  He nodded, frantically dialing a number. Hammett checked the periphery. So far, no cops or onlookers or triad members looking to protect their whores. She muted out the ambient city noises to pinpoint any police sirens, but didn’t hear any. Even so, Hammett figured she had thirty seconds, tops, before she needed to leave the premises.

  “Fernando? It’s Tex. Que pasa, amigo?”

  “What you want, cabrón?”

  “I’ve got a… uh… hot property for you.”

  “So call my people, set up a screening.”

  Hammett shook her head and raised her boot over Darling’s knee.

  “No! It’s… um.. it’s too hot for that, Fernando. I need to get this to you right away. Tonight.”

  “It better be worth my time, pendejo. Jack’s. One o’clock.”

  Fernando hung up, and a dial tone came through the speakerphone.

  “What is Jack’s?”

  “Bar. In Avenida Revolución, the Zona Centro. They have a mechanical bull.”

  “Describe Fernando.”

  Tex hesitated. He obviously knew that his life would be over once he told Hammett that bit of info. Hammett got on one knee and bent over, staring into Tex’s wide, fear-filled eyes. Then she kissed him, her tongue darting in fast, her free hand on his head under his Stetson.

  “It’s okay, lover,” she said. “I’m not going to kill you yet. I still need you. Now describe Fernando.”

  Tex’s voice came out in a rasp, but his face relaxed a bit. “Short, maybe 5’6”. Mustache.”

  “You’ve just described the entire male population of Mexico.”

  And some of the women, Hammett thought. Didn’t they know about waxing south of the border?

  “He drives a stretch Caddy, black, with horns on the grill. Always wears silver tipped boots. Rattlesnake. Lucchese. Expensive as hell.”

  Hammett knew the brand and owned a pair, though she preferred her Tony Lamas.

  “Is he armed?”

  “Always. And he has bodyguards.”

  “How many?” Hammett asked.

  “Two. Sometimes four.”

  She shook her head slightly. “No. How many children have you videotaped getting raped?”

  Tex’s eyes rounded again, the whites showing all around his cornea.

  Hammett emptied Stu’s gun into Tex’s crotch, then hammered the butt of the gun against his face enough times to take most of the flesh off. She finished him off by smashing both of his eye sockets to mush. He was still breathing when she used his shirttails to wipe her prints off the gun. If he lived—which was unlikely—he wouldn’t be harming any more kids. Not blind and with his junk blown off.

  Hammett scooped up his gun, and the weapons dropped by his henchmen. She also took their shoulder holsters, pleased that one was left-handed and one right-handed.

  There were still no police sirens.

  Too bad for the residents. Criminals were free to do what they wanted.

  “Shitty neighborhood,” Hammett said.

  In the trunk of the rental she had a box of baby wipes. Hammett got the blood off her hands, discarded the wipes in the parking lot, and then got in the car and headed south.

  “When operatives go rogue,” The Instructor said, “they become a threat to the organization. All threats shall be dealt with. Lethally.”

  Getting into Mexico was cake. It was getting out that would be a problem.

  Hammett buzzed down the San Diego Freeway through the border checkpoint in a briskly moving line of cars. She’d been driving for three hours, stopping once to refuel and pee, and the long period of inactivity had made her antsy.

  She exited in Tijuana, on Benito Juárez y/o Segunda, and was looking around for a hotel when she stumbled across Jack’s Taberna on the corner of Avenida Miguel F. Martinez. Hammett passed the bar—it was only ten in the evening—and wove her way through Baja streets until she found El Motel Del Sol. She parked and checked in, the proprietor happy to accept American dollars, and found her room to closely resemble the one she had in L.A.’s Chinatown, from the bare carpet to the same model pressboard nightstand. The only difference, Hammett surmised, was the roaches here spoke Spanish instead of Cantonese.

  She killed some time by field stripping and cleaning all the weapons she’d acquired. Tex might have been a scumbag, but he knew enough to equip his men with quality firearms. His guards had been carrying Ed Brown Special Forces 1911s—around $3k each. Tex himself had chosen a S&W M&P 340 for his carry. Double action, concealed hammer, Tritium sights, five .357 Mag rounds in the cylinder. Nice.

  Hammett made a boresnake out of some paracord she used as shoelaces, and was running it through the 340, cleaning out residue, when the phone rang. While this didn’t surprise her—she was always tuned in to her surroundings, even when asleep—she was curious who it could be. The motel manager? Wrong number?

  Or someone who knew her?

  She picked up the receiver, staying silent.

  “Why are you in Tijuana?” asked the robot.

  Her handler, Isaac, using his electronic modulator to disguise his voice.

  Shit.

  “After the mission I thought I’d get a little R&R.” Hammett bit back her nervousness. “Spend a few days south of the border. Unwind.”

  “Does unwind involve you dispatching four men in Los Angeles?”

  “Yes,” she said, matter-of-factly. “That helped me shake off a lot of tension.”

  “Protocol is for you to go home after an op. Await further instructions.”

  “Protocol also says we shouldn’t discuss business on public phone lines.”

  “You didn’t leave me a choice.”

  “There are always choices,” Hammett said, determined not to show fear. “And I’m choosing to hang up on you.”

  “Go home. I won’t tell you again.”

  “Is that a threat, Isaac?”

  “It’s an order.”

  “I have some business here. I’ll go home when I’m finished.”

  “Fe
rnando Guterez is not your target, Hammett.”

  Goddamn. Nothing got past Isaac. It was eerie.

  “He is now. I took out Hot Rod. This guy is even worse. Or do we rank baby rapers on some sort of sliding scale?”

  “I’ll be watching. If you’re not back across the border in an hour, I’ll consider that going rogue.”

  “I’ll go home after I kill Guterez. And if you send someone after me, they’ll join him in hell.”

  Hammett hung up. She’d been able to control her emotions, but her hands still shook. Making an enemy of the organization she worked for was damn near the stupidest thing she could do. But she also knew she was the best they had, and she was gambling they wouldn’t sacrifice her and her formidable skills because of a minor insurrection.

  Hammett dropped and did thirty quick fingertip push-ups to burn off the adrenaline. Then she padded to the bathroom, stripped down, and got into a shower of questionable cleanliness. The motel hadn’t provided shampoo, only a cheap sliver of soap wrapped in wax paper. But at least there was a private bathroom, a considerable bit of luxury in a place like this. She lathered up, scrubbing off her make-up, considering her next move.

  They’d trained her to kill, and she’d taken many lives for her country, without ever rejecting a target. She’d killed brave men who fought against tyranny and oppression, simply because they opposed the U.S. government’s foreign interests. She’d killed wives and girlfriends of targets—innocent collateral damage who were in the wrong place at the wrong time. She’d extracted information from U.S. allies in the most painful ways possible, because that was what she’d been ordered to do.

  But Hot Rod, and Tex Darling, and Fernando Guterez—these men were monsters. They needed death like the Sahara needed rain. For the first time ever, Hammett was using her skills to do real, measurable good in the world.

  So was it worth going AWOL and being hunted by her own organization, just to rid the world of a few profiteering pedophiles?

  Hammett turned off the water, shook her wet hair. “Fuck yeah, it is.”

  She dressed again, sticking the 340 in the back of her belt as Darling had, pulling her shirt over it. Then she left the motel and strolled the streets. They were crawling with activity, mostly young Americans in various stages of loud and wasted. A block away, she found a tamale cart and scarfed down two with some bottled water. Another block later she bought a cheap poncho—the kind Eastwood wore in the Dollars westerns—and put it on even though the post-sundown heat was hovering around ninety. Then it was back to the motel where she strapped on the left-handed and right-handed shoulder holsters she’d liberated from Darling’s dead henchmen.

  With the poncho on, she did several practice draws, adjusting straps and buckles until she was comfortable. Then she abandoned the motel and went off to wait for Guterez.

  The streets of Tijuana hadn’t gotten any cooler, but had gotten louder as more partying asshole American kids whooped and screeched and acted pretty much like partying asshole American kids. Hammett knew of Baja’s old days, of criminal activity and illicit sex shows and hard drug use. It used to be dark and dangerous. Now it might as well have been Ft. Lauderdale, New Orleans, or Las Vegas.

  Some cute twenty-something guy with too many tequila shots in him stumbled up to Hammett and drunkenly groped her ass. She hit him in the kidney hard enough to tinge his piss red, then sidestepped some underage chick blowing chunks onto her micro mini and walked into Jack’s.

  The scene inside was like the scene outside, only hotter and a bit darker. Hammett pushed through the throng of partiers, found a corner to back into, and checked her watch.

  Still forty minutes before Fernando’s arrival. She killed time by memorizing egress points, finding six potential exits if things went sour, plus a door marked No Admittance that probably led to offices on the second floor. Hammett also spotted four men whom she pegged as bouncers (or maybe predators the way they scanned the crowd), possibly armed.

  There were a few other men packing. Slick, older guys, their jackets let out to de-emphasize the bulge of their firearms. Cartels. When things got hot, Hammett didn’t know how they’d react. Most certainly Fernando Guterez was connected. But were these his people? Or partial owners of the club, protecting their interests and watching how business boomed? Or local boys just relaxing with a cold Corona after a long day of cocaine trafficking and torturing informants?

  A total of eight men she had to keep tabs on, plus whomever Guterez brought with him.

  Scratch that. Nine. An attractive Hispanic man with a wide smile and a black eye patch had made his way through the crowd and was staring at Hammett from three meters away. He moved like a panther, both effortless and coiled. Beneath his leather vest, under his right armpit, was the bulge of a weapon.

  Hammett kept her expression blank, staring as he approached. When he was within arm’s reach, he stopped, spreading out his palms.

  “Of all the tequila joints, in all the towns, in all the world, look who walked into mine.”

  “Keep walking, Bogie,” she said.

  “It is okay, my sweet bonita. I bear no ill will. I’m just happy to lay eyes on you again. Well, eye, I mean.”

  He winked. Hammett was sure she’d never seen this man before. She could also read people very well, and he wasn’t lying. This guy apparently thought he knew her.

  “Refresh my memory.”

  He frowned, looking hurt. “Our time in Vegas was not so long ago, was it? The Luxor? The waters at the Bellagio? The bed at the Venetian? Did the agency you work for brainwash you?”

  Interesting. He thought they’d had sex and knew she was an operative. He also didn’t seem threatening. At least, not in a violent way. But he radiated pheromones, as if he were ready to pounce on Hammett at any moment. Which, judging by his physique, wasn’t something she’d normally turn down.

  But this wasn’t the time, or the place.

  “Remind me of your name again,” Hammett said.

  “A joke, yes? I do not understand your intentions, but I will play along. Heath, at your service.”

  He offered his gun hand, no doubt intentionally to show her he wasn’t going to draw. Hammett took it, and he immediately pulled her close. She dug her free hand into her poncho, seeking the 1911, but Heath merely brushed his lips across her knuckles, then kissed her fingers.

  “Still paranoid as always,” he said, eye twinkling. “I understand our relationship has not been built upon trust, but believe me when I say I’m not here to harm you.”

  Hammett pulled her hand away from his warm breath. “So why are you here?”

  “Is coincidence not enough for you? This is where I grew up. My home. If anyone should be paranoid, it should be me. Perhaps you’ve looked me up to finish what we began?”

  Was that a threat? Hammett eyed the bulge in his armpit. Unless he was very, very good, she’d be able to draw her weapon before he could.

  “To settle old scores?” she asked, her voice flat.

  “To make each other cry out in ecstasy, chica. Por favor, do not pretend you don’t remember. My ego is not so strong that I could handle a rejection like that. Not from you.”

  Hammett had only just met him, but she was pretty sure Heath’s ego could handle quite a bit. But his presence was distracting her from the mission. This Mexican lothario needed to vamos, pronto.

  “If I asked you nicely to leave, will you comply?”

  He smiled, then moved his face closer as if to kiss her. Hammett decided, perhaps foolishly, that if he tried she’d let him, if only to see if he was as good at it as she would have guessed. But before his lips met hers, he whispered.

  “Those eight men you spotted. Four who look like bouncers and four who look like cartel. They all work for Guterez.”

  His visible eye was dark, wide, crinkled at the edges in amusement. He was talking shop, but apparently enjoying himself.

  “And who do you work for? Isaac?”

  “I know no one named Isaac,�
�� his breath smelled faintly of Cuban cigar smoke, which was a turn-on for Hammett.

  “But you aren’t here by coincidence, are you?”

  His lips brushed hers. “No. I am here to assist you.”

  Two could play this game. She moved her lips to his ear, gave it a soft nibble. “What if I don’t need assistance?”

  “You are very good, bonita. But this is only the first team. Guterez is sending more men. Many more. You have apparently made some formidable enemies. But you still have friends in high places.”

  The Instructor, Hammett thought. He wouldn’t let Isaac take down his number one student. Assuming Isaac was the one who informed Guterez. On the other hand, this Heath fellow might be the one working for Guterez, running a game on her. If so, his next act would be to get her someplace private.

  “We should leave,” Heath said, his unshaven cheek nuzzling against hers. “Go somewhere private.”

  Hammett frowned. She’d been starting to like the guy. Not too many male hitters were fluent in seduction. Killing him would be a pity.

  “Where do you suggest?”

  “Out of Baja, for sure.” His eyes crinkled. “Preferably somewhere with a firm mattress and room service.”

  Then, in a blink, Heath had drawn his gun from his shoulder holster.

  He was blindingly fast. Faster than she would have guessed.

  Hammett was faster. But as she pulled a 1911, planning to gut shoot the Mexican with one hand and counter his aim with her other, she realized he wasn’t pointing at her.

  Heath’s gun boomed over her shoulder, in the direction of one of the bouncers. Hammett turned slightly, saw the bouncer drop his piece and fall to the ground, red blossoming on his shirt, and then she adjusted her aim and shot at one of the suits, who’d drawn a bead on her and Heath. Two pulls of the trigger and his last thought flew out the back of his head in a red puff of brain matter.

  Then Heath tugged Hammett against him, pressing his warm, hard body against hers.

  “Round robin?” he said.

  She knew the maneuver and nodded. Then they were back to back, each covering 180 degrees of the bar. Hammett took down two more targets as the crowd erupted in screams and panic. The smart ones hit the floor. The stupid ones—who accounted for the majority—stampeded the exits, the impromptu mayhem making Hammett lose sight of the other hostiles.