New Growth (Spook Hills Trilogy Book 2) (34 page)

An hour or so later, with the evening gloaming started,
Mathew came out of the front door.
 
As he
neared Ivy and Steve, he noticed Ivy gazing up at the nearest hill.
 
Her grip tightened on Steve’s arm.
 

“Someone is out there,” Ivy said.

“What?” Steve said whirling around, gun at the ready,
pulling Ivy down next to him.
 

Mathew squatted down behind the van, then bent around by the
bumper to peer at the vista around them.

“Ivy, what did you see?” he murmured.

“I detected a presence,” she said,
uneasy
about signaling an alarm based on nothing but a
sense
of someone creeping around.

“Always trust your instincts,” Steve said.
 
“Mine helped me more times than I can count.”

Mathew called Brian to tell him to keep the Fuentes
inside.
 
A couple of agents ran up and
raked the hillside with their night goggles.

“
Up there, on
the near
rise,”
an agent
whispered.
 
“Might be
a
head
by the biggest bush.”

Lenny pointed his gun at the ridge and squinted through the
scope of his M4 Carbine.
 
“Got him.
 
Want me to shoot?”

“Negative.
 
Let the
SWAT guys go after him,” Steve said, as three agents crept towards the
hill.
 
“I want this persistent spy taken
into custody.
 
Damn he moved and is gone
down the far side of the slope.
 
Let’s
climb into the van from this side.
 
Ivy,
drive to the front door and position us to shield the pathway to the limo.
 
Point the nose of the van towards the
driveway.
 

“Mathew, have the other agents form a line on the far side
from the front door to the Fuentes’ limo.
 
The four of them can run hunched over, jump in and flatten down on the
seat.”
 
He nodded at Mathew, indicating
he should take over.

Mathew spoke with firmness into his headset, “When I say so,
exit in safe mode.
 
Moll, get in
first.
 
Be ready to sprint out of the
house and when the car is loaded, race out of here.
 
We’ll be right behind you.
 
Brian, you run with Cruze and Julio.
 
Whoever is last out of the house, lock the
door when you are in the exterior entryway.”

In the van, Steve sat by Ivy’s side.
 
Even with the bulletproof glass, he pulled
her down to make her less of a target from any shooting.
 
Two minutes later, Moll sprinted for the
driver’s seat in the limo with an agent at his shoulder.
 
Behind him, the evacuation of the house went
smooth and fast with Brian running next to Julio and helping him and Cruze into
the car before jumping in with them.
 

Moll sped away from the house, down the bumpy gravel and
dirt track.
 
At the
end
he hooked a sharp right and zoomed along to
pick up
the
main
road leading to U.S. 85 south to Albuquerque.
 
Staying half scrunched down in her seat, Ivy
shadowed him.
 
No shots split the
air.
 
By
phone
Mathew confirmed with the leader to have half the team stay to explore the
expanse around the house and the other half to be right behind them for
protection en route and at the hotel.

“So far so good,” Steve said. He slid over to the passenger
side
while keeping his hand on Ivy’s shoulder,
ready to jerk her away from any peril and take over the driving.
 

Mathew missed having Callie with him, but after now seeing
what was likely Gerkasky at both sites, he agreed with Steve on the likelihood
of an attack the next day.
 
Some gang or
other or hired sharpshooters would be at the Albuquerque cemetery the next
morning to silence the Fuentes and perhaps the rest of them.
 
He was glad Callie was safely in Oregon.

As they drove, Ivy asked, “Why are we going ahead as planned
tomorrow?
  
Shouldn’t we just let the
local FBI office setup a trap for whoever arrives?
 
Aren’t we endangering Julio and Cruze too
much?”

Steve turned in his seat and looked at Mathew.
 
“We need to flush out whoever is after
them,
or we guarantee that they will continue
to be followed.
 
Julio and Cruze have
agreed to this plan.
 
They know the
risks.
 
They
accept them.
 
We will do our best to make
sure they do not fall into the wrong hands.”

“But they could be killed.
 
Any of us could be killed.
 
Aren’t
you endangering yourselves, Brian and Moll way too much?”

Steve reached over and pressed Ivy’s shoulder.
 
“We have a plan.
 
Or I should say Mathew has a plan.
 
This is his operation.
 
Don’t you think we have considered the
options?”

“So Julio and Cruze will be bait?”

“Yes and no.
 
Julio
and Cruze trust us.
 
They would rather
die than face prison.
 
They want to live
the rest of their lives knowing they have paid a debt and moved to right side
of the law.”

Ivy squared her shoulders in that determined way she
had.
 
“Even if it means they could die
tomorrow.”

“
Julio and Cruze
are
choosing death over imprisonment and if they must die, they want it to be with
our agreement in place so they can feel a sense of atonement.”

“They must have
lots of faith
in the two of you.
 
Any chance they could
be devising their own setup for tomorrow to revenge the deaths of Cristo and
Eduardo?”

“Not impossible, but I believe they have placed their
confidence in the four of us in this car,” Mathew said.
 
“They rely on Brian and Moll.
 
As you have said, they are not all bad.
 
Ask them directly at the hotel.”

Ivy relaxed her shoulders and nodded.
 

At the hotel, Julio noted
they
had taken over one wing of the upper floor.
 
Agents
patrolled the corridor,
stairwells
and lobby.
 
Once settled in their suite, Mathew came by
to hand Cruze the album of photographs from his family.
 
Tears of gratitude welled up in his
eyes.
 
Having this compendium of his brothers,
his parents and his childhood raised Cruze’s spirits like waves lifting a
buoy.
 

After opening a bottle of
wine,
Cruze and Julio sat side-by-side on the couch to go over the pictures.
 
The compilation of their young lives remained
as Cruze recollected.
 
Each snapshot they
pulled out had handwritten annotations from Cruze’s mother.
 
Since Julio had not seen them in many years,
they meandered through unhurriedly, a page at a time.
 
He marveled at each grouping and pulled some
out to read the text.
 
On reaching the
ones of Annetta right before her 16
^th
birthday, Julio stared at them
for several minutes.

“I’ll never forget your long hair,” Cruze said.
 
“I remember how the curves of it cascaded
around your shoulders.
 
The style never
wilted or became blown into disarray.
 
You should grow your hair out again.”

Julio shook his head and sighed.
 
“Longer than it is now, but I doubt
long.
 
I will try to morph into Annetta
as a woman, but I can never again be Annetta at 15.
 
Oh Cruze, such deep pain we have experienced,
with more to come.”

“Tomorrow will be the end of this version of you and me,
either by death or by slipping away into our futures,” Cruze said.
 
“Are you sure you want to come with me?
 
If I must die now, at
least
I will be where Cristo and Eduardo are, but you can leave now
and be free.”

“You think this FBI dropout isn’t flying solo?”

“I agree with Mathew and Steve – he is either acting for the
DEA or for someone in our past who wants to silence us or even double-dealing
with both.
 
In the first instance, we
will be captured or killed.
 
Otherwise
we will be executed.”

“No reservations about the agents we know?” Julio asked.

“The
big
guy, Nielsen,
still worries me a little.
 
I am also
anxious an ambitious agent might sneak around to gain notches in his belt for
killing us.”

“I think we can rely on the four former agents,” Julio
said.
 
“Mathew is so kind to
stick
with us, even when he is injured and in
such discomfort.
 
I pray he does not
suffer more on our behalf.”

Cruze nodded and said, “They show strong bonds of commitment
to each other.
 
Now those
bonds
seem to extend to us.
 
They mystify
me,
and they show me how different life can be.
 
My father tried to instill better values in us.
 
By
example
he
attempted
to show us that honest hard
work had its rewards, if limited in the more material ways.”

Cruze stopped to drink some of the red wine he had
opened.
 
“If only my brothers and I had
bothered to look for other pathways to achieve their goals of wealth and
independence, we one day could be settling into retirement together.
 
However they were visionless about the
possibilities in legal
ventures.
 
I tagged along, fearful of taking an
independent stance until too late.
 
I can
blame no one but myself.
 
I was too weak
back then to defy them.
 
Regrets aside,
in no more than twelve hours our fates will be absolute.”
 

That night Julio was so caught up in the memories the photo
album evoked that sleep eluded him.
 
He
sat up in bed and crept out to pick up the binder of photos again.
 
Cruze snoozed in the other room with a
troubled expression.
 
Julio stood in
silence regarding him.
 
Even though
growing up Cristo had been his favored brother, over the years Julio had come
to see Cristo as all one-dimensional bravado with a perspective of life
centering on him and what he wanted.
 
Cristo
only bowed to the more intelligent and
calculating Eduardo.
 

In these last
weeks
Julio realized how much
he
cared for
Cruze.
 
In the
past
he had hovered behind his brother, but he contained more depth
as a man than Cristo.
 
That made Julio
pleased that Cruze was the brother who
survived
.
 
Cristo and Eduardo would never have garnered
the discipline or good
judgment
to walk
away from the international netherworld.

Julio glided out of the room, closed the door and tiptoed
over to sit up in bed.
 
The prospect of
dying the next day did not scare him.
 
Life was harder now that he stopped existing
in
the moment.
 
Instead
thoughts of the person he might have been flitted in and out of his mind.
 
At least part of Annetta might escape into
reality.
 
The
sliver of optimism frightened him.
 
Life
as Julio meant Annetta protected herself
from the world and from the dreaded memories of her adolescence.
 

If he lived after the next morning, Julio
would
revert to Annetta and Annetta was no
longer a
sixteen-year-old
abused
teenager.
 
She was a grown woman only
sketchily defined.
 
Would she be
diagnosed as suffering from schizophrenia, called today dissociative identity
disorder?
 
Julio had read a good deal
about the psychological malady.
 

For many years, she had controlled Julio and when she changed
into him.
 
She created the Julio persona
in a planned way.
 
She retained full
awareness of playing a part as Julio.
  
Even though her masquerade extended over many years, inside she had
always recognized herself as Annetta.
 

Now she found herself
frequently
shifting
out of her role as Julio into Annetta in a manner that
suggested that Julio was disappearing from her psyche.
 
Even here by herself, sometimes Julio
dominated and sometimes Annetta stepped forward.
 
The waffling between the two personas, the
made-up and the real, was dizzying and not supportable for long.

Julio leafed through the pictures again, slipped out the DVD
in the back and put it into his slim laptop, copying the contents over.
 
Those snapshots linked the FBI to his youth
as
Annetta,
and the FBI probably kept
copies.
 
How many of his wrongdoings over
the years were recorded on their books and how many of his crimes would the FBI
discover from the remaining names they would turn over?
 

The list Julio assembled with Cruze was now on the laptop’s
hard disk, with each criminal’s entry annotated with known crimes, locations of
their operations and other information.
 
A copy
was on a thumb drive in his slim
attaché, ready to be turned over in the morning when the agreement was signed.

His thoughts
wavered,
and he could feel Annetta stepping forward with determination, but not without
trepidation.
 
Each of the four men and
the two women seemed like friends.
 
Even
Steve did not alarm her.
 
Since the night
in the London
hospital,
she realized he
had made a
choice,
and he would stand by
it.
 

The three younger men each entranced her.
 
Never had she been exposed to
men
like them.
 
She requested ongoing contact with them because a part of her refused to
let go of their benevolence, which glowed like a pale green flame in her heart,
giving her hope.
 
For the inspiring light
to be extinguished now would be too hard.
 
Mathew drew her to him with his kindness and integrity.
 
She wondered if the big agent, who
personified toughness and yet had let her go in London, sensed her need to
cling to that goodness.
 

Annetta leaned back on the pillows, letting her eyelids
drift down over her eyes and Brian so slender and handsome, yet still
masculine, wafted before her.
 
Sprigs of
silver graced his temples, giving him the added attraction of maturity.
 
She remembered the soft impression of his
hand on her arm or her back as he guided her
downstairs
or into cars.
 
His touch radiated warmth
and assurance without any alarms of aggression, making her tingle in places she
worked hard to shut down inside her body.
 
Even though hopeless to think about him, she savored her moments with
Brian.
 
For a man like him, would she be
willing to address her deep inner problems?
 
This fascination for Brian enticed her into new territory, making her
both glad and sad to never see him again after the next day, whether by death
or by stepping into a new life.

She put the heavy volume of photos aside, turned off the
light and willed herself to doze.
 
She
never slept deeply, not since she was a small child.
 
She had learned to float in
a space
below consciousness where a part of her
always listened, staying on guard and ready to bolt.
 
Avoidance and flight continued as her
preferred weapons.
 
Going through this
transition where she depended on others, from Cruze to the agents, formed a new
experience for her and she fought all her instincts and habits to get through
the days.
 
The dependency carried an
upside, letting her feel sheltered and even valued.

After their meal with Mathew, back in their room Steve
took out his
gun
, inspected the
cartridge, set out additional ammunition and pulled out a second pistol.
 
He examined a new casing and took out a
little roll of red tape.
 
He
put
a bit of
the
red tape on the cartridge and another on the base of the second
revolver, loaded it, tested the grip and put the new piece in his shoulder
harness, leaving his regular gun lying next to his briefcase.
 

“Extra firepower?” Ivy asked.
 

“Yeah,
new
model I
want to try out.
 
Worked well
at
the firing range this afternoon,” Steve said
as he reached over to touch the handle of the new pistol.

Ivy noticed his concerned countenance which told her a
scenario might be anticipated for the next morning that was making Steve
apprehensive.
 
By now Ivy knew Steve well
enough not to pepper him with questions, but she relied on him to tell her as
much as he deemed possible

“Why don’t you get a hot shower?” Ivy asked.
 
“Mine did me a world of good before dinner.”

“Good idea.
 
We need
to get to bed early and be out early.
 
You order any breakfast?”

“4:30 a.m. private conference room downstairs.”

“Good.
 
We’re picking
up an armored assault vehicle that Mathew and I will take in.
 
You’ll be a block or so away with Lenny.
 
Talked him into serving as an ambulance
driver.
 
I want you close by, but not in
the line of fire.”

“But . . .”

“No buts, Ivy.
 
This
is the plan,” Steve said.
 
His face had
taken on the cold agent’s
stare
he could
get that told her not to argue.
 

While not happy to be away from Steve for this last
sting
, Ivy knew by now to follow his
instructions.
 
Although uneasy for his
safety, she also understood that he would not endanger himself more than was
necessary.
 
Earlier in his
life
he might have, but not since they became a
couple.

They slid into bed around nine.
 
A gentle stillness hung around them, as Steve
took her in his arms and held her.

“Do you trust me?” Steve asked in
a low
voice.

“With my heart and with my life,” Ivy replied in a firm,
though soft tone.

He pulled her tighter and whispered.
 
“Remember your words in the morning. We may
hit a time when you might question your faith in me.
 
Keep in mind that I am Steve and you love
me.”

She pulled back to stare at him in the darkened room.

“Tell me,” Ivy said.