Death, Taxes, and Sweet Potato Fries

by Diane Kelly

  chapter thirty

  Up, Up, and Away

  Before heading back to the office, I swung by the medical clinic. I was seen to today by one of Ajay’s medical associates, given that he and Christina had taken a week off to spend together, a sort of “honeymoon at home.”

  The tall female doctor came into the room, her laptop perched on one arm. She looked from her computer screen to me. “You have quite the large file, Miss Holloway.”

  My medical records chronicled my investigations, starting with minor burns and working their way through a litany of assorted injuries leading up to today’s throat injury.

  She stepped over to the examination table. “Judging from your records, working as an IRS agent is clearly not as boring as one might think.”

  A painful laugh burst from my esophagus. “There’s never a dull moment.” Frankly, I’d have appreciated some dull moments about then.

  The woman examined my neck, apologizing when she had to feel around the sensitive area with her fingertips. She also shined a light down my throat and listened to me breathe in and out. “You’ll be sore for a while,” she said, “but you should eventually make a full recovery. For the next few days, eat only soft foods that are easy to swallow.”

  A diet of chocolate pudding and milkshakes? I could deal with that.

  She looked into my eyes next, shining the flashlight in them. When the receptionist had looked startled by my appearance a few minutes before, I’d whipped out my compact to take a look. My eyes were bloodshot, the capillaries therein strained by the incident, the whites looking more pink than white. They looked like the kind of eyes you’d see in a Halloween mask. At least my skin wasn’t so orange anymore, the carotenoids having mostly processed out of my system by now. I had to admit I was missing those sweet potato fries, though.

  “I’ll write you a prescription for some eyedrops,” the doctor said. “That’ll soothe the pain. You can take aspirin for the aches and bruises, apply some cold packs.” She pulled a pad out of her pocket, scribbled on it, and tore the sheet from the pad, handing it to me. “Anything else?” she asked.

  “Ajay usually gives me a lollipop,” I rasped.

  She reached into her other pocket and pulled out a green sucker. “Here you go. Be a good girl, okay?”

  “I will.”

  Back at the office, I sucked on my lollipop as I took a look at the links my mother had sent me to possible mother-of-the-bride dresses for her. While all of the dresses were pretty, most were very conservative. The one that caught my eye was a taffeta number with a fitted bodice, a flirty peplum, and three-quarter sleeves. Small purple beads trimmed the neck and hemlines. It looked like a dress she couldn’t help but have fun in. I sent her a reply. Get this one. You’ll be stunning in it.

  * * *

  Monday night came with no sign of Hidalgo or the missing girls. Nobody called their aunt to tell her where to deposit the ransom, either. I downed a couple of aspirin and went to bed wondering whether the girls would ever be seen or heard from again. Why hadn’t the kidnapper called? Were the girls dead? Had something else happened?

  Knowing I’d be sick with worry and that I was in pain from the day’s takedown, Nick stayed at my place that night in case I needed a nursemaid or a shoulder to cry on. Henry was none too happy about Daffodil invading his territory, but Anne didn’t mind sharing the bed with the dog. In fact, the two curled up together nose-to-nose at the foot of the bed.

  “Maybe no news is good news,” Nick said, trying to lift my spirits.

  I wasn’t sure he was right, but I chose to believe it. I simply wasn’t willing to accept the alternative. I reached over and turned out the light. It felt symbolic. If the girls were no longer with us, I’d rather be in the dark.

  * * *

  At the office Tuesday morning, my cell phone rang with an incoming call. The readout told me it was Agent Castaneda.

  I jabbed the button to connect us. “Good morning, Age—”

  Before I could finish he interrupted me. “My counterpart in Mexico says they just found a rental car hidden in some brush alongside Mexican Highway 53, a few miles southeast of the Boquillas Crossing Port of Entry. They’ve confirmed it was rented in the name of Salvador Hidalgo. We believe he’s smuggling people across as we speak. They can’t use the checkpoint without passports, but we’re guessing he’s going to bring them over a few miles away. We’re just not sure in which direction. The car’s engine was still hot, so he couldn’t have gotten far yet.”

  “I hope you get him,” I said, thinking of the orphaned toddler whose parents had trusted Hidalgo with their lives. If only they’d known he couldn’t be counted on.

  “We need you to come with us,” Castaneda said. “If we finally catch him with undocumented migrants, we’ve got him. But if we find him alone like the other times, we’ll need you there to testify about your investigation, about the people you spoke with. You can vouch for the affidavits.”

  “But it’ll take me hours to drive there. Won’t that be too late?”

  “There’s a flight to the Midland-Odessa airport leaving in an hour from Love Field,” he said, referencing the smaller of the two airports in Dallas. “Get on that flight. I’ll pick you up in Midland and fly you down in my helicopter.”

  “Gotcha. I’m on my way.” I grabbed my purse and briefcase and rushed out of my office, pausing for only a moment to tell Nick my plans.

  “Good luck,” he said. “Hope you get him.”

  “You and me both.”

  I drove like a bat out of hell to the airport, leaving my car in the expensive short-term parking lot and sprinting toward the counter. I bought a ticket on Southwest Airlines, my late purchase earning me the dreaded middle seat. But at least I was able to sit in the front row, deemed by most to be undesirable due to its lack of under-seat storage to the front. Not a problem for me. All I had was my briefcase and purse, which fit in the overhead bin.

  With no time to get the clearances I’d need to bring my weapon on the plane, I’d had to leave my gun in the glove compartment of my car. But that shouldn’t be a problem. I was armed with original affidavits from the men who worked for Brett. That should be all I needed, right?

  The cheerful flight attendant read us the safety information, including the information about water evacuations even though there was little water between Dallas and west Texas. When she finished and took her seat, the plane pushed back from the gate, taxied down the runway, and off we went into the wild blue yonder. We were in the air just long enough to down a few ounces of soda and a foil bag of peanuts before the plane landed in Midland. Gotta love those short flights. I was the second one off the aircraft, saying a quick “thanks” to the flight attendants and dialing Agent Castaneda on my cell phone as I sprinted up the Jetway.

  “Where are you?” I asked as I jogged through the main concourse.

  “Exit the front of the airport and turn right,” he said. “You’ll see me waiting on the helipad.”

  Luckily, the Midland-Odessa airport handled much less air traffic and was infinitely smaller than the Dallas–Fort Worth airport I was used to. A single terminal was so much easier to navigate than the five expansive ones at DFW.

  I darted out the door and into the dry, west Texas heat. I could almost feel the moisture being sucked out of my skin as I ran for the Black Hawk up ahead. A TSA agent stopped me at the gate, but once I showed my identification he waved me through to the helipad.

  Through the windshield, I could see Castaneda at the controls, his sunglasses and headset on. Another agent sat next to him up front. The open door revealed a third Border Patrol agent seated in the back, while a fourth stood at the door to help me in.

  The instant I was buckled, the door was closed, the propeller began to spin, and we lifted off, my tummy once again tumbling inside me. Those peanuts had been a bad idea. My stomach was churning them into peanut butter.

  Fortunately, we leveled off a minute or so later, shooting across the sky, ou
r view an occasional far-off mesa and hundreds of pumpjacks moving up and down, sucking oil up from the Permian Basin, looking like big metal birds pecking for seed in slow motion.

  Now that we were settled, the agent who’d helped me into the Black Hawk handed me a headset and we exchanged names. The tall, thinner one who’d assisted me was Agent Armbruster, a fellow gringo. The beefier but shorter one in back was Agent Peña, while Agent Ochoa, an average-sized guy, sat in the other seat up front. All three appeared to be seasoned agents in their late thirties to early forties. They wore uniforms, weapons, and sunglasses, but no smiles, like soldiers on a dry, desolate frontier. In a rack between the agents were more guns, both short- and long-range rifles. While I was most accurate with my Glock given that I practiced on it routinely at the firing range, I was no novice when it came to larger guns. In fact, I’d once used such a gun to put a bullet between the eyes of a narcotics dealer. When he’d been about to shoot Nick in the back of the head execution-style and shove the love of my life into a shallow grave, the man had left me no choice but to end his life. I didn’t take pride in the fact that I’d killed a violent cartel member, but I didn’t dwell on it, either. I did what had to be done.

  I kept my focus out the front window, watching as hazy apparitions appeared in the distance, rising from the flat desert floor like towering gray monsters. As we drew closer, the mountains became more discernible, as did canyons and cactus and scrubby trees and clear creeks. It was rough, rugged country, but it was undeniably beautiful country.

  Castaneda dropped lower and the other agents fished binoculars out from under their seats and put them to their eyes, looking out the side windows, scanning the brush for any signs of Hidalgo or other members of his smuggling network, as well as the desperate people they’d snuck over the border. I reached down and felt under my seat, finding a pair of binoculars and putting them to my eyes, too.

  I found it difficult to focus at first, with the helicopter moving and so much of the landscape being similarly colored in muted shades of brown and green, like natural camouflage. We flew over an impressively deep canyon, its steep walls tall and treacherous, the bottom littered with large boulders.

  When a glint sparked on the horizon a second or two later, I realized it could be a sign. I squinted through the lenses. Yep, something metal had reflected the sun. And whatever it had been was situated behind a scrubby bush.

  “Over there!” I called through the headset, using my outside voice to be heard over the whop-whop-whop of the propellers. Instinctively, I pointed, but quickly realized giving a clock position would be more helpful to the pilot up front. “At eleven o’clock. I saw something reflect the sun.”

  Swoop.

  My stomach seemed to swing inside me as the Black Hawk banked and headed in the direction I’d indicated. Given that we’d changed position, I could no longer see the target out of the side window. With the control panels and seats in the way, I couldn’t see very well out the front, either. But a moment later Agent Ochoa verified my suspicions as he spied through his binoculars. “There’s a dozen people in that dry creek bed up ahead.”

  I shifted in my seat for a better view. Sure enough, I could see a dry, shallow rivulet in the earth. Several people were crouched down against the edge as if trying to hide. Unfortunately, none of them appeared to be Nina, Larissa, or Yessenia.

  Castaneda pulled to a stop in the air, hovering close enough to the crowd that they’d know we spotted them, but not so close that the helicopter would pose a risk to their safety.

  Ochoa reached for the microphone on the dash, flipped a switch, and pushed the button to speak. His voice came over a loudspeaker outside. He said something in Spanish, and immediately thereafter the people climbed out of the creek bed, dropped to their knees, and put their hands in the air.

  Well, all of them but one.

  That one—Hidalgo, no doubt—rushed out of the bed and ran off to the left, heading directly for the deep canyon we’d just flown over. While he might not realize the danger he was in, those of us in the air could see it clearly. Unless the guy had a parachute, he was about to be like Wile E. Coyote from the old Road Runner cartoons and plummet to a painful, dusty end on the hard-packed earth.

  As Castaneda turned the aircraft to follow Hidalgo, Ochoa shook his head. “That man’s got a death wish.” He pushed the button for the microphone again and said something else in Spanish. I recognized only two words. The first was cañon, which was clearly the Spanish word for “canyon.” The second was peligro. I knew that word, too. Danger.

  Hidalgo ignored the warning, continuing to run, his footsteps kicking up dust clouds.

  Castaneda sighed through the headphones as he watched Hidalgo make a beeline for the cliff. “As little as that guy deserves to live, I don’t want to see anyone else die out here.”

  He took the helicopter up and over Hidalgo, descending in front of the man, the rocks and dust kicked up by the twirling propeller serving as a deterrent, stopping Hidalgo in his tracks as he threw up his hands to protect his face.

  Ochoa issued the same order he’d issued earlier, and Hidalgo obeyed this time, dropping to his knees. But rather than raising his hands in the air as the others had done, he lifted his shirt and pulled a semiautomatic from the waistband of his jeans. Before any of us could process his movements, he’d raised the weapon and begun to fire at the helicopter.

  Ping-ping-ping-ping-ping!

  Bullets ricocheted off the propeller and tore through the floor at my feet, daylight visible through the tiny holes. Holy crap! He’s going to kill us!

  I flattened myself back against my seat and tried my best to breathe normally.

  Ping-ping-ping!

  While Castaneda soared up and off and I tried not to hyperventilate, the other agents grabbed two of the rifles and slid their side door open, a rush of air blowing in. The agents leaned as far out as their straps and courage would allow, trying to get a bead on Hidalgo so they could return fire.

  Ping-ping! Crack!

  Before they could shoot back, a spiderweb of cracks spread across the windshield of the helicopter and dark smoke began to pour out of the engine, trailing past the open window.

  “Holy shit!” Ochoa cried. “We’re fucked!”

  As the others issued similar cries of alarm, panic seized my brain and the world went fuzzy. Given that I was about to crash to a fiery death in the middle of an unforgiving desert, it was tempting to let the fuzz take over and drift into the oblivion. But as my eyes slid closed, the sun glinted off my engagement ring and I realized I had too much to live for to accept this fate without a fight. It was likely futile, but I had to try. For Nick. For my mother and Bonnie, who’d put so much time into planning our wedding. For my future children, Hank and Waylon or Reba and Dolly. And, if for nothing else, I had to live so I could eat another platter of sweet potato fries. You know, just in case they didn’t serve them in heaven.

  I grabbed the handle for the door on my side, threw it open, and yanked a rifle from the rack next to me. Holding the scope to my eye, I scanned the area, quickly sighting Hidalgo from the muzzle flashes.

  I took aim. “Adiós, amigo.”

  Bang!

  My shot went through the middle of his right hand, and he dropped his gun to the ground. Daddy had taught me well. Still, Hidalgo didn’t surrender, instead beginning to run again.

  Bang!

  My second shot got him right below the knee. Hidalgo didn’t go down, but he reached down with his left hand to grab his wounded leg.

  Though cries of victory resounded through my headset, Hidalgo continued to hobble through the desert below, limping his way toward the top of the canyon as fast as he could go, leaving a trail of blood behind him.

  Ochoa again issued the warning over the loudspeaker, telling Hidalgo what lay ahead. “¡Cañon!” he shouted. “¡Peligro!”

  But Hidalgo wouldn’t listen. He continued hobbling at surprising speed until he reached the edge, his mouth opening t
o emit screams of terror we couldn’t hear over the sounds of the helicopter. He windmilled his arms in a desperate attempt to stop his forward momentum.

  But it was too late.

  Over the edge he went.

  chapter thirty-one

  Another Puppet on a String

  The helicopter had become harder for Castaneda to control, but he was able to swing it around over the canyon as he aimed for a flat place to set it down. I closed my eyes as we passed over, not wanting to see the gooey blob that had once been Salvador Hidalgo at the bottom.

  “You’ve gotta be shitting me!” Peña shouted. “That son of a bitch is still alive!”

  I opened my eyes to see Hidalgo lying on a small outcropping of rock fifteen feet down from the top of the canyon. Landing on such a hard surface must have hurt like hell, but it had saved his life. He writhed in agony for a moment or two, then lay still, his head turned our way. I put the rifle scope back to my eye to take in his nasty scowl. I had to give the bastard credit. Even after taking two bullets and a significant fall, he had the ability to muster up enough hate to send a glare in our direction.

  Castaneda set the smoking helicopter down as softly as he could, but the landing was nonetheless hard. My teeth and vertebrae slammed into each other, threatening to crack. But after a moment or two, I realized that I’d be sore but nothing had broken. Thank goodness.

  “Out! Now!” Ochoa shouted.

  Grabbing the buckle to unclip my seat belt, I yanked off the strap and hopped out of the side door, the rifle still clutched in my hand. I followed the lead of the others as they abandoned the helicopter and ran as fast as they could across the desert in an attempt to put as much distance as possible between themselves and the Black Hawk. None too soon, either. As I dared a glance back, the smoke turned to flame, the dry desert wind fanned the flames backward across the aircraft, and the fuel tanks ignited.