by D. J. Molles
He took a step back. “Alright. Listen to my instructions and do exactly as you’re told.”
“Okay.”
“Pull in through the gate—very slowly. Then turn to your left, and park it right up against those barrels. You see them?”
“Yes.”
“Then you will exit the vehicle. If you have weapons, don’t touch them. Leave them in the vehicle. We will escort you to Señor Leyva. Understand?”
“Yes.”
The leader waved them on.
Lee tried to read him, to see if he was just getting them to relax and park the truck so that when they started pumping Lee and Abe full of lead, they didn’t accidentally accelerate into one of the houses.
But the leader seemed bored. Uncaring.
Lee pulled his foot off the brake, and let the truck coast forward.
The man beside the machine gunner opened the gate for them, and they rolled through, then parked it right where they’d been instructed.
Lee took that time to breathe, trying to lower his heart rate. A high heart rate meant muddled thinking and lack of dexterity. And Lee was going to need all his faculties to pull this off.
Too bad he was half-starved and partially dehydrated.
But there wasn’t much he could do about that.
He shut the engine off, and stepped out.
The leader with the FAL had remained at the gate. That was clearly his duty. But he’d dispatched the two men with AKs to escort them. Both looked like they were original cartel members—not local populace pressed into service. They had that lean, feral look to them.
One took up a position a few paces away and leveled his AK at Lee and Abe.
The other let his rifle hang on a strap and gestured at them. “Turn around. Hands up. Feet apart.”
Lee and Abe exchanged a quick, worried glance, but complied.
They’d planned for this. This was a part of the procedures.
One of their “sources” had told them so. And Lee had to trust that intelligence. Because without it, they didn’t have anything. That particular source Lee had been forced to hurt a lot more than the others. So there was a chance that the intelligence was born more out of desperation to get Lee to stop.
Lee stood there, facing the bed of the truck with his feet spread and his arms up. One of the two men stepped up and patted him down. He did a good job. Kept a grip on the back of Lee’s collar, and a leg pinioned right behind Lee’s, so that if Lee started to bow up, the guard could easily take him down.
As the pat-down continued, Lee stared straight ahead, letting that fear alchemize into hatred again. His eyes fixated on the main ranch house. On the porch where Joaquin Leyva had stood, smoking his cheroot, not so long ago. He was in that house. The man that Lee wanted.
A stepping stone.
All of these bodies were just stepping stones to Lee.
A way to get to where he was going.
And at the end of that path of bodies, there was Mateo Ibarra.
Somehow, someway, using some method that Lee didn’t even have a shadow of a concept of yet, he was going to do it. If he kept going. The way would open up. If he stayed focused, the opportunity would arise.
Mateo could not hide from him forever.
The guards finished patting Abe down.
“Okay. Turn around.”
Lee and Abe turned.
One of the cartel men gestured between them. “Which of you has the message?”
Lee nodded. “That’s me.”
“Give me the message and I’ll deliver it to him.”
Lee pulled a breath into his lungs, and then let it out, so that it wouldn’t get trapped in his chest and he wouldn’t appear tense. “I’m sorry. But Hermanco instructed me to deliver the message directly to Señor Leyva, and no one else, on my life. I swore to him. Otherwise I would give you the message.”
The guard squinted at Lee like he was trying to perceive through a veil of bullshit.
Eventually he sneered, but relented. “Fine. You. Alone.” He gestured to Abe. “You can wait here, or…refresh yourself.” The guard motioned for Lee to follow with his head, and then began walking away, towards the ranch house.
Lee followed, separating from Abe.
***
Abe watched him go, feeling his pulse thumping in his neck, but knowing that his thick beard probably covered it. He turned to the remaining guard, who looked like he was about to dismiss Abe and go back to the front gate.
“Got any good girls around here?” Abe asked him.
The suspicious expression melted and the guard’s eyes gleamed. He chuckled. “Take your pick.”
Abe looked out at Triprock. With the arrival of more apparent cartel, the people of Triprock had made themselves as scarce as possible. Best not to be noticed. But there were still a few people out—no choice but to do their chores and hope to be ignored.
There was a pretty girl filling up water from a windmill powered well. Young. Dark haired.
“What about her?” Abe asked, pointing at her.
The girl glanced up at him, noticing his attention even at fifty yards. She immediately looked back down. Like she wanted to get away. But the water jugs would only fill up so fast.
The guard peered at her. “Oh. Yeah. Muy bonita. But scary. She’ll scratch you. Como el gato.” A smile directed at Abe. “But maybe you like that.”
Abe smiled back. “Well, I guess we’ll just have to see.”
Abe patted the side of the pickup truck as though to bid it farewell, and then set off across the yard towards the girl and the well. The yard that sat between a cluster of buildings—the main ranch house to the left, the main barn to the right, and a few smaller structures filling in the gaps—was mostly hard-packed dirt. But some green Bermuda grass clung to the edges of the heavily trodden paths.
The girl remained agonizingly focused on her task, like she was willing the water to fill up faster. But as Abe drew closer, her eyes glanced up at him fearfully, and then back to her slowly-filling water jugs.
Filled, the jugs must’ve weighed close to eighty pounds. And she was such a small thing. But Abe saw the wiry strength in her tan-skinned arms.
He stopped on the other side of the cement trough.
The girl said nothing.
“I have a gift for you,” Abe said.
Her whole body stiffened. She straightened up. Looked Abe in the eyes. And gave him the tiniest of nods.
Abe moved around the water trough, heart thudding. He could tell that a few of the cartel men were watching. Curious as to how scratched up Abe was going to get.
He slid up next to the girl. Intimately close. His hand touched hers where it gripped the side of the trough. His other hand touched her shoulder.
The girl stared at the water jugs.
Out of the side of her mouth, she whispered, “Red building to your left. The room in the far back, to the right.”
Abe’s hand crept down her body to her lower back, and up her arm towards her breasts.
She spun and slapped the shit out of him.
It was a hard hit. Abe was shocked at the force behind it. He almost stumbled.
He came back at her. She let out little cry and sunk her fingernails into his face under his eyes, and kneed him hard in the thigh, but thankfully missed his crotch. By then he’d closed the gap between them and managed to get his arms around her. He spun her around and yanked her off her feet while she continued to kick and spit at him—very much like a cat.
He wrenched one of her arms behind her back, pulling the wrist up so that it was almost up between her shoulders, and with the other hand he buried his fingers into her long black hair and twisted until he had a solid grip.
“Easy now, bitch!” he growled at her.
Up in the hayloft overlooking the yard, the cartel guards in the machine gun nest hooted and made catcalls.
Abe hauled her forward, forcing her onto her tiptoes so that she couldn’t get enough traction to resist him. She
groaned and cried out from the pain, but she couldn’t resist without dislocating her shoulder or ripping a chunk of her hair out.
Abe angled for the red building. He made it up the steps and kicked the door open. It was a shotgun house. One long hall going straight to the back. Doors on both sides of the hall. A bunkhouse.
Abe loosened his grip as he pushed her into the hallway and kicked the door closed behind him. The other doors on either side of him were all closed as he passed them. But he wasn’t sure if they were occupied or not. And he wasn’t sure whether the occupants were sleeping or screwing.
At the far back, the last door on the right hung open a few inches.
Abe shouldered this open.
The room was empty, save for a dirty mattress on the ground. A single window over the bed.
Abe shoved the girl, aiming for the mattress, then turned around and closed the door behind him, and locked it. He whipped around, not sure whether she would attack again, but the girl now sat on the edge of the mattress, rubbing her shoulder, and glaring up at Abe.
Abe stalked across the room, and she didn’t move to get away from him.
He squatted down, about arm’s length from her. “I’m Abe Darabie,” he whispered.
She nodded. “I’m Sally Sigman.”
“Are you okay?” Abe looked at her shoulder. “I had to make it look real.”
She smiled. “Oh, I’m fine.” She nodded towards his face. “Your face, though…”
Abe grinned, and felt the scratches on his face burn. “I’m not worried about my face. But thanks for not actually kneeing me in the balls.” Abe glanced up at the window. “Did the Robledos get our last drop?”
Sally’s head trembled up and down. “Yes. Eric and Cat are ready.” She pulled a white piece of cloth from her pants pocket, and scrambled up to the window. She lifted it a few inches, put the cloth over the sill, and then slid the window closed again, all the while keeping her head down.
Abe looked around the room. Worry starting to mount on his chest. “You did stow the stuff, right?”
Sally nodded and then stepped off the mattress.
Abe nodded, understanding. He knelt down next to the mattress, then paused and looked at Sally. Oddly, as rough as their acting had been outside, his next request made his face flush. “You should…uh…probably make some noises.”
Sally’s face turned about as red as Abe’s.
How old was she? No more than eighteen.
But she nodded.
Abe lifted the mattress, as Sally covered her own mouth and began to make muffled noises of pain and violation.
Under the mattress was a loaded M4 and three extra magazines.
SIX
─▬▬▬─
JOAQUIN
Lee didn’t know the layout of the main ranch house.
He could make educated guesses, based on information given to him by Eric and Catalina Robledo—their contacts inside Triprock. But this was the first time he’d actually stepped foot in it.
“Wait here,” one of the guards grunted at him, and then left him standing in the foyer.
Lee took steady breaths.
Smelled the musty, grassy scent of faint cigar smoke.
Joaquin and his cheroot. Close by.
Lee was in the lion’s den now. And he couldn’t turn around and walk back out.
Get the layout.
He let his eyes scan across the interior of the ranch house, absorbing it with an almost robotic intensity of focus.
The atrium was front and center.
To his left, a dining room. To his right, a living room.
Both the dining room and living room were occupied. Two men in the dining room, playing cards at the table. Three men in the living room—two lounging on a couch, the third, looking out a window.
All were armed. Long guns and handguns.
They gave him passing, suspicious glances, but no one’s gaze lingered on him. They evaluated him, and then decided he was nothing to worry about, and went back to doing whatever they were doing.
Lee had learned how to become someone else. He’d been all sorts of people, since Julia left him. He’d been an animal. He’d been a killer. He’d been a manic cannibal. Several times he’d been a member of Nuevas Fronteras.
Now he was a messenger bitch.
He stood with his shoulders slumped, and his eyes cast down. Hands clasped at his waist.
He was someone you didn’t need to worry about.
The guards returned, coming out of a swinging doorway down the main hall that Lee suspected led into the kitchen.
“He’s ready for you. Come.”
Shit.
Lee had hoped they would keep him waiting longer. He hadn’t given Abe enough time.
Lee hesitated until the two guards that had escorted him nudged him forward, and then he began to follow.
They escorted him down the hall and pushed through the swinging door, holding it open for Lee. It was indeed the kitchen. He saw the men in the dining room to his left. To his right, a small kitchen table.
Joaquin Leyva sat at the table, puffing on his cheroot. Tobacco smoke hung around the ceiling over their heads. It smelled heavy and dark.
Joaquin inspected him as he entered.
Lee dipped his head, properly intimidated. This wasn’t entirely an act, though what Lee truly felt in his chest was a mix of hatred and the sort of tentative respect you gave to wild animals. Animals that could be unpredictable. Animals that could maul you out if you rubbed them the wrong way.
A short, dark-skinned man stood off to the side of the kitchen, eyeing him.
Joaquin’s body guard, perhaps?
Lee stopped a few paces from the table. His two escorts hovered close on either side of him, and slightly behind.
Again, Lee took in as much as he could with a quick sweep of his eyes.
The short man had a pistol in his waistband.
Lee assumed that Joaquin was also armed, though he kept it covered under his shirt.
Joaquin raised his eyebrows at Lee. “Well?”
“Uh, yes sir,” Lee glanced at the two guards to either side of him. “Hermanco has sent me with a message for you, sir.”
Joaquin nodded. “I’m aware of why you’re here. I’m asking you to give me the message now.”
Stall.
“Yes, sir.” Lee made another pointed glance to the guards. “I was told that it was for your ears only.”
Joaquin considered this, taking a pull on the cheroot and letting the smoke leak out of his lips, all the while watching Lee with sharp, scrutinizing eyes.
Abe needed ten minutes. That was what they had agreed upon.
It had only been about five. Maybe six.
Four minutes was a long damn time to stall with someone like Joaquin.
“I’m not in the habit of doing what Hermanco says,” Joaquin quipped. “You will give me the message now.”
Lee’s heart tried to accelerate, and he needed it to slow down. His palms began to sweat. He resisted the urge to wipe them.
He had to play their ace in the hole.
Unfortunately, they only had one. And how trustworthy it was, again came down to whether or not you could trust the word of someone you tortured.
Lee took a tentative step forward. Not too close, but enough to seem like he was earnest in his desire for privacy. He lowered his voice. “Sir, he told me to tell you that it is about the…Los Zetas.”
Joaquin gave no reaction to this. He sat there, very still, his cigar in his left hand, trailing a thin line of smoke towards the clouds swirling over their heads. He kept his right hand below the table where Lee couldn’t see it.
Lee knew he was right-handed. Which meant he was either keeping that hand free to go for his gun, or the gun was already in his hand, pointed at Lee under the table.
Joaquin gestured to the chair across from him with his left hand. “Sit.”
Lee didn’t want to sit. Sitting would put him in a disadvantaged
position. He wouldn’t be able to move and react as fast. In the space between heart beats he weighed the possibility of refusing to sit and decided that would cripple him even worse.
He took the seat.
Slowly.
Every second precious, and bought with the currency of the tenuous trust that still wavered between him and Joaquin like a rickety rope bridge over a chasm. If he did too much stalling, Joaquin was just as likely to kill him without warning. If he didn’t do enough, then the entire mission would go down the shitter.
He sat. Fidgeted. Looked at the guards again. Then back at Joaquin. Then placed his hands on the table top. Clasped his fingers together, and then separated them, laying them flat on the table. Giving every indication that he was wildly uncomfortable.
Sending the signal that Joaquin was in control.
Joaquin sighed. Looked at the inch of ash on the end of his cigar. Frowned. “Hermanco didn’t tell me that he was sending a messenger. Usually he tells me ahead of time if he has a private message for me. That way I can be prepared to receive it.”
The statement hung in the air.
Did Joaquin want Lee to address this concern, or was he just talking?
Lee’s source hadn’t told him anything about advanced messages, warning of other incoming messages. He’d just told Lee about the Los Zetas cartel, which had made a resurgence in Mexico. The problem was, a lot of Nuevas Fronteras had originally been Los Zetas.
Now, apparently, some loyalties were in question.
How much time do I need?
Joaquin remained silent.
Lee decided to push forward. “Hermanco did not confide in me. I understood that he was concerned about…certain people’s loyalties.”
“Perhaps,” Joaquin squinted at Lee, and Lee didn’t like the expression in his eyes. Like a cat waiting to pounce. “But I would have thought he would communicate this to me when we spoke, not twenty minutes ago.”
Shit.
Lee resisted the urge to swallow.
Joaquin leaned forward. “What he did tell me, was that he had lost contact with a small group that he’d sent out from La Casa. Two of his men that he’d sent to investigate a claim from one of our locals about having captured Nadie y Ninguno.”
