Wild Fire: A Suspense Thriller (A Hawk Tate Novel Book 6)

by Dustin Stevens

  Enough to keep the blow from landing square, the leather binding caught the front edge of his chin. Snapping his jaw shut, the sound of his teeth smacking together echoed out, accompanied by a low grunt.

  Following the force of the impact, his face went toward the ceiling. Stumbling a half-step back, his weight rose to his toes, his eyes seeming to dim, his weight uneven.

  Recognizing the lack of balance, the uneven sway, Tres pushed aside the thought of Luis for a moment. Needing to half his opposition, to put the deputy down, he moved in again. Drawing the case straight back to his shoulder, intent to use it like a poker, he aimed to drive it directly through Ferry’s cheek.

  Propelling himself off his back foot, he hurtled himself forward, teeth clenched, preparing for impact.

  An impact that instead came in from the side, Luis slamming crossbody into him, shoulder hitting him square in the ribs.

  With his hands raised by his head, the briefcase parallel to the floor, there was no way for Tres to protect himself. No chance at him even steeling for impact, his entire core left exposed to the shot.

  The air was driven from his lungs on contact, a pair of pops ringing out as the thin bones of his bottom ribs snapped. Stars erupted before his eyes, pain receptors firing the length of his body as the two of them tumbled backward.

  Smashing into the bed Luis had been seated on a moment before, they rolled in a tangle over the edge of the mattress, arms and legs flailing before landing hard on the tile floor.

  Hitting first, the flat side of the leather briefcase still gripped in his hands slapped down hard, a resonate boom echoing through the room. So close to Tres’s ear, it felt like it might shatter the drum, a dull buzzing settling in.

  His eyes going wide, pain hurtling the length of his body, Tres made no effort to move. Taking an instant, willing himself past the initial burst of battle, he drew in air.

  Blinking through the fog, the sheen of moisture on his eyes, he peered from the briefcase beside him to Ferry. Still somehow upright, he swayed in place, weight passing from one foot to the other. Both hands on his right hip, he pawed at the strap of his weapon, trying in vain to free it.

  “Lath...” he whispered, shoving the broken word out with a puff of air.

  “Latham,” he managed a second time, trying to find his voice. Eyes squinted up tight, he peered down at the weapon on his side, trying to pull things into form.

  Little by little, Tres could feel his focus return. Things around him returned to place, snapping back into order.

  Any moment, the initial shock of the blow to Ferry would recede. His vision would clear, letting him retrieve his weapon.

  He would find his voice, able to call out for aid.

  Behind him, Tres could also hear Luis grunt, his shoes sliding against the tile floor, fighting for purchase. With his nose shattered, he breathed loudly through his mouth, hands and feet scrabbling as he tried to get moving again.

  Tres could allow neither to happen. Either one and any hope he had for finishing the task or getting away was gone.

  As were all the years he’d spent in preparation. All the effort and menial tasks and everything else he’d been through.

  The life he’d left behind when this moment arose.

  The truly big events that still lay ahead.

  Left hand still wrapped around the handle of the briefcase, Tres drew the same elbow up beneath him. Dragging the case closer, he balanced his weight on his arm, using it as a fulcrum point.

  Clamping his teeth against the pain he knew was about to arrive, he twisted his body backward, flinging his elbow over his shoulder, scything it at Luis behind him.

  Without seeing a thing, he felt it mash into the man’s chest, dropping him back flat to the floor.

  Coupled with landing exactly where he wanted, it also did just as he’d imagined, feeling like a hot knife was jabbed directly into his side. An audible gasp passed his lips as he pulled his arm back, cocking it across his body before firing it a second time, a piston with the added benefit this time of seeing where it was directed.

  Using his knees as a pivot, Tres lifted his entire upper body from the floor. Acrimony spiked from the pain shooting through him, at the situation he was now being forced to deal with.

  Eight days earlier, they had both been sent north. They’d been given a single target, aided by the fact that their prey had no reason to believe they were coming.

  As easy a situation as could possibly arise.

  And still, this man had failed.

  Not just that, but he had done so in such spectacular fashion that he had gotten beat up and arrested, causing Tres to now be here trying to clean things up.

  Aiming the tip of his elbow at the matted mess that was the man’s nose, Tres saw the ceiling flash by in his periphery. Working up as much centrifugal force as possible, a low cry seeped between his teeth, moisture rising to his eyes from the pain jabbing into his core.

  Body parallel to the ground, he waited what felt like seconds before his elbow finally found its target.

  The shot wasn’t perfectly aligned, his uneven posture and his own injuries making that virtually impossible, but it was close enough. Landing just left of center, it drove into the twisted bone and gristle of Luis’s nose, sliding across the bridge of it, grinding the underlying structure into a splintered mess.

  Doing just as it was intended to, the shot was enough to ignite every nerve ending in Luis’s face. Signals shooting straight up to his brain, they overwhelmed him on contact, his eyes rolling back. His head smacked hard against the tile, his body going limp as Tres fell atop him.

  Laying belly-to-back, he stared straight up at the ceiling. His entire right side felt like it was alternatingly being set on fire and dunked in ice water, everything tingling at once, pulling the air from his lungs.

  For only an instant, he lay flat on Luis, fighting to get his bearings. The lights above distorted, twisting into double before realigning, adrenaline alone allowing him to jerk his focus back to Ferry.

  If the deputy had been smart, had been in a right state of mind, he would have left the moment things broke out. He would have moved into the main of the medical facility and started yelling, calling for Latham, and orderlies, and the local fire department, and whoever the hell else might be in the surrounding area.

  Beyond the edge of the tussle between Tres and Luis, he would have had no trouble drawing his firearm, using it to either warn them or make them stop.

  But he wasn’t. The shot from the briefcase had been just enough to scramble things, reducing him to his baser instincts. It rendered him into a state of tunnel vision, clear thought and manual dexterity both falling to the side.

  Instead, he was still standing in the middle of the room, working to get his weapon free, trying to call out in muted gasps for aid.

  Rolling forward, Tres braced himself against Luis’s body. Pushing off, he drew his knees up beneath him, his own mind beginning to winnow inward as the pain in his side intensified. Briefcase still in hand, he pulled it across his body, shuffling forward.

  Across from him, Ferry raised his gaze, the snap on his holster finally giving way. Sliding his hand around the grip, his features pinched in tight, his elbow jerked back by his side.

  Repeating the same movement he had used just moments before, Tres swung the briefcase back down past his knees. Bending at the waist, he added his right hand for extra force, clutching tight with both hands and swinging through in one fluid arc.

  Much like the start of the fight just minutes before, things seemed to slow down. Tres could see as the front edge of the briefcase came up before him, his gaze tracking the barrel of the deputy’s gun sliding free.

  His molars came together, sweat and saliva dripping down over his chin. Every muscle seemed to work in concert, his body twisting upward, a human cyclone moving across the interior of the examination room.

  All of it ending as the briefcase this time found it’s mark, catching Ferry clean u
nder the chin. Lifting him in the air, it deposited him flat on his back. Folded in half, the toes of his shoes hit the floor above either side of his head before slowly unfurling, leaving the man laying flat on his back in the middle of the examination room floor.

  Chapter Forty

  Forty-five minutes had passed since the call with Latham. Three-quarters of an hour with no word, a trio of calls back to him all going unanswered.

  Twenty-seven-hundred seconds for my mind to race, taking everything that had happened in the last day and adding this newest development to it, tons of new questions arising.

  No clear way of answering any of them. Even less chance at tamping down the adrenaline, the anxiety, the competing emotions roiling through me.

  In the wake of the first call, I had stood in the Snoqualmie Police Department parking lot for nearly ten minutes. Retreating back a couple of steps, I had opted to lean against the side of the truck, not wanting to climb inside, knowing that everybody within the station was likely still very aware of my presence.

  Shoving my hands into the front pockets of my jeans, that had lasted only a couple of moments. Unable to feign inertia, to even contemplate standing in one spot like that, I’d started pacing. Using the body of the truck as a makeshift barrier, I’d marched a path back and forth from the brick wall of the building to the rear bumper, never once slowing my pace.

  With every step I took, more thoughts, more ideas, had tumbled in. Most of them little more than sentence fragments, they’d poured forth in a stream of consciousness, my mind barely able to grasp one before the next in order pushed in behind it.

  Hands swinging free to either side, I’d alternated clenching them in a slow sequence, squeezing one until lactic acid burned in my forearm before switching to the other.

  The entire time my phone had rested on the top rail of my truck bed, the ringer turned on high, me practically willing it to life, almost begging for somebody to get back to me.

  Latham. Pally. Even Diaz.

  Anybody that could make sense of what I was facing. Or at the very least give me a heading on where to go to find answers.

  At the conclusion of those first ten minutes, sweat beginning to form along the small of my back despite the cold, I’d come to the realization I needed to be moving. While the SPD might have allowed me in as a friend of Serra and the deceased, there was no question that every person in the building had had a keen interest the entire time I was there.

  Never did a moment pass when at least one person didn’t have eyes on me. No doubt my name and face had been run through every system they had access to.

  Just like they were no doubt watching me in the parking lot, my continued lingering, pacing, doing nothing to acquit me of any doubts they had.

  Even if I had done nothing wrong, the longer I stayed where I was, the more I gave them reason to grow suspicious.

  A fact that - at the very least - would cost me time I didn’t have.

  Equally important was the simple reality that for as long as I stayed in Snoqualmie, I was getting no closer to whoever had killed Shawn Martin. Or was now in West Yellowstone posing as the attorney for the man that had attacked me.

  Or Junior Ruiz.

  My first move from there was to duck back inside the station. A quick trip to tell Serra that I had to go, but that I would return soon. A plan of action she seemed to already be well aware of, accepting the news with nothing more than another hug.

  No admonishments of being careful, no pleas for me to wait it out and let the police do their jobs.

  Fifteen years, she and Shawn had been married. Perhaps more than anybody outside of those of us on the team itself, she knew how these things went. She was aware of the threats that existed in this world.

  And the lengths we would go to as a result of them.

  From there, I had gone straight back to my truck. Pulling my phone from my pocket, I’d checked the screen again, hoping in vain for there to be a missed call waiting for me. Or a text message informing that more information was forthcoming.

  Something.

  Anything.

  Finding nothing more than the same blank screen that I’d been staring at since hanging up with Latham, I swung in behind the wheel. Starting the engine, I’d allowed the heater to begin piping in air around me, the temperature slowly thawing as I kept the phone in hand.

  Thumbing through the various apps on the home screen, I landed on the navigation system, my first thought to head west. Inputting the Seattle-Tacoma International Airport as my destination, I could probably be there in an hour and change at most, even with evening traffic.

  Catching a flight south, I could be in San Diego by midnight.

  Just as fast, I dismissed the notion.

  In the coming day or two, there was no doubt that was where I would ultimately end up. That’s where Diaz was, less than a couple hundred miles south of where Junior Ruiz had been locked up, roughly the same north of where we had apprehended him.

  I still had no way of knowing if he had gotten out. And if he had, what strings he had pulled, favors traded, or even deals cut to make it happen.

  What I did know was either way, there was zero chance he was leaving the area.

  Everything I could recall about the case originated and existed in that one four-hundred-mile corridor. Every contact we ever considered, every bit of surveillance we ever ran.

  Even most of the business he conducted, the man making a mockery of border patrol as he crossed back and forth with impunity.

  Equally important was the timing of it all, something finally creating the leverage he needed to go after Martin and me both. He’d had time to plan, to reach out to his cohorts, to put things into motion.

  And some reason for acting when he did.

  Regardless of the particulars, my running straight down south would be exactly what he wanted. It would mean I showed up alone and outgunned, making it easy for him to finish exactly what he had tried to the night before on my porch.

  I refused to be so foolish. This was now a lot bigger than just my anger or my ego or whatever else one wanted to assign to it.

  It was about Serra standing inside the police station fifty feet away, devastation splayed across her face at the loss of her partner and my friend.

  Kaylan lying in a hospital bed, mummified in gauze for making the mistake of trying to use the damn restroom after dinner.

  For all of that, Ruiz would pay. And in order for that to happen, I needed to be better prepared.

  Using the backspace feature on my phone’s keyboard, I removed the airport as my destination of choice. Instead, I asked for it to direct me back to the freeway, pausing just long enough to ensure I knew the route before wheeling out of the parking lot.

  According to Google Maps, the drive from Snoqualmie back to West Yellowstone would be ten hours. Ignoring any listed time estimates, I’d leaned hard on the gas, the drive away from the city easy. Moving opposite any form of evening traffic, I pushed the gas as fast as I dared, staying a full ten-to-twelve miles above the speed limit.

  Once I made it to the freeway, I set the cruise control and headed due east across the state, retracing my path from earlier in the day. My nerves pulled taut, I clenched the wheel tight in both hands, willing the miles to pass quickly.

  All of which meant that by the time my phone finally burst to life in the middle console, the ringer still turned up as high as it would go, I nearly shot straight through the roof of the truck. Body surging on an elixir of every chemical I produced, my heart rate spiked as I fired a hand out, snatching up the phone and thumbing it to life without so much as a glance to the screen.

  Balancing it in my lap, I could see the glow of the faceplate in the windshield, my focus alternating between it and the road before me.

  “Tate.”

  “Hawk,” Pally replied.

  Recognizing his tone in an instant, I riffled back through my mind to our previous conversation, pushing aside the mess that had most recent
ly occurred with Latham.

  “What’d you find?” I asked.

  “A shitstorm.”

  A clatter of keys followed the statement. Remaining silent, I repositioned myself in the seat, raising up a bit higher behind the wheel.

  “Okay,” he said after a moment, all sound falling away on the other side. “Here’s what I’ve got so far. And believe me, this is spotty as hell, so don’t bother asking questions.”

  The advance warning did nothing for the myriad feelings working inside me, though I again remained silent, allowing him to continue.

  “Apparently, at five o’clock this morning, the front gate to USP Lompoc opened wide and one Junior Ruiz stepped through.”

  Delivered without inflection, the words still managed to make my jaw drop and my eyes grow wide, palpitations rippling up through my core and passing into my chest. For an instant it was the same as when I’d first learned of Martin’s death, a dull hum settling into my ears, all else fading away.

  Unlike that last time, things snapped quickly back into place, my mind fighting to keep up, to focus on what Pally was saying.

  “Eight years into a forty-year sentence,” he continued. “No official court order, no evidence anywhere of him turning state’s evidence.

  “Just, done. Free and clear.”

  Flicking my gaze up to the green metal signs passing by along the side of the road, it was all I could do to register the words flitting by. Barely did I even see any of the vehicles moving past me in the opposite direction.

  Instead, my full focus went to what Pally had just shared.

  For most of the afternoon, I had known who was behind this. The bullet and the coin left at the Martin house was simply too poignant to ignore.

  Still, that was a far cry from finding out everything that happened last night was a mere hours before he became a free man.

  “Any chatter?” I managed to get out.

  “None,” Pally replied, seemingly expecting the question. “And believe me, I’ve been looking everywhere. Whoever orchestrated this is operating in some rarified air.”