by Alex Kava
He had already switched off all the dog doors so none of the dogs could come back in until he could air out the building. With his gas mask still in place, Creed collected the three men’s weapons, patting them down and finding knives and brass knuckles in boots and back pockets. He left each man where he had fallen to save time, but zip-tied their hands and feet, then duct-taped their mouths.
Finished, he stood over the pile of their weapons. He’d learned a long time ago that only a fool depended on weapons to save his life. But an even bigger fool wouldn’t take advantage of one given to him. Creed picked up a pistol he actually recognized, though they had only recently been issued to the marine special ops. The Colt M45 was desert-tan and felt small in his hand. It was meant to be a close-quarters battle pistol, which was exactly what he needed right now. He lifted his sweat-drenched T-shirt and slipped the gun in his waistband.
He was already headed for the back door when he heard dogs start to bark. He froze in his tracks. Barking was not good. Every single dog had obeyed his commands all night. Barking was not allowed. Creed had gotten through this far with anger fueling him, but now for the first time panic kicked him in the gut.
The dogs’ outdoor pen ran the length of the warehouse. He continued to use the back door as planned, letting himself out and keeping his body pressed against the building. He pulled off the gas mask, setting it down and sucking in the humid but fresh air. A gentle breeze reminded him that he had also gotten soaked by the spray. He filled his lungs with the damp night air, then he moved on.
He crept in the shadows, trying to listen beyond the barks. Night birds he didn’t recognize seemed to fill the air, possibly stirred up by the dogs’ barking. He was almost to the corner of the building where the pen began when he heard a man call out for him.
“You just as well come out, Mr. Creed.”
The deep voice had a heavy Spanish accent. That surprised Creed. He expected the Iceman to blend in better. The dogs had quieted, and Creed had to step slower and softer without their barking to cover his approach. His fingers started to pull the pistol out of his waistband when he heard a dog cry out in pain.
He recognized that cry. It was Grace.
68
THE MAN HAD GRACE tucked under his left arm. In his right hand was the end of a short rope. The other end was tied around Grace’s neck. A slipknot allowed the man to pull it as tight as he wanted.
“Put her down,” Creed said, as he came out from around the corner of the building, holding his hands up in front of him. Anger and panic made it difficult to keep calm when he wanted to race straight ahead and rescue her.
“This is the little bitch that started this whole mess. Is that not correct?”
The man grinned at him with white teeth made brighter by the dark stubble on his jaw. He looked about Creed’s age—middle to late twenties, brown skin, and greased black hair. He wasn’t dressed like his hit squad. Instead, he wore blue jeans and a designer T-shirt that he had never intended to soil on this night.
“I’m not sure what you’re talking about,” Creed said, while he tried to make eye contact with Grace.
He wanted to tell her it would be okay, even if he knew it might definitely not be okay. The man kept the rope tight around her small neck, so tight she didn’t move in his grip.
“The fishing boat. This little bitty thing. Who would have guessed she would be the start of so much trouble. Such a mess, and no one to clean it up except me.”
“Put her down and I’ll do whatever you tell me to do. It’s really me you came for. Not her.”
“Oh, the Iceman will still have you to himself.”
“You’re not the Iceman?”
This made the man laugh.
“My name is Leandro Ramos. If you were not so stupid, you would know that. I run Choque Azul in these parts. You took something of mine. It is only fair I take something of yours.”
“I didn’t take anything off that boat.”
He laughed again. “Not off the boat. At the airport.”
“You mean Amanda? If you wanted her back so badly, why’d you run her off the road?”
He shook his head, the grin still in place. “I was done with her anyway. And by running away, she got you to bring her here and led us right to you.”
“So then you must mean the cocaine?” Creed told him. “I can get it for you. Just put the dog down.”
“Yes, of course, you will get me my cocaine.”
Creed started to breathe a sigh of relief just as the man named Leandro dropped his arm out from under Grace. She jerked, then dangled at the end of the rope. Leandro now held up the other end, letting the slipknot bite into her neck.
Creed’s hand went for the pistol at his back. Before he could yank it free, Leandro’s left knee exploded, sending him to the ground. Without even looking to see where the shot had come from, Creed rushed to scoop up Grace. He didn’t even notice that while Leandro was screaming in pain, he was reaching for his own pistol.
This time Creed saw a flash of fur, then he heard a snarl. Somehow Chance had gotten out. He grabbed Leandro’s arm and made the man scream.
“Don’t let go, Chance.”
He heard a growl, then the big dog shook his head. Leandro screamed even louder.
That’s when Creed felt a lick on his hand. Grace looked up at him and he massaged her neck. Had it really been only a second or two that she had dangled at the end of the rope? It had felt like minutes.
“You okay?” he asked her. And she started to wag.
“How about you?” someone asked from behind Creed.
He turned to see Jason and another man coming out from the woods. Both were dressed in fatigues. Jason had a rifle with a scope swung over his shoulder.
“Go check on him, Tony.”
The other man was already going to take care of Leandro, but stopped when Chance growled and shook again, and Leandro screamed.
Over his shoulder Tony said, “He screams like a girl.”
“I know you said you didn’t want any help, but we just happened to be in the neighborhood,” Jason said with a grin that Creed had never seen on the kid.
Creed hugged Grace closer. He pointed at the rifle. “Was that you?”
“Oh yeah, I guess I might have forgotten to mention. The army trained me as a sniper. Amazing what you can still do with only one hand.”
Sunday
69
O’DELL GREETED AGENT MCCOY as he came up the Bagleys’ front porch steps. Behind her the forensic team was finishing up. She could see the other FBI agents waiting for her by the outbuilding where the children had been kept.
“Is this your first time here?” she asked McCoy.
“First time in Alabama.”
“Really? But this was such an important case.” She held the screen door open for him.
He maneuvered around her into the entry, and she noticed his eyes darting around the place.
“It’s called delegating, Agent O’Dell. You should try it sometime.” He stuffed his hands in his pockets, obviously impatient with her. “So what’s so important that you brought me all the way out here and on a Sunday, no less?”
“I appreciate you taking the time.”
“Yeah, well, be sure not to waste my time. I wouldn’t be here if your boss wasn’t busting my boss’s chops. Now that we have George Ramos’s son in custody, my people are anxious to close this sorry-ass case.”
“It’s just too bad they haven’t found the Iceman.”
He shrugged. “According to Leandro Ramos, the Iceman’s apprentice was supposed to be at the scene last night, too. And we haven’t found him yet either.”
“Maybe he’s a ghost, just like his boss.”
She thought she saw a spark in McCoy’s blue eyes. She wasn’t sure if it was more i
mpatience or perhaps a flicker of respect that both the Iceman and his apprentice had beaten them all once again.
“So what’s so important?”
“It’s upstairs in the master bedroom.” She pointed to the open staircase, then she led the way up, stopping for one of the forensic team who was coming down.
“They should be finished,” McCoy said as they passed another tech in the hallway.
“Pretty much.”
The door to the master bedroom was open. She stepped in and waited for him. She watched him glance at the altar, then scan the rest of the room as if he were looking for what it was she thought was so important.
“Something’s been bugging me about the altar the Bagleys set up for Santa Muerte.”
“I hate to tell you this, O’Dell, but I’ve already seen this altar in the case photos that were taken. And believe me, they had all kinds of angles and close-ups, so please don’t tell me you brought me all the way out here to find what’s bugging you about this.”
“Have you looked at very many other altars to Santa Muerte?”
He let out a long sigh of frustration and said, “No, I can’t say that I have.”
“All of them leave gifts, and there’s some variation but there are a few things that seem to always be the same.”
“And I can’t wait for you to tell me what those are.”
“Almost all of them leave tequila. Seems strange to me, but all of it seems strange so why not tequila, right?”
He glanced at the altar.
“Sometimes the whole bottle is included. Sometimes not. But always, if there’s tequila at all, there’s some poured into a glass or several glasses.”
“That’s so very interesting, O’Dell, that you’re putting me to sleep while I’m standing up.”
But she didn’t think he looked bored. For the first time since he entered the house, Agent McCoy looked a bit uncomfortable.
“I’ve checked with some experts.”
“There are experts?”
“Oh yeah, it’s crazy, isn’t it? They all say the tequila is poured and ready or it’s not an official offering. Sometimes people will refresh what’s in the glass, but never will they leave a glass empty. That would be disrespectful. Actually, an insult.”
She waited for his eyes to check out the glass, even though he certainly already knew it was empty. The glass was the only thing set off to the side. She hadn’t allowed the forensic team to touch anything else.
“Your prints are on the empty glass, Agent McCoy.” She said it bluntly, as a matter of fact. “I’m just wondering how that is possible when you’ve never set foot in this house. No wait, you haven’t even been in the state of Alabama.”
“I don’t know what you’re trying to pull. I pissed you off, so this is your way of getting back at me.” He shook his head as if he were disgusted by her. “You’re a sorry piece of work, O’Dell.”
“You’ve gotten away with it for so long that you got a bit cocky. You didn’t think anyone would notice. Especially if you had your own team in here cleaning up after you.”
“You don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“You’re a ghost, right? No one knows what you look like. You’ve been able to arrest or kill anyone who might.”
His eyes flashed at her. Blue eyes. Ice blue.
“But your apprentice knows.”
“My apprentice? What the hell are you talking about?”
She pulled out her cell phone and hit SEND on the text that she had drafted, letting her team know it was time to come on up.
“What are you doing? What did you just do?”
“You and George Ramos have been friends for a long, long time.”
“You have no idea what you’re talking about.”
“All the way back to the days when you were a simple immigration officer working for ICE. You helped him come to the States. When you got promoted and went to the DEA, you even tried to bust his old partner in the Gulf drug cartel.”
He shook his head again, but he didn’t stop her. She wondered if he was trying to figure out how she knew this or if he was plotting what to do with her.
“Howard Johnson went straight. And no matter how hard you tried, you couldn’t bust him. But your buddy George got involved in a new cartel, Choque Azul. Somehow he convinced you to come along for the ride.”
“You don’t know anything.”
“You’re right about that. There are a whole lot of holes I haven’t filled and dots I can’t connect. But I’ve seen the way you look at Senator Ellie Delanor. Did you come in second to George with her, too?”
“Shut up, O’Dell. You really don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“When I ended up busting George on his houseboat, he put his son Leandro in charge. You thought it should have been you, right? After all, weren’t you the one that came up with the new idea of trafficking kids?”
“That was Leandro, not me.”
She kept quiet, staring at him and waiting for him to realize his slip. When he finally did, she saw the anger before he tucked it away and replaced it with a smile.
“You can’t prove any of it.” He pointed at her chest. “What, are you wearing a wire? Thinking I might confess to your crazy-ass theory?”
“What about the fingerprints?”
“You planted those.”
“Then what about the one man who can identify you as the Iceman?”
“What are you talking about?”
McCoy’s back was to the open door when the two FBI agents brought in the young man named Falco. McCoy turned, and she watched his face fall, along with all his carefully maintained composure. From what she knew about the Iceman, he had taken great pains to put away, destroy, or kill anyone who had ever seen his face, and he had been able to do that all the way back to the days when he was an ICE agent. But McCoy didn’t know that Falco had been captured last night, so how could he get to him?
“Sorry, boss,” the young man told him. “They tricked me, too.”
Three Days Later
70
CREED GRABBED THE LAST BOX from Jason’s car. It was heavy, and he wondered how the kid had intended to move it on his own. Everything else he owned he’d packed into black garbage bags—the kind with the drawstring handle that could easily be carried with one hand or tucked under the arm. Sadly, there weren’t that many bags.
After talking to Hannah, they decided to offer Jason a trailer they kept on their property. It had been empty for only a few months, after Felix, one of their dog handlers, took a job on the West Coast to be closer to the new love of his life. Coincidentally, Hannah had already reserved Jason’s room at Segway House, because an available room there, no matter how small, was a commodity.
As soon as they had moved Hannah from ICU to a regular room, she insisted on being taken to Amanda’s bedside. Maggie had replaced McCoy’s DEA agent, who had been waiting to interrogate the girl, with an FBI agent to stand guard and protect her.
Creed could only imagine Hannah’s conversation with Amanda. It wasn’t often she misjudged people, and she would make sure that she made it right. He knew that she had promised Jason’s room at Segway House to Amanda, and Amanda had accepted. It was a start. She’d be safe there and well taken care of by not only Hannah, but the entire staff.
The trailer wasn’t luxurious, but Creed figured it was a considerable step up from a room at a rehab center. Jason seemed genuinely speechless at the gesture. But as Creed watched him place a gallon of milk and a carton of eggs in the refrigerator, he thought he saw a hint of a smile.
“What do you have, a load of bricks in this one?” Creed asked as he hauled the box into the living room.
“No bricks. Books. Put it down anywhere.”
“I wouldn’t have
pegged you for a reader.”
“It was my secret escape when I was in Afghanistan.”
Creed nodded. He slipped his hands in his pockets and stood in the middle of the double-wide. He remembered when they first met. The kid had a chip on his shoulder as big as Texas. Hannah kept saying Jason reminded her of him, and he didn’t see it. Refused to see it. But now he did. They had both been damaged in ways that would take a lifetime to heal.
“I can’t thank you enough for this,” Jason said.
“You might not be so thankful when it’s two o’clock in the morning and I’m pounding on the door to have you help me with a sick dog.”
“I don’t sleep that much, so that’ll be okay.”
And yet another thing they had in common.
“You saved Grace’s life,” Creed said. “Probably mine, too. I wish there was more I could do to repay you.”
“You already have.”
“A job, a place to sleep . . .” Creed shrugged, as if it weren’t enough. Certainly not comparable to saving two lives.
“No, you gave me a whole lot more.” Jason’s eyes got serious, and it looked like he needed to swallow hard to get the next part out. “You gave me a purpose.”
Creed understood that, too. It was exactly what Hannah had done for him.
“But there is something else I’d like, if you don’t mind,” Jason said.
“Sure, whatever you need.”
“Can I have one of those black Lab puppies?”
That shouldn’t have surprised Creed, but it did. “I’m guessing you already have one picked out.”
“The runt of the litter, of course.” Jason’s eyes lit up as he pointed to the box at Creed’s feet. “To Kill a Mockingbird’s one of my favorite books. Already picked out Scout for the name.”
“From what I remember, the runt of the litter is a boy.”
“I figure he doesn’t need to know he’s named after a girl.”
