Blue Steele Box Sets 2

by Remington Kane

  Fernando rushed to her, and to his horror, he saw that his daughter was bleeding. While struggling to free his hand, the tall man’s knife had nicked her on the forehead.

  “Are you all right, baby?”

  Mia hugged her father as tears rolled down her cheeks.

  “I was so afraid, Papa.”

  “Yes, but you acted bravely by biting that man.”

  Mia spit on the ground.

  “He was nasty, and he smelled like cigarettes and beer.”

  After calming Mia, Fernando dragged the men’s bodies out of sight among the trees. After grabbing a first-aid kit from his glove box, Fernando went to work cleaning and bandaging the small cut Mia had received.

  “We have to move their truck out of sight, then I have to find a phone and make a call,” Fernando said.

  After completing both tasks, they waited by the phone booth Fernando had used, and spoke of what had occurred.

  “Why did that man grab me, Papa?”

  “Those were evil men. They wanted our things so that they could sell them.”

  Mia’s eyes grew wide.

  “They were going to sell me too? But why would anyone want to buy me? I’m too young to work and earn money.”

  Fernando hugged his daughter to him.

  “They were evil men who would have sold you to other evil men. You don’t need to know their reasons.”

  “You killed them.”

  “Yes, and I will kill anyone who ever threatens you.”

  “After the man grabbed me, I was wishing I still had the gun you gave me. Even though it wasn’t loaded, seeing it would have made him let me go.”

  “Guns have power. I will teach you to use them so that someday you’ll be able to protect yourself.”

  The men Fernando had called arrived in a truck that was towing a small backhoe loader. After checking to see that the area was undisturbed, they ventured to the spot where the shooting had occurred.

  Mia watched as one of the men used the machine to dig a deep hole near the base of the sheer cliff. She then saw her father and the other man drag the bodies to the hole and toss them in. Once the dirt was filled in and the ground pressed flat by the weight of the machine’s tires, it was as if the men had disappeared.

  The ground had devoured the dead once again, as it had swallowed Mia’s mother on the day of her mama’s funeral. However, no prayers were offered at this gravesite, and none attending the burial would miss the dead in the least.

  Fernando gave the shotguns and the pickup truck to his friends for helping him deal with the bodies. Afterward, he and Mia drove home in a somber mood, as questions danced within her young mind.

  When they were stopped at a traffic light, Mia voiced what she was thinking.

  “Why do you have so many guns, Papa?”

  “They are part of my work.”

  “What is it you do? Mama told me you worked for Uncle Juan, but she would never say more than that.”

  “Juan Graboro is rich and has many enemies. I protect him from his enemies.”

  “The way you protected me back there?”

  “Yes, Mia. That is what I do for a living. I make sure that men like that do not hurt your Uncle Juan.”

  “Isn’t that what the police do?”

  “Was there a policeman back there when that man held a knife to your throat?”

  “No.”

  “That’s because they have other things to do. The police are a business like any other, Mia. They make money by handing out tickets and taking bribes. Juan owns many policemen and he pays them to leave him be in peace.”

  “That’s illegal.”

  “Yes, many things are, but if you’re a strong person and not a sheep like most people you ignore the laws and the silly customs and rules. You have to make your own way in this world, Mia, not follow the crowd. The people who obey every law are the weak and the poor. They deserve what they get for their cowardice.”

  “I want to be strong like you, Papa. I don’t want to be a sheep.”

  “You won’t be, baby. I won’t let you become one. Instead, you’ll be a wolf, like me.”

  A wolf? Mia thought, liking the image it evoked in her mind. Yes, someday I’ll be a wolf, just like Papa.

  Chapter 54

  “If you surrendered to me and cooperated, you might be released in time to live out your old age as a free woman,” I told Mia.

  She laughed again. “Your people would lock me away for life no matter what you say.”

  “Maybe, or maybe you could put this life behind you someday and not have to take orders from Graboro.”

  “I kill Juan Graboro’s enemies because his interest are my interests. Perhaps that changes soon. He’s getting old and I think one of the younger narcos will make a move on him.”

  “Graboro will be in prison soon, so will you.”

  “I will never go to prison.”

  I decided to see if I could shock Mia.

  “I’ve seen your daughter. She looks a lot like you, but her father must have light skin.”

  Mia’s face grew stern.

  “How the hell do you know what my daughter looks like?”

  “You left a photo behind at the hostel in San Diego.”

  Mia whispered a curse in Spanish.

  “I had it out before the police cars showed up, then forgot to grab it.”

  “You ran for no reason. Those police cars had been called to the bar near the hostel. The cops had to break up a drunken brawl.”

  “Still, it is a good thing I left, or you might have found me there.”

  “Are you married, Mia?”

  “Are you?”

  “I am, and he’s of Mexican descent.”

  Mia smiled.

  “That’s funny, I married a gringo. He was a tough biker who used to run drugs for the cartel, but ever since the baby came he stays home to take care of her.”

  “My husband is the same way. He likes to feed our daughter her bottle.”

  “You have a lot to live for. Put down that shotgun and I’ll do my best to let Graboro release you.”

  “You lie well,” I said, “but I’m no fool.”

  Mia gave a little shrug.

  “It was worth a try, and it’s a shame, but you will die. Was your father killed the same way, sticking his nose in where it didn’t belong?”

  “My father died in the line of duty, while working to catch a serial killer.”

  “Do you miss him, Blue Steele?”

  I nodded. “Every day of my life,”

  “He must have been so pleased to know that you wanted to be a pig police officer like him, eh?”

  “My father was a Texas Ranger, not a police officer.”

  “What’s the difference?”

  “My father specialized in the apprehension of fugitives.”

  Mia shook her head.

  “You really are following in his footsteps, aren’t you?”

  “Yes, but it wasn’t always that way.”

  LANDSVILLE, TEXAS, 2004

  I was seventeen and dreading the conversation I was about to have with my daddy.

  We had talked often over the years about my having a career in law enforcement. Daddy had always stressed that I should first get a college education.

  I had agreed, despite how confining and restrictive I always felt school was. I seemed to learn more on my own and had a great curiosity about the world, along with a passion for reading.

  The closer I got to the time when I had to make a decision on which school to attend, the more I knew that I didn’t want to go to college. I wanted to be out in the world earning a living and making a difference, not sitting in boring lecture halls for four years.

  I found Daddy out in the small shack he used as a workshop, where he was mending the leg on one of the kitchen chairs. It was an old breakfast set. Either the chairs or the table itself always seemed to need mending.

  When Daddy saw me enter, he smiled, but as he studied my face, the smil
e left his.

  “Spit it out, girl. What did you do?”

  “I didn’t do anything wrong.”

  “Then why do you have that look on your face?”

  “What look?”

  “It’s the same look you had when you were eight and cut off one of your sister’s pigtails.”

  I laughed.

  “Jenny had that coming. She had given my favorite doll a mustache with a black marker.”

  “I noticed she never messed with any of your things again,” my father said with a wink.

  There were several stools in the shop. I pulled one over and perched atop it.

  “I didn’t do anything bad, I promise.”

  “Okay, so what’s on your mind?”

  “College.”

  “Ah, so you know where you want to go?”

  I said nothing, as I dreaded his reaction. My father had been tightening a vise as we spoke. He stopped what he was doing, pulled up another stool, then sat facing me.

  “Blue? What’s wrong, baby?”

  I answered him while looking down at the floor. “I… I don’t want to go to college.”

  Silence.

  When I gathered my courage, I looked up into my father’s face and saw that he had a thoughtful expression.

  “If you don’t go to college then you won’t be eligible to become a Texas Ranger someday.”

  “I know,” I said. “I don’t want that anymore either.”

  Daddy rose up from the stool he was sitting on as his face reddened. He was mad at me, as I knew he would be. It had been assumed for some time that I would go to college, become a state trooper, then work toward becoming a Texas Ranger. I felt like I was letting him down, but I could no longer fool myself into believing my interests hadn’t changed. I was wise enough, even at that young age, to know that you had to follow your heart. That was something my parents had taught my sister and me.

  Daddy went back to work tightening the vise onto the chair leg, and did so with renewed vigor, which I knew was fueled by anger.

  There was a loud, sharp noise, and a wide crack appeared in the leg, nearly splitting it in half. Daddy muttered a curse as he shook his head.

  “Oh hell, it’s past time I bought your mama a new kitchen set anyway.”

  “I’m sorry,” I whispered.

  Daddy stared at me.

  “Don’t be sorry. Tell me what you plan to do if you don’t go to college. You do have a plan, don’t you?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Let’s hear it.”

  I had to swallow and take a deep breath before I began, but when I spoke there was no hesitation.

  “Mama was talking to Aunt Gail on the phone last week and I got an idea from listening to their conversation.”

  “Jake’s wife? That Aunt Gail?” Daddy asked, although I only had one Aunt Gail.

  “Yes, sir.”

  A sad look came over him.

  “Please don’t tell me you’re thinking of moving to New York City.”

  “No, no, but that’s the thing, Daddy. Aunt Gail and Jake are coming here next year to open up a new branch of Caliber Investigations. When they do, I want to get a job there.”

  “Doing what?”

  “I want to work as a private detective. I checked, and you don’t need a college education to become one.”

  “That’s not surprising. They probably spend their time tracking down cheating husbands. Is that what you want to do with your life?”

  “Uncle Jake doesn’t take cases like that and he’s a private investigator. He even saved the president and became famous.”

  “Your Uncle Jake is a special man, Blue. He’s risked his life many times to help out desperate clients.”

  “I know, and that’s what I want too.”

  “You could make a difference as a Texas Ranger, and believe it or not, college ain’t anything like high school. If you went, I’d bet the time would pass quicker than you’d think. After that, you could do many things, but by not going you limit yourself, baby.”

  “I understand that, but I still want to try to get with Caliber Investigations.”

  My father looked exasperated by my decision. He closed his eyes for a moment to, I assume, keep his temper in check, but when he opened them, he smiled at me.

  “Do you know how young you are?”

  “I’ll be eighteen soon.”

  He laughed.

  “Yeah, but you’re still pretty young. You could spend the next five years walking down a wrong path and still have a ton of time to get on the right track. I know, I’ve been there.”

  “You didn’t always want to be a ranger?”

  “I did right up until the time the band I was in began getting paid to play. After that, I thought I was gonna be the next Hank Williams.”

  “What happened with the band?”

  “Our drummer ran off with a girl from Memphis, then the bass player broke his leg in a rodeo. A few months after that and I was wearing a uniform.”

  “You think I’ll be sorry and change my mind, don’t you?”

  “I don’t know, baby. I do know that you have to follow your feelings. If I hadn’t taken a chance with that band I always would have wondered how far I could have gotten in music. Now I know and have no regrets about it.”

  I thought over what Daddy said as he closed up his work shop. When he was done, I took his hand as we walked back to the house.

  “Maybe I’ll go to college someday.”

  “Maybe,” Daddy said. “But I know whatever you do you’ll be damn good at it. You’ve got the family grit, girl, and you’re as smart as they come.”

  “Thank you, Daddy, and thanks for not being mad at me.”

  “I love you, Blue. Nothing you could ever do or say will change that.”

  “I love you too, Daddy.”

  That was the last day I ever saw my daddy. He went missing the following evening and it was over a decade before we learned that he’d been killed. And while I never became a Texas Ranger, I’ve done some good things with my life and wound up a federal agent. I like to think he’d be proud of me, and I strive to live up to the legacy he left behind.

  “Why are you staring at me like that?” Mia asked, breaking me from my reverie about my father.

  “I wasn’t staring,” I said. “I was just thinking.”

  “Thinking of pulling that trigger, eh?”

  “If one of us fires, the odds are good the other will too.”

  “Unless the first one is dead.”

  “And there’s no guarantee that will happen,” I said.

  “If there was, Blue Steele, you’d be dead already.”

  A thumping sound reverberated from the ceiling and in reflex we both looked up, then locked eyes on each other again.

  “It sounds like the fight has spilled into the villa,” Mia said. “Juan’s people are probably hunting down and killing the last of your fellow Feds.”

  I said nothing, as a second thump sounded, but Mia was right, the sound was ominous. If fighting was going on in the house, that could mean that Connors and his people were forced to move inside by Graboro’s troops.

  “They’ll be coming for you soon, Blue Steele, and you’ll never see your little girl again.”

  Although I hid my anger at the glee I heard in Mia’s voice, I almost pulled the trigger on my shotgun.

  But not yet. I told myself. Not yet.

  Chapter 55

  “The way I see it, there’s no chance for you to get out of here alive,” Mia said.

  “I’ll walk out of here when that door is forced opened by federal agents, then you’ll spend the rest of your life in a cell.”

  Mia squinted at me. “How did you track me down?”

  “Were you aware I was searching for you?”

  “Not you personally, but I knew they’d send someone. I killed a DEA agent who I later learned had a political boss in his family. They couldn’t let that stand.”

  “And you thought you’d
be safe here in the villa until the heat died down?”

  Mia laughed.

  “I just arrived here this morning. It looks like I picked the wrong day to come here.”

  “Maybe we both did,” I said.

  “Juan said nothing about the raid until just before the shooting started. He was bragging that he had been tipped off by some bigshot in the DEA.”

  “He’ll soon give up that name, and whoever the leak is will wish they never took his money.”

  “You are so sure that your people will win the fight outside, from what I saw, your people were losing.”

  “That was before they gained control of the gate, now it’s Graboro’s people who have to fight to get inside.”

  “They still outnumber your people. They’ll kill them all, then you’ll be the last to die.”

  “No, Mia, they’ll open that door and drag you out of here in handcuffs.”

  “I would sooner die, like my papa.”

  “How did your father die?”

  “He made the mistake of showing mercy to someone and it came back to haunt him,” Mia said, and I saw the flash of a painful memory in her eyes.

  MEXICO, 2006

  Every head in the bar turned to take in nineteen-year-old Mia Ortiz as she sauntered in wearing a slinky red dress. Being a Tuesday night, the bar wasn’t crowded, but Mia would have stuck out in any group.

  Among those present were three men. They were sitting at a table drinking beer and playing cards.

  Mia smiled at them on her way to the bar, then watched as the biggest of the men walked over to join her.

  “I’ll buy whatever the lady is having, Luis,” the man told the bartender.

  “Thank you,” Mia said, as she looked the man over. He was about thirty, tall, with a barrel of a chest and muscular arms. He was a handsome man and Mia thought that he must have bedded many young women over the years. But he had never met one such as her, for she was a wolf in sheep’s clothing.

  He introduced himself as Eduardo and Mia saw the interest in his eyes increase as she pretended to find him irresistible.

  She joined Eduardo and his two friends at their table and detected the holsters on their hips that were covered by loose-fitting shirts.