Chapter 2 - THE WOMAN IN THE TREE
For half a second, nobody moved.
The woman hung nearly ten feet above the ground, her arms restrained above her while another length of rope supported most of her weight around her torso. It was the only reason she was still alive.
Her head drooped forward.
Long dark hair covered her face.
One bare foot turned slowly above the wet grass.
The little girl in Ramon's arms stopped breathing.
Then she screamed.
“Mommy!”
The sound ripped through the clearing.
The woman's body jerked faintly.
Ramon looked up.
“She heard you.”
The girl twisted desperately in his arms.
“Mommy! I'm here!”
Ramon handed her to Matteo.
“Hold her.”
“No!”
The child fought instantly.
“I need my mom!”
“You're getting your mother,” Ramon said, his voice low and absolute. “But you're staying alive while we do it.”
Something in his tone cut through her panic.
She stared at him, chest heaving.
Then she clung to Matteo.
Ramon turned.
“Victor, tree. Diego, perimeter.”
They moved immediately.
Victor reached the oak first and examined the rope disappearing over one of the thick branches.
“No obvious trap.”
“Obvious isn't what concerns me.”
Ramon pulled a folding knife from inside his jacket.
Victor braced himself beneath the woman.
“On three.”
They worked fast.
Diego remained near the edge of the clearing, pistol lowered but ready as he scanned the fog.
“One.”
Victor grabbed the woman's legs.
“Two.”
Ramon sliced.
“Three.”
The rope snapped.
Her body fell.
Victor absorbed most of the weight and dropped to one knee. Ramon caught her shoulders before her head could hit the ground.
She was frighteningly cold.
But breathing.
Barely.
The girl tore herself free from Matteo.
“Mommy!”
She dropped beside the woman.
Ramon put two fingers against the stranger's throat.
A pulse.
Weak.
Irregular.
But there.
“She's alive.”
The girl burst into sobs.
She pressed her cheek against her mother's arm.
“Mommy, I brought help. I told you I would. I told you.”
Ramon looked at Victor.
“Call Rafael. Tell him I need the doctor brought to the north house immediately. No hospital yet.”
Victor's expression shifted.
Ramon noticed.
“You disagree?”
“A woman found hanging in a forest usually belongs in an emergency room.”
“And if the people who put her here have police watching emergency departments?”
Victor considered that.
Then he reached for his phone.
Ramon gently moved the woman's hair away from her face.
She looked somewhere in her early thirties.
A bruise darkened one cheek. Her lips were pale. There were marks around both wrists and a shallow cut near her temple.
Nothing about her suggested she had wandered here accidentally.
Someone had wanted her frightened.
Someone had wanted her daughter frightened.
And someone had wanted them found.
That last thought bothered Ramon most.
He scanned the clearing.
The oak stood exactly in the center.
No trash.
No footprints obvious enough to read in the wet leaves.
No abandoned vehicle.
No cigarette butts.
No signs of panic.
The scene had been prepared.
“Boss.”
Diego's voice came from behind the tree.
Ramon looked up.
Diego was standing completely still.
“What?”
“You need to see this.”
Ramon rose.
“Matteo, stay with them.”
He walked around the oak.
Diego pointed toward the bark.
At first Ramon saw nothing except age—gray wood, cracks, moss.
Then he saw the mark.
A symbol had been cut into the trunk.
A stag.
Its antlers curved around a small crown.
Ramon's entire body went still.
Victor returned from making the call.
He saw Ramon's face.
“What is it?”
Ramon didn't answer.
He stepped closer.
Ran his thumb over the carving.
Fresh.
Someone had cut it recently.
But Ramon had seen that stag before.
Years ago.
Long before expensive suits.
Long before armored cars.
Long before men called him Don Ramon.
He had been fourteen years old the first time he saw that symbol.
It had been stamped on a brass lighter belonging to his older brother Gabriel.
Gabriel Ortega had been everything Ramon wasn't at fourteen—fearless, loud, reckless, magnetic.
Nine years older.
The heir everyone assumed would someday lead the Ortega family.
And then Gabriel disappeared.
Their father said enemies had taken him.
Three days later, a burned car was found in the mountains.
There had been blood.
A body too damaged to identify visually.
Their father had buried a sealed coffin.
Their mother never recovered.
Ramon had stood beside the grave and watched rain collect on black umbrellas while his father told him something he would never forget.
You're the oldest now.
You don't get to be a boy anymore.
Ramon hadn't been.
Not after that day.
He looked again at the stag.
Victor came beside him.
“You know it.”
Ramon's voice hardened.
“I used to.”
Behind them, the woman made a sound.
Everyone turned.
Her fingers moved weakly.
The little girl leaned over her.
“Mom?”
The woman's eyes fluttered open.
They were hazel.
Unfocused.
Terrified.
She tried to move and gasped.
“Easy,” Ramon said.
Her gaze found him.
For several seconds, she simply stared.
Then the fear changed.
Recognition.
She knew him.
Ramon saw it immediately.
“Who are you?”
Her cracked lips moved.
No sound came out.
Ramon crouched.
“Tell me your name.”
The little girl answered for her.
“Isabel.”
Ramon glanced at the child.
“My mommy is Isabel Navarro. I'm Lucia.”
Lucia.
Now he had names.
“Isabel,” Ramon said.
The woman's eyes remained fixed on him.
“You know who I am.”
It wasn't a question.
A tear slipped from the corner of Isabel's eye.
She whispered something.
Ramon leaned closer.
“What?”
“Too late.”
His expression sharpened.
“For what?”
“They know.”
“Who?”
Her fingers suddenly closed around his wrist.
The strength surprised him.
“You shouldn't have come.”
Ramon stared at her.
“Who did this to you?”
Isabel's eyes moved toward the stag carved into the tree.
Then back to Ramon.
“They wanted her to run.”
Lucia's face crumpled.
“Mommy—”
“They knew she'd reach the road.”
Ramon felt something cold settle beneath his ribs.
The convoy.
The route.
He had changed his travel plans at midnight.
Only six people knew which road he would use.
Victor understood at the same moment.
“This wasn't chance.”
“No,” Ramon said.
Isabel tightened her grip.
“They needed you here.”
A branch snapped somewhere beyond the clearing.
Diego spun toward the sound.
Gun raised.
Victor drew his weapon.
Matteo grabbed Lucia and pulled her behind the oak.
Ramon stayed beside Isabel.
The forest went silent.
Not natural silence.
Waiting silence.
Diego whispered, “Movement east.”
Another crack came from the west.
Then another.
They were surrounded.
Victor looked at Ramon.
“How many?”
“Doesn't matter.”
Ramon pulled his pistol.
Lucia began shaking.
“Are they back?”
Isabel forced herself to speak.
“Ramon.”
He looked down.
Her eyes were clearer now.
Full of terror.
Not for herself.
For him.
“There is something under this clearing.”
Gunfire exploded from the trees.
Bark burst from the oak above Ramon's head.
Matteo covered Lucia with his body.
Victor fired twice toward the muzzle flash.
Diego shouted, “Contact!”
Ramon dropped over Isabel as another round tore through the grass.
“Victor!”
“Three east! Maybe more!”
The attack lasted less than ten seconds.
Then stopped.
Silence again.
Ramon knew that kind of attack.
Not an attempt to kill.
Pressure.
A message.
A second later, an engine roared somewhere beyond the trees.
Then another.
Retreating.
Diego started after them.
“Don't.”
He stopped.
Ramon looked around the clearing.
“They wanted us looking outward.”
Victor's eyes narrowed.
“What?”
Ramon remembered Isabel's words.
Something under this clearing.
He stood and examined the ground around the ancient oak.
Nothing.
Wet grass.
Leaves.
Roots.
Then Lucia spoke from behind Matteo.
“I know where the door is.”
Every man looked at her.
Ramon turned slowly.
“What door?”
Lucia pointed toward the far side of the tree.
“They took us through it.”
She crawled toward a patch of moss beneath the oak's exposed roots.
Her small fingers dug into the leaves.
Matteo started helping.
Within seconds, metal appeared.
A rectangular plate.
Then a recessed handle.
Victor stared.
“You're kidding.”
Ramon wasn't.
He pulled the leaves away.
A steel hatch had been hidden beneath the forest floor.
Old.
Heavy.
Locked from the inside.
A keypad sat beneath a false section of bark.
Lucia shook her head.
“They didn't use numbers.”
“What did they use?”
“A ring.”
Ramon looked at her.
“What ring?”
Lucia pointed directly at his right hand.
At the heavy silver signet ring bearing the Ortega family crest.
The same ring his father had given him on his twenty-first birthday.
Ramon stared at the hatch.
Then at the stag on the tree.
Then back at the ring.
He slowly brought his hand toward the concealed plate beside the keypad.
A red light blinked.
Once.
Twice.
Then turned green.
Deep beneath their feet, machinery groaned awake.
The lock released with a heavy metallic sound.
Lucia whimpered.
Isabel closed her eyes.
Ramon looked down at the dark seam appearing beneath the forest floor.
Whatever waited under that clearing recognized the Ortega crest.
Which meant it hadn't been built by strangers.
May you like
And as the hidden door began to open, Isabel whispered the words Ramon had spent seventeen years believing he would never hear.
“Gabriel is alive.”
