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

by Dustin Stevens

  Looking back our way, she added, “All confiscated in prior raids.”

  She didn’t add anything more, but the implication was clear.

  Every single piece found here was something that had been lifted in the course of investigation. Items that weren’t needed for evidence that had found their way into this hold, completely untraceable, to be used only in extreme circumstances.

  Every weapon currently housed at the DEA headquarters was on file. Every serial number was recorded, every ballistic profile had been checked and entered into a database. Same for the evidence locker.

  In no way could she just open up either and give us our pick. No matter how much she might want to, no matter how justified in principle it might be, doing so would be her job.

  Or all three of us ending up in jail.

  After speaking with Juana Salinas, the plan had been to go back to headquarters. To group up with Diggs, determine what he and Pally had been able to find, and put together a working outline.

  A plan that had gotten completely obliterated the instant Diggs informed us Jones and Smith were back at headquarters waiting for us.

  The men hadn’t exactly told us earlier in the day who they worked for, though the implication was plenty clear. As was their intentions, warning us off of going near Junior Ruiz or anybody that might have been affiliated.

  A warning that apparently extended to Juana Salinas. And the various online sources we had spent most of the afternoon digging through.

  Actions that, no doubt, they were back to again tell us to stay away from.

  This time probably being a lot less obtuse in their delivery.

  Knowing that, the instant Diggs had uttered their names, we knew whatever wiggle room we had was gone. Any extra time for planning, any days to prepare ourselves, to let Ruiz sit and linger, on constant vigil for our arrival, had evaporated.

  In response, Diaz had told Diggs to get out of there. To slip away the first chance he had and meet us at this exact location.

  “Thank you for this,” Diggs said, alternating glances between the locker and Diaz.

  “For everything,” I added, neither of saying another word.

  Not that we needed to.

  Diaz had gone well beyond anything we could have expected of her. Earlier today was the first time she and Diggs had ever met. She and I went back a year and a half, were what I would consider friends, but even at that, we couldn’t ask her to put herself out there any further.

  Just what she had done for us already went well beyond expectations. A play most likely mixed of respect for a fallen agent and not wanting to have the headache of Junior Ruiz ever cross her desk again. Added in I’m sure was no small bit of ego, not appreciating Jones and Smith walking in and telling her how to run things.

  Still, she had to exercise some level of discretion. DEA policy didn’t allow descent into vigilantism, and the justice system didn’t look kindly on it either.

  Everything up to this point was still cloaked in some level of plausible deniability. She could claim that she’d been looking into things adjacent to a case. Could possibly even state she had been doing a bit of research in connection to the death of a former agent.

  But there was no way we could ask her to join us for what happened next. Just as there was no way for her to sidestep a directive from another government agency.

  Especially when all conventional forms of inquiry had turned up absolutely nothing.

  The events of this week had started because of what happened eight years before. They were clearly targeted at our team, an effort for someone to exact revenge for some perceived wrong inflicted on them.

  If it was going to end, it was only right that it be us that did it. And that nobody else got pulled down into the resulting jet wash as a result.

  “We’ll see you soon?” I asked.

  “Definitely,” Diaz responded. Taking a step to the side, it was clear she wasn’t going to bother watching whatever we selected, one more thing she could deny with a clear conscious if ever it came to that.

  “And be sure to say hi to those two boys in suits too, huh?” Diggs added, receiving nothing more than a snort as Diaz climbed into her sedan and pulled away.

  Chapter Seventy-Eight

  The vehicle Diggs had rented at the airport was a midsize-SUV. One of the newer models that used letters and numbers instead of giving it an actual name, it couldn’t have had more than a couple of thousand miles on it. If not for the pair of giant coffees tucked into the cupholders separating the front seats, I’d have sworn it even still carried the proverbial new car smell.

  Much roomier than Diaz’s sedan that I’d been forced to fold myself into for a good chunk of the day, I sat in the passenger seat. Spread across my lap and over much of the dashboard was a flurry of white paper, everything Pally had sent over earlier in the day. Nabbed by Diggs when he made his escape a couple of hours earlier, every last detail available to us had been committed to memory, the sum total managing to point out the holes that remained more than provide any kind of working plan moving forward.

  A fact we had already made peace with.

  This wasn’t a DEA raid and we weren’t looking to make an arrest. We had one goal in what we were doing, one thing that needed to be done before we could both return to our respective lives.

  One thing to both put our friend at rest and ensure we both weren’t perpetually on the lookout for Ruiz making an attempt to finish the job.

  Reaching for my coffee, I flicked my gaze to the clock on the dashboard. The glowing green digits revealed it to be fast approaching midnight, the parking lot of the Wal-Mart we were in finally beginning to thin.

  “This has got to be full-on amateur hour compared to what you’re used to,” I said. Taking in a long pull on what remained of my coffee, the lukewarm liquid washed over my tongue, the taste fast drifting toward acidic.

  In no way did my body need the caffeine, the move one born of complete habit. Already surging on anticipation for what felt like days, adrenaline had started to leak into my system as well, setting my nerves on end.

  An ingrained response, my body sensing that action was imminent. Heightened by the presence of Diggs beside me, the experiences we’d shared, every bit of me wanted to go tearing off into the night.

  An eventuality that each passing second brought closer.

  “Ha!” Diggs spat beside me, the single syllable rocking his head back a few inches. “You’d be amazed how many times we’ve had to make chicken shit into chicken salad out there.”

  It was an expression not far from one I’d heard him use often in our own time together. Moments of bemoaning where we were or what our end goal was.

  Times when he didn’t mind being the mouthpiece for the team, saying what we were all imminently aware of but didn’t feel the need to vocalize.

  “Kind of makes you wish just one time they’d start you with chicken salad, just to see what you could really do,” I replied.

  “Got that right,” Diggs agreed.

  The vast majority of what Pally had been able to pull was split into two even piles. On one side was the cumulative history of the various conversations that had occurred.

  Junior Ruiz and his sister. Tres Salinas and his father. A handful of other interactions, all intersecting in a manner that coincided with the conversation Diaz and I had with Juana Salinas earlier in the night.

  Eight years might have passed, but to look at what was laid out before us, it was time spent as little more than a holding pattern. Moments of waiting, looking for the day when somehow he would exit a free man and resume his prior activities.

  Almost as if they knew it was coming.

  On the other side was what had been pulled regarding the Fruit of the Desert Winery. SEC filings, tax information, what little there was regarding a recent start-up business still far from turning a profit.

  None of it useful, little more than something to read, I considered taking it up one last time. Thinking bette
r of it, I shuffled everything into a pile and tossed it onto the backseat. Lifting my backside a few inches, I tugged down the legs of my jeans before settling in, my focus aimed through the windshield.

  Even at such an hour, a steady trickle of foot traffic moved across the brightly lit parking lot. Young twenty-somethings armed with cases of beer and families with small children were all represented in equal measure.

  The occasional solo person was also thrown in, everybody moving fast, their eyes down. Somewhere else to be and little time to get there.

  Beside me, Diggs attempted one last pass through his reading material before giving up as well. Forgoing putting anything into a pile, he simply tossed them over his shoulder, letting them land in a flurry behind us.

  “Man, I hate this shit,” he muttered. Gaze locked parallel to mine, he watched as an elderly couple toddled past, the old man pushing a cart with enormous sacks of dog food piled high.

  The choices too numerous at the moment to even guess at what he was alluding to, I didn’t even try.

  “What’s that?” I asked.

  “Waiting,” Diggs replied. “We know what he did. We know where he is.”

  It was obvious there was so many more things he could add, that maybe even he wanted to, though he managed to stop there.

  Not that I didn’t already know exactly what he meant.

  Flicking my eyes to the dash again, I said, “Three minutes until Pally hits us back. Then we can move.”

  Diaz setting us up with the drop box was only half of what we needed. We might have been equipped with the firepower to make a move on Ruiz, but without some form of intel on where the man was holed up, it would have been nothing more than a kamikaze mission.

  More or less exactly what he wanted.

  “Look at this,” Diggs said, jutting his chin forward to a man exiting the store. Pushing a cart loaded with plastic sacks, he was still dressed in a shirt and tie. Walking in barely more than a shuffle, he leaned forward with both forearms resting across the handle. “Poor bastard can barely keep his eyes open, not even home from work yet, having to stop and get groceries.”

  Feeling one corner of my mouth peel back, I watched as the man pulled up to a sedan on the opposite side of the lane we were parked in. Opening the rear door, he began unloading sacks, a stick figure family at least seven strong plastered across the rear windshield.

  “Come on, you telling me that won’t be you soon enough?” I asked. “You won’t be off on one of these jaunts, find yourself some local woman?”

  “What?” Diggs snapped, flashing a gaze over my direction. “And bring her back here? Start a family, get a dog, build a white picket fence?”

  Meeting his glance, I let my smile grow a bit larger. “It could happen.”

  “Yeah, and I could meet Jessica Alba in the airport on my way back and decide to run off with her...”

  A single chuckle escaped me as we watched the man finish unloading his sacks. Leaving the cart where it was, he climbed in and drove away, one less car providing cover for us as we waited for midnight.

  Smile fading, I watched until the man’s taillights faded before saying, “Seemed to be working for Martin.”

  “Yes, it was,” Diggs agreed, his voice lowered to match mine. For a moment, he added nothing more, before saying, “Same for you for a while there, too.”

  Unable to disagree, to say anything more than what had already been stated, I opted to wait in silence, counting off the last thirty seconds until the sound of my phone erupted between us.

  Chapter Seventy-Nine

  The thin threadbare cotton of the sheet had ripped easily for Tres Salinas. Requiring little more than gnashing his incisors down in a few choice spots, he’d been able to tear chunks from the outer edge.

  Once he had starting points, the weak material was no match, even for his weakened hands. Shearing away in jagged lines, he’d been able to tear the sheet into three semi-equal chunks.

  From there, it had simply been a matter of calling on a most basic skill. Something most young girls are taught before they even reached elementary school.

  Minute after minute of trying to find the patience he didn’t really have, hoping that the same guard that had led him to the interrogation room twice before wouldn’t feel the need to make yet another late-night jaunt down the hallway to check on him.

  Taken alone, the sheet itself wasn’t worth much. Whether intentional or through sheer neglect, there was no way the decrepit garment would ever perform what Tres needed it to. But by tearing it into thirds, he was able to twist each piece into tight rolls.

  Weaving them together in a basic pattern, he could then form a braided rope, the cumulative tensile strength more than sufficient for what he was after.

  In the wake of the public defender disclosing what Tres’s father had shared earlier, there had been no need to further the conversation. No point in asking follow-up questions or beseeching him to perform any further tasks.

  The instant the word was out, Tres had turned his attention to the guard and asked to be returned to his cell.

  Fully aware of how it probably sounded, what the guard would probably think, Tres had positioned himself in the exact spot he’d been earlier in the day. Ignoring the continued pain in his feet and hands, the pickax jabbing into his ribs, the pounding that threatened to cause his head to explode, he had leaned himself against the wall and waited.

  Counting off minutes, he’d remained completely motionless for more than two hours, watching as the guard made repeated trips down to check on him.

  Three times, the man had shuffled forward, making it no further than the edge of the cell. Stopping, he’d leaned in, peering as if trying to catch Tres in the act of something.

  Each time, seeing nothing out of the ordinary, he’d retreated back to the front of the building.

  As close to a suicide watch as West Yellowstone ever got, Tres imagined.

  Not until evening began to cede into night did Tres begin to work. Trusting that any interest in him would wane with the passage of time, he’d started in on the sheet. Moving as fast as his battered hands would allow, he threaded the uneven chunks together, droplets of blood oozing from his fingers, dotting the yellowed material.

  The point in the second meeting with the public defender was not in hope that his father might have some new directive for him. He had known what he was doing when he volunteered for the assignment. Was fully aware of what would happen should it ever come to this.

  Many times his father had tried to dissuade him, but Tres had insisted.

  Everything their family was, everything they had ever been, was based on the kindness of Junior Ruiz. To serve him the way his father had was a singular honor Tres was glad to shoulder.

  His mother had never understood such a thing. Neither had a sister. They’d never been able to understand why their father had lived the life he had, just as they didn’t get it when this opportunity arose and Tres promptly left the life he’d built to help.

  But he didn’t expect them to. They were not of the same ilk as he and his father, did not understand how these things went. Too long they had been in America, assimilating into a new society, relishing the comforts they found there.

  Just like he didn’t expect them to understand what he was doing now.

  The only reason in asking to see the attorney a second time was simply to ensure that the message had been received. To let it be known that he had made a mistake so that they could better prepare.

  Once that was confirmed, his concerns allayed, he had made peace with what happened next.

  Working his way to the end of the sheet, Tres tied a ragged knot. Looping it through three times, he pulled it tight, ensuring that the makeshift rope that was coiled around him would not unravel.

  The first option for most people in his position was generally to attempt hanging. Having seen too many movies before, they assumed that there was some light fixture strong enough to hold their weight or something
strong enough to use as a rope.

  It had taken nothing more than a cursory glance around the cell to determine that wouldn’t be an option here.

  The ceiling above him was nothing but smooth concrete, all light coming from the bulbs lining the outer hall. The twin crosspieces on the front cage were at his knees and chin, neither tall enough to create the needed leverage to cause a clean break.

  Even the rope he’d just braided, acceptable for his current plan, would not suffice for holding his body weight.

  Instead, Tres had gone with the less obvious.

  Keeping the end of the rope in hand, he formed a loose slip knot. Looping it over his head, he pulled it tight at the base of his neck, a macabre necktie cinched into place.

  Spinning it around to the base of his hairline, he let the remainder of the rope trail down his back. Raising his knees beneath him, he brought his ankles together and tied the opposite end of the rope around them, allowing himself just barely enough slack to roll over onto his stomach.

  Legs curled upward behind him, he could feel the tension of the rope across his windpipe, water coming to his eyes as he took one last long breath.

  “Farewell,” he whispered, extending his feet as far as he could, keeping them there as the world around him slowly faded to black.

  Chapter Eighty

  For no larger than the drop box was, it had held a cornucopia of small arms and tactile provisions. Far more than the two of us could ever hope to use and still survive, we’d left more than half of it behind as we locked up and drove away.

  Even at that, it made for quite a spread stretched out across the back of the rented SUV.

  “Just like old times, yeah?” Diggs asked.

  Standing opposite me behind the rear bumper, Diggs finished strapping a thigh holster around his black canvas pants. Moving with practiced precision, it was clear it was still something he did with great frequency, the top of the rig falling just below his fingertips.