“Who the hell are you?” I snarled.
“FUCK! MY LEGS!” I gave him a hard slap across the face to hopefully snap him out of his pain.
“You’ve got two seconds to answer me or I’m taking off the top of your head with this shotgun. Who are you?”
“Man, we don’t want you. We just want the girl! We just came for the girl!”
What the hell would they want with Inez? The words that came out of his mouth was enough to make me see red and still took his head off. There was no way I was going let these peckerwoods live so that they could maybe come back for her. Absolutely no way.
I rolled the newest corpse over onto his stomach and found his wallet. I flipped it open his wallet—also another sure sign these guys weren’t professionals. Pros didn’t bring their wallets along to a job—and read the address off of his license. It was a Tucson address, so that meant whoever had sent them was probably from down around there, too.
Maybe it was time to go and visit my big brother, Sam. He was in deep with a lot of the shader types down that way. At the very least, he could tell me who sent these guys to kill Inez.
Chapter 5
Not long after the firefight, Juan and a few boys from the bunkhouse made it up the house. I told them what was going on and to not call the sheriff for an hour or so. I wanted to get Inez as far away from this as possible and I didn’t want her to have anything to do with the law other than my brother. For as far as I knew, she was neck deep into something that would put her in jail for the rest of her life and I wasn’t going to help put her there.
When I had Inez open the door to the trophy room, she leaped into my arms, tears streaming down her face. We stood there like that with her trembling in my arms, and I could have stayed just like that for the rest of night, but I needed to get her out of dodge and I needed answers. I had her get dressed and we headed to Tucson in one of the ranch 4-by-4’s. As we made the hour long trip down to Tucson, she told me the whole story of why the men had come after her. She’d been through hell and back and then back again. But because of the her story, I knew that my brother would be able to help us.
Sam had joined up with the border patrol when he turned 18 despite the fact that he had more money than he could spend in 10 lifetimes. But like me and the Army, and both my old man and my brother with the police, Sam needed the action. No, that’s not quite accurate, Sam needed the power. There isn’t a government agency in the entire state of Arizona that held more sway and power than the border patrol, and that power virtually doubled after 9/11 and the creation of the patriot act. Sam basically held the power of life and death with zero impunity in the palm of his hand. And if the rumors were true, he wielded like a mad king and built an empire for himself on both sides of the border. He was a truly dangerous man, and at this point, I was pretty damn happy that he would be siding with me against whoever had come after Inez.
We arrived at Sam’s little ranch style house on the outskirts of Mount Lemon just after dawn. Sam greeted us wearing nothing but a tattered old bathrobe and slurping from a monstrous mug of coffee. Sam had never married, or even had a girlfriend as far as I knew, and his spartan house reflected its lack of a feminine touch; it was nothing bare gray walls and outdated dark oak furniture. He sat us down in his kitchen and stared at Inez and I like we were some kind of science experiment.
“So, I guess you drove all the way down here to introduce me to your new girlfriend,” He said as he took another big sip of coffee.
I pulled the ID I’d lifted off the third dead man and flipped casually across the table to Sam
“Any chance you know who that is?” I asked.
Sam picked up the ID.
“Yup, Billy Zane. I know the kid all too well.”
“Who is he?”
“Just another uneducated redneck with a hard-on for hurting Mexicans. Who is he to you?”
“I just killed him and a couple of his buddies back at the ranch a couple of hours ago for trying to kill me and my new girlfriend.”
“Well, that ain't no good.”
“How come come?”
“Well, Billy may be nothing but poor white trash, but he’s connected poor white trash.”
“Connected to who?”
“Reverend Fine.”
Shit. Just about everyone in the state of Arizona knew who the Reverend Joseph Fine was. He was one of those loud mouth yahoos I mentioned earlier who give the state of Arizona a bad name. In fact, he was pretty much the lead yahoo. The ultra-conservative politicians loved trotting out the good reverend out anytime around elections and they needed to get the natives worked up and scared and into the voting booths. He was extremely well known, but as far as I knew, he wasn’t dangerous. But then again, I avoided politics like the plague because the last time I gave a crap about them got me 6 years out in Iraq blowing people's heads off.
“You wanna take me to him?” I asked Sam.
“Not particularly. But I suppose you ain’t gonna give me much of a choice in the matter?”
“No, I ain’t.”
“Then I suppose I will.”
***
We left Inez back at Sam’s house and made the half hour drive to the Reverend’s “church” in total silence. Me and Sam have never been what you would describe as close. Sure, we were brothers, but we’d never paled around growing up like me and my little brother did. We were blood and that’s all that mattered. But in the same breath, if push came to shove, I was fairly certain Sam would sacrifice me in a dead second to either save his own ass or curry favor with someone who could give him a little more power. So when it came to dealing with the Reverend, I didn’t know where I stood exactly.
As we pulled in front of the Reverend’s church—which was just an anonymous storefront in a burnt out mini-mall—Sam turned to me with his gray eyes.
“I can’t have you killing this man, little brother,” He said.
“And why’s that? Are you into him?”
He snickered and cleared his throat.
“First off, I don’t feel like arresting you today, and if you kill him in front of me, you ain’t going to give me a choice in the matter. Secondly, I ain’t into him, but a whole bunch of people you don’t want to mess with are, and if you kill him, I ain’t going to be able to protect you one damn bit. So hands off, right?”
“Right.”
“Oh, and let me do the talking. He don’t know you from fucking Adam, but he’s scared shitless of me.”
We exited my brothers truck and stepped through the glass fronted door to the jingling of bells. There was nothing in the store front other than the Reverend himself sitting at a battered desk that looked like it had been fished out of the trash.
“Samuel!” The Reverend greeted us. “What a pleasant surprise! It’s been too long since you’ve last visited!”
The Reverend held out his long-fingered hand, but Sam just stared at it like it was a dead moth stuck in a screen door.
“Knock off the shit, Joe, and sit down, this ain’t a social visit.”
“It’s not, then whatever reason do you have for visiting me today? And who is this fine young man you brought along with you?” The Reverend took a seat and kicked up his snakeskin boots on top of his battered desk. The boots he was wearing easily cost 10 grand, so obviously he was doing pretty well for himself.
“This is my little brother and just killed the shit out of Billy Zane,” Sam tossed the ID onto the desk and it bounced off the Reverends boot. “And a couple of other fellas who just shot up his house trying to kill his girlfriend.”
“Now that’s a shame. Billy was always a little too hot tempered when it comes to dealing with the illegal problem. Too hot-tempered, too over overzealous.”
“Indeed, he was,” Sam agreed. “But my brother’s girlfriend also told me that Billy and a few of his other buddies killed a truckload of Mexicans just after crossing the border up near Phoenix.”
“That is a shame. As you know, Sam, I’ve never c
ondoned violence.”
“Of course. But, you know I don’t feel quite the same. So here’s the deal, if you or any of your people come at my brother or his girl ever again, I’m going come down here and put you into a pair of handcuffs. And then I going personally drive you down to Juarez to visit a couple of fellas I know down there, and these fellas, Joe, they don’t give two shits about who you know up at the statehouse, all they know is that you’re bad for business. Got it.”
The Reverend’s face had turned visibly gray as we turned and walked out of the small office. As the door closed behind us, Sam said me.
“Don’t say I’ve never done nothing for you, Hank, because that just cost me more than you’ll ever know.”
***
It’s been two months since the attack on the ranch, and things are more or less back to normal. The day Inez and I drove back home, Sam called the Apache Junction sheriff’s department and smoothed things over with them and the attack was labeled a home invasion gone bad. The house is more or less back to normal, too, but both Inez and I have taken to sleeping in the trophy room just incase. She still has nightmares about what she experienced here and out in the desert (I do, too, but she doesn’t need to here about that.), but every night, they become a little less frequent.
Every morning, we go out riding and every night I help her study for the GED. Neither of us talks very much, but then again, we really don’t need to.
Because all we need is to know that we’ll always be there for one another, and that’s all that matters.
THE END
Desired by the Cowboy
The Cost Of Living In Shadows
Chapter 1: Angela, Omaha, Nebraska
Angela Miller never thought her life would be like this.
When she was a little girl, she thought that one day she would be in charge of a major company (most preferably, a toy company—I mean, come on, she was only 8 when she started imagining her future), be married to the man of her dreams, have three children (two girls and a boy, of course), and live on a horse ranch in some far away place like Texas or Arizona (even these two barren states seemed exotic compared to her hometown of Bakersfield, California, which was nothing but flat yellow land and abandoned oil derricks) with six or seven dogs as her constant companions. At eight years old, this was her version of heaven. And for a time, she thought these dreams were attainable. She thought that she was on track to living her dream life. But then she started going a little off track. And then her life and her plans went completely off the rails.
And then her life became about nothing but running.
It all started in L.A. (isn’t that where most bad things start? There or New York) when she was working for Carmichael Investments. She was Lead Accountant back then, and over $500 million a year was passing through Carmichael’s halls. She was in love with her boss, Jonathan, and he said he loved her, too. But, of course, he never left his wife for her, so his love for Angela was much like the rest of their lives together: a secret, dirty thing.
But the fact was that she didn’t mind. Jonathan’s wife may have had the 5000-square-foot house and the vacations to Hawaii three times a year, but she didn’t have the man’s heart or his body—Angela had those. Plus, he was teaching her to survive and prosper on her own. He was teaching her how to cook books and shake the right hands. With his guidance, in another two years, she wouldn’t need him in order to live out her dreams. Jonathan would be nothing but a footnote in her personal history; a pleasant one, but all the same, nothing but a memory.
For the most part, Carmichael Investments was a legitimate business. It dealt with nothing but law-abiding individuals and companies. But, like most corporations that deal in excessive amounts of cash, there was a certain amount that came in dirty. Money that was made on the street, that was passed from the hands of desperate human beings to those who preyed on their weaknesses. Drugs, gambling, prostitution, all of the ugly vices of the world, and the millions upon millions of dollars they generated every year, had to end up someplace where those soiled and wrinkled bills could be washed clean, and that place was Carmichael Investments. But these investors were never spoken about. Only the upper echelon of the company knew where this money came from, and Jonathan just so happened to be one of those privileged few. So that meant his lover and protégé also knew about it, and readily assisted him in cleaning the filth.
But Jonathan didn’t just do it for the company; he did it for individuals as well. Dangerous men and women who, to the outside world, appeared to be nothing more than prosperous investors and business people, but actually made their fortunes selling drugs, weapons, and other human beings.
He introduced Angela to them all. Most of them were charming and intelligent—cultured. But there were others who caused her nightmares. She would see their vicious faces in her dreams, looming over her, a knife or a gun clutched in their hands, slashing her throat, putting a bullet between her eyes. She would come awake with a start, pouring sweat, her sheets sodden. She knew that if she or Jonathan ever made a mistake, ever overstepped their bounds, they’d pay for it with their lives. Which was why it seemed like such a relief when the FBI approached her.
Agent Kelly was waiting for her in her condo after she’d spent a long weekend with Jonathan on the coast of Mexico at an ultra-exclusive resort. The trip was supposed to be entirely about pleasure, a well-deserved break from the day-to-day grind of their lives. But, as with most things with Jonathan, there was an ulterior motive for the trip, involving meeting a pair of Russian clients (the clients who most often disrupted her sleep as luck would have it) and the delivery of two million dollars in untraceable bills. When they had met with the unassuming middle-aged couple for dinner on their second night at the resort, Angela felt betrayed. This was not how this much-deserved weekend had been supposed to work out. It was supposed to be just her and Jonathan. But instead there were the Koloffs; a husband and wife who specialized in providing wealthy American men with Russian brides and even wealthier men with underage girls from countries such as Thailand and South Korea. She was enraged when she saw the two of them and she had refused to speak or let Jonathan touch her for the rest of the weekend.
She couldn’t say that she was surprised to see Agent Kelly sitting on her couch, thumbing through messages on his Blackberry. Jonathan had been growing sloppy, becoming far too confident; he was bound to attract the attention of the authorities.
When she sat down with Agent Kelly, he began reeling off a laundry list of crimes she’d committed and how long they could put her in jail for committing them. But she merely sat across from him, unconcerned about being caught, lit a cigarette, and said:
“What do you need to know and how can you protect me?”
The fact was, Angela was done with her life with Jonathan. She was tired of Jonathan, tired of being scared all the time, and she realized at that moment that all she wanted now was a fresh start. A life reboot on an epic scale, and she knew the only way she could do that was to cooperate with the FBI and give them whatever they asked for.
“We want you to wear a wire, gather intel, and possibly testify at the Koloffs’ trial,” Agent Kelly said without an inch of expression.
“And I’ll get what for doing all of these things?” she asked as she snuffed out her cigarette, her face unintentionally mimicking Agent Kelly’s.
“You’ll be given full immunity from your crimes, and then we’ll set you up with a new life under the Federal Witness Protection Program.”
She agreed without a moment's hesitation.
Gathering intel wasn’t an effort. Once again, Jonathan had become sloppy and braggartly about his little side business within Carmichael Investments. Basically, the entire office knew what he was doing, and it was easy for her to get him on tape talking about the Koloffs and a dozen other clients.
Angela only had to live her life of subterfuge for a month and then she was in the wind, set up with a new name and identity in Kansas City, Missouri. She b
ecame Janet Macklin, the youngest of three children and hailing originally from Seattle, Washington. She lived in Kansas City for nearly a year and a half, and then her car blew up. Agent Kelly had her under protection within an hour of the explosion and then relocated within a day, this time to South Carolina.
That lasted less than six months and she was moved to Omaha, where she’d been living for the past eight months. During the brief periods she spent with Agent Kelly during her relocations, she came to find out that the FBI had also turned Jonathan, but that the Koloffs’ organization had caught up with him and his wife in Niagara Falls, New York only two months after they went into hiding. The Feds’ case was slowly but surely dissolving, but they weren’t taking any more chances. Even though nothing had happened in Omaha—a town she actually liked very much—they were moving her again as a precaution.
Married To The Cowboy (Love In Collin's Ranch 3) Page 62
