Wild Fire: A Suspense Thriller (A Hawk Tate Novel Book 6), Page 2

  Unable to stop myself, a sharp crack of laughter slid out, a single sound so loud it drew a handful more stares in our direction. Feeling the heat of them on my skin, I raised a fist to my lips, covering my mouth as I chuckled, shoulders quivering with the movement.

  It was true that I did care about Kaylan. She and I were as close as I had been to anyone since my wife and daughter were killed six years before.

  But it was also true that not once had that affection ever trended into romantic territory.

  “Okay,” she said, taking my reaction as response enough. “So, what is all this?”

  Letting my hand fall into place, I sat back in my chair, feeling the sharp corners of the designer wooden seat digging into my kidneys. Looking around, I took in the mounted moose and elk heads on the wall, the sound of faint classical music in the air.

  Everything painstakingly put together in an attempt to create a specific ambiance.

  What that was, I wasn’t sure.

  Not that I for a second thought I was their target demographic.

  “Call it an employee appreciation dinner,” I replied. “Toasting another great season, all that good stuff.”

  On the opposite side of the table, I watched as the initial shock of the moment bled away, the Kaylan I’d come to know over the preceding years finally peeking through. Raising one eyebrow, she stared across at me, disbelief apparent.

  “Really? Employee appreciation?”

  “Come on,” I replied. “It’s not that hard to believe. We do this every year.”

  “No,” Kaylan corrected, laying both palms flat on the table as she leaned in a bit closer. “Every year, we order pizza and watch football. Or we throw something on a grill.

  “We’ve damned sure never done this.”

  Once more, I couldn’t help but smirk, my head rocking back slightly.

  She was right, as she generally tended to be.

  “Okay, fine,” I conceded. “This is proof positive that from now on, I leave all internet research to you.”

  Chapter Three

  The salesman at the North Face outlet just outside of Seattle had sworn that the boots were guaranteed to be impervious to temperatures as low as twenty degrees below zero. He’d even made a point of taking them out of the box and pulling the pages from the bottom of it, pointing out the fine print embossed on the accompanying paperwork.

  In the moment, Tres Salinas hadn’t thought to press it further.

  He was from somewhere far south of where he was now standing. Much further even than the driver’s license from Northern California he now carried in his wallet. Cold weather was something he saw on television. An item on the morning news to be skipped past, audibly wondering why the hell people would subject themselves to such things when there were plenty of places in the world with sun and sand and warmth.

  All things he would kill to be enjoying right now.

  The temperature display in the car had said it was twenty-eight degrees as he’d parked and climbed out. Almost a full fifty degrees warmer than what the boots claimed to be successful at protecting against.

  And still, now just one hour and a short hike through the woods later, he could barely feel his toes. With each passing moment, he could almost imagine the flow of blood to them being choked off, his skin turning to mottled shades of black and purple.

  Not that there was anything he could do about that now. If such was the case, he would have to deal with it. Just as he would if forced to stand rooted in this spot all night, waiting until frostbite claimed all ten of them, rendering him a clubfoot forever more.

  That’s how important this was. How much it meant to him that he had been entrusted with doing it.

  Lifting either foot no more than a couple of inches, Tres stamped them down against the forest floor. On contact, the sound of each was swallowed up by the two inches of fresh powder that had fallen in the last couple of hours, already obscuring his inbound tracks from view.

  With luck, his exit would be just as clean.

  He just needed a sign. A flare that it was time, allowing him to move forward.

  With one shoulder pressed tight to the barren trunk of a hardwood tree, Tres allowed his weight to list to the side. Taking the stress of standing from his legs, he seemed to meld against the bark, using it and the cover of pine boughs pressing in tight from every direction to conceal his position.

  Tucked into the dense forest, dressed in muted colors, nothing visible but a narrow oval framing his dark eyes, it was as close to invisible as he’d ever felt.

  And sure as hell as cold.

  Lifting his right foot again, Tres stared into the small window he’d created by clipping back a single branch. Affording him a square foot to peer through, he could see the home of his target ahead, the place just beginning to shut down for the night.

  When he’d first arrived, the place had been lit up like a Christmas tree. Most of the lights inside had blazed bright, illuminating the quartet of people that called it home.

  One by one they had blinked out, leaving just a couple behind.

  If the last few nights of reconnaissance were to be trusted, it wouldn’t be long now before the remaining lights were extinguished as well.

  Sliding his gloved hands along the outer shell of the polypropylene snow pants he wore, Tres reached into the cavernous front pockets. The fingers of his right hand he ran over the hard outline of the Sig Sauer tucked tight into the bottom, feeling the gnarled ridges of the grip.

  With his left, he felt a trio of much smaller objects. One was nothing more than functional, a basic cellphone awaiting final confirmation.

  The last two were of a much more personal nature, totems chosen specifically, his own special touch. A closing statement on something that began years before.

  As he did so, he couldn’t help but notice the jolt of adrenaline that seeped into his bloodstream.

  Soon, it would all be worth it. The long trip north. The endless planning. The interminable wait for this very night.

  The damned cold that threatened to freeze his eyelashes together each time he blinked.

  Soon.

  Chapter Four

  Neither of the guards bothered stepping inside the room alongside Junior Ruiz. Once verbal assent from within had been given, the same guard that had first banged on the door grasped the handle and pulled it wide.

  There he waited as Ruiz passed through, feet barely making it over the threshold before the door was closed in his wake. Just like in his cell, every movement was done with care, an effort exerted to ensure that no excess noise was made.

  Who they might be afraid of alerting down here in the catacombs, Ruiz hadn’t the slightest. Not that he cared to press much on the matter, every single bit of his interaction with these men in recent weeks bordering on the absurd.

  Abnormalities he was willing to overlook if they made good on everything they had been claiming thus far.

  An eventuality he still couldn’t quite force himself to believe, no matter how close that very thing seemed to be creeping.

  Standing with his heels just inside the room, Ruiz paused. There he waited until the door was shut in his wake, his eyes adjusting to the bright halogen glow of the tube lightbulbs overhead.

  The room was simple, in line with most every other space that prisoners inside Lompoc had access to. Made entirely of concrete block, the walls were bare and gray. The floor was polished concrete.

  The sole furniture in the room was a single metal table. On either side of it rested a straight-back wooden chair.

  The first time Ruiz had been summoned to the place, he couldn’t help but shake the feeling that it was the sort of place where discussions that weren’t meant to be seen or heard were conducted. A spot where sound was swallowed by the concrete walls and any spilled bodily fluids could be easily wiped away.

  Eight years ago, when he first reported to Lompoc, such a thing wouldn’t have surprised him. If not by prison officials or government authori
ties, then certainly by some subset of the population.

  It wasn’t like he had been a model citizen on the outside, the list of people that he had angered in some form over the years quite extensive, even if based several hours to the south.

  To his unending shock, nothing of the sort had come to him, a fact he had always attributed to the small crew he had assembled around him and a few well-greased palms among the guards.

  Only in the last couple of weeks had he come to realize the truth, the answers he’d received from the pair of men now before him making far more sense, no matter how much he might want to deny it.

  “Good evening, Junior,” the man in the center of the room said. Known simply as Jones, he was perched on the far side of the table. One hip on the tabletop, his opposite foot was still on the ground. Body turned toward his cohort, it appeared the two had been in conversation, only pausing at Ruiz’s arrival.

  Somewhere around forty, the man was the walking embodiment of the fabled government agent stereotype. From his pasty complexion to his light brown hair combed to the side, he was the sort of man that was seen but never remembered.

  Ruiz knew, because on more nights than one he had lay awake on his bunk, staring at the ceiling, trying to place either of them.

  Not only had he failed to do so, barely was he able to even conjure their exact faces to mind.

  Saying nothing to the greeting, Ruiz flicked his gaze from Jones to his partner Smith in the corner. The Bad Cop to Jones’s Good, he stood with his arms folded, a scowl on his face. Another from the agent assembly line, the parentheses around his mouth were a bit more pronounced, his hair a little darker than his partner.

  Otherwise, they could have easily been siblings.

  At least that way, they wouldn’t have had to come up with two boring fake names to give him.

  “Your shiner’s looking better,” Smith opened, the barb clearly meant to get under his skin, making a point.

  In the wake of his first meeting with the men, finding out who they were and what they wanted, Ruiz’s initial reaction had been to balk. Ingrained from years of habit, of being practiced in self-preservation, he had known better than to take a couple of white boys in suits at their word.

  In the twenty-five minutes they had spoken that night, most of the talking had been done by the pair on the opposite side of the table. In the moment, Ruiz hadn’t believed a word of it, thinking it was all nothing more than posturing to get him to agree to something against his best interests.

  Rat on someone. Offer information about a competitor on the outside. Even pony up location details about some of his former cohorts.

  Sitting in the very chair not four feet from where he now stood, he had listened to the plan they had in mind. He sat completely still as they explained that they had been running interference for him the last eight years. Keeping him covered, out of harm’s way and off the radar of any officials running Lompoc.

  Had even been the guiding hand in getting him assigned to the place, all while monitoring things on the outside, keeping his sheet clean just in case the day came when they would need his help.

  Just eight years into a forty-year term, they knew he wasn’t going anywhere. They knew they could take their time, considering all the angles, hoping it would never come to this.

  But, finally, it had.

  And now here they were.

  Leaning back in the uncomfortable wooden chair, Ruiz had forced himself not to openly laugh. These two pasty bastards clearly thought quite highly of themselves, and locked inside an office building somewhere, they might even wield a tiny bit of power. Had maybe even talked themselves into believing that it extended beyond the front edge of the desk they sat behind.

  But they didn’t know the first damn thing about what went on inside the walls of Lompoc.

  Sure as hell not about the life he had lived to find himself there.

  Two facts he had not been shy about sharing with them, his reward being a quick end to the meeting and a pair of inmates waiting for him in his cell when he returned. Pretending not to see a thing, the same guards had waited while the young men put Ruiz through the paces. Any attempts to protect himself had more or less been batted away, the disparities in the two sides obvious.

  While they might have all come from the same world, Ruiz was the guy usually barking orders. These two were the ones to carry them out.

  Thick and tan, they wore the markings of affiliations existing south of the border. Deliberately chosen, their presence wasn’t solely to deliver a beating, but to remind him of what could have been a daily existence.

  A not-so-subtle demonstration of just how truthful the words of the men in the underground bunker had been.

  Three days after that initial meeting, sore and bruised, Ruiz had been summoned back to the very same room. His features turned up in a scowl, animosity roiling through him, he had sat and listened to every word the men said.

  At the end, again, he had balked.

  And again, the same two young men were waiting for him when he returned, the remnants of their second visit now still lingering, bringing about the crack from Smith.

  “You able to get what I asked for?” Ruiz said. Ignoring Smith entirely, he focused on Jones. Shuffling toward the table, he remained standing, his legs flush against the back of the chair.

  Lifting his eyebrows slightly, Jones flicked a glance to Smith. “We did, as promised. Everything in writing.”

  Raising himself from the tabletop, Jones leaned forward to a satchel resting on the opposite chair. Sliding a hand down inside the top flap, he pulled out a sheaf of papers nearly a half-inch thick. Bound by a binder clip at the top, he slapped the stack down, the top page covered in dark ink.

  “Have a look.”

  Tracking his focus toward it for just a moment, Ruiz allowed the disgust he felt to cross his features.

  There was no point in reading it. Whatever there might be that was of any value to him was shrouded in legal terms and misdirection, all of it no doubt meant to cover their ass should anybody ever think to look into it.

  All playing on the facts that his United States citizenship was at best a tenuous proposition and no matter how fluent he might be in English, it was still his second language.

  Never before had Ruiz worked with the government – this or any other – beyond facilitating whatever payouts might be necessary for a given objective, but he’d heard enough stories to know how it generally went. Especially for people like him.

  At the moment, they had a hard-on for him because he possessed something they wanted, something they couldn’t achieve on their own.

  Once that was over, his purpose served, he would probably find himself back in here, if not worse.

  A fact that both sides knew intimately well, those first two beatings blatant reminders of as much.

  Grunting softly, Ruiz shook his head to either side. “When?”

  “Tomorrow, just like we said,” Jones replied. “Noon. Full light of day, media crew on hand.”

  Again, a head shake. “We’ve been through this. No media, and I pick the time.”

  “Ha!” Smith spat from the back of the room. Inserting himself into the conversation for the first time since his initial barb, he walked forward, arms still folded. “Who the hell died and put you in charge?”

  Glancing to Jones, a mocking grin on his features, he added, “I guess those two beatings weren’t enough for this pissant to understand how things work here. You’re not El Jefe anymore.”

  Bit by bit, the smile faded, his eyes flashing as he rotated his focus to glare at Ruiz. “The way this goes is, we speak, you obey. Or you get to know our friends very well.”

  Deep within, Ruiz felt his acrimony spike, this time making it all the way to his face. His nostrils flared, his cheeks warming as blood rushed to the surface.

  There was no doubt the words Smith had chosen were deliberate, meant to incite this very reaction.

  Not that he particularly cared
, the time for getting hung up on such minutiae now well past.

  “That might be the way it is in here,” Ruiz replied, “but you two want me to go back out there. And believe me when I tell you, I know that world a hell of a lot better than you two pendejos.”

  Pausing, he matched the seething hostility of Smith for a moment before sliding his attention back to Jones.

  “Now, if this is real, if you two want me to do this, you’re going to have to let me do it my way.”

  “It is. We do,” Jones inserted.

  Unfazed, Ruiz pressed on. “Then that means I need to walk out that front gate under my own power. I can’t have cameras looking over my shoulder, can’t have my face splashed across every TV in the state.

  “I do that, then I’ve got your stink on me. I’m toxic. You understand?”

  Taking the information in, contemplating it a moment, Jones slowly tilted his chin back.

  “And then nobody’s going to touch you.”

  Not bothering to follow up, to confirm the obvious, Ruiz merely stared.

  What the men were wanting from him was damn near suicide. Even with the contacts he’d maintained, the flow of information he’d been able to cultivate, it was a ludicrous plan with little chance of success.

  But it was the only shot he had, the sole hope at not celebrating his seventieth birthday in the same bunk he’d spent the last eight.

  Crazy or not, he had to take it. And both sides knew it.

  “So tomorrow morning at dawn, I walk out of here,” Ruiz said. “And you’re going to have someone here to pick me up.”

  On the edge of his vision, Ruiz could see Smith throw his hands up. Turning away from the table, he rattled off a string of obscenities, none quite discernible.

  “At dawn?” Jones asked.

  “At dawn,” Ruiz said. Leaning forward an inch, he said, “Whether you guys kept me alive in here or not, no matter how far from home I am, people around here still know me. They recognize me. And they’ll be paying attention to how it goes down.

  “You want this all to look legit, that’s how it’s got to be.”