The girl waited a moment for me to respond before starting the scan, and an image similar to the first one appeared on screen. I could tell just from the much smaller outline and the lighter skin tone it was Lita’s, though beyond that the two were indistinguishable.
The driver’s license and credit card I had for Lita were both fake; that information came back within an hour. To add insult to injury the address listed on it, Kovanny Road, turned out to be the Russian word for forged. The entire thing was complete crap, and she didn’t care who knew it.
I’d just been too damn stupid, too blinded by her money, to realize it.
Pally had been all too happy to track the dough and see where it came from, especially after Hutch told him it was a favor for me, even more so once he discovered the origin was most likely Russian. As a first-generation immigrant from Poland, his hatred for the former Soviet Union ran deep, instilled by family members who had spent their lives in constant fear.
If I’d had such an upbringing, I’m sure my ire would have been aimed in that direction as well. As it stood, mine was aimed a little farther south, a little closer to home.
The girl checked to make sure the scan was complete before lifting the hand away, holding it between two fingers, extending her arm as far away from her body as she could manage. Once it was deposited and the top slammed shut she shoved it a few feet across the stainless steel table it sat on, putting space between the cooler and herself.
“I don’t care what you guys do with this, just get it the hell out of here,” she said, giving her upper body an exaggerated shake. She snatched up the disinfectant wipes and went back to work on the glass, polishing it to a mirrored shine.
“This takes away the stain, but what about the smell?” she grumbled, dropping the wipe into a biohazard container and grabbing another from the box.
Neither one of us answered her, instead focusing on the monitor behind her head.
“I’ll be damned,” Hutch muttered, his face neutral as he stared at the image on the screen.
The picture had been taken some time ago, before he had a chance to grow out his hair or beard. The broad nose and dark eyes, though, were exactly the way I’d remembered, the same for the pair of wire-rimmed glasses covering his face.
“Mateo Perez,” Hutch said, staring at the photo, his body at rapt attention.
“I told you,” I muttered, my voice free of gloating, just stating a fact. “The whole back end of his head was gone, but there was no mistaking that face. Not after the amount of time I spent staring at it.”
Hutch nodded in agreement. “I don’t think any of us will ever forget it.”
The girl glanced from the picture to both of us, her hair spinning out away from her head behind her. “Well, I’m glad you guys desecrating my lab did serve some purpose, at least.”
“Any luck on the other one yet?” Hutch asked without glancing over at her.
“Not yet,” she replied, “but it just started running. It might take a while.”
We both grunted in response, lost in our thoughts.
“You guys want me to call if it comes back a hit?” she asked, her voice tinged with hope.
Hutch and I glanced at one another, each of us nodding in unison.
“Please,” Hutch said, as we both turned and headed toward the door. Our feet echoed heavily off the tile floor as we went, our pace quick.
“Hey!” the tech yelled at our backs, spinning us both around.
“Don’t you two dare leave that thing in here with me,” she said, wagging a finger at the cooler. “I don’t care what you do with it, but get it out of my lab.”
Chapter Thirteen
The black sedan rolled to a stop six inches from the curb, as an overhead light gleamed off the glossy paint job. It idled there a long moment before the ignition was turned off, the engine ticking in the silent desert night.
Carlos Juarez sat in the back seat staring out, his hands hanging down between his knees. He ran them once down the front of his khaki chinos, his palms sweaty despite the dry air. It was the first time he’d been back in six months, and just the mere sight of the place brought on a flood of bad memories. They played one after another in his mind on loop, every last image something he could do without ever seeing again.
“She in there?” he asked, motioning toward the front door with his chin.
“She is,” the driver said, a thick, bullish man with a head shaved clean. “She’s expecting you, and she’s none too happy about it.”
Carlos nodded, already envisioning the hostile environment he was walking into. Returning wasn’t high on his to-do list either, but given what had arrived at his door, he didn’t have much choice.
“Yeah, well, the feeling’s mutual,” Carlos said, letting animosity hang from the words. He threw them out like a challenge, a dare, to see if the driver or his partner riding shotgun would take the bait.
Neither one did. Aside from the few words the driver had just muttered, neither had said a thing since picking him up at the airport a half hour before.
“It’s been real, fellas,” Carlos said, wrenching open the door and stepping into the night. Behind him he could hear both men chortle at his comment as the realization set in that they were his ride back to the plane.
“So it’s like that,” he whispered under his breath, coming to a stop in front of the same building he’d voluntarily walked into a few years before. A single story tall, constructed entirely of red brick, it looked like a cross between a school and a DMV.
For an agency trying its best not to be conspicuous, it could not have picked a worse location for its headquarters. The entire place, from the perfectly shaped shrubs to the neatly raked rock beds, screamed bureaucracy.
A plume of stale frigid air passed over Carlos as he stepped through the glass double doors. He paused in the main foyer as they swung closed behind him, the seals clamping shut with an audible sucking sound.
An open hallway extended out straight ahead of him, offices lining it on either side. A wooden receptionist’s desk sat off to the left, the seat behind it vacant and the light overhead dim; the person manning it had long since gone home for the night.
“Honey, I’m home,” Carlos said, sauntering one foot at a time down the hallway, his unbuttoned dress shirt billowing open over the same ribbed tank top he’d been wearing that morning.
The sound of heels clicking against tile echoed out into the hallway, preceding the arrival of Special Agent in Charge Mia Diaz. She appeared out of an open office door halfway down the hall and stood with arms folded across her chest, frowning back at him.
“So get your ass in here already,” she said. “You asked for this meeting, remember?”
She disappeared back into the doorway just as quickly, bringing a smile to Carlos’s face. No matter how much they wanted to act like his being here was a pain in the ass, the simple truth was they needed him, and everybody in the building knew it. They could stomp around and piss and moan, but the fact that within hours of demanding the meeting he was on his way to the airport proved how invaluable he really was.
Carlos dragged out the walk as long as he could, pausing every few feet to glance at a poster on the wall, or peek into one of the darkened offices lining the corridor. Deep inside he was scared, or at the very least concerned, about what had arrived on his doorstep. Still, he couldn’t let them know that, couldn’t give off the impression that he was relying on them.
If that happened, they took back control of the relationship, and that was something he could ill afford.
Swinging through the open doorway, Carlos walked into a conference room almost twenty feet in length. A long, oval table was stretched through the middle of it, and high-backed burgundy leather chairs were spaced about. Almost half of them each contained a man in a suit staring back at him, none of them looking the least bit enthusiastic t
o be there.
Standing on the right side of the room was Diaz, her arms still folded. She too wore a black pantsuit with a white shirt beneath it, a mess of black curls spilling down onto her shoulders. She stood with her chin drawn back into her neck, accentuating the frown on her face.
“Good evening, lady and gentlemen,” Carlos said, raising a hand to his brow and flicking a mock salute. “Trip was good, thanks for asking.”
“What the hell do you want, Juarez?” Diaz said, her voice a decibel louder than necessary, no doubt meant to make a point.
Carlos stepped forward and grabbed the back of the closest chair, sliding it out and depositing himself in it. He laced his fingers across his stomach and smiled up at her. “Nice to see you too, Agent Diaz.”
Diaz blew a long breath out through her nose and glanced at the ceiling, letting her rage play out plainly across her face. “We all have families and lives to get home to, Juarez. Either start talking or we’re out of here.”
Carlos knew he was playing it a bit cavalier, but he couldn’t give off the vibe of desperation. If he did, he and his cousin were toast.
He raised his hands by his sides as if to signal for a cease-fire and reached into his pants pocket, extracting the single piece of paper he’d received the day before. He left it folded into eighths and tossed it onto the table, one side flat, the other sticking up at an angle.
“What the hell is that?” Diaz asked, jutting her chin toward the paper.
“Open it up and see,” Carlos replied. He watched as Diaz flicked her gaze to the closest agent and nodded upward, a quick, curt gesture telling him to take a look.
The man, a thin, wiry guy with blond hair shaved down into a flattop, reached out and took up the paper, unfolding it to its full size. He glanced once down at the words on it before turning it to face the room, rotating it in a half circle so everybody could see it.
THEY FOUND ME.
For a long moment nobody said a word, Carlos panning his gaze around the room, gauging for responses. As best he could tell, there were none, besides a couple of men who seemed to grow a bit more frustrated.
Not the effect he’d been hoping for.
“Who found who?” Diaz said, annoyance in her voice.
Carlos rotated himself in the chair to stare at her. “Mateo. That is the me in question there. As for the they, I’m pretty certain we all know who that is.”
Diaz remained impassive as she stared at him. She didn’t outright dismiss what he was saying, but she gave no indication of buying it, either.
“And you know this how?”
“Before we went our separate ways, the three of us—me, Mateo, Cuz—we all agreed that if something happened, we would let the others know. Yesterday, Mateo let me know.”
The sound of Diaz’s heels clicking again filled the room as she turned away from him, circling the room. “How do you know it was Mateo?”
“Well it damn sure wasn’t Cuz, now was it?” Carlos challenged.
The remark earned him an angry glare from Diaz, who held the stare long enough to make her point before breaking eye contact, an unspoken concession that he was right.
“How’d he make contact?”
“That arrived this morning from UPS,” Carlos said. “I was sitting around watching some Food Network, learning how to make a nice cheesecake using canned peaches, and this little Asian boy showed up with that letter. Hell of a job you guys did on that one, letting a damn ninja sneak by you.”
The frown on Diaz’s face grew deeper as she stared at Carlos, her path taking her down around the far end of the table. She looked like she wanted to comment on the statement he’d just made, but to her credit she let it pass.
“How’d he know where to find you?” Diaz asked.
Carlos raised his palms for a moment, letting them slap down loudly against his thighs. “How the hell should I know? Maybe it came from Cuz? Maybe it came from one of your people?”
He knew there was no way his cousin had given Mateo the information. For one thing, his cousin only knew the city Carlos was now located in. For another, despite the fact that Mateo had grown up with them, he still wasn’t a Juarez.
There is no way his cousin would have put blood at risk, even for a close friend.
“OK,” Diaz said, her focus locked on him, “assuming this is real, which we’re not just yet, so you know, but assuming this is real, what’s your angle here? Why demand a meeting? Why not just call us and tell us you got a letter in the mail and it has you spooked?”
Carlos made a face at her, an exaggerated expression that relayed his disbelief at her statement. “What do I want? Lady, are you serious?”
There was no visible response at all from Diaz as she stopped her pacing and peered down at him. Both sides remained silent for a long moment before Carlos looked away, breaking into laughter. It started low and ironic, rising in both tenor and hilarity. He pushed out one hoot after another until his body shook, the sound reverberating off the walls.
Throughout the entire outburst, the remainder of the room sat in silence, staring back at him with stony expressions.
Carlos ignored every last one of them until the mirth within him faded.
“I apologize,” he said, shaking his head. “I just have to laugh at you government assholes to keep from getting pissed off.”
Upon the last two words he drew his voice short, letting them hear his anger, making them feel his burning hatred for the whole situation.
“Look, I get that you guys have to sit here in your little black suits and stare down at me and pretend this is all a big pain in your ass, but this is how it’s going to go.
“First, you’re getting my ass out of Texas. Actually, let me rephrase that: my ass is never going back to Texas.”
More silent stares came back to him, nobody saying a word.
“Second,” Carlos said, reaching out and jamming two fingers down into the tabletop, “you guys go find Mateo. Find out where he is, who’s chasing him, do whatever you have to. Figure it out.
“And third, I want to see my cousin. Within the next two days.”
Carlos leaned back in his chair and placed his hands atop his stomach, his fingers laced. The air had been sucked out of the room as everybody present stared back at him, most of them stewing as if they might explode and hurtle themselves the length of the table at him any moment.
He glanced over each of the men seated around him before settling his attention on Diaz. For all the bravado of having a room full of people so he felt outnumbered, her reaction was the only one that mattered.
She stared at him for a full minute, her lips pursed in front of her. Carlos could almost see her mind working as she did so, coming to the same conclusions he had during the preceding hours.
She didn’t like it, but she didn’t have a choice.
“Is there anything else?” she asked, an edge in her voice.
Carlos stared at her a long moment before nodding his head back against the chair behind him. “Yeah, the next place you send me better have a damn remote that works.”
Chapter Fourteen
There was no way for Pavel to know how much time had passed. Judging by the darkness creeping in through the single frosted pane of glass high on the wall above him, he figured it to be sometime early in the evening, though that was just a guess. From where he sat in the holding cell of the West Yellowstone Police Department, there were no clocks of any kind. A deputy had been by midday to bring him a sandwich—three slices of ham and wilted lettuce on a hoagie roll—and some chips, but otherwise he had been left alone.
The entire time, he sat on the metal cot with his back pressed against the block wall behind him, letting the cool feel of it pass through his T-shirt. He kept his hands spread wide, fingers splayed across his thighs, and stared straight ahead, appearing as noncombative as possible. When h
e had to go to the restroom, he did so. When the food arrived, he ate it. He had little doubt he was being watched by somebody somewhere inside the building, and he needed them to believe he was nothing more than a concerned brother who had taken things a bit too far.
Pavel had considered playing that angle to the hilt, standing along the bars, pleading for anybody listening to let him see Lita. Three different reasons kept him from actually doing so, each one springing to his mind within seconds of him taking a seat inside the cell.
First was the simple fact that his physical dimensions wouldn’t allow it. There was nothing to stop him from trying to work that approach, but he was fully aware of how he looked. A man his size, with his general demeanor, would never be believable in that role. He would only be making a mockery of himself, bringing the entire story into question.
Second, there was nobody around to hear it anyway. Pleading only worked if there was a guard sitting at the end of the hall, trying to get work done, tired of hearing the incessant whining. Only then would he have a chance, the guard trading away whatever Pavel wanted for some silence.
Third, and most important, he remembered with great clarity the complainers he’d been forced to endure while incarcerated in St. Petersburg. There was no way he’d lower himself to such a pathetic state.
So instead he sat and waited, his head reclined against the wall, staring at nothing in particular, letting his mind work over what he knew.
Sergey would be expecting a check-in soon, though he still had a day or two before his absence would be cause for alarm. He had been sent on nothing more than a fool’s errand, so letting Viktor know what had transpired wasn’t necessary.
At some point he would need to check on Lita’s and Mateo’s deaths, to confirm what the paper told him. While there was no reason to believe the information was incorrect, he needed to be certain.
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