Fierce Protector: Hard to Handle trilogy, Book 1 (10 page)

Zack applied a blue cold-pack to her face. “Go back a few steps, Eva. Who is ‘he’ and who is ‘they’?”

“My brother, Hank. He’s been getting himself involved in the wrong kind of business since he was a teenager. I don’t know how he stayed out of jail,” she said. “He’s depended on me more than I care to admit. Without me, I don’t know where he’d be.”

“What kind of business?”

She was quiet for a moment, terrified as to how Zack would react. “Drugs,” she said quietly. “I don’t think he uses them much,” Eva added honestly, “but he’s been moving things around for drugs people.”

“Guns?” Zack asked immediately, assessing the level of the threat.

“No, no,” she insisted, “he’s not violent.” Zack gave her a look. “Well, not normally.”

Zack brought out another cold pack to replace the first one. “So he’s a courier?”

“Something like that. They use him for fairly simple jobs and I guess he was given something to do and screwed it up.”

“Was he caught by the cops?” asked Zack, doing his best to follow closely, despite the late mind and the tiring evening.

“He lost the ‘package’,” she said using hand quotes. “And some money. They’re really pissed with him. And he thinks they’re really serious people, the kind who would just . . .” She held a finger to her temple in an unmistakable gesture.

“He can’t just go to the cops? They’d protect him.”

Eva shook her head. “They have cops on their payroll. It wouldn’t be any use, and then they’d kill him anyway for trying to snitch on them.”

Zack removed the ice pack and took a close look at Eva’s face. “Sounds like an impossible situation.” She nodded, winced slightly as he pressed the swollen skin under her eye. “I’d take a number and get in the line to beat him up, but I guess he’s got enough trouble right now. You’ve got to admit, though . . . hitting his sister is pretty damned
low
.”

“I’m not going to argue with that,” she said through the pain.

Zack reflected on the situation, willing his tired brain to analyze it, to step back and see the larger picture; and to ignore the emotions – Eva’s and his own – which swirled confusingly around the few facts. “I mean, does he really think you’re hiding a pile of cash under your bed?”

“I know,” she smirked, “it’s kinda ridiculous, right? I mean, Cheryl’s a great boss but it ain’t that far above minimum wage, and all my savings went into fixing up the car and getting out of Illinois.”

Zack returned to holding her hand, something she found profoundly reassuring. “Did you have to leave because of what Hank was in to?”

“It was partly that, partly some other things,” she said.

Zack didn’t press further. “Well, my priority is to keep you safe,” he said. “There’s nobody going to hurt you. Do you understand?”

She squeezed his large, warm hand between hers and smiled at him, her first since arriving. “Thank you so much, Zack.” Relaxing a little, Eva then remembered her friends with a start. “Would you text Trish or Tyler and let them know I’m OK?”

“Want me to tell them you’re at my place?” he asked, sensitive to how that would be seen.

Eva thought for two seconds, then imagined how Trish would smile about it. “Sure. Leave out the details though, OK? I’m trying to keep them out of it. We’ll just say I braked suddenly to avoid a rabbit and whacked my head.”

Zack eyed her skeptically but brought out his phone and sent the message. “There’s a friend I’d like to call, in the morning. I think he’ll be able to help.”

“Your SEAL buddy at the DEA?” she said.

Zack laughed. “So you
were
paying attention.” Eva nodded, filled with yet more admiration for this caring half-stranger and happy for any support. “It’s late, and I guess you’re exhausted.” He was going to say
beat
, but it hardly seemed appropriate. “I’ll take this couch. Why don’t you shower and then take my room?”

He helped her up and walked her to the bathroom, less unsteadily than before. “Lock the door if you want to,” he said, handing her a towel. “And shake me if you need anything, OK?” He returned to the sofa and started arranging the cushions.

“Zack?” He turned. “Thanks for everything. I . . . I hardly know you but you’ve been so kind.”

“Think nothing of it,” he said, closing the living room curtains and turning on a side light. “Just relax. You couldn’t be safer.”

Chapter 6 – Kingpin

When a man achieves notoriety, Vincent reflected, there was no longer the need to chase down those who owed him. A pile of cash the size of a microwave oven sat on a battered wooden table in the center of a cavernous, echoing warehouse building. The only sounds were the retreating footsteps of the two lackeys who had brought Vincent today’s winnings; betting against the Rangers used to feel disloyal, but now it was merely good business practice. He could have had one of his men count the cash, but there was hardly any need. His reputation already cemented by a series of violent reprisals and territorial acquisitions, Vincent knew that a small gambling syndicate would never be
dumb
enough to short-change him. He lit a cigar and put his feet on the table, relaxing in an ancient, but still magnificently comfortable office chair.

“Jesus, Vincent,” came a voice. “Did they used to assemble moon rockets in here, or something?” Curt was the square-jawed muscle man of the San Antonio operation and, despite Vincent’s efforts, still saw fit to express an opinion on almost everything. “This place is
huge
!”

Vincent remained seated as the younger, decidedly more brutish man approached the table and took one of the wooden chairs opposite his boss. A severe haircut had left him with a shock of graying hair which barely covered his scalp, and within his black, leather jacket, Vincent was certain, lurked at least two firearms. But Curt was easily controlled, easily manipulated. And Vincent knew just how.

“Curt, it is these keen powers of observation which I intend to put to good use,” Vincent said, his Minnesota accent still jarringly alien to south Texas, even after a year here. “You’ll remember our good friend, Hank Montgomery?”

Curt grunted. “A delivery boy, right? Low-level.” For Curt, people were either ‘low-level’, in which case they could safely be treated like crap, or ‘high-level’, which meant they received deference, obedience and instant loyalty. It was a stark social division which had served Vincent well.

“A delivery boy, as you say, Curt,” Vincent confirmed, “but not a very good one. He appears,” Vincent explained, puffing frequently on his cigar, “to have allowed his delivery to go missing.”

Curt shook his head. “Dumbass.”

“Quite so, Curt. Your judgment of character is as perspicacious as your architectural analysis.” Vincent loved to bandy around these huge words, the better to cement his status as a ‘high-level’ player; with intelligence, he had come to understand, came respect, in much greater amount (and more genuinely) than through violence. Though physical action still had its place, so much more could be achieved by mental agility.

“Want me to smack him, boss?” asked Curt, eager to please, as ever.

“I think not, on this occasion. How, one might ask, would a battered and bruised Hank Montgomery produce cocaine and cash which an undamaged Hank Montgomery was unable to produce?”

Curt thought this one over. “Want to put some pressure on, instead?”

Ah, you’re learning, my muscular, young apprentice.
“He’s in the booming metropolis of Sutherland, Texas. Do you know it?” Curt shook his head once more. “No, I’m not surprised. There’s no reason to. Still, our Hank has found commodious lodgings at a motel near town, and has been making contact with family in the area. “

Curt frowned for a second. “How do we know that?”

“We have the technology,” Vincent said cryptically, tapping the side of his nose. “Now, why would you think he’s bothering to visit Sutherland?”

“To borrow the money?”

“Good analysis, my muscled friend. But one would be surprised, would one not, to discover that one’s family were able to produce from under their floorboards six kilograms of high-grade Colombian cocaine?”

Curt smiled, enjoying his boss’ favorite methods of delivering news. And work. “One would,” he replied.

“Still, money is money, and wherever he gets it from, it will end up
right here
,” he said, tapping the table. “All you have to do is make sure his family, or friends, or whoever, sufficiently understands the gravity of the situation.”

“I’m pretty good at gravity,” Curt responded, cracking his knuckles.

“Ah, no. I fear yours is the violent road and, on this occasion, it is the road less traveled which I need you to take. Follow him. Take pictures. Make notes. Call me every few hours and tell me what he’s doing, who he’s talking to, where he’s eating. I want a file on this little rat that’s thick enough to choke him with.”

Curt rose and waited for the usual envelope of cash, which arrived from Vincent’s inside jacket pocket. “And Curt, do me a favor. Leave the shooters with me. The last thing we want is this thing going nuclear when it’s just a simple misunderstanding.” With unconcealed reluctance, Curt unloaded his two pistols and laid them on Vincent’s table. “I appreciate that, Curt. Now, go and build that file. And keep your distance. This is a fish to be reeled in
slowly
.”

***

They had been bound, gagged and shot in the head, just like the others.

The coroner was taking photos and notes as Grayson Alexander arrived in his unmarked car, coffee in hand, and made his way under the yellow police tape. Not that any prying eyes had shown up. This spot, ‘just outside of the middle of nowhere’, as his Captain had put it, was as innocuous as they came, the service roads of a tiny airport used almost exclusively for flying in agricultural supplies for the huge, circular fields to the east. It was, therefore, the ideal place to carry out a pair of executions and dump the bodies.

“Thirty-six hours at the most,” the coroner said. “We’ve got sufficient residual spatter to indicate they were shot right here.” One of the first facts to be established was whether the killers had done the deed elsewhere and transported the bodies here for dumping, or whether this had been where these two men had met their end. Not that it made very much difference to the victims.

“Can anyone say, ‘gangland style execution’?” Grayson asked rhetorically. “Who are we dealing with, Bob?” His photographic survey finished, the coroner helped Grayson turn the two men over.

“One male Latino, maybe thirty-five years old, two hundred pounds, heavily tattooed. I’d say an ex-convict, judging by the quality of these ones here,” he said, pointing out two clumsy, thick-lined tattoos made with ersatz prison materials. “The other guy is younger, not older than twenty-three, I’d say. White, good teeth, no marks inside his elbows,” the coroner added, establishing that the deceased had not been a habitual heroin user. “Not exactly peas in a pod, are they?”

Grayson took notes, partly in writing and partly in a dictaphone, called two colleagues at the crime lab and then took his usual slow walk around the area. It was flat, nondescript farmland of the kind found all over Texas. The airfield was silent, with one very obviously broken aircraft sitting forlornly at the end of the runway. There were seed storage buildings across the highway, and a couple of temporary huts housing offices for a produce market, probably the only people who had noticed the area was now cordoned off. For all he could tell, it was a random, quiet spot for a bit of late-night murder before heading into San Antonio for a beer.

“You ready to move these two?” he asked. The coroner nodded and his small team began the process of transferring the unfortunate pair to their truck for the journey to the morgue. Grayson sat in his car and continued his notes. He had resisted the urgings of younger colleagues and insisted on hand-writing everything, rather than ‘outsourcing his brain’, as he had called it, to an IPad or something similar. He was the same about his coffee; black, unvarnished, no damned
pumpkin
or
cinnamon
. Some things in this crazy world, he had concluded, needed to stay the same. His gleaming Harley, awaiting the weekend patiently in his garage was, to Gray, a powerful symbol of that belief.

He considered the two dead men, now being loaded into the coroner’s van. It was always the same pair of questions: how did you come to be here, and how did you come to be dead? Somebody obviously felt that it was worth risking the death penalty in order to entirely remove these two human beings from the population. Ergo, they must have done something so irritating, or unwelcome, or costly, that such a risk became reasonable. What could that have been?

Neither had been, as far as Gray knew, an informant. Neither were known to be on the west Texas distribution scene, although the
dramatis personae
of local dealers and pushers was in constant flux. Still, that remained the most likely reason: a territorial dispute which had escalated. Gray could readily imagine the sequence of events, beginning with initial warnings, moving on to direct threats, and then a sudden smashing down of their door, the disorienting bag over the head, the terrifying claustrophobia of the trunk of a car. Then the brief, one-sided conversation with whoever had ordered their execution, a calm explanation of the rules of the business and the inevitability of moments such as these. Perhaps they were even told that it wasn’t personal.

Gray had just finished his notes when his phone rang.

“Gray, it’s Zack Norcross. You got a minute?”

***