Chapter Eighteen #2
Under better circumstances, she’d love to bring the desert beauty to life on a canvas.
In the distance, a massive one-story complex covered with rusted metal panels dotted the land.
As they drew near, the barbed wire fence encircling the dusty property glinted in the light.
He pulled alongside a narrow raised platform in front of the gate, rolled down both the driver and passenger windows, permitting heat into the car, and tapped a code into the electronic keypad.
A beep resounded. The gate slid open with a metallic screech and clanked shut once they crossed the threshold.
He parked beside two dingy SUVs near the main wall and killed the engine. “Welcome to the Warehouse. The federales would pay any price to know its location.”
Her stomach twisted. To the untrained eye, the building appeared abandoned. She knew better. The Warehouse served as a combined storage facility and torture house—a hotbed of criminal activity, suffering, and death.
She dragged her gaze back to Enrique. “This place is in the middle of nowhere. With all the switchbacks, I couldn’t find it again if I tried.”
“Good. I’ll be back within the hour.” Once he stuffed the key in his pocket, he pressed a soft kiss on her lips and then climbed out of the car. He strode toward the bulky metal door and raced his fingers across a mounted panel. One piercing beep later, he entered the building.
The door slammed shut behind him with a deafening bang. She sucked in great gulps of warm desert air. So close. She was so damn close to breaching the barriers of his world. No half-measures. She wanted in. And damn it, she was getting into that building.
****
“What the fuck happened?” Enrique snapped at Lieutenant Muniz.
Suspended from a lofty ceiling beam by a thick metal chain, the bleeding policeman trembled with his arms shackled above his head.
His bare feet barely touched the floor in the middle of the bleak, cavernous room.
Crimson smeared his skin and torn uniform while soaking through the bandage on his stomach and shoulder. His head hung low as he wheezed.
What a coincidence for Muniz and his men to string up the cop the same way Enrique had Lourdes at the club. The sight of the man sickened him. Sullied his memory of the erotic, angry fuck he’d shared with his distrustful wife. Cristo. Lourdes tried his patience.
Warm, muggy air slicked sweat across his skin. Despite the Warehouse’s outward appearance, it flaunted enough high-tech cameras and sensors to keep the devil at bay.
The pinch-faced lieutenant glared at the officer and back at Enrique.
“Everything was fine and on schedule. The police van took the detour, and we ambushed it. Three cops were there. All but one stood down.” Each syllable scraped out of him like gravel on steel.
He rubbed his scarred throat and glowered again at the officer.
“This fucker popped two of the guys before I could fucking blink. I shot him twice. He went down. I was damn tempted to snuff him right on the sidewalk, but I figured you’d want to question him. ”
“Got that right.” Enrique stared off toward the side of the building where Rascón doctored the injured men.
Two other enforcers stood guard around the facility at strategic points, as if an assault was imminent, though unlikely as fuck.
“Flesh wounds,” Muniz informed. He flicked his gaze toward Rascón’s patients and back to the cop. “All we’ve been able to get out of him so far is his name—Alonzo Sanchez.”
“He’s a rookie, obviously.” Enrique sneered at the man’s ashen baby face.
He couldn’t be more than twenty or twenty-one.
So damn young. If there was one thing Enrique hated, it was a life cut short.
Even a policeman’s. “I trusted you to handle this, Muniz. I said no dead cops. What did you do? You shot a fucking cop.”
The shorter man stared him straight in the eye. “It was kill or be killed, boss.”
Enrique battled back his anger and stomped forward. “All right, Officer Sanchez. Why did you turn against us?”
The shuddering man lifted his head and spat a mouthful of blood at Enrique’s feet, which barely missed him. “F-fuck you.”
Sighing, Enrique shrugged off his suit jacket, handed it to Muniz, and rolled his shirtsleeves to his elbows. “Answer my questions, and I won’t hurt you. Not more than you already are.”
The cop pursed his lips and slammed his eyelids shut.
“Stubbornness will only cause you more pain.” Enrique withdrew his serrated knife from the holster and turned it from side to side so that the spotless blade and the onyx gemstone in the black hilt gleamed in the overhead light.
“Look at me, Sanchez.” He waited until the man obeyed. “Do you know who I am?”
A quick nod. “I know you. Seen your pictures online.”
“They call me El Tajador because I’m good with knives. Cutting, slicing, stabbing, holding a man on the edge of death to draw out his agony. Do you want to feel my blade?”
Sanchez trembled harder, his teeth chattering.
Mierda. He didn’t have much time before the man keeled over. “Talk.” He fisted Sanchez’s sweat-slicked hair, yanked his head to the side, and scraped the razor-sharp blade against his throat. A thin sliver of blood leaked from the cut. “Why did you betray us?”
“I-I b-be-betrayed no one.” Red spittle leaked down his chin.
“So you didn’t accept my money and then shoot my men?”
“M-money?”
Enrique paused. The muscle in his jaw ticked. “Explain.”
Sanchez sealed his chapped lips.
He trailed the knife lightly across Sanchez’s right cheek and the bridge of his pudgy nose to his left cheekbone.
The skin peeled open just enough to release a trickle of blood and a shitload of fear.
If allowed to heal, the wound wouldn’t even scar.
Only Sanchez would never know that. The fool should’ve realized that neither of his fellow officers were going to back his heroic play.
Some sense of misplaced duty or honor had driven him to put his nose where it didn’t belong—right in cartel business.
Enrique sliced the man’s ruined shirt in two and let it gape over his poorly bandaged gut.
“You’re on my payroll, Sanchez. Did you have a change of heart at the worst possible moment?” He pressed the flat of the blade onto the cop’s nipple.
“Ahh!” Choking on a startled gasp, he jerked and swung from the chains. “N-never. Not on payroll. W-would never t-take cartel blood money.”
An alarm blared. Red lights flashed from the corners.
Enrique flipped around as his enforcers grabbed their weapons.
“I’ll check the cameras.” Rascón raced down the hall toward the surveillance room.
Something wasn’t right. Enrique cocked his head at the cop. The man was too young, too inexperienced. Unless he had connections or a secret skill, no one from the cartel would’ve approached him with a business proposal.
The noise and lights cut off simultaneously.
Rascón returned. “Boss, your wife tripped the south wing perimeter alarm.”
“Goddamn it. Bring her in.” Enrique braced his fist against his forehead as the enforcer headed off.
If Muniz hadn’t advised him to get to the Warehouse sooner rather than later, he would’ve taken Lourdes home first. But the cop was dying.
Time was fading. Fast. He met his lieutenant’s frustrated gaze. “Days like this, I wish I smoked.”
Muniz snorted as the other guys chuckled. The lieutenant snatched his pack of cigarettes from his jeans pocket. “Want one?” he rasped.
Shaking his head, Enrique pursed his lips as Muniz lit up and blew a noxious smoke ring. He’d rather eat glass than suck that nastiness into his lungs. Cigars were his preference. A sharp, classy vice. Something that didn’t smell as though it belonged in a toxic waste dump.
He cleaned his blade on the dying man’s shirtsleeve before he holstered it. “Jacket.” Once Muniz handed over the garment, Enrique pulled out his phone and tossed him back the jacket. He scrolled through his contacts and smashed the button for Detective Ibarra.
Two sets of footsteps—one heavy, one light—thudded on the concrete floor.
Enrique stepped away from the cop as Rascón escorted Lourdes over.
Her wide-eyed gaze zeroed in on the soon-to-be dead man, then narrowed on Enrique and the weapons strapped to his body. She bit her lip and blinked rapidly to school her features.
His chest tightened. Torn between consoling and spanking her, he turned away as the call connected. He smashed the button for the speakerphone.
“Ibarra,” the detective said, his rough voice carrying in the confines of the open space. The hard clacking of a keyboard reverberated through the line. “I heard what happened. Things are in an uproar at the precinct. Is Sanchez dead?”
“You do not ask questions,” Enrique lashed out. “Why did you assign an honest fucking cop to the escort?”
“I didn’t. Alonzo Sanchez never should’ve been there.
Alanzo Sanchez, whose first name is spelled with two A’s instead of O’s, the one I wanted, just left my office.
He never got the assignment. Somewhere along the chain of command, someone got the two men confused.
They have nearly identical names. The wrong one got the assignment. ”
Enrique muttered a curse. “A cop is going to die because of this fuckup.”
“He’s not dead yet? Thank the saints. Release him to my custody, Briceno. I’ll make sure he stays quiet.”
“Not happening. He’s too far gone and will bleed out any minute.”
“Cristo.” Ibarra sighed heavily. “I never meant for any of this. The ambush should’ve been easy.
The officers on the scene reported that half-a-dozen masked assailants held them hostage while they ransacked the evidence van.
With the equipment gone, the chief will get a judge to drop the case.
It’s an embarrassment to the department.
But Sanchez, his death will be harder to ignore. ”