Laughing Eyes: Bittersweet Familia (3) (23 page)

Danny

“You fucking did what?”

Had he completely lost his mind? Was his head so focused on Laila that the rest of the world just didn’t matter?

“We had no choice!” Aiden said, his tone definite.

“You shot two policemen. That shit carries consequences, brother.”

“I know, which is why we are leaving Reno.”

Once again Aiden, Laila, Ethan and Jorge were on the move. Not convinced that this was a situation out of the law’s control, Laila had taken off and revealed everything to the police. Turns out, they too worked for Hector. Or Aguila as they called him. He was a man who had taken over the whole of the Americas, the influence, power, and fear he instilled in others, widespread.

“Ok, so where are you now?’

“Heading further East.”

“Keep going, I will find you your next safe house. Maybe this time you could stay there longer than twelve hours.”

Twenty minutes later I messaged through the next location. It wasn’t secure, just a dingy motel along the highway, but it would have to do until a safer location could be organized with more time.

Angelo had his phone tapping up quicker than expected, so I set myself up in my hotel room waiting for the spider web of cell connections to be made.

My eyelids began to droop, the glare of the laptop screen and boredom of waiting was starting to kick in. There were a few red dots popping up on the radar, but nowhere near Aiden and Laila’s current location. I resigned myself that this would be a work in progress.

Anna’s beautiful face appeared before me just as I closed my eyes. She was radiant, her smile one of an angel. She was wearing the long white nightie, the same one she wore when she died, except it was no longer covered in blood. Her long dark hair was flowing like she was caught in a gentle breeze and suddenly I fell in love with her all over again. She extended her hand out to me, but mine didn’t return the favor. I wanted to touch her again so desperately I could feel that familiar heavy weight on my chest. The serene smile she wore dropped and was instantly replaced with a look of fear I remembered all too well. She looked over her shoulder, as if searching for whoever had suddenly changed the mood of our meeting. She turned back to me and called my name. I couldn’t respond. Why couldn’t I talk to her?

“Danny!” She called again, this time more urgent.

Again I could say nothing.

“Danny!” There was no mistaking the genuine fear in her eyes. She needed me and I could do nothing to help her.

“Danny, please help us!”

Us?

Anna’s face blurred as if she were being erased and suddenly I was looking at another beautiful face. Laila’s.

The genuine fear in her eyes had my heart racing. She was frantic, too scared to look around for fear of what she might see. Both her arms reached out beckoning me to save her.

“Danny, he is here.”

With those last four words, she straightened, her arms falling to her side, a look of resignation on her face as her body faded into nothing.

Jolting from my sleep I looked at the time. I had been out for over an hour. My heart was thumping painfully in my chest, sweat drenching every inch of me.

“Fucking hell!” I muttered, inhaling deeply.

My heart leaped yet again at the sound of my cell vibrating noisily on the glass table, the number unknown. I answered the call by not saying anything, knowing I had approximately fifteen seconds before my location was traced.

There was a crackling sound and two people having a conversation. I had been tapped into their line. Angelo was a fucking genius. It was difficult to make out what they were saying, my Spanish being at such a low level. They conversed mostly in English, the rest I would have to guess.

“In forty-eight hours,” I heard one voice say, “Consider it your best interests to work within that time frame.”

The second voice responded in a rapid flow of Spanish and then the line went dead. My eyes flew to my laptop, dread filling my gut as the tiny red dots grew in numbers as each second passed. Red dots equaled connections. Those connections were to be avoided at all costs. What I didn’t count on was just how many there were and how widespread they existed. We were swimming in them. Soon we would be drowning with no possible chance of escape.

Dialing Jorge’s number, I emailed a screen shot of the evidence we didn’t want to see.

“Yep,” he answered in his typical short fashion.

“Check your email.”

There was a pause while I assumed he doing as I said.

“Fuck me. Is that what I think it is?”

“Sure is. Bro, you need to get the fuck out of there and fast and even then I think the safest option is to get you all out of the country.”

“We can’t. I think you are forgetting Aiden killed two cops. We need to stay out of the system for a while. Are they all Florez’s connections?”

“The hack was set up for Juan’s phone. Whenever he contacts someone, the hack then hooks up with the new number and so forth, allowing the web to expand. All the red dots are potential targets.”

There was a silence while Jorge digested the information.

“All right, I will let Aiden know,” he finally said, his pissed off tone more than obvious.

“Try to make moves soon. This whole situation is unstable and I seriously think we have underestimated the stretch this family has when it comes to recruiting.”

There was a scoff on the other end. “Let’s just kill the fuckers already!”

Danny

The sheets beneath me were wet with my sweat. My body warm, chest hurting with a racing heart, She was in my dreams again. They both were. The beautiful faces of Anna and Laila begging for help, desperate for me to reach out to pull them from the nightmare.

The small light on my phone flashed indicating a missed call. Downing the now warm glass of water on the nightstand, I flicked on the lamp. Six missed calls from Aiden, eight from Jorge.

Up until this point I had only conversed with Jorge, allowing Aiden to focus on Laila, but now my gut was churning with a sense of very real dread I hadn’t felt in a long time.

Aiden answered on the first ring. “Danny, are you ok?”

“Yes, why?”

“You weren’t answering.”

“I was sleeping. What’s wrong?”

“Juan has Laila.”

Suddenly the girl in question appeared in front of me. The same anguished face from the dream was telling me it was all too real.

“How?”

“She went downstairs at the motel. The car was trashed and she must have gone to inspect it. I was at the shops and Ethan and Jorge were in the adjoining room. They didn’t see or hear her leave.”

“How do you know it was him?”

“Video surveillance around the motel. She walked down the stairs and over to the car. The tires were slashed. Juan snuck up from behind and seconds later he was forcing her into the trunk of his car.”

“Fuck me! Did the asshole lay a finger on her?” Juan had already raped the poor girl back at the mansion. There was simply no doubt that given the chance, he would do it all over again.

“He kissed her and then pistol whipped her.” There was no denying the mix of hurt and anger in Aiden’s voice. I knew he would feel responsible for her recent abduction. I also knew that he was falling fast for Laila.

“Do you think they have gone back to the mansion?”

“No, he’s not. He’s heading out into the Nevada.”

“How do you know?”

“Juan made the mistake of taking one of Hector’s fleets. It’s tracked with a GPS that is on my phone. We are a few hours behind him, but he definitely isn’t heading back to Mexico.”

“Right, I’m on my way. Whatever he has planned, ends today.”

Danny

Two hours later, I pulled to a stop next to Aiden’s car, or in actual fact, the one he had stolen. Ethan, Laila’s brother, was pacing back and forth his head down in concerned concentration. Jorge was running his hand over his face in a repetitive motion that told me he was stressed. Aiden looked heartbroken. To others he was keeping it well together. But I knew him, and I could see the toll this was taking on his heart and mind.

“They’re another six miles from here,” Aiden said keeping his best calm tone, “Waiting for us.”

“He still wants Ethan?”

“On a silver platter. Here.” He handed me his phone where I read the message from Juan.

‘Game on, brother. No rush, your mamasita is giving me all her full attention.’

My own heart sank. It seemed like Aiden and I both had the knack for finding the same kind of evil. Nicolas did the same to Anna. The hell he put her through, using her body as if she was his, single handedly destroying her will and shattering her into tiny pieces.

“What’s the plan?” I said, realizing I had been staring at the phone for longer than needed, Aiden picking up on the memories such a message would evoke.

“I’m sorry, Danny. I know this was the last thing you needed to go through again.” There was genuine concern in his voice, but I couldn’t allow my past to hinder the future that belonged to him and Laila.

“It’s fine, truly. Let’s just find this fuck and settle the score.”

Aiden hesitated for a few seconds, unsure whether I was speaking the truth. “Ok,” He said hesitantly. Pulling his tablet off the trunk of the car, he pointed to the screen where the red dot told me the location of our target. “I was thinking you take this road and loop around. If you go this way you can surprise them by flank. His attention will be on me which makes him a perfect target between us.”

“Ok, but we need to perfectly time this. We are in the middle of the desert which means he will see you coming. There will be no backing out, no changing of plans. Once we are on our roads, stay in touch so that we reach at similar times. He will be expecting you to come from the North, your last location.”

“Correct. I will need you to take Ethan. I don’t want him to be in the firing line. If you can, take out Juan’s men, as many as possible, but leave him for me.”

***

Back in the car heading South, Ethan remained quiet. I didn’t know much about the kid other than he was the main cause of our current predicament. It’s hard to say whether his getting involved with the Florez family was a bad thing. For one, if he hadn’t come along it would’ve made it extremely difficult for Aiden to remove the two underage girls from the awful fates that awaited them. Perhaps it was just a case of the wrong person being used for the job. If it was someone else perhaps they wouldn’t have had their sibling seeking their whereabouts. But it is what it is and now Ethan was struggling to come to terms that there was a real possibility he may never see his sister again.

“You know how to shoot a straight line?” I had to ask, even if he did look like the type who bummed it out at the beach.

“No,” he mumbled, his eyes staring out into the nothingness of the desert.

“Right, well shit’s about to get real interesting where we’re going so I need you to really listen to what I say. I can’t have a grown man freaking out just because he’s pissed his pants with fear. You hear me?”

No response.

I waited for another five minutes of silence to pass before I changed tact. “Look, Ethan… Laila will be fine. It’s gonna get a whole lot messy before it gets any better, but at the end of the day, we are going to do all that we can to get her back.” I could promise our efforts would not be vain, but it simply would not be fair to promise something and it not be true. I couldn’t say we would get his sister back alive. Four years ago I was certain Anna would have been on that plane with me out of Costa Rica safe and sound. But that’s not how shit works out.

“Will he kill her?” Ethan asked. His voice was so quiet I could barely hear him. His attention now glued to the scenery.

“I just don’t know. From what I do know that Aiden has told me, he likes to play games. He loves the thrill of the chase, which is what he has us doing now. I know men like Juan. They are ruthless, born without a conscience and are void of all emotion that makes us human.”

I could feel Ethan’s gaze now on me. “Who have you met that was like Juan?” It was a simple question and one meant with no ill-intent but it still chilled me to the bone. I didn’t have the words to answer him.

“Is this what you do? Hunt down people like him?” Ethan continued.

“It’s certainly becoming a trend.”

A silence settled between us. I could still see the glances from my inquisitive passenger, not content with my lack of answer.

“I met a man worse than Juan. He was a cold, cold man. Not an inch of humanity in him. It was like he was born without a heart. Only a mind that was solely focused on destruction.”

“What did he do?”

“An arms producer. He had his factory set in the heart of Costa Rica, but would travel to the outskirts of Panama recruiting people to work for him. He targeted the poor who had been ostracized from the community after the war. If they didn’t go with him, his troops would kill them all, women, children, all cold-blooded murders.”

“Did you stop him?” Ethan was like a kid at story time. Sometimes I forget that the average man was innocent to world I had witnessed.

“Did I stop him? Well… I killed him, but only after he had taken something very dear from me.”