Cold Fire

by Dustin Stevens

  Accepting it from me, he twisted the cap off and took a long pull, smacking his lips with pleasure. He held it out at arm’s length and examined the label in admiration before taking another swig.

  “Thank you,” he said, finishing the drink with a deep breath. “Damn, that is smooth.”

  “Better than that herbal tea you were choking down last time I saw you?” I asked.

  “Ha!” Hutch coughed out. “The reason I drink that shit is so I can have a pull on this every now and again.”

  I matched the laugh, a short, staccato sound, my gaze still aimed in the distance. “I bet. You know what I don’t understand, though?”

  “What’s that?” Hutch asked, taking one more drink before passing the bottle my way.

  “Why the fuck you had to give them my family.”

  All traces of mirth, or friendship, or even acquaintanceship, were gone from my voice. I turned so he could look me full in the face, stare at me as he attempted to answer the question.

  Hutch’s mouth dropped open as he shifted to look back at me, the color receding from his features. He kept the bottle extended my way a long moment before lowering it to the ground, the glass bottom sounding hollow against the floor board.

  The fingers of my right hand curled around the grip of the derringer tucked away in the pocket of my coat, barrel aimed his way, poised to go off should he try anything. No indication of anything crossed my face as I sat and stared at him, waiting for him to try to formulate a response.

  “The first time I arrived here, you weren’t the least bit surprised to see me,” I said. “At the time, I bought your little story about keeping tabs on us, but little things kept creeping in, things that taken together didn’t seem to add up.”

  My voice remained even as I stared across at him, careful not to draw any attention from the neighbors.

  “The first was this house, the sudden taste in expensive whisky, things consistent with a marked increase in liquid cash. You’re a lifer, suckling at the government teat since you were twenty-five years old. You’ve done well, but not finer-things-in-life well.”

  Across from me Hutch’s face took on an ashen appearance. A small sound slid from his throat, a tiny twitch flickered in the skin near his right eye, but otherwise he sat unmoving.

  “The second was your decision to go to West Yellowstone to see Pavel. You weren’t there to check on things for me, you were there to make sure whoever was there wasn’t spilling their guts. Once you arrived and saw who it was, you knew things were safe, caught the very next plane down to California.”

  Anger, bitterness, resentment started to tickle the back of my throat as I spoke, almost daring my former mentor to do or say something that would allow me to squeeze the trigger.

  “After that, things really started to pile up. How did Lita happen to know when Mateo left witness protection? Where to find me? That he might come looking for my help?”

  Unable to respond, Hutch shifted his attention back to the street. He kept his hands folded, his fingers laced, hanging between his thighs, pointed down at the ground.

  “Once we were on the ground, they were always a step ahead of us. They knew where Carlos was, about the safe house. Everything.”

  My voice rose just a little bit, my body’s natural reaction to the anger, the feeling of betrayal, within me. My left hand squeezed into a ball so tight my fingers ached. The index finger on my right hand caressed the trigger of the derringer, wanting, needing, to pull it.

  “You know what really did it for me, though?” I paused a moment to see if he would venture a response. When none came, I continued on. “When Diaz told me about you bringing in the Juarezes. Just months after my house was torched and I walked away, suddenly these guys come and turn themselves over to you? Cut a deal, go state’s evidence?

  “We had enough on the books to bury every last person in that network. Instead, you tossed Manny in minimum security, accepted a couple low-level pushers in exchange, and let the majority of the crew stay in place.”

  My gaze hardened, I stared at him a long moment before turning my head to face forward, looking down the length of the porch. “I admit it took a long time for me to put it together, but once I did, I felt like an idiot that it hadn’t happened sooner.

  “You were the only one with access to where Mateo and Carlos were being held in witness protection. You knew where the safe house was, because Manny gave it to you when he came in.

  “That’s why I knew not to bother going down to Baja. There was no way anything of value was going to be left behind. You had too much lead time to warn them. Instead, I went off script on you, showed up in Russia, caught them all with their pants down.”

  Again I paused, waiting to see if there was anything he wanted to say to refute me, any explanation he could offer for all of it. No words passed his lips, though, in denial or defense. Instead he sat staring out, his features pale, looking much, much older than the man who had walked up ten minutes before.

  “You know the part I can’t for the life of me figure out, though? The part that I’ve wrestled with every day since leaving Russia? Why the hell did you have to give them my family? Elizabeth loved you, Alice adored you. Was this house, those paintings on the wall in there, really worth all that?”

  My voice was raised to just below a shout, my face strained as I tried to keep myself rooted in place.

  The last five years had been time spent battling my own emotions. Most of that period was spent trying to suppress them, believing I had nowhere in particular to aim the rage, keeping it locked away for fear it might consume me.

  Two weeks ago that changed. The blind evil that haunted my dreams became real; it developed a face, a name. I had someplace to aim my ire, and I did so. I let it drive me forward, doing the very things I had always feared I might, and feeling all the better for it.

  Now that those things were out of the way, I had only one last emotion left to deal with. While the triggerman and the puppet master had both been cruel monsters so far from home, the lynchpin to all of it, the man that made it possible, was the one sitting right beside me. He had taken and abused my respect, the trust of my family, and betrayed them for his own personal gain.

  If I had anything left inside me, any form of emotion after carrying so much rage for so long, I would have turned my disgust inward. I would have aimed it at myself, thinking that I allowed myself to be duped, that even after all this time I had come to him when things went awry, thinking he was on my side.

  There was no point in that now, though. A heavy burden had finally been lifted from my shoulders, and there was no need to replace it with something that could never be cured.

  Five more minutes and it would all be over. Nothing would ever bring back my family, but at least their memory could be at ease.

  “Was it worth the trouble?” Hutch asked me, his voice thick, the words coming out distorted. I watched as his eyes glazed over and his tongue slid out over his bottom lip, saliva glistening off his chin.

  I leaned forward and put the bottle of whisky back into the cooler, flipping it closed and standing. Hutch tried to track my movements as I went, but his weakening form wouldn’t allow it. Pale blue ebbed into his face, his body going rigid as he swayed in place, throat constricting, fighting for air.

  “What trouble?” I asked, leaving him in place on the porch, the lights on the Charger flashing twice as I unlocked it and climbed inside.

  Chapter Forty-Seven

  A subset of the Department of Justice, the Drug Enforcement Administration was headquartered in a squat, boxy building along the Potomac River, its mailing address residing on Army Navy Drive in Arlington, Virginia. On the east wing of the sprawling Department of Justice campus, it had easy access to all DOJ buildings and infrastructure, along with clear sight lines to the Pentagon, the National Mall, even the White House if looking from a high enough fl
oor.

  From the outside, the building looked like a multilayered cake that had been cut in half. Each floor was drab brown with a thick white divider. Windows were used only sparingly, a stark contrast to the newer glass structures that seemed to dominate the city.

  Despite the winter chill biting the air, the icy wind whipping up off the river flowing nearby, Richard Rogan, director of the administration, had called a ceremony for the front steps of the building. Over his solid black suit with red tie, he wore a wool overcoat that came almost to his feet, a red scarf around his neck, black leather gloves on his hands. His meticulously parted hair refused to move even as blustery winds pushed into his face, and the cold made his cheeks grow pink.

  Well back from the proceedings, I leaned against a tree, watching the events unfold. My position wouldn’t quite be described as hiding, though I had no interest in stepping forward to partake in the events either. There were too many people around from a past life, the director included, whom I had no intention of ever speaking to again. My presence was to make sure one last thing was taken care before I drifted back into a better version of the life I had a month before, one with far less baggage attached, no dark storm cloud following my every move.

  Already dressed for Montana in jeans, a fleece vest, and a heavy canvas jacket, I kept one shoulder pressed into the tree, oblivious to the weather, even as it pushed my hair across my forehead. By the same time next week it would be thirty degrees colder where I was, if not more.

  The wind whistling by served to make just enough noise to keep me from deciphering what the director was saying. His voice was muffled and distorted as it sounded out from the speakers set up to either side of him. With each puff of wind, the speakers swayed in place, threatening to keel over. Feedback kicked through the microphone and out over the crowd.

  By the third such incident I could tell from his body language that he was ready to wrap things up; he stepped away from the podium and turned to his right, shaking the hands of X, then Diaz. Both accepted the handshakes with straight faces and terse nods, being forced to endure stolid words about jobs well done, making their country proud—the sorts of things all directors said when cameras were rolling.

  The crowd clapped politely as he returned to the podium and made a few closing remarks. My hands never left the deep pockets of my coat as I watched and waited.

  Three minutes later the ceremony was over. Rogan and the other higher-ups from the administration stayed just long enough for a couple of quick photos, awkward postures and forced smiles all around, before retreating inside. The crowd, consisting mostly of media personnel, remained just a moment longer with the stars of the hour before drifting away as well, heading toward the parking lot as their deadlines loomed.

  I watched as the janitorial staff went to work on the setup, breaking down chairs and clearing away the speakers. With collars flipped up and shoulders hunched against the wind, they worked quietly and efficiently, not once paying any attention to the solitary person who came down the front steps and made her way to me.

  Diaz looked a little more tired than the last time I had seen her. The cold had sapped most of the color from her face, belying dark circles under each eye. Her mane of curls was pulled back in a harsh ponytail, and her face was void of makeup.

  If not for the smile on her face, she would have looked absolutely miserable.

  “Weren’t even going to say hi?” she asked as she approached, hands buried halfway up her forearms into the pockets of her heavy black overcoat, her body drawn in on itself in an attempt to keep warm.

  A wry smile crossed my lips as I shook my head and said, “Didn’t want to interrupt you during your big day. Figured you’d get a second for little old me at some point.”

  “Little old you,” she repeated, shaking her head. She turned her body sideways so the wind was at her back and stamped her feet, rocking back and forth. “Could have at least clapped, you know.”

  A quick, sharp laugh passed over my lips, a bit of white extending in front of me. “I’m here, aren’t I?”

  “That you are,” Diaz said, raising her eyebrows and nodding. “Something tells me you won’t be this time tomorrow when they add Hutch’s name to the Wall of Honor in there.”

  The Wall of Honor, an award bestowed on all agents who died in the line of duty, a list now over thirty people in length. The last thing I wanted when leaving his house was to make a martyr of the man. He had tainted his own legacy beyond even being included as a footnote in the DEA history.

  How anybody could have found him hunched over in a chair on his front porch and thought to construe that as death in the line of duty was beyond me.

  I guess that was the kind of perk that came with being a ranking official.

  “Can’t,” I said, opting to comment as little as possible on the topic. There was a tiny shred of me that figured Diaz already knew what had transpired, both in the desert and here in D.C. An even larger shred told me she would never act on either. “Need to get on the road, get things ready for winter.”

  “Ah, yes,” Diaz said, giving me a knowing look that meant both she recognized me ducking the topic and would conspire with my return-to-Montana narrative. “The cabin in the woods, back to roughing it, all that.”

  Again the corners of my mouth curled up. Once upon a time, she would have made for a great partner. She had a quiet confidence and a lack of bullshit that I could have worked with for sure. “Yeah, all that.”

  “The Rocky Mountains is the marrow of the world.”

  A deep smirk pushed out of my nose, tilting my head backward. “You finally watched the movie.”

  “I did,” she confirmed. “You’re no Robert Redford, but I could see the resemblance, I guess.”

  My lips widened even farther, my teeth peeking out through the smile. It was the same line my mother had used on me a hundred times before, every time my father alluded to the origin of my name.

  “How about you? What’s next?”

  Turning at the hip, Diaz motioned toward the headquarters, extending an elbow without removing her hand from its pocket. “They offered us both positions here. Supervisory roles, promise of fast tracks to the top. They didn’t say as much, but I think the idea of a black guy and a Hispanic woman practically had the PR people salivating.”

  Another low chuckle slid out from me, nodding in agreement. I would have never thought to frame it quite that way, but I couldn’t disagree with her, either. “Congratulations.”

  “Naw,” she replied, shaking her head, drawing the word out several seconds long. “This place isn’t for me. I gave them a list of things I needed back in Cali, told them where to send my raise.”

  “I’ll be damned,” I said, though her words didn’t surprise me. Once, right before moving to California, I too had been offered a position in D.C. Having gone to undergrad nearby I had no problem with the city, but the thought of working in that bastion of bureaucracy was enough to make my skin crawl. “X?”

  “Jumped at it,” Diaz said. “Asked me to say thank you if I saw you and to let you know you’re more than even. Said he’d be in touch once you got settled.”

  That, too, wasn’t a surprise. If somebody were to ever sit down and analyze our trade, I’m sure a winner could be determined, though neither one of us ever would. He went out on a limb for me in a time of need; I made sure he was rewarded for his efforts. Had the situation been flipped, I’d like to think it would have still played out the same way.

  I slid my gaze from the building to Diaz. Her face was taking on a ghostly pallor. “So back to the desert for you,” I said.

  “Back to the desert,” she said, “where it’s not so damn cold.”

  This time I managed to bite back a laugh, shaking my head. “I would say you’re welcome to visit in Montana at any time, but if you think this is cold . . .”

  She smiled without showing
her teeth, her lips pulled into a tight line. “Just the same as I would say you’re welcome back in California at any time. I can always find room for a good consultant.”

  I matched the thin smile, both of us acknowledging the offers without comment. At some point, perhaps, one of us would pick up the phone and make good on them. Perhaps not.

  With a tiny nod I moved forward and wrapped one arm around her shoulders, pulling her close, her cold cheek pressed against mine. Her hands slid around my back and she returned the embrace a long moment before releasing, both of us taking a step back.

  “Thank you,” I said. There was so much more I could have added, defining every last thing I was thankful for, from her offer to all she had done in the preceding weeks. I didn’t, though, knowing, fearing, I would leave something out, and the situation deserved better.

  “Thank you,” she echoed, following my lead, making no attempt to define it.

  One step at a time we drifted away from each other until eventually we both turned, putting our backs to one another, already moving on toward our next destinations.

  The sun was high in the sky, a golden orb sitting directly overhead and casting a bright yellow glow over everything it touched. The grass alongside the road seemed radiant, bathed in its hue; the river in the distance reflected it as it danced along the rocks beneath it. After weeks in the desert, twenty long days of staring at nothing but varying shades of sand, the entire world seemed amplified, like a movie with just the right amount of color saturation.

  The skin of my forearms was deep chestnut brown as I draped them over the steering wheel. The hairs along them were sun-bleached blond, standing in stark contrast to the skin beneath.

  My truck rumbled over the highway as I drove along, leaning forward, willing us to go faster, for my destination to somehow move itself closer. On the seat beside me sat my discarded shirt and tie, a blue blazer long since stripped off and stuffed in my duffel, which was stowed in the truck bed. Atop the rumpled pile of clothes beside me was my faded holster and service weapon, the leather sweat-stained and cracking, beginning to give off a pungent scent.