The ask was a big one. Ruiz knew that. But he also knew the world he was about to step back into.
He might have been away for eight years, but some things were timeless. Most of what he knew had been culled from the hand of those before him, their knowledge passed down from the generation before them.
People in their industry lived within a certain duality. They were forced to compete with the ever-changing times, but they also abided by a code that had predated all of them.
Would long outlast each of them as well.
“Dawn?” Smith said, stomping back into view. “Are you serious with this? Is this your idea of getting back at us because you took a few punches?”
Within, Ruiz could feel his hatred for the second agent pushing outward. Growing until it almost consumed him, it threatened to spill out of every opening.
But still he remained rooted in place. His molars clamped, he stared at Jones, imparting that what he was saying was non-negotiable.
If he was going to do this, going to step outside and serve as anything more than target practice, it had to be done right.
“Given the time of night, that could be tough,” Jones said, “but I think we can make that work.”
Much like the roiling hostility within, Ruiz gave no outward response whatsoever. Considering the enormity of what it was they were presenting him with, what he was requesting was minor.
At best.
“Anything else?” Jones asked.
Chapter Five
The lights from the roadside signage for The Smokehouse passed across the front windshield of my truck as I swung out of the parking lot. Bouncing across the seam separating the lot from the street, the entire rig shuddered slightly before settling out as we headed back south.
Not enough to be cause for concern.
But more than sufficient to set Kaylan moaning in the passenger seat beside me.
“Oh, dear God,” she muttered. “Please be gentle.”
The same crooked smile I’d worn through our earlier conversation - and again as her food arrived, and once more as she ate every last bite of it – graced my features as I glanced over. Propped up in the corner, the crown of her head was pressed into the frame of the door, her eyes closed, a hand placed gently atop her stomach.
In the half-glow of street lights filtering into the cab, her skin looked sallow, matching the strain in her voice.
“How we doing over there?” I asked.
“Why did you insist on ordering that dessert?” she asked, not once cracking her eyes open.
That dessert was the most decadent brownie à la mode I’d ever seen, the baked good more than two inches thick, the ice cream hand churned. Covering all of it was a homemade chocolate sauce so dense it resembled tar.
In total, no less than twenty-five-hundred calories.
And worth every last one.
“Because it was the only thing on the menu I recognized?” I replied, pushing a bit of levity into my voice. Extending a hand, I reached out, jabbing a finger into her thigh, “And because it was good?”
Peeling her hand away from her stomach, Kaylan swatted at me, just barely missing my outstretched finger before slapping her palm against the seat. “Don’t touch me. I can already feel that chocolate sauce collecting on my ass.”
Opting against saying anything more, I rode out the last quarter mile back to the office in silence. Given that it was a Wednesday night in early November, the streets were as barren as expected. A handful of vehicles were all that dotted the streets, even fewer lined up at the neighborhood gas station and the smattering of fast food joints along the way.
In a month, a new crowd would descend on the place. Ready to take advantage of the winter season, snowmobilers and cross-country skiers would arrive.
And then to take advantage of them, a new batch of vendors and services would prop open their doors, continuing the annual cycle that hit the area each winter.
But for now, life was blissfully tranquil, like a college town in the summer.
“You going to be alright to drive home?” I asked, dropping the turn signal and easing off the road. Trying to take it as slow as I could, I pushed forward into the gravel lot outside our office, sidling up alongside Kaylan’s Sentra parked out front.
As I did so, the front lamps bounced over the exterior of the building, the place one I purchased six years earlier when first moving north out of the desert. A single story tall, it was cut from flat-front pine boards, everything except the green trim outlining the door and windows painted dark brown.
Stretched across the top was a rough-hewn wooden sign employing the same color scheme, announcing ourselves to all who passed by.
Hawk’s Eye Views: West Yellowstone’s Favorite Private Guide.
Never let it be said that anybody in our line of work had a problem with false modesty.
“Ugh,” Kaylan said, cracking her eyes open. “We’re there already?”
Posting a fist into the seat beside her, she wriggled her way upright, staring out at her car and the front of the building.
“I can just run you home,” I offered. “Your car will be fine here overnight.”
Even at the peak of tourist season, West Yellowstone wasn’t the sort of place where one needed to worry about where they parked. All summer long, my truck more or less sat alongside the building as I ferried people through the sights, nobody ever so much as glancing sideways at it.
Added to that was the fact that Kaylan was a local. Everybody knew who she was and what she drove, an unofficial neighborhood watch employed to take care of their own.
“Naw, I’m good,” she managed.
“You sure? I don’t mind.”
“Yeah, I got it,” she said, reaching out and unlatching the passenger door. Cracking it no more than an inch, cold air flooded in, plainly obvious despite the vents shoving stale heat around us. “Thank you, for tonight. I might be miserable now, but it was worth it.”
“You’re welcome,” I replied, opting against a handful of retorts. The poor girl was in enough pain as it was. “And thank you for another great season. You more than earned it.”
Opening her mouth as if to respond, Kaylan thought better of it. Pressing her lips tight, she nodded once before shoving the door out wider and hopping down to the ground, her diminutive stature making the exit far from graceful.
“You sure you’re good?” I asked, one last attempt to ensure she was going to make it.
“Yes,” she said, her feet dragging over gravel as she turned to look at me. Glancing up to the front of the building, she added, “Though I am going to use the restroom before heading out. Please don’t wait for me.”
Knowing better than to say a word, I smiled. Raising a hand in farewell, I merely offered, “Good night.”
“Good night,” she said, lingering a single moment to see if I would be foolish enough to add anything more before flinging the door shut.
Shifting toward the office, she lumbered up the trio of front steps, perfectly framed in my headlights. Fishing deep into her pocket, she extracted a wad of keys as she continued moving forward.
Selecting the one she wanted, she no more than had it inserted into the slot before the door exploded outward in an array of light and sound, lifting her into the air, seemingly suspended parallel to the ground.
All still under the watchful gaze of the twin spotlights protruding from the front of my truck.
Chapter Six
The last couple of nights couldn’t be considered true dry runs. Not with the actual target out of town, leaving behind only his wife and two young children.
Instead, they were more like scouting missions. They allowed Tres Salinas to get close to the property in a way he probably wouldn’t have if the man had been home.
Starting forty-eight hours before, he had spent an inordinate amount of time standing exactly where he now was. Watching the afternoon and evening coming-and-going of the family. Getting a feel for their bedtime rituals, co
mmitting it all to memory.
Adding it to everything else that had been gathered in the week before that, gaining an understanding of the family and how they conducted themselves each day.
If there was anything that had been drilled into Tres from an early age, it was the necessity of preparation. Nobody that was successful, that had ever achieved anything of value, had done so purely on luck or even talent.
They had gotten there by leveraging the latter to create the former.
And the only way to properly exert leverage was through sweat and determination. Going beyond what was expected.
Making the most of every opportunity, like the one bestowed upon him now.
Arriving in Washington a full week prior, Tres had done everything he could to make the target’s life his own. Knowing the man’s schedule and where he lived wasn’t enough. He needed to be inside the family, to know where the wife would be and why. When the children took their bath each night and how early they rose in the morning.
He needed to have every contingency covered.
No matter how cold it got. No matter how tired he became.
The reward would be worth it.
Each day began at six sharp, with the wife rising in her second-floor bedroom. Not once had Tres seen her linger in bed, pummeling the snooze button for extra minutes. Instead, he suspected that with her husband gone she had spent the night tossing and turning, thinking of all that came the next day, awake long before the alarm summoned her.
An hour later, dressed and ready for the day, she would wake the children, the remainder of the morning a sprint to get them all out the door on time.
Given their remote location, no school buses went near the home. No garbage collection or paper delivery for that matter, either.
In lieu, she drove the twins – one boy, one girl, both nine – into town, dropping them off outside the front door of their school before making her way down the street to the local branch of the public library where she was the director.
Not that she needed to, what her husband made more than sufficient to keep them comfortable, especially in this part of the country.
A woman that insisted on pulling her weight, keeping herself busy.
A move Tres could respect.
Whatever errands the woman needed to run were done during the noon hour. Banking, groceries, dry cleaning, all of it conducted between twelve and one.
Two hours later, she walked the three blocks down to retrieve the kids from school, escorting them back to the library, where they took part in the daily after-school program.
Coloring. Storytime. If the signs posted on the bulletin board inside the front door were to be believed, a sing-a-long each Friday.
All of this, Tres had been forced to piece together through a series of quick passes through town. Brief swings where he was careful not to linger, knowing that someone of his particular skin tone would stand out in such a small town.
As would the stickers on the back of his rental car, perhaps the only thing less conspicuous than the California license plates on his vehicle still parked in the hotel garage outside the Seattle airport.
Maintaining strict nine-to-five hours each day, the woman and both kids were on their way by three minutes after the hour. From there it was straight home, where the kids retired to homework while she prepared dinner.
Evening meal at six. Baths at seven. Lights out for the kids by nine, the woman an hour later.
Next morning, rinse and repeat.
As Americana as baseball, apple pie, and all that other shit people liked to talk about.
Or so Tres had been told, his own upbringing about as far from all that as could be imagined.
Hands still entrenched in his front pockets, Tres tapped the pad of his right index finger against the butt of the weapon stowed inside. He felt the heft of it tugging just slightly against the drawstring of his pants, could already imagine the weight of it balanced in his palm.
Could practically savor the moment when finally, after so long, he could draw it. Hold it at arm’s length, staring into the eyes of the man that had shifted his life irrevocably so many years before.
Let him know that the same thing would now befall his own family.
With his opposite hand, Tres rested his fingers atop the small flip phone wedged into his pocket. Ringer turned to vibrate, all he needed was a single pulse from it. A sole signal that the final hurdle had been cleared, he was free to move whenever the opportunity presented itself.
Tres felt his heart rate tick up slightly as he nudged himself away from the base of the tree. Inching forward, he peered into the small window carved through the branches of the pine trees, staring intently at the bedroom on the second floor.
To his surprise, the woman didn’t appear there. She didn’t cross in from the side, fresh from putting the children to bed. She didn’t flip on the lights and begin peeling back the handful of throw pillows, readying herself for an hour of personal time before extinguishing the lights and heading off to sleep.
Neither did her husband.
Instead, they both appeared more than a dozen feet below, stepping out onto the back patio, each dressed in white terrycloth robes, champagne flutes in hand.
Chapter Seven
The last question Agent Jones had asked was exactly the one Junior Ruiz had been hoping for. Vague enough to be open-ended, it allowed him to pose what he was truly after, the one thing he needed more than any other, without having to say as much.
The instant the question was out, a fair bit of the wrath Ruiz harbored for Smith ebbed away. The previous comment about his eye, the theatrics about stating that the proposed exit wouldn’t work, all of it fell to the wayside.
Replaced internally by a ripple, a series of palpitations rising through his core. A feeling he hadn’t experienced in the better part of a decade, and as recently as two weeks before would have never imagined coming to pass again.
Hope.
There was not a single outward sign as Ruiz had stood and stared at the men. As he had put up the façade of considering the question, when in reality he was being careful not to overplay his hand.
“Everything we’ve talked about in here is written in there?” he asked.
“Jesus H...” Smith mumbled off to the side, following it up with something that seemed to be commenting on Ruiz’s ability to read.
“It is,” Jones confirmed, the man now also completely ignoring his partner.
“And that when I leave here, my debt is paid,” Ruiz continued. “There’s no way the DEA or the FBI or whoever the hell else you two work for can one day knock down my door, charge me with escaping, and drag me back?”
A slight flicker at the corner of Jones’s mouth told Ruiz what he already suspected. He’d been careful to mention the two agencies he didn’t believe they actually worked for, hunting for any form of a response, when in reality, he already had an idea who the men represented.
No way two men about to do what they were, proposing the plan they had, worked for most anybody else.
“It says that also,” Jones confirmed.
Glancing down to the papers, his mind working quickly, Ruiz had waited a mandatory couple of seconds before finally dropping what he’d been waiting to all along.
“So when I step foot out of this place, everything from before that minute is considered moot?”
In the moment, Ruiz almost worried that he had been too obvious. That he had somehow tipped off his true intentions, that the men might get suspicious and call everything off.
Now, walking back to his cell, the same pair of guards on either side of him, he knew that wasn’t the case. Whether the agents had suspected anything or simply didn’t care was far from relevant, all that was being the answer they had given.
Striding forward, the corners of his mouth turned upward, Ruiz walked in silence. Barely did the comments lobbed at him from the cells filing by on their right even register, his mind in a handful of different places.
Third in order was the fact that this was his final night inside. His last eight hours of being forced to lay on a thin and frayed mattress, ignoring the jabs of pain in his back and neck. His final morning of having to face the showers, or the mess hall, or any of the other things that had demarcated the years.
Coming in at second was knowing that when he did take those first few steps of freedom, it was with a completely clean slate, courtesy of the United States government.
The very same assholes that had put him here years before.
Both sat a good distance back from the top spot, the single thing dominating his thoughts.
What the agents were asking of him was ludicrous. Ruiz knew it, was fairly certain Jones and Smith did as well.
But the opportunity they were putting on the table was too good to ignore. Even if it did turn out the way Ruiz figured it might, if things went south within the coming days, they were at least granting him a taste of fresh air.
And to finally right the one enormous wrong that had hung over his head for so many years.
“Open Eight,” the black guard called out. Deep and resonant, his voice echoed out, barely falling away before a metallic click could be heard the length of the hall.
The moment it did, the opposite guard stepped forward, sliding the front gate to the side. Allowing Ruiz to pass inside, he motioned for him to stick his hands back through the front bars, the final step in the process, the complete inverse of what they’d done an hour before.
Throughout it, Ruiz never once looked anywhere but straight ahead. His features were kept a stony visage, his gaze never alighting on any one spot for more than a couple of moments.
Even after the guards had removed his restraints and been on their way, he stood just millimeters from the steel bars. Rubbing his wrists with either hand, he stared at the frosted glass windows on the far side of the hall, seeing that darkness had fallen in his time below ground.
“Were you able to get your hands on a phone?” Ruiz asked, his voice barely more than a whisper.
Wild Fire: A Suspense Thriller (A Hawk Tate Novel Book 6) Page 3
