Wild Fire: A Suspense Thriller (A Hawk Tate Novel Book 6)

by Dustin Stevens

  “Hawk?” Diaz asked. “What was that?”

  Allowing the tension I felt to slowly unfurl, I peeled my eyelids open. Gaze locked on the plain brick façade just beyond the front of the truck grille, I said, “Plata o plomo, which as I’m sure you know, means –“

  “Silver or lead,” Diaz finished. “Expression rumored to be made famous by Pablo Escobar back when he was running Colombia. Either take the bribe or take the bullet.”

  “Exactly,” I replied. “And like you said, it was nothing more than a rumor. The sort of thing that somebody probably made up and attached to Escobar, trying to inflate the myth.

  “Damned sure not the sort of thing anybody ever said.”

  Even as I explained to her what I’d found, I kept my gaze locked forward, right hand clenching and releasing in equal measure.

  How the hell I expected to walk inside in a moment and speak to Serra Martin with a clear head was anybody’s guess.

  “But Ruiz did?” Diaz asked.

  “He did,” I replied. “He said it to us the night we stormed the quinceañera he was hosting and arrested him.”

  Once more, I shoved a slow breath out through my nose. “And he said it just now at Shawn Martin’s house.”

  The display was small. So much so that unless someone was familiar with the expression, had been through the paces we had, they wouldn’t have recognized it. Nothing more than a single bullet standing upright and a silver peso leaning against it, some might even think it had been placed there deliberately by the Martins.

  Some sort of homage, perhaps souvenirs gathered from a trip taken long ago.

  As such, they might have even thought that the smudges in the dust underlying them and the prominent placement in the center of the entertainment center housing their television were both merely accidents.

  I had had no such compunctions, recognizing it instantly.

  Five minutes later, I was back outside, having seen everything I needed to.

  Accepting the information in silence, I could imagine Diaz working through what I’d told her. If she had questions about what I was saying, any objections to the story I was laying out, she didn’t voice them.

  Instead, the first words out of her mouth were the same ones I kept returning to as I tried to make sense of all this.

  “Isn’t Junior Ruiz in prison?”

  Bobbing my head in silence, I let the last sentence hang a moment, chewing on what I knew, no closer to answering the question than I had been standing in the Martin’s living room.

  Junior Ruiz had been sentenced to forty years in prison. Five counts in total, all involving the production and international distribution of cocaine. Because he didn’t have any prior convictions, and his lawyer agreed to plead guilty in exchange for leniency, the judge had cut twenty years off the maximum total, a move I didn’t agree with at the time and did even less now.

  Especially considering that potential sixty turned out to be eight, less than fifteen percent of what we originally wanted.

  Eight years for a man we spent six months chasing, turning up egregious acts of moving copious amounts of product. Six months of uncovering things much worse, the cascading structure of his organization ensuring he was always a degree or two removed from the major acts.

  International trafficking. Money laundering. Using human mules.

  Murder.

  All the requisite things that came with running an operation like his.

  “Any word from Pally?” Diaz asked, the first words shared in over a minute.

  “No,” I answered, glancing down to the screen to ensure no calls had been missed while we were talking. “Last we spoke, he said, I’ll be damned and disappeared.”

  Considering that for a moment, Diaz said, “I mean, I thought...”

  Knowing already where she was going, knowing she was circling back, much the way I had been for almost a full day now, I countered, “And he might well be. It wouldn’t be hard to send someone after me and Martin like that, even if he was inside.”

  Which was true. We’d both seen it done many times before.

  The part that didn’t fit was the timing.

  “Okay, but then why now?” Diaz said. “An anniversary of some sort?”

  “June, 2011,” I replied, leaving the statement open-ended, knowing she would understand what I was getting at.

  This was a long way from being any sort of commemoration. As best I could tell, it was just a random day, there being no reason for men to have gone after us when they did.

  And it wasn’t like they’d just been waiting for us to drop our guard. My office has the exact same set-up it did when I opened doors. Any forms of home security are exactly as they’ve always been.

  “You happen to notice if the same message was left at your place?” Diaz asked.

  In the haste of the night before, I hadn’t thought to search my office, the immediate threat standing right in the middle of the room.

  “No,” I admitted. “Definitely wasn’t on the front counter. Maybe on my desk in the back?”

  “Or still on his person,” Diaz offered. “Orders to wait until it was done before leaving them behind.”

  Considering that a moment, I lifted one shoulder in a shrug. Whether the man had them or not was irrelevant at this point. The message had been received, one just as poignant as if it had been two.

  The onus was now on me to figure out why.

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  The phone was waiting in Esmera’s box when she’d gone out to the curb in the early afternoon to check for the daily mail delivery. Purchased three days earlier via a phone call placed through Burris, it rested on a small stack of bills and the usual litany of local grocery store advertisements, inconspicuously wrapped in a cardboard box from Amazon.

  Brand new, it was still in the original packaging, Junior Ruiz not even bothering to unwrap it. Instead, he’d merely unfurled the charger tucked away in the bottom and plugged it into the wall.

  Now two hours later, the battery symbol displayed through the plastic film adhered to the screen showed it to be almost fully charged. Prepaid and loaded with the necessary SIM card, all he had to do was power it up and he was ready to go.

  His first tiny baby step back into the world.

  And, more importantly, that much closer to the two things that had been burning just beneath the surface all day, each crying out for his attention.

  Having swapped his post from the overstuffed sofa in the living room to the hardback chairs by the kitchen table, Ruiz sat with his elbows resting on the polished oak before him. Much more comfortable on the grooved wood of his chair, he waited with his fingers laced together, his gaze aimed straight ahead.

  Before him rested the phone, the charging cord snaked out from the base of it, disappearing over the side of the table.

  “Hey, I’m going to run over to the store and grab a few things for dinner,” Esmera said, appearing in the open doorway across from him. Still dressed as she had been that morning, her hair was pulled up behind her, a thin sweater enveloping her shoulders.

  In either hand were her car keys and a couple of cloth sacks, the name of some local market stamped across the canvas material in green block letters.

  “The call yesterday came as such a surprise, I wasn’t exactly expecting company.”

  The last words she said with a hint of a smile, bits of color flushing her cheeks.

  Lowering his hands from his chin, Ruiz replied, “You don’t need to do all that. After what I’ve been forcing down the last few years, whatever you’ve got here is just fine.”

  “That’s the problem. I don’t have anything here.” The smile grew larger on Esmera’s face as she patted at her midsection. “Been trying to cut back. You know what mama always said happens when we reach thirty.”

  Ruiz did remember. More times than he could count, he’d been warned about the family genetic predispositions and the way metabolism tended to plummet after they reached a certain age.<
br />
  Much like his sister, once upon a time he had been rail thin, a full slate of abs on display every time he looked in the mirror.

  Muscles that had seemed to disappear a month before he exited his twenties, never to be seen again.

  Even if not his sister by birth, his mother had always imparted the same thoughts in Esmera, reminding her that a healthy midsection was a universal Ruiz trait.

  “Don’t I know it,” he replied, leaning back and patting his own stomach.

  For an instant, he considered offering to go with her. He could push the cart, load sacks into the car, carry them in for her once they returned.

  Take advantage of the time they’d been gifted.

  Even revel in being around someone that he didn’t need to perpetually be wary of, free of any lingering concern what their true intentions might be.

  As fast as it arrived though, the notion faded, his gaze drifting back toward the phone sitting before him.

  Seeing his attention shift, Esmera tracked his focus. Eyes landing on the phone, the smile faded, just a hint of teeth peeking out between red lips. “You need anything? Something specific you want?”

  “No,” Ruiz replied faintly, “whatever you come up with will be great.”

  Meeting her glance, the two paused for a moment.

  The conversation earlier, replete with questions far outnumbering the answers that were available, had managed little more than to leave them both frustrated. Not necessarily with one another, but with the situation as a whole.

  What it meant, now and in the future.

  At the conclusion of it, both had retreated to their respective corners of the house - Esmera to her bedroom, Ruiz to the kitchen chair – to regroup. To ponder things.

  Things that neither had dared touch in a long time, figuring them to be nothing more than wishful thinking. Longing for all that was lost, could never be again.

  “See you soon,” Esmera eventually managed, adding a small nod before drifting from the doorway.

  Tracking her movement, Ruiz listened as she made her way through the kitchen before exiting out a side door. A moment later, the garage door kicked to life and a car door slammed, followed in order by the engine turning over.

  Visage completely unreadable, Ruiz sat in place, waiting until he heard the garage door begin its descent before extending a hand. Taking up the phone before him, he thumbed the device to life, pausing as it vibrated twice in his hand before a series of logos and startup messages passed across the screen.

  Beneath the table, his left leg began to bounce up and down like a sewing machine on the highest setting, the pace matching his elevated heart rate. Warmth came to his face as he stared at the screen, the phone finally powering to life and settling on a home page before him.

  Scanning the thin smattering of icons across, he jabbed a finger at the small picture of an old-fashioned receiver in the corner. Pulling up a basic calling feature, he input the number he wanted to dial from memory.

  Pausing, he stared at the numbers scrawled across the screen. His leg continued hammering out a steady beat as he stared at the digits, the green button at the bottom practically calling for him to press it.

  To make the connection and check on where things stood, if all had transpired to plan.

  Finger hovering over the screen, the thought dancing across his mind, Ruiz muttered, “Dammit,” before shifting his thumb and canceling out of the program.

  Dropping the phone back into place on the table, he stared at it as the screen faded and then eventually blacked out.

  Handfuls of thoughts, of next steps, of future actions, all flitted through his mind. Extensions of everything he’d been thinking since first meeting Jones and Smith weeks before, he allowed them to swirl in his mind for several minutes.

  One at a time he considered each, working his way through what they might mean, before pushing himself to a standing position. Crossing the small kitchen, he went to the counter and found a stack of blue post-it notes and an ink pen.

  Writing at a diagonal, he jotted a quick note before pulling the top sheet from the stack. Pressing the adhesive against the pad of his thumb, he dropped the pen back into place, his pulse rising yet again.

  Turning to face the front windows, he could see the late afternoon sun peeking out around the edges of the shades drawn low.

  As much as he wanted to place that phone call, there was something more important he needed to see to first.

  And he had waited long enough.

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  The six years that had passed since I last saw Serra Martin seemed to have gone by the way one might expect. Stepping from her mid-thirties into her early forties, her features had become a bit sharper, enhanced by what looked like some unnecessary weight loss. A couple of stray grays had started to appear in her hair.

  Otherwise, she looked exactly as I remembered her from our last encounter, standing alongside the gravesite of my wife and daughter.

  Right down to the red-rimmed eyes and the black blazer she wore.

  Spotting me the instant I passed through the front door, she leapt from the conference room table where she was seated. Striding directly out of the window-lined room, she hooked a sharp turn, going straight for me and burying her head in my chest.

  Sliding both arms around me, she squeezed tight, fingers clawing at the back of my coat.

  Responding in kind, I wrapped my arms around her shoulders. I lowered my chin to the top of her head, grazing her hair.

  Just as we’d stood the last time I saw her.

  Then mourning the loss of my partner, now doing the same for hers.

  “Hey, Serra,” I whispered.

  Neither of us said another word for nearly a full minute, each embracing the other, oblivious to the handful of stares from the room behind us.

  Standing there, dozens of thoughts moved through my mind. Offers of condolences, telling her I was sorry for having been gone so long, merely saying hello after so much time.

  One at a time, I pushed them away.

  Sometimes, with people having shared history, there really isn’t the words.

  The other members of our team had been together when I first arrived in the Southwest. They’d had two or more years in before me, had ascended together, assimilated into each other’s lives.

  In the time since, I also knew they’d remained visible to one another, doing what I had failed to and making a point of maintaining contact.

  A point that couldn’t help but cause some bit of shame to rise as I felt Serra release her grip and slowly pull back. Making it as far as her hands resting on my waist, she looked up at me, moisture underscoring her eyes.

  “Thank you for coming. I know it was a long way.”

  “Of course,” I replied softly.

  “Pally said you had a visitor, too,” Serra whispered. Her gaze traced over my face as she did so, landing on my forehead.

  Lifting a hand, she lightly brushed aside the hair hanging across it, revealing the small lump and faint bruising from the head butt I’d delivered the night before.

  “Yeah.”

  Eyes lingering another moment, she pulled her hand away, my hair falling back into place. Retreating a step, she placed both arms across her torso, hugging herself tight.

  “Hawk, what the hell is going on right now?”

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  The conference room felt more like a fishbowl, much in line with the rest of building, which resembled a small-town diner more than a police department. Square in shape, the entire interior utilized support poles and low partitions rather than actual walls.

  Everything and everybody in plain sight.

  The only two spaces with even a modicum of privacy was the office for the police captain in the corner and the space we now sat in. Even at that, both had glass walls, not bothering with blinds or shades of any kind.

  Where an evidence locker, or holding cell, or any of the normal trappings of a police department wer
e, I hadn’t clue, such questions far from the most important at the moment.

  Seated on one side of an elongated oak table, my bottom rested on the last few inches of a leather padded rolling chair. Directly beneath the overhead vents, my coat was off, sweat forming beneath the hair swaying across my forehead, my elbows on the front edge of the table.

  Positioned beside me at the head of the table, hands folded in her lap, was Serra. Gaze aimed down at her fingers, she watched as they writhed continuously, constantly moving, twisting and wrapping themselves over one another.

  Behind me, I could still feel the weight of a handful of stares coming from the police station staff, no doubt curious who the grizzly guy that had just arrived could possibly be.

  Which was fine by me. I had both an airtight alibi for the night before and zero patience for anybody that would even think to insinuate otherwise.

  Resting on the far end of the table was a silver coffee pot and some upturned mugs, probably left over from prior conversations earlier in the day, nothing remaining but the faint aroma of dark roast.

  I had been the first to speak. Recognizing that Serra might not have been in any state to launch straight into another retelling of the night before just minutes after my arrival, I had offered to kick things off.

  Needing neither prompting nor agreement, I had explained in quick but thorough fashion what had taken place. Beginning with Kaylan inserting a key into the front door, I took her through the confrontation with the man inside and the night spent at the hospital. I’d also shared returning this morning to find that no ID had been made and snapping a picture that as yet had turned up nothing.

  Throughout my story, Serra had done her best to be unflinching, only occasionally allowing herself to respond exactly how I anticipated before walking in. At mention of Kaylan getting tossed, she flinched visibly. When I told her of encountering the man in the front of the office, she winced, her face scrunching, shoulders shuddering slightly.