“This way!” It’s the pastor, our partner in crime, or at least in flight. He’s shepherding us toward a shiny red SUV. It will be easy for our pursuers to track—if they attempt it despite the growing police presence—but it’s a beast of a vehicle and will be faster than running.
A boom from directly behind me nearly sprawls me to the ground. My first thought is, ‘explosion,’ but when it repeats I realize it’s Wini firing her revolver from my shoulder. The men chasing us must have exited the building.
“Wini!” I shout.
Boom.
“Stop…”
Boom.
“Firing!”
Boom.
Her shots might deter the men for a moment, but they’re also making us an easy target, not to mention putting other people at risk. She stops firing when I lean forward and plant her on the pavement beside the SUV.
“Two down,” she announces, and both the pastor and I pause to glance back. Two men lie in the open doorway, both bloodied, but still moving.
For now.
I know what it’s like to take a life. What it does to your soul. So I step in front of Wini and direct her toward the SUV, hoping to leave the men’s fate a mystery.
Just as Wini is about to slide into the back seat, the vehicle is rocked by gunfire. Glass shatters. Tires blow out. I drop to one knee, head ducked, looking for targets, but find nothing.
The bullets are coming from above, the chopper hovering a hundred feet up on the far side of the SUV. Two men in tactical gear, firing assault rifles, stand in the open side door. Rotor wash slaps us down, peppering us with the vehicle’s shattered glass.
The mercs are no longer trying to subdue us. They’re trying to kill us.
“Still have your weapon?” I shout to the pastor.
He nods and holds the gun up.
“We’re going to open fire on that chopper and head for the street,” I say. “When they stop to reload.”
He looks to the nearby street, flooded with cars and fleeing people. It’s our only chance to blend in and escape.
I grasp Wini’s shoulder. “Are you good?”
The assault rifles go silent and Wini is the first to raise her pistol and fire, the loud crack kicking off our race to safety. The pastor aims his weapon at the sky, firing blindly. Wini does the same with her last two rounds. Together, they fill the air with the sound of returning gunfire. So it’s up to me to be accurate.
Instead of running, I stand my ground behind the SUV’s hood and fire the Beretta’s remaining sound-suppressed rounds. The first three miss, the fourth strikes one of the mercs, knocking him back. The rest pepper the cockpit glass, letting the holes and spider-webbing glass inform the pilot that they’re under fire. The helicopter and the men inside are far from disabled, and our group is out of ammo, but the pilot reacts by veering to the side.
They’ll come around for another pass, but it might be enough time for us to disappear. As I sprint to catch up with Wini and the pastor, I spy a nearby house. Congregation members are taking shelter inside, peeking out of windows. I have no doubt we would be welcomed there as well, but I don’t want to stick around, and I don’t want to try explaining all this to the police. In part because no one will believe us, even with the good pastor’s support, but also because it will make Wini and me very easy to locate. I have a feeling these aren’t the kind of people who give up easily, especially since we’ve managed to draw first blood. Being far away when the dust settles is our safest option.
The pastor’s, too.
We cross the street as a trio and are honked at by a man trying to transport his family to safety. The man’s curses are followed by apologies when he realizes he’s just cussed out the pastor. Then we’re on a side street, and I’m eyeing the vehicles parked there. I understand the concept of hot wiring a car, but I’ve never done it.
My eyes move to the cars locked in traffic, slowly moving away from the church. Carjacking one of these vehicles using our guns, empty or not, would be a simple thing. But stranding someone here could be putting them in serious danger, especially if the mercs return and the police end up in a gun battle. Not an option. Carjacking someone at gunpoint would also add law enforcement to the list of people trying to take us down.
A police cruiser skids to a stop across the street, digging troughs in the dry grass of a front yard. Two officers spill out and take up positions behind the vehicle, weapons aimed toward the sky. Right now, they definitely see the mercs as the aggressors. No need to alter their focus.
Before I can come up with a plan that doesn’t result in us getting arrested or killed, a voice beckons to me, “Mr. Delgado!”
A young Hispanic man leans out the driver’s side window of an orange Dodge Charger—brand new from the looks of it. “Yo, Mr. Delgado. I’m your ride!”
I nearly lift my weapon toward the man’s smiling face, but then realize what’s happening. This man is one of the many Uber drivers I summoned to the area, and he’s recognized me from my profile photo.
I tuck my weapon into the back of my jeans. The heavy gun and large sound suppressor make it an awkward fit, but at least it’s out of sight. Wini slides her revolver into her purse, which she’s managed to cling on to. The pastor attempts to tuck his weapon into the back of his dress pants, but gives up and opts for his pocket.
“This is some shit, right?” the driver says, watching the fleeing masses, the helicopter twisting around behind the church steeple, and a newly arrived police vehicle that stops beside us. The officers climb out, head for the opening trunk and emerge with assault rifles. “Some real shit, man!”
“Get us out of here,” I shout, sliding into the passenger’s side front seat, while Wini and the pastor dive into the back.
Despite the moment’s chaos, I note the new car smell, the spotless interior, and the odometer, which reads 897.
“Hold on, bitches!” The driver throws the car into reverse and speeds away backward, matching the speed of fleeing vehicles facing the correct direction, on the right side of the road. Then he spins into an empty driveway, before peeling back out into the road and merging with other, far more careful drivers.
The chopper thunders closer.
I brace for their attack.
Shots ring out, but not from the chopper. The police are giving them hell. The chopper roars past overhead before peeling away and retreating, staying low to avoid radar.
A few minutes later, when we pull onto a mostly empty highway, the pastor loosens his silk tie, yanks it off, and with a shrill, cracking shout, asks, “Will one of you please tell me what in the name of shit is going on?”
7
There’s a lot going on that makes very little sense to me. The disappearance of Isabella, and then her mother has become the top layer of a larger, far more sinister and dangerous mystery cake that I was not hired to deal with, but am now choking on. On top of that, I’m joined by Wini-turned-Dirty Harry, a foul-mouthed, right-wing, gun-toting pastor, and an Uber driver in a brand new Dodge Charger, who seems unfazed by the chaos.
I’m not comfortable with the large number of unanswered questions, but at least I can get answers to the smaller unknowns.
I turn around to Wini, “Where did you learn to shoot like that?”
“Self-defense classes.” She looks a little offended when I raise a skeptical eyebrow. “I wasn’t always old and pudgy. A girl has to look after herself.”
“Excuse me,” the pastor says. “I asked you a damn question.”
I crane my head toward the man. “What’s your name?”
“Aaron Young, currently a pastor, previously a U.S. Marine chaplain, and I haven’t seen action like that since coming home from the Middle East. So I’ll repeat my question in kinder terms, what is going on, and who are you people?”
“I’m not done yet,” I tell him in my most stern voice. He might have been deployed with Marines and seen some shit, but I still manage to intimidate him with a stare. I turn to the driver. “Th
is car is too nice. Whose is it?”
“You saying I stole this ride?” The driver looks aghast, but I can tell it’s a show. “Yo, that’s racist.” He gives me a watered down version of my own ‘shut-the-hell-up’ stare, but barely contains his smile. When I don’t blink, he takes both hands off the wheel for a moment and says, “Geez, man, you’re stone cold! Okay, okay, it’s not my car…”
“Good Lord,” Wini says.
“But, it’s my uncle’s. I swear. He’s rich. Famous south of the border, know what I’m saying? But he wants me to make my own way, so I become an Uber driver. But I don’t have a car, see? So he…”
“Lets you borrow the car,” I finish.
“Right.”
“But he doesn’t know that yet,” I guess.
“What he doesn’t know, hombre…” He smiles at me. “You know the rest.”
I nearly point out that the odometer is going to give him away, but decide our driver’s muscle car, youthful naiveté, and willingness to drive are imperative to our next steps.
“Name?” I ask.
“You can call me Lindo,” he says with a smile that looks tailor-made to impress the ladies.
Wini snorts from the backseat. “You’re not hard on the eyes, honey, but ‘Lindo’ is pouring it on a little thick.”
He flashes that same smile back at Wini. “You know what else is thick, maravillosa?”
I cut off Lindo with a raised hand, not because Wini can’t go toe to toe with our driver, but because I’ve seen and heard enough horrible things for one day, and this is one road I don’t want Lindo to take us down. “Let’s just stick to business, eh, Lindo? Muy bien?”
He grimaces at my graceless use of Spanish. “In that case, where do you want to go? You’ve already racked up a decent fare driving…” He looks out at the road. “…wherever we are.”
“Mind if we do the rest off the books?” I ask, and then I point to the GPS unit tracking us and calculating how much Uber will charge me. “And off the grid?”
“Oh shit,” he says. “You weren’t just getting the hell out of dodge. You were part of that, weren’t you?”
“A thousand dollars,” I say, “and I’ll pay for gas, if you can take us where we need to go.”
“Damn, man. For a grand, I’ll take you wherever you want to go.”
“Look, I don’t know what you all are mixed up in, but my part in this is ending,” Young says.
“I wish it were that easy,” I tell him.
“It is that easy,” he says. “Pull over, let me out, and I’ll call for a ride. I don’t live far from here.”
“Except you were seen with us,” I say.
“I don’t even know you. I’ve never seen you before. If anyone asks, that’s what I’ll tell them. You haven’t told me anything yet, so I won’t need to lie. They’ll see I’m telling the truth.”
He’s stretching, hoping his words will make sense, but even he knows they don’t, because of one glaring problem.
“You shot at them,” I say.
“Oh shit, really?” Lindo says with a chuckle. “Damn, man, a priest with a gun? What church you at, man? I want to sign up.”
“I’m a pastor,” Young grumbles. “Priests are Catholic.”
Lindo waves him off. “Same thing. You all believe in the same dude, right?”
Young stares at the back of Lindo’s seat, lost in thought. He can think all he wants, but there’s no way out for him. In the eyes of whoever attacked us, he’s the enemy. The trouble is that unlike Wini and me, who are two hours from home, Young’s identity will be easy to uncover. I’m sure the church’s website has his well-groomed mug on the front page.
When I ask, “You have a family?” he snaps out of his reverie. “Better call them. Tell them to lie low until we know what’s going on.”
We fall silent as a group while Young calls home. He speaks in hushed tones, but I can tell that whoever is on the receiving end is both angry and concerned. When he finishes the conversation he turns to me, fuming, and says, “Okay, now tell me why I just sent my wife and son to stay with my sister. And in case you can’t tell by my tone, they don’t like each other. At all.”
“First,” I say, “phones out the windows.”
I put my window down and drop my phone on the blur of pavement. It shatters on impact. Wini does the same without question or complaint. She understands why. Young frowns, but he gets it, too. We’ve all seen enough movies to know how easily smartphones can be tracked, and I’m still not convinced the people hunting us don’t have access to such things.
With three phones out the window, I turn to Lindo, who seems just as pleased with the situation as he was when he picked us up. That is, until he realizes what I’m asking.
“Yo,” he says, growing more serious. “Yo…”
“I’m sure your dick pics are saved on the cloud,” Wini says from the back.
Struggling to not smile, Lindo adds, “This is a six hundred dollar phone, man.”
“Two grand,” I tell him.
Business is good, and Kailyn was insured. As a bachelor with few hobbies beyond my work and reading biographies, I don’t spend a lot of money. Two grand won’t put much of a dent in my net worth.
Without taking his eyes off mine, Lindo puts his window down and casually tosses his phone out the window.
Then I turn my eyes to the GPS unit.
“Uh-uh,” he says. “No way. Car is under my uncle’s name, man. Uber doesn’t even know I’m driving it. Seriously, look at my profile. This is supposed to be a shitty Prius.”
I believe him, and the GPS will come in handy for what comes next.
“What kind of asshole drives a Prius?” Wini says, getting a chuckle out of me.
“Hey, man,” Lindo says. “It’s fuel efficient.”
“I’m sorry,” Young says, gripping the two front, bucket seats. “I’m glad our driver is having fun with all this, but some of us have people who depend on us, and family to get back to. So if we could cut through all the small talk, yos, mans, and general disregard for anything that makes a lick of sense, could you please tell us what is happening?”
“I was hired to find a missing little girl. The daughter of an illegal immigrant living in Santa Cruz.”
“Legit?” Lindo says. “My parents are ill…”
He thinks better of making the confession, but I can see he’s a little more invested in what I’m telling him now.
“We went to meet her mother this morning. There were signs of a struggle.” I tell them about the small house in disguise, the phone, the mysterious warning text, and the mercs’ arrival, taking us up to the moment we met Lindo and drove away.
The story sounds unbelievable as I tell it. There isn’t a law enforcement agency in the country that wouldn’t have serious doubts with some or all of what I’ve said. But no one in the car questions it. Young witnessed the most unbelievable bits himself, and Lindo saw enough to cast doubt aside. Plus, I think he likes his role in the narrative.
‘Seeing is believing’ is a cliché, but like many clichés it exists for a reason. That’s why most people can’t be convicted of a crime without evidence, though it does happen.
“So…” Young says, “we’re doing what, exactly? Hiding?”
“Pssh, haven’t you been paying attention?” Wini swats the pastor’s shoulder. “We’re looking for a missing girl, and now her mother, too.”
Lindo pumps his fist. “¡A huevo!”
“Huevo?” Young asks. “Isn’t that…eggs?”
“Man, if you’re taking it literally, yeah.” Lindo looks disappointed.
“Pssh,” Wini says, again. “No tiene dos dedos de frente.”
I have no idea what she said, and neither does Young, but Lindo cracks up laughing. “Yo chica, you’re good people.” He puts a fist out to Wini, and she bumps it. Then he turns to me and asks, “So, man, where we headed?”
I erase his smile with three words. “Colorado City. Arizona.”
8
What I took for horror over the distance is actually a slow brewing excitement that gurgles into a high-pitched squeal of delight, followed by laughter and a string of Spanish so fast that even Wini looks confused.
“Uhh, have you been?” is all I can think to ask when Lindo’s exuberance begins to ebb.
It’s Young who answers. “Colorado City is fairly infamous.”
My full attention shifts from the front seat to the back. “Why?”
“Mormons,” he says. “Well, a sect of them that have stayed true to the teachings of Joseph Smith, the same way Islamic Extremists stay true to—”
“Nope,” I say, “don’t go there.” Wini shakes her head while Lindo says, “Yo. Yo. Yo.” with varying degrees of seriousness, and then adds, “Man, you’re the racist? Out of everyone in this car, I’d expect Ms. Daisy back there to be the one stuck in the past. No offense.”
Wini shrugs. None taken.
“Islam isn’t a race,” Young says, growing defensive.
Whether or not he’s right isn’t the issue. I normally wouldn’t mind the debate. But that hot button topic is going to spiral us into a heated discussion that will do nothing more than cause division and not get me any closer to finding Isabella or Marta. “Let’s stick to the Mormons.”
Young acquiesces with raised hands. “The only real difference between the Council of Friends—what the town’s founders called themselves—and the LDS church is that the Council believed in plural marriage.”
“Hell yeah,” Lindo says. “Polygamy FT-Dubs.”
Young takes a deep breath, clearly not accustomed to having his lessons interrupted. He probably doesn’t even know that FT-Dubs is slang for FTW, which is slang for ‘For the win’. Slang upon slang, upon slang. But he rolls right past it, sticking with the word he does understand: polygamy. “Which is what Joseph Smith taught and lived. The man had twenty-eight wives. Brigham Young, Smith’s successor—to whom I am not related—had fifty-five wives.”
The Others Page 5
