So close I could feel the wind from them, I heard as they slapped into the canvas coat above me, driving it backward before thudding into the wall.
Only then did I lift my gaze, for the first time spotting my attacker. Standing with his backside against the desk running almost the length of the room, bisecting the space, he was dressed in all black, everything but the top half of his face obscured from view.
Gripping a weapon with both hands, a thin tendril of smoke rose from the tip, his eyes widening as he spotted me moving in low.
Seeing his movement, knowing that there would be no stopping the next round he squeezed off, I snapped my right arm forward. Pushing it in a tight arc, using the heel of the boot as a leverage point, I flung it as hard as I could, aiming for the weapon steadily moving my way.
The throw wasn’t perfect. It didn’t twist end-over-end, colliding with the gun and knocking it from his hand. It didn’t lift the front end toward the ceiling, a harmless shot firing into the sheetrock.
But it was good enough.
The man was able to squeeze off one last round, though it was faster than he wanted, before he was able to fully correct his aim. Tearing through the boot, it sent bits of leather spinning into the air, flinging the shoe across the room, a wounded duck coming in for a rough landing.
And then I was on him.
Coming in from such a low angle, I hurtled forward off bent knees, the full force of my weight, of my journey, of the anger I was feeling about whoever this bastard was and why he was here, hitting him square. Burying my shoulder into his stomach, I drove him straight back into the counter, hearing as his tailbone mashed against the front ledge of it.
A weak gasp passed between his lips as his body went slack for a moment, the gap all I needed to draw back, both hands immediately going for his wrists. Shoving them straight upward, I moved in tighter, raising my knee as hard as I could into the soft tissue between his thighs.
Holding him steady, I brought it up a second and a third time, my knee a piston, firing into his nether regions. With each contact, I could feel the strength seeping out of him, my grip on his wrists the only thing keeping him upright.
One last time, he fired off a round, weakly trying to push down against my hands, hoping to use the gun.
A move that was futile. He might have had the jump on me with better positioning and a weapon of choice, but he’d been too reliant on both. He’d assumed that coupled with those, all he’d needed was a bit of surprise and victory was his.
What he’d failed to take into consideration was I actually knew what to do once an initial plan went awry.
Hands still locked on his wrists, I rolled them down, pulling his forearms flush with mine. Squeezing hard, I slowly bent them inward, forcing his elbows out wide, opening a clear lane between us.
A lane he barely even seemed to register as I snapped my head forward, driving my forehead into the bridge of his nose. Hitting flush, the full weight of my two hundred and twenty pounds behind it, the thin bone disintegrated on contact, blood spatter flung across my face.
Any tensile strength that might have remained bled from his body, his knees turning to liquid.
Propping him up just long enough to take the gun from his hand, I relinquished my grip, letting him fall in a heap to the floor.
Part Two
Chapter Twelve
The locker room was so tiny, it could barely even be considered as much. Nothing more than an alcove carved into the back of a much larger space, it was comprised of only a single bank of metal lockers, their fronts laced with rusting lattice. Gone were the usual pegs that would allow someone to thread a lock through, as was any of the original paint.
Two even rows, five apiece, at most a couple of feet in height.
Why they were there, what purpose they had originally been meant to serve, was anybody’s guess. The sort of thing that had been there for so long, everyone just sort of accepted their presence, not bothering to even consider what they were needed for.
A position Junior Diaz found himself in as he sat on the narrow wooden plank serving as a bench in front of them. With his head bent downward, he didn’t bother to even glance up, his entire focus on the garments draped across his hands.
In the background, he could hear metal scraping. He could hear the faint din of conversation taking place nearby, not caring enough to even try to decipher what was being said or who was saying it.
The air around him was cooled in a way that only sitting inside a concrete basement bunker could be. Redolent with a handful of different scents, he could pick up the faint smells of water and mildew, concrete dust and grease.
A thousand others, if he really cared to try and pick them out.
But he didn’t, his entire attention on the plastic sack balanced across his thighs and the objects folded inside. Items he hadn’t seen or even thought about in eight years.
Not even in the whirlwind that was the last week or two, when things went from non-existent to ethereal to reality in record time.
For most people, the process of being sentenced and reporting to prison was an ordered one. A person was arrested and they stood trial, a long and drawn-out process that could extend for months or even years.
At the conclusion of it - if found guilty - they were given a date sometime in the future and told to report by then to begin their sentence.
Armed with so much time to think, to prepare, to plan, many of them arrived at the front steps of whatever facility they had been ordered to dressed as if arriving for Sunday church. Suits and ties. Polished shoes. The type of attire that they thought they could slip back into on the far end of their sentence and immediately assimilate right back into society.
The thinking being that rarely does someone see a person in a suit and tie and immediately think of the recently incarcerated.
Again, a process that occurs for most.
But not all.
Men like Junior Ruiz weren’t so fortunate. They were deemed flight risks, or the crimes they were charged with were so severe, that the government considered the very thought of allowing them another moment of freedom an affront to national security.
For those unlucky few, there was no forewarning. No planning. No chance to present themselves in a way they would like to be viewed upon exit.
Instead, they were left with whatever they happened to be wearing at the moment of their arrest.
Garments such as the beige linen suit and the pink button-down shirt folded in the bag before him. Items that still bore the grass stains on the knees and shoulders from where he was forced to the ground and handcuffed. That no doubt still smelled of the champagne that was spilled across his lap and the sweat that seeped from his pores as he was driven across the desert.
Scents and marks that had had eight years to sit in a plastic sack. Eight years to grow stronger, embedding themselves forever in the fabric, a final harsh punctuation to the better part of a decade.
For him, there would be no stepping outside in fresh Armani or Brooks Brothers. There was no chance at presenting a spit-shined version of his former self, seamlessly blending back into the world around him.
There would be only these clothes and the memories they brought.
The resolve that now surged through him as he sat and stared down at them.
“Ten minutes,” a voice said, jerking Ruiz’s attention up to see the same guard that had handed him the bag moments before. Stomach straining against the front of his uniform shirt, he held a paper cup from McDonald’s in hand, a half-sneer on his face. “Unless you want to stick around a little longer.”
Where the man had come from, Ruiz wasn’t sure. So lost in the memories wrapped in plastic before him, he hadn’t heard the man approach.
Just as he wasn’t sure if he was actually expected to respond, the best he could manage a simple shake of the head.
The clothes weren’t what he would have picked. If given his preferences, he would have asked them to be burned in
the incinerator long ago.
But they damned sure beat the orange jumpsuit he’d been wearing for the last eight years.
And he wasn’t about to spend another minute in this place, regardless if he had to walk outside naked.
Chapter Thirteen
The sound of the ringtone shattered the silence of the hotel room, jerking Tres Salinas upright in his bed. Not the shrill, harsh bark of the standard phone found on every nightstand in the country, making good on the wakeup call he had requested before falling asleep, but the understated melody programmed into his cellphone.
The specific sound set aside for one caller and one only, the unexpected arrival of this distinctive din what had so radically altered his course just a couple weeks before. A tone he would recognize anywhere, association strong enough to pull him from the deepest of sleeps.
Even those coming on the heels of nights like the one he’d just had.
Snapping himself upright at the waist, Tres let the covers fall back from his bare torso, bunching around his hips. Reaching out with his right hand, he grabbed up the phone from the nightstand beside him, the white glow of the screen a harsh beacon of light in the otherwise darkened room.
The celebratory shots of whiskey he’d allowed himself the night before seemed to bore into his skull, making his brain feel two sizes larger than it was supposed to be.
Pinching his eyes shut to block out the glare, Tres thumbed the device to life, pressing it to his face.
Even here, within the confines of his room, he knew better than to put the person calling on speaker.
The risk of someone overhearing, of possibly even getting a word he might say or the sound of his voice on tape, was just too great.
“Sir,” Tres answered, long past having to be told to never use names over the phone.
As they had learned long before, no electronic communication could ever truly be considered secure. Not with law enforcement agents the world over practically soiling themselves at the thought of their next big get.
“Is it done?” the caller asked, employing his usual phone voice. Low and even, it came out as little more than a hiss, Tres having to strain to hear him.
Though, again, he knew better than to ever say as much.
Or to even insinuate the man repeat something.
“It is,” Tres replied.
Grunting softly, he asked, “Were there any problems?”
The presence of the target’s wife in the hot tub made things a bit trickier for Tres. It had meant he had to stay a few minutes longer than necessary, had been forced to do something he really hated and put hands on a woman, though nothing that he would consider a problem.
“No,” Tres replied. He thought of adding that it was almost too easy, that the man stepping out onto the covered porch and sliding into the hot tub had taken some of the joy from it, before opting against it.
This man was not a friend, and this was not a call to swap stories, a fact that was never once forgotten.
By either party.
Once more there was a grunt, a quick guttural click. “And were you seen?”
The target’s wife had gotten a quick glimpse of him, but there would be nothing that she could identify, everything but his eyes shrouded in black. As he’d determined many times in the preceding week, there were no cameras on the grounds, same for the network of backroads he’d taken to return to Seattle.
Nothing that would have captured a single image of him before he arrived back at the airport car rental counter. By that point, he had stripped out of his winter reconnaissance togs and into jeans and Seahawks sweatshirt and ballcap, just another tourist dropping off his ride before catching a late flight.
Taking a shuttle all the way back to the main terminal, he had stopped for a slice of pizza and the shots that were now reverberating through the inside of his head before walking out the opposite side and catching an Uber back to the hotel he was now lying in.
In total, plenty of people had seen him, but not one would have had any reason to give him even a second look.
Not in a city as teeming with tourism as Seattle.
And definitely not with the look he’d tried so hard to cultivate, the tan complexion of his skin the only thing differentiating him from being a poster child as the average American male.
“No.”
“Good,” the man snapped, the closest he would ever offer to praise. Pausing, he fell silent a moment, seeming to contemplate his next words, before asking, “Have you heard from your counterpart yet?”
The first words uttered that weren’t completely expected, Tres felt a crease form between his brows. Lifting his gaze to the flat screen directly in front of the bed, he could just make out the outline of himself sitting upright, the faint glow of the phone illuminating his silhouette.
To call the man that had headed north at the same time as Tres a counterpart would be a misnomer at best. The two had known each other for a while, had even been friendly when the occasion called for it, but in no way had they been working together.
A shared task, states apart, and nothing more.
Since departing a week before, Tres hadn’t heard a single word from the man. The two had left in opposite directions, each with a specific target in mind and the instructions to complete what was asked and get back without being seen.
Beyond that, there was no interaction.
Not even any reason for there to be.
“No, sir. Was I supposed to?”
Ignoring the question entirely, the man muttered something too low to be heard. Based on tone, Tres would guess it to be an obscenity, pushed out in Spanish, the default setting whenever he was angry.
“Where are you now?”
“Just outside the city,” Tres replied, still careful not to give away too much. “Planning to head south as soon as traffic breaks.”
“Not anymore. There’s something else you need to do first.”
Chapter Fourteen
I’ve never been what one might call a coffee connoisseur. I derive no joy in drawing in the aroma, trying to determine what sort of beans were used, where on the globe they came from, or even how they were sourced. Never have I lingered for an hour or more at the dinner table, sipping on a Cafecito, letting it act as the perfect palate cleanser after a meal.
I just don’t care that much.
To me, coffee falls into the same category as vehicles. I need it to perform the purpose for which it was designed, and beyond that, I am ambivalent. It doesn’t bother me if it looks and smells like jet fuel, so long as it provides the requisite jolt of caffeine I’m looking for.
A task the third cup I’ve gotten from the hospital vending machine seems to be achieving with even less success than the first two. Much longer and it will be spitting out nothing more than muddy water, each mouthful of the swill managing only to heighten the frustration roiling through my system.
Agitation aimed at where I’m seated. At not hearing anything in the hours since I arrived.
At wondering who in the hell that man was that showed up at my office last night, blew the front door from the hinges, fired at me, and put my friend in this damn place to begin with.
Seated on the front edge of a padded chair, the lone person using the waiting room at such an ungodly hour, my hands were wrapped around either side of the paper cup. In the background I could hear the hospital beginning to come alive, mixing with the faint drone of the morning news cycle on the television above me.
Little more than a faint staccato, my mind tuned it all out, instead trying in vain to make sense of what happened. Again and again I asked the same questions that have been flitting across my consciousness since the moment I put down the intruder standing in my front office, no closer to finding answers now than I was then.
So badly, I wanted to be out of the place, on my way, knocking on doors, demanding to know what happened. I could feel nervous energy pulsating through my system, threatening to come spilling out at any moment.
/> But just as surely, I knew that I would not – could not - move. I would not leave my friend and partner alone, would not go anywhere until I knew that she was okay.
That there was zero chance that whatever happened wasn’t actually aimed at her, or that somebody wasn’t looking to return and finish the job.
Lifting the paper cup toward my mouth, I made it less than halfway there before abandoning the notion. Unable to force down any more of the sludge, I pushed myself upright, shoving out a sigh through my nose. Shifting to the side, I chucked the beverage away, barely noticing the thin stream of droplets that splashed out, dotting the top of the receptacle.
“Excuse me, Mister...”
Rooted deep in my own angst, focus completely drawn inward, I had failed to even notice the woman standing beside me. Had somehow completely missed her pushing through the double doors on the end of the hall and walking steadily forward, the sound of her voice being the only thing strong enough to catch my attention.
No wonder the man last night had been able to get the drop on me so easily.
“Tate,” I replied, drawing myself upright. Rubbing my hands along either side of my jeans, I began to extend one for a handshake, making it only a few inches before realizing the woman still had both of hers thrust deep in the pockets of her lab coat.
Under the coat was a pair of dark purple scrubs, a lanyard identifying her as Dr. Jade Whitney hanging across her chest.
Looking like she had been awake as long as I had, her chestnut hair was pulled back into a tight ponytail, concentric rings underscoring her eyes.
“I understand you came in with Ms. Quick?”
“Yes,” I replied, “she and I are business partners. We own a guide company down in West Yellowstone.”
A series of faint lines appeared around one eye as she nodded slightly, processing the information, her thinking plainly obvious on her features.
All thoughts that - no matter how much they might sting - she wasn’t wrong in having.
Wild Fire: A Suspense Thriller (A Hawk Tate Novel Book 6) Page 5