The Guardian (The Wolfe Series)

by Donna Oltrogge

  The psychopath in him smiled at the thought.

  “Julie, it’s me, Laurie,” Laurie said breathlessly as she deposited additional coins into the pay phone next to the used car lot where she’d just purchased a vehicle. “Listen, I haven’t much time . . .”

  “Oh, Laurie, I’ve been so worried about you,” Julie cried, unable to stop herself from interrupting.

  “I’m fine, Julie, scared to death but fine. I’ve gotten away from Luzaro so you’ve got to listen to me. Your life is in danger, they’ll be coming for you and they’ll try to use you to get to me. So get out of town and don’t tell anyone where you’re going. Not even me, do you understand?”

  “I understand,” Julie sniffed miserably. “Isn’t there anything we can do? These bastards shouldn’t be able to dictate to us like this.”

  “Enrique is a psychopath, Julie, do you hear me? A psychopath! I saw him kill a DEA agent in cold blood so there’s no way in hell he’s going to let me live now that I’ve left Luzaro’s protection. He’ll kill you too, Julie, just to spite me. He’s that kind of man!”

  “I’m packing as we speak,” Julie said, resolution now evident in her voice. “How will I find you or know when it’s safe to come back home?”

  Laurie thought hard for a moment or two then said, “You know that little newspaper with all the personal ads and that you’re always complaining about it littering your doorstep? I’ll send you a message when it’s safe through that newspaper. Look in the “personals” section. You’ll know my ad when you see it.”

  “Okay, Laurie, whatever you say.” Laurie could hear Julie’s front door slam shut as Julie continued, “You be careful, you hear me, and stay in touch?”

  “I will, Julie,” Laurie said with a catch in her throat. “I’ll be in touch as soon as I can get settled somewhere and think of what to do.”

  “We could call the FBI . . .”

  Laurie didn’t hear the rest of what Julie was saying. Her heart started beating a frantic tattoo in her chest when she saw a black Escalade turn the corner and head down the street toward where she stood in the phone booth. She hastily slammed the receiver back in its cradle and crouched as low as she could get in the restricted confines of the phone booth, and she prayed.

  Please God, please don’t let it be them! Please!

  Laurie breathed a sigh of relief, her prayers answered when the Escalade drove slowly past the phone booth, a cell phone plastered to the left ear of a woman with flaming red hair. Tears of reaction trickled down Laurie’s cheeks and she rested her head against the glass walls of the phone booth for a moment before squaring her shoulders and pulling open the phone booth door. She had to get out of Nogales as quickly as possible and resolved to call the FBI as soon as she got to Tucson where she would be able to purchase a prepaid cell phone. Luzaro had confiscated her phone as soon as they’d boarded his plane in New York. There would be no more phone booths for her. They were too exposed as the experience with the woman driving the Escalade had taught her.

  Laurie walked resolutely toward the used car lot where she could see the car she’d purchased was ready and waiting for her. It wasn’t much of a car but it would have to do. The money Luzaro had given her was running dangerously low after paying for the car and having given Jenny several hundred dollars.

  The man who had sold her the car stood beside the aging Sentra dangling the car keys in his right hand and smiling ear to ear as she walked up.

  “It’s all ready for you, little lady.” Ben Johnson reluctantly handed her the keys when he noticed the tears that were staining her cheeks. “Are you okay, Miss?” He’d been hoping to take her to dinner that night but he could tell by the look on her face there wasn’t going to be a snowball’s chance in hell of that happening.

  “I’ll be okay. I’d appreciate it if you wouldn’t tell anyone that you’ve seen me,” Laurie attempted a soggy half-smile. “My boyfriend has hit me one time too many. I’m sure you can understand.”

  “He’s not much of a man if he’ll hit a woman,” Ben said indignantly. “I’ll not tell him anything, Miss, you can count on me.”

  “Thank you, I’ll be able to make good my escape if I can count on you not to say anything.” She knew the man would be shaking in his boots if he ever found out that her “boyfriend” was actually the notorious drug kingpin, Luzaro Rivera.

  ChapterThirteen

  The bus station had been the first place he’d looked for her. Having had no luck at the bus station and glad that it hadn’t been that easy, Enrique had then started making the rounds of the used car lots closest to the boutique where he’d last seen Laurie Kincaid.

  It hadn’t taken him long to find out where she’d purchased a vehicle or to persuade the wiry little salesman working there to tell him everything he knew about his beautiful female customer.

  “You had a woman customer this morning?” Enrique had asked, his eyes drilling holes in the little man’s head.

  “Why no, not that I can recall,” Ben had instantly understood the young woman’s wanting to escape from such a man and was becoming more and more nervous under the other man’s unrelenting gaze.

  “You don’t recall a beautiful blonde woman coming in here this morning?” Enrique had been able to smell the man’s fear and had known he was lying. He’d thought of mentioning a Columbian necktie and other equally vicious forms of torture and had been disappointed when the little man had said, “Are you her fiancé?”

  “Yes, and it would be in your best interest for you to tell me everything you know about her.” Enquire had stepped closer, encroaching on the man’s personal space, his eyes narrowed to slits.

  Ben had been sure he was facing the devil incarnate as he’d starred into those malevolent, hateful eyes. He’d found himself becoming lost in their murky depths and had been horrified when he’d heard himself telling the devil everything he knew about the woman.

  “She bought a beater that probably won’t make it a hundred miles,” Ben had said in a sing-song voice. “I tried to talk her into something better but she insisted on paying cash. I think it took almost all of the cash she had.”

  “Tell me about the car she bought,” Enrique had cajoled, his eyes holding the other man’s in a hypnotic grip.

  Ben had wiped the sweat out of his eyes with the back of his hand and continued, “It was a 1985 beige Sentra, a small compact car. I also gave her a map of the area but she didn’t tell me which route she intended to take out of here.”

  Enrique had stepped back then, breaking eye contact and watching the little man drop to his knees.

  “You aren’t going to hurt her, are you?”

  “Not your business my friend,” Enrique had said coldly. “You’d best forget this conversation unless you want me to visit you again.” He had looked at the man sniveling at his feet and spat in the dirt in disgust before walking toward his car. He figured there were only a couple of ways the Kincaid woman could be headed and he didn’t think she would take the interstate as she could be easily overtaken. No, he guessed she’d take the road less traveled which meant she’d head to Patagonia or the Altar Valley.

  Enrique smiled grimly as he got into his car and shut the door. He enjoyed the hunt almost more than the kill unless the kill could be drawn out over several hours. His smile grew even wider as he started the car and left the car dealership behind, considering just how that might be accomplished once he caught up with Laurie Kincaid.

  Turning off Interstate 19 at Arivaca Junction just south of Green Valley, Laurie steered the little Sentra toward the village of Arivaca. According to the Arizona map Ben had provided, this circuitous route would lead her to Highway 286 and up through the Altar Valley. She had chosen this route because it was a less direct route to Tucson, definitely a road less traveled as she could tell by the very few cars she had met since leaving the interstate.

  Laurie sighed, hoping that it would be a route where Enrique and his henchmen would be less likely to find her, a road wher
e she would be able to collect her thoughts and possibly find a place to hide out for a few days. She’d learned to defend herself the last few months but her kick-boxing, a mixture of boxing and karate, wasn’t going to stop a bullet, not unless she was somehow able to get the upper hand. Laurie was proud of the way she’d become so proficient at the sport. Punches and kicks were only legal above the waist and elbows and knees were forbidden, the use of shins seldom allowed. Even so, she knew she wouldn’t hesitate to use those additional weapons if she was confronted by Luzaro or one of his henchmen.

  Laurie drove through the little hamlet of Arivaca and saw the Las Guijas Mountains rising to the northwest and the foothills of the San Luis Mountains to the south. Little did she guess that the sleepy, unincorporated village had once thrived in the early days with over one-hundred working mines in the Las Guijas Mountains northwest, the San Luis Mountains to the southwest and Cobre Ridge to the southeast of the town. Gold, silver, lead, copper and tungsten production had been recorded in the area starting in Spanish colonial times and had continued intermittently through the 1950s.

  As she drew closer to Highway 286 the desert grew more desolate. The landscape was dry and was sparsely vegetated with mesquite, creosote bush, tumbleweed, and ocotillo. In the distance Sonoran Pronghorn Antelope raised their heads and watched her passing. Smaller than a white-tailed deer, the pronghorns stood less than three feet tall at the shoulders. The upper part of their bodies was a rich tan color while their under-part, rump and two bands across their neck was white. Laurie could see a short black mane running down the back of their necks, some of them sporting a black mask and black cheek patches as well.

  Oh, aren’t you beautiful! Laurie sighed as she took in the magnificence of her surroundings, forgetting for a moment that she was running for her life. She breathed deeply, the desert air calming her jangled nerves. She felt as though she’d come home, something she’d never felt in any of the foster homes she’d been forced to live in growing up. In tune with the desert surroundings, she felt as though she were coming alive, her senses expanding in ways that she didn’t fully understand.

  The largest of the pronghorns pricked his ears and tilted his head as though he had heard her mental communication. The obvious leader by his size and stature, he didn’t alert the others to bolt as the car drew closer as he normally would have, but instead he watched the car intently until it passed, before returning to his grazing like the rest of the herd.

  Laurie was considering returning to Arivaca to see if she could find a place to hole up for a few days when she heard it, the unmistakable THUMP, THUMP, THUMP of a flat tire. Her heart rate kicked into high gear as she looked in the rear view mirror before pulling over to the side of the road. She breathed a sigh of relief when she didn’t see any cars coming up behind her, but knew that the odds Luzaro or one of his men would find her increased ten-fold the longer she remained stalled on the side of the road. As it was, she probably only had an hour’s head start before they had found her missing, and another half hour before they found the used car lot and convinced Ben to tell them everything he knew about her. I hope they didn’t hurt you, Ben.

  The sun was a ball of blood red fire shooting flames of magenta and gold across the western sky. Temperatures were still in the high nineties when Laurie opened the car door and climbed out of the Sentra. Reaching down and releasing the trunk latch, she walked toward the back of the car and lifted the trunk lid. Spotting the spare tire on the left side of the trunk she used the lug wrench that was nestled beside it to loosen the bolt holding the spare to the side of the vehicle. The spare was fairly light and Laurie lifted it easily out of the trunk and leaned it against the side of the car while she went back to retrieve the jack and lug wrench.

  She had just placed the jack beneath the rear end of the car and was about to insert the lug wrench into the jack when she heard it. Her heart thundered in her ears as a car rolled to a stop behind her.

  The girl was fifteen years old, petite and blonde, exactly the type of girl the slavers looked for to help fill their quotas. She wasn’t a prostitute, which would have made it easier and less newsworthy. But she had been that special one in one-hundred girls, the one men with money would pay a kings ransom to get their hands on, and the slavers hadn’t been able to resist.

  Jake and his brother Rand, having heard the news of the kidnapping on their police scanner, rushed toward where they suspected the kidnappers would make the transfer. A previous attempt to rescue a kidnapped girl hadn’t ended so well for them there. The slavers had killed the girl before Jake and his brothers could get to her and all of the brothers now harbored a deep-seated hatred for the slavers and made the slavers lives difficult every chance they got. Jake brought the ATV to a halt below the lip of a hill that overlooked the transfer site. He and Rand jumped from the vehicle, grabbing their hi-powered rifles from behind the vehicle’s two seats before scrambling up the hill. Lying flat on their stomachs they surveyed the shack below through their rifle’s telescopic lenses. The Heckler & Koch PSG1 sniper rifle they had chosen for the job at hand was used mainly by law enforcement and was blessed with the greatest possible accuracy, even more than military rifles because they didn’t need to deal with such long distances.

  Jake and Rand were taking no chances with the kidnapped girl’s life this time around and planned to take the slavers out before any more harm came to her. Jake lifted his head and sniffed the air using his wolf senses of both sight and smell. The young woman’s fear-choked scent drifted toward him on the desert breeze, and he was glad it wasn’t the woman he’d been searching for.

  It was now completely dark but with their wolf’s vision Jake and Rand could easily see the young woman slumped between the two slavers who were dragging her toward the rendezvous shack. Jake hoped against hope that he and Rand would have enough time to take the two slavers out and rescue the girl before the others arrived.

  Jake nodded silently to his brother before adjusting the scope’s settings. Drawing a deep breath, their fingers on the hair triggers, Jake and Rand fired.

  Laurie’s stomach dropped to her feet as she slowly stood and turned to find Enrique Perez pulling a black Mercedes coupe to a stop not more than twenty feet away from where she stood. Dark glasses hid the psychopath’s obsidian eyes and Laurie shuddered, the sight of the malevolent smile that tilted up the corners of his mouth chilling her to the bone. She hadn’t thought that it would be Enrique who would track her down but she should have known better. He’d been waiting all along for her to make a mistake and now here he was, ready to take full advantage of the situation. Laurie knew that her death at Enrique’s hands wouldn’t be quick or painless. He would take her someplace private where he could prolong whatever torture he had in mind for her. She doubted that his ego would allow him to use a gun to overpower an insignificant woman, and probably expected his superior strength would be all that would be needed to overpower her. And that was exactly the macho bullshit attitude Laurie was hoping for as she raised the lug wrench in her right hand and widened her stance. Come ahead, you bastard. Do your worst.

  Enrique couldn’t believe his good luck when he saw Laurie Kincaid knelt down behind her little car where she appeared to be changing a tire.

  “Good luck for me,” Enrique chuckled as he slid the car’s shifter into park and opened the door. “And oh, so bad luck for you.” He sneered at the tire iron Laurie held in her right hand and was brandishing like a weapon as he stepped out of the car and began walking toward her.

  “Drop the tire iron, Laurie,” Enrique cajoled. “You’ll only make things harder for yourself if you fight me. Luzaro is beside himself with worry and waiting for you back at the ranch,” he lied. “Come with me now and all will be forgiven.”

  “You’re a lying bastard, Enrique,” Laurie snarled, surprising herself with the intensity of her response. “Come any closer and I promise I’ll make you pay.”

  Enrique laughed. “And just how are you going to do that,
my lovely, hmmm? With that puny little tire iron?”

  Laurie was ready for Enrique when he lunged. Her instructor had told her to watch her opponent’s eyes for sign of their intent because the eyes never lied. She hadn’t been so sure of that where the psychopath she was now facing was concerned, but she’d seen the slightest narrowing of Enrique’s eyes just before he’d lunged and she’d been ready for him.

  Laurie’s round house kick landed on the side of Enrique’s head, stunning him and sending him reeling. Staggering under the powerful blow, Enrique stumbled back a few feet and tried to regain his balance. Laurie didn’t wait for Enrique to recover. She moved in quickly, swinging the tire iron at Enrique’s head with all her strength. Enrique tried to avoid the blow and turned away at the last moment. The tire iron connected with his left cheek, the bones cracking under the impact, and blood spurting from a terrible gash.

  Laurie was breathing hard as she moved in to finish Enrique off.

  “Take this, you bastard!”

  Flipping the bloody tire iron into her left hand, Laurie punched Enrique’s shattered cheek as hard as should could with her right fist. His head snap back and his eyes rolled up into the back of his head. As though in slow motion Enrique’s body tilted precariously for a few moments before hitting the pavement with a thud.

  “You aren’t going to be so pretty the next time you go after some unsuspecting woman!” Laurie snarled as she threw the tire iron down beside the unconscious man. Time to get the hell out of here!

  The adrenaline fading from her system, Laurie raced toward Enrique’s BMW and slid behind the wheel. “Damn!” she cursed when she saw the car keys were not in the ignition. Sliding out from beneath the wheel she started back toward where Enrique had fallen to search his pockets when she heard him moan.

  Laurie skidded to a halt, her heart beating against her breast bone as though it were trying to escape. Pure unadulterated panic coursed through her veins.