“Be it known, today belongs to Soto.”
Those were the last words those ten men ever heard.
Blood spilled from bullet-ravaged bodies, pooling beneath the corpses until the parched earth swallowed every last drop.
Sangre Tierra . . . Blood Earth.
Arturo Bolivar Soto was its first and only leader. From that moment on, a terror worse than the Torres cartel reigned. Already-dug graves became a trademark of Sangre Tierra, and mass shootings a favorite method of compliance and control. Soto’s ambitions were far larger than the territory currently under his authority. The balance was soon to tip in his favor. Sangre Tierra already had a growing presence in the United States, and from there had plans to extend its area of dominance well beyond the boundaries the Torres Cartel once controlled.
Poor Eduardo had interfered with those ambitions. For that, he would pay.
“I don’t have what you seek.”
Fausto appraised Eduardo anew and suppressed the urge to bend back Eduardo’s fingers with pliers.
“I’m going to tell you a story,” Fausto said, standing and using his pants to brush away the grime collected on his palms. Fausto had a long face, a prominent nose, deep-set eyes, and hair like the mane of a stallion, which he pulled back into a long ponytail that swept across his broad shoulders. He was fit, narrow at the waist, muscled and in perfect proportion. Women were drawn to Fausto, but he preferred the whores, who asked for nothing and never complained of his sexual proclivities.
“When I was a young boy, no more than thirteen,” Fausto began, “I lived in Ciudad Juárez. It was there I met Soto’s cousin, Carlos Guzman, who gave me a gun and ordered me to shoot a man he had tied up and dumped on the ground. Carlos was so drunk he didn’t think he could hit the man at point-blank range. I didn’t know what to say. I had never killed before. But what captured my imagination was Carlos’s diamond-studded watch, the fancy clothes he wore, the pearl inlay on the pistol’s handle. You see I came from nothing, Eduardo. I was an orphan boy who escaped from an abusive master.”
Here, Fausto could have elaborated on the sexual abuse he had endured, the endless rapes by the pervert who had taken him in under the auspices of hiring a young store clerk to stock shelves in his grocery store. Store clerk! His rapist wanted a victim, a plaything, and Fausto was too young, too inexperienced, too frightened, to find a way out.
“Why are you telling me this, Fausto?” Eduardo’s voice snapped with fear.
“Shut up until I finish,” Fausto barked.
Eduardo bowed his head sullenly.
“When I met Carlos Guzman,” Fausto continued, “I had just recently escaped from my captor. I was living on the streets of Juárez, scrounging for food like an alley cat. I had experienced little but the darkest side of humanity for close to a decade. So when I pulled the trigger, blowing that helpless man’s brains out his ears, I did so, hoping one day I, too, could have a pearl-inlaid pistol.”
Fausto reached behind him. From the waistband of his jeans, he produced a pistol exactly like the one he had described. A pleased-with-himself grin creased the corners of his mouth as he put the gun away. The grin widened into a smile; for the first time since his abduction, Eduardo could see the ornately designed gold caps that covered each of Fausto’s teeth. The caps were removable, but Fausto was considering having them affixed permanently. They sent a strong message of wealth and power, Fausto’s two greatest loves.
“When Carlos sobered up and saw what I had done,” Fausto continued, “he was so appreciative that he paid a visit to my so-called employer. The police found the grocery store owner’s liver in one garbage can, his heart in another, and his head in another still. From that moment on, I became a part of something. Something I could believe in. Carlos raised me like a son. And Arturo Soto is a grandfather whom I treasure and adore. They trust me with the most important assignments. They respect me and my ability, and for that, I’m eternally grateful.”
“Again, why are you telling me this, Fausto?”
“Why do I tell you this?” Fausto repeated. “Because you need to know that I view you like you’re a rodent. Your life has that much meaning to me. I feel nothing for your suffering. And I would not be involved here unless this situation was indeed a very big deal.”
Fausto went over to his toolbox, the only object on the warehouse floor aside from a busted wooden chair. He retrieved from within a cordless power drill, with a gleaming silver bit. With a push on the trigger, Fausto showed Eduardo that the drill’s battery was fully charged.
“Now, then,” Fausto said in a perfectly calm voice. “Let’s talk again about the packages you took from us.”
Fausto placed the drill on Eduardo’s knee and squeezed the trigger. Eduardo’s eyes burst with panic at the loud whirring sound. The angry metallic whine quickly dampened as the tip of the drill bored through the fabric of his soiled pants and penetrated the first layer of skin. Blood erupted from the puncture wound; the scream that followed was symphonic to Fausto’s ears.
Fausto prepared to drill again. He had bet himself he could bore nine holes before Eduardo passed out from pain. Fausto steadied Eduardo’s shaking leg in a viselike grip. He set the drill tip on the other knee when his phone rang. Fausto exhaled a loud sigh and returned his attention to the drill, but the persistent ringing proved too much of a distraction. He glanced at the caller ID and sighed once more. Eduardo did not seem certain how to feel. The anticipation of pain was its own form of torture.
Fausto answered the call.
“¿Que quieres?” Fausto said. (“What do you want?”)
Fausto kept the drill bit against Eduardo’s knee, but he waited to pull the trigger. He didn’t want to listen to the caller over Eduardo’s screaming. Eduardo’s blubbering was bothersome enough.
“Soto te quiere ver ahora mismo, Fausto,” a man said. (“Soto wants to see you right away, Fausto.”)
“I’m a little busy right now,” Fausto answered in Spanish.
“It’s urgent,” said the man. “There’s big trouble in America, someplace in Massachusetts. You need to leave immediately.”
Fausto ended the call and turned his attention back to Eduardo. “Always something, eh?”
Eduardo looked like a man who’d been given a new lease on life.
“I’ll have to finish with you later. In the meantime, let me leave you with something to remember me by.”
Fausto pulled the trigger on the drill and wished he had more time to make Eduardo scream.
CHAPTER 3
Ellie Barnes remembered how he stood.
Whenever she thought of the first time she laid eyes on Jake Dent, she remembered that the most.
Jake had drawn his weapon in a fluid motion, arm slightly bent—that little give so important for flexibility. Long, stiff arms create fatigue that can affect the shot. Jake knew this, and Ellie did, too.
Ellie was a police sergeant in the town of Winston, and one of the best shooters on the force. In ten years on the job, Ellie had stopped plenty of drunk drivers, burglaries, and domestic disputes, but never discharged her weapon in the line of duty. The police academy preached preparedness; so if the day ever came, she was practiced and would be ready.
She observed that the man to her left at the gun range, whom she’d later come to know as Jake, also shot one of her favorite pistols, a Ruger P95, the way William Tell could split apples. At some point, she caught his eye—or he caught hers, Ellie couldn’t remember—but she did notice he was as fit as any guy on the SWAT team. She liked his boyish good looks and strong arms.
Ellie’s colleagues at the Winston PD jokingly referred to her as “Pint-Sized Power.” Few could match her reps in push-ups and pull-ups, despite her being only five-four. She had warm brown eyes and a pleasing smile that attracted plenty of interest from local men, including a lot of divorced dads, some of whom were intrigued by her chosen profession. Her smile must have attracted Jake, too. He had approached, introduced himself, and they made
small talk about guns for a few minutes.
Ellie was taken by his knowledge of firearms. “Why do you like the Ruger so much?” she asked.
Jake didn’t hesitate. “Dependability,” he said. “May not be the easiest to hold, but you can always trust it.”
For a second, Ellie wasn’t sure if Jake was referring to himself or the gun. Either way, she fell into his blue eyes, and got lost there. It was as if Jake Dent had plugged into her brain and come up with two words that made him immeasurably more attractive: “trust” and “dependability.”
Walter had those qualities when she married him, or so she had thought.
A week after their initial meeting, Jake invited Ellie out to dinner and she gladly accepted the invitation. He had selected a cozy Italian restaurant, with checkered tablecloths and dim lighting, a couple towns away from Winston. The maintenance guy from the local prep school and a cop from the same town out to dinner together would get some people talking. Jake was sensitive to this when he made the reservation, and that sensitivity intrigued Ellie.
For their first date, Ellie wore her chestnut hair down, so it fell across her shoulders, and a low-cut, curve-hugging yellow dress—a rarity for a woman who favored flannel and jeans. Jake had on an oxford shirt and something told Ellie it was the only one he owned.
“I wanted to have kids, but Walter didn’t,” Ellie said to Jake midway through the meal. She hadn’t known she was going to talk about her ex—or herself—so much, but Jake had a way of bringing it out of her.
“I’m sorry,” Jake said. “That must have been hard on you.”
“It was.”
“Is that why you got divorced?”
Ellie chuckled. “No. That would be the woman in his office he was sleeping with.”
Jake kept a stolid expression. “Well, in that case, he’s an asshole.”
Ellie laughed again. “You don’t know the half of it. According to Walter, the affair was just about the sex. Somehow this was supposed to make me feel better.”
Jake showed an appropriate degree of disgust. “I’m guessing you two haven’t stayed in touch.”
“No,” Ellie said. “But I did fill that kid void—well, sort of.”
“You have children?” Jake asked.
The candlelight flickered and cast shadows that called attention to the deep creases on Jake’s ruggedly handsome face. Every one of those lines had a story behind it, Ellie believed.
“Well, let’s just say each of my kids weighs between seventy-seven to eighty-five pounds fully grown, and they’re courageous, loyal, alert, and truly fearless.”
Jake nodded. He understood right away, guessing correctly that Ellie had dogs.
Ellie explained how she’d started training German shepherds to help heal her broken heart, but what she’d discovered was a new passion and purpose in life. She had grown up around working dogs and was familiar with the breed. But it was not until Ellie trained her first service dog, and gave that dog to a new owner, that she fully appreciated her connectedness to these animals. It was love, pure and simple. Each dog she trained and subsequently gave away took a little piece of her heart along.
“What do you train the dogs to do?” Jake asked.
“They’re for diabetics.”
Jake gave her an inscrutable smile then. “We have more in common than a love for the Ruger, it seems,” he said.
Jake told Ellie a little bit about his son, Andy, who had been diagnosed with type 1 diabetes as a toddler.
“My mom was a diabetic and died from the disease when I was fifteen,” Ellie said, “and my dad was a K-9 officer. So in a way, training service dogs for insulin-dependent diabetics was a way of honoring both their memories.”
“When did you lose your dad?”
Ellie pushed the remnants of her linguini dinner about her plate. “About five years ago,” she said. Her eyes misted. “Heart attack. It was sudden, the way he wanted to go. Wish he could see my dogs. He’d be so proud. My dad always encouraged us to be of service to others.”
Ellie explained how she trained her dogs to use their powerful sense of smell to detect changes in blood sugar levels. When those levels spiked too high, or dropped dangerously low, the dogs would go to work, barking a warning. The dogs were vigilant even through the night, as their owners slept.
Jake listened intently, but something about his expression was playful. Ellie eventually caught on. “You know all this, don’t you?” she asked.
“I had looked into getting a dog for Andy, but he didn’t want anything that would call so much attention to his condition. He refused to get an insulin pump, too, even when our insurance could finally cover the cost. By that point, he was used to managing his blood sugar levels with food and insulin injections as needed.”
“From my experience, juveniles can be the most brittle,” Ellie said.
“Your experience is spot-on,” Jake said. “Andy’s blood sugar can go from high to very low without much to tilt those scales. We’ve had more than a few emergency visits to the ER over the years. Now, in addition to glucose tablets and insulin, Andy carries a glucagon emergency kit everywhere he goes in case his blood sugar drops.”
Ellie knew all about glucagon, a natural substance that raises blood sugar by forcing the body to release sugar stored in the liver. It was used in emergent hypoglycemic situations, when the body’s blood sugar level dropped dangerously low. In those instances the body could not process glucose tablets, even foods like chocolate, quickly enough to get enough glucose into the bloodstream. If the low blood sugar condition persisted untreated, a diabetic could lose consciousness, slip into a coma, and ultimately die.
Dessert came. Ellie ordered chocolate mousse, wondering what something like that would do to Andy’s blood sugar. Jake suggested they go out for a nightcap, but Ellie declined, with more than a hint of regret in her voice.
“I have to get home to Kibo,” she said.
Jake shook his head in good-natured disappointment. “Is he a boyfriend you haven’t told me about?”
“No, he’s my dog.”
Ellie had spent a year apprenticing before she trained her first dog on her own. She partnered with a reputable charity that helped place her dogs with people who could not afford the expense, but the time and effort that went into training made each donation a gut-wrenching experience. For this reason, Ellie got a puppy she knew would stay. She named her dog Kibo, for one of the three volcanic cones on Mount Kilimanjaro, which she had climbed in her twenties. After three years together, Kibo truly was woman’s best friend.
“Will you go out with me again?” Jake said.
“I would have been supremely disappointed if you didn’t ask.”
At the end of their second date, Jake asked Ellie out again. And he asked her out again after that. Two months later, they’d ended up in bed after a bottle of wine and a bad movie on Netflix. Ellie always gravitated to the blue-collar types, the rough guys who were skilled with their hands. One night together and Ellie could attest to Jake’s considerable skills.
More than a year had passed since that first date—a year of no big fights, no heartache, and no drama. That was just the way Ellie liked it. She liked the sex, too, but sex wasn’t everything. Honesty was.
Ellie had something important to share with Jake, something that could change their relationship drastically. He’d show up any minute, and Ellie would have to confront him.
Ellie gazed down at Winston from the hilly rise of the ten-acre plot of land her father had willed to his three daughters. As a matter of fairness, Ellie’s father had divided his substantial assets equally among the three children, but only Ellie wanted to stay in Winston. She used her inheritance to buy out her city-dwelling siblings.
The home and land were special to Ellie, filled with cherished memories of playing hide-and-seek with her sisters, capturing fireflies, and roasting marshmallows in the big fire pit where her father frequently burned brush. No place on earth was quite like it, and
Ellie felt lucky and grateful to have such a beautiful home. Over these last few months, Jake had come to know Ellie’s home, and he, too, had fallen under its spell.
Ellie’s property stood at the end of a long stretch of dirt road. It looked like something out of a fairy tale. A hilly landscape with breathtaking views of Winston cradled a gorgeous post-and-beam home, which her father had built by hand. Not far from the wide front porch was a large duck pond, which froze in the winter and made a perfect ice-skating rink. Neighborhood kids could always be counted on for a spirited game of hockey. The sounds of the children’s shouts and laughter always made Ellie feel a little less lonely since the divorce.
Now she had Jake to cure those winter blues. Or did she?
Ellie had never been invited to Jake’s home. She knew he lived in a double-wide trailer. That didn’t bother her in the least, but maybe it bothered him. On the surface, Jake and Ellie seemed to have much in common—a love of dogs and guns, a history with a difficult disease—but a wall remained between them, and Ellie wasn’t sure who was doing most of the construction. Initially she hadn’t pushed the issue. Ellie still carried some of the wounds Walt left behind and she liked the relationship just the way it was. So Ellie let it go, and Jake didn’t change. But she had fallen for Jake Dent and started to want something more. If she was going to be in a relationship, she had to believe it was going to grow and deepen. Ellie brought her walls down, but it was clear Jake had not. Ellie began to think there was more to Jake than just a supremely private guy.
Which was why she’d turned to Google. And how she found a whole lot more than she ever expected.
CHAPTER 4
Jake drove up Ellie’s driveway in his Chevy Tahoe. Kibo came running like his best buddy suddenly materialized out of thin air. As Jake came to a stop, the muscular German shepherd stood on hind legs, slipped his nose under the front passenger-side door handle, and lifted his head. No scratches left behind. The door latch disengaged, and Kibo used his head to pry the door open the rest of the way. He jumped inside and gave Jake’s face a proper licking.
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