With the hood of my jacket pulled up over my head and shielding my face, I pretend to study my phone, but my eyes are on every single person who enters the car. Gang members are everywhere, they’re like cockroaches, step on one, there are a hundred more to replace it. I’m certain if Los Muertos is looking for me, if word is out, everyone is aware of it.
But why? Is it because of what Rafi and I saw? That must be why Rafi’s dead. Julio can’t know I talked to the cops? I didn’t go to a precinct, I didn’t even go to the guy’s house, we met at Gabrielle’s apartment.
The fact the gang is looking for me is a bad sign, a really, really bad sign. My heart rate accelerates as I peer at all the faces in the subway car from beneath my hood. No one is looking in my direction, they all have the disinterested expression New Yorkers always have. But I can’t stop the sudden fear that’s escalating within me. My heart is jackhammering against my ribcage and my breaths are short and ragged.
Shit, shit, SHIT! This can’t be happening!
My mind races backwards on the chain of events that transpired over the past two days. As the images flash by in my mind, nothing seems unusual. The only thing was meeting O’Sullivan.
Did he call the gang? Is he crooked?
Dirty money is too hard to resist and constantly entices struggling officers. But I had been certain Gabrielle’s brother wasn’t a bad cop, that’s why I’d insisted on speaking with him, I knew in my gut that if anyone could help me get revenge, or as O’Sullivan had said, justice, it’s him.
If it wasn’t him, then he must have called someone, maybe his partner or someone else at his precinct. Right now, who doesn’t matter, only that I’m on the radar of Los Muertos.
They aren’t called The Dead for nothing.
I have to get the hell out of New York fast, and as far away as possible.
I have to go into hiding.
In Port Authority Bus Terminal, I angle my way through the crowd of commuters moving like sheep, trained, mindless, and position myself next to the biggest man I can find, shielding myself from sight as much as possible. Heart racing and on the verge of a meltdown, my emotions are rebounding from heart breaking despair, to desperation, to blood-lust fury. When I finally get to the ticket counter, my eyes dart back and forth as I give my name to the attendant and ask if there’s a pre-paid ticket waiting for me. Just like my mother had promised, although I wish, no pray, I didn’t have to go to some backwoods town with some rednecks, I know I have no other choice. There it is, a one-way ticket to Wilmington, NC, waiting for me. The bus is leaving in fifteen minutes.
Shit, my heart plummets even more.
I have just enough time to use the restroom and wash up, grab some drinks, and something to eat is probably a good idea, if there is any possibility of shoving food down my constricted throat during the full day trip.
The aroma of the diesel fuel that swirls around and fills my nostrils when I exit the terminal is like the comforting smells when you enter your grandparents house. It soothes me.
These are the smells of the city, my home, the only place I’ve ever known, it’s a part of me, it runs through my veins, I’ve lived and breathed it. Leaving could very well be the final piece that would destroy me.
As I settle into a seat with no luggage, nothing to put in the overhead compartment, nothing but my purse and the two bags of Doritos and three bottles of water, I let out a tired sigh. My body misses the constant weight of my school portfolio, I feel naked without it. It has been my constant companion for the past four years.
In a perfect world I would have graduated from The Fashion Institute of Technology this year, me and Gabrielle O’Sullivan, the cop’s sister, my friend. Even though I’m almost thirty, I’d gone back to college after working dead-end jobs after high school, I’d just started an internship with one of the largest fashion houses in New York City, and they’d already hinted at offering me a full-time position.
Why, why, WHY?!
I want to scream, hit, cry out with the agony that’s shredding me apart inside. None of this was visible to anyone who might cast a glance my way. But this is New York and everyone is well accustomed to being in their own little bubble, each person co-existing smack dab against the person next to them, but completely oblivious. They’re experts at it.
The bus isn’t really crowded and I’m lucky to get a seat by myself. I’m pissed off that I don’t have the charger for my phone, or the earbuds. Even if I wanted to appear unapproachable with silent ear phones shoved into my head, I can’t. I have to accept the only distraction I’ll have is my own miserable company as the world passes by outside the window, and my life in my mind.
This ride is going to royally suck!
As the hydraulics squeal when we pull out of the station, I burn the sights of the streets of New York into my memory. Times Square, Macys, and I remember walking to Madison Square Garden with Rafi, the love of my life, my soul mate, to watch the Knicks play.
We were so happy; life was so perfect. Why didn’t I know it then? I was so stupid, I wasted so much time.
Agony wracks my body and pummels me with grief, choking me like a strait jacket binding my body, and a plastic bag over my head and tied around my neck.
Why don’t people die from a broken heart? God, it hurts, it hurts so fucking bad!
That’s when the tears start, they pour down my face through the greenery of Pennsylvania, and don’t stop until the white stone government buildings of Washington, DC. My head throbs from crying so much, my throat hurts from sucking back the sobs, and my entire body aches from the internal pain.
A lot of passengers disembark in Washington. As the big Greyhound lumbers on, and we leave Virginia, the terrain starts to change. The land gets flat and the roads are less curvy.
This is real. From this moment on, my life is not my own. Over. Destroyed.
I let out a soft, sarcastic laugh.
We’re not in Kansas anymore Toto.
Time becomes a nightmare, the hours its messenger, as overwhelming despair consumes me, terror annihilates me, and fury possesses my mind. Unending. Relentless. Limitless.
After over seventeen hours, the bus finally pulls into the small bus station in downtown Wilmington, NC, population around one hundred thirteen thousand. Even though it’s small, it is nice, new, shiny, and clean. Everything the opposite of what I feel, emotionally destroyed, filthy, stinky, and a little insane. My legs are stiff as my feet hit the ground and I look around to get my bearings.
“Luggage?” the driver asks.
Hrrrrmmph, I wish!
“No,” I reply, cocking my head to the side and shrugging my shoulder.
The driver’s brows raise slightly as he scans me up and down, his surprise evident in his expression.
“Whatever,” I mumble as I turn and enter the terminal.
I don’t need his judgmental shit on top of everything else.
I roll my neck and shoulders to get the kinks out, trying to shake the fog of despair from my mind, as I scan the people and look for my aunt.
I don’t even know what she looks like! How am I supposed to spot her in a crowd?
I walk toward the sign that reads, “Street Exit”, and hear someone calling my name.
“Maria, Maria!”
Turning, I see a woman that looks a lot like my mother, a little younger, but with that same classic exotic beauty. Deep sorrow washes over me once again for everything I left behind, and for what I possibly might have left my mother to deal with.
I can’t think about that, she’ll be okay, everyone will take care of her.
Straightening my shoulders, I breathe deeply and approach the stranger with the familiar face.
“Titi Julie,” I greet her and try to sound as pleasant as possible, the familial term feeling slightly foreign on my tongue.
“Come here, mi amor,” my aunt embraces me tightly, squeezing the air right out of me.
Agony threatens to grip me again as tears pool in my eyes.
Don’t you dare cry!
“Come, baby, let’s get you home.”
My aunt wraps an arm around my shoulders and leads me toward the exit.
My home, my entire life, was destroyed when Rafi died, I’m in hell now.
Rico
CHAPTER 2
Six Months Later…
“This fucking sucks, I hate stake-outs.” I must have muttered this a hundred times if I’ve said it once over the past five hours.
I’ve been in this car since five o’clock in the morning. My mouth tastes like shit from too much coffee, and I have to take a leak.
I’m sitting in a blacked out Dodge Charger, police issued for detectives. A sweet ass ride, but not as sweet as my baby at home, a nineteen seventy-eight Camaro Z28, black, with white leather interior, completely refurbished and sounds loud and tough as hell. Thoughts of taking my baby out for a ride gives me a moment of distraction as I sit in the parking lot of a local superstore in a large town outside of Wilmington, NC. A town that still strums to its own slow beat of the past.
The people in this town have no idea what’s simmering behind their barbecues and white picket fences, outside the windows of their Sunday dinners. The good folks aren’t aware of what’s inside the cars that travel the streets alongside their kids riding bikes, what monsters walk next them on the sidewalks and in the grocery stores. They think the drug dealers and criminals and terrorists are people they see on the news or their favorite television shows in some big city half way across the country. The sewers aren’t always underground and in the dark, hidden away from the good citizens that walk the streets every day. The scum that lurk there don’t have red or blue bandanas wrapped around their heads, some fucking insignia that warns of their sick affiliations. They don’t have signs on them warning they’re here to destroy you. They’re dressed in suits and dresses and would kill you in an instant for no reason at all. They live next door, they go to the same places everyone goes to, and they watch you. Constantly.
I should know. There’s a reason I can sense them.
I’ve been working on this case for months, it’s what brought me down south. I’d made my way down the coast after I left New Jersey when I was seventeen years old.
That’s when my life had ended. Tragedy struck in an alley in the middle of the afternoon in broad daylight. I’d been a walking time bomb in a breathing corpse waiting to detonate after that. I had to get out of New Jersey before I blew and took too many casualties with me.
I’d kept the memories at bay for years. For a long time, I’d forced them down with too much work and too much sex. Now it’s just work. Mostly. Unless I need to remind myself that I am human.
That was until I went home to help my friend Alexander Black. When I stepped off the plane, I walked right in the middle of the life I’d left behind almost two decades ago.
I thought I’d found solace in my emotionless solitude. Thought I’d created calm in my self-imposed prison.
Immediately I’d confronted all the demons I’d been running from for so long, the ones that still haunt me if I let my walls down. They’d been waiting for me patiently, biding their time. They knew I’d come back. Eventually. I’d exorcised some by going home, reuniting with my family, the people I’ve loved, the ones I’d cut all ties with when I left. The cross I carried still hasn’t left me, but there had been forgiveness.
But I haven’t forgiven myself.
I still won’t allow myself to live.
I exist in the darkness of secrets. It is my refuge.
You can run but you can never hide.
My ringing cell phone slaps me back to reality. I’m grateful for the reprieve from the haunting of my demons.
“Yeah Captain,” my voice is raspy from being silent for so long.
“Rico, anything yet?” my boss asks impatiently.
The man is perpetually in a state of hurry, I wonder if it’s a nervous thing of his, but it bugs the shit out of me.
“Not yet, Cap,” I can almost hear the older man’s jaw clench over the phone.
I know it aggravates the piss out of him when I call him Cap, which is exactly why I do it. Juvenile? Maybe, giving the guy an intentional slight just because he gets on my nerves.
I have to get my kicks somehow.
It particularly bugged me today after I’d been sitting in this car for five damn hours on a case we’re no closer to solving.
This time it’s worse because there’d been another death last night. Another overdose from the poisonous heroin that’s all over the streets. There’s been twenty-seven so far.
“What the hell? We know it arrives there like clock-work every Saturday morning. Are you sure you’re at the right one?” the captain snaps impatiently.
“Captain, I’m going to ignore the question.”
I like the captain, he’s a good guy, the respect he gets from his men is very well deserved. I haven’t been with this department long, but I know a good cop from a bad cop, and the Captain is an excellent cop. The man probably hasn’t been to sleep since he’d been called to last night’s crime scene. I’d been there too, but I arrived later, just before I had to come to the stake-out.
“Sorry, this case has been nothing but a pain in my ass,” the captain grumbles, his southern accent hoarse.
“I know Captain; we’re all sick of watching these kids drop like this.”
“It’s bad enough it’s heroin. Tainted and laced with that shit fentanyl is like a death warrant. The dealers are setting them up, getting them hooked on the Oxy’s (Oxycodone), that gets too expensive, then the users turn to the cheap heroin cut with the elephant sedative. It’s sickening.”
“We’re gonna find the source, Captain. It’s frustrating watching it piece together bit by bit as these kids kill themselves. I hate it.”
The captain sucks in a heavy breath. “I know. They’re gonna show. Send me the shots when you take them and we’ll get started over here.”
“Will do, Cap,” I grin.
The things I do for amusement.
The line goes dead.
With my head against the headrest behind me, I take another sip from the cup of stale coffee.
“It’s about damn time!” I grumble as I sit up in my seat.
An older bus turns into the parking lot and parks at the far end of a row of cars. I knew it would go there, it’s taken the same spot ever since we became aware of it. The store’s security cameras have been reviewed every week and showed the same thing. Unfortunately, the angle of the bus kept the plates out of view, it seemed the occupants knew exactly what they’re doing, so the department hasn’t been able to run them and get an identification on the owner. The driver has been ID’d as Pedro Sanchez, Mexican, long time hood, now chauffeur to a busload of migrant workers.
What the fuck?
That had been the entire departments initial reaction. That was until Sanchez was met by another man. He’d managed to keep the camera’s from getting a good shot of him, but speculation believes him to be one of the main drug suppliers in the area.
Picking up the department camera that’s in the seat next to me, I start to shoot continuously. First item on the list is a clear shot of the license plate, then I proceed to zoom in on every person, man and woman on that bus, including Pedro Sanchez.
All the people are illegal immigrants, brought over from Mexico, charged an exorbitant fee for their passage, and if they survived, this particular group was forced to live and work on a farm, one like so many others in the states, to finish paying off their debt of being brought to America. None of them are allowed to leave the compound. This shopping trip once a week is the only time they step foot off the farm. It’s monitored, they’re monitored, by a guard, Pedro Sanchez.
This is a busload of slaves.
Human trafficking was the original reason for having the bus under surveillance. After the meet with the possible local drug supplier, it might just be turning into something a hell of a lot more.
My body tenses as I stare at the faces through the lens.
“Fucking horrible,” I grit out as the camera clicks, capturing each face up close and personal.
Every single person on that bus looks anxious, apprehensive, and afraid.
Until one of the last ones.
This guy comes off laughing and is followed by a young woman who looks like she’s ready to cry. I capture the images as the punk yanks up his zipper and grabs the young woman by the arm and drags her down the last step of the bus. Taking a closer look at her, she’s barely older than a girl.
Rage flares inside me. I resist my natural instincts to kill him.
“You like to get sucked off by little girls, you scumbag?”
The girl stumbles as the guy shoves her, throwing her down to her hands and knees on the pavement.
“You little piece of shit! You’re lucky this isn’t twenty years ago. I would smash your head in so fast, you wouldn’t see me coming.” Feigning a southern accent, “I reckon that would show you how to treat a lady, now wouldn’t it son?”
The group of Mexican immigrants begin their weekly trek toward the entrance of the store, none of them appearing to pay any attention to what just happened with the girl. Pedro Sanchez follows behind, like a goddam sheepherder. The sleazebag who manhandled the girl veers off on his own with a cocky step. He pulls out his phone as he walks to a car and gets in, then drives off.
“Where’s that scumbag going?”
I grab my phone and call the captain.
“We got the pictures, and they’re running them all now. They look good.”
“That’s not why I’m calling.”
“Why is that not surprising?” I can hear the squeak of the captain’s chair as he’s probably sitting back and rolling his eyes.
“I want to follow the last slimeball. He just left and is headed south.”
Being confined to the car and acting as only a pair of eyes is completely frustrating.
So is following orders. Especially when a piece of shit needs his ass kicked.
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