Strong Rain Falling: A Caitlin Strong Novel (Caitlin Strong Novels) (34 page)

“There are only two kinds of creatures, Ana: those who hunt and those who are hunted. Animals do not choose their lot, but people do.”

It was the simplest but most important lesson she had ever learned, one that stayed with her each and every day. Life was indeed a hunt, rife with prey to be stalked and commanded, if not destroyed.

And, sometimes, even killed. Her father had realized that was all Locaro was good for, so he’d given up on his son and turned to his daughter, who embraced his wisdom along with the realization that power was everything because without power there was nothing.

Ana Guajardo recalled the time her father had made her stand against a wild boar, on the verge of trampling and goring her when her final bullets at last brought it down, snorting and belching hot breath from its nose until it finally died.

“That boar I now realize,
Papá,
represented the United States, and from that day on I’ve learned to stand against the enemy who dwarfs us the same way the boar dwarfed me. I still have the knife I used to field dress that animal, and I’ll never forget its blood and entrails spilling all over me, just like the blood of the children in Willow Creek did last week. Because now the roles have switched. We are the boar and the United States is the frightened child about to be trampled in our path. All your dreams are to be fulfilled, vengeance gained on the enemies of our people and our family. Those who would cast us off as refuse, those who would betray all that we worked to attain going back almost a century now.” The smell of feces from his diaper seemed to dissipate briefly, before returning even thicker. Guajardo adjusted her father’s hat to keep the sun from hurting his eyes. “Whoever said revenge is sweet was wrong,
Papá
, because it isn’t, but that makes it no less necessary. We can feign strength to others but must find it in our hearts as well. And only the weak allow sins against them to go unpunished.”

Ana had built this five-thousand-acre preserve as a testament to her father’s vision and teachings, which had made her everything she was. The preserve was divided into eight separate quadrants enclosed by heavy steel fencing to discourage interspecies mingling that would surely turn deadly. Guajardo did not charge a fee of any of those who came to Rancho Enrique; they came by invitation only, culled from those who could advance, or had advanced, her business and political interests. The preserve allowed for the ultimate payback, rendering Ana’s guests all the more beholden to her.

Rancho Enrique boasted the perfect climate and terrain to maintain the kind of exotic animals that would die most other places. There were ample grazing areas as well as open spaces atop hardened clay and cracked tundra that gave way to thick forestlands perfect for both smaller species and the hunters who enjoyed the notion of evening the odds a bit more. She felt as if this were some less futuristic version of Jurassic Park, offering a comparable experience with far more predictable species. She cared nothing for the animals—rare, endangered, or otherwise—sacrificed toward her greater ends. They were no different to Ana than ballot box manipulations, compromising photographs, discreet bribes, not so discreet extortion, or political payoffs. All merely tools and nothing more.

Her father had made his initial fortune building an elaborate marijuana distribution network through the United States following his release from prison just after her tenth birthday. She had made herself far richer, on the order of billions, by using the vast stores of laundered drug money she controlled to buy herself the entire country of Mexico. And soon, very soon, she would sit back and watch while the country she had despised for as long as she could remember became the very same backward and desperate land Mexico had so long been perceived to be.

“Why do you hate the United States so much?”

It was a question posed to her on numerous occasions, one to which Ana Guajardo had no precise answer. Every time she contemplated one, she felt a tugging on her brain, a curtain of haze trying to lift on something she could not clearly see. It couldn’t be just the rape of her mother at the hands of the new work foreman Locaro had sliced to pieces with his machete as a ten-year-old boy in the Rio Grande Valley. She remembered the hose stinging her skin as her mother washed away the blood that had sprayed her. But the haze always returned before she could recall something else from that day, some lost truth that forever eluded her and perhaps held at least part of the answer others sought that she couldn’t provide.

Upon learning of the moves she had made to divest their interests from American holdings five years ago, her father had summoned her to his fourth-floor office in their hacienda.

“This is business, Ana,” he had scolded. “You must never let your personal prejudices interfere with business.”

He had turned away, a clear sign he considered the matter finished.

“When did kissing the Americans’ feet become part of our business?” Ana had challenged instead of leaving.

“You would have us sacrifice profits?”

“I would have us do business in a way that serves Mexico’s interests instead of those of our American investors.”

Her father had shaken his head, his look of disappointment profound. “You’ve made my decision easy, at last,” he sighed.

“What decision?” she asked him, starting forward.

“You are not fit to succeed me. I’ve tried so hard to teach you, and yet you are no different from your brother. You are even worse for having squandered the chance I gave you to do great things. Now, like him, you will be nothing because you can’t set aside your hate even for one moment. No matter how many times I warn you, you persist. Tell me why, Ana. Tell me why so I can help you.”

But Ana couldn’t, because she didn’t know.

“We are done here,” she remembered her father saying. “Leave me.”

But Ana held her ground, risking more of her father’s wrath and temper.

“
Tu estás muy débil,”
he charged. “You are weak and no longer fit to work with me. You are no better than your mother, just not a
puta
like she was, sleeping with every man she could find while I was in prison.”

Ana felt herself begin to shake.

“You bring me no grandchildren because you are empty inside.”

That’s when Ana felt something snap. She recalled picking up her pace but nothing beyond that. The haze that had enveloped her after the rape of her mother returned, clearing to find her father lying broken on the concrete drive four stories down while gardeners and security men alike looked up at her.

“I’m sorry,
Papá,
” she said now to the figure hunched in the wheelchair that barely resembled the strong, vibrant man she remembered. “I’m sorry you did not share my vision for the future.”

Guajardo felt a buzzing on her hip. She stopped her father’s wheelchair and jerked the walkie-talkie from her belt, raising it to her ear.

“I told you I was not to be disturbed,” she snapped at whoever was on the other end. Rancho Enrique offered no cell phone service and she never walked the property without a reliable alternative.

“
Señora,
” said the voice she now recognized as belonging to a guard at the front gate, “there is someone here who insists on seeing you. A Texas Ranger.”

“A Texas Ranger?” she said, wondering if she’d heard the man right. What could they possibly want with her? How could they have known she’d be here? “Tell him to make an appointment with my office. Give him the number.”

“But
señora,
she is already on her way.”

“She?”

“
Sí,
a woman.”

“And you let her
in
?”

“
Ella no me dio ninguna opción.
She did not give me much choice,
jefa. Ella me dijo que me iba a patear los huevos.
”

“I should kick you there myself for letting her in.”

“There’s something else,
jefa
. The Ranger told me she came here because your life may be in danger.”

88

L
OS
M
OCHIS,
M
EXICO

“You can see my reason for concern, ma’am,” Caitlin Strong explained to Ana Callas Guajardo minutes later, after finding her in the enclosure set before an area where two African white rhinos were grazing comfortably in a field. Their tiny tails waved side to side in rhythm with the wind that blew the scents of animal musk and stale feces straight into the two women. Caitlin noticed a shriveled figure in a wheelchair huddled in the shade of a large oak tree. “I felt it was my duty to come down here and warn you personally.”

“And this is because…”

“The same killers who may be after you came after a pair of teenage boys up in Texas. They’re your twin sister’s boys, ma’am, your nephews,” Caitlin said, comparing Ana Guajardo to pictures she’d seen of Maura Torres. Clearly, they weren’t identical twins, but the resemblance between them remained striking.

“Well, Ranger, your coming all this way is a much appreciated yet altogether unnecessary gesture,” Guajardo told her, having to ungrit her teeth to manage the effort and fighting not to show her shock at the Ranger’s knowledge of her background. Caitlin Strong had wielded that knowledge like a blow, waiting for Ana’s reaction to see if it had landed. “I’m very well protected.”

“I imagine that’s what the parents of those children we found in Willow Creek last week thought. Got them packed off safely to school, just like they did every day, only this time they never came home.”

“And you believe I’m in danger because of
that
?”

“Ma’am, I believe you’re in danger because of what I’ve managed to learn about your past. You had a twin sister who was raised by your real parents. Whoever was behind the murders of those kids in Willow Creek hired professional gunmen to kill your twin sister’s sons too. Mexicans. That mean anything to you?”

“Why should Mexican gunmen, hired killers, mean anything to me?”

“Because you’re so well protected. I just figured you’ve come to make the acquaintance of plenty of men who fit that description down here.”

“Down here,” Guajardo repeated, trying to capture the obvious disparagement in the woman Ranger’s voice. “As in Mexico, you mean.”

“Or hell, ma’am. Take your pick.”

Guajardo noted an expression that might have been confused for smugness rode the female Ranger’s countenance, as if she practiced it in front of a mirror. The Stetson looked too big for her tight, angular features and hint of Mexican descent in the thick portions of her hair that pushed out from the hat’s confinement. She’d removed it politely as soon as she reached Ana, holstered pistol riding her hip like a steel appendage.

“Get back to why you think I may be in danger,” Guajardo told Caitlin Strong.

“I wish I could tell you for sure,
Señora
Guajardo, but I believe it’s about revenge for something that happened a long time ago involving my own grandfather and great-grandfather.”

“A student of history are you, Ranger?” Guajardo asked with her head tilted slightly to the side, tight expression indicating that she knew Caitlin was holding something, maybe plenty, back. She wet her lips with her tongue, reveling in the challenge the way someone not accustomed to losing does. Hanging on Caitlin Strong’s every word, as if ready to snap the cord connecting them at any moment, letting the Ranger think she was in control when in fact nothing could be further from the truth.

“I believe in the past, ma’am, just as much as I believe we don’t understand it any better than we understand the present.”

“Then I’m sure you’re aware that vengeance is the purest, strongest emotion, the most powerful motivator of all.”

“Especially when its roots lie somewhere back in history,” Caitlin told her. “In this case to that stretch your father did in Huntsville on those drug and arson charges.”

“What does that have to do with anything?” Ana Guajardo snapped, fighting the rage building inside her, summoning all her reserves to keep herself calm.

“I was hoping you could tell me, ma’am, since your brother and his men shot up a lacrosse game in San Antonio last night and kidnapped one of your nephews.”

Guajardo let Caitlin Strong see her stiffen. “My brother is dead to me.”

“Because he pushed your father off a balcony.”

“
Threw
him, you mean.”

“Your brother was released from Cereso Prison, you know.”

“Maybe he had served his time.”

“This was a pardon signed by President Villarreal himself. Interesting that the president of Mexico would bother intervening, don’t you think?”

“I don’t think anything,” Guajardo told her. “It’s not my concern.”

“Your own brother?”

“I told you he’s—”

“Dead to you, I know.” Caitlin took a step closer to Ana Guajardo, out of the sun now so both of them were trapped in the shadows cast by the thick tree line. “But there’s this problem I was hoping you could help me with. See, ma’am, your brother was under surveillance by undercover Mexican drug operatives at the time of your father’s unfortunate fall. Those operatives can place him several hundred miles away at the time he supposedly pushed—pardon me,
threw
—your father off that fourth-story balcony. I was hoping you could help me reconcile the discrepancy.”

“There is no discrepancy.”

“My sources indicate otherwise.”

“Then your sources are wrong. And they’re wrong about me being in danger too. Please accept my assurances of that.”

Caitlin hesitated, making a show of seeming to study the woman before her without responding until, “Where were you on the day your father was nearly killed?”

“You already know the answer to that: I was home. I was the one who found him broken on the pavement four stories down on the circular drive he’d only just installed.”

“You also said you saw your brother on the balcony afterward. You said that to the police.”

“If you say so, Ranger.”

“I do, ma’am, and I also say that was either a lie or a misstatement.”