Chapter 2 - THE AMBUSH IN THE FOG
The metallic slamming of heavy truck doors echoed through the damp Valle de Bravo air like gunshots. Alejandro froze, the flashlight beam bouncing wildly off the rotting cedar walls of the old worker’s cabin. Outside, the terrified wails of Sofía and Lucía cut through his chest like glass. He tucked the laminated photograph and the plastic bag deep into his heavy wool jacket, his muscles tightening into hard cables of instinct. These weren't local police or random wanderers; the disciplined, silent precision of their movement screamed professional enforcers. Alejandro crept to the half-rotted window frame, peering through the grime into the swirling mountain fog. Two beefy men in tactical vests stood on either side of his black luxury SUV, their heavy boots crunching on the gravel. One of them, a scarred brute with a jagged tattoo snaking up his thick neck, slammed the butt of a heavy-duty flashlight against the driver’s side window of the truck. Inside, the little girls scrambled into the footwell, their shrill screams peaking in terror. Alejandro didn't wait to be hunted. He stepped out of the back door of the cabin into the shadows of the towering pine trees, his breath pluming white in the freezing midnight chill. He needed to draw them away from the children, and he needed answers. The dead woman lying on the mattress inside had looked hauntingly familiar, her delicate bone structure and dark amber eyes mirroring someone from his own distant past. But before he could piece the fragments together, a blinding beam of light swept across the wet brush inches from his face. "Over there! By the woodpile!" a raspy voice shouted. Alejandro ducked low, sprinting deeper into the dense thicket as a volley of heavy footsteps pounded behind him through the underbrush, the cold night air burning his throat with every agonizing breath.
