Dead Six (64 page)

“I can’t believe you’re some sort of international super thief, I mean, come on man, you were such a . . .”

“Dork?” I offered. It was true. Bob had been the tough one.

“No offense, but heck, when we were kids, when I played football, you did
gymnastics
.”

“It comes in handy. I’m a good second-story man.”

“You were in the
drama
club. You were really good at it too, before you dropped out.”

I shrugged. “Playing pretend comes in handy,” I answered, my voice a nearly perfect impression of his own. I’d always had a gift for being someone else. Compared to some of the cons I had pulled off, sophomore-year
Hamlet
was a piece of cake. “Do you believe me?”

He rubbed his face in his hands. After a long pause, he looked me in the eye. “Yes. I can see it. You always were the crazy one.” I could tell that this was breaking his heart. He had always looked out for me, like a good big brother. “Hector, you’ve got to come in with me. The FBI can protect you.
I
can protect you. You can testify against this Big Eddie. I can get you into the witness-protection program.”

“Bob. This is bigger than that. Way bigger.” I stood. “Please, just get everybody to safety. You don’t have much time. And you’ve got to keep it low profile. Nothing official, because he
will
know. You’re the only one that can do this. Eddie tried to kill me. He shot one of my friends and murdered the others. He cut one’s
head
off. I’ve stalled him for now, but the man is a snake, and he’ll bite soon. It’s his nature.”

My brother stood, too. He towered over me, and his face was dark, clouded with anger. The shotgun was still leaning against the couch.

“You gonna try to arrest me?” I asked. Bob was a good and honorable man, and I did not know what I would do if he tried. “If you do, then you’re signing our family’s death warrant. As soon as Eddie finds out I’ve made contact with you, they’re all dead.”

“What do you plan on doing?” Bob was seething.

“I’m going to kill Eddie first.”

“You’re a murderer, too?”

No point in beating around the bush. “Bob, I shot three Chechens and tortured a fourth one to death before I ate breakfast this morning. What do you think?” I answered, hard and low.

He was taken a back. “That was you? I saw the bulletin about the SAM and the bodies. ICE nailed some more coming over at dawn with missiles because of an anonymous tip. The report said that one of them had been cut to ribbons, bullets in the other one’s heads, execution style. . . . I can’t imagine my little brother doing that.” Bob slowly sat back down. “What have you become?”

“I’m a monster,” I answered truthfully. “But I’m still your brother. Protect them, Bob. It’s up to you.” I turned and walked for the back door. I’m sure this was a lot to take in.

“Hector.”

I stopped, hand on the doorknob. He sounded broken. It tore my heart open. “Yeah, Bob?”

“Be careful, little bro.”

“You, too,” I answered as I slipped out the door and into the night. I had to pause to wipe my eyes before scaling the back fence.

Chapter 26:
Qagmire

VALENTINE

Quagmire, Nevada

June 28

0500

The sun wouldn’t be up for a while, but the little diner where Jill worked opened at five. The place opened at oh-dark-thirty so the local ranchers could get their breakfast and coffee. She was on early shift today and was probably getting ready for the early birds. At this hour, she’d be the only one there, doing both the cooking and the serving. The regular cooks and waitresses came in later in the morning.

I hadn’t planned on being up that early, but I still had terrible nightmares sometimes. Once I woke up from one of those, I was up for the day. Hell, I didn’t want to go back to sleep anyway. I was hungry, too, so off I went to the only place in town where I could get breakfast at that hour without cooking it myself.

A few days earlier, Hawk and I had pulled my Mustang out of his shed and dusted it off. He’d taken very good care of it. The oil had been changed, the tank was full, and the registration fee had been paid for me. I’d missed my car, and it was nice to have it back.

The diner Jill worked at was called Shifty’s
,
which I thought was hilarious. The place had been a staple of Quagmire life for forty years. The food was good, too. I’d eaten here every time I’d returned to Quagmire over the past few years. It was a decent place for Jill to work while she tried to figure out how to start her life all over again.

Really, I was in the same situation. After being gone for months, I was back in the United States, home sweet home. Nothing had changed. The fall of Zubara had been pretty big news while it was happening, but the press had no idea there was direct American involvement. The only ones that even suspected that were conspiracy nuts like Roger Geonoy and the kooky guests on
From Sea to Shining Sea
. I began to wonder if any of their other stuff about aliens, ghosts, and demons was true, too.

Anyway, I was in an interesting situation. It was as if the last six of months of my life had never happened. Save for the scars on my body and the ache in my heart, it would’ve been easy to pretend that all was well and that everything was normal.

And let me tell you, it was tempting. Back at the Exodus base I had been so filled with rage that I was ready to track Gordon Willis down and murder him. That had been my primary motivation for returning home, after all. But now that I was here . . . well, let’s just say that reality had sunk in a little bit.

Having a quiet life and working on Hawk’s ranch had done me a lot of good. My mom used to say that taking care of animals, especially horses, was good for the soul. She was onto something, I think. Hawk wouldn’t come out and say it, but I think he really enjoyed having Jill and me around. He was old enough to be our father, and had lived alone since his wife, Elaine, died.

Seeing Jill every day had been nice, too. The girl was an absolute sweetheart, and she was beautiful too. After losing Sarah, I was completely disinterested in any kind of romantic pursuits, but . . . well, Jill was easy on the eyes, especially in the little cutoffs and tank top she wore when working in the garden. If things had been different . . . But they weren’t.

In any case, I wasn’t ready for anything like that, and Jill was still going on and on about how dreamy Lorenzo was. I felt bad for the girl. She was young and, despite everything she’d been through, naïve. Lorenzo wasn’t coming back for her, period, end of story. I don’t care if he did save my life; it was plain to see what was going on. I just didn’t have the heart to tell her. She’d figure it out eventually. Probably better that she came to the realization on her own.

The question remained, though: What in the hell was
I
supposed to do? Aside from Hawk and Jill, I didn’t really have any friends. I had nowhere else to go. And what was I going to do, go find a job? I didn’t have a fake ID or alternate passport or anything. For all I knew, the moment I popped up on the radar, Gordon Willis’s organization would come swooping down in their stealthy helicopters and make me disappear into the night. I was scared to drive my own car anywhere beyond the bounds of Quagmire.

I had thousands of dollars stashed away, so I wasn’t hurting for money at the moment. I wasn’t about to try to access my old Las Vegas Federal Credit Union account, and I doubted I’d ever been paid a dime for my service in Zubara. But I still had access to my old offshore account with the Bank of Grand Cayman. As far as I knew, my former employers had never found out about it. They probably didn’t look real hard, considering they were planning on killing me anyway.

But I couldn’t stay in Quagmire forever. It was a small town in the middle of nowhere, which seems like a good place to hide, but it’s really not. People noticed a new face in Quagmire, especially one as scarred up as mine. Sooner or later somebody would notice me, and being noticed could get me killed. Not just me, either, but Hawk and Jill also.

Besides, I wasn’t about to just stay in Hawk’s spare bedroom, mooching off his hospitality until my savings ran out. I was determined not to be a burden on him or put him at risk. I had to leave Quagmire, and soon. But where would I go? My original plan of hunting down Gordon Willis seemed, as Ling suggested it would, silly now. The injustice of what that man had done still burned a pit in my stomach, and I hated him all the more for being powerless to change it, but what could I do? Even if I could get to him without getting picked up, would killing him change anything?

Sighing, I shook my head. Five o’clock in the morning was no time to be making big life decisions, especially not on an empty stomach. I pulled into the empty parking lot of Shifty’s and parked my Mustang. Jill liked to walk to work. It appeared I’d be her first customer.

The place was dark.
Weird
, I thought.
Where is she?
Jill should’ve been there for at least half an hour already, but the diner was still locked up. No one had been in.

Suddenly worried, I looked around the parking lot. Jill had left Hawk’s house an hour ago. It didn’t take that long to walk to the diner. I hadn’t seen her anywhere along the way. It’s hard to miss the hottest girl in town in a pink miniskirt jumper and white sneakers, after all.

I couldn’t see anything out of the ordinary. I was so upset I was on the verge of panic. If somebody had just driven up and grabbed her on the way to work, how would we ever know?
Oh, God. Oh, God, no . . .

Something caught my eye then. A faint glow in the darkness, coming from the weeds across the parking lot. It was only there for a moment, then disappeared. I broke out into a run, pulling a small flashlight out of my pocket as I did so. It had come from near the entrance to the parking lot. There were some scrubby little weeds near the edge of the sidewalk.

There.
On the ground was Jill’s cell phone. The screen had illuminated for a moment and I was lucky to have seen it. Nearby was her purse, its contents spilled out onto the ground. A little bit farther away from the sidewalk I found Jill’s gun.

Picking up the little S&W compact, I checked the chamber and magazine. It hadn’t been fired. She’d either drawn it and been disarmed or it had been found and tossed. Jill had been taken. There was no doubt about it. They’d snatched her off the side of the road. I lifted her phone, intending to call the sheriff. Jill had been kidnapped, and there wasn’t any time to worry about that.

It hit me then. What if they were looking for me? What if they took her because they thought she could lead them to me? A knot formed in my stomach. It didn’t make any sense, but what else could it be? Why would anyone kidnap a waitress in Quagmire freaking Nevada? It couldn’t be a coincidence. I couldn’t call the sheriff. They’d be waiting for me. But if I didn’t call, how would I ever find Jill? I had to do something. They were going to hurt her, or kill her.
Damn it! What do I do?

I noticed the screen on her phone then. It was open to her address book. There were only two entries, and one of them was Hawk. The other . . .
well, holy shit.

The phone rang six times before it was answered. On the other end of the phone was a voice I’d not heard in a long time.

“Jill?” he said.

“Guess again, Lorenzo.”

LORENZO

Somewhere in Arizona

June 28

I had just hung up on the Fat Man. The meeting had been arranged for a few days from now.

Reaper’s snooping had shown that Eddie, like all good international playboys, had a penthouse in Vegas. I had arranged the handoff for some innocuous shopping center with plenty of eyewitnesses, just like they would have expected. My gut told me that though Eddie wouldn’t dare show his face at the handoff, he wouldn’t be able to wait to see his treasure. So it seemed logical that he would be staying at his local residence.

And the night before the handoff, I was going to break in and take care of business. The place wasn’t in his name, rather owned by one of the Montalban family’s shell corporations. Reaper, more dedicated than I had ever seen him, had been doing a lot of digging and had compiled quite the list of properties, from private islands to penthouse suites spanning the globe; Big Eddie certainly got around.

The Fat Man had sounded suspicious. They’d probably thought I would have still been somewhere in the eastern hemisphere. Screw them. Las Vegas seemed like as reasonable a place for a drop as any. I could have picked a hundred other cities in twenty countries and Eddie probably had a place there, too.

He wouldn’t be expecting me to take the fight right to him. Reaper was en route, and the plan seemed to be coming together. Plotting revenge gave me a feeling of smug satisfaction.

I would be in Vegas before lunch, leaving me with plenty of time to scout the place, take care of some business, catch up on some sleep, and get some Thai food. There was this one little hole-in-the-wall place off the strip . . . My phone rang. I was expecting Reaper, but the caller ID was a surprise. I stared at it for a moment. I had arranged for the drop to be in Nevada once I had figured out that was the prefix from Jill’s phone, but now with the handoff arranged . . .
She sure has lousy timing.

I flipped the phone open. “Jill?” I asked.

“Guess again, Lorenzo.”

It definitely wasn’t Jill. The voice was familiar . . . from Zubara.
It can’t be
. “Valentine?”

“Yeah.”

It took me a long moment to wrap my brain around this. How had Dead Six found her? Valentine, the killer with the .44 Magnum, and he was only alive because of my stupidity. I should have killed him when I had the chance. “If you hurt her, I swear I’ll—”

He cut me off. “Shut up. Listen to me.”

“No,
you
listen to
me!
I’ll cut your eyes out if you don’t put her on,” I shouted into the phone.

“Goddamn it, if you want that girl to live,
listen to me
.”

“What did you do with her?” I asked before he could say anything else.