by M C Rowley
Eleanor shook her head. “Scott, no. Jairo, I don’t know. It seems that way.”
Jean put her face into her palms. She looked tired. “Jesus. This is all some revenge thing on the old cartel. Rose won’t let this drag out. We’re supposed to be protecting the country, not reuniting a family of misfit criminals.”
Eleanor dipped her head.
“Sorry,” said Jean. “But seriously, your husband just threw the only chance you had of finding your granddaughter into the trash.”
“Scott found our son, twice,” said Eleanor. “I trust him.”
Jean almost smiled. “Rose won’t be happy when he wakes up. Just prepare yourself for that.”
Eleanor nodded.
And then Jean’s cell phone rang. She pulled it out of her pocket and swiped the screen.
“Yes?…No, sir. We had the target in sight. He got away…Wait? What?” She got up and started pacing up and down, listening intently. “I can’t believe that…Yes, sir. As soon as we can, sir.”
Jean clicked the phone off, put it in her pocket, and turned around, one hand on the back of her head, the other covering her mouth.
“What is it?”
She looked at Eleanor. “That was Finchley at Langley. He’s been trying Rose all afternoon.”
“And?”
“They have someone in custody. They’re calling us in.”
Eleanor stood, a million scenarios running through her mind like six lanes of gridlocked traffic, fighting and battling for space to move.
“What about Estrella? Scott? Jairo? Casas?”
“No,” said Jean. “It looks like we’ve got Reynolds himself.”
Chapter Thirty-Two
I stayed put and watched Luciana edge around the house and then out of sight. I held my position for five minutes, counting the seconds in my head, grabbed Rose’s gun tight and then made my move.
I rolled out of the bed of the truck and found my feet on the gravel parking area by Casas’s house. Then I walked slowly toward the front door. Luciana had jumped me in the jungle before, but I wasn’t about to seek revenge for that. I wanted to stop her doing whatever Reynolds had sent her to do.
My back hit the wooden slats of the frontage and I breathed deep breaths. Then I took small side steps to the right, the opposite direction to where Luciana had gone. I made it to the corner and went around to the side of the house. The first window was too high for me to see or hear anything. I guessed the house had been built on raised foundations, in case the lake ever flooded. I continued on until I passed another high window and then I reached a lower one. I stopped and listened. And heard voices.
Jairo was speaking. “And the other?”
I heard Casas mumbling.
Then Jairo again: “Why do you care anyway, Casas?”
I closed my eyes and listened hard.
Casas said, “How many cut in to the deal?”
Jairo said, “Do the math. How many were we?”
I heard a snort or a scoff.
“Casas, come on. Ten plus Reynolds. You literally have nothing to lose here. Join it and you’ll be able to pay for your own damn witness protection. The others won’t even have to know you’re part of it. I could say I killed you as soon as you gave me your numbers.”
I thought, the others? The Sons of No One? Half of them were dead.
“I don’t trust you. I don’t trust any of you,” said Casas.
“Rich coming from you,” said Jairo.
I heard a tut. Then silence for a few minutes.
Jairo said, “It’s billions, Casas. Billions, for God’s sake. Give me your number and we’re done. Or nothing happens, then you’ve lost nothing.”
“You know where I live now,” said Casas.
Jairo laughed. “I could’ve found you anytime, cabrón.”
Then I heard movement. From outside the house. I went to move, but Casas spoke.
“Fuck it. Four-three-zero. Okay? Those are mine. Give me yours.”
Jairo said, “Don’t think so.”
I had to move but couldn’t pull myself away from Jairo’s conversation with Casas.
I thought I heard the sound of a gun being drawn. Movement from within the room, but at the exact same time, a window was smashed. At the other side of the house.
Luciana, surely, conducting a not-so-subtle break-in. I waited where I was. The room had gone completely quiet. I heard footsteps. One pair. Jairo checking the smashed window, I guessed.
I waited at the side of the window, looking out to the yard, not moving. I thought about heading back to the truck. I didn’t want to lose Jairo now I’d found him again. I turned to my left, back the way I had come. I took one step and felt a cold metal circle touch the back of my head.
“Hold on,” whispered Luciana.
I froze and said nothing. I had had a gun at my head a fair few times over the last couple of months. If she wanted me shot, she’d have done it by now. So I froze.
“Drop the gun.”
I did.
“Kick it back towards me.”
I kicked it back.
“To the front door,” she said, prodding my cranium with her gun. “Go. Now.”
I walked and Luciana followed, stuck to me by an extended arm and pistol. We reached the corner, turned, and made it slowly to the main door.
“Open,” she said.
I followed the order. The door was an old wooden thing with frosted windows. It opened inward with a creak. There, in the hallway, pointing a second gun at my head, was Jairo. He looked perplexed but the gun didn’t waver.
I peered beyond him and saw a man tied to a chair. It was Casas.
Jairo was staring at Luciana. I looked into my son’s eyes, trying to plead with him not to do anything rash.
Luciana spoke first, slowly, in Spanish. “Did you get the number?”
Jairo didn’t blink, and then he replied in Spanish, “That is nothing to do with you.”
Luciana gripped my shoulder from behind. “I’m afraid it is.”
She raised her voice, speaking past Jairo, to Casas directly. “Did you give him the number?”
Casas looked exasperated. “Yes, but what does it matter? The account’s been dead for years.”
“Good,” said Luciana, and I felt the barrel of her pistol move away from the back of my head and sit flat on my right shoulder. Then my head filled with an explosion.
I dropped to my knees, clutching my head, and in the chaos looked upwards and saw Casas’s body slumped back over the chair, blood dripping from his head. I couldn’t hear a thing.
Luciana stepped over me, and I saw that she was aiming the gun at my son. Jairo’s gun stayed steady, pointed at Luciana’s head.
Then they dropped their shooting arms to their sides.
I tried to speak through the ringing, but couldn’t make out whether any sound left my mouth.
My son walked to Luciana and they kind of nodded at each other.
My ears had given up all function, and the pain was penetrating the inner sanctum of my skull, a constant, devilish high pitched note that shook my nerves. I tried to stand up, but the floor tilted up toward me at a forty-five-degree angle and I tilted to the side, and my shoulder hit the floor, or the floor hit my shoulder, which was what it felt like.
I looked at Jairo and Luciana. They were in deep discussion. Luciana’s right hand, holding the gun, kept twitching toward me, as if she were trying to convince my son that I was better off dead. Jairo was talking as if he were the reasonable half of a couple deciding on whether to invest in new bedclothes or not, his hands spread upward, gun in hand, too. Explaining, negotiating, talking it out.
I tried to stand again, and this time Luciana saw me move and placed her boot on my right shoulder and pushed me back. My balance, or lack of it, combined perfectly with gravity and I want sprawling on my ass.
She turned to Jairo and nodded. Big and clear and strong.
He dropped his head and nodded back.
Th
en they walked past me without even a glance and left the house.
I slumped on my side, pain now coming from two places, my ears and my shoulder, and looked across the room at Casas, dead in his chair with a meter-wide puddle of blood underneath his drooping head.
I lay back and stared at the ceiling. The blood had started to make me feel nauseous.
I stayed like that for over half an hour, until the ringing sound became a strong buzz, then a vibration, and eventually a hum.
I sat up and it felt good. Balance working at about seventy percent capacity, I reckoned. I got to my knees, used a hand to push myself upright, and stood. The room spun a bit and I stopped. And waited.
Then I started toward the front door. I made it after five dodgy steps, opened it up, and looked outside. Casas’s truck was still there. No sign of Jairo and Luciana, of course. I expected nothing less.
I was about to turn back into the house when something on the ground caught my eye. A screwed-up bright-pink Post-it note.
I walked to it, bent down, picked it up, and unfolded it. At the top was the name of the motel, Super 8. Where Jairo had been. And below, unmistakable, was his handwriting. I’d seen his childish scrawl before. The note had been written in haste, possibly while walking. In Spanish it read:
Reynolds has the girl.
Reynolds Shipping.
Or El Pac-
It was clear from the way the last “c” of the word “Pac” kind of sprawled upward that Jairo had been cut off. An unfinished note.
It had to be intended for me.
Chapter Thirty-Three
Agent Rose came around thirty minutes later. Eleanor watched Jean speak with him through the window of the ward. She saw Rose’s face contort with incredulity, then turn angry, flushing all kinds of shades of red and pink. He tried to sit up and Jean put a hand on his shoulder. She was still talking. She was telling Rose about the new lead, Eleanor supposed. She thought about Scott and Jairo and hoped her husband had found their son again. And then she thought of their little granddaughter and a lump rose in her throat. She closed her eyes and prayed in silence.
Not again, Lord.
An hour later, Rose had been released from the hospital and they were heading back to Langley on the same private jet they’d flown in on. Four hours later, they were at Langley. Leaving Eleanor in custody downstairs, Rose and Jean went up to the interview room.
They hadn’t exactly got Reynolds in custody. But they had the next best thing.
The man was called Sebastian Thomas, and as Jean and Rose arrived at the mirrored glass window and the door, they stopped and peered in at him. Thomas was a short man dressed in an expensive suit tailored to make him look slimmer and with wider shoulders. He was white, with a plume of blond hair, and looked like he’d been caught robbing a bank.
“Let him talk,” said Rose.
Jean nodded, and they went in.
Thomas looked up at them with hopeful eyes. No lawyer, thought Jean, with a little bit of trepidation. They had been run around the houses on this case for long enough to not trust anyone or any information.
“Mr. Thomas,” said Rose, “my name is Agent David Rose, and this is my colleague Agent Jean Santos.”
Thomas nodded and lifted one of his palms off the table.
Rose and Jean settled into the chairs opposite Thomas and stared at him.
“Why did you come in?”
Thomas gave a small shrug. “I don’t have a choice,” he said.
“Not true,” said Rose. “We have nothing on Mr. Reynolds, or his little group of investors. You could’ve stayed incognito, Mr. Thomas. Why should we trust you?”
Thomas sat up. “I have information on Mr. Reynolds. Take it or leave it.”
“Go on,” said Jean.
“We first heard from him a few years back. It was the same way I heard as the others.”
“Others?”
“The other Founders,” said Thomas. “Reynolds came with an offer of large returns, minimum risk. We fell for it.”
Rose wrote a note.
“We were contacted via an encrypted email,” Thomas went on.
“Sounds more like a SPAM scam to me.”
Thomas scoffed, “Yeah, it did. At first. Then we were approached by some heavy guys telling us the deal. It took Reynolds time, but one by one he convinced us.”
“Of what?”
“Of the returns. We started with a small investment, a hundred thousand dollars. Reynolds came back within a week with an ROI of three hundred percent.”
“Not bad.”
“You’re telling me. After that, we reinvested. The amounts grew and grew, and every time the ROI stayed steady.”
“Too good to be true.”
Thomas dropped his head and smiled. “Yeah, you reap what you sow, right?”
Rose and Jean had read Thomas’s file but played dumb. “Meaning?”
“That’s what regular folk don’t get about money. For us, it’s a game. It’s an addiction. When you get that taken away, you’ll do anything to get it back. That rush. I don’t need more money. Nor do the other Founders. We’re junkies, hooked on zeros on a check.”
“When did you have your trading license revoked?”
“Six years ago.”
“Ditto for the other Founders?”
Thomas nodded. “We missed the game. Reynolds offered a way to play. Under the table. Huge amounts.”
“And you never met or saw Reynolds?”
Thomas shook his head.
“How much have you invested with him?”
Thomas paused for a second, evaluating his answer before it left his lips. “Close to a billion dollars.”
Jean and Rose exchanged glances.
“Is that the same amount that the other Founders put in?” asked Rose.
“There or thereabouts.”
Big money.
“And you know what Reynolds was investing in?”
“Not at first,” said Thomas. “But we asked him in one meeting and he told us. A new cartel in Mexico. Black market investment. Reynolds took the money, and took dividends from the cartel’s haul. We knew the danger. But it was too late to back out. And like I said, the money was too good.”
“You are aware, Mr. Thomas, that funding an illegal drugs operation will put you in jail for a very long time?”
Thomas’s head dropped again. “I have no choice.”
“Have you heard of a Jairo Morales?”
“No.”
“Have you heard of the Sons of No One cartel?”
Thomas said, “One of the old cartels? Yeah, sure. On the news.”
“Excuse us a moment,” said Rose, gesturing to Jean to go outside.
They left the room and went back to the window and looked in at Thomas, who had rested his head on his folded arms.
Rose asked, “You buy it?”
“I do,” said Jean. “But I don’t know why he’s here. It makes no sense.”
“Money,” said Rose. “Amazing what people will do to get it back when it’s been taken away. Like a dog chasing a rabbit. They lose all reason or logic. They believe they can hold that cash again in their hands.”
Jean nodded. “So this is about money.”
Rose nodded. “Let’s wring him for the other Founders’ IDs. We bust them, our bosses will be pleased enough. Then we have to turn it over to the DEA. Código X is their problem. I think Jairo Morales will help us solve the Reynolds problem.”
“How d’you figure that?”
“Because,” said Rose, “I think he’s trying to steal the money Reynolds got from the Founders.”
Outside Langley, a couple of blocks back, X04 sat in the back of his hired town car. His roll of the dice had been a risk. But Thomas had a kid and that gave X04 leverage. He pulled out his phone and sent a message to X05 back at the hacienda.
Any news?
He waited for a minute until his phone pinged and he opened the reply.
It’s bad, compadr
e. Nothing left.
X04 put his phone down. God damn Reynolds, he thought. How had X04 been so stupid? He knew the answer, of course. Money. Just like Thomas and the rest of those assholes, the dirty smell of cash had clouded his judgment. His cartel, his power, his newfound influence – all of it was dangerously close to fading away. Once his smaller rivals sniffed out that Código X had no cash flow, they were done.
And X04 could not let that happen.
Not too far away, Mr. Reynolds stood over the graves for perhaps the last time. He looked down at them, three beautiful marble stones aligned in perfect symmetry. The church had told him there was no room left in the cemetery. So he had bought the cemetery. And now his lost loves lay in peace beneath his feet.
He spoke, quietly and softly. “Ronda, Isabelle, Victoria.”
He stopped and looked around him. Nothing. The wind blew through the trees around the site, and he felt the cold in the air. His anger burned still, which was what he needed. He looked down at his murdered family again. “I’ll be with you soon.”
And he turned and started walking away.
To finish what he had begun.
Chapter Thirty-Four
I walked back into the house and retraced my steps. I hadn’t touched a thing. No prints. I went back outside, shutting the door and leaving Casas’s corpse for the flies, and headed to the truck. The keys were still in the ignition.
I got in and started the oversized ancient V8 engine and put it into gear. I ran through the implications, one by one.
I had knocked out a CIA agent.
I had witnessed the murder of a man in FBI witness protection.
And I had seen my son colluding with the enemy. With Reynolds’ lieutenant.
There was no doubt left in my mind. It was too late to save Jairo’s soul. There would be no redemption for him. I looked at the note again.
Reynolds has the girl.
That was all that mattered now. Our son had died a long time ago, in a sense. But I knew Eleanor would understand what we had to do now. We had lost a son. It had torn us apart. And it had come back to haunt us years later. We simply could not allow that to happen again with our granddaughter. I would find Estrella if I died doing it. I knew that then in that moment, without hesitation, without doubt.
