by L T Ryan
"I'm Daphne. We can spend time getting to know each other later. What we need to do is get the hell out of here. And fast. Can you walk?"
"I think so."
Hatch assisted the girl to her feet. She wobbled but maintained her balance.
"Put your hand on my right shoulder. Do not pull or push. Only move when I move." Hatch laid out the ground rules. There was no way she could carry this girl and focus on their escape. But she also needed to keep her close so she could keep her safe. Knowing where she was relative to Hatch was critical should the battle erupt.
Hatch brought her gun up into a low ready, centering it near the Club de Fuego emblem above her left breast. She moved forward to the door leading to the hallway that the fleeing girls had left wide open.
To Hatch's surprise no security team members had entered. A moment later, as she stepped into the hallway with Letty in tow, she saw the reason why. Flames licked their way into the gaps in the door's frame. A heavy layer of smoke filled the top three feet of the hallway.
The thug she'd turned into a doorstop had inch-wormed himself away from the burning door. He looked in Hatch's direction. He grunted loudly. In the smoke, he must've thought she was his partner. His eyes widened when he realized the folly of his assumption.
Hatch turned and headed to the far exit at the other end of the hall. "Stay with me. Do what I tell you when I tell you to. Understand?"
Letty squeezed Hatch's shoulder weakly and nodded. Hatch opened the door and quickly scanned the exterior. Fire engines and police sirens could be heard approaching in the distance, but nobody noticed the open door. The few patrons passing by were in hustled jogs to the back lot. A passing car's headlights gleamed over Hatch just as she retreated inside.
Hatch took a moment to tuck the gun alongside the other one pancaked against the base of her spine. Walking with a gun was a surefire way to draw unwanted attention.
The two slipped out into the muggy night air filled with the biting acridness of the electrical fire now consuming Club de Fuego. They moved down to the far corner at the rear of the building. One of the vans had pulled up to the rear entrance. The other was still parked in the back corner of the lot, idling.
Hatch made sure her brim was pulled down as low as it would go. "Stay here. Don't move until I come back for you."
The young girl leaned against the painted black concrete wall. "Come back—please."
"Promise." Hatch patted the traumatized girl's hand before removing it from her shoulder.
She stepped around the corner, head down but moving purposefully to the passenger side of the van.
Unable to see through the tinted window, Hatch grabbed the handle with her right hand while simultaneously withdrawing the Glock. She slipped inside quickly and closed the door behind her.
The driver said something in Spanish before realizing the man he was speaking to wasn't a man at all. He never had a chance to unholster the gun strapped to his thigh. Hatch slammed the side of his head into the driver's side window with enough force to spider the glass. Had the thick tinted overlay not been affixed to the glass, it would've undoubtably shattered, drawing unwanted attention. Hatch delivered a follow-up blow with the metal slide across his exposed right temple, zapping the fight out of the man.
Hatch pulled him across the seat to her side. She then opened the passenger door and dropped him onto the ground. Hatch looked over in the direction of the awaiting teen. "Come! Now!"
Letty moved in a wobbly run, zig zagging her way, as Hatch climbed back in the passenger side and then pulled herself across to the driver's seat. She took a moment to look out toward the second van. It continued to idle in the back corner of the dirt lot, its driver unaware of his partner's fate.
She watched the driver roll up from the heap she left him in and scream something in Spanish as Hatch pulled away.
Club de Fuego burned bright, sending its gray smoke high into the dark as Hatch raced away. No Angela, and now with the addition of Letty, Hatch needed a helping hand. She hoped Miguel Ayala was still willing and able to offer his.
Eighteen
Eddie Munoz arrived with thirty police officers who responded to the Club de Fuego fire. Although he wore the uniform identifying him as a ranking lieutenant, he didn't respond in his official capacity. He wasn't even technically on duty. His shift ended hours ago and he had been at a strip club on the other side of town when he got the call.
The call hadn't surprised him. He was called to handle all sorts of things for the Fuentes Family. He was their top guy in Nogales, serving both as enforcer and overseer for the operations within his hometown. He considered himself worthy of being at the head of the table someday. He often daydreamed about receiving the nod to come forward as next in line. If nothing else, as head of security.
Until that time when his talent and dedication were properly recognized, Munoz would continue to use his power and influence as a lieutenant to gather evidence, cover something up, and occasionally…kill. Tonight, his task had been simple. Gather as much intelligence about the person responsible and report back.
Munoz walked up on a cluster of Fuego employees, easily identified by their shirts’ emblem. "Any of you have access to the surveillance system?"
A skinny man in his fifties put his hand in the air. "I'm the manager. But I can't access it remotely. I have to go inside to do that and the firemen already told us that nobody's allowed back in yet."
"Let me worry about what the firemen want. You see this? This highly polished brass bar trumps any of the firemen. Got that?"
The manager raised his hands defensively, "I'm just repeating what they told me."
"I know," Munoz gestured toward the smoldering building.
Munoz walked by firefighters working to control the blaze on the west side of the building, where the damage had been worst. Nobody had been killed or severely injured. Some suffered minor smoke inhalation.
A stocky fireman grabbed Munoz by the shoulder and spoke in the crackled voice of a chain smoker. "Can't go in until it's cleared."
Munoz looked down at the soot-covered hand touching the freshly pressed uniform and smudging the collar brass he always kept to a high gloss shine. He fought the urge to smash the back of his hand across the man's face. But all that was hidden behind Munoz' engaging smile. "Oh, thank you." Munoz simply brushed the fireman's hand away and proceeded in the direction he had just been forbidden to go.
A few minutes later, Munoz was standing behind the manager who was busy logging into the camera system. A men's room separated the office space from the rest of the club. The air stunk of the fire, but the manager's space had been untouched and ran on an alternate fuse box from the club. The fire had not corrupted the lines, and power had not been lost.
A raised monitor offered twelve greyscale perspectives of the club. Munoz received a quick tutorial on how to use the system, a simple mouse click function display on the monitor allowed for easy playback. And he began scrolling back in time to the starting point of the fire. Each monitor reversing in sync.
Munoz saw the flash on four of the cameras. He zoomed in. Two of the screens were too far away. Of the last two cameras, only one captured what Munoz was looking for.
He brought up the freeze-frame image to full size on the monitor. All twelve screens disappeared but one. Munoz stared at the face captured in the still shot. And he was shocked to recognize the person in it.
The woman who had come into the police department early that morning was now staring back at him. The security camera up above the DJ's turntable captured the face of Daphne Nighthawk.
He called a number and waited. Raphael Fuentes answered. Strange, because he had always been in the backdrop, hiding in his father's shadow. Munoz hadn't had many dealings with Raphael, and in the few times he did, it was never over matters of security.
"I needed to speak to your father."
"I'm handling this now," Raphael said.
"Then you have a problem."
"What is it
?"
"It's not a what. It's a who," he continued to look at the woman on the screen. "The Nighthawk woman burned down the club. All five girls are gone."
"I'll handle it.”
"Allow me."
"I'll be in touch." Rafael ended the call.
Munoz put the phone away and spent the next several minutes tracking the Nighthawk woman on her skillful rescue mission. He watched the pole camera capture the departing black van as it sped away into the night away from Nogales.
Munoz wasn't sure where she was headed. But he was sure a whole ton of trouble was heading her way. And he hoped to be a part of it.
Nineteen
Raphael turned to his father, who was taking the first sips of his favorite brandy. It was all he permitted himself to drink after midnight. He said it left him with a clear mind in the morning. Rafael never saw the logic. It never bothered him before, but since the murder of his mother, everything his father did only further fueled the hatred Raphael felt for the man.
"Problem?"
"Daphne Nighthawk. The woman Munoz called us about just burned down the nightclub and freed five of our girls." Money and property were two things Rafael's father took very seriously. Raphael watched the ripple of anger pass across his father’s brow at hearing the news.
Hector set his drink down and looked at his son. He was quiet, his reserved thoughts never permeating his facial expression.
"I think it's time for Juan Carlos and his men to take over." His father's native tongue always took on a lyrical note when he was pensive, as he was now.
"We need to think about this carefully. Having Juan Carlos hunt her down and kill her could possibly do more harm than good."
"Go on." His father raised a brow.
"Sometimes the heavy hand is not the way. Sometimes a more delicate approach may be advantageous."
"Delicate? Like a flower? Would you like to invite the Nighthawk woman to dinner so we could discuss her decision to burn down one of our nightclubs and steal five of our whores?" Juan Carlos Moreno strutted into the immaculate barroom in the west wing of the Fuentes palace in the desert. The room, designed to comfortably seat twenty people, felt empty with only three.
Juan Carlos was the only man Hector allowed to speak to Rafael in such a way. Not that he took advantage and abused that privilege, but the smug look on his face as Juan passed by and greeted Hector sure looked like he enjoyed it when he did. Rafael never offered a response to his father's top enforcer and personal bodyguard. Not out of respect, but out of pure, unadulterated fear.
Juan Carlos Moreno, a vicious man with a short temper, was feared by any who crossed him long before he ever came to work for Rafael's father. His reputation for the ruthlessness with which he dispatched his enemies grew by exponential leaps and bounds once he became head of security for the Fuentes Cartel. Moreno executed his orders with precision and violence, carrying out a variety of unsavory tasks for the family, and to this day, had yet to fail in that regard.
Rafael had borne firsthand witness to Moreno's ruthless delivery of his father's orders. The blood on the thick-necked man's hands could fill buckets. He was, in Rafael's opinion, the scariest man on the planet. Raphael hated any moment spent in Moreno’s presence. Seeing Juan’s face reminded Rafael of his tenth birthday, a memory he'd spent the years since trying to erase.
The scar rode down along Moreno's face at an odd angle, beginning at the top right side of his head two inches into his hairline, then spreading across his forehead until it stopped abruptly in the center of his left eyebrow. The day he received it etched a scar of equal size and proportion on the young Rafael's mind. He still felt its tingle as he recalled the memory of that horrible day.
On the morning of his tenth birthday, Rafael's father had the family barber come to the house for a grooming of all the Fuentes men, including Hector. Hector believed then, as he did now, certain events dictated perfection. Celebrating one's birth fell into that category, as did funerals. Maybe that's why the sight of Moreno now had triggered his memory. Rafael absently played with a curled tuft of his black hair. His mother's burial was in three days.
When the barber came, Rafael remembered excitedly waiting for a fresh haircut. As a kid, it wasn't the haircut he was excited about, but one of the few times he was guaranteed to spend time with his father. Up until the morning of his tenth birthday, it had been one of his most revered memories. Even the memory of preceding birthday mornings with the family barber were tainted in the darkness of that day.
Unbeknownst to Rafael’s father, the barber, Gerardo Guzman, who’d been grooming the family for nearly twenty years, had been extorted by a rival cartel. They took his grandson as leverage. None of that mattered anymore. Anybody who was even remotely involved had been later hunted down and killed. Most at the hand of Moreno himself.
This was the day Raphael Alejandro Fuentes decided he would never grow up to be like his father. It was the wish he never told anyone, even his mother, when he blew out his birthday candles later that day.
Down the hall from the bar where the three men currently convened was the barber shop. His home had a two-chair barbershop built inside. Immaculate as it was, it was nothing compared to his mother's spa nestled against one of their three pools. Some days Rafael swore he could still see the blood stain on the barber shop’s tile floor.
His father had been reclined in the soft brown leather of the barber chair with a warm, moist towel draped over his eyes. Rafael used to love the smell of the barber's foam. The fresh clean scent overwhelmed the air. He remembered watching his father in the chair and longing for the day when he could receive his first shave.
Guzman ran the length of the blade against the sharpening strap as he always did. Rafael used to love the thwack and swoosh sounds steel made against worn leather. He pictured the next moment with reverence. The image of Guzman's stoic face and sad eyes as he stood behind Rafael's father’s foam-covered, exposed throat while holding the razor-sharp edge against the edge of his neckline. The image had come to symbolize a line of departure in which the course of his life was changed forever.
Moreno spent most of his life around death. Rafael had given much thought to what he’d witnessed that day and came to this conclusion. Moreno's experience enabled him to see in a way that few others could. Only a killer can recognize another by the look in their eyes. Moreno was as lethal as they come and saw a glimmer of himself that day in the sad eyes of the barber. But Guzman lacked the killer instinct. And Moreno could smell it on him.
The cat-like reflexes of Moreno saved Rafael's father that day. The straight blade razor nicked the skin as Guzman attempted the unthinkable. The hesitancy he demonstrated was not seen in Moreno’s decision to act. He caught the barber by the elbow before he could work up the nerve to finish running it across the foamy throat of his employer.
The barber had proven desperate enough to continue his fight, as men do when life hangs in the balance, like that of his three-year-old grandson. All the want and will, when faced against a more skilled and determined opponent, means nothing on the field of battle.
Guzman ripped his arm free and made several wild slashes. But, like a horse swatting a fly with its tale, Moreno disarmed the barber with ease, sending the blade clinking to the floor. Rafael remembered the feeling of relief at seeing Moreno save his father. He also remembered how fleeting it was. A breath after the blade hit the tile, Moreno plunged a knife of his own, a long, eight-inch blade, under the barber's chin.
Rafael could see it now, just as he had at ten. The silent pause as the blade pierced Guzman's brain. He was looking into Rafael's eyes. The desperation of the preceding moment was all but gone. Only sadness was left. A teardrop and trickle of blood drag racing down the side of Guzman's cheek had been interrupted by the sudden jerking of Moreno's blade as he ripped it free. Guzman, no longer supported by Moreno's knife, dropped to the floor.
Juan Carlos Moreno never muttered so much as a curse when the blade cut him.
As a young boy, Rafael had missed it. But in the lightning speed struggle, Guzman had somehow managed to slice Moreno's face. He merely grabbed a towel from a stack neatly folded on a nearby marble counter and pressed it firmly against his head. Moreno's soulless eyes watched as Guzman's body convulsed violently at his feet.
Hector promoted him to head of security that very moment. Moreno continued to fill that position to this very day. Rafael never looked at either man the same. After his father's recent pressuring of Rafael to follow in his footsteps, it looked as though his birthday wish ten years ago was not going to be a reality.
Rafael knew why Moreno disliked him and it had everything to with his avoidance of violence. Rafael had never even been in a fight. What kid would dare strike the son of Hector Fuentes? But that wasn't the reason. His younger brothers picked their fights. Moreno could smell it on him, just as he did that day in the barber shop. Raphael wasn't a killer.
Moreno only respected men of action. Rafael had never gained that respect. Although knowing his place within the rank and structure of the cartel, Moreno never openly challenged Rafael's suggestions, but there was an air of contention in the way he responded to them.
"Juan Carlos, I'm glad you're here. We've got a bit of a problem. The Nighthawk woman from earlier is turning up the heat. She's becoming more than an annoyance. Rafael and I were just talking about it."
"I'll grab my team and have it taken care of."
"Did you need to speak to her first?" Rafael asked. "Killing her without first knowing everything we can doesn't seem like good business to me."
Moreno grumbled something under his breath that sounded more like a growl. Looking at the scowl twisting the already twisted face of the bodyguard, Rafael reconsidered. Maybe he was growling.
"Father, years back you told me every life should be weighed in accordance with the value that life has to offer. If in that offering, value is found, then it should be explored. I wasn't sure of its meaning when you said it. Still not sure I'm applying it correctly here, but I think what I'm trying to say is, let's find this woman and see what she knows. There may be value in that."
