by L T Ryan
Whitewater
Rachel Hatch Book Six
L.T. Ryan
Brian Shea
Contents
The Rachel Hatch Series
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
The Rachel Hatch Series
Aftershock
Aftershock Chapter 1
Aftershock Chapter 2
Aftershock Chapter 3
Also by L.T. Ryan
About the Author
The Rachel Hatch Series
Drift
Downburst
Fever Burn
Smoke Signal
Firewalk
Whitewater
Aftershock (pre-order now)
RACHEL HATCH SHORT STORIES
Fractured
Proving Ground
The Gauntlet
One
"You know I honor family above all else? For me, there is nothing greater than that. Our family is stronger than any other. The only reason for this is simple. We built our family's name brick by brick through our blood, sweat, and tears. The toils my father endured secured our place at the throne. That kind of thing only happens when each member of the family is strong. As with any building's foundation, we're only as strong as the sum of its parts."
Raphael Fuentes stood in the corner of the room and listened on as his father, Hector, delivered his ceremonious speech. This wasn't the first time Raphael had heard it, or at least a variation of it. The man had raised Raphael. And over his twenty-three years of life, he'd listened to his father espouse the meaning of family, and its worth. He'd grown up loving the man, not just for the power he wielded, but for the love he had shown Raphael and his two younger brothers, Gabriel and Jesus. And just three months ago, Raphael became big brother once again to Guadalupe.
He could see that his father hadn't been as pleased when his sister was born. Hector wanted only boys. As a child Raphael knew his father's love was true and genuine but doubted his sister would ever come to know it. His father didn't give his love freely, it came at a hefty price, its tolls increasing with each passing year. As the oldest male heir to his father's fortune and power, Raphael learned at an early age what it meant to rule and lead as his father had. At seven years old, Raphael watched his father use a dull machete to separate a man who had wronged him.
Even witnessing the beheading and the many to follow in its wake, Raphael went to bed every night praying for the strength of his father, to walk in the man's gigantic footsteps. And every morning when he woke, was saddened to see he was still the same old Raphael. He did his best to prove himself worthy. By the age of thirteen, Raphael knew deep down the differences between his father and himself spread as wide and long as the Rio Grande River cutting its path outside his hometown of Juarez. As he matured, his father took him to places, showed him things, and taught him what the family business was all about.
Raphael had felt the disconnect before learning the true source of his father's power and influence, then after he felt like he never had known the man at all. He saw it in his father's eyes too, the darkening. Over time, Raphael's disagreement became more obvious, and his father had begun to question whether Raphael was fit to lead. This was why his father put on such a big show. It was another lesson, another opportunity to test Raphael to see if he had proved his worth.
"But even the smallest fracture in the foundation of any building can lead to bigger cracks, until it all crumbles down." Hector Fuentes lectured the room's attendees, to include Raphael who remained silent while his father addressed the group. No one ever interrupted Hector Fuentes without consequence. Depending on your status within the family, some of those consequences had life-altering repercussions.
"What we do here matters. What we say to others matters. The money, the power, it means nothing if we don't have family. If I cannot trust every member in this room to carry forward the ideals and the secrets that our family holds, then it is all for naught. That's why today saddens me as much as it angers me."
Seated in the center of the room was a woman bound to a chair. Thick plastic zip ties held her and her ankles in place. A rope wrapped around her midline just under her ample breasts sealing her to the back of the chair.
Hector reached down and grabbed the top of the hood shrouding the woman's face and head and ripped it off. Raphael's eyes moistened at the sight of his mother's tear-soaked face. Raphael did not make eye contact with her. Raphael couldn't afford to let his father see the pain in his eyes, nor the hate that would surely follow. Instead, he looked just to the side of her at the hulking shoulders of a mountainous man. His father's right-hand security man, Juan Carlos Moreno.
Moreno had done a stint in the military before returning home to serve as Hector's most trusted soldier. He stood by with his deadpan golden eyes and scanned the crowd. Even in the close circle of friends, family, and upper echelon of the Fuentes Cartel, his father was smart enough to know that threats could come from anywhere. The woman bound to the chair was testament to that.
Hector worked the room, moving around and making eye contact with each member present as if he were a politician at a speaking engagement. "Isabella my love, to see you sitting here tears at my soul." The words sounded genuine, and maybe at some point they would've been. Even now they might still hold some truth of the love they used to share. To Hector Fuentes, though, loyalty trumped all else. Even love.
But to Raphael, his father's words sounded rehearsed. He figured they were. Everything his father did was done to perfection. That's why when things did not go according to his meticulous plans, there were repercussions. This was one of those moments.
"But you betrayed me." Hector turned and bent down, bringing his face inches from his wife's.
"Please," she uttered, barely above a whisper. Her voice quivered. She choked it down like an overcooked piece of steak. Then came a flash of defiance in her deep-set eyes. This resistance only seemed to energize Hector's fervor.
He stepped back and panned out to the audience. "I loved her. I still love her. She is the mother of my children and just gave birth not three months ago to my daughter, Guadalupe. Your sons stand by and watch." His voice darkened. "Because of what you did, they have to suffer. Because of what you did, our family must suffer. There is no worse crime than turning on your family." Raphael heard his father's words and recognized the hypocritical connotation.
"Please," Isabella Fuentes sobbed. "I did it for—"
"Save your breath," he barked. A froth of spit came out of his father's mouth in contrast t
o his normally reserved demeanor. He was enraged and nearly launched at her. "Not only did you go behind my back, you also went to the police. The POLICE! There's no reason you could give that would ever justify what you did. But just like a crack in any foundation, if it's addressed early enough, it can be patched up. It can be repaired. And that is what I'm going to do here. The police officers you spoke with have already been dealt with. There's just one more small crack that needs filling."
"No," she whimpered. Isabella brought her head around, twisting it, craning her neck to look at her first-born son.
Raphael could no longer avoid the eye contact. He met his mother's tearful eyes, and the sight of it nearly broke him. He bit the inside of his lip so hard that he could taste the blood. She pleaded with him without uttering a sound. Her silent cry for help tore at his soul.
"You have been called here today to bear witness to this…so that no other crack, no other fracture in our foundation, will ever happen again. Remember this moment."
Hector moved quickly. Slipping in behind Isabella's seated position, he grabbed her forehead and jerked it back against his chest, breaking her eye contact with Raphael. He looked on as his father ran the sharpened edge of a long-bladed knife across his mother’s throat.
Raphael Fuentes remained motionless as the blood spurted. He listened to the choking and gurgles of his mother's dying breaths. He willed himself not to look away as his mother's life slipped from her body.
Two
It was dark, but the sandy ground she laid on still carried the warmth of the day, even though the air around her had cooled dramatically in the shift from day to night. A wind began kicking up sand. It still carried a note of the remnants of the nearly contained wildfire seven miles away. The massive efforts to contain the wildfire had been successful, and they worked now to extinguish the remaining embers, but the air continued to reek of the fire’s damage. It had burned in a twenty-mile crescent extending from Nogales. Hatch still felt the memory of its sting.
Ash and soot drifted like dirty snow, laying a thin coat over Hatch during the seven hours of waiting. She accepted the gift of gray camouflage now covering her body. She’d returned to the area in which the traffickers had taken Angela Rothman. She had travelled the same road where the first gunfight with Colton Gibbons and his fellow traffickers had taken place. When she passed by the spot, she was surprised to see no evidence of the violence that had taken place less than a day before. She stopped and looked for any shell casings. She found none. Even the blood was gone. None of the media sources she’d searched had covered the event. Her trail was clear, as well as the traffickers. She was dealing with a highly organized group of individuals.
It would only be a matter of time until she found what she was looking for. So she hunkered down and waited. Patience born by necessity. She skirted the border until coming to an empty swath of open space. There was no way she could enter Mexico legally without a passport or identification. Since she was legally dead, neither one of those things were available. To have it done through an alternative channel would've taken time she didn't have. So, she waited.
Hatch lay on the ground seven miles west of the Nogales border crossing. She selected her current location by asking herself one simple question, where would I try to cross the border? It had taken nearly eight hours before she’d proven her decision right.
She heard it before she could see it. There were no buildings nearby, no streetlights, no lamps, or sources of man-made light anywhere in sight. The only light provided came through the cloudy ash covering the sky. To Hatch's benefit, she was bathed in the darkness, giving her more flexibility in her choice of concealment.
There was a crunch up ahead followed by the coo of a baby and the mother trying to quiet it. Somebody snapped, yelling in Spanish a phrase Hatch didn't understand, but the tone of which was easily discerned. Anger. The cooing stopped and the procession continued. They weren't quiet by any stretch, although Hatch could tell they were trying to be.
As they came into view twenty feet from her position, she counted seven heads: an old man, a pregnant woman, a young mother carrying a baby, and two men. One of the men was heavyset and older and used a walking stick to navigate the uneven terrain in the dark. He stumbled once, and the younger man at the back of the pack kicked him hard, hard enough for Hatch to hear. The older man grunted softly, and then got back to his feet, offering no form of resistance to the violence he'd endured. Hatch knew why. The man who had kicked them was their coyote, a paid shepherd of human beings. Most of the people in that group undoubtedly gave their life savings for this journey, or would be indebted upon arrival, possibly for the remainder of their lives. Crossing the border from Mexico to the United States, with the hope of a better life, was no easy task. Often, the American Dream was more a nightmare than anything else.
Human trafficking was a modern form of indentured slavery. These people each had a predetermined destination, where they would serve out whatever sentence until their debts were paid. Hatch watched as the group came to a stop, now only fifteen feet from where she lay.
Hatch remained tucked tightly to a rock, making herself as small as her 5'10" frame would allow. The large rock aided in masking her from the headlights of the approaching van. The small boulder casting Hatch in the shadow cut the beams, keeping her invisible to the man driving. The coyote shoved the other six border crossers into the back of the van. A very brief exchange between the coyote and the driver followed and within a minute, they were gone.
Hatch remained still. She waited until the van was out of sight. The brake lights disappeared as the van crested the small rise in the dune nearby. Twenty seconds later Hatch's night vision returned. The details of her surroundings came back in full view as she watched the man who had just offloaded the six people into the van.
He took a moment to smoke a cigarette. The embers burned, casting him in an orange glow, and blinding him to her movement as she broke cover and stood up. He wasn't looking in her direction. And he didn’t turn.
She crept along the dirt and rock beneath her feet, rolling heel to toe on the outside edge of her boot. She moved forward, keeping her knees bent just above a half squat. Like a tiger, she was ready to pounce. She wanted to get close to the man before addressing him. Within five feet, he still had not noticed Hatch. She could see now that he was armed. She hadn't expected otherwise. He carried a revolver, a strange weapon for a man in his line of work. With six shots and six people, he could've easily been overwhelmed. The power of a coyote didn't come from the ammunition in their gun, but from the influence they had over people's lives. The families left behind could easily be gotten to. Death, or worse, was just a phone call away for those who did not comply. There was power in the control mechanisms at play that went well beyond that of a one-hundred-eighty grain Hollow Point, like the ones in Hatch's gun. She didn't draw it or plan to. Hatch had other plans for the man in front of her.
He blew out a long puff of smoke, and Hatch spoke. "Hola. Cómo estás?" She knew little Spanish but figured it might put him more at ease if she started in his native tongue.
The man spun and reached for his gun.
Hatch threw her hands up. "Wait, wait, wait!"
He paused and looked back toward the massive fence dividing the two countries. He was frantic and looked as though he were about to run. "No policía," she said.
He looked around, expecting a hoard of border patrol agents rushing in his direction. But there were none. There were no cars. Hatch had parked her vehicle nearly three miles away. After clearing her DNA from the car, she lit it ablaze, and walked the rest of the way here.
He was curious now. His hand went off the gun, and he squinted his eyes at her as he took another drag of the cigarette. "What the hell do you want, lady?" he asked in broken English, but easy enough for her to understand.
"I don't want any trouble. I just need to get across the border."
"You need to get across the border?" He looked confu
sed. "Why don't you...?"
She knew what he was going to say. "Why would any American citizen need to illegally cross the border into Mexico?" Her answer couldn't be given, but this was a man of secrets, this was a criminal, and her reasons didn't matter. Only one thing mattered to a man like this.
"I've got a thousand dollars. Take me across and get me into Mexico. Half now, half when you get me across." Hatch pulled out an envelope with five hundred dollars cash inside. She showed it to him, but didn't give it to him, not until he agreed, which he did with a shrug, before she allowed him to snatch the money from her hand. He stood there and counted it for himself. He flicked the cigarette off into the dry dirt beside him and didn't bother to squash it out. "Get you across the border and there's five hundred more?"
"That's it." She knew he had other plans in mind when they got across, but she'd deal with that when it arose.
"Nobody smuggles themself into Mexico. You must be either crazy or desperate."
Hatch knew better.
She was both.
Three
Hatch followed the coyote through the desolate landscape, among the dark shadows. The sure-footedness with which the smuggler navigated the uneven terrain, with limited to no light to guide him, spoke volumes to the countless times he'd taken this path before. Hatch thought of the innumerable human lives he'd shuttled across this same path. She thought of how this man, and men like him, had subjected his own people to suffering over the course of his career. Up close and personal, modern day slavery didn't look all that different when compared to smugglers of old, in a world with a long and ugly history of this unforgivable abuse.