Gael Morales stepped out of the car and into the sun. The heat seemed to have weight to it, so thick and heavy it was pushing down on him. He looked over his shoulder. Diego got out of the passenger side, aiming his gun over the roof of the BMW, and keeping his barrel trained, walked around the trunk. Gael watched him approach, asking himself how he might get out of this mess, but he had no answer.
“Put your hands in the air and keep them there.”
Gael did as he was told.
“Turn around. Don’t fucking look at me.”
Gael straightened his head. Found himself squinting at the department store in front of him, and the sea of cars that lay between him and the building, this aluminum and steel and fiberglass ocean of red and blue and yellow and black. It was midday. People were around. He watched a woman glance toward him and then hurry to her car. Diego would have no hesitation about shooting him here. He could put a bullet in the back of Gael’s head, throw his body into the bed of his truck, and drive away, and even if there were witnesses, they would remain silent. No one would speak against Rocha or his men for fear of losing their own lives, and truth was, they were wise to remain silent. Talking would do nothing but get them killed too.
“Get on your knees.”
Gael dropped to his knees, which popped simultaneously as they hit the ground. The asphalt was hot through the fabric of his Levi’s. Loose pebbles poking through the fabric, digging into his skin. The barrel of Diego’s gun pushed against the back of Gael’s head. He could feel it against the base of his skull. When Diego squeezed his trigger, the bullet would sever Gael’s spinal column.
He was going to die and there was nothing he could do about it. Sarah, after less than a year of marriage, was going to be a widow, and she wouldn’t even know it. He’d simply vanish. She’d hold out hope, for months or years living in a state of paralysis, her life on pause, unable to move on because there was no body, and if there wasn’t a body, maybe he was still out there somewhere.
Only he wouldn’t be out there somewhere.
He’d be three or four feet beneath the surface of the desert sand.
Coyotes might discover his body, scatter his bones across the desert floor, but that didn’t mean he’d be discovered anytime soon. Diego would take him deep into the desert, thirty or so miles southwest of La Paz, and the next closest town, Ascension, was still another twenty or more miles away. He’d be buried in the emptiness between those towns, surrounded by nothing.
Even if his body or part of his body—a femur or his left hand or part of his skull—was discovered, it was likely to be discovered by drug traffickers. Ascension was controlled by the Sinaloa cartel and La Paz by Rocha.
Several years back, the entire police force in Ascension quit for fear of being murdered by the cartel, leaving the town of five thousand without any law enforcement, and it was now patrolled by soldiers who might or might not be getting paid by the cartel to look the other way, but even if they weren’t, it didn’t matter. La Paz sat in the desert between Ascension and Juarez, and the road connecting the three cities was used to move drugs.
Drug traffickers weren’t likely to go to the police if they discovered his body.
He was going to die here and Sarah wouldn’t know she was a widow for years. If ever.
Thinking of her alive but in stasis was worse, to his mind, than his own death. This was his job and he knew the risks, knew death might happen, but he loved Sarah and wanted her to be happy—with or without him—and it was impossible to find happiness when your life consisted of waiting, waiting for your husband to return from the field, waiting to find out whether he was alive or dead.
“Just get it over with,” he said.
“I trusted you.”
“You sound betrayed.”
“I feel betrayed.”
“It was my job to make you trust me. It wasn’t personal.”
“It was personal to me.”
Gael closed his eyes and waited for the bullet.
But the bullet didn’t come. Instead he heard George Rankin’s voice: “Diego, you drop the fucking gun and turn around or I’ll shoot you in the back right here.”
* * *
Danielle Preston ran west along a two-lane strip of faded asphalt. She glanced over her shoulder and saw Francis Waters coming after her. He shouted at her to stop, damn you, but stopping would only ensure she died a little bit sooner than if she continued to run.
After about a quarter mile, pain already knifing into her side, she reached Avenida Hidalgo, and chest heaving, came to a brief stop. She didn’t know where to go or what to do. For a moment, she considered giving up, succumbing to her fate—at least then it would be over—but she pushed that thought away. She didn’t want to die, she wanted out of this situation, and death wasn’t an escape but a result of the mess she was in.
She thought about the church at the north end of town, the tunnel beneath it that led to the United States. If she could cross the border, she might be able to hitchhike into El Paso, go to the police there, tell them who and what she was and hope they’d protect her. Or she could hitchhike west, make her way to California, and hide out in Fresno for a year or two.
Either way, the tunnel was her only option at this point.
She turned right, heading north, and ran toward the church at the end of the road. She saw it up ahead, freshly painted white, the large crucified Jesus at the top of the spire backed by clear blue sky.
She glanced over her shoulder again and saw Francis Waters running after her, the distance between them cut in half, and because his legs were longer, he was gaining on her with every step he took.
Finally she reached the gravel parking lot, the stones grinding beneath her feet as she ran across it, and headed up the stairs to the large double doors.
She grabbed one of the door handles, thumbed the paddle, and as she pulled open the door, she could hear feet crunching into the gravel behind her. She stepped inside, shut the door, and turned the dead bolt.
The handle rattled behind her.
“Unlock this door, you fucking bitch.”
“Fuck you,” she said, lungs aching. She turned to face the room even as the man who would kill her slammed his shoulder against the door. Colored light beamed in through the stained-glass windows, projecting biblical images on the walls.
There was a tunnel under the church, a tunnel that would take her to safety, but she had no idea where it was. Nor did she know how long she had to find it before Francis Waters made his way inside. Sooner or later, he’d find a way in. She only hoped she was gone when he did.
* * *
Gael Morales heard Diego’s pistol clack against the faded asphalt.
“Turn around and pick it up, Gael. You put your fucking hands in the air, Blanco, and keep them there. If you even fucking twitch, you’re dead.”
Gael turned around and for a moment found himself looking directly into Diego’s eyes. They glared back with hatred. Part of him felt a strange, unexpected sadness. Diego was a drug smuggler and a murderer but that wasn’t all he was. He was a father, had three daughters, and until today, he’d been a friend.
Gael had eaten meals at Diego’s apartment, his daughters sitting with them, and they’d discussed the difficulty of being a single working father. How Diego had gone through half a dozen babysitters over the last few years. How his work schedule and his schedule as a parent often contradicted one another, making him miss soccer practice or band recital. Though their friendship had been based on a lie, Gael hadn’t pretended to be Diego’s friend. He’d been his friend.
In order to work undercover, you had to become the person you were pretending to be. You had to find those aspects of your personality that would make that person real and push them to the front while simultaneously forcing everything else back.
It made you realize that you were no better than the people you were trying to imprison. You were capable of everything they did. The only difference was that you’d repressed those dark parts of your personality while they had—for whatever reason—embraced them.
Gael leaned down and picked up the pistol, a Smith & Wesson M&P. He stepped back, taking himself out of Diego’s reach, and raised the weapon, aiming it at the man’s face. Over Diego’s shoulder, he watched as George Rankin holstered his own weapon and pulled out a pair of handcuffs. He walked up behind Diego, snapped one of the cuffs around his right wrist, and yanked his arm behind his back, twisting it hard.
“You’re not killing anybody today, motherfucker.”
George pulled the left arm back and cuffed it.
Diego smiled a malevolent smile. “There’s always tomorrow, Gael Castillo Jimenez. You’ll get yours. I’m a patient man.”