Blue Steele Box Sets 2
Page 25
Chapter 59
“¡Alto el fuego!”
The shouted command telling me to cease-fire was in Spanish, but it was spoken with an American accent. Better yet, it was a voice I had come to know over the last couple of days.
“Agent Richards, it’s Blue Steele. The woman lying in the doorway is Mia Ortiz.”
A cautious eye appeared near the halfway mark of the door and I released the shotgun and raised my hands.
“The room is secure, Agent Richards, and there are two hostiles down.”
Richards entered the safe room with three other agents as I moved over to check on Mia. As I walked the few steps, I limped, as the circulation in my legs returned. There was also pain from the shotgun pellet that struck my calf.
My shotgun blast had hit Mia where her hands had been holding her weapon. The impact of the steel pellets sent her shotgun flying while splintering its wooden stock. She had taken damage to the left forearm and hand, but worst of all, her abdomen.
She lay on the floor in a state of agony, much as Graboro had done earlier. She was in far too much pain to speak, but as her eyes saw me standing over her, the hate in them was easy to understand.
I had intended to fire at her no matter who came through the door. Unlike Mia, I had everything to lose.
If the Feds opened the door, Mia was good. She would be arrested, but not raped and slaughtered. If the cartel opened the door, she would be free to go and leave me to my fate. As for me, I had to strike first. Mia was going away for life. killing me wouldn’t have added a day to her sentence, and once she’d seen Richards at the door, I believe her next act would have been to pull the trigger. I just beat her to it.
“Graboro’s alive, but just barely,” said a Mexican agent.
“Good,” Richards said. “That bastard needs to keep living long enough to rat out his friends.”
The same Mexican agent checked on Mia.
“Will she live?” I asked.
“I think so, but we need to get them both airlifted out of here as soon as possible.”
Richards studied the dried blood on my face.
“You need medical attention.”
“It’s a scratch, it can wait,” I said.
“What went on here, Steele?” Richards asked.
As I was filling him in, Mia and Graboro were stabilized and placed on stretchers. Once that was done, they were carted out of the safe room. I caught sight of Mia as they were carrying her up the stairs. Her eyes were looking back at me, and although her arms were strapped down, she still managed to give me the finger. I knew then that she was going to live.
A battle had raged inside the villa, where Richards let me know that they had been involved in a stand-off of their own as each side battled to get the upper hand. The battle was decided after backup arrived in the form of twenty additional Mexican agents. The thumping Mia and I had heard above our heads earlier was the sound of a flash-bang grenade going off.
Richards and I stepped around bodies to get to the front of the house. The doors in the entryway were each hanging by a hinge and were marked by bullet holes.
When a paramedic saw me, she insisted on cleaning my face of the blood and bandaging the wound. She did so while Richards and I sat in chairs in the foyer.
“You know you saved our asses, don’t you, Steele?” Richards said. “If you and Connors hadn’t gone over the wall and opened those gates we’d all be toast.”
“It was self-preservation,” I said.
“Yeah, but I still owe you one.”
When the paramedic had finished with me I felt much better and told her so. She sent me a smile and moved on to treat others.
Once outside, I saw yet more bodies, including the ones near the gate that I’d had a hand in killing. I didn’t like to kill and avoided it when I could, but when it was kill or be killed, I never hesitated.
I had a question to ask Richards that I dreaded the answer to, but after looking around and not spotting him, I needed to ask.
“Where’s Agent Connors?”
Richards was about to answer when a gunshot came from down on the beach. It was followed by a second shot, then, there was silence. Richards was on the radio in an instant seeking answers.
Several seconds passed before a voice came over the speaker on his walkie-talkie.
“A stray cartel soldier took a shot at Javier and missed. Javier nailed him in the arm and he dropped his weapon. We’re over by the stables.”
“I’ll be right there,” Richards said.
As he began running toward the stables I hollered to him.
“What about Agent Connors?”
Richards pointed to my left as he ran.
“He’s in one of the ambulances.”
“Oh no.” I thought. Connors had been wounded when I’d last seen him, but at least he was still alive. Many agents had fared worse. Some of them were lying under sheets atop of stretchers.
There was a long line of ambulances, and in some of them, an agent was being treated for an injury or a minor wound. I found Connors in the very last ambulance. His right leg was bandaged at the thigh. It was an injury he’d received while risking his life to come to my aid. I owed him much for that. Despite the pain he must have been in, he was smiling.
Agent Connors was sitting on the floor of the ambulance between two stretchers, and atop each stretcher was one of the Rottweilers he’d been forced to shoot. The hounds were heavily bandaged, and drugged, but they weren’t so out of it that they didn’t eat the doggie treats Connors was feeding them.
He looked up at me with a huge grin.
“The doctor said they’ll both recover.”
I laughed, sat beside him, and petted the dogs.
Chapter 60
After entering the bail bonds company on Lancaster Avenue in Fort Worth I was met with a shout of greeting by my old boss and good friend, Ron Tenney. Ron owned the business and was there with two other friends of mine who were bounty hunters, Randy and George.
When the three men spotted Ruby in my arms their smiles became looks of delight. Ruby surprised me by smiling back at them. I had thought she might be a little frightened at meeting, what were to her, three strangers, but no, she smiled and cooed at them.
Ron held Ruby in his arms and spoke to her in baby talk, then looked at me.
“She’ll be as beautiful as her mama, and I love that you named her after Ruby.”
“I owe Ruby a lot,” I said. “Naming my daughter after her just felt right.”
Randy and George had to leave, but we made a date to meet for lunch soon to catch up. As Ron handed Ruby back to me, he asked a question.
“Are you happy, Blue?”
“Ron, life gets better every day.”
He smiled at me the way a father would.
“It’s no better than you deserve.”
Ramón had fussed over my minor injuries when I returned home, and I let him. I love being spoiled.
Ruby had missed me as much as I missed her, and at first, she cried whenever I left her sight. It made me wonder about Mia’s daughter and how she was faring without her mother, but I couldn’t dwell on that.
Despite her upbringing, Mia was a grown woman who had sown the seeds of her own fate. I was told that she would recover, but she would never be free again.
After surviving his wounds, Juan Graboro stonewalled the American and Mexican authorities for three days before breaking down and making a deal.
The Mexican authorities had tracked down his wife and arrested her as an accomplice. Mia had claimed that Graboro loved his wife dearly. It seemed she hadn’t lied.
Graboro cut a deal for his wife’s freedom in exchange for information about other cartels and their leaders. The agreement would have him serving time in the United States. Graboro would never see the light of day again. However, he would live out his life under an assumed name inside a country club prison, one where his wife could visit him often.
Mia might have cut a deal
of her own, but she refused to talk to anyone other than her lawyer. From the time we spent together, my guess was that she was hoping to escape someday. If so, I would go after her. It’s what I do. I hunt down fugitives and bring them to justice, just like my daddy.
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Copyright © REMINGTON KANE, 2019
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This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.
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