ARMY OF ONE

INTRODUCING JOE BECK

AMERICA’S UNLICENSED PRIVATE DETECTIVE

ALASTAIR BROWN

ARMY OF ONE

INTRODUCING JOE BECK

AMERICA’S UNLICENSED PRIVATE DETECTIVE

Second edition

Published by Ablaze Books

First edition: February, 2018

Second edition: January, 2020

Copyright © Alastair Brown, 2020, 2018

Alastair Brown has asserted his right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 to be identified as the author of this work.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents either are a product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, actual business establishments, actual events, or actual locales is entirely coincidental.

All rights reserved. This book, or parts thereof, may not be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any form without permission in writing of the publisher or author. The author acknowledges the trademarked status and trademark owners of various products, brands, establishments, and institutions referenced in this work of fiction.

Find out more about Alastair Brown by visiting:

www.authoralastairbrown.com

TABLE OF CONTENTS

ONE

TWO

THREE

FOUR

FIVE

SIX

SEVEN

EIGHT

NINE

TEN

ELEVEN

TWELVE

THIRTEEN

FOURTEEN

FIFTEEN

SIXTEEN

SEVENTEEN

EIGHTEEN

NINETEEN

TWENTY

TWENTY-ONE

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ONE

They never knew each other, but Mike Sikorsky and Walter Redmayne shared something in common. It wasn't that they were accepting of their own eventual mortality or that they were well prepared for when the time would come, holding life insurance to help their loved ones when they were gone. Nor was it that they were buried on the same day, at approximately the same time, and in virtually the same place. All that was a mere coincidence. What it was, was something darker.

Mike Sikorsky’s burial was held at La Piedad Cemetery in McAllen, Texas, in the early evening hours, under the hot, setting orange sun. It was a somber, honorable occasion attended by a crowd of mourners. Maybe sixty in all. Men, women and children. Family, friends, co-workers and acquaintances. All of them standing huddled together in a crowd by his graveside, sad and depleted expressions across their grieving faces as they prepared to pay their last respects to a man whom they understood had taken his own life.

The women were wearing black dresses and black heeled shoes with black hats sitting atop their heads and dark sunglasses covering their eyes. They carried black handbags and purses and held soft, white Kleenex tissues in their hands. Most of the men were wearing dark shades and black suits with crisp white shirts and black neckties and black dress shoes that were polished to a shine.

Joe Beck was one of them.

He was standing in a chilling silence a few paces from his friend’s graveside, dressed in a dark fitted suit, polished black shoes, a crisp white shirt and a demur, respectful black necktie. His hands were clasped in front of his lap and his head was slightly bowed. His heart felt heavy, there was a lump in his throat, and there was a solemn expression across his heart-shaped face.

He listened to the children cry while the women sniffled and blew their noses into their tissues, and he watched as a few stray tears trickled down grown men’s cheeks when the white hearse carrying Mike Sikorsky's casket slowly eased up La Piedad Cemetery's red gravel path toward them. Its entrance played in to the tune of bagpipes by a sole piper, dressed in a white shirt, dark waistcoat and purple tartan kilt, standing behind his gun-gray granite headstone.

The gravel crunched under the hearse’s tires as the vehicle turned and slowed to a halt a few feet from the crowd, its trunk in perfect alignment with a guard of honor that flanked a black velvet carpet pathway to the six-foot-deep grave.

On one side of the guard was a row of nine proud men and women. Nine men and women that Joe Beck knew. Police officers from Lincoln, Nebraska. Mike Sikorsky's former colleagues. They were wearing dark flat-soled shoes and navy-blue pants, white shirts, and navy-blue neckties with navy-blue peaked caps resting on their heads. The arms of their shirts were embroidered with a blue-and-yellow stitched shield and the front of their caps sported polished silver badges. There was sadness in their eyes and sorrow on their faces, and they, too, looked like they were mourning a fallen friend rather than a former colleague.

On the other side of the guard were another nine men. Nine typical, average height, dark-haired men whom Joe Beck didn't know. They were all dressed in smart black suits, white shirts and black neckties, and wore dark aviator-shaped shades over their eyes. Their faces were stern, almost expressionless. He presumed they were Mike's most recent colleagues: hard-nosed federal agents from the ATF's McAllen field office.

The eighteen members of the guard raised their right hands to the side of their forehead in salute as six brave-faced, grieving men stepped forward from the crowd and lifted Mike’s casket from the back of the hearse. The red, white and blue of the stars and stripes, draped over the top, fluttered in the warm evening breeze as the men strode past the guard and along the black velvet carpet. They laid Mike’s casket down into its gray concrete burial vault with gentle precision, then stepped backward and rejoined their friends, family and colleagues in the crowd.

A silver-haired minister who was standing by the grave, dressed in a black robe with a silk purple stole, clutching a thick heavy-looking bible in his left hand, said a few final words of committal, while looking at every saddened face in the crowd together but at no one individual in particular. When he finished speaking, he bowed his head and clutched his bible in his hands in front of his body and waited.

A rifle party of three men standing off to the side of the cemetery raised their black Remington Model 700 rifles up into the air and fired blank cartridges toward the sky. The gunshots of three-volley salute rang loud amid the sad and deathly-silent setting as tears trickled down many somber-looking faces. It was a procedure Joe Beck had seen and heard many times before. It was a tribute to a fallen officer.

On the last gunshot, Mike Sikorsky's pregnant wife, Kim, stepped forward carrying a single white rose. Slim and petite with long blonde hair, she was a beautiful woman, but she was nowhere near her full glory. Her bottom lip quivered from her first step to her last and her eyes looked heavy, growing big and full and red. Tears streamed down her face as she laid the white rose on top of her husband’s stars-and-stripes-covered casket.

Beck watched on with a heavy heart as she raised a soft white tissue to her face and dabbed her running eyes, staining the tissue's white fibers with black smudges of mascara as a pale-skinned and dark-haired short and fat funeral director dressed in a tight black suit sealed her husband's casket inside the vault and looked at the piper, who piper played a soft chorus of Amazing Grace as Mike Sikorsky was lowered to his final resting place.

The customary shovelful of dirt was tossed, gently, into his grave and the mourners dispersed shortly afterward. Most people made their way back down the red gravel path and climbed into their cars - a variety of red, blue and white sedans and SUVs, and black Lincolns in the case of the federal agents, that were parked up by the grass, bumper-to-bumper in a long, neat line. A few others hung around for a few more minutes, talking to Kim and her family, offering them their condolences, giving warm hugs and apologizing, again, for their loss; while a few others paid their last respects and laid colorful wreaths and floral bouquets by the base of his headstone. White and purple roses, yellow daffodils, and violet carnations with green leaves and thick green stocks.

Joe Beck hung around longer than most. Until almost everyone had gone. He felt it appropriate to do so, considering he thought of Mike like the brother he never had. He walked forward and stood beside Kim, who was standing by the graveside staring at his headstone in a distant daze.

"I'm sorry, Kim," he whispered, glancing at her, sombrely.

She said nothing.

He nodded, slowly, then stepped forward and glanced down into the grave and shook his head. Lifted a handful of dry, brown dirt from the near four-foot pile on his right-hand side and cupped it tight in his hand. It felt dry and powdery, disheveled from sitting under the searing sun and out in the hot humid air. He closed his eyes tight and sighed. "Rest in peace, my friend," he whispered and scattered the dirt onto the top of the vault.

When he turned around, Kim was looking straight at him, a blank expression on her face with tears spilling over her bottom eyelids.

"Go home, Kim," Beck said to her, softly. "Get some rest."

She sucked a deep breath and nodded slowly but said nothing.

He nodded back once, a sympathetic expression on his face, a nod of acknowledgment, and then, slowly walked away. He made his way down the cemetery’s red gravel path and out through its rusting black gates.

On the other side of the fence, he climbed into a black Ford Mustang which he had left parked up by the curb, closed the door and then closed his eyes and exhaled, slowly. He sat in a brief, sad moment of silence. It was only a few quiet seconds, but his mind raced, thinking through all of the possible reasons why Mike would possibly have taken his own life.

I don't get it, he thought. I just don’t get it. Beautiful, pregnant wife. Nice home. Good job. Great income. He made federal agent, just like he had always wanted. He was never the sort of guy to...no way...was it debt? Did he owe somebody money? Money he couldn't pay? How much? What for? Or, was it guilt? Had he done something he couldn't live with? What? To who? God knows.

He was asking himself questions he didn't have the answers to. And he knew it. He decided to grab a drink, thinking a few neat bourbons would loosen him up, change his mindset and, maybe, bring some old, long-forgotten but positive memories about Mike to the forefront of his mind. He drew his cell phone from the inside pocket of his suit jacket and searched for bars in and around McAllen. A couple of results popped up. He flicked through the listings, not being familiar with the area, and settled on a placed called Diamondback's on North McColl Road that promoted itself as a trendy rock bar. He laid his cell phone down in the cup holder on the Mustang’s center console, fired up its V8 engine and set off.

***

Walter Redmayne's burial wasn’t honorable at all. Instead, it was like something from the darkest of nightmares. He was buried in the dirt somewhere between Santa Catarina and McCook with just three men in attendance. Three men whom he had only known for about six long, arduous hours. Three men who wore scuffed work boots, faded blue jeans and black leather jackets to his funeral. Three men who picked him at random and knocked on his door, then dragged him from the doorstep at gunpoint sometime in the afternoon and drove him out to the barren Texan desert because they had a job that needed to be done. Three men who beat him black and blue in the dirt and tossed a shovel at his feet, then held two black 12-gauge pump-action shotguns at his head and ordered him to dig his own grave. And, then, stood watching, smoking cigarettes, while he did.

By sunset, Walter was dehydrated, sore and exhausted. His throat felt like sand. His arms were limp, his bones ached and his joints burned. The arthritis howled up through his hands and the back of his sunburned neck looked like a raw cut of beef. But the hole had been dug. Which meant his job was done. Which meant the men’s use for him was up.

One of them, a huge, obese man with a red, round bulldog face covered in a thick and dirty black beard, flicked his eyes along the length and breadth of the hole. He nodded his approval at a job of work well done and whipped the cigarette from his mouth, flicked it to the ground and looked down at Walter’s frail figure with a grim look in his eye. "Shift’s over, Grandpa. Time for ya to punch out," he said, then raised the muzzle of his shotgun up through the air.

Walter stared up at him, squinting against the glare of the red setting sun. His heart raced and his eyes widened with every beat. He knew what was coming, but he did what any other man in that situation would have done. He drew upon all the might he had left in his body and raised his sore and shaking hands above his head and pleaded.

"Please," he shouted, in a weak and exhausted-sounding voice that made the word sound like a whisper.

The black-bearded guy merely smirked.

"Plea..,” Walter began to say, again, in the same exhausted intonation, when the guy pulled the trigger.

The shotgun blast echoed loud around the empty landscape, blast after blast ringing through the air, each sounding as if it had been fired from another shotgun farther and farther away, until it finally faded to a faint whisper in the distance.

That's one thing about a shotgun blast. The bark may be loud but the bite is much worse. The shrapnel severed Walter's legs from his thighs down and he crumbled to the bottom of the grave, letting out an excruciating groan that was muffled to nothing more than a moan underneath the loud, ringing gunshots.

The three men chuckled as he twisted his head left and right, clutched the shovel in his left hand and snatched for handfuls of dirt with his right, while a crimson torrent of blood spurted from the torn arteries hanging from his thighs and the life left his body with each and every heartbeat.

The guy in the middle, a similar-built guy to the man with the black beard, but his face and chin covered in a thick ginger beard instead, raised his shotgun and pumped the forend. It clicked, then it clocked, and he took a step forward, his toes overhanging the edge of the grave.

The black-bearded guy, behind him on his left, raised his left hand and shook his head. "Put that down, Wyatt," he said to him and glanced at the third guy. A slim-built blond-haired mouse of a man. "Go fetch the shovel,” he said, then grinned, sinisterly. “We’ll bury him alive."

The little blond guy smiled and nodded his understanding and the ginger-bearded man lowered his gun and stepped backward, the corners of his mouth angling up his cheeks, wickedly.

The little blond guy jumped into the grave and ripped the shovel from Walter's grip. He climbed back out almost as quickly as he had jumped in and drove the shovel’s dull steel head into the brown pile of dirt that Walter had accumulated through his own efforts by his own graveside.

Walter knew it was a matter of time. Seconds rather than minutes. He realized he was going to die, and he was powerless to stop it. He simply closed his eyes tight and smiled through the pain, trying to hang onto what precious few seconds he had left, finding solace in the thought of seeing his late wife, Mary, once again. He imagined her waiting for him, her hand outstretched and reaching for his to help him through the huge set of golden gates that led to a vast lush, tropical garden behind her.

His final, blissful thought was interrupted by the sound of the dirt crunching as the little blond guy shoved the blade of the shovel into the mound, then scraping as he dragged it back out, followed by the feeling of the dirt being tossed over his body. He died right there and then, course gritty dirt itching at his eyes, sticking to his lips and slipping down the back of his sun-scorched neck the last things he ever felt.

The black-bearded guy nodded, watching Walter's body all but disappear under the thin layer of dirt, and raised his right hand, signaling the blond guy to stop. "That's enough," he said to him. "Leave room for later, for when we come back with the whore," he added, then drew his cell phone from his jeans and made the call.

The little blond guy wiped a bead of sweat from his brow and plunged the shovel into the dirt mound and waited, listening quietly, alongside the ginger-bearded guy named Wyatt, as the black-bearded guy made the arrangements.

The call was short. Maybe only a minute. But that was all it took. Everything had been set up. The black-bearded guy tucked his cell phone back into his jeans and looked at the two men and smiled. "Ten-thirty. Tonight. Diamondback's Bar."

***

Diamondback's Bar wasn't the trendy rock bar its advert made it out to be. It was more like the type of place Beck figured would appear in often-overlooked the section of the things to do in McAllen listings somewhere below the dull and grubby old man's bars but above the sleazy strip clubs. The air inside was warm and it reeked of stale lager and the bar area was dimly lit to a dull orange glow by a row of low-watt pendant lights that hung about a foot above the bar's beaten wooden countertop. The bar itself was just as tired. It looked as if it had been assembled from discarded casks of ale, broken apart haphazardly, then slung into place and tacked together by hand by somebody with a weak, shaky grip using a small handheld hammer and a single jar of old rusted nails.

Beck was sitting off to the right-hand side, on a cracked red leather bar stool at a dusty, faded wooden high top. A few neat bourbons had turned into a five-hour session. He hadn’t planned on it. It just, sort of, happened. And, in that time, he had ignored the advances of four women, devoured two foot-long cheesesteak sandwiches and three portions of overly-crispy fries and drank ten double shots of Jack Daniels. But he wasn’t drunk. It was a unique trait that he had. No matter what he drank, the alcohol didn’t affect him. He was about to knock back his eleventh neat double shot of bourbon when another woman walked in the door.

This time, different from the rest.

She was wearing a tight red lace dress and matching pointed-toe stilettos with four-inch heels and carrying a black Versace purse in her left hand. She had long dark-brown hair that curled outward at its ends and long tanned legs that looked like they had been kissed by the sun. Her skin shone under the glow from the bar’s orange lights.

She paused a beat, stepping inside. Glanced left, and then right, then noticed him up ahead. The big guy in the dark jacket sitting drinking alone at a high top. The guy she was told to look for. The client. She flicked her eyes up and down his frame and smiled. He was tall and smoulderingly handsome. Dark-haired and masculine-faced. He had a square, stubbly jaw, and he was dressed in a fine-looking dark fitted suit that did little to hide his muscular stature.

Suit looks designer, perhaps. Which means he must have money. Which means I could probably tag on a few extras. This one will be a pleasure, she thought, watching him neck a double shot of bourbon and nod to the barman, a short, bald fat guy with tattooed arms standing behind the bar up ahead, to bring another.

The barman nodded back at him and lifted lowball glass from the pile and what was left of a bottle of Jack Daniels from the middle of a row of bottles sitting high above the bar on a shaky, unvarnished pine shelf.

She clip-clopped across the hard wooden floor, stopped about a foot short of him and placed her right hand on his left shoulder.

“Hey,” she whispered. “Are you the guy?”

Firstly, Beck caught a whiff of her light, floral perfume and the fresh mintiness of her breath. Then, he heard her speak. Her voice sounded soft, feminine. He glanced around from his empty glass, curiosity in his eyes.

She looked to be a few years younger than he was, somewhere in the twilight of her twenties, with a bronze tanned complexion and a diamond-shaped face with azure-blue eyes that were flanked by long dark lashes.

“You the guy?” she asked him, again.

He flicked his gaze down her voluptuous figure. She was slim-waisted and curvaceous in all of the right places. He wasn’t the guy and he had never seen her before, but she was beautiful. Maybe up there with the most beautiful women he had ever seen, which meant he was interested. Which meant, this time, he was 'the guy.' That was for damn sure.

“I’m the guy,” he answered, in a deep-sounding, masculine voice, as the barman brought over his twelfth double shot.

“Great,” she replied, smiling. "Mind if I sit?"

Beck gestured her to take a seat. "Please."

She pulled out the chair next to him and sat down, careful to smooth down her dress before taking a seat. “You got a name?” she asked.

“Yeah. Do you?”

She paused a beat, startled. Then placed her hand on his forearm. "Course I do, honey. It’s Sapphire.”

"Sapphire," Beck said, slowly, lifting his bourbon, thinking about it, realizing she was a prostitute. He paused a beat, then continued, figuring what-the-hell. "It’s Beck. Joe Beck," he said and put the bourbon down, untouched, and stuck out his hand.

She shook his hand, raising her left eyebrow and offering him an admirable glance. "A strong grip."

Beck smiled. He knew her game. He re-lifted his double bourbon and gestured her to have one. "Care for a drink?"

She smiled. She realized his. "Sure thing, honey, it’s your dime," she said and drank his bourbon.

He waved the barman over and asked for another double shot and she asked for a vodka slimline tonic.

The guy brought them a moment later, the vodka tonic served in a tall glass with a fresh slice of lime and the bourbon in another lowball glass.

Beck necked it in one and Sapphire drank the vodka cocktail and they small-talked their way to a few more empty glasses over the next ten minutes, then left the bar arm-in-arm.

***

The two bearded men and the little blond guy pulled in to the Diamondback's parking lot at about ten twenty-eight. Two minutes ahead of schedule. They were in a black Chevrolet Tahoe. The little blond guy was in the driver's seat and the two bearded men were in the back. The blond guy nosed the car into a spot in the middle of the lot, facing onto the bar’s entrance, then turned off the lights. They sat inside the car in darkness like a pack of lurking predators poised and ready to ambush their prey on sight.

That was when they saw the impossible.

They watched, speechless, as Sapphire walked out of the bar on the arm of some random guy dressed in a black suit and then climbed into a car with him. A black Ford Mustang.

"Fuck," the black-bearded guy sneered, thumping the back of the blond guy's headrest.

He said nothing. Just glanced up at the rearview mirror and looked at his reflection. "What do we do now?" he asked him.

The black-bearded guy sighed. "We’ll wait."

"Wait?" the ginger-bearded guy asked, in a rising intonation.

"We’ll wait," the black-bearded guy confirmed, watching the Mustang through the window. "We’ll wait for them to leave,” he added. “And, then, when they do, we’ll follow them. His orders were that this has to be done tonight. So, that unfortunate asshole has just gone and made himself collateral damage."

***

"Your place or motel?" Beck asked, sitting on the driver's seat of the Mustang with Sapphire on the passenger seat on his right.

"Motel," Sapphire answered. She was an outcall girl, through and through. She felt it was more exciting. Different place, different guy, different night. No place and nobody was ever the same, and nothing was going to change that.

“Motel it is,” Beck said and fired up the Mustang's engine and moved the car out from the slot. They cruised across town and stopped at a thirty-five-bucks-a-night shack in the middle of McAllen called the Sundance Motel. It had a pink-and-yellow glowing neon sign out front advertising basic essentials like clean beds, coffee and running water as its main selling points. But it was the small print that caught Beck's eye: Cash payments accepted. No ID necessary. The perfect spot to shack up for the night without leaving any sort of imprint, he thought. His kind of place.

They pulled into the parking lot, went inside and checked in to room 106. The rooms were basic, and 106 was no different. It was small with magnolia pained plasterboard walls and a tired dark-green carpet. There was a small black portable television with a built-in VCR sitting on a pine table by the window and a double bed in the middle of the room. It had a yellow Caribbean bloom bedspread with a pine headboard at the top and matching pine bedside cabinets on either side, each three drawers high with brown plastic knobbed handles. The top knob was missing from both.

They flicked each other a glance that said, ‘c’est la vie,’ and stepped inside and closed the door behind them. Sapphire tossed her Versace purse on the carpet and kicked off her stilettos, while Beck placed his wallet and car keys on the cabinet on the right of the bed.

She padded over behind him and carefully slipped the suit jacket from his shoulders, then eased the tie from his neck and, slowly, undid the buttons of his shirt. She glanced up and down his tanned, muscular torso and smiled, then tossed his shirt in the pile beside her shoes and purse. That was when she slipped out of her red lace dress.

Beck watched, a grin on his face, as the dress slipped down her body and elegantly landed at her feet. Her breasts were full and round and free from tan lines, and there wasn’t a pinch of fat anywhere to be seen. He placed his hand on her left breast and leaned his head forward for a kiss.

She shook her head. "Not yet," she whispered, then undid his belt buckle.

Beck raised his left eyebrow.

She smiled. “Go sit on the edge of the bed first."

He smiled back and padded along the carpet to the foot of the bed and sat down, his legs spread apart and his feet square against the carpet.

She walked around and knelt on the carpet in front of him, wearing nothing but teardrop crystal earrings and a black breakaway thong. Its thin black straps sucked around her tight tanned waist.

She placed her right index finger over his lip and slowly moved it downward, tracing an elegant path over the dark shadow of stubble covering his chin, down his neck and past his collar bone. It was warm and pulsing and he could feel the smooth tip of her nail, colored red with polish, teasing against his skin. She continued, running her fingertip down between his pectoral muscles and into the deep creases between his chiseled abdominals. They felt firm and hard and looked like the European cobblestones travelers tend to find along the footpaths and side streets in places like Vienna or Brugge.

She caressed every inch and smiled, running her finger down and then across, left and then right, and down again until she reached the waist of his pants. Her fingertip slid past his undone belt buckle and onto his dark polyester pants. She gazed upward, looking into his emerald-green eyes and smiled. Then ran her tongue along her upper lip and bit down on her bottom lip and whispered, “Let’s get these off."

Beck grinned and, slowly, nodded his agreement.

Sapphire curled her fingers around the waist of his pants, took the slider of his zip between her right index finger and her thumb and began to pull downward. Firm and slow.

The zip’s teeth parted with a hiss as the zip glided over them. It had slid half-way down with just another half to go when the room’s plum wooden door came crashing from its white wooden frame with a thunderous bang.

It sounded like a direct hit from a sledgehammer. The white wood splintered from the frame and peppered the green carpet with chipped fragments that fell like snow. The door caved sideways from its brass hinges and fell to the floor, and two huge, bearded men charged in from the night.

They had skinhead haircuts over round bulldog faces, red wrinkled foreheads, dark puffy eyes and thin purple slits for mouths. Four flabby chins drooped over their necks and they looked as if they'd never seen a razor in years. They were covered ear-to-ear by thick straggly beards, one jet black and the other ginger. Their beards twisted and coiled at the ends and practically held pieces of black decayed corn and scraps of rotten, gray meat-like insects stuck to a spider's web. The men stood almost as tall as they looked wide. Maybe six-foot-two with somewhere beyond eight-hundred pounds of bulk between them. They were wearing tired-looking dark-brown work boots that had scuffs at the toes and dirt stains along the welts, faded blue jeans and dark-gray sweat-soaked t-shirts underneath black leather jackets that did nothing to contain the ghostly white rolls of flab that hung down over at their waists. They held black 12-gauge pump-action shotguns across their bulging stomachs and they had sinister grins across their faces. Their fingers were looped through the guns’ trigger guards, and their knuckles were a ghostly shade of white.

Sapphire screamed and crumpled to the floor. She crawled across the carpet and curled up in a ball with her back pressed firmly against the wall that separated the bedroom from the bathroom, holding her left forearm across her chest, barely covering her naked breasts, frantically shaking her head. She dug her feet into the carpet and pushed hard against its fibers, trying to move back even farther, but there was nowhere else for her to go.

The ginger-bearded guy waddled across the carpet and stood, leering over the top of her almost naked body. "Get up, bitch," he yelled in a thick Texan accent and grabbed her by a lock of her long, dark hair.

She screamed and jolted her hands above her head. Grabbed a hold of his wrists as he hauled her up to her feet like she was a rag doll.

He yanked her head downward to her left and leered at her bare round perfect breasts.

"We're gonna enjoy this," he said, sniggering and licking his lips, then dragged her across the carpet by her hair and pushed her out through the hole in the wall where the door had once been.

The black-bearded guy glanced at the bedside cabinet on the right of the bed and raised the shotgun to Beck's head. "Wallet and keys," he said. "Get them and put them in your pockets, Asshole."

Beck’s throat tightened and his heart raced. He was staring down the chilling hollow barrel of a loaded Winchester SXP Black Shadow shotgun and he was unarmed. He had left his firearm of choice, a Smith & Wesson 5906, in the glove box of the car, having put it there before the funeral because it seemed inappropriate to have a gun at the burial of a man who took his own life with a bullet.

His first thought was to rush the guy. At his weight, he figured all it would've taken was one hard shoulder tackle. His knees would have buckled beneath him and he would have collapsed on the floor like a big redwood falling over in a clearing. But his feet were spread apart, one slightly behind the other. There was no guarantee he would knock him off his feet and the shotgun would likely go off. The shrapnel would tear right through him and the other guy would hear it. He would kill Sapphire in a heartbeat. Or, worse, she would be left with them. Alone.

His second thought was his smartest. He realized that if the guy had wanted to kill him, he probably would have shot him already. So, he figured the best way to ensure both he and Sapphire made it out of this alive would be to do exactly as the guy said. For now, anyway. He leaned back across the duvet, twisting his body and stretching his arm and grabbed his wallet and car keys with his right hand.

"That's right, Asshole," the black-bearded guy said. "Now put them in your pockets and stand up."

Beck returned to a seated position, then stuffed his wallet into his left pocket and his keys into his right and stood up from the edge of the bed.

"Now hands above your head," the guy snarled, jabbing his abdomen with the muzzle of the shotgun.

Beck looked at him for a long moment, then raised his hands above his head.

"Okay," the black-bearded guy said and nodded toward what was left of the door. "Walk."

Beck kept quiet, taking deep, silent breaths, and moved toward the empty white door frame.

The guy followed closely behind, the shotgun’s cold steel muzzle pressed hard against the small of his back, and pushed him out to the dark and humid Texas night.

TWO

The sky was midnight black and the night air was hot and dry. It felt hotter than it should've been for sometime around eleven o’clock. Maybe still around a hundred, heat that had no place lingering around so long after dusk, like the shotgun that had no place pressed against Joe Beck's naked back. Its muzzle felt cold and hard against his skin.

The black-bearded guy marched him across the sidewalk and into the motel's deserted parking lot. He stopped by the black Mustang that Beck had parked nose-in in the slot outside 105. "Yours?" he asked.

Beck said nothing.

The guy took the silence as a ‘yes’. "Good. I'll come back for that later," he said and then jabbed the shotgun’s muzzle deeper into his spine.

It was a painful blow. Metal on bone. Beck felt it shoot all the way up to his neck, but he kept focused and calm and, crucially, vigilant.

The only other car in the lot was a black Chevy Tahoe, also parked nose-in, in a slot across the other side. A short fresh-faced guy with a thin figure and blond hair stood beside it, leaning against the hood, under the flickering yellow glow of the parking lot’s lights. He was wearing brown work boots, dark-blue jeans and a black polo shirt underneath a black leather jacket and there was a cigarette sticking out from the left side of his mouth. Its tip singed as he inhaled and briefly illuminated his face with an orange glow during the intermittent flashes of darkness when the light flicked out.

Sapphire was ahead of him. She padded bare-footed towards the Tahoe's trunk, the cold muzzle of the fat ginger-bearded guy's shotgun also pressed against her exposed back.

He slapped his left hand on the back of the car. “Open her up,” he said.

Beck felt the black-bearded guy's shotgun muzzle jerk to his right kidney. "Hang on," he called from behind him. It was loud in his ear. "I want a good angle on this one," the guy said and jabbed him, again, with the gun. The blow to his kidney hurt more than the blow to his spine. A tender area of flesh that stood had no give against the steel. "Hold her there,” the guy yelled. “We'll put him in first, then the woman."

The two men nodded and the blond guy flicked his cigarette to the floor and twisted it into a thin white ash with the outsole of his left boot. He pulled the keys from his front left breast pocket, pressed the switch and the Tahoe's locks clicked open. He opened the back left passenger door and manually locked it again. Then he walked around the other side and opened the back passenger door while the ginger-bearded guy pushed Sapphire back against the side of the car with his shotgun pressed against her stomach.

"Move and I'll blow another hole in you, bitch," he said, smirking with his eyes focused on her breasts.

The black-bearded guy used his shotgun to push Beck toward the open door. "Get in," he said firmly.

Beck paused a beat and studied the other two men. He looked at the ginger-bearded guy first. Fat and unkempt, just like the black-bearded guy, maybe his brother. But lower in command. The younger brother, he thought and flicked his eyes across to the little thin blond guy standing holding the door. Young-looking and scrawny. A go-for. One thing is clear for damn sure, the black-bearded guy is the one in charge.

The blond guy flicked his eyes up and down Beck's tall frame and sneered. "He said get in, Asshole." It was a Texan accent but softer and higher pitched than the other two.

Beck said nothing. He just stared at him like a scrap of meat, having now decided the order he would kill them in. Black-beard first, then ginger-beard, and then the little blond runt. He would save him for last. Snap his neck in two like a pencil wrapped across his finger. But he knew had to be smart. They had already made their first mistake, and it would be a matter of time until they made another. For now, he would do as they said. He took another breath of the scorching night air and climbed into the back of the car.

The back of the Tahoe was cool, still chilled from a recent blast of air conditioning. Its seats were cream leather with thick padding and its floor was covered in taupe carpet. It looked almost unused. New. He slid across the cold leather seat to the far end, noticing a black Magic Tree air freshener dangling from the interior mirror and catching a hint of its vanilla scent. That was when he figured the car was stolen, considering it unlikely for two fat slobs and a smoker would bother about the scent of their car.

The ginger-bearded guy grabbed the back of Sapphire’s left arm and tossed her into the back. “Get in there,” he said and slapped her ass as she fell forward across the seat. It was a sharp and loud smack.

Beck helped her up onto the middle seat and glared at the guy from the other end of the car. He was going to enjoy it when he killed him.

The guy followed in after her and sat on the far right passenger seat. The suspension dropped and squealed under his flabby bulk. He held his shotgun across her lap, jammed into Beck's lower abdomen and slammed the door.

The black-bearded guy climbed into the front passenger seat. The car dropped even closer to the ground. Beck imagined its rims almost touching the concrete below.

The guy spun around in the seat to face them in the back and held his shotgun over the cream leather center console. He aimed its muzzle at Beck's sternum and covered the trigger with his right index finger. Squeezed it about a quarter-inch of its pull, his knuckle turning white.

The blond guy climbed onto the driver's seat and started up the Tahoe’s engine. He backed it out of the space, slowly eased across the lot and slipped out onto the quiet, deserted road.

They drove in silence. The blond guy watching the road, the ginger-bearded guy leering down at Sapphire's naked breasts, and the black-bearded guy staring directly at Beck. Eyeball-to-eyeball.

Beck flicked his gaze down the shotgun's black barrel to its muzzle and then back up into the guy’s dark puffy eyes. "What's this about?"

"No talking," the guy answered, without moving a single muscle in his face.

"What do you want?" Beck asked.

"I said no talking, Asshole," he said and glanced over at the ginger-bearded guy.

He pushed his shotgun deeper into Beck's side. Then the black-bearded guy angled his shotgun toward Sapphire’s breasts and jabbed its muzzle deep into her cleavage. "One more word and I'll blow ‘em off," he said. “One more word.”

Sapphire took a sharp breath and clasped Beck's right hand with her left and squeezed it tight.

They drove the rest of the journey in a tense silence, only interrupted by the whir of the air conditioning and the sound of the Tahoe's tires sucking at the road. Sapphire stared at the floor, desperately trying not to make eye contact with the guy, or look at the dark barrel of the gun right below her chin, and Beck stared back at the black-bearded guy, breathing hard against the other shotgun pressed into his abdomen, thinking, still trying to make sense what was going on.

In town for a funeral, now sitting in the back of a Tahoe, taken hostage by three men I've never seen before, with two shotguns, alongside a half-naked prostitute I picked up maybe just a half-hour ago. What the hell’s going on?

The Tahoe turned off-road and onto a narrow dirt track. It continued straight for another ten or fifteen minutes, past an isolated white farmhouse set on an acre of land and ringed by a broken white picket fence, before they turned off the dirt track and onto the course green plain. The thick grass scratched at the car’s wheel trims and the dirt crunched under its tires. Its headlights bounced up and down as it bumped over rocks on the ground and into cracks in the hardened uneven dirt.

They pulled up maybe a mile from the farmhouse and circled around a single withering oak tree. It was a sad sight. Thick and knotted with not a single leaf hanging from its twisted branches. The headlight beams reflected off its flaking white bark and flicked across the surrounding landscape before fading into the overhanging blanket of darkness. There were no other obvious landmarks and no signs of anyone around.

Beck knew it wasn't good.

The Tahoe began to slow. Its brakes squeaked and the black-bearded guy flicked his eyes from Beck to Sapphire, down at her breasts, then back at Beck. "That's us here," he said. "At the end of the road. For you."

Sapphire squeezed Beck’s hand, harder.

It was a tight, panicked squeeze. He could feel her fear, her fingernails digging into his skin, but there was nothing, yet, that he could do.

The ginger-bearded guy unlocked the door and stepped out onto the dry brown dirt. It crunched under his boots. "Right, bitch," he said and pointed the shotgun against the right side of Sapphire’s head. "Out."

She looked at Beck, obvious distress across her beautiful face.

He nodded, slowly, telling her to do as the guy said.

She slid across the leather seat. It sucked at her warm naked skin. She paused in the doorway, looked out at the darkness, down the shotgun's black barrel and then stepped out onto the dirt. It felt rough and cracked under the soft skin on the soles of her feet.

The ginger-bearded guy smiled, “that’s it,” he said and gestured the shotgun forward to the front of the car. "Now, get yourself over there."

Her eyes followed the bright beams from Tahoe's headlights, along the ground to an illuminated spot of land where they merged into a solid bright sphere that was about ten feet wide and ten feet long. There was a pile of dirt about chest high from the ground, with what looked like the wooden shaft and black handle of a shovel sticking out from the top. And to the left of the mound was a six-foot-long hole in the ground.

The night air was hot, but, suddenly, she felt cold. Shivers crept along every inch of her skin. Like insects crawling. Down her neck, down her arms, down her back, and down the backs of her legs. Her heart began to thump and her airways tightened. She sucked in what breath she could, turned and looked back the uncouth slob of a man, with full watery, red eyes.

"Walk," he growled and gestured his shotgun forward for a second time.

She turned and wiped her eyes with the back of her left hand, then slowly began walking towards the hole, looking at the dark cracked dirt under feet, shaking and shivering with every step she took.

The guy followed close behind her. She could feel the aura of the gun against her back and she could hear the sound of his footsteps, his boots slamming against the ground.

The black-bearded guy laughed, then climbed out of the car and pointed his shotgun back in through the open door at Beck. "You as well, Asshole," he said and nodded toward the grave. "Out."

Beck did as he was told. He climbed out of the car and stretched off the stiffness that had crept up through his joints. Then followed behind Sapphire toward the hole, still trying to work an angle.

The hole was a rectangular shaped and uneven around the edges, obviously dug by hand. It was maybe four-feet deep and was already partially filled by a mound of dirt. Beck spotted what looked like a shoe, a blue slipper and then some sort of tartan pattern cloth sticking out of carmine-colored soil. Somebody else was already in there, he realized. Somebody old, he thought and, immediately, wondered who? And why? One thing, though, was clear - they had dug it deep enough for at least one more person and he still had no idea why he was about to become one of them.

"That'll do," the black-bearded guy said as Beck neared the grave's edge. "Now down on your knees, back to the hole, facing me, with your hands behind your back."

Beck took a slow breath and did as the guy asked. He got down on his knees, his hands behind him, facing him with his back to the hole. The Tahoe's headlights were bright in his eyes. He could hardly see a thing, just the guy's huge outline and the shape of the shotgun’s black barrel.

"On your knees, bitch," the ginger-bearded guy snarled to Sapphire.

She kneeled down on the ground, behind Beck, on the other side of the grave.

"Now, let's lose that thong," the guy barked and reached down and tucked his index finger under its black strap. She pushed at his chest and slapped him across the face, but he just sniggered and kept on. She twisted away, a disgusted look on her face, and bit down firmly on her bottom lip as he tore the thong from her waist, then lifted it up to his nose. He sniffed, loudly, and smiled with a wide toothful grin of yellow rotting teeth.

"Fuck you!" she yelled. She wanted to stand up and smack him. Kick him in the balls. Take his gun and shoot him. But she knew she couldn’t. She knew he would be too strong and that trying would, somehow, only make things worse.

Beck heard the tussle and sighed, watching the black-bearded guy's outline nodding against the bright lights, realizing what they were going to do. They were going to rape her. And, then, when they were done, they were going to kill her. He closed his eyes and exhaled a disgusted breath.

"Now, get down on your back," the ginger-bearded guy commanded.

Sapphire lowered her head and looked at his feet. She sucked a deep breath, staring a million miles beyond his boots on the dirt. She knew what he was going to do, too, but she also knew there was nothing she could do to stop it.

He grew impatient. Leaned forward and jammed the shotgun against her chest and knocked her backward to the ground.

She groaned in pain and flopped to the floor.

Beck heard her body slap against the dirt. He wanted to stand up and beat the guy to death, but the black-bearded guy’s shotgun was pointed straight at him. All he could do was watch and listen.

The guy’s dark outline then stepped forward from the headlights. "Empty your pockets, Asshole," he said to him. "Toss the wallet and keys on the ground in front of you."

Again, Beck did as he said. He tossed his wallet and car keys on the ground but made sure they landed a foot closer to him than the guy had probably intended. His outline nodded against the headlights, and then he waved forward with his right hand. The blond guy jumped out of the car. "Eugene," the black-bearded guy said to him. "Pick up his stuff and bring it to me."

Beck’s plan hadn’t worked.

The blond guy casually walked over, scooped up the wallet and keys and handed them to the guy. Then stood by his side, waiting for his next order.

"Get me the saw and the cooler from the trunk," the black-bearded guy said to him. "Once Wyatt's had a good few rounds with her, you hold her steady and I’ll cut off her head, just as the chairman ordered."

The blond guy laughed. “I’ve been looking forward to this all day, Bagwell. You think when Wyatt’s done, and before you cut off her head, that I could get a go with her, too?” he asked.

The black-bearded guy glanced across the grave at the terrified-but-beautiful naked whore on the dirt and then back at him and nodded. “There’s plenty of time. We’ll all have a go.”

The blond guy grinned and walked off into the Tahoe's headlights.

That was when Beck realized he had gotten it wrong. He was right about the heavy guy with the black beard being the leader of the three, but somebody else was in charge, and the grave wasn't intended for two more. It had been dug for Sapphire.

The black-bearded guy squeezed Beck’s keys into the pocket of his jeans and then opened Beck’s wallet. "What do we have here?" he asked, rhetorically, and pulled a wad of bills from the bill slot. Tens, twenties and fifties. "A couple hundred bucks," he said and chuckled. Then squeezed the notes into the same pocket as the keys and took two steps forward. The complexion of his face came into focus from the blur of the headlights. "That's better," he said to Beck. "I like to look a man dead in the eye when I kill him.”

Beck heard something thump against the dirt behind him. Something metallic. The shotgun. The ginger-bearded slob must have tossed it, he thought, realizing he had just made their second mistake. All I need is one more. Then he heard a hissing sound, like a zip being undone.

“I also like to know a man’s name when I take his life,” the black-bearded guy said to him and pulled a white plastic card from Beck's wallet. “Joe Beck," he said, turning his name into a much longer sounding name than it was. "What’s this?”

Beck said nothing.

The guy raised the white card higher in the air and inspected it with his eyes. It was a plastic card with a light-blue tinge and the words ‘Private Detective’ in bold blue print at the top. Beck’s photograph and name and identifiable information were below it, to the right of a large gold shield that sat on the left. The shield had a navy-blue eagle with the letters U and S on either side of its wings and the words ‘United States, Private Detective,’ in navy-blue font underneath it. There was an issue date below them – the date that Beck had picked it up from a guy in Sioux Falls, South Dakota, for fifty bucks. “So, you’re a private detective, eh? From South Dakota?” the guy asked.

Beck didn't respond. He could hear Sapphire sobbing behind him, pleading with the fat ginger-bearded slob to stop. "Please. No. Please." It sounded like she said it with more emphasis the second time, but the guy just sniggered back at her. “I’m going to enjoy this,” Beck heard him say, followed by a struggle that sounded like he had put his hand over her mouth.

"You're a long way from home, Cop," the black-bearded guy said.

"About eleven-hundred miles," Beck replied. “And the name’s not Cop.”

"If I say your name’s Cop, it’s Cop. Okay?!”

Beck said nothing.

“Eleven-hundred miles you say?" The guy asked him, rhetorically. "Well, Cop, that's eleven-hundred miles you won't be traveling again. Do you have any last words?"

Beck stared at him, silently. Listening to the metallic clanking sounds coming from behind the Tahoe. Thinking. The blond runt's out of range, he’s unarmed and must be fumbling around with something in the Tahoe's trunk. The ginger-bearded slob has dropped his gun. His pants are most likely around his knees. He's vulnerable. And I'm about thirty seconds from taking a shotgun blast in the chest.

“Nothing to say, Cop?” the guy asked him. “Maybe you need somewhere to put that mouth of yours. Why don’t you bend forward and kiss my boots?”

Beck inhaled a deep, nasal breath and answered the guy in a barely audible voice, "Yeah? Like your whore of a mother's tampon tunnel?" he said and moved his right hand to his right ankle, slipping his fingers up the right leg of his pants.

The black-bearded guy stepped forward toward him, now completely out of the glare from the headlights. "What did you just say? What did you just say about our mother?" He growled, his face reddening and aggression in his voice, now standing about two feet away. Almost close enough.

Beck wrapped his fingers and palm around the rubber handle of a boot knife he kept in a leather holster strapped around the crus of his leg. It was a black Smith & Wesson HRT model with a black six-inch spear-point stainless-steel blade. Because it had been resting against his leg, the handle felt warm in the palm of his hand.

The guy lowered the shotgun to the ground, leaned forward and balled his left fist. "What did you say about my mother?" he snarled, his face scarlet, now standing only an arm's length away.

Their third and final mistake.

Beck whipped the blade from the holster and sprung upward from his knees, lunging toward him.

The guy's eyes widened as he saw him rise up from the dirt. He saw Beck's arm hook towards him and caught a glimpse of the moonlight flickering off the knife's sharp tip. His first thought was to shoot him, but he was too close. He quickly stepped back to gain some range and began to arc the shotgun up toward Beck’s body, its barrel briefly touching the side of his left thigh and then his hip. He squeezed the trigger as hard as he could, and the shotgun fired.

The blast was loud, like the sound of a heavy phone book being dropped onto a hard wooden desk. It echoed around the empty landscape. But the barrel had gone up under Beck's left arm and the shot went high into the air. The next thing the guy felt was the knife’s sharp tip slice through the left side of his neck and a thick, sticky warm liquid pour down his sweat-soaked skin.

The gun slipped from his hands. Its muzzle bounced off the ground and its butt slapped against the dirt. He fell backward and brought Beck down with him, his hand was still wrapped around the knife's handle with so much pressure that his entire fist was white. He fell across the guy's flabby stomach. The guy slammed hard against the dirt and they both briefly disappeared behind a cloud of brown dust that eddied up into the air around his huge outline.

The ginger-bearded guy heard the blast and the thud that followed. He looked up and saw his brother lying dead on the dirt with the half-naked guy wearing the suit pants lying across the top of him, a knife sticking out from the side of his neck and a carmine torrent of blood pouring past it to the ground. He let go of Sapphire's arms and drew back and scrambled for his shotgun.

Beck rolled over and grabbed the dead guy’s black Winchester SXP. He sat up and pumped the forend back and then forth. It clicked and then it clocked. The spent shell fell from the chamber and bounced across the ground and the next shell slipped into place. He quickly glanced at Sapphire, still alive and moving but lying on her back on the dirt in a naked daze. Then over at the ginger-bearded guy. His jacket was on the ground, his shirt was off and his pants were around his ankles. He was far enough away from Sapphire not to bring her into Beck’s line of fire. His shotgun was now in his hands with his finger on the trigger and he was turning around. The rolls of white fat folded as he moved. He was quick for such a big man but not quick enough. Beck was quicker.

One stiff pull and the SXP’s firing pin shot forward, crushing and igniting the primer in the cartridge base. The primer ignited the gunpowder in the brass head of the shell. The contained explosion forced the wad forward and pushed one-hundred steel pellets down the smoothbore barrel at 1,300 feet per second. The shrapnel erupted from its muzzle and whizzed through the air, fanning out with every inch. It sliced through the guy's stomach and lap before he even heard the sound of the blast and his gut exploded like a watermelon. He crumpled to the dirt a few feet back and left of Sapphire in a naked and bloodied heap with his intestines hanging down his legs.

The blond guy had heard the first blast but had thought nothing of it. He was sure that it was the sound of Bagwell putting the big muscular guy into the ground. Then he heard the second blast. He ran from the back of the Tahoe, holding the handle of a white foam cooler in his left hand and a crosscut saw in his right, but he froze by the driver’s door as the muscular man stood over Bagwell’s dead body with his shotgun in his hands. He glanced across the grave and saw the ginger-bearded guy on the ground in a folded-over blooded mess. His eyes widened. He let go of the cooler and the saw and dived for the Tahoe's door.

Beck heard him scurrying across the dirt and turned around just as he had turned the key and started the Tahoe’s engine. The car roared to life as Beck pumped the shotgun’s forend for a second time. The spent shell fell from the gun’s chamber with a click and another slipped in with a clock.

The Tahoe backed away and turned. Its wheels screeched and spun against the dirt and a thick cloud of dust eddied into the air. Beck pointed the shotgun directly at it, knowing the Tahoe was just on the other side, and squeezed the trigger. He heard the sound of shattering glass and about thirty simultaneous metallic clanks. The shrapnel shattered the Tahoe’s back window and punctured dozens of small holes in its trunk, but it didn't stop. Something in the trunk had shielded the guy from the blast.

He gunned the accelerator and the car sped off into the darkness.

Beck watched it disappear into the landscape and then crumpled to the floor, physically and emotionally exhausted. He looked up at the clear dark sky, briefly taking in the sight of the stars twinkling overhead and closed his eyes. It was possibly the closest he had ever really come to death. He had been in tight situations before but none as unexpected and life-threatening as this. He shook his head against the dirt, took a slow breath of the warm dry air and nodded. The closest he had come, but he had gotten lucky. He had been afforded an opportunity and he had taken it. He had survived.

He opened his eyes and glanced to his right, at the saw and white foam cooler lying on the dirt. The saw was a crosscut model, long and wide and made for cutting through wood. Its blade was brown with clumps of flesh between its jagged teeth and there was a crimson stain along the cooler rim. He grabbed the shotgun and pressed its muzzle into the ground, pushed his weight against its butt and used it to wedge himself up from the dirt. Then, staggered over, dazed, for a closer look.

It was blood. No doubt about it. He lifted the cooler from the ground. It felt heavy, like there was something inside. He held it upright and took a deep breath, then reached down and opened the lid.

THREE

The inside walls of the cooler were coated in a thick sticky carmine crust and there was a pool of dark-red liquid sloshing around at the bottom. Two bundles of flesh were lying in it on their side. He saw ears, eyes, noses and mouths. It was two severed heads.

Their skin was pale, almost ghostly, with sticky patches of red across their cheeks, chins, temples and foreheads. Veins and arteries hung from the ends of their throats like soggy purple straws. Their mouths were open and their blue tongues pressed against their flaking blue bottom lips. Their eyelids were closed about halfway, just their scleras showing. They were bloodshot and red. The flesh at their necks was torn and textured with nicks and grooves that looked to have been made by the teeth of a crosscut saw.

Both of them were male. One had combed back black hair with chubby cheeks and a flabby chin. The other’s hair was brown and tousled. He had a square jaw and aquiline nose that angled ever so slightly to the right. It was a face Beck recognized. It was Mike Sikorsky’s.

Beck's eyes nearly exploded from their sockets, and his heart shot to the back of his throat. He let go of the handle. The cooler dropped to the ground and the heads rolled in the blood as the lid swept shut. He raised his hand over his mouth and stood in silence, staring down at the bloody, white box.

That’s Mike Sikorsky. I stood by the side of his grave, he thought. Just a few hours ago, I watched his casket get lowered into the ground. That’s his head. Why is his head inside that cooler? Why did these men have it? That's why it was a closed casket ceremony. Not because it was draped in red, white and blue, or because he had shot himself. His casket was closed because his head was missing from his body. Wait, there weren’t any bullet holes. No entry or exit wounds. He didn’t shoot himself. He was killed. And whoever is behind this has tried to cover it up by painting it as a suicide.

Sapphire stirred behind him. She tucked her legs underneath her body and sat staring at the ground, propping her body up with her arm. She was breathing quick, light breaths and she was shaking.

He knew they had to get as far away from wherever they were as fast as they possibly could. He padded over to help her up. Stuck out his hand.

She looked frightened when she saw it. It was like she was preoccupied, as if there was intense fear on her mind.

"It's okay," he said. "You're okay."

She nodded once but said nothing. Waited a long moment before regaining herself, then took his hand and pulled herself up against his weight.

He glanced at her thong on the dirt and then back at her. "Did he..."

He didn't know how to say it, but she knew what he was asking. She dusted the light-brown covering of dirt from her ass and legs and shook her head. "No," she said. "Didn't get it in."

Beck nodded, relieved.

She flung herself into his arms. Her breasts pressed against his upper abdomen. Her skin felt warm and smooth against his body.

"Thank you," she whispered and laid her head against his chest and sobbed.

He nodded again but said nothing. He was still thinking about Mike. He glanced down at the two dead bodies and the cooler, then whispered, "Sapphire, we’ve got to get out of here."

She looked up and nodded, teary-eyed, and breathed out a 'yes.' Then padded across the dirt and lifted her thong from the ground, pulled it up her legs and re-clipped it around her waist. She glanced at the ginger-bearded guy's dead, naked and mutilated body and shivered, then looked across the other side of the hole and saw the black-bearded guy lying lifeless on the dirt, a knife plunged into his neck.

"What happened?" she asked.

"I killed them," he replied, looking off into the distance. "I had a knife holstered by my right shin. Always do. They made a critical mistake. They didn't check for concealed weapons. I caught the black-bearded guy off guard. Stuck him in the neck. Grabbed his gun and used it to blow the other guy’s guts out."

She nodded and let out a half-smile. "What about the black SUV? What happened to the other guy?"

"He heard the gunshots and hightailed it. Jumped in the car and took off. I got a shot off as he was pulling away, but something in the trunk took the spray."

She glanced over to where the Tahoe had been parked and saw a spaghetti pattern of curving tire tracks on the floor, then noticed the white foam cooler.

"What's that?" she asked.

“Nothing,” he lied.

“Joe. What the hell’s that?”

He sucked a deep breath. "It's a cooler. The blond guy must have lifted it from the Tahoe’s trunk. He was carrying it around when I killed the other two. Dropped it right before he dived for the car door."

She stepped forward, slowly, toward it. Raised her hand over her mouth. "Joe? What’s that beside it?”

He shook his head.

She grimaced and stepped closer but stopped, frozen still, and caught her breath. “Why the hell is there a saw beside it?"

"Sapphire," he said. "Don't go near that."

She looked back at him, fear on her face.

He closed his eyes and exhaled. "Because see that cooler? There are two severed heads inside it."

"Bullshit," she said and took another step closer, breathing light breaths.

"Sapphire," he called and charged over and gently grabbed her by her shoulders. "I'm not joking. Don't go near it."

She saw the blood on the saw’s blade and shivered. Looked back at him, her eyes as wide as frisbees. "What? Why would they?"

He shook his head. "Because, that's what they were here for,” he said.

The color drained from her face.

"I heard the black-bearded guy say it right before I killed him. Somebody sent them to..."

Her eyes filled with tears and she felt her long tanned legs turn to wax.

"We’ve got to get out of here," he said, for the second time.

She nodded vaguely but said nothing. Just looked at him through frightened eyes.

He saw the question. Grimaced and shook his head. "It wasn't my head they wanted.”

She said absolutely nothing. She just gazed up at him, absently. Her face looked pale. Sickly.

"Now, I don't know why and I suspect, from your reaction, that you probably don’t either. But one of the heads in that box belongs to a friend of mine. A friend who was like a Goddamned brother, who I saw being lowered into his grave earlier today."

She remained silent.

He placed his hands on her shoulders and pulled her close. She felt colder than before and she was shaking. "Don't worry, Sapphire," he said, softly. “It’s all right. We’re all right. You’re all right. I'm here. And I’m staying here. I’m going to find out what’s going on here. And I’m going to find whoever's behind this.”

She nodded slowly, reassured, and pressed her lips tightly together.

He gently rubbed the back of her arm and smiled. "You'll be safe with me," he said, nodding gently.

She nodded back but only once.

He walked over to the black-bearded guy's body. Forced his money and car keys from the guy's left pocket and put them back into his pocket. Then, checked the guy’s other pocket for ID. It was tight against his hip and he could only squeeze his football-sized hand in about half-way. Enough to feel that there was nothing there but a few folds of flab. Next, he checked his jacket. But, again, he found nothing.

He whipped his knife from the guy's neck. Rubbed it against the guy’s shirt, wiping off the thick slick of blood, then slipped it back in the holster on the crus of his right leg.

He padded around the other side of the grave and folded the waist of ginger-bearded guy's jeans up over his knees. Rummaged through his pockets. They were a little looser than the other guy's. Not as much fat pushing behind them. But they were completely empty. He checked his jacket, too. Again, he found nothing. He lifted the shotgun from the ground and walked back toward Sapphire, picked up his wallet and private detective ID card from the ground, then stuffed the card into his wallet and his wallet back into his pocket.

"Okay," he said. "Let’s get out of here."

"How?" she asked, her voice fragile and barely audible.

"They drove us past a farmhouse on the way,” he said and pointed south-east. “It’s maybe a mile in that direction. We can cover that in maybe twenty minutes. Easy. See if anybody’s home. Best case we get a ride back to town. Worst case we get to call a cab."

She looked at him, incredulous. She knew what he was saying meant walking on foot, half-naked and through the darkness.

"You got a better idea?"

She shook her head and sighed.

"Okay, then, let's go," he said, while he picked up the other shotgun.

They then set off south-east under the moonlight.

***

The Tahoe rocked back and forth and bounced up and down on the hard terrain. The inside of the car was deathly silent and Eugene was staring out through the windshield, but his mind was a million miles beyond the road.

Bagwell and Wyatt, man. Shit. They're dead. Shit. What the hell happened? It was supposed to be easy. We'd just pick her up. Kill her and get her head. Leave her out there in the dirt. Why the hell was that guy there? Who the hell was he? How did he get Bagwell’s shotgun? He was on his damned knees. Jesus. That could've been me with the knife in my neck, or my guts on the dirt. Shit. What if the car had been locked? What if Bagwell or Wyatt had the keys? He'd have had a clear shot, right at me. I'd be dead right now, too. Shit. Shit. I need a smoke.

He slipped a cigarette pack from his polo shirt pocket and snatched a cigarette from the pack. Three of them fell out onto his lap. He tossed the pack onto the passenger seat and glanced down and looked at the three fallen cigarettes. Scooped one of them up and jabbed it between his lips. Its butt crumpled against his front teeth. He swerved the car off the roughage and onto the dirt track and sped past the farmhouse. The speedometer reached fifty, sixty and then seventy miles an hour, and kept on rising.

He fished a thin matchbook from his pocket, took a match from the book and struck it against the book’s strike strip. It struck out. The flame sparked but faded to nothing but smoke. He tossed it and grabbed another match. Took his eye off the road. Struck the match. It snapped. The Tahoe swerved. He tossed the match and grabbed the wheel and steadied the vehicle’s course. Frustrated, he grabbed the last match and tried again. This time, he got the result he was hoping for. Its end sparked into a glowing orange flame. He held it up against the tip of his cigarette and inhaled hard. Then flicked the switch on the door and the driver’s window shot down about two inches. Hot air whipped in from outside as he flicked the flaming match out from inside.

He exhaled slowly and watched the whipping air suck the smoke out through the window. It disappeared into the darkness. Instantly, he felt calm.

He took another long draw, exhaled slowly and then repeated it, again. Long draw, slow exhale. He did it over and over until the cigarette had been reduced to a pale-brown stump with about a centimeter of gray and white ash hanging from the end.

He flicked the butt out the window and glanced at the sign by the side of the road. It read: Welcome to McAllen. He caught his breath and a sobering thought flashed through his mind.

Shit. What do I tell the chairman?

***

Beck and Sapphire walked in near silence, listening to the howling of coyotes somewhere in the distance. Every step was a struggle. The terrain was hard. The grass scratched at their legs and the deep cracks in the dirt grabbed at their ankles. There were questions he needed to ask her and answers he needed her to tell him, but he knew it wasn't the time or the place, so they kept on walking, silent, listening to the sounds of the night.

The reached the farmhouse after almost twenty-five minutes. Sapphire’s feet were cut and sore and throbbing. Their legs felt heavy. They were both warm and sweaty and tired. The sweat trickled down their backs and glistened on their bare torsos. They staggered through the broken white gate and continued up the dirt drive. Padded across the lawn and along the concrete slab path, then up the gray concrete steps to the front door.

The door was ajar, creaking back and forth, about a millimeter at a time, from the tremor of the night air. The top step was littered with broken shards of white porcelain that and what looked like the remnants of the handle of a coffee mug.

Beck stuck his forearm across Sapphire's chest. "Hold it," he said, briefly feeling the smooth, warm, sweaty skin of her breasts against the back his arm. "Don't want you standing on that barefoot."

She stopped on the second step, glanced down and nodded. “Right.”

He swept the shards aside with a swift brush of his shoe and handed her a shotgun. "Hold this and stay behind me."

The gun was long and felt cold and metallic in her hand. She studied its butt and ran her hand up its barrel.

Beck pushed the door open and stepped inside, glancing at a black oval-shaped nameplate on the white wooden frontage to the right as he passed through the frame. It said, 'Redmayne.'

The hallway was dark with navy-blue walls and stunk of stale air and nicotine. There was a light-brown carpet on the floor. There was a coffee stain in its fibers by the door. It looked like it maybe had spilled from the mug that was lying in shards on the front step.

They padded forward and Beck ducked his head through the pine, unpainted door on the left. It was a lounge. It had the same gloomy decor and tired ambiance as the hall. There was a burgundy fabric chesterfield armchair in the center of the room. It had been worn threadbare at the arms and sat at an uneven angle, directly in front of a brown television set that looked to be about a hundred years old. It was switched on and playing something in black and white. There was a VCR on a pine television stand below it. It was running. He also saw a coffee table to the right of the armchair. It was pine, like the television stand, and there was a glass ashtray with a half-smoked cigarette sitting tip-down against the side and a green plastic lighter on the table beside it. The television set on and the cigarette looking fairly recent meant that chances were somebody was home, Beck reasoned.

There was a metallic bang from the other side of the wall. Beck turned to Sapphire and whispered, "Wait here." He raised his shotgun up through the air to upper abdominal height, his left hand underneath the barrel and his right forefinger covering the trigger, then stepped back out into the hall and pushed open the door.

A black cat screeched and darted past his leg and shot out through the open front door. He stepped into the room. There was a can of tuna rolling along the gun-gray tiled kitchen floor. The cabinets were white and wooden and the countertops were the same shade as tiles. There was a navy-blue saucer and a blunt buttering knife sitting on top, beside a small orange bottle of pills that had a white label and a white plastic lid.

He walked over and picked it up and read what it said. 'Anti-inflammatory Tablets. Patient: Walter Redmayne. Disease: Arthritis.' He thought of the house slippers and checked trousers sticking out from the blood-soaked dirt at the bottom of the makeshift grave they men had prepared and realized he was probably in the dead man's house. He thought of the coffee mug at the door and the television still playing and wondered what had happened, trying to figure out how he had left in such an abrupt fashion. He pictured an old man standing in his kitchen, wearing the blue suede slippers and checked trousers and maybe a gray sweater. The guy in his mind had short white hair, bushy white eyebrows and maybe even a bushy white mustache. It was maybe sometime mid-morning, or early afternoon, and he was drinking coffee and making his lunch. A tuna sandwich. He imagined him hearing a knock on the door and walking through to the hall, closing the kitchen door behind him to stop the cat from getting out. Opening the front door to see three men standing on the other side. Two of them bald and fat with straggly beards, and the other blond and thin. All of them wearing black leather jackets and sinister smirks across their faces. Then he thought of the porcelain shards on the step. Maybe they grabbed him by the scruff of his neck, dragged him down the steps. He dropped the mug from his shaking, fragile hand. The coffee sloshed across the carpet. That would explain the stain. And the shattered mug out on the step. That would explain the shards. He pictured them holding him in the back of the Tahoe, driving him out past the withering tree, and tossing him out on the dirt, just like they had done with him and Sapphire. Then he had a bone-chilling realization. They probably made him dig the hole for them, then killed him when he was done. That's why he was lying at the bottom of the pit. The three men made him dig his own grave.

He sat the pills back down on the counter and bit down on his bottom lip. Digging a grave by hand with arthritis? The poor guy’s fingers, hands, and joints must have been on fire. He sighed and then called to Sapphire. "It's clear."

She walked in through the door, shotgun pointed toward the floor, and glanced curiously at the tuna can lying on the gray tiles.

"It was a cat," he said. "It must’ve knocked it over. It dived out the door when I stepped in. We're the only people here. There were tire tracks in the dirt by the side of the house. Have a look around, see if you can find keys to car. And try to find some water."

She nodded and looked around the kitchen. She saw a gray metal refrigerator by the back wall. Walked over and opened the door and looked inside. She savored the soothing cool air on her skin. Then, grabbed two plastic water bottles. "Found the water," she said and tossed one to Beck.

He tore the blue plastic cap from its neck and glugged it down in one. Then, walked over to the chrome sink and checked a cream plastic tray sitting on the yellow-painted window sill.

A couple of quarters and a dime. Some postage stamps. Rubber bands. A lighter. A screwdriver. And a key. He tucked his finger through the keychain loop and yanked it out with a swish. The chain looked old and slightly rusted and had a badge on one side that said, 'Cadillac.'

"I've found a set of car keys," he called back to her. "Now, where the hell's the car?"

She looked out a window by the side of the fridge. "There's a barn out back. Maybe it's in there?"

He craned his head and looked out. There were tire marks in the dirt by its doors, illuminated by the light of the moon. "Good. Let's go. And bring your bottle. We don’t want to be leaving anything lying around."

They hurried back through the hall and out into the front yard and around the side of the house. The barn was a huge rosewood structure with a straw apex roof. It looked about thirty years old and as if it had been assembled by a cowboy. A series of wooden plans, two-by-eights, loosely fixed to an underlying frame by nails that weren’t in any semblance of order. Some were perfectly aligned at the ends of the planks, while others appeared to be hammered in on top of each other. It looked like the work of a drunken man. Some of the planks were broken and some of the nails were crooked and rusty. It had also been built with no windows or secondary doors. Just a set of double doors at the front that had gone rotten around the edges as time grew old. It looked like it could have toppled over at any moment.

Beck laid the shotgun on the ground and pulled the old wooden doors open. A thick cloud of dust wafted out into the air. Sapphire waived it away and coughed and walked a few paces inside. It smelled putrid, like a stewing mixture of rot and damp.

Beck lifted the shotgun and followed behind. The smell didn't bother him, he had smelled worse, but the structure did. There were more rosewood planks nailed to the back walls, shelves filled with cans of oil and tins of paint stacked on top of more cans and tins. He wondered how they were still standing. With one awkward movement, it looked as if they would pile to the floor, and bring the whole thing down with them.

On the right, there was an old green wheelbarrow and an assembly of useless garden tools lying in a pile on the ground beside it. Trowels, watering cans and a green plastic hose.

The car was in the middle under a gray polycotton cover. Beck handed Sapphire his gun and whipped the cover back. He waved away a thick cloud of dust and tossed the cover to the floor by the wheelbarrow. Underneath it was a pink 1965 Cadillac Coupe de Ville. A classic long-bodied model with a chrome front v-shaped grill, silver alloy wheels and white soft-top roof.

“Do you think it’ll start?” Sapphire asked, handing him the shotgun back.

"One way to find out," he replied and stuck the key in the lock and opened the door with a flick of his wrist.

He tossed the shotgun into the back seat and jumped in. The inside was cream leather. It felt soft and smooth and the seat creaked as he settled into position. Sapphire opened the passenger door, threw her gun in beside his and jumped onto the passenger seat. Her gun clanked against the side of his. A loud, metallic thud.

He stuck the key into the ignition and turned it with a sharp twist, but the starter motor just clicked and clicked and clicked.

Shit, he thought and tried again.

More clicking.

“What do we do now?” she asked.

He said nothing but knew exactly what they would have to do. If this car didn’t start, they would have to walk the remaining fifteen or twenty miles in the darkness. He turned the key once more, willing it to work. The starter motor clicked and clicked and, finally, the engine rumbled to life. The headlights flicked on and illuminated the barn’s entrance to a bright white hue, and the air conditioning kicked in and blew a blast of cool stale air across their warm, sweaty faces.

They shared a relieved glance and he put the Cadillac into DRIVE, pushed its accelerator to the floor and gunned it out of the barn, down the dirt drive and off into the night.

After a short thirty-minute drive, Beck turned the Cadillac left off Highway 83 onto South 5th Street.

"We have to dump this car," he said.

Sapphire glanced at him, curiously.

He pointed to an alley up ahead on the left, by the side of the car garage named Guerra Auto Body. "That alley leads to the motel. It's right behind the body shop. We drove past it earlier on the way in. I'll pull in there and leave it with the keys still in the ignition. It should be gone by first light and any trace of us ever stealing it and invading that home should go along with it."

She glanced at him again, thinking. Who is this guy?

They edged passed the body shop and slowed to a halt, Beck put the Cadillac into reverse and backed it into the narrow alley. He lined the Caddy's nose up with the edge of the building, making sure it stuck out ever so slightly, so that any passers-by would clearly see it sitting there. Then, he killed the engine, grabbed the two shotguns from the back and opened the door and stepped out, leaving the key in the ignition.

Sapphire followed behind and they quickly walked down the alley to the back end of the motel. Beck glanced around, making sure nobody was around and then led the way into the parking lot. His Mustang was the only car in the lot and room 106 was the only one with a light on. It shone out through the gap where the door should've been.

Beck was cautious. He turned and whispered to her. "Wait here."

"Why?”

"We don't know if there's more of them. They could be inside the room, waiting for us right now. I'll go check it out, signal if it's clear, start shooting if it's not."

She nodded. "Well, be quick."

He nodded his acknowledgment and stepped forward with the shotguns by his sides of his legs, his palms wrapped around their butts, his forefingers covering their triggers and their muzzles pointed downward to the sidewalk. It looked as if he was carrying two umbrellas on a dark, overcast day. He crept past 101. Then 102. 103 was next. Then 104. He saw a shadow on the sidewalk outside of 105, and then a reflection in the window. It was a huge half-naked, armed man. He grinned and the man grinned back at him.

He shuffled past the door. Turned and stole an admiring glance at his black Mustang. Still in the slot, just as he had left it. Not a dent or a scratch. He saw the white net curtain flapping in 106's window, under a feeble blast of the room’s poor air conditioning. He stopped by the door, with his back to the wall, listening to the unit whirring inside.

He extended his arms and raised the shotguns by the sides of his lower chest, then spun around and stood in the doorway. The bedroom was clear. His shirt and suit jacket were still lying on the carpet beside Sapphire's red dress, her heels and expensive purse. He padded over to the bathroom and pushed open the door. It was clear. Just cracked white tiles, a white ceramic bathtub, a sink and a toilet armed with faded chrome fittings coated with grime.

He stepped back through to the bedroom. Tossed one of the guns on the bed. It bounced up and down on the mattress. He leaned out through the door frame and waved Sapphire toward him.

"We’re clear. Come get your stuff and let's get out of here," he said.

She quickly padded toward him and ducked into the room. In and out of the bathroom, she carefully lifted her red lace dress and slipped it over her body. Then, she slipped her feet into heels and picked up her purse. Quickly ran a stick of red lipstick over her lips, up and around, and then pursed them together.

Beck stole an admiring glance while he did the buttons on his shirt. In less than three minutes, and after everything she had been through, she looked almost as beautiful as she did earlier that night at the bar. He flicked his eyes up and down every inch of her perfect figure and smiled. Then grabbed his suit jacket and slung it over his shoulder and lifted the two shotguns.

"Let's go," he said. "We'll take the Mustang and head out of town. Find a place to spend the night. Somewhere off the beating track where nobody would expect to find us. And, then, tomorrow, we’ll hunt them down."

She nodded her agreement, seeing no other alternative, and followed him out through the gap that used to be the door.

FOUR

Eugene turned the Tahoe off South Bicentennial Boulevard and accelerated along Wichita Avenue. He could hear the sound of airplane engines throttling overhead, red-eye arrivals, 747s and A330s flying into McAllen International Airport, and he could see a four-story glass and steel building in the distance. It was getting taller with every meter the Tahoe drew closer.

He slowed to a halt at a gatehouse by the gates to the building's parking lot. It was a black steel cabin with a gray apex roof and bulletproof dark tinted glass windows.

A gray-haired guy with glasses sat on a chair inside. He was wearing a black leather jacket, a black shirt with no necktie and a black cap. He slid back the window and shone a torch in through the Tahoe’s window, holding a black Glock 19 in his right hand.

Eugene pushed the button on the door and his window zipped downward.

“License plate?” the guy asked, in a rough-sounding voice.

Eugene squinted into the light, barely able to see him. He opened the glove box and pulled out the owner's registration document. Then read the license plate number out to the guy.

The guy lifted a clipboard from a counter on the other side of the glass and slowly shone the torch down the list. He stopped about three-quarters of the way down and placed the clipboard down on a table inside the cabin and shook his head. “Vehicle ain’t on the list.”

Eugene pulled an annoyed expression. He leaned out of the car window toward the guy. “The vehicle isn’t registered to the company. It belongs to somebody...who doesn’t need it anymore. Anyway, I’m here to see the chairman. I’m working under his orders.”

The guy breathed a slow, deep breath and looked him in the eye, evaluating whether or not what he was saying was bullshit. He glanced to his left, toward the offices and then back at Eugene and nodded. “You can go in,” he said and pushed the OPEN button on the gray control switch down by the counter.

The black steel gates sprung open. Eugene put up the window and drove in through the gap. He continued across the empty parking lot and nosed the Tahoe into a slot near the door, killed its engine, then sat for a long moment, looking through the windshield at the car’s reflection on the building’s reflective glass panels, thinking.

I've worked hard. Made him a lot of money. Especially in the last few weeks. He’s gotten to know me. That’s got to be worth something. He values honesty. That’s what he’d want. I'll tell him exactly what happened. Maybe leave out the bit about dropping the cooler. He formulated his plan, went over exactly what he was going to say, then opened the Tahoe's door and stepped out into the heat.

He walked across a concrete slab footpath, past a black Mercedes and a dark-blue Ford Fusion, to the building’s main entrance doors. They were dark-tinted glass, fixed to black steel frames with silver rectangular handles. He opened the door on the left. It sucked from its black rubber frame and an icy blast of cool air rushed through gap and crashed into his face. It felt refreshing against the heat of the night. He stepped inside and the door sucked shut behind him.

The floor was gleaming white marble and there was a glass and steel reception on his left. An empty white fabric swivel chair sat behind it and there was an idling black computer on the white marble counter in front of it. Its processor hummed and an aqua square, with a white A in the middle of it, bounced around on its black screen, top-to-bottom and left-to-right, as he walked past.

There was a waiting area with hard-backed cream leather sofas and a glass coffee table up ahead on his right, beside a water feature that took up most of the middle of the floor. It was in full spray and lit up aqua, by underwater spotlights that shone through the mist, all the way up the atrium, dispersing on the clear glass ceiling about sixty feet above his head. It offered a spectacular view of the dark, starry night sky.

He walked on past the water feature, enjoying the tranquil sound of the trickling water, and climbed a wide spiral white marble and steel staircase by the back wall, counting each step that he took. He was nervous and he thought it was calming.

Forty-eight steps later, he was on the fourth floor. He paused at the top to catch his breath and then walked down an open-air corridor, which offered a view of the fountain down below, past a wall of white frosted glass panels and a series of matching doors. The sixth door was further from the fifth door than the fifth was from the fourth. It led to a much larger room than the fifth door did, a room directly in the middle of the building, perfectly aligned with the top of the fountain down below. It looked just like the others, thick and heavy white frosted glass, except there was an acetate plaque about eye level in the middle with black capitalized text on it that said OFFICE OF THE CHAIRMAN.

Eugene sucked a breath and opened the door and walked through.

There was another waiting area behind the door. It was on the left. It had black leather sofas and a cream coffee table and there was another reception desk on the right. A black computer and a green coffee mug were sitting on its mahogany surface and a tall guy with broad shoulders and a white cue-ball head was sitting on a white leather swivel chair tucked in behind. He was wearing a plain black t-shirt under a black leather jacket and there was a solid gold chain hanging from his neck. He stared at Eugene without expression.

"I'm here to see the chairman," Eugene said to him.

The guy took a slow breath and nodded, then pulled a black clamshell cell phone from his jacket pocket. He dialed a number and held the cell up against the right side of his face.

"Eugene is here to see you, Sir," he said into the cell and then nodded his head up and down, attentively.

Eugene watched the guy’s icy-blue eyes flick up and down his frame as he listened on the phone.

“He doesn't have anything in his hands," the guy said.

He nodded again, only once, and then hung up the call. "Okay, the chairman said he will see you," he said and nodded towards an unmarked frosted glass door that aligned with the dead center of the room.

Eugene walked on through. His feet sunk into a thick navy-blue carpet that covered the floor. The office was spacious but minimalist. There was a floor-to-ceiling window on the far end. It ran the length of the room and the moonlight shone in through the glass. The walls were painted duck-egg blue and a large painting hung in a chrome frame on the wall to the left. Its edges aligned perfectly with the arms of a cream leather sofa that sat on the carpet below it. It was eye-catching. Painted with mostly warm colors. Vibrant shades of red, orange and yellow, blended with a few splashes of gray and accented with even fewer strokes of black. They formed an array of shapes. All with sharp edges. Squares, rectangles, parallelograms.

The only other furniture in the room was a glass cabinet stretching the width of the wall on the right and a glass desk with thick chrome legs sitting in front of it, directly opposite the sofa. The cabinet was accented with panel lights in the same aqua shade as the fountain in the atrium and its shelves were almost empty. They held nothing at all, except for a few thick-looking books with hardback covers that had capitalized titles such as ‘THE ART OF WAR’, ‘THE ORIGINS OF MONEY’, and ‘THE STICK OR THE CARROT.’

The desk was equally clear, with only two items sitting on its glass surface: a standard black office telephone and a severed crocodile’s head. The head looked about fifteen inches long, from the back of its skull to its snout, covered with scaly dark-brown skin that reflected the cool white light from overhead. Its jaws were agape, flashing its sharp-looking teeth, and the pale inside of its mouth. There was an ever-present angry look in its amber glass eye. Just looking at it sent shivers running down Eugene's spine.

The chairman was sitting on a high-back white leather swivel chair behind the desk. He was a thin man about average height, maybe a fraction below six-foot and somewhere on the older side of forty. He had dark slicked-back hair over a pale oval-shaped face characterized by a few contours of time and a chin with a dimple deep enough it could have passed for a puncture. He was wearing a black suit with a white shirt and a blood-red necktie. There was a thick brown cigar sticking out from the right side of his mouth and a stream of white smoke swirled upward from its tip.

He slipped the cigar from his lips and scanned Eugene's frame with his piercing Arctic-white eyes. They were oval-shaped and had almost no color at all. His irises were a light shade of gray and his pupils looked like the black abrupt dots a marker pen makes when it's dropped tip-down onto a white sheet of paper.

The crocodile’s head was chilling, but Eugene felt even more uncomfortable under the man’s gaze. Like a schoolboy awaiting sentencing at the head master's office. Keep calm and be honest and say exactly what you’ve planned to, he thought and took a deep, lungful breath.

"Do you have the hooker's head?" the chairman asked him, in a thick and husky Texan accent.

Eugene glanced down at the carpet and then back at him. "No, Sir," he said, quietly.

"Why not?" the chairman asked, in the same intonation.

"It went...it went wrong," Eugene said. His voice was even quieter.

The chairman didn’t move a muscle. He just sat there, expressionless, smoking cigar in his right hand, staring back at him. He took a deep breath and glanced beyond him. “Where are Bagwell and Wyatt?”

Eugene swallowed hard and shook his head. "Bagwell and Wyatt...they’re dead, Sir."

The chairman said absolutely nothing. He put the cigar back in his mouth and narrowed his piercing eyes. The cigar's tip singed as he inhaled.

Eugene shifted on his feet and stuffed his hands into the pockets of his pants, grabbing the lining as hard as he could. "There was a guy," he said, quicker than perhaps he should have.

The chairman’s thick black eyebrows dropped to the top of his hooked nose. He whipped the cigar from his lips, again, and exhaled a plume of white smoke. It was a thick white cloud that crept through the air. "Well, of course there was a guy,” he thundered. “She's a Goddamned whore. Now, you tell me, what the..."

"No, but, he wasn't just a regular guy," Eugene said, interrupting him before he could finish his question. “He was huge. Well over six-foot and all solid muscle. His arms were like tree trunks. And, his neck, there was a long and thin scar, like somebody had stuck him with a blade. And, yet, he must have been the one who walked away."

The chairman crushed his cigar against a thick round yellow tooth from the crocodile's bottom jaw. He twisted it into its hard enamel and then flicked the stub into a trash can down by the side of his desk. "Eugene,” he said to him, his voice calm.

“Sir?”

“Do you know what skin smells like? When it burns?"

Eugene’s eyes widened. His insides pulsed. He shook his head.

The chairman sighed and pulled a silver Zippo lighter from his suit jacket and flicked its switch. It sparked an orange-and-blue hissing flame. "Interrupt me, again, and I'll start with your testicles."

Eugene nodded, anxiously, concern on his face. The palms of his hands felt clammy and beads of warm sweat began to trickle down his back. His damp polo shirt clung to his skin.

The chairman flicked out the flame and placed the lighter on the desk. It clanked against the glass surface. "Now, tell me exactly what the hell happened."

"Bagwell called Fantasia Escorts, Sir, booked her out for the night,” Eugene said, flicking his eyes, nervously, down at the lighter and then back up at him. “Told them to have her meet him at Diamondbacks bar, on North McColl Road. Told them to have her look for the big guy at the bar, wearing the dark jacket. We were there a few minutes early, Sir, but she must have got there before us. We watched her come out, on the arm of some huge guy, dressed in a black suit. We followed them to a room at the Sundance Motel, Sir. Waited five minutes, to give them time to get undressed, so that they would be vulnerable. That’s when Bagwell and Wyatt kicked the door in. They brought them out at gunpoint and we loaded them into the Tahoe. The woman was virtually naked and the guy was only wearing pants and a pair of dress shoes. I drove us out to the desert, where we had a grave ready and waiting for her."

"A grave?" the chairman asked, curiously. “Whose idea was that?”

“Wyatt’s, Sir,” Eugene said.

The chairman cut him off before he could continue.

“A grave,” the chairman said, again, incredulous. “What a dumb way to dispose of a body. Graves can easily be found. They can be Goddamned stumbled upon. Reported. Exhumed!” He paused on that thought, rage in his eyes. “Why the hell did he decide to throw her in a grave?”

“Because, Sir, he wanted to go one-on-one with the whore before killing her.”

“Okay. And what difference would that make?”

Eugene said nothing.

“Why didn’t you tell them to follow the proper procedure?”

Eugene remained silent.

“Eugene?”

“Because, Sir, Wyatt said he didn’t want anybody being able to see the evidence. And Bagwell said it would be fine.”

“I don’t care what Wyatt wanted or what Bagwell said. I’m the one who’s in charge here. What I say, goes. And you were all told to dispose of her body properly. The same way as the others. Not create another problem that might or might not have to be dealt with later.”

Eugene remained silent. He was taking a lashing, and he knew it, but he didn’t know what to say.

The chairman shook his head, a condemning look on his face, then told Eugene to continue. “Now, tell me what else happened.”

“Yes, Sir,” Eugene replied. “We had them out there and Bagwell put the guy on his knees, held his shotgun on him and Wyatt forced the woman to the ground. We were going to kill the guy first. Bundle him into the hole. Then shoot the woman, once he was done with her. Bagwell was going to cut off her head and bring it back in the box, along with the other two, just like you had asked for. I was at the trunk, getting the saw. Next thing, I hear is a shotgun blast and then a thud. And, then, I heard another blast right after it. I didn't know what had happened. I came around the side and Bagwell was lying on the ground with a knife sticking out of his neck. And, Wyatt, too. He was on the ground with his guts blown out. And, the big guy, he was standing over them holding one of the shotguns. I was unarmed, so I jumped into the car and I got out of there."

"Unarmed?" the chairman asked and glanced down at the crocodile's head. "I thought you had a saw?"

"A saw? Against a shotgun?" Eugene asked, an incredulous look in his eye and disbelief in his voice.

The chairman placed the palm of his right hand over the lighter and stared at him, silently, for a long couple of seconds. His crooked right forefinger bent over his middle finger like it was a withering, twisted branch.

Eugene felt his mouth go dry and his testicles shrivel. He tried to swallow, but it was impossible.

"What about the cooler with the other two heads? You still have it, don’t you?"

Eugene glanced down at his boots. "No," he coughed.

The chairman’s eyes exploded from his skull. His face turned scarlet. "Where the hell is it?" he snarled.

Eugene’s heart raced. His breathing drew short. "It must still be out in the desert, Sir. A few miles south of Santa Catarina. Out where we dug the grave. I dropped it when I jumped into the car." He closed his eyes tight. The last part came out, uncontrollably. He didn’t mean to say it. It just slipped out, like his tongue was moving on its own.

The chairman drummed his fingers on the glass. Tap-tap, tap-tap, tap-tap. His crooked finger tapped the glass before the others. Oddly, it seemed to be longer than his middle finger. He looked down at the lighter, then out the window at the darkness and then back at him. "How much do I pay you, Eugene?"

"Four-thousand dollars a month, Sir," he answered.

"Four-thousand a month?" the chairman repeated and shook his head. "That’s forty-eight-thousand dollars a year. Do you think I pay you forty-eight-thousand dollars a year to shit your pants at the sight of a shotgun? To screw up something as simple as meeting and killing a prostitute?"

"No, Sir," Eugene said, in a faint-sounding voice, and shook his head.

"Do you have any idea...?" the chairman thundered and thumped the glass desk. The bang echoed around the near-empty room and the crocodile’s head vibrated on the surface. “Do you have any idea how much trouble your mistake has caused?"

Eugene couldn’t think of anything to say. He just shook his head and swallowed hard. His throat was dry and sore and there was fear in his eyes.

The chairman took a deep breath and exhaled, slowly, through his nose. His face returned back to its normal light hue. “Okay,” he said, softly, and glanced over Eugene’s right shoulder, at the bald guy in the leather jacket standing by the door.

The guy slipped a length of black cable from the inside pocket of his jacket and wrapped the ends around his wrists. He stepped forward and slung the cable over Eugene's head and pulled it tight around his neck.

The force snapped Eugene's head backward and the wire cut into his neck. It felt cold and rough and hard. His arms flapped by his sides, like towels in the wind, and he gasped for what air he could.

The chairman steepled his fingers in front of his face, his elbows on his desk, and watched in silence. His left forefinger curled around the side of his right as it rested on his middle finger’s nail bed. There was a radiant gleam in his eyes and the corners of his mouth slowly edged upward.

Eugene twisted and thrashed, but the wire tightened. He brought his hands up to his neck, wheezing, and pressed his fingertips against the cable as hard as he could, trying to pry it from his skin. If I can’t pull this from my neck I’m going to die, he thought. His eyes filled with tears.

He pressed against the wire like his life depended on it. The tips of his fingers turned white and he could feel the pressure shooting through his knuckles. But the wire cut in under his fingernails and sliced into his skin. He yelped at the sharp pain and tried to look down, in horror, to see the warm crimson blood he could feel oozing down back of his hands. He barely caught a glimpse.

The chairman's smirk turned to a wicked smile and he nodded in approval. He knew there was no way out for him now, that it was just a matter of time. Minutes, seconds, maybe. He watched as sweat poured down Eugene’s forehead and tears ran from his eyes.

Eugene could feel the pressure in his skull, from the blood rushing to his brain. His head throbbed like it would explode and his face turned purple. His eyes rolled to the back of his head and he choked on his saliva. The saliva drooled from his open mouth, over his bottom lip and dripped down his chin and his thrashing stopped. A sudden limpness came over his body and he fell back into the guy's burly arms.

"Such a disappointment," the chairman said and looked at the bald-headed guy in the black leather jacket. "Lester," he said to him. "Take his body out through the service exit and bundle it into the trunk of the car. Go out to Santa Catarina and recover the other two Goddamned heads. And pick up Bagwell’s and Wyatt’s bodies. Dispose of them properly.”

“Yes, Sir,” the guy said and nodded.

“And, then, once you’re done, go over to the Sundance Motel and do what you have to do. I want to know who the hell this guy in the dark suit is by morning.”

FIVE

The glow from the morning sunlight shone through the window of room 301 at the Alamo Inn. It was a small hotel on the northern side of Edinburg, decorated to the same standard as the Sundance Motel, but twelve miles further north. It also had two extra floors and charged an additional ten dollars a night for 'free' in-room coffee and bathroom toiletries.

Joe Beck opened his eyes to glow from the sun’s warm yellow beam. He glanced around the room and rolled over on the bed to check his watch. It was eight o’clock. Instantly, he felt horrible. Not because he had spent the night in a cheap motel room with a prostitute, but because the day had already started and he wasn’t even up for it. He was an early riser. He always had been. And, even though the night before had been long and exhausting, he saw no excuse for sleeping so late. He didn’t have anywhere to be by any particular time, but it made him feel late. And that was something he hated.

He quickly slipped out of bed and started the day as he always did. First, he grabbed his cell phone and checked his messages, then he flicked through his emails. There was nothing new, or notable. But that was a good thing. He had hoped there wouldn’t be. In his mind, his day was already planned. His hands were going to full with finding the guy who sent those men to kill him and Sapphire the night before, who had Mike’s head in their cooler.

Second, he decided to make some coffee and brush his teeth and take a shower. But not before glancing back at Sapphire. She had been lying beside him. She was still asleep, breathing lightly. Her long dark hair was fanned out over the white feather pillow. He smiled and nodded and then pulled a ponderous expression. Those men weren’t after her for nothing. Nobody digs somebody’s grave for no reason, that’s for damn sure. There was something going on.

There were questions he needed to ask her, things he needed to find out. But now wasn’t the right moment to ask them. And he knew it. He needed her to be awake, to be alert and to be level-headed. He nodded, again, deciding against waking her up, allowing her to sleep on a bit longer.

He stood up from the bed and padded across the brown Berber carpet and flicked the switch on the black filter coffee machine to ON, then slipped into the bathroom. The machine hissed as the heat plate warmed and the filter began to drip with steaming brown liquid. Its glass coffee pot soon filled up, drip-after-drip of coffee plopping into a rising, hot brown pool.

The smell was amazing. It woke Sapphire up, along with the faint rush of water somewhere in her dream. She opened her eyes to the daylight and savored the fresh morning scent of a new day while watching Joe Beck sanding in the glow of the sunlight, bare-chested and zipping up a pair of dark-blue jeans. She watched him slip a black shirt over his muscular shoulders and contoured torso, then smiled.

“Morning,” she whispered to him.

Beck smiled and said it back. “Morning.”

“Shower any good?”

“As good as can be in a place like this,” he said.

She smiled, again, and nodded, then threw the duvet to the side and slid off the edge of the bed and padded toward the bathroom.

He stole an admiring glance as she walked past wearing nothing at all. He poured the coffee from the pot into a small white china mug and sat back on the gray fabric sofa, drinking it while he listened to the whooshing sound of the running shower.

Sapphire stepped back out from the bathroom a few moments later. She padded wet-footed across the carpet now wearing a white towel wrapped around her body, tied in a knot under her left arm. Her dark hair was damp and it hung down over her shoulders. She still looked beautiful, even wet and without makeup.

Beck sipped his coffee, slowly, watching as she let the towel fall to the floor and pulled her black thong up her smooth, tanned legs and then, elegantly, stepped into her tight red lace dress and slipped it up over her body.

"Hey, Sapphire," he said, quietly, in a reflective sort of manner, while sipping coffee. "Those guys from last night, you've never seen them before, have you?"

She glanced up at him and shook her head. Then asked him if he could pour her a cup before lifting a slimline pink toothbrush and small white travel tube of toothpaste from her black Versace purse and disappearing back into the bathroom to brush her teeth and blow dry her hair.

He padded across the carpet, thinking about how the ginger-bearded guy had stormed into the room and gone straight for her, while the black-bearded guy had merely held him back with his gun. She was obviously the target from the beginning. He turned the other mug upward and lifted the coffee pot and began pouring. "What about Mike Sikorsky?” he called, against the hair dryer’s blow.

She switched it off and ducked her head out of the bathroom. “What?”

“Mike Sikorsky,” he said.

“What about him?”

“Does that name mean anything to you? You know him?"

She shook her head. "Nope," she replied and went back inside.

Beck nodded, slowly. He continued pouring the coffee.

She came back out a moment later, her hair now full and voluminous, slipped her toothbrush and tube of toothpaste back into her purse and walked across the carpet and lifted a stick of red lipstick and gently applied it to her lips, then pursed them together while looking in the mirror of the dresser by the side of the bed. "I’ve never heard of him."

Beck nodded, but, again, said nothing.

She pulled a small black tube of mascara and a slimline pink bottle of perfume from her purse, gently stroked her eyelids with the soft black wand and sprayed the perfume on her neck three times and once on each wrist. It smelled good. Light. Floral. Feminine. She lifted her crystal earrings from the bedside cabinet and sat down on the edge of the bed. “Should I have?”

“Should you have what?” Beck asked, without looking up from the mug.

“Heard of him?”

He flicked his eyes from the coffee to Sapphire. She was the first woman he had met who didn’t use much make-up. Not much at all. And she didn’t need to, she was beautiful without it, he thought. “No. Well, I wouldn’t think so, anyway.”

She smiled and looped the first earring around her left earlobe and clasped it in place.

"Okay,” he said. “Coffee’s out. You take cream and sugar?”

“Yeah. Two. Thanks,” she replied, a smile on her face.

Beck sucked a breath. “Sapphire...you’ve not been involved in anything...shady, recently, have you?"

She flashed him an incredulous glance, then looped her second earring around her right earlobe and clasped it in place, too. "You do realize what I do for a living, right?"

He nodded. “Of course I do.” Her mug was full and the steam swirled from the coffee’s black placid surface. He added two sugar cubes and two creamers and stirred it to a light, caramel shade of brown, then placed the spoon down on the counter. He walked over and carefully handed the mug to her, then leaned back against the wall opposite her by the side of the bed. "That included. Have you seen or heard anything out of the ordinary, lately? Or, have you met anyone who...just didn’t seem quite right?"

“Not really,” she answered and looked down at the steaming hot caramel-colored liquid and took a sip. Her lips left a red imprint on the rim of her mug. “I mean, what sort of guy who pays for sex is quite right?”

Beck said nothing. Hard to argue her point, but he needed more. He looked at her, expectation in his eyes. He knew the best way to get someone to open up was to ask them a question, then stay silent. Plant the seed and wait for them to respond. Allow them to time to think. They always think. And they always talk.

"Well, I suppose there was this one guy," she added, eventually, then paused a beat and took another sip. “He was probably a bit different from the others.”

“Probably?” Beck inquired.

She grimaced, agitated. “I don’t know. What am I? A psychology expert? You asked and I answered. I don’t know.”

He took a sip of coffee. "Sapphire, this is important. People are trying to kill you. And, now, I’m caught up in it, too. Now, if you know something, anything that could shed any light as to why, you really need to tell me. So, let’s start with this guy who seemed a little out of the ordinary."

She shook her head. “I don’t know.”

“What’s not to know?”

"If talking about my clients is the right thing here,” she said. “What we really need to be doing is call the cops." She leaned toward the phone that was sitting on the bedside cabinet.

"We can't call the cops," Beck said, incredulous. He dived down and placed his palm over the back of her hand as she lifted the handset. The back of her hand felt smooth under his palm.

She disagreed. His palm felt strong and rough on her the back of her hand. "Why? That's what most normal people would do in this situation."

He said nothing.

The phone beeped, loudly.

She stared at him.

"Because, the guy I know whose head was in that cooler, he was an ATF agent."

“What?” she asked, still holding the handset.

"And you can't do away with a federal agent like that unless you've got connections. The sort of connections we can't afford to just stumble right into."

***

By eight o’clock, the chairman was sitting behind the glass desk in his office, on the fourth floor of his company headquarters. He had been there for two hours, already. He was now wearing a charcoal suit with narrow white pinstripes and a new white shirt, but the same blood-red necktie as the night before, and he was also drinking coffee.

He always started the morning with coffee. Never with breakfast, it wasn't his thing, but always with coffee. He was more concerned with productivity than nutrition, believing coffee made him a more critical thinker, which he believed improved his decisions, which in turn made more money. That's also why he was always in his office early, before most of his employees had even thought of hitting the snooze button on their alarm clocks. He believed the quietest periods of the day, the late nights and the early mornings, were the most productive. Those were the times when almost nobody was around, when there were never any incoming calls and when there were next to no incoming emails. Those were the times he was free from distractions. He thought they offered the best conditions for getting things done, for conducting his real business, and that's exactly what he was doing behind his desk at eight o’clock on a Monday morning.

Lester was standing opposite him. He was still wearing the black leather jacket and the same black t-shirt as he had on the night before. The light from the ceiling reflected off his cue-ball head as he watched the chairman working with a set of red-looking tired, puffy eyes.

The chairman was leaning forward over the desk and his hands were pressed down on the glass. White smudges of condensation had begun to form under his palms. He was peering at a photo of a dark-haired guy in a black suit and tie with a dark-haired, voluptuous-looking woman on his arm. She was wearing a tight red dress and they were on the other side of the wooden reception counter, checking in to the Sundance Motel.

The picture was time-stamped 22:42 and offered a view from a high angle, from a ceiling cam above the front desk. It had a rough and grainy sort of quality, but it was clear enough to be able to make out their faces.

"The guy at the front desk said his name was Lukas Haas, Sir," Lester said, pointing down at the photograph. "He said he checked in with the woman, paid in cash, took the key to one-owe-six and then left. The clerk said they were the only guests staying in the motel last night."

The chairman nodded and reached for his mug. He hooked his crooked index and middle finger through the loop, closed them around the handle and lifted it unsteadily from the desk. Took a slow sip, swallowed and took another. Then placed it back down on the desk beside the crocodile's head. It clanked against the glass. "Eugene said there was a scar on his neck. You can see it on there, just under his left jaw.” His forefinger was touching the left side of Beck’s neck. “This is definitely the guy he was talking about.” His eyes narrowed as he looked to Beck’s left. “And that's definitely the whore."

Lester nodded. "What do you want me to do, Sir?"

The chairman glanced at the watch on his left wrist. A gold Rolex with a black square face. It was ten minutes after eight. "Call Forgewood and send this picture over. Tell him to run it for facial recognition and then run a background check when his real identity comes back. And tell him to call me, directly, when he has the results."

"Yes, Sir," Lester said and stepped forward and lifted the photo from the desk. It sucked against the glass, resisting as he grabbed ahold of it.

The chairman stopped him before he turned away. "Lester," he said.

"Sir?"

"The guy from the motel that gave you the photo, what did you do with him?"

"He's in the trunk of the Tahoe, Sir, beside Eugene's, Bagwell's and Wyatt's bodies.”

"Alive?" the chairman asked, a grisly smirk across his face.

Lester shook his head. "Dead. They’re parked down on death row at the county morgue. Once Kranz puts them on ice, he’ll call Estrada to come and collect the car. He’ll take it down to the scrap yard and get it put through the crusher. It’ll be added to the recycling pile and packaged up and sent off to China to be recycled into a can of beans. Gone without a trace."

"Good, very good, Lester," the chairman said to him, nodding while he spoke. "That’s why you’re my top guy. I can always count on you. Now, go call Forgewood. Then call Estrada, Hernandez, and Jimenez. Tell them to get up here for when the results come back."

Lester nodded and pulled his black clamshell cell phone from his jacket pocket and walked out the door.

***

Sapphire grimaced. The thought of not being able to rely on the police for help made her feel uneasy. She didn't like it, not one bit, but she knew Beck was right. They both lifted their hands from the handset of the phone together, tensely, like two opponents lowering their guns in a stand-off, then sipped the coffee and thought about it, in silence.

Beck asked her about the guy she mentioned, again. “Tell me more about the guy.”

She sighed. "He was a bit of a weird-looking one, but, God, he paid well. He had me for two hours, paid for four. We were in his car the whole time. He drove around McAllen, while I...you know?"

"While you what?"

"Jesus. While I sucked him off, okay? It was constant, and it was disgusting. He was unkempt. And sweaty. But, like I said, he paid well."

Beck nodded, slowly. "If you don't like what you do, why do it?"

"Same reason anybody else goes and sits in an office, or stacks shelves at the grocery store," she said and rubbed the tip of her right thumb against the tips of her right forefinger and middle finger, then bit down on her bottom lip. "Plus, I'm good at it."

Beck smiled. It was more of a sly grin than a smile. That makes two things we have in common, he thought and took another sip. "This guy, you said he was weird-looking, do you remember anything about him at all?"

"Yeah, he looked weird.”

“You said that. Anything else? How?”

“He was a bit, sort of cross-eyed. Real ugly. Maybe it was a good thing I was only looking at his other head."

"C’mon, I need more than 'ugly'," Beck said. "What did he look like?"

She took a sip of coffee and ran her fingers through her long dark hair. Beck caught a whiff of the ‘free’ ten-dollar-a-night coconut shampoo as her hair parted between her fingers.

"He wasn't exactly a pin-up sort of guy," she said and sipped her coffee, again. The red lipstick smudges had now made their way around the entire rim. "He had black greasy hair. It was combed back. He wasn't fat, or thin. Sort of chubby. Yeah, a chubby round face, like he was a fat kid when he was young. And he was also sort of small."

Beck drank some more coffee while thinking about the other head inside that cooler. He wasn’t sure what she meant about ‘small’, whether it was height or otherwise. He didn’t dwell on that part. But he did ponder his appearance because the other head beside Mike’s had black combed-over gelled hair and puffy cheeks and a fat chin. "What about the car? Do you remember what kind it was?"

"Not really," she answered. "It was black, maybe an SUV, I think?"

"Like the car we were in last night?"

She nodded and drank some coffee. "Yeah. I suppose. It was like that one."

“It smell of vanilla?”

Her eyebrows narrowed over the bridge of her nose. She nodded, slowly, a curious look in her eye. “Yeah, now that you mention it, it did, actually.”

“The car those men had last night smelled of vanilla, too,” he said.

She nodded.

Beck drank some coffee whilst thinking about it. The other head in the box probably belonged to the guy she went for a drive with. He had already figured the Tahoe was stolen. It was probably the guy’s car. But why?

“Do you remember the guy’s name?”

She shook her head. “Uhm, I think it was maybe...Wen...something?”

Beck sighed. “What about where he picked you up?”

“It was a gas station,” she answered. “On the corner of Lark Avenue and North Twenty-third Street.” Then she nodded. “That was it. His name was Wendell.”

“Did you get a last name?”

She shook her head.

Beck pulled his cell phone from the back pocket of his jeans and opened up his Google app. He keyed in, ‘Wendell McAllen Tx’, and pressed search. There was a result about a professor from the University of Texas and a couple of news reports of two different people whose first name was Wendell being busted for drug dealing and child pornography. He scrolled down. There were no other results that were of any more use. He stared at his screen, thinking. He added ‘LinkedIn’ to his search query and pressed the search icon. The results page changed and a new listing popped up. It was for a Wendell Matthews, listed as being an Insurance Agent for Texas Life Corporation, forty-five years old and living in McAllen, Texas.

Beck tapped the link and the guy’s profile opened. There was a photograph of a guy in a yellow-and-pink Hawaiian shirt, wearing a pair of dark sunglasses, against a backdrop of an ocean somewhere with the sun setting in the distance behind him. He was sitting at a table and there was an exotic-looking purple drink in a hurricane glass sitting in front of him. He had a chubby face and greasy black hair that was parted in the middle and stuck down with what appeared like a whole tub of gel. Beck tapped the photo to blow it up, then turned his phone around and showed it to Sapphire. “This him?”

She leaned forward and stared at the photograph, then nodded. “Yeah. That’s him.”

Beck turned his cell phone back around and quickly searched Hidalgo County marriage records for a Wendell Matthews, approximately forty-years-old, from McAllen, Texas.

There were no results.

Next, he looked up the National Next of Kin Registry for any family members the guy might have.

Again, there were no results.

He sighed and locked his cell and slipped it back into his back pocket, then looked out the window while he thought about it. What was this guy’s head doing in the cooler alongside Mike’s? Why would they have killed him? He was a life insurance agent. Why would he have been involved with an ATF agent? What was the link? Did he see something and call it in? Maybe he spoke to Mike? That would explain it. Maybe they were involved in a case somebody wanted to keep a secret. But, then, how would Sapphire be involved?

He looked back at her and asked, "Do you remember where he drove you to?"

"Just around. I felt him stop a couple of times, like he pulled over by the side of the road. One time, we were stopped for maybe fifteen minutes."

"Do you remember where? Did you see anything?"

"No. It was dark and my head was down on his lap, remember?"

Beck nodded. That sounded plausible considering the guy was paying about two-hundred an hour. "Okay, do you remember when it was?"

"Last Monday," she answered and glanced down at her red stilettos. "Last Monday night, seven o'clock ‘til nine."

Last Monday was exactly a week ago. It was also three days before Kim Sikorsky called and told Beck about Mike. He figured whatever had gone down must have happened between last Monday and Wednesday, something enough to get Mike Sikorsky and this Wendell Matthews guy killed. But exactly what, he wasn't exactly sure, and for now, he was out of questions. He reached down and lifted Sapphire’s shoes and handed them to her.

"You done?" she asked him.

"Yeah," he replied.

She slipped her left foot into her left shoe and then her right foot into her right.

He admired how graciously she was able to do something as simple as slipping on a pair of shoes. "You ready?"

She nodded.

“Okay, let’s go,” he said.

She shook her head. “Not so fast.”

“Not so fast?”

"Not before you tell me your deal."

"My deal?"

"Yeah," she said. "Last night, those men were armed with guns. Two of them were huge, and they were obviously going to kill us. And, yet, you got the jump on them with just a knife. Then you stole somebody's car and dumped it in an alleyway like it was nothing. Like you'd done it a thousand times."

He said nothing. Although, he knew where this was going. He padded across the carpet and refilled his mug. If she was going to start asking questions and digging up his past, he knew he would need a second cup of coffee.

"Who the hell are you, Joe?"

***

The light strip on the handset of the chairman's glass desk phone lit up in flashing red. An incoming call. He didn't like the ringing sound that phones made when they rang, so he had muted the volume and relied on the flashing red alert instead. He leaned forward and grabbed the handset as the frosted glass door to his office swung open.

Four men shuffled in. Lester was at the front of the pack. He padded across the thick navy-blue carpet and put the photograph back on the chairman's desk. Three Hispanic men followed after him. Estrada, Hernandez and Jimenez. They also wore black leather jackets over casual black round-neck t-shirts with dark-blue jeans and black boots. They were all short and thickset, with tanned complexions, buzz cut bristly brown hair and green and blue tattoos of various daggers and serpents on the sides of their thick necks. They sat on the sofa opposite the chairman's glass desk and watched him answer the call.

The chairman lifted the handset from its cradle and raised it to his right ear.

"Sir, it's Forgewood," a man's voice said on the other end of the line.

The chairman glanced down at his reflection in the glass and stared at the man staring back up at him with a phone in his left hand and smiled. He liked it when people in public positions of authority called him 'Sir'. "What have you got, Forgewood?" he asked.

"Well," he said. "I can tell you the guy's name ain't Lukas Goddamn Haas. My God, I got a bunch of results for that one. Mostly parking tickets for some actor in California."

The chairman glanced up at Lester. He walked over and closed the door and then the chairman pressed the loudspeaker icon on the cradle and placed the handset down on the desk without a sound. "Forgewood," he said. "You're on speaker. Lester, Estrada, Hernandez and Jimenez are in the room. Tell us exactly what you know about this guy."

The three Hispanic men leaned forward on the sofa and Lester moved across the closed door and folded his arms across his body. Their leather jackets scrunched as they moved.

"The guy's name, Sir, is Joe Beck," Forgewood said, louder than before, so the men could hear him. "He's thirty-five years old, born June fourteenth, in Lincoln, Nebraska. He’s an ex-cop. Used to be on the squad with the Lincoln Police Department. Joined the force from college, when he was just twenty-one.”

The chairman and the four other men all nodded, attentively.

Forgewood continued. “He was a patrol officer for almost nine years. Spent seven of them on SWAT. He had a reputation of a bloodhound - focused a hundred percent of the time. Relentless. He got a couple of warnings for use of excessive force, but he was effective at what he did. He won Lincoln PD's Officer of the Year Award three years in a row and was awarded the Public Safety Officer Medal for Valor, for tackling three men who attempted to stick up a bank he was waiting in while he was off duty. They offered him the team captaincy at thirty, but he turned it down and took a detective’s position on vice instead. Lasted almost four years."

"What happened after that?" the chairman asked.

“He was sent to jail,” Forgewood answered.

The silence in the chairman’s office was striking. You could have heard a pin drop from about a mile away.

“What for?” the chairman, eventually, inquired.

"They found him, Sir, during a routine search in March last year, to be in possession of counterfeit credit cards,” Forgewood answered. “They were copies of cards that had been reported stolen in Omaha a few months before, linked to a case he was looking into at the time. It says here, he was arrested and put on administrative leave while he stood trial. He was fined ten-thousand dollars and sentenced to twelve months in Nebraska State Penitentiary. Lincoln PD dismissed him as soon as he was incarcerated, and they revoked his pension, too. He spent a year locked up inside. According to the file, he got into more than his fair share of scuffles with the other inmates. It says here that it happened almost every day. He suffered a couple of cut lips and an occasional bloodied nose, but the other guys, Jesus. Very day he got put inside, his orange uniform wasn't even ten minutes on his back when one of the inmates must have gotten wind he was a cop. The guy walked over and welcomed him to his new home with a stiff left hook. Burst Joe Beck's lip. But it says he took it like it was a shot from a sponge. He wiped the blood from his chin and put the guy down with one shot. Decked him with a forearm smash. Pretty much turned the guy's face to powder. He shattered six of his facial muscles and left him lying on a gurney with a cast strapped around his head for months. And that was just day one. I’ve got an entire list here. There must have been almost a hundred incidents. There’s even an account of him stopping a riot by himself. It says that six inmates got the jump on two guards, dragged them into the shower and held knives to their throats. Threatened to cut them from ear-to-ear unless the warden let them all out. Apparently, this Joe Beck guy just walked in and took the six of them down with his bare hands. Cracked two guys’ skulls, caved in two guys' rib cages and broke one guy's legs. Doesn’t say what he did to the other one. The warden had to move him from Gen Pop, but not for his own safety, for the protection of the other inmates. And, from that moment onward, he let it all slide, probably saw it as owing him for saving two of his guards' lives."

The three Hispanic guys glanced at each other, silently. The guy in the middle turned his head and looked at the guy on his left, and then at the guy in his right. And he looked to his left at the guy on the far end of the sofa. Every one of them had a concerned glimmer in their eyes.

Lester unfolded his arms and stepped forward. "Impossible. How could one unarmed guy take down six men armed with knives?"

"He's a big dude, Lester," Forgewood said. “It says here that he's six-foot-five, that he weighs two-hundred and seventy-five pounds. And his jumpsuit was a quadruple X-L. You take a direct hit from somebody like that and it’ll feel like you’ve just been smashed with the business end of a sledgehammer.”

“So, what the hell’s he doing on the outside?” Lester asked.

“Warden released him,” Forgewood answered. “Minute his twelve months were served, he was free to go.”

The chairman shook his head. He slid the photograph back into the middle of his desk and scowled, looking at Beck standing in the Sundance Motel’s lobby. "I can't have an ex-cop who’s the size of a brick shit house poking around down here asking questions. How can we find him, before he finds us?"

"Well, Sir," Forgewood said, quieter than anything else he'd said. "That's the hard part. According to the paperwork, he applied to become a private detective when he got out of prison, but the State of Nebraska turned it down. They cited his felony conviction, said they couldn’t license a guy on the wrong side of the law. Now, he had a residence in Lincoln. A three-bed detached home. But, when they turned down his application, he listed it on the market. Flipped it for maybe ninety percent of what it was worth. It was a quick sale. Done and dusted in three days. Then, by the looks of it, he went up to South Dakota.”

“South Dakota?” the chairman asked him, his eyes narrowing with contempt.

“Yes, Sir,” Forgewood confirmed and continued. “He went up to South Dakota and registered a limited liability company in his own name. The address we have on record for it is a PO box on South Minnesota Avenue in Sioux Falls. It looks like it’s inside a UPS store, as far as I can tell. He then changed his registered address on his driver’s license from his home in Nebraska to the PO box in Sioux Falls.”

The chairman was silent as he thought about it. “This company he registered, what is it for?”

“As far as I can tell, Sir, he’s using it as a private investigator’s entity. I found a website registered to it, promoting a detective service.”

“I thought you said his application got declined?” the chairman asked.

“I did,” Forgewood answered. “In Nebraska, but not in South Dakota. In South Dakota, a private eye doesn’t need a permit. It’s one of only three states in the U.S. that doesn’t require you to be licensed.”

The chairman sighed. “Well, if there’s a website, surely there’s contact information? He must be taking calls through some means, otherwise he wouldn’t be looking into much, now, would he? Surely there’s a number that you can trace?”

“I thought so, too, Sir. But, it’s impossible,” Forgewood answered.

The chairman’s eyes narrowed even more.

“The guy was smart,” Forgewood added. “Very smart. His business phone line has a New York City area code. Nine-one-seven. It looks as if it’s a virtual number, which means it’s in no way affiliated to him or his company. It’s owned by a specialist telecoms firm in New York that offers these types of things, for people who want to be contactable, but remain anonymous. They basically operate the number on his behalf, forwarding any calls through to whatever phone number he would have asked them to. And that’s the thing. We don’t have an active cell phone number for him on record. Anywhere.”

The chairman sighed, again, louder than before. “So, what else do you have? You’re the Goddamned police, for God’s sake.” There was anger and aggression in his voice.

“Well, there’s no current address, other than that PO box, on file. Nor is there any record of him ever owning a car, so if he has one, it has to be a leasehold. Maybe through the company? The only other thing I could find was a series of withdrawals from his bank accounts. They were made at infrequent intervals, from a couple of ATMs in Sioux Falls, South Dakota, then in Williston, North Dakota, then in Wichita, Kansas and, more recently, up in Dallas."

"So, you mean to tell me we have no idea where this guy lives, or exactly where he is, or how to find him?" the chairman thundered.

Forgewood was silent on the other end of the line. He didn't have the answer the chairman wanted and he couldn't think of a good way to possibly tell him that.

The chairman lifted his mug and gulped his coffee while he thought about it. "What about family? You never mentioned if he has any family."

The men heard paper whipping through the air from the other side of the phone, like Forgewood was flicking back through the files.

"He doesn't appear to have any, Sir. His mother is deceased, his father is listed as ‘not known’ and there’s no record of any siblings. He’s also never been married."

The chairman glowered down at the now lukewarm coffee swirling around at the bottom of his mug. He flicked his eyes across to the crocodile's head, nodded and then looked up at Estrada, Hernandez and Jimenez on the sofa, then flicked his gaze across to Lester.

"Get Zanetti and Kellerman involved," he told him and lifted the photograph from his desk. "Show them his picture and tell them his name. And I also want the word out to every other suit, tie, badge and gun we’ve got in this city. I want him found, dead or alive. He’s shacked up somewhere with that whore and I want to know where. The minute he turns up anywhere in this city, I want to know about it." He pushed the red button on the phone and ended the call.

***

"I used to be a cop," Beck answered and took the first sip of his second cup. Even though the pot was on the hotplate, it wasn't as warm as the first. The second never is.

"You? A cop?" Sapphire said and laughed, then handed him her mug.

He asked her if she wanted more.

She shook her head and waved her mug away.

"Yeah," he answered and placed her empty mug down on the unit beside the coffee machine. "Spent almost thirteen years on the force. Twelve years ad nine months, to be precise. Up in Lincoln, Nebraska."

"Nebraska?"

"Yeah," he answered and took another sip.

"What are you doing in McAllen?"

"I was here for his funeral. The guy whose head was in that cooler. It was yesterday."

She grimaced.

"Yeah, and they said it was a suicide," he said. “But a man doesn’t commit suicide and then get up and chop off his own head and stick in a box.”

She shook her head. Then leaned back with her arms behind her and her palms down on the duvet.

"Exactly," he said. "Now, the people who are looking for you, I think they killed him and then they spun it off as suicide. I also think they killed Wendell Matthews."

“Wait. What?” The color drained from her face.

“The other head that was in that box, that’s who I think it belonged to. You didn’t see it, but it looked just as you had described him, just like the photograph from that LinkedIn page. And, I think, that black Tahoe those men had was his car.”

Sapphire said nothing. She felt sick. She took a deep breath and nodded, then thought of what he had said before that, wanting to change the subject. "You said you 'used to be' a cop?"

"That’s right," he answered.

“Why 'used to be'?”

"Well, I was, before I did a year in the State Penn."

Her eyes widened. "Wait, what?"

He nodded. "I was working vice and I got caught up on something.”

“Wait, you were vice?” she asked, suddenly uneasy.

“Yeah,” he answered, then shook his head. “That’s all in the past. Don’t worry about it.”

She remained silent.

“Anyway,” he continued. “I was looking into a local forgery racket that had a sideline in the sex trade. It was a ring of low-lives who were stealing and copying credit cards and pimping out women. They were selling the copied cards for a few hundred bucks at a time. They must’ve had somebody on the force in their pocket. An inside man. Somebody to protect and preserve a different kind of interest. Because they managed to slip two of the forged cards into my wallet the very day I was picked for a 'random' search. It was total bullshit. And, in Nebraska, you're as good as done if you get caught with anything like that, no matter how you got it, or if it got to you. They saw me as being involved. Corrupt to the core. They pulled me from the case, took my gun and my badge and placed me on leave, pending trial. I was convicted, of course. The jury had no other choice. I was fired on the spot, stripped of my pension, handed a ten-thousand-dollar fine and put into the State Penitentiary for twelve long months."

Sapphire frowned. It was a harsh punishment by any standard, especially for a set-up. She glanced toward the left of his neck and brought her hand up to the left side of her neck and asked, "Was it in prison that you got the scar?" referring to the long, grisly mark that ran down his skin.

"No," he answered and finished his coffee. "The scar didn't happen inside."

She nodded.

He smiled.

"But, if you were a cop, you must have been in there with all the animals you put away?"

He nodded. "I was. And there wasn't a day went by where somebody didn't try something. I took a few bloodied noses, but I broke a whole lot of faces and smashed a lot more limbs. Day after I rocked up, they were handing out crutches like candy canes at Christmas in that place. But that wasn’t the worst of it.”

“What could possibly be worse than that?” she asked, eyes wide, incredulous.

“Hearing about all the crimes they had committed that had gone under the radar. The sick bastards would sit there, smirks on their smug faces, bragging about everything and anything they’d done and gotten away from. Everything from rape to abuse to murder. Crimes that no other living soul would know had even taken place, except for their victims who must have been sitting alone out there, somewhere, isolated by the burden of carrying a nightmare of a memory around somewhere at the backs of their minds. Listening to that shit, there wasn’t a day went by where I didn’t think about killing some of them. But I didn't. And that's how I got out. It was day number three-hundred-sixty-five. The warden called me to his office and handed me my release papers. Said it was a reward for being like a guard behind bars. Said prisoner control had increased ten-fold since I had come inside.”

She flashed him an onerous look that said three-hundred and sixty-five days behind bars must have felt like a lifetime.

He shrugged.

"What happened when you got out?"

He laughed. "Well, I couldn't get another job for shit. I’ll tell you that. And, definitely, not in law enforcement, not with a second-degree forgery conviction to my name. I even applied for a private detective’s license, but the state declined it.”

She grimaced.

He nodded. “It was tough. No doubt about it. But I thought about it for a few days and realized hunting down assholes that commit crimes was maybe the only thing in this world I’m really that good at. And I wasn’t going to let some bullshit conviction take it away from me. I looked into a few laws and regulations and found a loophole. Drove up Interstate Twenty-Nine, to Sioux Falls in South Dakota, spend the night in a Roadway Inn and stuck the middle finger up to the licensing board the very next day.”

She looked him a confused-looking question.

He grinned. “You don’t need a license in South Dakota. And, anyway, when shit hits the fan, those formal pieces of paper don’t count for shit.”

She nodded. Then smiled. Not only is he the all-action type, but he’s also pretty smart, she thought.

He drank some coffee and continued. “I sold up my house and put everything into storage in Omaha and, initially, moved up to Sioux Falls. Spent a few weeks there, staying in the motel, but I quickly found out there was quite a demand for more ‘off-books’ no-questions-asked sort of investigations in other parts of Dakota and other, surrounding states. I realized I would have to be mobile, so I got rid of most of my stuff. Sold most of it off, junked what I couldn’t sell, and just kept a few outfits, some valuables and some family heirlooms.”

“So, you just roam around?”

He nodded.

She glanced down at his bare ring finger. “What about a woman? You don’t have one?”

He shook his head. “No.”

She said nothing. There were questions in her eyes.

Beck nodded, slowly. “I used to. I was engaged once.”

Sapphire looked him another question.

“Her name was Jane,” he answered. “She was small and dark-haired. A bit like you, I guess, except she was a journalist.”

Sapphire nodded, slowly. “If you don’t mind me asking, what happened?”

“It didn’t work out,” he answered. “I worked long hours. Eighty, maybe ninety a week? But that was nothing compared to what she did. Reporting the news, it just consumed her. At the height of it, she must have been doing about twenty hours a day. Maybe more. Always trying to get a scoop, thinking every time that it would be the big one, the one that would help her make anchor. And, unfortunately, when you pull hours like that, you don’t have time for much else. Our relationship just broke down. It just fell by the wayside, you know? I could see it happening, but I was powerless to stop it. I was always working. She was always working. I tried to tell her, but she just wouldn’t listen. Her career was her top priority. Which meant we just never seemed to have the time for each other that our relationship needed. And my conviction must have been the straw that broke the camel’s back. After that, we just went our separate ways. We never officially separated, but she moved on to Illinois and I moved into the Nebraska State Penn.”

Sapphire nodded, again, but remained silent for a brief sad moment.

“Anything else you want to know?” Beck asked.

“Yeah, let’s go back to what you actually do. That compared to being a cop, how do you actually make a living?”

He drew his cell phone from his jeans and held it up. “This is basically my office. I put a couple of ads up online. But, mostly, it’s word of mouth referrals. People have a job that needs doing, they ask around. They get my details and just call me up. And I’m flexible. With no concrete ties, I can be wherever the action is, sometimes in a matter of minutes, sometimes in a few hours. And, wherever the action is, that’s where the money is. Clients pay once, in full when the job’s done. And always in cash. In the last couple of months I’ve done jobs in North and South Dakota, in Montana, in Colorado, in Kansas, and Oklahoma and more recently here, in Texas, just up in Dallas.”

She nodded. “Is it regular?”

“Mostly. But, like everything else, there’s good times and bad times.”

She nodded her agreement. “So, what does it actually involve? Is it like police work, just without the badge.”

He shook his head and grinned. “No. I handle the stuff the cops wouldn’t dare to touch. I’m able to do the things they can’t. I don’t often take liberties. And I never take any prisoners. I do whatever needs to be done.”

She smiled. For the first time since yesterday evening, before she was getting ready for work, she actually felt safe. She was sitting in the room with a guy who was nothing more than a drifting criminal, but, equally, a good man, as far as she could tell. It was a calming realization and one that settled her. She found comfort in having a wronged, outlaw ex-cop standing behind her, especially when somebody was out to get her.

"Anyway," he said, glancing at his watch. Nine o’clock. "Enough about the past. We need to address the problem we’ve got today. We need to find out who tried to kill us and why. And I know exactly where to start."

“Okay,” she said and stood up from the bed and grabbed her purse. "What about breakfast?"

“What about it?”

“You do actually do it, right?”

He looked at her like she’d just asked a stupid question. "Of course. We’ll grab it on the way," he said and nodded toward the door.

She smiled. Not only was he big and strong, but Joe Beck was also a man who took charge.

SIX

Lester stepped out of the chairman's office and called Kellerman and Zanetti. The chairman watched the frosted glass door close softly behind him, then glanced over at Estrada, Hernandez and Jimenez who sat on the edge of the sofa opposite him.

He opened his mouth to speak but promptly closed it when the light strip on his desk phone flashed red, again. The console's screen lit up in light blue and a number popped up at the bottom in black text.

The number started with the usual generic international prefix, 333-555, but the remaining digits formed a telephone number that he was familiar with. The tiny dark pupils in the chairman’s eyes widened when he saw it. The caller was Mexican and his name was Ariel Izaguirre.

The chairman raised the handset to his ear but didn't say a word.

"Mr. Mullarkey," Izaguirre said to him. He spoke slowly, in a distinctly-Mexican accent. "I trust you've now taken care of our cop problem?"

At first, the chairman said nothing. He paused and thought about the two heads in the cooler, then Sapphire and Joe Beck roaming around somewhere in McAllen. Then he pondered about Izaguirre’s question and, finally, gave him the answer he needed to hear.

"Yes," he said. "It's handled."

His pause lasted a moment too long. And Ariel Izaguirre noticed. He sighed, then breathed slowly into the line and said, "Good, because attention like that causes problems, for everyone. And, I'm sure, you remember what happened to Mr. Vinson?"

The chairman said nothing. He remembered Vinson. He was a short but thickset guy somewhere in his mid-fifties, with salt and pepper hair that parted to his left and pale-skinned oval-shaped face. He always wore a three-piece suit and a tie, even when the temperature was over a hundred degrees. It was a trait that the chairman liked that about him. He thought it portrayed an image of power and emitted an aura of superiority. It was a quirk he adopted himself when he took his place.

Izaguirre laughed, but just once. A smug expression. “Do you remember the last time you ever saw Mr. Vinson?” he asked.

“I do,” the chairman answered, thinking about the last time he ever saw him. Vinson was invited out to the bank of the Rio Grande for a late-night meeting with Izaguirre and he was with him by his side. He remembered Izaguirre's men stripping him naked at gunpoint, M16s in their hands, and then gagging his mouth with his own dirty black socks. Then he remembered them shoving concrete cinder blocks around his ankles and binding his arms and legs together with gray duct tape. That was when Vinson began to weep. A powerful, authoritative man crying by the bank of the river because that was when he realized his time was up.

The chairman remembered Izaguirre throwing a black hood over his head and drawing it tight with the string around his neck. Then, one of his men, a tough-looking Mexican in a white open-collared shirt and blue jeans, wrapping a length of barbed wire around his testicles. He remembered Vinson's screams when they guy pulled the barbed wire tight and the wire’s sharp steel barbs thrust into his skin. High-pitched and frantic. He also remembered the carmine blood dripping down Vinson’s legs, spattering across the tops of the cinder blocks and the bare bridges of his feet. He remembered the screaming going on for what must have been the best part of a minute before Izaguirre pushed Vinson into the river. The chairman remembered his head disappear under its murky brown surface and that was the last he ever saw him.

"But, since our problem is handled, what happened to Mr. Vinson is irrelevant. Wouldn’t you agree?” Izaguirre said.

“Yes,” the chairman replied, dry-throated.

Izaguirre breathed loudly into the phone. “And so, to our business. The next shipment will go ahead tonight.”

"Tonight?"

"Tonight," Izaguirre repeated. "It’s Monday, and you’ve assured me that our problem is fixed. Tonight, Cortez will be manning the crossing shortly after six, meaning the truck will be earlier. It should be at the border by six-thirty. It’ll go through the customary search to fulfill Border Patrol processes, of course, but Cortez won’t find anything unusual and he’ll let it pass. It should be at your warehouse around a half-hour later."

The chairman said nothing. He nodded into the phone, thinking.

Izaguirre continued. "And, this time, I'll need distribution handled quickly. I'll be in McAllen tomorrow night, at nine o’clock, to collect the money, personally. And, while I’m there, I also want you to show me the heads of the three people you’ve told me you’ve taken care of, just like we agreed,” he said, then hung up the call.

The chairman leaned back in his chair holding his left hand over his mouth. One simple phone call had given him three serious problems. He inhaled slowly through the gaps between his fingers. Firstly, he had lied to Izaguirre, and Izaguirre had detected it. Which put his position in his organization and his life under serious threat. Secondly, there was now a time limit to find the whore. He had about thirty-six hours to get Sapphire’s head into that box alongside the others. And, thirdly, he had to arrange the distribution of the next shipment sooner than he had anticipated. He had postponed the scheduled buyer meets until the problem was taken care of, and he was now also three men short, but he had to turn the distribution around in a day when it usually took two, sometimes three.

The three Hispanic guys saw the worry on his face as he stared absently past their heads, looking at the painting on the wall above their heads, still holding the handset in his right hand. Hernandez, sitting in the middle of the three, spoke first. "Sir?"

The chairman didn't acknowledge him. His eyes never moved an inch, but the painting on the wall was getting farther and farther away with every passing second.

Lester stepped back in the door, but the chairman didn’t even see it open or notice him coming in. It was like he never even realized he was there.

"Sir?" Lester said, noticing his employer's unusual blank stare. "Everything okay?"

The chairman's eyes lit up, like he had come to. He flicked them from the painting, across the room and then he fixed his void icy gaze directly on him. It was like the beam of a backlight torch slowly flicking sideward into position.

"The shipments continue tonight," he said, to nobody in particular, a shocked expression on his face while he still cradled the handset in his right hand.

All four men stared at him and waited for more, afraid to ask. It was like they were standing on a thin covering of eggshells, terrified to hear them crack.

"Lester," the chairman said, aggression in his voice. "Izaguirre will be here tomorrow night at nine o’clock. And he wants the payment for tonight’s shipment, then. I need you to bring forward the buyer meets. I need it all to go down tonight and I need the cash rounded up by tomorrow morning."

"The entire shipment?" Lester replied, incredulous, like it was impossible.

"The entire shipment," the chairman confirmed.

“But we’re three men down, Sir?”

“Estrada, Hernandez and Jimenez will see to that,” the chairman said to him. “Now, go re-arrange the buyer meets. And, once that’s handled, I need you to find the Goddamned whore. Izaguirre wants to see her head tomorrow night, as well. Which means I need her found today."

Lester nodded. "I’ve spoken with Kellerman and Zanetti. They’re both on board, Sir. And we’ve got every resource in town on the lookout. That shouldn’t be a problem.”

“It had better not be,” the chairman thundered.

Lester glance downward, submissively. “But, Sir, what about this Joe Beck guy?"

The chairman sighed loudly through his nose, like he had almost forgotten about him for a split second only to realize that he was problem number four. "If anybody sees him, just tell them to kill him. If they can’t kill him, tell them to subdue him until we send somebody else along to do the job." He looked over at the three Hispanic men sitting on the sofa.

They all looked back at him with attentive faces.

"Estrada, Hernandez, Jimenez,” he said, left-to-right in the order they were sitting down. “I want you to go out and find four able-bodied men. We're three vans short of a driver and I need the manpower to fill them, by tonight."

Hernandez piped up, a quizzed look on his face. "Sir, why do you need four when we’re only three men short?"

The chairman’s eyes widened and his upper lip curled in disdain. He glared straight at him and pointed to the door.

Estrada and Jimenez, bookending him at either side of the sofa, cursed at him in Spanish under their breath and simultaneously leaned forward, nodded and said, "Yes, Sir." Then they huckled Hernandez up by his underarms and dragged him out of the chairman’s office.

Lester watched the door close behind them and then sat down where Estrada had been sitting, with his right elbow against the sofa’s hard arm. The seat still felt warm and the leather cushion cracked under his body. He took his cell phone from his jacket pocket, nodded and gave the chairman an assured look and began making calls.

***

Hernandez wrestled his arms free from Estrada’s and Jimenez's grip. He sneered at them and then cursed in Spanish as they walked down the corridor and stepped down the stairs. The words hissed across his lips and flicked from the tip of his tongue.

Estrada and Jimenez looked at each other and shrugged. It was something about how he would cut them up if they handled him like that again.

"So, how do we get four men?" Hernandez asked and smoothed out his shirt and his jacket. "Who do you guys know?"

Jimenez ran his palm over his bristly brown hair. "I got a cousin up in San Antonio, says he..."

Estrada interrupted him before he could finish, "Chairman don't want no cousin of yours," he said. "Didn't you see that look in his eye? He told us to just go find four men. He doesn't want anybody we know, just four guys that know how to drive. He needs a quick fix and once the deliveries are made, he'll probably have us pop 'em."

They reached the bottom of the stairs and made their way across the white marble floor in the reception, past the spraying fountain. Hernandez and Jimenez nodded. It made sense. The chairman had a temporary problem and he needed a temporary fix. Scooping up four random men would give him exactly what he needed and they would have no problem with capping them when the time came.

"So, where do we pick up four random guys?" Jimenez asked him, concern in his voice, as he opened the glass door. The heat hit them like a hammer. The humidity was thick and the air was dry. It felt like stepping into a sauna.

“Easy,” Estrada said to him and glanced down at his watch on his left wrist. It was cheap. It had a stretchable chrome strap with a circular dark-blue face that had steamed up with the change in air temperature. He wiped the condensation off with this right thumb. The time was nine-fifteen. He nodded and looked up and pointed across the parking lot. "We got plenty of time. We’ll find the first one out right there on Wichita Avenue.”

Hernandez looked him a question.

“A FedEx truck comes up there every day. Without fail,” Estrada answered. “Sometime around twelve-thirty. So, we can all go grab a bite and a drink and take it easy. Come back here shortly after twelve. And make him the first of the four because, if the guy can drive a mail truck, he can damn sure drive one of ours."

***

Edinburg to Pharr is a ten-mile southbound journey on Interstate 69C. At an average of sixty-five miles per hour, the Mustang covered it in less than ten minutes and Beck and Sapphire pulled up outside Kim and Mike Sikorsky's house shortly before ten o'clock, having stopped off for breakfast on the way. Sapphire, conscious about her figure, ate just a slice of dry toast. Beck, conscious about his, devoured twelve eggs.

"Looks a nice place," Sapphire said, her stomach grumbling, as she glanced out of the window of the Mustang.

The house was a single-story detached model built with sandstone brick and covered by a dark-gray slate roof. There were windows to rooms on either side of a solid oak door. They had center bars with white wooden frames and there was a slight tint in the glass to reflect the sun, keeping it from warming the home. It was set in the middle of a newly built estate full of similarly designed single-story houses. Each home had neatly trimmed lawns and red-brick monoblock driveways wide enough for two cars, almost all of them with an array of gleaming black and silver sedans parked up side-by-side.

Beck nodded, his stomach silent, satisfied. The Sikorsky’s had only moved in about six months ago and it was the first time he had seen it. They would have invited him to their housewarming back in January, but he was otherwise engaged. He killed the Mustang's engine and they stepped out into the morning sun. Beck led the way across the concrete sidewalk and up the empty red-brick drive to the front door.

He rang the bell twice. He could hear its dull ding-dong on the other side of the door. There was a brief silence and then a metallic scratching sound. The sound of the lock chain being unlatched. Then the door swung open.

Kim Sikorsky was standing on the other side. Her long blonde hair was tied back in a ponytail and she was wearing dark-blue sweatpants and lightweight white cotton roll-neck sweater that fit snugly around her full, pregnant stomach.

She looked at Beck and smiled and said his name, warmly. "Joe."

He smiled back and greeted her with the same warm intonation. "Kim, Hi."

She briefly glanced at Sapphire and then flicked her gaze back over at Beck. "You never said you were sticking around?"

"I wasn't planning to," he answered. "But something's come up."

She glanced at Sapphire again.

"Sorry, Kim," Beck said. "This is Sapphire." He turned and looked at her. "Sapphire, this is Kim."

The two women smiled, pleasantly, and shook hands, but not before Sapphire caught Kim flicking her eyes up and down her figure and dwelling on her red high heels.

Kim looked back at Joe.

“It’s maybe best we come in,” he said.

She smiled. “Sure.” Then turned side on and gestured them to step inside. “Please.”

Beck nodded and he and Sapphire stepped through the door and accompanied her to the lounge. It was through an archway on the right, about half-way down a bright and airy hallway with magnolia-colored walls and a solid oak wooden floor.

The oak floor and magnolia walls continued into the lounge and there was an oak fireplace on the wall to the right. It wasn’t lit. Opposite it was a brown leather corner sofa. The long side offered a view of the fire, and the short side offered a view out the window at the street. Behind the short side of the sofa, against the wall, was a heavy-looking oak sideboard. There was a lilac vase filled with fully-blossomed pink chrysanthemums sitting on top and, beside it, a burning scented candle with liquefied light-purple wax sitting on a glass plate. It filled the room with a faint orange flickering glow and the light aroma of lavender.

Kim sat first, on the short side of the sofa, facing the window. Beck sat beside her, and Sapphire sat next to him, on the long side, facing the fire.

"So, Joe, you said something came up?" Kim asked.

“Yes,” Beck answered and nodded once, then paused and sucked a slow breath. “It's something about Mike.”

"Something about Mike?" Kim asked, a quizzing look on her face.

“Yes,” Beck answered and glanced awkwardly at the wooden floor and then the blackened pile of logs lying in the bottom of the unlit fire. He couldn't think of the best way to say it. So, he figured that would just say it clearly, but in as gentle a voice as he could. "Kim, I don't know how to say this, but, I don’t think Mike killed himself."

The color drained from her face. She was in a warm room with two people, but she suddenly felt cold and adrift, like she was alone and floating on a vast dark ocean of anguish.

He placed the palm of his hand over the back of hers and gazed at her, sadly, and shook his head.

“What?” she asked, it being the only thing she could think of to say.

He said nothing. Just nodded.

She looked up at him, a sadness in her eyes and a single tear slipping down her left cheek like a raindrop tricking down a window as what he had just said had begun to sink in.

He let a brief moment pass. "Do you understand what I just said?" he asked.

She shook her head, staring at him like she heard what he was saying, but couldn't comprehend the meaning of the words.

He squeezed her hand tight and whispered, "I'm sorry, Kim. But I’m not lying. Your husband didn’t kill himself.” He paused. “He was killed."

She closed her eyes and began to sob.

Sapphire took a Kleenex from her purse and handed it to him. He tried to give it to Kim, for her to dab her eyes, but she just shook her head and wept, tears running down her face. He gently pulled her close and allowed her to cry on his shoulder.

Five minutes is only three-hundred seconds, but three-hundred seconds felt like a lifetime with Kim’s head in his hands, sobbing against his body. She finally sucked a deep breath and raised her head from his shoulder. Her eyes were red and her make-up was running. She eased the tissue from his hand and used it to wipe her nose.

"That's why I stuck around," he said and shook his head, thinking about Mike's head rolling around in the puddle of blood at the bottom of the cooler.

Kim nodded, biting down on her quivering bottom lip.

“Kim,” Beck said. “I know this might be hard to take, hard to understand, but do you get what I’m telling you?”

She closed her eyes and nodded, sadly. “I knew it,” she wept. “I knew he wouldn’t...” She couldn’t finish what she was going to say.

Beck pulled her close, again, and cupped his right hand around the back of her head. “It’s all right,” he whispered.

“No. It’s not all right,” she sobbed.

She was right. Her husband had been murdered. It wasn’t all right. But he couldn’t think of anything more appropriate to say. He looked at Sapphire.

She looked back at him, grimacing, compassion in her eyes.

He nodded.

“Joe?” Kim whispered.

“Yeah?”

She drew her head back and looked him in the eye. “What makes you so sure. What do you know?”

He shook his head and blew out his cheeks. “I can’t go into that, Kim. I saw something, physical proof, but I can’t say much more. I’m sorry. But, what I’m going to do is, find out what really happened. And, to do that, I'm going to need your help, okay?"

She sucked a slow, painstaking breath. “What did you see, Joe? What do you know?”

He shook his head. “I told you, I can’t go into that. It wouldn’t be right. Now, let’s focus on finding out why. Okay?”

She nodded once, fear and sadness in her eyes.

"Okay. I'm going to have to ask you a few questions,” He said. “And I'll need you to try your best to answer them."

She sniffled and sighed, then nodded.

He put the palm of his hand over the back of hers, again, and took a deep breath. "What happened? How did you find out he...?" He left the question hanging, not wanting to mention it again.

She flicked her eyes to her right and gazed absently out of the window. "He left for work," she said, in a quivering and barely audible voice. "Last Wednesday morning.” She paused. Her eyes filled up again. She dabbed them with the tissue. Its soft white fibers turned a graying shade of peach, smudged with foundation that coated her cheeks and the mascara that had run from her eyes.

“It’s okay, Kim,” Beck said. “Take your time.”

She took a deep breath and continued. “Last Wednesday morning, he left for work and he didn't come home. It was late, maybe six o’clock, about an hour after he usually came in. I was getting worried, so I rang his cell. But he didn’t answer. I tried three times over the next half-hour. No answer. And that's when Zanetti called."

"Zanetti?" Beck asked, his left eyebrow slightly raised.

"His boss. At the ATF," she answered. "I can remember exactly what he said to me. I'll never forget it.” She paused and took another deep breath. “He called and said they had bad news, that Mike and his partner, Kellerman, made a stop at a laundromat on Alberta Road. To follow up on a lead. They said it was just after lunch, that Mike went in first, while Kellerman parked the car. Kellerman said he heard a gunshot from inside. He said he charged in and found Mike lying dead on the floor with his gun in his hand. They said he had just walked inside and killed himself. The laundromat manager said he witnessed the whole thing, that they were lucky there were no customers around at the time."

Beck nodded, slowly, processing the information. "Then what happened?"

"Kellerman and Zanetti stopped by later that evening,” Kim answered. “They brought a bouquet of flowers,” she said and nodded backward at the vase on the sideboard. “Along with Mike's personal effects from the office. They were very nice about the whole thing, said they were sorry and that I hadn’t to worry about anything. That the ATF would take care of all of the formalities."

"Did the ATF arrange the burial?"

She nodded, sadly, tears in her eyes, biting down on her bottom lip.

“Take your time,” he said.

She nodded. "Because it was suicide, it voided his life insurance policy. So, they said that since it happened on the job, it was the least that they could do."

“So, the agency covered it?”

She nodded, staring into space. Her head barely even moved.

“Okay,” Beck said and paused a beat. "Did they...” He stopped and closed his eyes, briefly. “Did they let you see his body?"

She shook her head.

He wasn’t surprised. He brought his hand up to his face and ran his thumb and fingertips down the dark stubble that covered his jaw and thought about it.

The ATF themselves said it was suicide by firearm, but there were no bullet wounds on Mike's head. And I know that nine in ten people who take their own life with a gun, shoot themselves in the head. But, then again, one in ten shoots themselves elsewhere, the leg, the chest, the heart, most often, and then they just bleed out. It’s possible that he did kill himself. At least, theoretically. Maybe his gun went off by mistake? Maybe it shot him on the leg? Maybe he bled out? Maybe he died right there and then? A suicide, indeed, just like they said. But, in any case, it doesn’t change the fact that somebody took his head. Maybe he died accidentally and the decapitation happened afterward? Or, maybe the ATF lied? Maybe they knew about it? Maybe they were involved? Maybe this Zanetti or Kellerman had him killed, then covered it up? Maybe it was because of something they wanted to hide? Or, something the man called ‘the chairman’ wanted them to keep secret?

At this point, he realized that one particular document would most likely tell him all he would need to know.

"Did you get his death certificate?" he asked.

She nodded.

“May I see it?”

“In the sideboard. Top drawer."

He glanced at Sapphire.

She stood and walked around behind them. Her heels clip-clopped on the oak floor and the lavender smell got stronger as she drew closer to the candle. She pulled open the drawer and slipped out a piece of folded white paper that was sitting on the top of a bundle of files, handed it to Beck and then sat back down.

It felt cold and thick. Printed on a more durable quality of paper than the regular 80gsm commonly found in homes and offices. He unfolded it and scanned the printed side. There was a dark--blue textured outline around the sides and the middle was light-pink with a textured background. The coroner had marked his manner of death as a suicide, occurring at approximately 16:25 on Wednesday 24 June, listing the official cause of death as being from the 'discharge of a short-barreled firearm'. The certificate didn't specify where he had been shot, just that he had. He scanned the document. It was certified by a guy named Herman Kranz, at an address printed as, ‘Hidalgo County Morgue, 722 Breyfogle Road, Mission, Texas, 78572, United States of America.’

Beck flicked his eyes back up over the information, again, but stopped at the time of death: 16:25. He folded the certificate back up and nodded, slowly, then sat it down on the sofa. 16:25 was more than two hours after the end of the usual lunch window, and from his days on the force, he knew that no cop ever took a two-hour lunch, especially the ones who eat late. Not because they didn’t want to, but because it was impossible to. There was always some crime or another needing their attention, always a lead to chase up or a shitbag to grab. Most cops were lucky to get fifteen minutes and many of them ate in their cars while they worked. None of them took two hours at half-past two in the afternoon. And that meant only one of two things.

One, the time on the death certificate was a mistake. It could've been. A simple slip of the finger and a one or a two could become a six. But then, somebody would have to miss it when they proof-checked it. Again, possible. All it would’ve taken was a simple human error.

Two, the time on the death certificate was right, which would render the story about the laundromat as total bullshit. No cop would ever get a detail like that wrong, especially not a federal agent. And that realization confirmed everything he already thought - that Mike Sikorsky had been murdered and the ATF had something to do with it. He made a mental note of the coroner's name and address from the certificate as a lead to follow up on, then looked at Kim.

"Did Mike mention anything unusual about his work recently?" he asked.

She shook her head.

Beck nodded. "Okay, did he say or do anything lately that seemed a little out of the ordinary?"

She went to shake her head, but stopped and pulled a face like there was something on her mind.

“Kim?”

She said nothing. She stood up from the sofa and padded across the floor in her socks without saying a word.

“Kim? I can see there’s something on your mind. You need to tell me what it is.”

She stopped by the sideboard and opened the second drawer.

"Last Wednesday morning. He gave me this before he left," she said and lifted what looked to be a thin wooden box from the drawer. "He told me to give it to you next time I saw you. Then he said he loved me and walked out the door for the last time." Tears ran down her cheeks.

Beck stood and padded around behind the sofa, breathing in through his mouth, so he didn’t have to smell the strengthening lavender scent. He eased the box from her hand and glanced at it, briefly. “Did he say why?”

She shook her head and cried.

He turned his head and glanced at Sapphire and gestured to the door.

She nodded, stood and walked out to the hall. Her heels clip-clopped, again, with each step that she took.

Beck placed his hand on her shoulder and smiled, sombrely. "I’m sorry, Kim. But thank you. He never left this behind for nothing and, in giving it to me, you did the right thing. You did exactly what he wanted.”

She nodded and wept.

He hugged her tight for a moment. “We have to go, but I’ll be around for a few more days, I think. So, you need anything, you just call me.”

Kim wiped the tears from her eyes and nodded. “Please, Joe, do what you have to. For Mike’s sake.”

“I will,” he whispered and turned and walked out into the hallway.

Sapphire was already out the door, standing in the hot morning sun, waiting at the bottom of the steps. She was looking around at the other homes in the neighborhood.

Beck closed the door behind him and joined her in the sun.

"God, that was awkward,” she said. “She was pretty torn up in there. And you never mentioned she was pregnant.”

Beck glanced down at the wooden box Kim had given him and then looked up, absently, at the neatly trimmed lawn. "You would be, too, if you were seven months along and led to believe your husband committed suicide," he said and walked down the path.

Sapphire sighed and let him go ahead and get into the car, then followed behind.

Beck sat behind the wheel of the Mustang, studying the box. It looked like the kind of tired heirloom that could only be found in yard sales and thrift stores. The wood felt dry and knotted and looked like it had faded from a deep mahogany to a reddish shade of orange. The corners were still brown, but the surface now much lighter. There were no logos or emblems carved into it, no identifiable markings at all, other than a few chips missing from it left edges and some deep scratches along its front side.

There was a dull brass buckle on the front. He unclipped it and lifted back the lid. The inside looked the same as the outside - tired and old. There were twelve brown cigars resting on a thin faded red-suede cover that lined the bottom. The middle had turned more of a deep shade of salmon from the passage of time. The cigars looked dry and fragile, like they would disintegrate into dust if he even tried to touch them.

Why would a non-smoker have an antique box of old cigars? And why would he ask his wife to give it to me? It’s a message, but it doesn't make any sense. What was on his mind? What is he trying to say?

Sapphire climbed in the passenger side and put her left hand on his shoulder. "Hey," she said. "So, what do we do now?"

He folded the lid shut and re-did the buckle and slid the box into the accessory pocket of the door and turned the key in the ignition, starting the Mustang’s engine. "We’re going to Breyfogle Road, to speak to a guy named Hermann Kranz."

SEVEN

It took almost thirty minutes to do the twelve-mile journey from Pharr to Mission. Beck and Sapphire took Pecan Boulevard through the center of McAllen and that's what took the longest. That was where they hit traffic. They fought against stop signs and traffic lights at four-way intersections, waited behind lowered barriers at the level crossing, and started and stopped behind a lot of red rear tail lights. Pecan Boulevard was a fairly straight road that eventually evolved into West Griffin Parkway for a quieter stretch and then became East Veteran Boulevard for a welcome clear run on the other side of town. They cruised past an old white church on the right and made a right at the intersection onto Breyfogle Road, where they watched the building numbers increasing as they drove past.

Six-hundred, six-twenty, six-forty, six-sixty, six-eighty, seven-hundred, seven-twenty. Number seven-twenty-two was a single-story gray concrete building set back from the road on a vast parcel of land. It looked like two giant cinder blocks lying beside each other in a parking lot, mirrors stuck in the holes for windows.

Beck eased off the gas and turned the Mustang into the lot.

Sapphire glanced at a sign by the side of the access road. It said, 'Hidalgo County Morgue.' Her face dropped. “Absolutely not,” she said and turned to face him.

“Absolutely not what?” he asked.

“Am I going in there.”

Beck glanced out the windshield at the tinted glass entrance doors as they drove past. “It's only a morgue,” he said and pulled into a parking spot one down from the entrance.

“Exactly. I'll wait out here,” she replied, a shiver creeping down her spine.

The heat haze was shimmering by the curb.

“You can't wait out here,” he said. “It must be over a hundred degrees out there.”

“Don't care,” she replied. “I don't do bodies.”

He shook his head and sighed. Then pulled his Smith & Wesson from his waist and stuck it in the glove box. “I'll leave this in here, in case you need it, along with the keys and keep the air conditioning running. I should be in and out, back in maybe five or ten minutes,” he said and quickly jumped out of the car.

The outside air was hot and dry. It felt like he had jumped into an oven. The sun seared against the back his neck and the dense humidity made every step toward the building’s entrance feel heavy, like he was walking in lead boots.

The other side of the tinted glass door was icily cool. The floor was dark-gray linoleum, the walls were white and there was a gleaming white reception counter on the right. A black computer with a matching heavy CRT monitor sat on top and there was an attractive blonde-haired receptionist sitting behind it. She was wearing a sleeveless white open-collared top and she was shivering under the air conditioning units humming overhead.

“Can I help you?” she asked, through chattering teeth. It sounded like she was running on a treadmill as she spoke.

Beck thought about Wendell Matthews and nodded. “I'm here on behalf of Texas Life,” he said and slipped his wallet from his pocket and flashed his private detective ID with an outstretched hand. “We're looking into the life insurance claim for one of our customers, a Mr. Mike Sikorsky.”

The ID, of course, never had an official license number, but, to the untrained eye, it looked the whole nine yards.

She glanced at the bold blue text at the top, that said ‘Private Detective,’ and then at the gold shield, then his picture and, finally, flicked her eyes over his name. She looked back up at him and nodded. “Anything for Texas Life. What can we do for you, Mr. Beck?”

Beck lowered his arm and stuffed his ID card back into his wallet and then stuffed his wallet back into his pocket. “What we need, Ma’am, is a statement from the coroner on record, a Mr. Hermann Kranz. It’s just a formality, but we need to corroborate the information on the death certificate with the official opinion of the medical examiner.” He did his best to sound official, like some sort of compliance department was making him follow a serious audit process.

She flicked her eye up and down his frame and scanned his figure. Then smiled, satisfied he was who he said he was. “Okay,” she said. “I’ll let Hermann know you're here. I’ll tell him he needs to come out and speak with you.”

Beck nodded her a thank you.

She tapped a few strokes on her keyboard, waited, then nodded and tapped a few more. She looked up at him and smiled, again. “Okay,” she said, again, and pointed toward two gray double doors on her right. “Hermann has said he'll be out in a few minutes. Can you wait over there?”

Beck nodded, then glanced around the reception. The gray doors were on his left and there was a small palm tree in a white pot, opposite the reception desk, by the wall behind him, and a white clock nailed to the wall above it. But there were no chairs he could slouch in or coffee tables he could rest his feet on. He figured that the morgue obviously didn't get too many active visitors.

***

Lester felt his cell phone vibrating in his jacket pocket. It was a pulsating buzz that sounded exactly like it felt, but much quieter than a ring. It filled the tense silence that still overhung the chairman's office.

The chairman was sitting behind his desk. There was an unlit cigar sticking out from his mouth and a small black note pad in his right hand. He held the chrome zip lighter in his left hand and he was flicking the switch back and forth. The flame sparked and burned for a beat and then extinguished into a thin trickle of gray smoke, again and again. He was looking at the middle pages of the notepad, pouring over a list of transactions. They were weekly distribution payments he had made to Ariel Izaguirre over the last three years. They ran row-by-row, across seven pages. There were dates and times and locations and seven-figure dollar amounts. He drew a black Montblanc pen with a silver tip from the inside pocket of his suit jacket, turned to the top of the eighth page and wrote tomorrow’s date on the left-hand side of the first row in black ink. His handwriting was neat and the numbers he wrote were crisp. The loop of the six was perfect, almost like the loop of a hangman’s noose.

He heard the buzz from Lester’s cell phone and his eyes swept the room like a searchlight. He focused his gaze on Lester who sat opposite him on the sofa and his eyes narrowed.

Lester pulled the phone from his pocket. It was vibrating in his hand. He unflipped it, glanced at the name on the screen and repeated it out loud. "It's Kranz," he said, a curious expression on his face, and then answered the call.

The chairman tucked the Montblanc pen and the notepad back into his pocket and pulled the cigar from his lips and held it, cupped in his right hand. He watched Lester, nodding as he listened.

He saw Lester’s eyes widen.

He narrowed his farther, looking him a question.

Lester looked up at the chairman and repeated what Kranz had told him. "Sir, Kranz says the receptionist at the morgue has told him there’s a tall and dark-haired guy there waiting to speak to him. Says his name is Joe Beck, that he's a detective for a life insurance company. Wants to ask him some questions about Agent Sikorsky."

The chairman's bleak expression turned into a curious grin. If Joe Beck was there, chances were that whore might be with him, and he knew it. He dropped the cigar on the glass desk almost silently and pointed his crooked right forefinger toward Lester's cell phone. "Tell Kranz to keep him there," he said. "Tell him to do whatever he has to in order to make that happen. We'll send Forgewood and Jackson and Kellerman. Tell him they’ll be there shortly, not to let Joe Beck leave before they arrive."

Lester nodded and repeated what the chairman had told him to Kranz on the other end of the line. Then he nodded and hung up and looked back up at the chairman with a twisted smile across this face. "Kranz knows exactly what do, Sir. He says that Joe Beck is in for a real nice surprise. He’ll be ready and waiting for them, in Autopsy Room One."

The chairman looked at his watch and smiled. Five past eleven. About thirty-four hours until his meeting with Ariel Izaguirre and the main two of his four total problems were about to disappear. He lifted the cigar from the desk and stuffed back into his mouth. Sparked a glowing orange flame with the lighter and lit its tip. It hissed in the fire. Then he inhaled a rich, loamy draw of the Cuban tobacco and lifted the handset of his phone.

***

Sapphire was sitting in the front of the car, listening to the chilled air blasting from the slots on its dash, thinking. He's been in there for ages. The AC's too damn high. I wonder what's on the radio.

She reached over the center console and turned the air conditioning down a few notches. Then hit the power knob for the stereo.

The screen lit up orange and a man started singing in a rough and raspy-sounding voice from the speakers somewhere in the back. “And the gambling commission’s hanging on by the skin...” He turned 'on' into a long multi-syllable word.

She pressed the MODE button and it flicked over to the radio. There was nobody singing. It was just a loud static crackle. She turned the knob, dialed it up through the frequencies, and then back down again. Just more loud static crackling. God, who doesn't have their car radio tuned in?

She pressed MODE for a second time and her private concert started up again. “Everything dies baby, that's a fact, but everything that dies someday comes back.”

She leaned over the center console and tugged on the glove box handle. It folded open and Beck's steel Smith & Wesson 5906 slipped out onto the floor. She pulled her hand back and stared at it. Then steadied herself and reached inside. She felt sharp edges of card paper, then the hard plastic and thick blunt corners of CD cases. She pulled a few of them out and looked at the covers.

The first one read, 'Bruce Springsteen's Greatest Hits', and featured a rear view of a dark-haired man wearing a black leather jacket, with a black guitar slung over his shoulder. She shuffled it to the back. The next cover said, 'Born in the U.S.A', with another rear view, this time of a man's ass. He was wearing blue jeans and there was a red ball cap hanging from his back right pocket. She glanced at it for longer than she had glanced at his greatest hits. Then shuffled it in behind the other one and looked at the third cover. The text read, 'Devils & Dust', and there was a close-up of a man's face looking downward, surrounded by fading darkness. She signed and tossed them back into the glove box, then scooped the gun up by looping her index finger through the trigger guard. It felt heavy and swayed back and forth in the air. She tossed it back in the glove box, after the CDs. It cracked against their covers and she slammed the glove box shut with a swift flick before they all came toppling back out.

Bruce Springsteen was still singing, “Well, honey, I got a job and tried to put some money...” She pressed the knob on the stereo to shut him up but unintentionally pressed it in twice. It flicked off for a split second and then immediately back on with a scratchy jumping sound that CDs make when a car rolls over a bump on the road. He continued, “’Cause I got debts that no honest man can…”

She thumped the knob again, this time harder, and the car fell back into a bliss, peaceful silence.

Joe Beck would have had her hand if he'd have seen how she treated ‘The Boss’.

She leaned her elbow against the door and balled her right hand into a loosely-clenched fist. Titled her head slightly to her right and rested it on the back of her forefingers. Then looked at the black leather driver's seat, the door and the window and watched the specks of dust floating around in the sunlight.

That's how she saw them coming.

***

Five or ten minutes turned into thirty and, eventually, a fat guy wearing brown chorded pants, a white shirt and a white lab coat appeared through the set of dark-gray double doors on the left of the reception desk. His hands were stuffed in the pockets of his coat. He had thick curly black hair that had gone threadbare on the top and large protruding bug-like eyes.

“Mr. Beck?” he asked. His eyes darted all around Beck's figure, up and down, then left and right, like he had expected somebody else to be there with him. Then, he glanced at the main entrance and, after that, up at the clock. “I'm Hermann Kranz.”

He wheezed loudly and he was shifty and dismissive. He never made eye contact when he spoke nor offered his hand when he introduced himself. Beck didn't like him.

“I'm here with Texas Life, looking into the death of a customer named Mike Sikorsky,” Beck said. “We just need to corroborate a few things around the death certificate before we can process the claim.”

Kranz just stood with a blank expression on his face, gazing at the floor by Beck’s left side, wheezing the air in and out of his lungs.

“His body would have passed through here about a week ago, do you remember him?”

Kranz glanced up over Beck's left shoulder, at a white clock on the wall behind him, and then somewhere between Beck's knees and the floor. “I see a lot of bodies. I don't know any of them by name. Only by tag number.”

Beck thought about it. He didn’t have that information. “We his description? There was a photocopy of Mr. Sikorsky’s driver’s license attached to the claim. Would a description help?”

Kranz breathed loudly, out through his nose. “I see a lot of bodies,” he said again. “But, maybe if you can accompany me to my office and you can describe what he might have looked like, I can think about it some more and speak while I work.”

“Okay,” Beck replied and gestured for Kranz to lead the way.

Kranz turned and walked through the gray double doors.

Beck followed behind.

There was a narrow corridor on the other side. It had the same dark-gray linoleum floor and the same white painted walls, although it was slightly brighter, from halogen strip lights overhead, and smelled of a mixture of strong chemicals.

There were ten green doors with eye-level rectangular glass windows, five on each side of the corridor, each about twenty feet from the next. Dark-green plastic signs were stuck on the wall beside them. Kranz stopped at the first door on the right. The sign said: Autopsy Room One.

He slipped a key into the lock and unlocked the door. And Beck preceded him inside.

***

A black Lincoln Town Car turned into the access way from Breyfogle Road and slowly rolled across the parking lot.

Sapphire caught a glimpse of a guy sitting behind the wheel. He had dark hair and was wearing black shades and a suit. She panicked, thought about Beck's gun and reached for the glove box. She pulled hard on the handle, but it wouldn't open. The latch had jammed when she slammed it shut.

Shit, she thought and glanced at the reflection of the Lincoln's hood in the drivers-side wing mirror. It was getting closer and closer and couldn’t have been more than fifty feet away.

She quickly reached over the center console and turned off the engine, pulled the key out, then pressed the black central locking switch on the driver's door.

The doors clicked shut.

She unclipped her seatbelt and climbed over the center console and into the back. There was a rolled-up black sheet on the floor behind the driver's seat. She grabbed it and shook it. It unfurled onto the back seats. She lay flat on the floor in front of them, side-on, her legs bent at her knees, curled underneath the front passenger’s seat, and pulled the sheet over her body, making sure it covered her hands, head and legs.

The Lincoln pulled into the next slot on the Mustang's right. She could hear its tires crunching over the concrete and then the low drone of its engine. Then a second of silence, followed by the bang that a car door makes when it’s slammed shut.

The guy stepped out into the sun and glanced down at a damp patch of concrete behind the Mustang's front-right tire. His eyes narrowed and he nodded slowly. The condensation had been dripping down from its AC system. The only way it could possibly be that damp in this heat was if the AC had just been switched off, he thought. He pushed his black shades up over his head and leaned forward, cupped his fists around his eyes and peered in through the Mustang's dark tinted windows.

Sapphire could feel his gaze piercing through the 3mm tempered glass, almost as if he could see her underneath the dark sheet. Her heart was pounding. But she kept quiet and still and held her breath.

The guy thought he saw something twitch in the back. He grabbed the passenger door handle and tugged at the door. It was locked. He tugged, again, and leered in through the windows.

Nothing moved on the other side.

He breathed out heavily, his lungs fighting against the humidity, and let go of the door handle before stepping around to the front. He stopped directly in front of the Mustang’s hood and cupped his hand above his brow. He squinted against the sun, in through the windshield. The glass there wasn't tinted. It allowed him to look right in. He scanned the inside of the car with his dark squinting eyes, analyzed the front passenger’s seat, then the driver’s seat, then the gap between them, and the two back seats.

There were no signs of movement.

Sapphire dared to breathe. She made sure it was light and hardly sucked in any air at all. It was only a few seconds, but it felt like an eternity. Then she heard another, similar sound to before. The sound of rubber crunching across the concrete. More tires, which meant another car. Its brakes squeaked as it eased into the space on the Mustang's left. Then she heard the bang of a door. And, then, another. Jesus, there's three of them out there, she thought, trembling beneath the sheet, keeping as quiet and still as she could, but panting, terrified to draw too heavy a breath.

One of them spoke. A man with a strident sounding voice. It sounded like it was coming from her right, from the guy standing by the hood.

“I checked the car,” he said. “It's empty. They must be inside.”

One of the other two replied. Another man. He sounded different, adenoidal, like the words were coming from his nose. And like he was right outside the door, about six inches away from her head.

“Good,” he said. “Let's go in there and get them.”

Then she heard their feet crunching against the concrete as they walked away, before, eventually, their footsteps fell to an eerie silence, only interrupted by the sound of the cars’ heat shields crackling as they cooled.

She took a deep breath and closed her eyes and cried. Relieved. Then, pulled the sheet back from over her head and wiped her eyes with the back of her hand. She used the padded leather seat to haul herself up and glance out the window. She looked at the new car parked on the left and her face dropped.

***

Autopsy Room One was a sterile environment that smelled strongly of bleach. It had no windows and no natural light. But it was well lit. Gleaming white tiles covered the walls and the floor. They reflected the bright halogen strip lights that buzzed on the ceiling overhead

There was a row of stainless-steel cabinets with a matching countertop on the opposite end from the door. The middle was hollowed out into a large steel basin. It looked about seven feet long and maybe two feet deep and had been polished to a shine. There was a long chrome water pump on the left that Beck thought looked a bit like a showerhead. An array of sharp-looking handheld metal instruments, scalpels, pokers, scissors were arranged side-by-side, sitting on a blue paper towel on the countertop to the left of the basin.

On the right was a wall of floor-to-ceiling steel cabinets with polished square steel doors. Beck counted twenty-four in total, eight across by three high. All of them were closed and there was no indication which cabinets were occupied and which were empty.

Kranz saw his head bobbing up and down as he counted. “That's where we keep the corpses,” he said to Beck and smiled a sinister grin while he shuffled past him.

In the middle of the floor, there were six steel tables arranged side-by-side with exact precision to the millimeter. They stood about waist high from the ground and lined up to form a row from one end of the room to the other, each spaced about two feet away from the next.

The table on the far end was empty. The polished steel reflected the strips of white light above. The others had a dead body lying on top. They were each draped with a white sheet and their cold-looking feet stuck out from underneath. Cardboard tags had been tied around their big toes. They hung over the soles of their left feet and there was a four-digit number handwritten across each of them in black ink.

Kranz whipped the sheet from the body furthest away. Number 3751. It was a woman who looked to have been somewhere in her mid-thirties. She had long red hair and soft feminine features. Her skin was pale with a posthumous tinge of blue, further blackened at the top of her chest by a deep bruise about the width of a football just below her collar bone.

Kranz traced his right index finger around the perimeter of the dark circle and smiled. “A blunt force trauma,” he said, wheezing out each word, and drew a scalpel from his left coat pocket.

Beck stared at him but said nothing.

“Who was the guy you were asking about, again?” Kranz asked him. “What was the name?”

“Mr. Mike Sikorsky,” Beck answered. “We have him down as a white male, thirty-seven years old. He was an ATF agent. Would've come in sometime last Wednesday.”

Kranz glanced absently at the floor. He muttered under his breath, “Sikorsky, thirty-seven, male, ATF, Wednesday.” Then he glanced up at the clock above the door and then stared directly at Beck. “I remember that one, yes. Sikorsky, yes. That one was a suicide,” he said.

Beck studied the guy for a second. He felt like Kranz was looking at him and staring straight through him at the same time. He also knew he was telling him bullshit, but he needed more. He nodded, “That's what we’ve been told and that’s what’s been recorded on his death certificate, yes. But what we need to know is exactly how and when he died. Is that something you might be able to recall?”

“Yes, Sikorsky,” Kranz wheezed. “A suicide. It was with a handgun, a pistol. There was a bullet hole on the right side of his temple, a puncture in his skull and a fragment of a bullet lodged in the frontal lobe of his brain. Consistent with the pattern we see when somebody shoots themselves in the head.”

Beck thought back to the image of Sikorsky's head in the cooler. There were no bullet holes on any side of his head. So, Kranz was lying. That for damn sure, but was he involved? “His time of death is recorded as twenty-five past four, in the afternoon. Does that sound familiar?”

“Sixteen-hundred and twenty-five hours, yes, that’s about right,” Kranz said and glanced up at the clock, again.

Beck noticed. It was the third time he'd done it since he had met him. He also noticed that it took him about twenty-five minutes to make a thirty-second journey to the reception. And that the room was clean when they came in. With no trace of him having worked on another body, he realized that the sixth table had probably been empty all morning.

He got the feeling that something was off and knew that it was about the right time to make an exit. He still had ideas in this investigation. He could follow up with the ATF, ask some questions, find out what anybody knows. Or, he could concentrate on the cigar box. Mike never left it for him for nothing, and Beck knew it. There had to be something there.

“Okay, Mr. Kranz, thank you for your time. I think I have what I need. Somebody will be in touch if we have any further questions,” he said, keeping up the charade about being an investigator for the life insurance company, and stepped backward toward the door, not once taking his eyes off the guy.

The corners of Kranz’s mouth edged upward and a grin began to form across his face.

Beck clasped his hand around the circular steel handle and flicked his wrist, but it didn't budge. It was locked.

Kranz slowly drew his right hand from his coat pocket, holding the one thing that Joe Beck hates most: a syringe.

The needle looked to be about four inches long. Beck felt the hair rise on the back of his neck. He quickly glanced at the barrel. It was filled to its top marking with an opaque and gloopy liquid. He felt his throat tighten and took another step backward. He tried the handle again, but it still didn't move, and he was now standing with his back against the door.

Kranz wheezed and lunged forward, a sinister smile on his face, the scalpel in his left hand, and the syringe in his right.

Two things happened. Firstly, Joe Beck learned that thirty-feet of tiled floor isn't a long distance when a lunatic charges across it holding a needle and a knife. And, secondly, his fight or flight response kicked in. It sent warm red blood howling through his veins and propelled his body forward. He charged toward Kranz and swung his right foot up in the air.

Kranz’s face crumpled under the outsole of Beck’s size fourteen shoe and his unconscious body flopped to the cold tiled floor, his head banging against the tiles. The blow shattered his nose and pulped his lips. His face turned into a crimson mass and he lay unconscious on the white tiles with drops of blood, fragments of bone and about six of his teeth scattered all around his lifeless-looking body.

Beck kicked the syringe somewhere to the other side of the room, under one of the steel tables, and lifted the scalpel. Then he patted Kranz down and found the key to the door in his left coat pocket. He took it, along with a rough grip of his coat, lifted him from the floor and tucked him underneath the steel table nearest the door, about four feet from the naked dead body lying underneath the white sheet above him.

Beck then hurried over and unlocked the door. He stuck his head through the frame, craned it left and then right, and made sure there was nobody in the corridor. He flicked the light switch to OFF, stepped out and closed the door behind him. Then locked it with the key.

He drew the key from the lock and took one step toward the reception when he saw the gray double doors swing open and the black muzzle of a Glock poking through.

He darted back, but there was no time to unlock the door. He looked at the door across the corridor. It was dark green, with a rectangular window, just like the rest. But there was no sign on the wall, just a rectangular patch of whiter paint with a dusty outline, where it once had been. He grabbed the handle and quickly flicked his wrist, hoping that it wasn't locked.

The door clicked open.

He ducked inside and closed it softly, then pressed his back against the cold hard tiled wall and waited. The room was cold and dark and it, too, smelled strongly of bleach. There was a chilling, almost deathly feeling in the air and he could hear a near-silent, but constant humming sound coming from somewhere on the other side of the darkness.

Then he heard footsteps. Boots crunching on the linoleum and a faint clip-clop. Three pairs of feet. Three men. Two in heavy-duty boots and one in dress shoes, he thought.

The footsteps stopped outside the door. He could feel their presence on the other side of the four-inch wall and he could sense one of them peering in through the window on the door. He could see the pale fleshy smudge of a man's face in the glass from the corner of his eye. It filled the middle of pane like a peach squashed onto the glass.

The guy grabbed the handle and turned it about half-way. It squeaked with every quarter inch, probably about another two squeaks away from the door swinging open.

Beck tucked his hand up under his shirt, to the small of his back, reaching for his Smith & Wesson. It wasn't there. Shit. It's still in the glove box, out in the car, he thought. He looked down at the scalpel and held it out in front of his chest. A perfect height that he could use it to puncture the guy's throat the moment he stepped through the door.

That’s what he would do, puncture the guy’s carotid artery. Then he would grab his boot knife and use it to do the same with the next guy to follow him in. It would then be one-on-one. But there was a problem. And he knew it.

He knew that if one of them was carrying a gun, it was likely that the other two were packing as well. Three guns versus two knives, he thought. Not the most favorable odds. More guns always beat out fewer knives. It had been two-on-one last night, but he had gotten lucky. The fat guy with the ginger beard had tossed his shotgun on the ground, which made it one-one-one with black-beard. But, at three-on-two, there was a higher chance of him catching a bullet. Three times as much chance, to be precise. With the scalpel and his knife, he would take out two of them, guaranteed, but one of the guns would go off. And, if it was the last guy of the three, it gets him. If that door opened, three men were going to die. And, he realized, there was a real possibility that he could have been one of them.

The guy turned the handle another half inch. The deadbolt unlatched from its strike plate and the door clicked open. A sliver of light shone in across the heavy darkness. Then one of the men spoke, in a loud and clear voice.

“Hang on,” he said. “That's the wrong door. He said Autopsy Room One. The first door on the right, not the first door on the left.”

The guy let go of the handle and took a step back. The door creaked back and forth, a few millimeters at a time, from the force of the circulating air from the air conditioning units above.

Beck took a long, slow silent breath of the cold bleachy air. He listened to them trying the handle of the door he had locked across the hallway. Furious twisting and pulling. He smiled, knowing that he had the key in his pocket.

“This damn door won't open,” one of them said. “You sure that's the right one?”

“Positive. He said it was the first door on the right,” the third one replied. It sounded like he was talking through a beak.

“Why would Kranz have it locked then?”

“Maybe he got them,” the nasally-sounding guy replied. “Put the big guy down and stuck her with the tranquilizer. Locked the door to hide the body and cover up what he’s doing, maybe has her in there, prepped and ready.”

Then the guy with the loud voice cut in. “Or maybe the big guy got the jump on him. Killed him. And that's why the door's locked.”

There was a silence. Then, he continued, “You two go speak to the receptionist. Get the skeleton key. I'll wait here until you come back.”

Beck heard their footsteps as they walked down the hallway. The crunching got quieter with each step and, eventually, faded into the dull whir of the air conditioning and the freezers.

He dared to look through the window. There was a guy standing on the other side of the door. He looked about six feet tall and thin with wide shoulders. He had short combed-back dark hair and he was wearing a black business suit that had white pinstripes, a white shirt and polished black dress shoes. Beck was right about the shoes. He had a Glock in his right hand, its muzzle pointing toward to the linoleum.

Maybe he’s the chairman, he thought and slipped his hand over the door handle, then listened. He could hear the guy breathing on the other side. Slow, deep, controlled breathes. In through his nose and out through his mouth. His eyes were focused on the door in front of him and the Glock was still lowered by his right leg. He had no idea that Beck was about two feet behind him. And he was alone and quiet, and vulnerable.

Beck swung the door open and his hand was over the guy's mouth before he felt the chill creep over the back of his neck. Beck grabbed him by his hair and pulled him back, into the room. The guy tried to struggle and raise the Glock, but Beck snapped his neck before he could angle its muzzle an inch from the ground. One sharp twist was all it took.

His body crumpled to the cold tiled floor.

Beck shoved him back against the wall, in behind the door and stepped back a pace, to look at the guy’s face. That was when he recognized him. He had seen him at Mike Sikorsky's funeral. He was stood in the guard of honor. The fifth man in the row. He had watched him raise his hand to his head in salute as Mike’s casket was carried past.

Beck turned up his nose. He reached into the guy's inside suit jacket pocket and pulled out a leather ID holder. There was an identification card under a vinyl cover inside. It was white with a navy-blue outline around all four sides. On the right, there was a younger-looking picture of the guy and his name and title were printed below it.

It read, 'Agent Grant Kellerman'.

There was a government agency logo to the left of his photo. It was yellow and blue. A series of circles overlaid on top of each other, each smaller than the last in diameter. There was a dark-blue circle at the center, with three gold stars and a shield, flanked by interlocking gold grains, inside. White text wrapped around it, by the end of the next blue circle, said, 'Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives'.

Beck took a step back and stood looking down at the guy's lifeless body, slumped against the wall. He shook his head. Kellerman. Jesus. He was the guy Kim mentioned. Mike’s partner. What the hell? He must have been involved. Maybe he’s the asshole who killed him. Or, at least, if he didn’t do it, he sure as shit would’ve known who did.

He tucked Kellerman's ID back into his pocket and lifted the Glock from the tiled floor and checked it was loaded and then thought about the other two men.

What about the other two? Who the hell are they? Are they ATF, too? Two more from Mike burial? Bastards. What else do they know? He glanced down at the Glock, nodding. It’s gun-for-gun now, somebody’s going to talk. Then he glanced back at Kellerman and paused, realizing that killing two more federal agents in a gunfight at the county morgue would maybe get him the answers he sought, but it would also draw a whole lot of extra attention. Whether they were dirty or not, every law enforcement agency in the state would wade in. And, that, he didn’t need. Not today. Not here. Not in McAllen. He decided not to hang around any longer and stepped out into the corridor. He closed the door softly and quickly walked down the hallway, and slipped through a red fire door at the end.

It clicked shut just as the gray double doors opened from the reception, but Beck was already outside the morgue, on the grounds, when the other two men realized Kellerman had disappeared.

Beck hurried over the short trimmed lawn, ducking past the windows, using a row of hedges for cover. He slipped past the last window and turned the corner around to the front, then paused, looking at something he didn’t anticipate, but that also didn’t really surprise him. Not in this city.

There were two cars parked beside his Mustang, one on either side. One was a black Lincoln Town Car and the other was a black and white Dodge Charger, emblazoned with sky-blue writing on the side. It said: McAllen Police.

The other two were cops, he thought. Which meant, whoever the chairman was, he had a lot more reach than he had even begun to anticipate. Beck thought of Sapphire. He stepped onto the sidewalk and anxiously looked over at his Mustang. He made out Sapphire's outline through the dark tinted glass. She was sitting in the passenger seat. Moving, safe, alive.

He tucked the Glock into the waist of his pants, its butt beneath his shirt, then slipped the scalpel from his pocket and used it to puncture the sidewall of the Lincoln’s and the Charger’s tires. They popped as he drove it in, then hissed as he pulled it out. Four times over. Eight tires, four punctures. And nobody carries that many spares.

He tossed the scalpel underneath the police cruiser, then quickly opened the Mustang’s driver’s door and jumped in, escaping the seething Texan heat.

“What the hell was that?” Sapphire asked.

She looked spooked. He could hear it in her voice. “More guys working for the chairman,” he answered, calmly, and gestured toward the wheel.

She handed him the keys.

He stuck them in the slot and fired up the ignition and savored the cool air blasting across his face from the dashboard. “The coroner must have called them while I was waiting inside.”

“Even the cops?”

He nodded grimly as he put the Mustang into REVERSE and backed it out of the space. Then put it into DRIVE and gunned its engine across the parking lot, turning out onto Breyfogle Road.

Sapphire sighed and pulled a saddened face. “What the hell happened in there?” she asked.

“The coroner came at me with a scalpel and a syringe,” he said. His face went white.

“Jesus. And what about the other three? How did you get out?”

“I killed one of them,” he answered

“You killed a cop?” Her eyes almost exploded from her head.

“No,” he answered, almost expressionless. “I killed an ATF agent.”

EIGHT

Forgewood and Jackson walked back through the gray double doors separating the morgue’s entrance and its narrow, clinical corridor that led to the autopsy rooms. Forgewood walked through first. He was a guy in his early thirties somewhere around six-two with a tall and muscular frame. He was lean with wide powerful shoulders. He had dirty-blond tousled hair and baby-blue eyes and he was dressed in the McAllen Police uniform: Black boots and dark-blue, almost-black trousers, with a thick black leather silver-buckled belt strapped around his waist. There were silver handcuffs hanging by his left hip, beside a black radio. A turquoise short-sleeved shirt enveloped his torso. There were black patches sewn onto the sides of the arms. They were shaped like shields with a red outline and white capitalized writing in the middle that said, 'McAllen Police'. His shirt was open at his collar and there were dark-gray aviator shades tucked in by the second button. There was a silver shield pinned to his left breast pocket, a police badge, and a silver nameplate pinned to his right. It said his name: ‘Forgewood’. He looked like the sort of cop that the force would stick on the charity calendars they might sell around Christmas-time.

He craned his head left and then right, looking for Kellerman. He saw no sign of him. He glanced back at Jackson. "Where's Kellerman?" he asked, a hint of concern somewhere in a nasally-sounding voice. He may have looked like calendar model material, but he certainly didn’t sound it.

Jackson glanced around and shrugged, then shook his head, a confused look across his face. "Said he would wait here 'til we came back.”

Forgewood nodded.

“Maybe he went to take a leak?" Jackson joked.

He was exactly the same height as Forgewood, and almost as wide, but his frame was mostly flab, not muscle. Most of his weight was dispersed around his midsection. His stomach was soft and round, not firm, and his pectorals were perky. They jiggled as he walked. He had dark skin and cropped dark hair with a mere, early hint of gray by his shorter, shaven sides. There was nothing remarkable about his face aside from his nose. It was completely flat and his nostrils looked like slits. He wore the same McAllen Police uniform as Forgewood, except his shirt was fully buttoned and there was a thick black tie hanging from his collar. It was neatly held in place by a chrome tie bar about half-way down the length of the tie. His nameplate said his name, too: “Jackson. There were no sunglasses hanging from the second button of his shirt and the only calendar he looked like he would’ve been on would’ve been the McAllen PD shift rota.

The two men may have looked very different, but they had something in common, aside from the uniform and their job. And it was something they also shared with the rest of the chairman's organization. Neither man was wearing a wedding ring. And that was a purposeful decision. The chairman saw marriage as a burden, as a need to explain one's whereabouts to someone else, at all times. Burdens, and wondering wives, he figured, were bad for business. Which is one of the reasons he chose Forgewood and the only reason he chose Jackson.

Forgewood shook his head. “If Kellerman said he would be here, he would be here. The guy’s a federal agent. He’s one of the best in the organization.” He paused. “Men like that don’t just disappear off to take a leak,” he added, irritation in his voice, then drew a black handgun from the holster on his leather belt. It was a Beretta M9. A 9mm semi-automatic pistol, with a hard black chrome barrel, most effective at distances up to fifty meters and capable of firing rounds at up to 1250 feet per second.

Jackson nodded. Forgewood was right. On both counts. About Kellerman and about his light-hearted joke. And he knew it. He sucked a breath and followed suit and drew his M9.

Both men then walked down the corridor, their arms fully extended and the muzzles of the guns pointed downward at the gray linoleum about three feet in front of them. They stopped by Autopsy Room One and Forgewood slipped the skeleton key into the lock. He turned it once and the lock clicked open. He raised the M9 straight ahead, about sternum level, and stepped inside.

Jackson followed behind, his gun also raised, flicking on the lights as he stepped through the door.

Both men craned their heads, checking the room. Left-to-right. On the left, they saw nothing notable. In the middle of the room, they saw a few teeth and what looked like fragments of bone and large spots of blood lying on the white tiles in front of their feet. And, on the right, they saw Kranz. He was lying in a bloodied heap underneath the steel autopsy table closest to the door. There was a cadaver above him, lying on the table’s surface with a white sheet draped over it. Kranz’s arms hung out by his sides and his legs were bent in a fetal position. His face was a crimson mass and the top of his white coat was soaked in blood.

"Jesus, is he...?" Jackson asked, wincing.

Forgewood bent down and felt for a pulse coming from his left wrist while Jackson stayed back, covering the door.

"He’s alive," Forgewood said. "But he’ll need medical attention."

Jackson whipped a black plastic radio from his belt. It had a long black antenna, maybe eight inches long, a narrow orange screen and buttons that made it look like an old cell phone from the 1990s. Most of the buttons were gray, but one was green and one was red. He thumbed the green button. The orange screen brightened and the radio began to crackle.

Forgewood heard it and quickly turned around. "Put that away," he hissed, his voice reduced to a soft whisper.

Jackson glanced at him and then at the radio and nodded.

A woman spoke to him in a broken, crackly voice. "This is dispatch."

"Sorry, dispatch. I hit the damned button by accident," Jackson said, quickly, and in an apologetic and dismissive voice. He pressed the green button again, to mute the mouthpiece on his side, then holstered the radio back onto the clip of his belt.

The woman muttered something inaudible, and, most likely, unpleasant, and the crackling faded into silence.

Forgewood was staring at him, questions and contempt in his eyes.

“Sorry. It was a reflex, you know?” Jackson said to Forgewood. “I never thought.”

“Obviously.”

Jackson pulled a humbled expression. "Well, what do we do about this?" he asked.

Forgewood was younger than Jackson, maybe ten or fifteen years his junior, but he had been around McAllen longer than Jackson had. He was born and bred there, Jackson wasn’t. He also had more experience with handling their off-the-desk cases and secretive situations, like this one. He knew exactly what to do.

"First, we find Kellerman,” he answered. “We need to know his status.” He glanced around the room and looked at the door and out through the rectangular window, and paused. His eyes lit up, like he had just thought of something. “Let’s check the other rooms, starting with the one across the hallway."

Jackson nodded his agreement and they stepped out the door. Forgewood flicked the lights in Autopsy Room One back to OFF and they crossed the corridor, their guns aimed forward, still at sternum height, and their right forefingers covering the trigger. Joe Beck could be anywhere, they feared, and they wanted to be ready for him.

Forgewood stopped by the door opposite and raised his left hand, signaling Jackson to stop, too.

He did.

Both men were now stood by either side of the unmarked door opposite Autopsy Room One, still holding their guns in a locked and loaded stance. Forgewood glanced around and nodded, then beckoned him to go forward with the muzzle of the gun.

Jackson pushed the door open. The room was dark and cold air rushed out through the doorframe and crept across his face. He stepped a pace inside. "Kellerman?" he whispered.

There was no reply. Just a chilling silence, only interrupted by the whirring of the air conditioning overhead and some cadaver freezers somewhere at the back wall, lurking underneath the darkness.

Forgewood stepped in behind him and flanked around his right side with his gun also held out directly in front of him. Something felt off. He glanced nervously at Jackson and then turned around and flicked the switch on the wall by the door frame to ON.

The lights flickered on and illuminated the room to a bright, flickering white. The floor and the walls were white and tiled, but some of the tiles were missing and others were badly cracked. There were six empty steel tables ahead and a wall of freezers with square steel doors. But there was nobody else around.

Jackson stepped farther inside and turned to Forgewood and shook his head, but froze. His eyes widened.

Forgewood watched him flick his eyes down toward the bottom of the door behind his right shoulder and he saw his face drop.

He spun around to take a look and saw a man's foot sticking out from behind the edge of the dark-green door. He was wearing black leather dress shoes, just like Kellerman's. Forgewood gasped. He stepped forward and grabbed the edge of the door and pulled it toward him.

It squeaked as it moved forward, slowly exposing the rest of the body. First his knee, then his thigh, and then his right arm and the side of his torso, and then his head. It was Kellerman.

Jackson looked at Forgewood at the same time as Forgewood looked at Jackson.

"Christ," Jackson said to Forgewood.

"That’s where Kellerman is," Forgewood sighed to Jackson.

Jackson nodded, bleakly.

"This changes everything," Forgewood added.

Both men stood in silence, thinking, staring at him for a long moment. He looked as if he had suffered the after-effects of falling into a gorilla enclosure at the zoo. He was lying slumped against the cold tiled wall and his head was hanging over his left shoulder. There were hard-looking bony bumps jutting out on the right side of his neck and a blackened circle of skin that looped all the way around.

"If somebody finds him down here, like this, and starts asking questions about what he was doing in the morgue, things could turn out very difficult," Forgewood added and paused. "For us. And for the chairman."

Jackson holstered his gun into the pouch on his belt and ran the palm of his hand up over his head. "And we got Kranz lying beaten within an inch of his life in the room across the hallway. What do we do?"

Forgewood glanced at the freezers on the far wall and holstered his gun back into the leather pouch on his belt. He walked over toward them. He grabbed the handle of a door one down from the top and three along from the left, the door exactly in the middle of the middle row, and pulled it downward. The door clicked open and a freezing cloud of white mist wafted out around him. He caught the strong smell of chemicals and then a glimpse of the pale white icy soles of somebody's feet. There was a thick white frost around the toes. He studied the space left in the compartment and nodded. Then turned and looked at Kellerman for a long moment, nodding some more, and then at Jackson, a polarizing expression on his face.

"If we shove him in foot-first, he might just fit. Nobody will find him. Nobody will look in here. Nobody will ever know he's here," he said.

Jackson stared at him for a beat, incredulous. "You gotta be shitting me, right?"

Forgewood shook his head. "No. That’s how it has to go down. We can’t afford some do-gooder finding out what’s gone down here and then asking questions about things people can’t know the answers to. You know that as much as I know that. Now, take his cell phone from his pocket and let’s get started."

"Jesus," Jackson said, grimacing as he flicked his eyes from Kellerman's body to the freezer and then back to Kellerman’s body. He walked over and slipped his cell phone from his suit jacket and slipped it into the pocket of his own pants, then grabbed Kellerman by his left arm.

He contorted like a miracle fish and flopped forward onto the hard tiled floor. His face thudded against the tiles and the bony lumps on the right of his neck slithered under his skin.

"Give me a hand here," Jackson called to Forgewood, annoyed, but trying to keep as quiet as he needed to be.

Forgewood walked over and grabbed a hold of Kellerman's ankles and pulled. His body straightened out. He dragged him across the tiled floor to the open freezer.

Jackson moved behind Kellerman's head and grabbed him by his underarms. He counted to three, "One, two, three," and they heaved him up about waist height into the air. His suit jacket flapped down under his sides and his arms flopped out. His hands moved back and forth, open-palmed and with curled fingers, and his head bent backward and rubbed against Jackson's shirt, his blank, rolled eyes staring back up into Jackson’s.

"Ah, Jesus," Jackson said and let go.

Kellerman's upper body slammed to the floor. The back of his head cracked against the tiles and Forgewood fell backward against the freezers, still holding his ankles. He glared at Jackson, who pulled an unamused face and then lifted Kellerman by his underarms, again.

Forgewood slid Kellerman's feet into the compartment. The heels of his black leather shoes rubbed against the dead person's frosty white toes. The toes bent backward and there was a loud crunching sound. The feet moved to the side and Kellerman’s feet slid in over the dead person's legs. Forgewood grabbed him by the leg of his pants and kept on sliding. He disappeared gradually, his knees, then his hips and then his abdomen. Forgewood tucked Kellerman's arms by his sides and, eventually, only his head hung out. Jackson grabbed it by his dark, slightly graying hair and shoved it inside at a ninety-degree angle to the rest of his body. They heard another loud crack and then Forgewood slammed the door. Its rubber seal sucked shut.

Both men leaned back against the steel freezers, short of breath, cold and feeling absolutely exhausted. Shoving a second body into a freezer compartment designed to hold just one was a job of work. Forgewood wiped a stray droplet of cold sweat from his brow and looked up at Jackson. "We're half-way there," he said. "Now it's just we need to handle Kranz."

"And what the fuck are we going to do with him?" Jackson asked, trepidation in his voice.

Forgewood looked down at the tiled floor and thought for a moment and then answered with a spark in his eye. "He’s alive. And he’s valuable. We can’t kill him. He might know something about that Beck guy or the prostitute. Something the chairman could use. But, like I said, he needs a medic. We'll carry him outta here. Dump him down at A&E at McAllen Medical Center. Leave him be for a bit and then go back and pay him a visit.”

"What?” Jackson asked, incredulous. “Carry him out? How? Through the reception?"

Forgewood shook his head. "Out through the emergency exit," he answered. "The red door at the end of the corridor. That must be how that Beck guy got out of here. And there was no alarm. Which means it won't go off when I go through it. I'll carry Kranz out that way and meet you out front."

"Okay. And while I do what, exactly?"

"While you go and get the security footage disc and the license plate for the Mustang that was parked out front. It’ll be gone by now, but the camera will have got it. And us and Kellerman coming in here. We can’t be leaving any traces of that behind."

Jackson nodded his understanding. "I'll tell the girl it was a stolen vehicle and we'll need the footage disc as evidence," he said, smiling, and walked off out of the unnamed autopsy room.

Forgewood followed a minute later. He glanced back at the Freezer he and Jackson had shoved Kellerman into and shook his head, then put out the light and closed the door, used the skeleton key to lock it and went into Autopsy Room One across the corridor. He grabbed a cloth from the steel unit on the far wall and used it to wipe up the blood on the tiles and lift the fragments of bone and teeth. Then washed them down the sink, before pulling Kranz out from under the steel table. He wrapped the blood-stained cloth around his face, to stop any dripping down and leaving a trace, and tied it in a knot behind his head, leaving room for him to breath, of course, then lifted him up over his right shoulder. Kranz groaned and gurgled and the washcloth became further immersed in red as blood poured from his nose and mouth.

Forgewood flicked off the light and locked the door. He carried him down the corridor and out through the emergency exit at the far end, outside into the burning early afternoon sun.

He hurried along the sidewalk and around the building, squinting against the sun’s powerful glare, unable to reach for his shades because he was holding the back of Kranz’s calves to stop him from toppling over his shoulder to the concrete. At six-two, he wasn’t a small man, but carrying one-ninety or two-hundred pounds of dead weight through the hot humid air and against the sun was a job of work. He realized he had given Jackson the easier assignment when he felt himself begin to sweat.

He reached the parking lot and realized he was right. The black Mustang that was in the slot between the black Lincoln Town Car and their police cruiser was gone. The slot was empty, filled with nothing but sunshine and air. Forgewood scanned the lot and the road out front but saw no sign of it. Then glanced at their Charger and sighed, noticing the tires were completely flat. The steel alloys were almost touching the ground and there was what looked like a long slit in their rubber sidewalls.

He opened his mouth and sucked warm air in through clenched teeth as he hurried around and checked the other side, still holding Kranz over his shoulder. They were the same. Next, he looked at the Lincoln. Exactly the same and the keys were still on Kellerman’s body inside the freezer. He thought on his feet and noticed there were another few cars parked across the lot. Red, white, silver and black sedans. He quickly checked Kranz's pants pockets and found a set of keys. He pressed the button. The lights of a sedan parked on the far end flashed orange. It was a nondescript white Chrysler 200, maybe two years old. It beeped and the locks clicked open. He hurried over and opened the back door and dumped Kranz onto the back seat. His bloodied face left a smudged crimson slick on the cream leather.

Jackson walked out from the morgue's entrance doors a few seconds later. He was carrying a silver disc in his right hand. He noticed Forgewood by the white Chrysler and called over. "What you doing over there?"

"That asshole, Beck, burst our tires," Forgewood replied. "We're taking Kranz's car. You got the security disk?"

Jackson held it up in his right hand. It reflected a bright ray from the glowing sun.

"And the Mustang, did you get its license plate?"

Jackson nodded. “Yeah.” He recounted it to him as he drew nearer, now only a few paces from the Chrysler.

Forgewood unclipped his radio and climbed into the car. The radio was a police issue, exactly the same as Jackson’s. He pushed the green button and it crackled.

"This is Officer Forgewood," he said.

"This is dispatch," a man said, in a soft and crackly voice. “Go ahead, Officer Forgewood.”

Jackson climbed into the car, too. He closed the door, softly.

"We have a 10-29V, a vehicle wanted, last seen out in Mission," Forgewood said, into the radio. "We have the license plate and we need its precise location."

"Okay, Forgewood, say it out, loud and slow," the man said from the other side of the radio.

Forgewood proceeded to say the license plate, just as the guy had asked. Loudly and slowly.

"10-4, Forgewood," the man said and repeated it back to him. "I'll run a search against the footage from the ALPR cameras around Hidalgo County. Give it thirty minutes, maybe an hour. If it’s around, they’ll pick it up and if you can leave your radio on, I'll contact you when the results come back.”

"Okay, dispatch," Forgewood said. “But be quick. And thorough. This one’s important. We think the guy may have killed somebody.” He pressed the green button again, then clipped his radio back onto his belt and fired up the Chrysler’s engine.

***

Estrada, Hernandez and Jimenez were standing on the sidewalk by the side of the road on Wichita Avenue. They picked the most secluded strip, by the side of a Staybridge Suites hotel and one of the fairways of the country club. Hernandez was smoking a cigarette. Jimenez was flicking through pornographic photographs on his cell phone and Estrada was staring straight ahead. He saw a white truck turning off South Bicentennial Boulevard at the end of the road. "There it is," he said. “Right on cue.”

"And how do you plan to get it to pull over?" Jimenez asked him, not once raising his eyes from the phone’s screen.

"Easily," Estrada said and pointed down the pathway to the side of the hotel. "You two, go stand over there and watch."

Hernandez and Jimenez walked over and stood around the side of the building, out of sight from the road. Hernandez flicked his cigarette onto the sidewalk and both men watched as Estrada slipped his right hand in under the left of his jacket and staggered out onto the road.

The FedEx truck driver looked up from the dash and saw a Hispanic guy shaking like a mad man and stumbling across the lanes up ahead, like he didn't know where he was. He noticed his hand stuffed inside his jacket, covering his chest, like he was suffering from palpitations. He watched him drop down onto his knees, in dire need of help, and that's when he slammed the brakes.

They squealed and the truck’s tires screeched against the hot tarmac. It stopped to a halt, its hood maybe three feet from the guy lying, shaking on the road, rocking back and forth, before settling still, parked at an angle across the lanes. There was a crashing bang in the back, from a couple of packages that had become dislodged and slammed into the truck's steel bulkhead.

The truck driver lifted his cell phone from the dashboard, unclipped his seatbelt and opened the door. He climbed out and padded across the road to see if the guy needed help. He was dressed for the heat, wearing black boots and black ankle socks, black shorts that exposed his thin tanned legs and a black polo that had a purple stripe at the left breast and a black ball cap over a tanned thin face that was hollow at the cheeks. The cap had the FedEx logo at the front and a fringe of light-brown hair stuck out under the visor.

“Hey, Sir,” he said. “Do you know where you are? Do you know you’re on the road? Are you okay?”

No response.

The truck driver stepped closer. “Are you okay? Do you need help?”

Again, no response.

“Okay, Sir, I’m calling you an ambulance,” the truck driver said and lifted his cell phone to his face.

Suddenly, the Hispanic man on the road stopped shaking. He glanced up at him and rose to his feet, pulling his hand from inside his jacket.

The truck driver saw the Hispanic man’s right hand gripped around something black. He saw the magazine sticking out from under the guy’s palm and the rear sight above his thenar space, then an extractor and ejection port and then the guy’s right forefinger, curled through a black trigger guard. His knuckle was white. He saw the black front sight and then the gun’s black muzzle. It was a Glock 19.

He gasped, loudly, as his bushy brown eyebrows shot up is tanned forehead like two caterpillars scrambling for the refuge of his cap. There was immense fear in his eyes.

"Get 'em up," Estrada snarled at him.

The truck driver threw his hands above his head like his life rested on whether or not he was able to reach up and touch the sky.

Hernandez and Jimenez walked out from the side of the restaurant, amused grins across their faces and their own black Glocks in their right hands. They jammed the muzzles of the Glocks into the truck driver’s guts.

“You’re in big trouble now, boy,” Hernandez barked, while Jimenez laughed.

The truck driver said nothing. A cold sweat had formed on the back of his neck and he was hyperventilating.

Estrada glanced up at the cell phone the guy was clutching in his right hand, a nine and a one visible on its screen, awaiting the last digit of the phone number. "The phone," he said to him. "Drop it."

The truck driver opened his fist and let it fall to the concrete. He winced when it bounced off the road and small fragments of glass scattered around its frame.

Estrada smiled a sinister grin and then stepped on it with his boot. The glass crunched and the components cracked and the guy winced again. He was almost in tears when Estrada lifted his foot from the ground and he saw its mangled frame and wires and a thin spreading of crystal power that was once its screen.

Estrada flicked his tongue across his front teeth and then barked at him, "Wallet?"

The truck driver grimaced and looked up at the baby-blue sky, then closed his eyes and shook his head. He was a good guy. He hadn’t done a single bad thing to anybody. He didn’t deserve this. He lowered his left hand to his shorts pocket and pulled out a black faux leather wallet.

Estrada took it from him and opened it. He ruffled through its contents and pulled out the bills. Forty-one dollars. A twenty, two tens and a one. He handed one ten to Hernandez and the other ten Jimenez and then pocketed the rest himself. He moved to hand the guy’s empty wallet back to him, then stopped and grinned and stuffed into his own pocket.

“Cards can be sold for a few hundred bucks,” he said, a twisted grin on his face.

“Please don’t do this,” the truck driver pleaded.

Estrada smiled, venom in his eyes. "You got any duct tape in that truck?" he asked.

The truck driver closed his eyes and nodded. He couldn’t bear to look at the Hispanic’s sick grin, but he could feel its presence burning through his eyelids.

"Walk," Estrada barked and then pushed him toward the truck with the muzzle of the Glock pressed against the back of his head.

The truck driver leaned in and opened the glove box and pulled out a thick roll of dull gray tape and a set of steel scissors with a black rubber grip.

Estrada nodded to Hernandez, who snatched it from him. Then he marched the truck driver around the side of the truck to the back doors. Used the Glock and gestured him to open them up.

The back smelled of cardboard and paper. There were about ten bags inside, pushed against the bulkhead. Eight of them were blue and held a variety of different shaped boxes and two of them were white and held a similar variety of different colored envelopes.

Estrada and Jimenez pushed him down onto the ledge and held him at gunpoint, a Glock pressed against each side of his ribcage, while Hernandez pushed his wrists together and rolled the tape over them. When he was done with the guy’s wrists, he did the same to his ankles and then slapped a strip of tape across his lips.

Estrada laughed and pushed him backward into the truck and slammed the doors shut.

The back of the truck wasn’t air-conditioned. It was dark. And hot. The truck driver lay against the sidewall, sweating in the sweltering heat, listening to one of them talking to the others outside as they walked around the side.

"Keys are inside," the guy said. "And hang onto that duct tape. It’ll be handy for when we find our friend some company."

The next thing the truck driver felt was the truck rock from side-to-side as the men climbed in. Then he heard the doors slam shut, before falling sideward against a bag of mail as the truck pulled away.

NINE

Beck had suspicions about the ATF, but he hadn’t really expected the same about the cops. While he wasn’t surprised, two cops moonlighting as the chairman’s gunmen were the last thing that he, and Sapphire, had expected to run into, not at the morgue. And even more people trying to kill them for the second time in around twelve hours had left their nerves shattered.

Beck saw a sign for Deja Brew Coffee, a small coffee shop off South Bentsen Road, and quickly realized that a jolt of caffeine was exactly what they needed. It would help us regroup, steady our minds, he thought. He steered the Mustang into a slot in the parking lot.

“Caffeine hit?” Sapphire asked.

Beck nodded and turned off the Mustang’s engine, then took his Smith & Wesson from the glove box. He swapped it for Kellerman’s Glock, whipping it from the waist of his pants and tossing it into the glove box in the Smith & Wesson’s place and tucking the Smith & Wesson in by the small of his back. Next, he grabbed the cigar box from the car door and joined Sapphire in stepping out into stewing heat.

Inside, Deja Brew Coffee had a welcoming cool temperature and a relaxed ambiance. It smelled of sweet syrup, pastries and warm donuts, mixed with the arousing aroma of freshly-brewed coffee. The lighting was low and the walls were a dark shade of maroon. There were canvases hanging along them. Acrylic paintings of various different cups of coffee, accompanied by black handwritten brush strokes that said things like, 'Freshly Ground', 'Arabica', and 'Espresso.''

Farther ahead, on the left, there were leather furnishings huddled around a variety of maple tables with circular and rectangular surfaces. Some were knee-height and others were as tall as Sapphire’s waist. They were surrounded by matching maple wooden chairs with maroon leather cushions and maroon leather sofas and tub chairs with hard backs and firm arms. All of the tables were clear and all of the seats were empty.

It was just the environment Beck had been hoping for. He could hear the relaxing, rhythmic beat of instrumental jazz music. Soft gentle strokes of a piano intertwined with soothing, bright and vibrant notes of a trombone and the higher-pitched and sexier, brassy squeak of a saxophone. It felt calming and helped the image of the coroner’s syringe in his mind fade to nothing but a flash of a memory somewhere far off in the distance.

Ahead on the right were two smiling baristas standing behind a maple wooden counter. They were wearing black silk shirts with smart black pants and maroon aprons that had the name of the coffee shop stitched in cream thread across the chest. Both were male. And young, with curly brown wavy hair that covered their ears and thin, rimless glasses wrapped around their fresh-looking, clean-shaven faces. They looked like a couple of college students. One was behind the register and the other was wiping down a big silver coffee machine with a light-blue cloth. He was cleaning coffee spatters and then shining it up with circular motions.

Beck and Sapphire walked over. He ordered an Americano with milk and Sapphire asked for a skinny latte. Beck paid the five dollars and the barista told them to take a seat, that he would offer them table service.

It’s the small things that happen inside a quiet coffee shop that makes the experience so much better than when it’s busy.

They grabbed a seat at a rectangular four-seater table by the back wall. It offered Beck a clear view of the front windows and the entrance door and was within about twenty feet of the emergency exit. Important, he thought, in case they needed to make a quick getaway.

The coffee machine hissed and puffed and the barista applied his craft with admirable attention, and they were served just over a minute later. The guy who was initially cleaning the machine brought their drinks over on a circular black plastic tray. He smiled as he lifted their drinks and laid them down on the table.

The latte was served in a tall and limpid glass. It was light brown and velvety smooth, topped with a thick head of white foam and dusted with chocolate sprinkles. The Americano was served in a round ceramic maroon mug with a C-shaped handle. Steam eddied from the coffee's hot pecan-colored surface.

Beck lifted the mug and held it to his nose. He savored its rich and invigorating scent and, eventually, took a sip. It tasted soul-soothingly nutty, with a subtle hint of chocolate. And it was strong. Better than the pre-packed filter drip stuff from the motel room, he thought and took another sip.

Sapphire took a sip of the latte.

"It’s definitely ATF business," he said to her, over the top of his coffee mug.

"ATF business?" Sapphire asked, over the top of her latte, as she took another sip. The milky white foam left a bubbly coating of froth on her upper lip.

Beck nodded. "Whatever Wendell Matthews must have been involved with," he said and took another sip. It tasted just as good as his first. A feeling he only ever really experiences when drinking bourbon. "Whatever got Sikorsky killed. It has to be. No other reason for their heads to be in that cooler, for federal agents to be involved in a cover-up. For them to try and kill the very people who’re asking questions and looking into what’s been going on. Maybe it’s something to do with alcohol? Or, tobacco? They could be smuggling that, too. Or, it could be guns.” He paused for a beat and then continued, “Whatever it is, I think Matthews witnessed something and called it in. I think that Sikorsky picked it up. Maybe he started looking into it. Started looking where he shouldn't have. Maybe he got caught. Maybe Kellerman found out about it. He was in the chairman's pocket, that’s for damn sure. Maybe he told him about Sikorsky looking and that’s what got him killed. To keep wraps on whatever they’re up to."

Sapphire nodded. "But what about the cops?"

Beck took another slurp of coffee and thought about it. "They’re involved just as much as Kellerman was," he answered. "They probably helped cover it up, too. They probably looked into it, to follow due process, but made sure it went down on record as suicide rather than homicide. Hell, they probably even helped along the way.”

“But how?” Sapphire asked as she savored the warm steam from the milk swirling up onto her face.

“How what?”

“How can somebody just flip the police? Make them their own personal lapdogs?”

“Easy,” Beck answered and rubbed his right thumb on his two forefingers, then took another sip of the coffee. “Money.”

Sapphire drank hers, too, and looked up over the top of her glass, waiting for him to continue.

“Cops are human like everyone else,” he said. “And it doesn’t take much to tempt them. Start passing brown envelopes around under the table at the station house and you’ll feel a fair share of hands grabbing back at them. A few hundred extra bucks can work wonders on a guy who's fallen behind on his mortgage, or who owes a couple of grand to somebody he really shouldn't be indebted to, or who even has good intentions and wants to do something with it for his family. And when they've taken the first envelope, they'll take a second, and then, they’ll take a third. And by that point, they're in it up to their eyebrows, with no way out."

Sapphire nodded. "Those cops from the morgue, do you think that's what they’re in it for?"

Beck blew out his cheeks. "Who knows," he said. "If it’s not money, it’ll be leverage. Dig up enough dirt on someone and you can enslave them into doing almost anything you want them to. But, anyway, it doesn't matter how they got dirty, just that they are.” He paused. “And that we've only met three of them, so far. We don't know if there are any more, or how many others there are."

She looked at him, anxiously. "Do you think there’s more?"

"Impossible to say for sure," he answered and casually sipped on the coffee. "But we have to assume so, yes. Place like this, the whole station could be corrupt. If they can flip federal agents, they can damn sure flip cops. And we can’t take any chances. In fact, do you have a cell phone with you?"

She nodded and put down her latte glass. The thick round base thudded against the table’s wooden surface.

"Okay," he said, calmly. "Can I see it?"

"Sure," she answered and lifted her purse. Opened it and pulled out a slick black Samsung smartphone. She checked there were no missed calls or messages and then handed it to him.

He flicked his eyes up and down its dark screen, turned it over and glanced at the back and then tossed it through the air toward the maple condiment bar at the far end of the seating area, where the metallic jugs of milk sat and wooden stirrers, packets of sugars and napkins were neatly stacked in their trays. The phone disappeared into a hole in the surface of the counter and clanked against the trash can’s steel base.

"What the fuck are you doing?" she shouted.

The two baristas glanced over. “Everything okay over there?” one of them called.

Beck raised his right hand and waved them off, while Sapphire glared at him through hot and seething-looking eyes.

"I’m saving your life, again," he answered, calmly, and casually took another sip of the coffee. "Carrying that phone would've gotten us killed. All they would need to do is call up your carrier, or better yet, your pimp, ask maybe one question, and they've got your number. They can then ping it against the cell towers around the city, or use GPS tracking, and your approximate location pops up on one of their screens." He pointed toward the shop front. "And, then, five minutes later, they burst through that door, guns blazing. Cuff us and march us out to the back of a black and white. Except, if it’s those guys we ran into at the morgue, we wouldn't even make it half-way to the station house."

At first, she said nothing. She sat silent while the anger evaporated from her eyes. Then, she looked at him sternly. “And what about yours?"

He reached into his pocket and pulled out a similar Samsung cell phone. “This thing?” he asked and held it up. It was jet black with a dark touch screen. "This is a prepay. Not in any way registered to me. Which makes it pretty much untraceable unless they get the number. And there's no way for them to get that, unless I call them, or they know somebody who’s called me direct."

“But you’re a private eye,” she said.

“So?”

“So, how can they not just get your number that way. I mean you gotta have ads out there. Listings online. In phone books. All that sorta stuff.”

“Impossible,” he answered and took out his wallet and pulled a small white business card from one of the card slots, then slid it across the table to her. “I use a virtual number. Take a look at the area code at the front. New York City. Someone calls me, it dials that line, which then gets forwarded to my cell. It’s completely anonymous. Somebody tries tracing that, they’ll just get the current location of an office block in Manhattan.”

She shook her head and handed the card back and said, "Well, then, you owe me a new cell phone.”

Beck shrugged, indifferently, at her and slipped the card back into his wallet, but he detected a hint of annoyance in her voice, almost like her cell phone meant more to her than her life did. People these days, he thought.

She took a long sip of the latte and glanced down at the antique cigar box sitting on the table in front of him. "Anyway, what's the story with the box?"

"I'm not sure," he said and glanced at it. "Sikorsky told Kim to give it to me next time she saw me. And that was last Wednesday morning, the day that he died. I figure it must mean something, but I don't know what. There's no logos or markings or anything that I can see on it that might provide a hint as to where or who he might have got it from. It’s a message of some kind, that’s for sure, but I’m not sure whether it’s just something sentimental or something with real substance."

Sapphire picked it up and undid its buckle. Opened the lid and looked inside. It reeked of dry tobacco and time. And the two cigars on the right were already reduced to a thin brown dust.

"It looks like an old box of Eastwoods from San Andres Southern Tobacco," she said, now speaking in a calmer intonation.

“Have you seen one of these before?” he asked.

"Yeah, when I was young,” she answered. “My Grandfather used to smoke their cigars. Always said the Mexicans had more bite. He kept them in a box like this."

She turned the box over and inspected its base and nodded. Dug her fingernail into the groove between the bottom panel and the end of the sidewall. "I found out one day that the bottom of these boxes pops out and there's a slim compartment inside."

Beck slid his maroon mug of coffee to the side and leaned forward in his seat.

Sapphire curled her finger and tugged at the base. It was a thin wooden panel and it began to break from the bottom.

"It turned into a sort of game we used to play,” she continued. “He used to leave quarters and small change inside and I would open it and take them when he wasn't looking. Then I would close it back up and leave it, like I hadn’t even touched it. He would always play the fool and ask what happened to his quarters, and I would just shake my head and give him the eyes. I knew that he knew and I think he knew that I knew that he did it on purpose."

The bottom of the box flapped off and landed on the table. A small white piece of paper fell out beside it. It was thin and almost scrap-like, missing one of its corners, stained from the residue of the tobacco and with a diagonal crease running from the bottom left corner up into the top right as if it had been folded quickly and stuffed into a pocket or wallet. There was a four-digit number scribbled on its surface in blue ink: 4411.

"What's that?" Beck asked.

She sat the two parts of the cigar box down, lifted up the slip of paper and turned it over. "It looks like…a library receipt," she said. "Look." She laid it on the table and turned it one-hundred and eighty degrees so he could read it. The ink was pale gray and barely visible.

It said: McAllen Public Library, Checkout Receipt, 23-June, Item A-1-411876393, Checked out to M. Sikorsky, Due 29-June. It was also stamped with red ink. The stamp left a red circle with the word 'returned' in the middle of it.

Beck scrunched up the slip in his left hand and took another sip of coffee with his right.

23-June was the day before he died, he thought. Why would he have checked out a book and then returned it almost immediately? And why conceal a book receipt with a code written on it inside an old cigar box and tell Kim to give it to me? Clearly, he wanted me to find it. It must be some sort of lead. A clue as to what got him killed, as to what’s going on around here. We have to go get whatever book this is for.

He glanced at Sapphire. "Where's McAllen Public Library from here?"

"Not far. Maybe four miles," she said and pointed in a northern direction.

"Okay, let's go,” he said and took his last slurp of coffee, placed the mug back down on the maple table and stood up.

“Hang on,” she said. “What about the box?”

“Leave it,” he answered. “It’s no longer important. We have what we need from it.”

Sapphire downed what was left of her latte and joined Beck, making her way to the door.

The two baristas who served them nodded and smiled, thanking them for stopping by. They also stole a shy glance at Sapphire’s ass on her way past.

She noticed and blushed.

Beck and Sapphire jumped into the Mustang and Beck backed it out of the parking lot and drove out onto East Frontage Road. Traffic was light and the road was clear. He knew that a four-mile journey wouldn't take long.

"So, what do you think it is?" Sapphire asked him.

"The book, the handwritten number, or the message?" he asked.

"All of it, I guess," she said.

"The book could be anything," he said. "There wasn't a title on the receipt, just an item code.”

She nodded. "Do you think it' still there?"

He hesitated, realizing that it might not be. “Exactly what we're going to find out," he said, eventually. "Now, the handwritten number. It was four digits. The first two numbers were the same, as were the last. I figure that has to be a code, or maybe a pin number, for something."

Sapphire nodded, slowly.

Beck continued, "But, for what, I'm not yet sure. But I guess that was the point of the message. He wouldn’t have concealed that receipt for no reason. It was dated the day before he died. So, whatever is inside that book, it might lead us to what got him killed. It might expose the identity of the guy who we only know of as ‘the chairman’, it might explain what’s going on around here. And it might shed some light on why these men are looking for you."

Sapphire nodded but said nothing and they drove the rest of the journey in near silence, wondering about what they might find at the library.

A few miles down the road, Beck knew they were drawing closer and asked her for directions. "Where to now?"

Sapphire glanced out of the window. "We're on West Nolana. Take a left at the intersection, onto North Twenty-Third, and the library is first on the left."

***

McAllen Medical Center was an eight-story white concrete building that looked like a multi-story car park with dark tinted windows instead of open-aired spaces between the floors. The accident and emergency ward was on level six. There was an open waiting room across from a pine reception desk. It had hard-backed black plastic chairs and a couple of shiny overpriced vending machines selling gloopy coffee and a variety of salty and sugary snacks. The walls were white with a thick gray plastic skirting running along the middle and the floor was shiny plastic peach linoleum. There was a set of pine double doors by the reception. They opened to a narrow, similarly-decorated corridor that led through to the operating rooms.

Forgewood dumped Kranz on one of the black chairs, slumped back against the wall, while Jackson scribbled his name and details of his injury on a white form attached to a brown clipboard he had picked up from a young blonde woman who sat behind the department’s reception desk, then handed it back to her.

He lied, of course, said they found him in the street, surmised that he had been the victim of a random assault.

The young woman took the form and laid it atop the stack of sheets in her in-tray for processing and Jackson gave her his contact details. Told her to have the hospital call them when the man was stabilized and compos mentis, so that they could ask him a few questions.

She scribbled his details down on a white A5 notepad and told him she would.

Jackson nodded and thanked her and turned and walked towards Forgewood. They made their way over to the pine fire door that led to the stairwell when the steel elevator doors opposite them pinged open. Two people dressed in basil-green paramedic uniforms with heavy black boots wheeled a white steel-framed gurney from the elevator car directly to the pine doors, where a female surgeon wearing aqua scrubs, a matching aqua bouffant surgical cap and a sky-blue surgical mask strapped to their ears, pushed the doors open and rushed the victim down the hall on the other side. Her blue surgical shoe covers sucked against the linoleum as they padded around and got a grip of the gurney’s handle.

Forgewood and Jackson walked through the fire door and off into the stairwell and the sound of alarmed and frantic voices subsided as the door clicked shut behind them. The radio on Forgewood’s belt crackled and a man began to speak from the other side, in a soft-spoken voice that echoed off the white concrete walls.

"Officer Forgewood?" he said. "This is dispatch. We have a hit on the black Mustang.”

Forgewood unclipped the radio and pushed the green button. "Okay, dispatch, this is Forgewood. What do you have?"

The man on the other side breathed heavily into the speaker. "It’s registered in Sioux Falls, South Dakota, to Dakota Executive Vehicles. It’s not been reported missing, but you’re right about it being in McAllen. We picked it up from the traffic cam on East Frontage Road only a few minutes ago. We got it heading east and turning left at the junction for South Ware Road and then heading north. The cameras on the Pecan Boulevard, Vine Avenue and West Daffodil Avenue intersections got it going straight through before it eventually turned right onto West Nolana Avenue and then left onto North Twenty-Third Street. The last image we have was at one-fifteen when it turned off North Twenty-Third and into the parking lot of McAllen Public Library.”

Forgewood nodded while he listened and descended the concrete stairs.

"How would you like to proceed, Officer? Do you require back-up assistance?"

"Back-up is not required, dispatch," Forgewood replied and pushed the radio’s red button. He glanced at Jackson and smiled and then pulled a black clamshell cell phone from the left pocket of his pants.

***

The chairman was standing by the wall-sized window in his office. His nose was only about an inch from the glass and his hands were clasped behind his back, the crooked forefinger and the middle finger of his right hand intertwined over the little fingers of his left hand. He felt relaxed, looking out along Wichita Avenue, at the McAllen Country Club down below on the left.

There were two golfers teeing off on the fourth. They were both dressed in white leather ball caps, silver polo shirts, black pants and white leather golfing shoes. One of them swung a silver club up behind his back, shifted his waist and whipped it back down, driving it into a white golf ball sitting prepped on the tee. The club’s thick round head smashed against the ball’s side and the ball arced up into the air and disappeared somewhere between the sunshine and the clear blue sky. The men looked up and tried to follow it, cupping their right hands above their eyebrows to shield their eyes from the sun. If he was good, it would have landed on or around the velvety smooth-looking green or the false front where it meets the fairway. If he was bad, it might have ended up in one of the two kidney-shaped white sandy bunkers on either side of the far end of the fairway, the chairman thought. His shots always landed on the green. No exceptions.

As he looked beyond the country club, to the runway of McAllen Miller International Airport, he smiled, wondering if any of the golfers had any idea about the two dead bodies he had his men dump in the water hazard by the eighth hole. He thought about the men sinking down under the murky surface, bubbles swooshing from their noses and mouths until they reached the bottom, while he watched a white Hawker 800 zooming along the tarmac runway toward the perimeter fence. Its engines would have been in full throttle, but it was eerily silent from behind the quadruple glazed glass, almost like a thunderous gunshot muted too a dull whimper when the bullet is fired through a silencer. He watched as the plane’s nose angled upward at what seemed the last moment and its front wheel left the ground and rose up into the air and curved a left on its ascent. Maybe destined for New York, JFK or La Guardia, or Charlotte Douglas, or somewhere else that side of the country. The bright orange sunlight glimmered along its wingspan and bounced off its nose, just like it had bounced off the tip of his Glock when he pressed it against the heads of the two cops he dumped in the water hazard behind the green at the back of the eighteenth hole, after discovering they were looking into his real business.

The lighting strip on his phone flashed red, illuminating the inside of the crocodile's mouth and its teeth with a creepy candy hue. Lester saw it from the sofa and alerted him to the call. "Sir, your phone's ringing."

The chairman didn't acknowledge him, but he saw the reflection of the light flashing in the window.

"Sir?" he said, again.

The chairman turned his head slowly and glanced, expressionless, at the phone, then padded across the carpet and lifted the handset and sat down in his leather chair. The chair sighed as he sat, his weight pushing all of the air from the thick padded cushion.

"Forgewood," he said in a commanding-sounding, but happy and authoritative voice. "Tell me you've got them."

There was a brief silence on the other end of the line. Then Forgewood said, “Not exactly, Sir."

The chairman said nothing. He let the silence ask the questions for him.

Forgewood continued, "He got Kellerman and Kranz, but he was gone when we got there, Sir."

The chairman flicked his eyes over to the window and down to the country club below. He watched the golfers walking up the fairway in the distance toward the bunker on the right. Their shots were bad. "What do you mean he got Kellerman and Kranz?"

"Well," Forgewood said. "We found Kranz beaten to a bloodied pulp. Face mangled. Nose smashed, teeth missing and maybe even cheekbones broken, too. And, then, we found Kellerman. He was lying dead in the room across the corridor. His neck was broken."

The chairman balled his left hand into a tightly clenched fist and slammed it down on the glass desk. The crocodile's head and the phone's cradle bounced on the quivering glass surface.

Forgewood heard the bang over the phone. "Don't worry, Sir, I’ve taken care of it."

"How?" the chairman thundered.

"We put Kellerman on ice," Forgewood said. "He’s in one of the cadaver freezers where nobody will ever find him. And we got the footage for the security cameras, just like you always tell us to. Nobody will ever know we were or, or what took place.”

The chairman nodded. Forgewood was a man that knew how to get things done. "What about his car?"

"We drove it out to Sullivan City and dumped it by the side of Military Road. It’ll look like he left it parked up and just disappeared," Forgewood lied. The Lincoln was dumped in Sullivan City at the side of Military Road, but he hadn’t driven it. He had actually called a guy he knew, who owned an auto-recovery business. Forgewood had offered him a hundred bucks to come out and lift it from the parking lot and then pick up the Dodge police cruiser on the way back. The Lincoln was dropped where he said it was and the cruiser was put down at the Rayburn Village Apartments on North Main Street. He planned to call it in as needing roadside assistance, due to a random act of vandalism, after he had finished up with Joe Beck.

"Okay, good," the chairman said. "And what about Kranz?”

“We took him down to McAllen Medical Center. Dumped him at A&E. Filled in the paperwork saying we found him in the street, badly beaten in what we would say was a random act of violence. We told the hospital staff to call us when he comes to, so we can go back and see what he knows, if anything.”

The chairman nodded his approval. “Very good, Forgewood. Now, tell me, what about Joe Beck?"

"Well, we never actually saw him, Sir. But we did get his license plate, from the footage captured by the camera. I asked dispatch to run it against our Automatic License Plate Recognition cameras around the city and they just picked it up turning into the McAllen Public Library."

The chairman glanced up at Lester. "How long ago was this?”

“Two minutes, Sir.”

“And it's still there?" the chairman asked him.

"Yes, Sir," Forgewood replied. "And Jackson and I are on our way over there now."

"Good. Very good, Forgewood,” the chairman said, again. “I'll send Lester over behind you. Don't do anything until he gets there."

“Copy tha…” Forgewood began before the chairman hung up the phone and glanced at Lester. "Everything set for tonight’s distribution?"

Lester nodded. “Everything’s a go, Sir.”

"Good," the chairman said and smiled as he clasped his hands together on the desk’s glass surface. "Forgewood and Jackson have got a location on this Joe Beck. He's at McAllen Public Library. I want you to go down there and back them up."

"Yes, Sir," Lester said and stood up from the sofa. "Should I call Oswald, too, Sir?"

The chairman thought for a beat and shook his head. "He's still at the whore's apartment?"

Lester nodded, again.

“Has he made any contact?”

“Yes, Sir. He checks in every hour, just like you instructed. But, so far, his text messages are saying he’s seen nothing.”

"Then leave him be. We don't know for sure if she’s with him and I want someone covering her home in case she decides to turn up. But you’re right. He got away from three men last time, so having another guy there isn’t a bad idea.”

Lester nodded for a third time.

“I'll call Zanetti. Break the news to him about Kellerman and send him behind you. Have Forgewood and Jackson take care of the cameras, as usual, but wait until Zanetti gets there before you guys make a move."

"Yes, Sir," Lester said, firmly, and stood up from the sofa.

"And, Lester," the chairman said as he lifted the handset of his desk phone. "When you get Joe Beck, bring him back to the warehouse. Alive. I've got plans for him."

TEN

At more than twice the size of a football field, the McAllen Public Library is the largest single-floor library in the United States. It was built on the site of an abandoned Walmart Supercenter and cost somewhere around $14 million to renovate, refit and decorate. $14 million that left it looking nothing like a grocery store.

The entrance was grand. There was a porte-cochere overhanging a wide a red-brick monoblock drive that was laid edge-to-edge with pristine precision. It extended out to a gray concrete wall that was built into a shallow pool of water and had a semi-circle hollowed from the middle. A waterfall filled the semi-circular cavity. The water streamed down like a torrent and formed a line of white froth where it met with the pool's majestic blue surface.

Beck and Sapphire walked past it listening to the rushing sound, stepped into the shade of the porte-cochere and padded across the shaded monoblock to the library’s automatic glass sliding entrance doors. The doors zipped back on either side, letting out a relieving blow of cool air and a light scent of vanilla mixed with the sort of musty odor of old books found only in libraries. They stepped inside.

Inside, the décor was contemporary. A light-gray-and-chartreuse-green checked carpet covered the floor and the walls were painted with pale shades of orange and yellow and white. It was bright and open-spaced. A stainless-steel perch mesh ceiling hung below the building’s real ceiling, hiding the square skylights that Beck imagined ran along the rooftop above it. Beams of daylight shone in through the false ceiling’s steel ribs and synergized with the square luminaires suspended from the perch mesh, illuminating the inside to a bright pearly light.

The atmosphere was tranquil. It was peacefully quiet. There were people standing, relaxed by the walls, holding orange paper coffee cups and whispering to each other over the cups’ black lids. Beck detected the unequivocal smell of coffee that wafted out from the café somewhere off to the right. He also saw women up ahead. They were curled up in plastic tub chairs that were shades of orange and aqua. Some were quietly reading while others typed gentle keystrokes on the keypads of black and gun metal-colored laptops that straddled across their thighs. Beyond the women, he saw a few groups of boys were sitting dialed into rows of fixed computer terminals. They were wearing had red ball caps and white casual t-shirts. He could see the white of the screens reflecting on the lenses of their glasses, like little white rectangles.

A female librarian standing behind the wooden service counter on their right noticed them glancing around and offered her assistance in a distinctly Texan-sounding, but polite accent.

"Good afternoon, is there something I can help y'all with?" she asked.

"Yeah," Beck answered, turning around to face her.

She was maybe fifty-five years old with short graying hair streaked with light blonde and styled in soft loose waves. Her skin was tanned and smooth, but there were wrinkles of time around her eyes. Her eyelids looked brushed with a light-pink eye shadow. There was light-pink lipstick on her lips and matching pink pearl earrings dangled from her ears. A pair of silver-rimmed glasses hung from a thin black fabric cord that was wrapped around the back of her neck. She was wearing a black v-neck top that had silver sequence spattered along the chest, in the shape of the V, and a silk light-pink neck scarf was wrapped around her neck, neatly tied in a knot over her upper chest.

"We're looking for a book,” he said.

She nodded, politely, and asked, "May I ask if you have a library card?"

Beck flashed a tooth-bearing smile and sucked a breath of air in past his teeth. He didn’t have a card, and he also didn’t want to put his name onto their database. Instead, he glanced at Sapphire, the same question in his eyes.

She paused and thought about it, then nodded. "Yeah, I've got one," she said, sounding almost embarrassed, and fished a white plastic card from her purse and handed it over to the librarian.

The librarian put on her glasses and lifted a black handheld barcode scanner and used it to scan the card's barcode. The scanner flushed the white plastic in flickering red criss-crosses. It bleeped and its red criss-cross ray flicked off. The librarian glanced at the computer screen in front of her and smiled. "Okay, Ms. Gray, that’s fine. Now, what book was it that y’all were looking for?"

Sapphire had no idea. She looked at Beck.

He shifted his gaze to the librarian, wondering if Sapphire’s real name was, in fact, Sapphire, and said, "It’s A-1-411876393.”

"Oh my, that’s very specific," the librarian said to him and handed Sapphire back her card as she put the barcode scanner into its cradle. "Do you know the title?"

Beck shook his head. "Just the number," he said and repeated it back.

The librarian nodded and typed a few keys on a computer keyboard hidden somewhere below the counter. "Okay," she said. "Ah, that's..." She paused for a beat and ran her eye down the list of titles with an A-1 number, looking for A-1-411876393 on the list. "That's, uhm, a book called, Running Guns: The global black market in small arms,” she said, her intonation rising when she got to the book’s title, then glanced back at him, hoping he would confirm that was the one.

He nodded, vaguely, while a young woman shuffled past him with about sixteen books cradled in her arms. She made a series of unimpressed grunting noises when the other librarian, an older man dressed in a brown tweed suit with short gray hair and gold-rimmed glasses with thick lenses, told her she could only take out two at a time. “The number match up to what I just told you?”

“Yeah,” the librarian said.

“Then that’s it.”

She smiled.

“Now, where do we find it?”

"Ah, let me see if we have it in stock, first," the librarian said and typed a few more keystroke.

The system took longer to load than Beck thought it ought to. He felt tense.

Eventually, the librarian looked up from the screen, a smile on her face and said, "Yep," in the delighted sort of way that only librarians can really pull of when trying to find books. "It's in Adult Non-fiction, over by the far left corner of the building," she said and pointed to the far end of the library. "Just bring it on down when you're ready.”

Beck and Sapphire both nodded their acknowledgment.

“But, just so you know,” the librarian continued. “We follow a strict two-books-at-a-time policy." She said it sounding as apologetic as she probably could, knowing fine well that everyone thinks those sorts of rules are bullshit.

Beck nodded his understanding and thanked her for her assistance. Then he and Sapphire walked off toward the adult non-fiction section that was about two-hundred yards deeper into the building.

They both looked at each other, questions in their eyes as they walked.

“Sapphire’s your real name?” he asked her, curiously. It sounded more like a statement than a question.

She nodded. “Yeah. Sapphire Gray, just as it’s been for the last twenty-nine years.”

He nodded, slowly, thinking he was right about her age. He had placed her somewhere a shade below thirty, but he was surprised that she used her real name for her work.

She saw what he thinking and answered before he asked. “People never expect it to be, hence why I use it.”

He nodded.

She asked him her question. "That book. Do you think that could be what this is about?"

"Guns?" he asked.

"Yeah."

He nodded, again. "Guns would definitely be within the ATF’s jurisdiction. And Mike Sikorsky was a smart guy. If he's using a book to send me a message, I don't think it would be a coincidence that it's a book about the trafficking of illicit firearms."

***

It took just eleven minutes to drive from McAllen Medical Center to McAllen Public Library. The Chrysler went up North Colonel Rowe Boulevard, onto West Nolana Avenue and then turned into the parking lot off North Twenty-Third Street. Forgewood steered it to a halt in a slot at the far end, on the right-hand side of the entrance, facing Orchid Avenue. He could see the fountain flowing in the interior mirror.

He pulled out the black clamshell cell phone and sent a message to Lester. It said, 'We're in the lot. White Chrysler. Right of the entrance, Orchid Avenue side.'

Lester pulled in a few moments later. He was driving a dark-blue Ford Fusion, which he parked up right next to the white Chrysler. He looked at Forgewood and made a rolling gesture with his right hand, then pushed a black button on the driver's door. The window on the Ford’s passenger door zipped down.

"The chairman wants us to bring them back alive," he said to Forgewood, window-to-window and through the scorching afternoon air as the window on the white Chrysler's driver's door also disappeared beneath its seal. "He said we can shoot, if we want to, but we’re not to kill. We're to take him down and subdue them and bring them to the warehouse. And we're to follow the due process and get the camera footage to make sure nobody can prove what really happens here."

Forgewood and Jackson both nodded their understanding. "I took the footage from the surveillance cameras at the morgue," Jackson said. "I’ll handle that here, too."

Lester nodded and continued, "He also called Zanetti and told him to come down. He's on his way right now. You two go in now and do what you have to do to get that footage. Then wait by the entrance. I'll meet you inside, with Zanetti, when he gets here."

Forgewood and Jackson nodded, again, and Forgewood killed the Chrysler's engine. They stepped out into the heat and walked off toward the building's entrance, under the shade of the porte-cochere.

***

The FedEx truck cruised along North Colonel Rowe Boulevard. The air conditioning was whirring and blasting cool air around the cab and there were sounds of groaning coming from the back. Hernandez was behind the wheel, with Jimenez on his far right and Estrada bookended between them in the middle again, like he had been when they had sat on the sofa in the chairman's office.

Jimenez leaned forward and pointed out the windshield. There was a red Ford Galaxy up ahead by the side of the road. Its hood was up and its rear hazard lights were flashing. "There's the next one," he said.

Hernandez and Estrada smiled wicked grins and Hernandez steered the truck across the lanes and eased it to a halt at the side of the road behind the red Ford.

The driver's door of the Ford opened and a fat guy with slicked-back black hair and a neatly trimmed black goatee stepped out. He was wearing camel suit pants and a light-blue long-sleeved shirt and matching thick baby-blue necktie with thin camel and dark-blue diagonal stripes. His shirt sleeves were rolled up to his elbows, exposing his dark hairy forearms, and there were circular dark-blue sweat patches under his arms.

He waddled along the road to the driver's door of the white FedEx truck and threw his hands up in the air, speaking as he walked. "Goddamn battery. Second time this month. Roadside assistance guy supposed to have been here a half-hour ago. But there ain’t no Goddamned sign of his ass and I got somewhere to be. Don’t suppose you guys got a set of jump leads in there?"

Hernandez heard next to nothing. He just saw the guy’s mouth opening and closing rapidly and watched the sunshine reflecting off of his sweaty forehead. He pressed the control switch on the driver's door and the window slid down. "You say you needed a lift?" he asked him while slipping his hand into his jacket pocket and wrapping his palm around the butt of the Glock.

"Nah," the guy replied. “I don’t need no lift, I need a jump-sta...” He paused, his mouth open, glancing into the cab at Hernandez, then Estrada and then Jimenez, noticing not a single one of them was in FedEx uniform.

Hernandez grinned and pulled the Glock from his pocket. "Jump-start this.”

The guy's eyes widened and his face turned a ghastly shade of white. It was as if he had just seen a ghost. He raised his hands up above his head and stepped backward. His mouth opened and closed, then opened, once more, and closed, again. But no words came out. Eventually, through his asthmatic hyperventilation, he spoke.

"Hey, I don't want no trouble,” he wheezed and stepped backward, again. “I never saw you and you never saw me. I'll just wait here ‘til Triple-A comes along and then I’ll be on my way." He stepped backward for the third time, but Hernandez shook his head.

"One more step and I blow your brains across the highway," he snarled.

The guy swallowed hard, the sweat patches under his arms getting bigger and bigger and his shirt collar turning a damp, dark shade of blue.

Jimenez opened the door and walked around the hood of the truck. His Glock was pointed at the guy's stomach. Estrada followed behind him, with his Glock in his right hand and the roll of duct tape in his left.

"Walk around back," he barked at the guy.

The guy waddled past the side of the white truck. He saw another car up ahead, coming their way, closed his eyes and nodded, thinking that they would see what was going on, that somebody would help. Then he opened them to see that it had turned left onto Taramack Avenue and that there was now nobody else around. His heart sunk.

Jimenez jammed the gun into his right kidney and told him to open the back door.

The guy reached forward, but paused, fear on his face. He could hear groans from somebody in the back, on the other side of the door.

Jimenez jabbed his Glock deeper against his lower back. "Open it,” he hissed.

The guy turned and looked at him, distress etched across his face.

Jimenez scowled and jabbed the Glock deeper into his back.

The guy whimpered, then turned around and pulled the door open. He caught the scent of cardboard and paper and sweat and he saw bags of packages and envelopes tipped over in the back. Another man was lying across a pile of mail with his hands and feet taped together and his mouth taped shut. He was wriggling and twisting and groaning, like he was a madman, hoping that someone would hear him, that someone would help him.

Estrada grinned and climbed in and whipped him across the face with the butt of the Glock and the guy flopped, boneless, over the pile of white and brown letters. Estrada then turned and looked at the fat guy in the blue shirt and camel pants.

"You got a cell phone?" he barked.

The guy reached into his left pants pocket and took out an iPhone and handed it to him.

Estrada tossed it out to the ground and stamped on it as he climbed out of the back. The fragile device shattered under his boot. "Now, your wallet," he commanded.

The guy reached into his right pants pocket and pulled out his wallet. It was thin and old, made of cracked brown leather and it didn’t look like there was much inside.

Estrada snatched it from his hand and looked inside. It was empty. Just a driver's license and a couple of credit cards. He handed it to Jimenez. "Here, there's some plastic in there you can shift for a couple hundred bucks. We’ll split the proceeds when you got 'em."

Jimenez nodded and took the wallet and stuffed it into his inside jacket pocket.

The fat guy in the blue shirt and camel pants looked like he was going to cry.

Estrada smiled. "Now, into the truck," he said to him and beckoned him with the Glock.

The guy flicked his eyes down at its muzzle and then Estrada’s finger looped through the trigger guard and, afraid, he did as he said. He climbed into the back, tears running down his red chubby cheeks.

Jimenez held him at gunpoint while Estrada lowered the Glock and then taped his ankles and wrists together and slapped a strip of tape over his mouth. He jammed the Glock’s muzzle against his forehead and made a gunshot sound with his lips, then winked and used the gun to push him inside, before he slammed the door shut.

He locked the back of the truck and they walked around the side and climbed in. Estrada first, to the middle seat, and then Jimenez behind him, to the right passenger seat.

"You boys get any dough from the fat one?" Hernandez asked.

Estrada shook his head and then nodded at Jimenez. "He got a couple of cards. We can shift them later."

Hernandez nodded and smiled and moved to put the FedEx truck into drive.

Estrada put has arm across him. "Hang on. Fatso in there said he called for roadside assistance, said the guy shoulda been here already. Let's hang here for a bit, let our next one come straight to us."

***

Lester waited in the parking lot with his Ford's engine off and the passenger-side window still down. It was hot and humid and a bead of sweat trickled down his temple, but he was icily calm. He watched as a black Lincoln Town Car pulled in to the lot and parked in the slot on the other side of the Chrysler.

Zanetti was behind the wheel. He was a guy in his late thirties, clean-shaven with black gelled hair and a pair of light-brown aviator sunglasses sitting across his eyes. They had gold shining rims. He was wearing a gray British suit with a white shirt and plain silver necktie.

He stepped out of the Lincoln and nodded Lester a hello and then asked, "Where's Forgewood and Jackson?" as Lester stepped out of the Ford.

"They're inside," he answered. "Taking care of the surveillance system."

“Smart,” Zanetti said.

Lester nodded his agreement and walked around and popped the trunk of the Ford, then reached in and lifted out a black long-barreled gun. It was maybe two feet long and had a barrel that looked like a tube.

He closed the trunk and stepped around the side of the car. A woman walking past them on the way to her car screamed and dropped her car keys and two books onto the concrete lot. The books bounced off the ground and landed face up with open pages.

Zanetti raised his left hand and pulled his ATF ID from the inside pocket of his suit and flashed it to her. "It's okay, Ma'am, I'm a federal agent,” he said and smiled.

The woman said nothing. She picked up her keys and the books and shuffled off quickly as Zanetti and Lester walked across the lot, guns out and ready. They stepped into the shadow under the porte-cochere and in through the library’s double glass sliding doors.

Forgewood and Jackson were standing on the other side. Their arms were folded across their stomachs and they each held a silver disc in their left hand. "We got the footage," Jackson said and raised the disc up about head height, holding it by its edge between his forefinger and his thumb.

Lester nodded and took it, and then the other one from Forgewood, and stuffed them into his jacket pockets. He paused and thought for a moment. "What if they've put new discs in?"

Forgewood shook his head. "There was a cup of coffee on the desk, sitting beside the server. It happened to fall over and spill over the hardware. The thing crackled and smoked. They won't be recording anything else anytime soon."

Lester nodded, again, and his lips slithered into a sick smile. He glanced around and saw people sitting on chairs, reading and quietly using computers, then some more people standing drinking coffee, and a few more carrying books toward the wooden librarians' counter. He saw an old woman standing behind it. She had blonde and gray hair and was wearing a black v-neck top and pink neck scarf. She was looking straight at him, with a nervous curiosity burning in her eyes.

Lester walked toward her, flashing the shotgun by the side of his leg.

She glanced down at its long black barrel and gasped. Her first thought was to call the police, then she looked up and saw the two police officers and the guy in the gray suit standing behind him. It was reassuring, but confusing at the same time and she still spoke with a glimmer of fear in her voice when she asked him, "May I help you? Officer?"

She sounded quiet and fragile, like she was taking a stab in the dark as to whether Lester was, or wasn’t, actually a cop.

Lester nodded. "Yes, you can,” he said while he pulled the folded up picture of Beck and Sapphire out from his inside jacket pocket. He slapped it down on the counter, quickly unfolded it and turned it one-hundred-eighty degrees. "These two people, have you seen them?"

The librarian squinted at the photograph and nodded. Okay. He must be a cop, she thought and said, "Yes."

“They’re here? In this building?”

The librarian swallowed and nodded.”They asked me about a book.”

"Well, Ma’am, they're wanted fugitives,” Lester said to her. “And we're here to take them in. I need you to tell me exactly where they are."

The librarian glanced at the photograph, again, and then looked up over Lester's right shoulder. "Non-fiction," she said, slowly. There was still a nervousness in her voice because the police officers that she knew usually wouldn’t walk into libraries brandishing shotguns.

“And where’s that?”

She pointed in the direction of her gaze. Her hand shook back and forth and her fingertip appeared to swirl uncontrollably in a circular motion. "That way."

Lester smiled and scooped up the photograph. He could see the woman was debating in her mind whether or not to call 9-1-1. He nodded. “Ma’am, this is a top-secret bust. The people in this photograph are a threat to national security. And we’ve been tracking them for a while. I need you to stay calm and go about your business just like normal. Can you do that for me?”

She nodded, slowly.

He smiled and thanked her for her help, then turned and walked back over to Zanetti, Forgewood and Jackson. "They're over at the non-fiction section," he said and pointed in the same direction as the librarian had pointed. His hand was deathly still and there was a wicked smile on his face. "It's showtime!"

***

When Beck and Sapphire reached the adult non-fiction section, they were confronted by a wild group of screaming young children. They were all maybe seven or eight years old, and wearing sneakers and blue denim shorts and t-shirts in shades of white and yellow. The boys had pudding bowl haircuts, some longer than others, and the girls had their hair tied back in ponytails or braided into pigtails that ran down the backs of their heads.

There was a young woman with them. She had long straight black hair and was wearing black pants and an aqua long-sleeved top. She held a clipboard in her hands and there was a stern expression on her face.

Great, Beck thought, figuring it was probably some sort of school trip.

The young woman was calling the children's names and shouting various commands, reading them off the white sheet of paper clipped to her brown board, but the children ignored her. They were running back and forth down the aisles, jumping and shouting, and making contorted faces at each other between the tall white wooden racks that were packed with an assorted array of books.

Sapphire saw the unamused look on his face. “Ignore them,” she said. “And let’s find this book.”

He nodded, knowing she was right, that no distractions can interrupt focusing on the job at hand. Not even a delinquent herd of children. “Let’s get started,” he said and begun looking along the edges of the shelves, for Section A.

Beck was a fairly well-read man, mostly from his time inside, not much for inmates too do, except fight, talk and read. But he wasn't a member of a library anywhere in the country and he had never seen such a vast collection of titles. He saw everything from small paperbacks, to bigger and heavier hardbacks and, also, a few textbooks with even thicker spines and much larger pages. They all had covers in a multitude of colors, from shadowy blacks to lighter tints of gray, to pastel tones of peach and burning shades of orange. There were even a few in gold, silver and bronze. They were all well organized, going from A to Z, each book stacked vertically with the title running down its spine.

He tilted his head and read them. They covered a wide range of subjects, from accountancy to astronomy, from economics to ergonomics, from geography to geometry, and everything beyond, all with individual item numbers printed on white labels that were stuck onto the edges of the white wooden shelves they sat on. Without the number, it would’ve been like finding a needle in a haystack.

They walked up and down the aisles of section A, scanning the titles running down the spines of the books and taking in the small eleven-digit codes on the shelves below them. They had gotten about half-way down the third aisle, and closer to the screaming pack of kids than Beck would have liked, when Sapphire spotted it sitting in the middle of the fourth shelf from the bottom, about waist height on her right. It was tightly tucked in between something called ‘More Guns, Less Crime’ and another book named ‘Gun Control and Constitutional Rights.’ Running Guns: The global black market in small arms was an old paperback with a full photographic cover and white cracks along the horizontal of its spine. "There it is," she said, pointing. "Middle of the rack."

Beck glanced down at the item number printed on the white label that was stuck to the shelf below it: A-1-411876393. He smiled, then reached over and pried it from the collection. The other books on its right tumbled sideward, falling like a row of dominos, into the space. He glanced at its cover. The title of the book was printed in white, with the subtitle below it in yellow, above a close-up of a guy dressed in olive army fatigues, holding a machine gun across his chest with a full belt of bullets hanging from the gun’s side.

He opened it up and looked at the first page. The paper was off-white and its corners were brown and dog-eared. There was a due date slip glued onto the middle of it. There were only two names on the list. The first was a Ray Gunn, with a date from almost fourteen months ago. And the second was Mike Sikorsky, with a date that matched exactly what was on the book receipt hidden at the bottom of the cigar box. Beck glanced at Sapphire, a glimmer in his eyes, knowing he was onto something. He nodded and turned to the next page. That was when he heard a man's voice shouting from somewhere behind him.

"There he is," the guy called, aggressively.

It sounded uncharacteristic, given the setting, but recognizably nasally. Beck realized he had heard it before. It was one of the cops from the morgue.

He then heard the sound of a woman screaming. The school teacher. It was sharp and loud. He turned to look behind his back, but before he could get a glimpse of anything, he heard a loud bang and felt a thunderous blast by the side of his chest.

It sounded like somebody had dropped the Encyclopaedia Britannica onto a hard wooden floor. He glanced down and saw a hole in the purple spine of some sort of book about aeronautics and what looked like the base of a full metal jacket buried in the pages, sticking out from the end.

Sapphire glanced down at it, fear in her eyes.

"Get down," Beck called, as loud as he could, as he dived for the floor. He wrapped his powerful arms around her waist and pulled her down to the carpet with him, behind the cover of the bookshelf.

The children around them screamed and dived to the ground. Their teacher dived for cover and landed on top of them. She lay face-down, whimpering, with her arms and legs spread out in the shape of an X. Trying to cover as many of them as she could.

There was another loud bang as they fell to the floor. It sounded just like the first, except there was an abrupt metallic ringing in the middle of it. Beck glanced up and saw that the steel supporting beam holding one of the bookshelves’ sidewalls had been blown clean from the wood. The sidewall had collapsed to the floor and the wooden shelves had tilted downward where the sidewall had been. Each of the shelves angled toward the ground and formed slopes like the hypotenuse of a right-angled triangle. The books all leaned over on their side and began to slide down the shelves. They tumbled off the sloped edge and over the front, one-by-one, and toppled to the floor. The first couple thumped against the carpet and then the rest thumped on top of them and formed a growing pile on the floor. Some lay face-up with open pages, while others lay face-down and fully closed, and a couple balanced precariously upright, standing on their bottom edges.

Beck noticed Sapphire’s shoulder sticking out beyond the edge of the bookshelf. He grabbed her hand and pulled her back behind the shelf, then ducked around her. He glanced around the corner, through a gap between a remaining couple of books that had been wedged in between the intermingled planks of wood that were left of a once five-foot-tall bookshelf. He saw four men maybe fifteen feet on the other side of it. One of them was bald and wearing a black leather jacket, a dark t-shirt and dark pants. He was standing beside a dark-haired guy who was in a gray British suit with a white shirt and silver tie. There were two police officers in dark-blue uniform standing together on his left. One of the cops was blond-haired and white and the other was mostly dark-haired and black. The white guy was strapping and the black guy was fat. They each held a nickel-plated Beretta M9 in their hands and had adopted the police shooting stance. The guy in the gray suit stood more relaxed. He had a black Glock in his right hand, and the guy in the black leather jacket, next to him, held a black Winchester SXP Black Shadow across his chest.

Lester scanned the bookshelf and noticed Beck and Sapphire ducking on the other side. He pumped the shotgun’s forend and pulled the trigger. The blast sounded like somebody had poked an over-inflated balloon with a nine-inch nail. Metal shrapnel exploded from its muzzle and tore through the air. It spattered into the books' vinyl, cardboard and paper covers and chips of vinyl and fragments of paper exploded into the air. But the shelf remained in-tact.

The young teacher screamed some more as the children whimpered and sobbed and tried to dig themselves into the carpet. A little girl got up from the floor and tried to run across the aisle to be with her friends.

Zanetti caught her by the arm as she scurried past. He jammed his gun into the right side of her chest, its muzzle pressed into the fleshy gap between her ribs. She yelped in pain and cried. "Beck," he called. "Surrender yourself or I'll blow this little girl away, right here, in this Goddamned library."

Beck watched in horror through a gap in the books. He glanced around at Sapphire and reached for his Smith & Wesson that was holstered by the small of his back, its barrel tucked into the waist of his jeans. She shook her head. It was too dangerous. She knew it, and he knew it, too. Reaching for his gun was an unconscious response. He knew fine well that he couldn't fire it, not with all the children in his range of fire. He couldn’t risk a child taking a bullet.

"Beck," Zanetti called, again. "You’ve got three seconds, or I’ll blow her brains out."

Beck made no response. He was racking his mind, trying to think of a way out of this.

Zanetti started the count. "One..."

Beck said nothing. He kept still, thinking. They had four guns and he had none, at least none that he could viably use in this precise moment. He took a deep breath and glanced up at the wall behind him. There was a red steel box with the word, 'FIRE', above a rectangular-shaped glass panel in the middle that said: BREAK GLASS, PRESS HERE. But he knew that if he stood up they would blow his head clean off.

"Two," Zanetti continued, much louder than when he had said, 'one.'

Beck grimaced and moved to stand.

Sapphire grabbed his arm and shook her head. “They won’t do it,” she whispered, tears in her eyes. “They can’t do it.”

"Thre..." Zanetti began to say.

A thin-built teenage boy with flat brown hair, and a thin face cratered with red pimples, sprung up from the floor somewhere on the other side of one of the shelves behind them. He was wearing a black superhero t-shirt and had a pair of glasses over his face that had lenses like the bottom of glass milk bottles.

"Give yourself up, man," he shouted in a mousy-sounding voice as he pointed his right forefinger aggressively around himself in different directions. "Don't let them shoot that little girl."

The four men shifted on their feet and spun around to face him. The muzzles of their guns moved with them, with their aim rotating from Beck and Sapphire's position behind the bookshelf toward the young man.

His eyes widened and he took a step back and swallowed hard. He stuck his hands out, up over his head, and his eyes filled up like he was about to cry.

Beck used the distraction to his advantage and balled his left hand into a huge sledgehammer-sized fist. He leapt up from the carpet and smashed the fire alarm glass with one stiff left hook.

The men heard it shatter and spun back around. Forgewood fired his M9 at Beck as he was on his way down. The bullet flew past the top of his ear and took a chunk of concrete from the wall behind him.

The fire alarm sounded and the overhead sprinklers kicked in. A shower of water spurted down on their heads and the alarm rang loudly throughout the building. It sounded like high-pitched metallic clanks, like a crazy person was frantically ringing a brass handbell above their heads.

Zanetti tossed the little girl to the ground and said something. It was inaudible beneath the alarm. The four gunmen then stepped forward toward the bookshelf. Lester pumped the SXP's forend, again, and it discharged the cartridge of the shell that had peppered the row of books. It sounded completely silent, drowned out underneath the metallic ringing.

Beck watched their feet lift from the gray-and-chartreuse-green checked carpet in unison. Right, left, right, left. He could see the distance between them and the bookshelf disappear behind their heels like sand disappears from the upper bulb of an hourglass. They were maybe only ten feet away with four loaded guns and no reservations about lighting them up among the group of children. He sighed and pulled his Smith & Wesson from the back of his jeans. He had no other choice. He curled his right forefinger through the trigger guard and covered the trigger, then pushed its barrel through a gap in the books and angled its muzzle upward. He aimed it in the direction of Leather Jacket’s chest and began to pull on the trigger. His knuckle turned white. That was when he heard the thumping sound of charging footsteps.

It sounded like it was coming from a closed classroom across the other side of the library, behind the four gunmen. He heard the frantic banging of hands on the room’s hollow wooden doors and caught a glimpse of them swinging open. The thunder of the footsteps suddenly grew much louder. He kept still, his finger pulling on the trigger, listening and watching as maybe five-hundred people charged out through the doors.

They had fearful and panicked and snarling expressions across their faces. They were running and hobbling and scrambling for the fire exit, snatching at the air with open palms and hooked fingers and clenched fists. They piled out twenty at a time, beside each other, on top of each other, in front of each other. Somebody was crawling along the floor in the middle. It was a stampede and it was headed straight toward Beck and Sapphire, the four gunmen and the group of children because the fire exit was a red door behind them by end of the aisle.

Beck pushed Sapphire back around the side of the bookshelf and leaned in against the shelves. He saw the four men spin around and step backward as they saw the horde of people charging toward them like a herd of wildebeests migrating across a vast African plane.

The men lowered their guns to their sides and closed their bodies and leaned down to the ground.

The children scurried around their feet, some of them ducking into the safety of the sides of the shelves and the others making it to the other side of the white bookshelf across the aisle.

The horde charged past. They knocked over shelves and sent books flying, pushed past the pile that lay on the carpet and swept almost everything from their path. Three of the gunmen were lifted up off their feet and pulled out through the fire exit. Swept away by the rampant tide of humanity. But, one of them, the fat black cop ducked around the side of the bookshelf out of the horde’s path, on the same side as where Sapphire was hiding.

He saw her and reached out his left hand.

Beck heard her shriek among the commotion.

"Help!" she called.

He looked toward the end of the shelves and saw the fat black cop leaning over her. He had a grip on her dress and his M9 in his right hand. He arched it upward through the air, toward her head, as stragglers from the horde anxiously dived past.

Beck knew he couldn't shoot. There were still children behind them. But he knew that he was going to have to put the guy down. That was for damn sure. He reached over and grabbed the first book he saw. It had a hardback black cover with a close-up picture of the red rocky surface of Mars on the front. The Encyclopaedia of Space, with somewhere near to a thousand pages inside, packed with random facts and statistics about asteroids, comets, planets, stars, moons, solar systems, and galaxies. It felt like it weighed around ten pounds.

He pulled it from the shelf and darted toward the guy and clubbed the back of his head with every one of the encyclopedia’s near one-thousand pages. The book's hard spine, and all of the known listed galaxies in the universe, thumped against his skull and he dropped to the floor like a sack of cement, his gun falling to the carpet.

Beck grabbed Sapphire’s hand and pulled her up from the ground and nodded toward the building's main entrance. "Let's get the hell outta here," he called, against the ringing of the alarm.

She heard almost none of it, but she knew what he was saying.

They ran through to the open hallway, past some computer terminals and service counters, past the children’s section on the right and a few eerily-empty classrooms on the left, the doors of which moving back and forth in the tremor of the air. Beck and Sapphire continued into the lobby and then slipped out the glass automatic entrance doors into the shade of the porte-cochere and continued down the monoblock drive, past a group of librarians and a gathering of readers standing at designated fire points and out to the burning afternoon sun. They stopped by the black Mustang, wet and short of breath.

“Jesus Chris, when will this end?” Sapphire asked him, grief in her voice.

“Soon,” he answered, confidently, and glanced down to his left. He still had the book they came for in his left hand.

Sapphire smiled. “I hope so.”

“It will,” he said.

She glanced at the book and grinned. “When's the due date on that?".

"This one ain't going back,” he answered and opened the car door, then tossed it in onto the front passenger seat. He then glanced up at one of the security cameras by the roof of the building and pointed up toward it. "That's it, that’s how they found us.”

Sapphire looked up, holding her right hand over her eyebrows to shield her eyes from the sun.

Beck continued, "They must have got the license plate and ran a trace on the ALPR."

"The ALPR?"

"Automatic License Plate Recognition," he said. "Once cops know a plate, they can run it against cameras all around the city and use digital stills and their timestamps to get a location on a vehicle.”

“Oh my God,” she said. “They can do that?”

He nodded. “They must have got the plate from the Morgue. Or the motel."

“What do we do?”

“We can make ourselves impossible to find,” he answered and walked around to the back of the car. He reached down and pulled the Mustang’s license plate off with his bare hands, then opened the trunk and tossed it inside. “Try finding it now,” he said and smiled as he slammed the trunk shut.

She nodded.

“Okay, let’s go,” he said and walked around and opened the door and climbed into the driver's seat.

Sapphire climbed in beside him and lifted the book and sat it down on her lap, then turned and looked at Beck, gratitude in her eyes. If it wasn’t for him, she’d be dead already, and she knew it.

He started the engine and slipped the Mustang into DRIVE, then gunned it across the lot and turned back out onto North Twenty-Third Street.

ELEVEN

The AAA roadside assistance truck was a white Chevrolet Silverado pickup. It looked relatively new, maybe less than a year old, and clean, as if it had just been washed. It approached the Ford Galaxy breakdown from a southbound direction on North Colonel Rowe Boulevard sometime after two o’clock. It was only the driver’s fifth breakdown call-out on what had been an otherwise slow day, but there wouldn’t be a sixth because his fifth was about to become his last.

Hernandez, Estrada and Jimenez watched the white Chevrolet’s approach from the cab of the FedEx truck parked up on the other side of the road. Their heads turned and followed it as it drove maybe twenty feet past. It U-turned across the lanes of traffic and pulled up in behind them, its right tires coming to a halt on the grass verge and its left tires to a halt on the road.

Hernandez watched the reflection of the driver stepping out of the door in his left wing mirror. He saw the pickup's white door swing open and two black boots appear on the concrete underneath it. Then he saw a man's head and shoulders pop up above it and watched his body emerge as the guy closed the door.

The guy had short gray hair and a smooth clean-shaven face. His forehead had deep wrinkles of age. He looked to be somewhere in his early fifties. He was wearing a red, white and blue hooped polo, a black leather belt, dark-blue pants and a plain pair of boots the same color as his belt. He was holding a brown clipboard under his left arm.

Hernandez watched his reflection getting bigger in the mirror as he walked towards the truck. He stopped when the Ford came into view, now standing by the side of the FedEx truck, and appeared to check the Ford’s license plate against a few sheets of paper clipped onto his clipboard. The guy ruffled the papers, flicking from sheet to sheet and tracing his finger about half-way down the fourth or fifth sheet of white A4. He looked up at the red Ford and back down at the sheet. And that's when Hernandez opened the door and stepped out of the truck.

"You the Triple-A guy?" he asked him, rhetorically, already knowing the answer.

The guy glanced up from the clipboard, squinting against the sun, barely making out Hernandez’s face, and nodded. Then he glanced down Hernandez’s body. His head stopped bobbing back and forth when he noticed the black Glock in his right hand. He froze for a brief second and then raised his hands out in front of him, holding the clipboard up above his head.

"Hey man," he said as the sheets paper fanned out in the seething warm air. "We don't need no guns at a breakdown. I’m not here for no trouble."

Hernandez said nothing. He grinned and raised the gun up to just below his chest.

There was a banging sound of another door closing and then a younger guy, dressed in the same uniform as the old guy was wearing, appeared behind his partner. He was tall and black with short black hair and he looked to be about thirty. He had black shades over his eyes and he was holding a black tire iron in his left hand. There was a scowl across his face.

"Yo, man," he called. "You can put that gun down and let Harry go or I'll..."

He stopped mid-sentence, feeling the cold metal muzzle of a gun suddenly pressing against the back of his neck. And, then, another through his shirt, pressing against the small of his back.

Hernandez watched with amusement as the black guy’s eyes widened like two large eggs cracked into a burning hot frying pan.

"The iron," a man said from behind him, in a Latino accent. It was Estrada. "Drop it."

He let it fall from his hand. It clanked against the ground.

"You drive?" another guy asked him, sounding similar to the first, Jimenez, as he jabbed the gun deep into his tailbone.

The black guy winced as it caught his spine. He felt a sharp jolt of pain shoot up to his neck.

“You drive?” the same guy snarled.

The black guy nodded, slowly. “Yes.”

"Good," the other guy behind him said. "Because that just saved your life. Now, get around to the back of the truck."

Hernandez nodded to the old guy and beckoned him with his gun. "You too, old man."

They marched them to the back of the truck and Jimenez opened the door. The two roadside assistance guys’ nostrils were immediately assaulted by a combination of paper and sweat, and they saw two men lying on the floor inside. They wriggled and groaned, but their arms, legs were bound and their mouths covered by duct tape.

"Cell phones and wallets," Hernandez said to the roadside assistance guys. "Hand 'em over."

The old guy took his wallet from his pants and handed it to him. It was tan-colored and suede. "I don't have a cell," he said. “My wife’s been trying to get me to use one for ages, but not me. Those things are for…” He never finished what he was going to say. He was nervous and he was waffling, aimlessly, before pausing and watching as Hernandez took the money from his wallet’s bill slip and passed it around Jimenez and Estrada and then tossed it into the back of the truck. “Why that’s my money. That’s stealing. You can’t do that,” he said to them.

The three Hispanics laughed, then Estrada patted the guy down to be sure he wasn’t lying about the phone. "He's clean.”

Hernandez turned to the black guy. "You too, Asshole. Cell phone and wallet."

He sighed and pulled a black Samsung phone and brown leather wallet from his pants and handed them over to him.

Hernandez tossed his cell across the grass on his right. It plopped into a shallow green river that ran parallel with the road. He opened his wallet and raided its bill slot. "Whoa, must be two-hundred bucks in here boys," he said and held up a fanned out wad of notes, then passed them around the other two men.

Estrada then handed a roll of duct tape to the old guy, shoving it against his chest and said, "Right, tape up the nigger's wrists."

The black guy flashed him a seething look, like he ought to knock his teeth in for using that word. If there weren't three guns on me, he thought and turned and looked at his AAA partner.

The old guy shook his head, a dejected and apologetic look on his face.

The black guy shook his head, too, and sighed and stuck his hands out in front of his body.

The old guy wrapped the duct tape around his wrists.

"Tighter," Hernandez barked as he watched it wrap around and around.

"Yeah, we don't want his big black ass breaking out of that," Jimenez added.

The old guy wrapped the tape around and around, again, this time much tighter than the last.

"Now, his ankles," Estrada ordered, pointing to his feet with his Glock.

“Jesus,” the old guy said, under his breath and shook his head. Then he leaned over and wrapped the tape around the black guy’s ankles.

Happy that the large black man was suitably restrained, Estrada snatched the roll from the old guy’s hand and took a thick strip from the roll, then stepped over and slapped it across the black guy's lips. "How's that taste, ah, nigger?"

The guy just glared back at him, seething, the veins in his face pulsing and his eyes angrier than dark overhanging thunderclouds.

Estrada saw it and sniggered. Then he pushed him into the back of the van and turned to the old guy. "Okay, now, it’s your turn,” he said. “Sit on the ledge with your hands and feet together, in front of you.”

The old guy did as he was told. He sat down on the ledge of the truck, with his hands and feet in front of him, pressed together. He gave the men a pleading look.

They ignored it. Estrada proceeded to wrap the tape around his wrists, while the other two held him in place with the threat of their Glocks. Next, Estrada taped his ankles and then he finished him off as he'd done to the other guy. He slapped a strip of tape on his mouth and pushed him inside. Then he stepped back and slipped his cell phone from his jacket pocket as Hernandez and Jimenez slammed the doors shut.

“Good work, Boys,” Estrada said to them and flipped open the cell phone’s the lid and dialed the chairman's direct line.

***

The chairman saw his phone flashing on his desk. The red lights bounced off the crocodile's teeth, momentarily, making them looked like they were soaked with blood. He saw Estrada's number pop up on the screen. He let it flash four times. Important to let his employees wait. That way, they know how dispensable they really are, he thought, before, eventually, lifting the handset.

"Estrada," he answered, authority in his gravelly voice.

"Sir," Estrada said. "We got you four men. Four men who can drive."

The chairman smiled and answered.

"Good work," he said, nodding while he spoke. "Do you know any of them personally?"

"No, Sir," Estrada answered from the other end of the line. "We got them in the back of a truck, duct tape around their arms and legs."

"Exactly what I wanted to hear,” the chairman said to him. “What sort of truck?”

“FedEx one.”

The chairman nodded. “Take them down to the warehouse and put them in the management office and hold them there until I get there. And have Jimenez or Hernandez dump the truck. We don’t want some vehicle fleet tracker giving up our location."

***

The stampede of people dissipated in the library’s parking lot. Some of them stood in the sun with their cell phones up by the side of their face, calling to tell friends and family what had happened, while others sought shelter under the shade offered by the side of building or moved off to sit in the comfortable air-conditioned insides of their cars. Lester, Forgewood, Zanetti smoothed themselves down, annoyed expressions on their faces, drew breaths of the hot dry air and re-raised their firearms by their waists. Lester held the shotgun across his stomach with his left hand cupped around its black steel handle.

“Anyone seen Jackson?” Forgewood asked them.

Lester and Zanetti shook their heads.

“What about Joe Beck and the whore?” Lester asked.

They craned their heads left and right and glanced around like they were looking for bricks of gold. But they weren’t. They were looking for Beck and Sapphire. Not by facial appearance. It would be almost impossible to spot them. There were too many people still hanging around them for that. Instead, they were looking for colors and size. A thin, busty woman in a red dress and a tall wide-shouldered guy wearing jeans and a black shirt over his huge frame. There was no sign of them on that side of the fire door.

“They must still be inside,” Zanetti said.

Lester nodded. “Let’s go back in and get them.”

The three men stepped back inside. The alarm was still ringing and the sprinklers were still squirting showers of water from high above their heads. Spatters of water bounced off the barrels of their guns and droplets formed on the muzzles. They dripped, slowly, to the carpet.

Just like they had done in the crowded parking lot, they looked left and then right, with steady, stone-cold eyes. They scanned the immediate area, then the aisle in front of them, where the remains of the bookshelf and pile of books lay on the floor, and then looked to the hallway farther ahead. But they saw nothing.

Lester gestured a movement with his left hand and they fanned out. Zanetti went up the leftmost aisle, Lester took the aisle two down from him, toward the middle of the section, and Forgewood took the second last one on the right. They walked side-by-side, slowly, steadily and ready to open fire at anything that moved in just a heartbeat's notice.

Lester stood on a couple of open-paged books lying face-up on the floor. They squelched beneath his feet and black, wet ink smudged across the books’ damp pages.

"I've found Jackson," Zanetti called and stopped walking. He ducked down and disappeared behind the bookshelf.

Forgewood and Lester completed their sweep. They paused at their aisles' ends and shook their heads and then looped around in a choreographed fashion. There was nobody there.

Forgewood shook his head.

“Shit,” Lester snarled.

They walked back down the aisle to where Zanetti had stopped. He had crouched down beside Jackson, who was lying unconscious on the floor slumped against the base of the bookshelf.

His arm was extended to the left of his head and jammed into the bottom row of books. A couple of them sat lopsided and one had fallen out where his hand had crashed in. There was a trickle of blood running down the side of his neck. It had stained the light-blue collar of his shirt with a dark and sticky red.

“What the hell happened?” Forgewood asked.

Nobody said anything.

Zanetti prodded Jackson with the Glock, pushing it into his side.

He began to stir. He opened his eyes and sucked a mouthful of air and winced as he brought his left hand against the back of his head. He felt his hair warm and wet and slightly sticky. He brought his hand in front of his face, open-palmed, and saw a red covering of blood.

The men watched as he stared at it, absently, like he never even saw the water from the sprinklers wash it from his palm, down his wrist and into the sleeve of his shirt.

"Looks like he's been taken out," Lester said.

“The stampede?” Forgewood asked.

Zanetti shook his head. "He's probably concussed," he said and glanced down at a heavy encyclopedia sticking out from under the bookshelf beside him. The book's bottom-left corner was smeared with red blood.

"Jesus Christ," Forgewood said. "Somebody must have hit him with an encyclopedia.”

“Somebody?” Zanetti quipped, then holstered his Glock back in under his suit jacket and looked back at Jackson. He held up his right hand, open-palmed with his fingers spread apart. "How many fingers am I holding up?" he asked him.

Jackson didn't respond. There was a vacant look in his eye.

“He’ll need taken down to the hospital,” Zanetti said. There was now concern in his voice. Not for Jackson’s heath, but for the paperwork that gets triggered any time a cop gets put onto a gurney.

“No way,” Forgewood said, shaking his head. “We take him down there, somebody has to explain it to the chief. He’ll have to just shake it off.”

“Shit,” Zanetti said, then clicked his fingers on his left hand. "Yo, Jackson?" he called.

Jackson's eyes flicked up to his face and, for the first time, it looked as if somebody was there behind them.

"How many fingers am I holding up?" he asked him again.

Jackson winced again as he patted the back of his head. He sucked a breath of air in through his white tightly clenched teeth and looked at Zanetti's hand, before pausing a beat to focus. "Five, you asshole. Now, help me the fuck up."

Forgewood blew out his cheeks, relieved, and Zanetti helped Jackson up while Lester picked up the red shotgun cartridges and brass bullet casings from the floor and tucked them into his jacket pocket.

He had cleared the immediate area, where they had stood and fired from, and then glanced down and noticed the book with the bullet lodged in its cover. Shit, he thought and grabbed it. No way to tell whether it was from an M9 or Zanetti's Glock, and no way to leave it behind for somebody to find. He tried to stuff it into his pocket, but it was too big. He tucked it into the waist of his pants, instead, covering it with his jacket.

Zanetti then lifted the Encyclopedia of Space that had hit the back of Jackson’s head like an asteroid, clutching it like it was a briefcase, and they all walked back out through the fire exit and into the sun. The people were now standing in a line outside at what looked like a fire assembly point across the car park while others walked around in luminous yellow sleeveless jackets. Library fire marshals.

The four men ducked around the back of the building, out of sight, and Zanetti turned around and looked at them with pondering eyes. “This guy that the chairman sent us down here to get, Joe Beck, any you boys seen him somewhere else before?”

The three men shook their heads.

“See, I thought he looked familiar, like I’ve seen him someplace else,” he said to them and shook his head like he knew it but couldn’t quite picture where exactly.

“From the photograph this morning?” Lester asked.

Zanetti shook his head, again. That wasn’t it. He opened his mouth to speak, but his work cell phone rang from his inside pocket. The ring was low and constant, muffled by his suit jacket, but it was there. He pulled it out and swiped the screen to answer. "It’s Zanetti," he said.

He nodded into the line as he listened, glanced at his watch and said, "McAllen-Hidalgo International Bridge crossing point? You’re sure? I'll head down there now," and then hung up.

He slipped the phone back into his suit and looked at Lester, Forgewood and Jackson. "ATF shit. We got a large bust. A guy at crossing with a truck-load of counterfeit alcohol. Gotta head down there and oversee it.” He sighed. “And the mountain of paperwork it'll cause."

Lester, Forgewood and Jackson nodded their understanding and he walked away, heavy encyclopedia in hand, turning around the Orchid Avenue side of the building and off toward his Lincoln. They watched him slip a black clamshell flip phone from his other jacket pocket and make a call as he turned around the side of the building.

The three men followed his path and reached their cars a minute later, Zanetti now completely out of sight and his car gone from the slot. Jackson was walking slowly and staggering, like he was still to really re-gain all of his faculties. Forgewood opened the passenger door for him and Lester helped him in. Then the radio on Forgewood's belt began to crackle.

"Officer Forgewood?" a man asked, from the other side. "This is dispatch. We have a ten-thirty-two in progress at Target on West Trenton Road."

Forgewood glanced at it, wondering why dispatch was radioing him for something going down up on West Trenton. He thought for a moment and then realized that’s where he had the Dodge Charger dumped, at an apartment block around the corner. The dispatcher had picked up its location and figured they were the closest cops in the area.

The man continued, "We need you to respond immediately."

Forgewood glanced at his watch and pushed the green button to speak. "Okay, dispatch, we’re just around the corner,” he lied. “We’ll go check it out. Will radio in if backup is required." He pushed the green button and silenced the mouthpiece. Then looked at Lester. "We got a man with a gun in a grocery store that Jackson and I are supposed to be right next to. We gotta go. But we'll swing by the warehouse later, for the distribution, as planned."

Lester nodded and watched Forgewood jump into the white Chrysler and speed off out onto Orchid Avenue. He looked up into the sun. It looked bright and orange and stood out against a backdrop of blue. Then he blew out his cheeks and pulled his cell phone from his jacket pocket. Unflipped it and dialed the chairman's number to give him the bad news.

***

The chairman was still sitting behind the glass desk in his office on the fourth floor of his company’s headquarters. His left elbow was resting on the desk's glass surface and his left forearm was raised in the air about head height. He held a half-eaten sandwich in his left hand. It had a layer of ham and another of cheese on brown bread with a light spreading of mayonnaise. It was a late lunch and it was his first meal of the day.

There was a white china mug of coffee on the desk, sitting to his right. He always ate with his left hand and drank with his right. His right hand was his dominant hand, his gun hand, the hand he killed people with. It was also the hand he smoked with, too. There was a half-smoked cigar resting between two teeth on the crocodile's bottom jaw, also a few inches to his right. Its tip was in its mouth and its butt was sticking out. A stream of gray smoke swirled up past the beast's amber glass eye.

There was a document sitting on the desk in front of him. It was thick, maybe fifty pages long, each of them crisp and white. It was a research and development proposal for a new type of medication, printed in black and white. He read the front page from the bottom to the top: starting with the proposed return on investment, glancing at the payback period, then time it would take to develop and then he read the drug's premise and its name. It was some sort of new pain relief pill, but its name was unpronounceable.

He nodded and finished the sandwich, then swept the crumbs from the bottom left corner of the document with the back of his hand and flipped it over to the back page. He then peeled back the last two pages and opened it at the financials and, again, he began reading from the bottom line.

He hadn’t gotten much further than the net present value of the investment when he reached for his cigar, pausing as the light strip on his phone flashed red. It caught his eye. He glanced at the screen. Lester’s number ran across it. He lifted the phone.

“Lester?”

"Sir," Lester said to him. He spoke quickly, sounding alarmed. "There was another incident at the library.”

The chairman said nothing.

“Sir, they got away."

The chairman kept quiet. He reached over and lifted his cigar, took a draw and let his silence linger.

“Sir?” Lester said.

The chairman exhaled a plume of white smoke. "I’m already aware," he said to him, speaking slowly and in a calm intonation. "Zanetti called on the way to handle an ATF problem. He told me about the fire alarm. Said that you guys lost them in the crowd."

Lester said nothing. He knew the chairman didn't take well to failure.

The chairman continued, "But, Lester, there’s nothing to be concerned about. Things are well in-hand."

"Things? What things, Sir?" Lester asked, nervously.

"Zanetti said that he recognized Joe Beck from Agent Sikorsky's funeral. Which means we no longer need to go looking for him. We've found our leverage. And we're going to use it to make him come to us. And we're going to have him bring the whore with him."

Lester exhaled, slowly, on the other side, relieved. "Why, Sir, that’s excellent news.”

The chairman smiled and sighed. It was a happy, contented sigh.

“What do you want me to do now, Sir?"

The chairman took another draw of his cigar and thought about it for a moment and then answered. "Firstly, I want you to go to a gas station,” he said. “I want you to buy some duct tape, pliers, a screwdriver and a canister. And fill the canister with gasoline. And secondly, I want you to go over to the whore's apartment on Violet Avenue. Oswald will still be waiting outside. I want you to go over there and get in the van. Tell him to drive it out to Pharr, to Agent Sikorsky’s house.”

“To Agent Sikorsky’s house?” Lester inquired.

The chairman nodded. “That’s right. You’re going over there and you’re going to scoop up Kim Sikorsky."

"That’s our leverage?"

"That’s right, Lester," the chairman answered. “Now, what you’re going to do is scoop her up and make sure to get her cell phone. Throw her in the back of the van and drive her around the county for the rest of the afternoon. And drive carefully, so you don’t arouse suspicion, but take sharp corners and make abrupt stops. Drive on and off the road. Take the freeway and the state roads. Make her wonder where the hell she’s being taken. Make the journey disorientate and frighten her. And, then, anytime after five-fifteen, I want you to bring her to the warehouse. I’ll be there. Waiting.”

Lester muttered his agreement.

The chairman allowed him a moment to speak before saying, "And, Lester, I let this afternoon’s failure slide. Don’t ever fail me again." He pushed the red button on the phone and ended the call before Lester could say another word.

He then sat back in his chair, relaxing, cigar in his mouth and a smug smile across his face, before glancing back at the drug proposal and totting up the figures in his head. Things are turning for better, he thought and drew a Montblanc pen from the inside pocket of his suit, turned to the back page and signed his name on the approval line. He pushed it over to the left side of the desk, took a draw of the cigar and exhaled once more, before tossing the stub back into the crocodile's mouth while pondering what he was actually going to do when he met Joe Beck.

TWELVE

Kim Sikorsky was sitting curled up in the corner bend of the brown leather sofa in the lounge of her home. Her feet were on the seat, tucked under her thighs. She could smell the light scent of lavender that was lingering around the room, although the candle had burned out and its wick was now black and crisp. There was a white photo album sitting on her lap. It was open and she was flicking through the pages, gazing at the photos.

She flipped over to page seven. There was one full-page photo, in full color, tucked behind a protective transparent cellophane cover. It was one of the photographer’s shots from hers and Mike's wedding day. They were standing together, in the picture, in the garden of an archaic stone church in Lincoln, Nebraska.

He was the first thing she looked at. He was dashing. His brown curly hair was swept over to the left and he had worn a black suit with a white shirt and a thin black necktie. The tip of a white handkerchief was sticking out of the front left breast pocket of his suit.

She flicked her eyes from his face to hers and took in a glimpse of the crystal tiara she had worn. It had sat atop her long blonde hair like a crown and glistened in the camera's flash. She glanced down and looked at her snowy white dress. It was still perfect. She glanced further down the photograph and paused, noticing that she was holding his hand. A tear slipped down her right cheek. She could still feel his warm palm on hers, like he was still right there, beside her. But he wasn't. He was gone.

She swallowed hard and thought hard about the dress, to divert her mind. She hadn't seen it for a while, not since they had moved to McAllen. She remembered boxing it up, along with the rest of the wedding stuff, and Mike putting it into the haulage van. She remembered him lifting it out and bringing it all inside, so it would have been in the house somewhere. Probably lying at the bottom of a closet in one of the spare rooms upstairs, she thought.

She then thought about the tiara. She knew exactly where it was. It was in her jewelry box. It twinkled every morning and every night, every time she opened it. She sighed, deeply, and grabbed the bottom right corner of the page and flicked over to the next photo. That was when she heard a knock on the door.

She glanced up and looked through the archway to the hall with curiosity flashing in her eyes. She wasn't expecting visitors and, naturally, she wondered who it might be. Whoever it was had chosen to knock on the door rather than pressing the button to ring the bell. Which meant it probably wasn't somebody that she knew. Everybody she knew rang the bell. She figured it was a salesman and ignored it.

But whoever was at the door, they knocked again. The sound of their knuckles wrapping on the wood echoed around the hall and into the lounge.

She didn't really want to answer it, but she figured that she ought to. Whoever it was had chosen to knock twice rather than just walk away. Which meant it most likely wasn't a salesman. And the second knock was louder and longer. It sounded like it might have been important.

She laid the photo album down on the sofa and padded across the polished wooden floor in her white socks. They slipped ever so slightly with each step. Not enough for somebody to notice, but enough for her to feel it. I ought to use less polish next time, she thought as she walked toward the door. She unlatched the brass chain from the door lock and reached for the handle. Pulled it down with just enough force to peel the bolt back from the lock and allow the door to click open. Its top hinge squeaked as it turned and a beam of the afternoon light shone in through the gap. She pulled the door open, then quickly realized she had just made a huge mistake.

There were two men standing on her front step. Two men whom she had never seen before. One of them was a short and thin man with a wiry frame. He had a long white face with sunken cheeks and short, almost shaven blond hair. He was wearing dark jeans, dark boots and a black leather jacket over a charcoal-gray t-shirt. The other guy was taller and thicker set. He was completely bald and wore dark pants, a dark t-shirt and a black leather jacket. There was also a thick gold chain hanging around his neck. They were stood side-by-side, each as ugly as the other and each holding a short-barreled firearm in their right hand. They looked just like the gun that Mike had kept in a box in the cupboard upstairs. Square trigger guards, black polymer frames and grips contoured with grooves for fingers. They were Glock 19s.

She was in trouble, and she knew it. The only thing she could think of was to try and close the door. She caught her breath and reached for the door handle, but the bald guy, standing on the right, had already stuck his hand across it. He forced it further open. The handle slipped from her hand and the door swung open and slammed against the wall.

She stepped back, afraid, deeper into the hall. Her socks slipped on the polished wood. The two men noticed. The bald guy stepped inside and planted a swift kick through the knob of bone at the side of her right ankle and swept her from her feet.

Her first thought was: my baby. She brought her right hand over her stomach as if to protect it from the fall as the left of her body smashed against the wood. She cried out as the pain shot up her left forearm to her shoulder and watched in fear as the other guy stepped inside.

His boots crunched on the hard wooden floor.

She pleaded with them to stop. "Please, I'm carrying a baby. Please, don't do this."

The two men looked at each other and smiled. The bald guy on the right leaned over toward her and raised his gun up through the air. He pressed its muzzle hard against her forehead.

It felt hard and round and hollow. Maybe the most chilling thing she had ever felt.

"We know," he said. "Now, move a muscle, or say one more word, and I'll shoot you dead right here."

She didn't respond. She couldn't bring herself to, but the terror on her face said enough.

The guy glanced at the blond guy, who was now standing behind him in her hallway, and said, "Five minutes, Oswald. Ransack the place. Take what you can find. Cash, cards, jewelry and passports."

The blond guy, named Oswald, nodded and stuffed his gun into his jacket pocket and walked off down the hall. The soles of his boots sucked on the wood. His feet did not slip.

The guy holding the gun to her head pulled a roll of gray tape from his jacket and dropped it at her feet. It bounced off the wood and rolled into her left ankle. It stopped and tipped over and wobbled in a circular motion before coming to a halt on the floor.

"Tear a strip from the roll and put it over your mouth," he commanded and pressed the gun harder against her forehead.

She felt its muzzle against the bone of her skull. Terrified, and with no other choice, she lifted the roll of tape from the floor, whimpering in fear and shaking like a leaf. She tucked her nail under the folded-over pull tab and yanked a strip out from the roll.

"That's enough," he said, watching the peel.

She pressed her left thumb down on the roll and used it to apply pressure as she pulled on the strip with her right hand, out and away, and a six-or-seven-inch strip tore from the roll. She dropped the roll and pressed it over her lips. Tight.

"That’s right," the guy said and ran his left forefinger along the strip of tape, making sure it was tight enough. "Now hand me the roll."

Kim lifted it from the floor and threw it at him.

The tape fell by the guy's feet. He scooped it up with the muzzle of the gun, lifted it off and then tucked it back in his jacket.

She breathed a short sighed of relief that the gun was no longer wedged against her forehead, but she could hear the other guy going through her and Mike’s things. She heard him slamming cupboard doors and banging the cupboard drawers in the kitchen. She closed her eyes. She heard a loud metallic crash. It was a collection of high-pitched chinks, all at once. It sounded like the cutlery drawer being emptied on the floor. Then she heard a few loud smashes, like he was pulling glasses from the cupboards above the worktops.

He emerged a few moments later, with a handful of notes and coins, taken from a glass jar that she kept in the cupboard beside the mugs, and a cell phone, a white Samsung smartphone. That was what the smashing sound was. "Just some loose change and a cell phone in there," he said to the bald guy with the gun and handed him the phone.

Kim kicked out at him and yelled something inaudible, her words muffled by the duct tape.

The bald guy with the gun nodded and shoved it into his pocket, then pressed the gun back against her forehead, in the exact same spot as before. He lined its round muzzle up with the depressed red circle on her skin that it had made the first time. “One more move,” he said.

She stared up at him.

He flicked his eyes to the blond guy. "Head upstairs," he said to him. "See what you can find up there."

The blond guy nodded and stepped over her and walked up the wooden staircase. The stairs creaked with each of his steps.

The bald guy proceeded to holster his gun in the pocket of his jacket and tear another strip of tape from the roll. He reached out and grabbed her by her arms and hauled her onto her side, yanked her arms behind her back and wrapped the tape around her wrists, binding them together.

She twisted and struggled and groaned, trying to fend him off, but it was hopeless. He was too strong and she was too weak. She was helpless. She heard the blond guy banging and clanging in the rooms upstairs. Her heart sunk. She thought about the crystal tiara.

Oswald came banging back down the stairs a few minutes later. He had two passports in his left hand, hers and Mike’s, and a handful of her jewelry in his right. Some silver necklaces and bracelets, and the crystal tiara.

She saw it sticking out between his fingers.

"Maybe a couple of grand worth of shit here, Lester," he said to the bald guy with the gun and held it out for him to take a closer look. The crystals twinkled in the sunlight as it shone in through the door.

The bald guy, named Lester, nodded and said, "Good. Let's keep this between ourselves. Throw it in the van and we'll get rid of it later."

Kim closed her eyes and sobbed.

The blond guy nodded his understanding and walked out the door.

The bald guy grabbed Kim by her arm and pulled her to her feet. "Get up," he snarled.

She heard the bang of a car door and then saw the blond guy appear, again. He stood in the doorway.

"Let's load her up," he said to the bald guy and reached out and took her by her other arm.

She struggled against their crushing grip, but they held her too tight. They dragged her out the door.

Lester closed it behind them and they dragged her across the path to a white Volkswagen Crafter that they had backed into her front yard. It sat parked on the front lawn with the back doors wide open. The body was white, but it was brown with a thick covering of dirt and the wheels were missing their plastic silver trims. Their discolored, rusted metal was open to the air.

She had hoped that maybe a neighbor was out washing their car, or that one of their gardeners would be there tending to their lawns. Or that the guy who washed the home three doors down's windows every Monday afternoon was running late and was still outside. But there was nobody else around.

They hauled her toward the back of the Crafter and slung her inside, then slammed the two doors shut, left door first and then the right.

The back of the van was like a dark and empty cupboard. There was nothing at all inside and the doors had no windows. They were pure aluminum, like the van’s sidewalls. There was an aluminum panel separating the front from the back and it looked like it once had a small rectangular window directly behind the headrests. But they had tacked a thick plank wood across it.

She felt the suspension drop when they both climbed in the front and then she heard one of their doors bang shut, followed by the other, then the sound of the starter motor and the engine. She leaned over on her side, her body propped up against the van's aluminum sidewall, worrying in the darkness, wondering what they wanted as the van moved forward off her lawn.

THIRTEEN

Beck and Sapphire headed southbound on Twenty-Third Street until the northern section became the southern section and it eventually intersected under Interstate 2. He looped around and joined the freeway and headed east, eager to put as much distance as he could between them and the boundary of McAllen Police Department's and the city's ATF field office's jurisdiction.

She looked down at the book as he cruised along at sixty miles per hour, overtaking sedans and station wagons being driven by old ladies out for an afternoon on the road. The edges of the pages felt damply fragile under her fingers. She carefully flicked through them one-by-one. Not quite sure what she was looking for, but sure that she would know when she saw it.

She never saw it.

"What's in it?" Beck asked.

"Nothing," she answered, a puzzled look on her face, and shook her head.

"What do you mean nothing?"

"There's nothing.”

“You’re joking, right? There has to be something.”

She blew out her cheeks. “Not unless you count a circle around one of the page numbers and couple of underlines below some of the others as something."

“That’s not nothing.”

“It’s near enough.”

Beck thought about it. "How old do the circles and underlines look?"

Sapphire shrugged, like it was a question that she wouldn’t possibly know the answer to.

"Well," he continued. "Look closely at them. Does the ink look faded?"

She opened the book, again, and flicked through. "Don’t know. It’s a little smudged from the water."

He sighed. "What color are they?"

"They’re blue," she answered.

"Like the blue that the four-four-one-one was written in on the library receipt?"

"Yeah, I guess, it’s like that."

Beck nodded. "So, we’ve definitely not got nothing."

She rolled her eyes. “Yeah. We’ve got circles and lines.”

"Exactly," he said. "Circles and lines that were made by the same pen as Mike used on the library receipt. And what we've got isn’t just circles and lines on random page numbers, it’s most likely a series of markings, on specific page numbers.”

Sapphire was beginning to see where he was going.

“What pages are they on?"

She flicked through the book again and spoke as she saw them. "Underline below number one. Another below number four. And another below number ten. Blue circle around number twenty-three. Then nothing until fifty. There's another underline below that. And, again, on fifty-nine. And on seventy-eight. And, then, after that, nothing."

"So, we got underlines below one, four, ten, fifty, fifty-nine, and seventy-eight?" he asked.

“Yeah,” she answered.

"And a circle around twenty-three?" he added.

She nodded, then they fell silent for a moment, whilst thinking about it. They could hear the tires sucking at the road and the sound of the air whizzing past outside.

"It must be some sort of a code,” Beck said. “Twenty-three is different from one, four, ten, fifty, fifty-nine, and seventy-eight. So, twenty-three must be particularly important."

Sapphire nodded, watching him deep in thought. She could see the cogs turning inside his mind and the spark in his eyes.

"The underlines," he said. "You’re sure they’re all the same color of blue?"

"Yes," she answered.

He nodded, slowly. "They all the same shape?"

"Yes," she answered, again. "They're all straight lines."

"What about length and weight? Are they all the same?"

She hadn’t even noticed that much, so she opened the book, again, and flicked through its pages once more. She used her fingertip to gauge the length and her fingernail to judge the weight. "One and fifty-nine look the same length,” she said. “And they're fairly fine-looking lines. Ten is the same length but thicker, like maybe it was marked three or four times over. Four, fifty and seventy-eight look all the same weight, but seem to be a little bit longer than the others."

Beck nodded, again, flicking his eyes from the open road up to the rearview mirror and back down to the open road. "Okay, what we now have is a pattern. We've already separated twenty-three, and now we can do the same with the rest. Put one and fifty-nine together, ten on its own, and then four, fifty and seventy-eight together. And that gives us five different number groups."

"Five?"

“Yes,” he said, confidently. "Five. Including the four-four-one-one that was on the book receipt, it gives us five.”

She nodded.

“Now, the question is, what the hell do they mean?" he asked.

She shrugged and they fell into silence once more, only interrupted by the sound of the Mustang’s tires sucking at the open road. They passed by Harlingen, San Benito and Olmito on Interstate 69E on the way toward Brownsville, a city on the American side of the U.S.-Mexico border opposite Matamoros on the Mexican side.

“Where are we going, anyway?” Sapphire asked.

“Away from McAllen,” Beck answered. “Out of reach of the cops and ATF.”

“Well, we’ve been on the road for ages,” she complained.

He glanced at the clock on the Mustang’s dashboard. Three o’clock. She was right. He had been driving for over an hour. He looked ahead and saw a sign by the side of the road advertising a Texas Roadhouse at the next exit. It had a photograph of a giant char-grilled steak and a monstrous pile of skin-on fries. He nodded. “Let’s cut off here, grab a bite to eat.”

“Yeah because my ass is numb sitting here. I could do with stretching my legs. And I guess I could eat something.”

He glanced at the rearview mirror and nodded, again, then steered the Mustang over to the outside lane.

“Wait,” Sapphire said.

“What?”

“How do you know we’ve not been followed?”

“Because we’ve been driving for over an hour. And we’re now about fifty-five miles from McAllen. I’ve been checking the vehicles behind us in the rearview mirror every couple of miles. The only one that piqued my interest was a black Ford F-150. It followed us all the way from McAllen, keeping about five vehicles back. But it cut off at Harlingen.”

She nodded, slowly. "Okay."

He pulled off the freeway at the exit slip for Frontage Road, drove down the ramp and merged into the left-hand lane, continued for a few hundred yards and looped around in a U at the next turning point underneath the freeway. He merged over to the right side of Frontage Road northbound and pulled in to an Exxon gas station on the corner of Frontage Road and Ruben M Torres Boulevard and eased the Mustang to a halt under the canopy by the gas pumps.

Sapphire glanced out the windshield at the kiosk. “I thought we were stopping for food?”

“We are,” he said, “But we’ve been driving around a lot and we need gas, first.” He jumped out of the car and went into the kiosk, handed over fifty bucks and came out and gassed up the Mustang’s tank.

“God. I hate doing that,” she said to him as he climbed back into the car.

He nodded. “What do you drive?”

“A red Ford.”

“Mustang?”

“No. Fiesta.”

He shook his head. “Never been in one,” he said and started the Mustang’s V8 engine, then rolled the car from the forecourt out onto Frontage Road northbound and into the parking lot of the Texas Roadhouse about a half-mile from the gas station. The parking lot was empty. He pulled into a spot by the door. "Bring the book with you," he said and killed its engine. “We’ll take another look at it inside.”

She lifted the book and they got out of the car. It was just as hot in Brownsville as it had been in McAllen. Maybe even hotter since they were now into the middle of the afternoon. Walking the short distance from the car to the restaurant's wooden doors felt like hiking through a sauna. The air was dry and intense and they could smell nothing but heat.

Inside, the floor was gun-gray linoleum and the walls were wooden. There was a dining area was on the left of the entrance and a bar on the right. The counter was onyx with a wooden, grainy pattern and polished to a shine. There were five wooden stools with black leather cushions sitting in front of it. Three old men with short white hair, wearing white Stetsons, white linen shirts tucked into the waist of blue denim jeans, and brown cowboy boots were sitting on the three middle stools propping up the bar. They were loud and laughing and they were drinking lager from glass tankards.

They turned around in their chairs and stared at Sapphire with lecherous eyes as she walked in the door. But they quickly turned back to their beers and each other when they saw the size of the guy that stepped inside behind her.

Welcome blasts of chilled air blew from AC units overhead, blowing scents of beef charring on a flaming grill around the restaurant. Beck felt like he had stepped into heaven. He saw posters hanging on the walls. They featured beer bottles from iconic brands like Budweiser and Miller adopting patriotically inspiring poses against dark-and-smoky backgrounds with white mist swirling their open necks and a seductive sweat dripping down the sides of the bottles. There was a large American flag proudly hanging from a white pole on the back wall. It faced directly into the middle of the restaurant and there were various blue-and-red neon signs of American beer logos around it. They were arranged side-by-side in a long line, logo after logo, wrapping around the building. Together, they illuminated the place with a radiant warm, hazy hue. He felt his chest pump up like a balloon just standing among it. Then he heard a Toby Keith song playing in the background.

There was a wooden hostess stand by the doors and a row of three wooden barrels on the floor beside it. They were each about four feet tall and filled to the brim with shelled peanuts. Beck grabbed a handful and crushed them all in his hand with one hard squeeze, then he separated the peanuts from their broken shells and slung them in his mouth. Savory. Salty. Nice, he thought and reached for more as a young woman walked through from the dining area after noticing them walking in.

She had long blonde hair tied back in a ponytail and was wearing black pants and a black t-shirt with the red, white and yellow Texas Roadhouse logo over her left breast. There was a white earpiece in her left ear. Its spiraling rubber cord ran down her neck and disappeared below the t-shirt. She was also wearing dark-blue jeans and black flat shoes. She stopped behind the hostess stand and greeted them with a welcoming smile. “Welcome to Texas Roadhouse,” she said.

Beck smiled, munching on the peanuts.

Sapphire said, “Hi.”

The hostess said the word 'two' in a way that was more of a question than a statement. "Two?"

Beck nodded, swallowed the peanuts and then repeated the same word back to her in a way that made it an answer, not a question. "Two."

She smiled and said, “Follow me,” and led them through to the dining area, past a couple of foreign-looking families dining with young children, to a booth by the back left corner. It had bottle-green leather cushions and a wooden table. And there was a small steel bucket sitting at the back of the table, also, filled to the brim with the same shelled peanuts. Beck liked it. It offered him a view of the building's entrance and fire escape on the left of the bar.

He grabbed another handful and did to it as he had done to the first, then grabbed two menus from the wooden holder at the back of the table and passed one over to Sapphire. He knew what he was going to order, but he figured he would take a look anyway.

Beck and Sapphire sat quietly for a few moments, Sapphire saying the names of a few dishes, a mixture of excitement in her voice, at the prospect of how good they sounded, and disgust at the size, Beck chowing down on handfuls of shelled and salted peanuts.

“Sixteen-ounce sirloin? Country-fried chicken? Pulled-pork sandwich?”

Beck nodded his delight, savoring the saltiness of the nuts as she spoke while wondering what she would have.

A tall and thin black guy, dressed the same as the young blonde, who noticed them sit down, walked over to their table after giving them about five minutes to peruse the menu. He had a pen in his right hand and a small white notepad in his right. He recommended a few dishes he liked himself, or the ones that the management had told him to push, perhaps so that they could run down an overstocking problem, and then asked for their order.

Sapphire spoke first. To Beck’s surprise, she asked for a salad with light dressing and then some sort of unpronounceable cocktail that he had never heard of.

The black guy scribbled it down and then turned and looked at Beck.

He ordered the biggest steak on the menu, a twenty-three-ounce porterhouse T-bone, with sides of green beans and sweet potato fries, a shot of bourbon, neat, and coffee.

The guy nodded his approval, “Good call,” he said and noted it down, then walked off.

He brought their drinks a moment later along with a basket of four warm bread rolls and cinnamon butter and carefully sat them down on the table. The cocktail thing came in a hurricane glass. It was red and white, like it was swirled with strawberry purée and light cream, and there was a fresh cut strawberry and a wedge of lime pressed onto the rim of the glass. A thick-looking straw stood upright in the middle, like it was sitting in wet cement.

Beck saw Sapphire’s eyes light up the moment she saw it. He wondered how she kept such a trim figure if she drank stuff like that. Then he glanced at the salad. It looked nice and fresh, he thought, but still like salad.

His bourbon was served in a lowball glass with the Texas Roadhouse logo printed on the side in black and his coffee came in a plain white china mug that also had the logo on the side. Beck devoured two of the four warm bread rolls and necked the bourbon and drank the coffee. It wasn't the best coffee he had ever tried, not a patch on Deja Brew's Americano and maybe even not as good as he had made with the filter machine at the Alamo Inn. But it was caffeinated and he had a mystery to solve.

He lifted the book from the wooden tabletop and looked inside. Flicked through the pages to those numbered 1, 4, 10, 23, 50, 59 and 78, as Sapphire had mentioned. The markings were exactly as she had described in the car. He had five groups of numbers to work with: 1 and 59, 10, 23, 4 and 50 and 78, and 4411.

He drank some more coffee and ate another cinnamon-buttered bread roll, his third, and thought about it quietly.

We got five groups of numbers. Four-four-one-one, ten, and twenty-three. They’re all separate. They were in a different format to the rest. Which means, one and fifty-nine must go together and so must four, fifty and seventy-eight. The pairings must be individual parts of some sort of overall code. But what? And in what order?

“You sure you never saw anything else inside that book?" he asked Sapphire.

She nodded and sucked on the strawberry concoction through the straw. It looked like its surface never moved down. And not once did she even look at the bread rolls.

Beck ate the last one and lifted the book, again, and began to flick through, looking for anything that might help them string the random number pairings together. There was nothing at all. He laid it down and thought about it. Then pushed it to the back of the table when he saw the black guy coming over with their food.

Their plates were sitting atop of a black round plastic tray that the guy was carrying with one hand in the impressive way that all waiters can balance things on their forearms and keep them perfectly still and perfectly safe. He balanced the tray on his right forearm and served the dishes with his left hand, repeating their orders as he laid them down on the table.

The steak was a mammoth. A huge hunk of medium-well cooked beef with black charcoal grill-marks. It sat in a pool of brown juice and its edges overhung the oval white china plate it was served on. The sweet potato fries came on another, similar plate of their own. There were piled high and there in abundance. It looked like a mountain. And the green beans came in their own little bowl, sitting in a pool of ham stock with shavings of bacon. Beck gazed down at it, delight in his eyes, like he was a kid in a candy store.

Sapphire gazed down at it, disbelief and disgust in hers. "You're going to eat all that?" she asked him. “After the size of the breakfast you had earlier?” The disbelief sounded through in her voice.

The waiter smiled and walked off.

"Yeah," Beck said and lifted a bottle of Texas Roadhouse steak sauce from the back of the table, beside the menu holder, and doused it over the steak and the fries. "This frame doesn't keep itself up," he added and proceeded to carve a huge strip of meat from the steak’s blackened end with the serrated steel steak knife that it came with.

Sapphire rolled her eyes, then flicked her gaze down his neck to his torso, taking in the impressive breadth of his shoulders and let out a half-smile, before taking a mouthful of her lightly-dressed house salad.

"Anyway," he said, pausing briefly to savor the char-grill flavor and the sweet and spicy undertones of the dry rub that his cut of beef had, no doubt, been sitting in all day. "We got somebody to find, so we have to figure out what these numbers mean."

She nodded her agreement. "Where do we start?"

"With the biggest one," he answered and took a few more bites of steak and some fries and almost all of the green beans. That was his rule: when confronted by multiple problems, take care of the biggest one first. He proceeded to think of the digits of the three-number code and said them aloud as they ran through his mind.

"Four-fifty-seventy-eight, four-seventy-eight-fifty, fifty-four-seventy-eight," he said and then switched to saying each digit individually. "Five-zero-seven-eight-four, seven-eight-five-zero-four..."

Sapphire glanced up at him, a thought in her eyes. "Seven-eight-five-zero-four?" she asked.

"Yeah. You know that number?"

"Yeah," she said. "That's the zip code for my apartment, in northern McAllen."

“Your zip code?” he asked, chowing down on more steak and fries.

She nodded. “Yeah.”

“You’re sure?”

“Yeah,” she said, again.

"Okay,” he said and paused and ate some more. “What about the others? Is there a ten in the area? Or a twenty-three, a fifty-nine, or a one? What about a forty-four or an eleven?"

She paused a beat and thought about it, ate some more salad and sucked the rest of the cocktail through the straw and then answered. "There's a Tenth Street. And a Twenty-Third Street. It’s that one that leads into the library. They run parallel to each other."

Beck nodded and finished the rest of his steak and then turned his attention to what was left of the fries. They never stood a chance, but things were beginning to become a whole lot clearer. "Okay. That leaves us with a five-nine-zero-one and a four-four-one-one."

Sapphire nodded and finished her salad.

The waiter came over and began to clear up their plates. He asked how their meals were and then asked whether they had left room for dessert, mentioning something called a Big Ol’ Brownie.

Sapphire looked at him, incredulous.

Beck thought about it and smiled, but decided against it and shook his head, then said, "No, but we'll take the check."

The waiter nodded and said, "Sure thing, Boss," and scooped up the finished plates and walked off to the kitchen.

He brought the check and laid it on the table, inside a folding leather wallet with the Texas Roadhouse logo debossed on the front. Beck pulled it over and opened it. The check was a long, thin strip of white paper, printed in black and white. The amount was $52, but it was the top half that caught his eye. It had the Texas Roadhouse logo at the top and the restaurant’s address below it. It said: 3400, North Expressway 77/83, Brownsville, Texas, 78526, USA.

He looked up at Sapphire. “It’s an address,” he said and pulled out his cell phone and tapped on the Google search app. The search screen popped up with a white search bar and a blue blinking cursor. He tapped it in: 5901 23rd Street 78504, and pressed the search key, the little magnifying glass icon, on the screen’s digital keypad.

The results popped up, almost instantly. There was a search listing for a home in Arlington, Virginia, and then another, for a home on 5901 23rd Lane, McAllen, Texas, 78504. He skipped past it to the fourth search result. It was a listing from Yelp, with a headline that read, 'The Best 10 Self Storage options near 23rd Street, McAllen, Texas, 78504' and referenced a '5901, 10th Street' in the snippet.

He changed his search to: 5901 10th Street 78504. Again, the results were instant. The top result, this time, said: Self Storage Units in McAllen Texas, located at 5901 North 10th Street. The text was blue and there was a green weblink below it. Beck tapped it with his right forefinger.

It took him to the company’s website and a list of storage unit options popped up. They ranged from ten-foot by twenty-foot indoor climate-controlled garages, at a couple of hundred bucks a week, down to lockers of the kind commonly found in fitness clubs, at only twenty a week.

He tapped a tab on the web page that said, 'photos', and a couple of pictures of the facility popped up. It was a square hut-shaped building with a red apex roof. Below the photograph were a few bullet points of 'facility information'. It was the third bullet that caught his eye. It said: Over 500 storage lockers available.

That's when he realized what the circled number twenty-three most likely was. And what the blue handwritten code on the book receipt was probably for. A locker number and its combination code. He glanced at his watch and then looked up at Sapphire.

"Let’s go,” he said and moved to stand. “We're going to North Tenth-Street." She coughed under her breath. “Ahem.”

“Oh, right,” he said and glanced back at the check and pulled out his wallet. He dropped three twenty-dollar bills on the table and then they hurried out the door.

FOURTEEN

The chairman glanced at his gold Rolex. Five o’clock in the evening. The sky outside his office window was still blue, but it was beginning to turn a vibrant pink and orange with darkness not far behind it, falling somewhere in the distance.

He stood up from his desk and buttoned his suit jacket. Middle button only. He walked out the door and down the hall, stopping for a second to take in the spraying fountain as its light changed from blue to green.

The elevator cart took him to ground in under a minute and he walked across the reception and out through the tinted glass doors. The heat hit him like a right jab from a heavyweight boxer. He didn’t mind. He liked it. He pulled the key for his black Mercedes from his pants and pushed the switch. Its lights flashed orange and beeped and the doors unlocked. He climbed in and sat on the cream leather driver’s seat and started up its engine. It purred as he drove across the lot, past the gatehouse by the steel fence and eased onto the road.

***

Move It Self Storage was compound of lock-ups, trailers and garages that sat on a couple of acres of land on the corner of Tenth Street and Hawk Avenue. Beck saw the rectangular brick building with the brown apex roof, like he had seen in the photograph on the website. The building was the front of the plot facing the intersection of the two roads and looked even more like a hut than the picture gave it credit for. The bricks were painted brown and light yellow, and there was a glass door directly in the middle of the roof's apex with a vertical glass panel either side. He turned off the road and into the parking lot, parked the Mustang in a slot by the door and he and Sapphire then stepped out to the scorching evening heat and in through the building’s glass door.

Inside, it was light and bright and it smelled strongly of orange. The scent of glass or surface cleaner. The walls were plasterboard, painted white and decorated with posters advertising storage options, and there were white tiles on the floor. Ahead, there was an eggshell laminate reception desk. It was shaped like the long side of a half rectangle and it was about chest-high. The Move It Self Storage logo was debossed onto the front. There was a guy sitting on a white office chair tucked in behind it. He had black spiked hair that was streaked with lime-green highlights at its hard-looking tips. It looked stiff with gel. His face was thin and his skin was pale and he was wearing dark eye shadow. A silver bull ring looped through the columella of his nose and he had a set of hooped silver earrings dangling from his ears. His arms were thin and heavily tattooed.

His eyes flicked up from a magazine on the counter and glanced toward Sapphire and Beck as they walked in the door, his gaze focused completely on Beck. He smiled and nodded, closed the magazine and pulled a white folder across its cover.

Beck caught a glimpse of it before he pulled the folder fully across. It had dark-colored pages and what appeared to be a photograph of a tanned man's ripped torso on the front cover.

"What can I do you for?" the guy asked him, in a curiously-intimate intonation as he flicked his eyes up and down his figure.

"Looking for a locker," Beck said to him, firmly.

The guy pulled his eyes down to the desk, without looking at Sapphire, and opened the white folder. He flicked to what Beck counted as being the third page and then ran his finger down a column of prices.

"Lockers are twenty bucks a week,” he said and then traced his finger to a sentence of black text on the price column’s left, when not being read upside down. “They’re payable by cash or credit, but we gotta get it all upfront. How long do you need it for?"

Beck raised his right hand, open-palmed, and shook his head. "No, no. We don't need to rent one. We're looking to get into one, a locker that a friend told us about."

The guy made no response. He closed the white folder over and placed his left palm on top, fingers fully extended. His eyebrows narrowed over the top of his nose and he flicked his eyes up and down Beck's frame, again. Although, this time like he was now evaluating whether or not he was looking at a criminal. He then glanced over at Sapphire, for the first time, and flicked his eye up her body, starting from her shoes.

Beck could see him casting aspersions about them in his mind. He realized what the guy was thinking and knew he had to come across as being there on a friend’s behalf. "It's locker twenty-three," He said. "Guy who rented it goes by Mike Sikorsky. He sent me to retrieve the contents for him."

The guy behind the counter nodded and pouted, ever so slightly. He then reached for a computer mouse somewhere underneath the counter and shifted his gaze to the black computer screen on his left. Beck heard him click the mouse a few times and then the guy looked up. "Twenty-three, you say?"

Beck thought about it, briefly. He had no way of knowing for sure, not until the guy the told him so. But twenty-three was the only number that was circled, and it didn’t make up any part of the address or zip code, so he figured that’s what it had to be and nodded, then confirmed it.

"Twenty-three."

The guy tapped a few elegant strokes on the computer's keyboard and sat back in his white swivel chair, staring at the screen.

"Okay," he said, nodding. "Suppose that locker is rented out to somebody by that name, how do you know him?"

"He was a friend," Beck answered.

“Was?” the guy said, sensing he might be on to something. “You say that in the past tense.”

Beck nodded, sombrely. “He passed away a few days ago. And his wife can’t bear to clear it out, so I’m here to do it for her. ”

The guy looked at him with sympathetic and admiring eyes, then smiled. “Okay,” he said. “I’ll help you. But, unless you got a warrant or a court order, we can’t open them. So, you’ll need the code.”

"Don't worry about that. I already have the code," Beck said.

The guy nodded and then pointed over his left shoulder, to an archway off behind the counter. "Lockers are through there. Twenty-three will be on the other side of the wall, right behind me," he said. "Just punch the code in on the keypad and the door will click open. But you only got three attempts at it. And, each time, you only got fifteen seconds to key it in. So, you gotta be careful. If you get it wrong three times, or wait too long, the deadbolt locks, indefinitely. If that happens, the only way to get it open is if you've got written consent from the original renter, or a court order, or a police warrant. And, even then, we gotta get Corporate to schedule it in. And, then, they gotta send a guy out to drill the door, which takes time. So, don’t mess it up, or you’ll need to wait, say, three or four weeks to get it open."

Beck nodded and thanked him and then he and Sapphire walked under the arch and around the other side of the wall.

***

A short drive later, the chairman entered the warehouse grounds. The warehouse was a prefab steel structure, in a gun-gray color of metal, surrounded by a black steel chain-link fence. The fence was reinforced with a layer of barbed wire intertwined with razor wire running along the top. There was a black steel gate at the front and a gatehouse on its left. It had dark tinted bulletproof windows.

The guy sitting in the gatehouse recognized the vehicle and pushed the control switch and the gates swung open. Men like the chairman don't have to stop for an ID check.

He drove in and rolled the Mercedes across the gray concrete parking lot, past four black vans parked side-by-side in slots by the black steel chain-link perimeter fence on the right-hand side, and eased the car into a single parking space that had been pained onto the ground by the door. The Mercedes’ hood stopped about three inches away from the ‘reserved’ sign.

He looked at his watch, again. Five-fifteen. Then he opened his glove box and lifted out a black steel cylinder and a box of pre-cut Cuban cigars. He put the steel cylinder down on the passenger seat and removed a thick brown cigar from the box. Put it in his mouth and drew his chrome lighter from his pocket and sparked a dancing flame. He brought the flame to the cigar's tip and listened as its paper hissed in the fire, then inhaled and started smoking.

He tucked the lighter into his pocket and then drew a black Glock from his other one. Puffed on the cigar and lifted the black steel cylinder from the passenger seat. It felt cold and hard. He lined one end up to the muzzle of his gun and began to screw it in place. It squeaked with each turn.

He took another draw on the cigar and turned off the car’s engine and then stepped out the door. He exhaled a plume of white smoke into the air in front of him. It vaporized against the dry searing heat. He held the gun by the side of his right leg, its elongated barrel and muzzle pointing at the ground, and walked over toward the warehouse’s heavy metal door.

The heels of his expensive dress shoes clip-clopped on the concrete.

Inside, the warehouse was deserted. He walked across the hard concrete floor, past wire shelving racks. They had black wire decks, steel columns and bracing, and orange beams. And, unusual for a warehouse, they held nothing at all. He could hear the buzzing sound of the light bulbs in the steel pendant lights hanging from the metallic rafters overhead, and he could smell the scent of oil and paint and dust. He paused for a beat and glanced all around, taking in the sight of the empty racks and breathing in the pungent warehouse air. The racks are empty now, but soon they’ll be full, he thought.

He smiled and continued walking, toward his management office at the building’s far-left corner. The heels of his black leather Oxfords clip-clopping on the concrete as he walked. He turned down the second last aisle, between yet more empty wire racks, and continued for another hundred yards. Then stopped at his management office’s black door.

The management office was a modular cabin that was assembled from 10mm thick white PVC panels. It was about thirty feet long and forty feet wide. Thick soundproofed windows ran along the length of the two walls that faced onto the warehouse. The glass was tinted, meaning he could see out from the inside, but nobody could see in from the outside.

He opened the door and stepped inside. The office smelled of bleach and carpet cleaner and fear. He glanced ahead, at his black rectangular desk and high-back leather executive swivel chair. His folded up laptop computer sat untouched on the desk’s surface beside a black desk lamp and a glass ashtray. The cigar butt he had stubbed out was still sitting in its base, untouched from how he had left it the Wednesday before. Smoking that cigar had been a particularly enjoyable experience, he thought and, slowly, shifted his eyes to his right and that was when he saw them.

Estrada, Hernandez and Jimenez were sitting on the black leather sofa to the right of the door and there were four other men sitting on black swivel chairs around the circular chromium table across from them. They had been there for hours, sitting in contorted and unnatural positions. They were stiff and sore.

Estrada, Hernandez and Jimenez nodded and stood to his attention.

The chairman glanced at them, briefly, and then looked back at the four men sitting around his table. Three of them were in what looked like work uniforms, one in blue shorts and a dark-blue polo, two in dark-blue pants and red, white and blue polos, and one was in camel suit pants and a light-blue shirt and tie. His shirt was soaked and stained with sweat and his sweaty forehead reflected the glow from the pendant light hanging above him.

The chairman looked at the duct tape around their ankles and wrists and, finally, the strip of gray tape stuck across their mouths. He watched the guy in the camel pants and the sweaty blue shirt, amused as the guy’s eyes widened when he caught a glimpse of the Glock in his hand.

The rest of the men noticed. Their eyebrows shot up their foreheads and their faces turned white. They groaned and struggled in their chairs, terrified by the man’s presence, trying to stand to get away, but barely able to move, bound by the tape.

The right side of the chairman’s mouth angled up either side of his face. He liked it when other men were afraid in his company. He raised his arm and the Glock’s muzzle arced up through the air and stopped just below his chest, about head height for a man sitting at a table. His contented, egotistical smirk turned to a wicked grin and he looked the guy wearing the camel pants and blue shirt deep in his terrified eyes and pulled the trigger.

The sound was sharp but muted. Almost like a brief pop, as if somebody was sticking a poster to a wall with a staple gun. But the blast was devastating.

The guy's head exploded. It snapped backward and a red splatter of blood sloshed against the white wall behind him. The small fleshy pink chunks of his brain stuck to it while the larger parts fell to the black carpet with a squelch.

The other men gasped and jumped back. It was a collective sound, as if conducted with perfect choreography, that sounded more like a groan than a gasp because of the tape covering their mouths. They didn’t get far. The fibers of the thick black carpet stopped their chairs rolling any more than a few inches from the table.

Estrada, Hernandez and Jimenez laughed behind them.

The chairman, still to say a word, walked around behind his desk. He sat his gun down on top of the folded-down black laptop and opened the top drawer of the pedestal underneath. He lifted out four folded black PVC bags and placed them next to his gun, closed the drawer and walked over to the chromium table that was now occupied by three men and a dead body. He laid three of the bags down on the table's shiny black surface and then unfolded the other one out on the carpet, beside them, but in the middle of the office.

The three men watched as he unfolded each flap, slowly, with finesse and precision, hyperventilating at the sight unfolding before them.

The bag was seven and a half feet long by three feet wide and a dull gray zip ran the length of it up the middle. Its black PVC edges flapped against the carpet’s fibers under the tremor of the air.

The chairman glanced over at Estrada, Hernandez and Jimenez and nodded in the direction of the dead body of the guy in the camel pants and light-blue shirt and tie.

The three men stood up from the sofa and walked around behind the guy sitting slumped in the swivel chair. Estrada pulled a pocket knife from his jacket and used it to cut the tape and then Hernandez and Jimenez each took an underarm and Estrada bent down and grabbed his ankles. They heaved him out of the chair and carried him around the table towards the bag

The chairman pulled the zip open. It hissed, quietly, like a snake somewhere in the grass. And the men dropped him into position on top of the bag and pulled the sides up over his shoulders and hips. He sunk right in. Estrada grabbed the zip and pulled it shut, slowly, and the guy gradually disappeared inside.

The chairman then pulled his wallet from his pants and peeled three one-dollar bills from a wad and padded over and placed them down on the table, dollar-by-dollar, and beside the other three bags. He looked each of the three men in their red and frightened eyes, one-by-one, and nodded slowly.

"You three are the lucky ones," he said to them as he walked back over to his desk and sat behind it. "You three have a choice.”

The men stared at him in horror.

The chairman continued. “In a few hours, I’ll have a job that needs doing and you get to decide whether or not you want to do it.”

The three men’s eyes widened even further. Their hearts were thumping.

“The job is a night shift behind a wheel,” the chairman said to them, speaking to them collectively in a way that addressed them all, but felt like he was speaking to each man individually on a one-to-one basis. “And the payment is one dollar.” He paused and picked the Glock up from the laptop. “One dollar for one night's work.” He glanced down at the Glock’s long, silencer-bearing barrel. “And the choice is between a buck or a bag."

The three men whimpered in distress, but they didn’t hesitate. They made their choice immediately. Each man placed his taped-together hands over the face of the one-dollar bill and looked at the man with worry in their eyes.

The chairman smiled, slowly, vaingloriously, but he didn’t lower the gun.

***

The lockers covered the entire left of the room, along three of the four walls. The only remaining space was taken up by a rest area. It was a black fabric sofa, two vending machines sitting beside it and a white oval coffee table with chrome interlinked legs in front of the sofa. The vending machines filled the room with a low-pitched hum.

The lockers were five-high, numbered top-down, left-to-right, from one to five-hundred. One-hundred columns. All of the doors were closed, but just over half of them had green magnets stuck across the bottom, below the keypad, that said: Vacant. Yours for $20 a week. Each locker was stainless steel and black and there was a black cast iron keypad in the middle of its door. The buttons on the keypad were white and numbered from zero through nine and there was a red button on the bottom left that said CANCEL and a green button on the bottom right that said ACCEPT. At the top of each keypad was a thin red digital strip.

Locker twenty-three was exactly where the guy had said: directly in the middle of the fifth column, backing onto the wall behind the front desk. Beck walked over and began pushing the keypad’s buttons with his right forefinger.

Four. The keypad made a high-pitched beep and the number-four button lit up in light blue. The digital strip showed: 4. He pressed it again. It beeped and lit up, again, in light blue. The digital strip showed: 44. Then he pressed number one. The keypad beeped and the number one key lit up, just like the others had. The digital strip showed: 441. He pressed it again. It beeped and lit up. The digital strip showed: 4411, just like what was written on the book receipt. He then took a slow and calm breath and pressed the ACCEPT button. There was a brief pause and then the digital strip then flashed: DENIED, and the keypad beeped again. It sounded like, 'uh oh," and all the buttons flashed blue.

He felt a sudden sinking feeling in the pit of his stomach. "Shit," he said. "Four-four-one-one isn't the code."

She said nothing. She just stared at the keypad with concern on her face.

An occupied look on his face, Beck placed his left palm across his forehead and continued, "How did we not see that? It's just like all the rest of the numbers. It's a deliberate scramble, which he’s left me to solve."

Sapphire nodded. “Looks that way. He’s gone to an awful lot of trouble to make whatever's behind that door almost impossible to access.”

Beck blew out his cheeks and nodded. "Which is why we have to get this right," he said and started thinking about the numbers. He had already tried 4411, which meant there were five possible combinations remaining, and he only had two more attempts left. He stood still, his mouth open, rapidly tapping his right thumbnail against his bottom front teeth, thinking about it carefully.

He glanced at the other lockers around the room. One of the vending machines at the back corner of the right-hand wall had a sign advertising 'Soda for 50c'. He saw recognizable logos from an array of brands, including Coca-Cola, Pepsi, Sprite, and Dr. Pepper. He walked over and dug two quarters from his pants and pushed them into the coin slot. Then he pressed the button for a Dr. Pepper. There was a metallic bang from the bottom of the machine and the machine's digital screen flashed with 'ENJOY' in cyan-blue capital letters. He reached down into the drink tray and removed his Dr. Pepper. Except, it wasn't a Dr. Pepper. It was some sort of unbranded grape soda in a purple can, instead. He sighed and handed it to Sapphire.

"What's that?" she asked as she took it.

"Some sort of grape soda," he said and then tried to get a Dr. Pepper for a second time.

Another fifty cents later, the result was the same. Another unbranded grape soda in a purple can. He blew out his cheeks, this time with frustration, and figured what the hell and pulled on the ring. The can popped and purple bubbly liquid fizzed up from the inside. He took a sip, expecting the worst, but, it wasn't too bad.

Sapphire then did the same. She didn't like it. She dumped it in a trash can tucked in by the side of the other vending machine.

He took another slurp while he looked across the room and stared at the locker’s keypad, thinking about the possible combinations. 4411 was out, which left 1144, 1441, 4114, 1414, and 4141. One of them had to be right.

He took another drink, the last one in the can, and it an idea flashed through his mind. 4411 could have been a scramble for 4141. Mike Sikorsky's best spell with Lincoln PD. 41 arrests in 41 days, back in March-April 2011. A department record that still exists to the present day. He nodded and tossed the empty soda can over his shoulder, to the trash can behind him. It went straight in and clanked against Sapphire's somewhere at the bottom of the black bin liner.

She looked at the trash and then back at him in disbelief as he walked back over to the locker and pressed on the keypad.

He pushed the buttons and keyed it in: Four, one, four, one. The keypad beeped and each key lit up light blue. The digital strip said: 4141, and he pushed ACCEPT. He waited for the screen to flash with something like OPEN, GRANTED, ACCESS. But, again, it flashed DENIED and beeped and all the buttons lit up once more.

“Shit,” he said and looked up at the ceiling while biting down on his bottom lip.

Sapphire saw the disappointment on his face.

He brought his left palm up over the back of his head and stared at the locker’s door, blankly, while he thought about it, again. If it’s not his arrest record, it can’t be anything to do with work. There was never a day went by where Sikorsky didn't mention that record, so if it was a code about something at work, that would've been it.

He sucked a deep breath and ran his hand up over his head, through his short dark hair, and breathed out, slowly. He had one more chance at this and he had to get it right. And he knew it. He had tried 4411 and 4141, which left him with 1144, 1441, 4114, and 1414. Odds of one in four, a twenty-five percent chance of getting it right. Which also meant there was a seventy-five percent chance of getting it wrong.

He knew that if it wasn't work-related, it had to be family-focused. And, that being the case, he could rule out 1441 and 1414. To Mike and his family, both numbers meant nothing. Which left him with a fifty-fifty shot: 1144 or 4114. 1144 could have been it. He knew that both Mike’s parents were born back in November 1944, his father in Nebraska and his mother in California. A bit like Beck, whose mother was also from the West Coast, and whose father was also said to be from Nebraska, although he never met him. So, he never really knew for sure.

But, alternatively, it could have been 4114 because that was the date of Mike and Kim's wedding - April 1, 2014. He had always said that Kim was the best thing that ever happened to him, that she was his guiding light, something he didn't really have in common with Beck as he never really saw the only woman he was ever in a serious relationship with, given they had both put their jobs before their love lives.

He nodded and thought some more. 1144 or 4114. Each combination just as possible as the other. He reached out to the keypad and hovered his right forefinger over the line between the number one and number four buttons. He decided on 1144 and pressed number one. The keypad beeped and the button lit up in light blue. He pressed it again. Same result. Then he pressed button number four and the keypad beeped and it lit up, like the rest. He hovered his forefinger over the ACCEPT button and took a breath. About to press the button.

That was when he thought hard about Kim earlier that morning.

He stared at 1144 on the digital strip and shook his head as he changed his mind. He quickly pressed CANCEL and then punched in 4114 as quick as he could, and pressed ACCEPT. There was a long, tense pause. The digital screen finally flashed with the word 'GRANTED' and the locker door clicked open.

Beck smiled and took a massive breath of relief. It was a huge win in his bid to find out why Mike had really been killed and, most likely, a massive step forward toward finding the man known as ‘the chairman.’

Sapphire felt the victory, too. "You got it!" she said and hugged him.

He nodded and held her tight for a brief moment and then refocused and reached out and grabbed the locker door by its steel edge and pulled it open. It felt light and somewhat flimsy, like he could have easily busted it in with a fire extinguisher, or his fist, if he had to.

Inside, it looked like a dark and narrow steel cupboard. The locker's inside walls and floor were exactly the same as it looked on the outside. Black and metallic. But it wasn’t the locker that caught his eye. There was a long brown manila envelope sitting inside. It was standing upright on its side fold, leaning against the locker's steel black wall. Beck lifted it out. It was thick and felt fibrous, like it was made from recycled paper. He glanced at the front.

"Look, it’s addressed to you," Sapphire said.

He nodded, ominously, staring at it. His name was handwritten on the front, in the same blue shade of ink that had been used on the book receipt and the page numbers of the book.

"What do you think's inside?" Sapphire asked him.

"I don't know," he answered. “But it feels like it could be a stack of paper.” He walked over to the black fabric sofa and sat down.

Sapphire followed behind and sat beside him.

He laid the envelope on the coffee table and tore it open.

FIFTEEN

The white Volkswagen Crafter pulled in through the open steel black warehouse gates at about five-thirty. It rolled across the cracked gray concrete yard and eased inside the prefab steel building, under the open steel shutter door, and slowed to a halt. The door lowered behind it.

Kim heard the rolling shutter motor turning from the back. She also heard the driver kill the van's engine and the sound of the two men’s doors, squeaking open and then banging shut. Then she heard their footsteps, boots on a concrete floor, as they walked along either side of the van. Her heart was pounding. She still had no idea who they were, or what they wanted, or where they had taken her.

The back doors swung open and a mixed odor of oil, paint and dust crept in. It slithered up her nostrils. It was a warehouse smell, foul and strong, and it clung to the insides of her nose. The blond guy named Oswald was standing in the open doorway with his gun by his side, holding it in his left hand.

"Time to move," he snarled and beckoned her toward him with the gun.

The bald guy named Lester appeared beside him. He was holding a black sports bag in his left hand and a red canister of liquid in his right. The bag was open. He sat the canister down on the concrete floor and reached into the bag and pulled out a square burlap sack. He looked up at her in the back as he laid the sports bag at his feet and then reached in and tried to grab her right ankle.

She pulled her foot away from his hand, then kicked out at him.

He sneered and stepped forward, climbed up into the back of the van and slapped her down with the back of his right hand. It was a loud, sharp smack across the right of her face.

She flopped to the van floor and pressed her hand hard against her cheek. If felt warm and sore, stinging.

Lester leaned over her body and pulled his Glock from his jacket. He pushed the gun’s muzzle hard against her belly button and bent down close to her face. His nose was maybe an inch above her right ear. "Try and kick me, again, and I'll shoot you in the stomach!" he whispered.

She squeezed her eyes shut and cowered in against the van’s aluminum sidewall. Hurting and afraid.

Two other men then appeared from around the other side of the van’s back left door. They were Hispanic-looking, with short, brown buzz-cut hair and were wearing black leather jackets, dark clothes and boots. They were shorter than Lester and Oswald, but they had darker skin. There were tattoos on the sides of their necks and maniacal looks in their snake-like green eyes.

“He’s waiting for her,” one of them said. The words hissed from his tongue.

"Grab her legs and pull her out of the van," Lester snarled as he pulled the gun away from her stomach, then slung the burlap sack over her head.

The bag's fibers felt rough against her face. Like her head was tightly wrapped in sandpaper. It did nothing for her hot, stinging cheek and barely allowed her to catch a breath. It was her worst nightmare.

The two Hispanic men, Hernandez and Jimenez, nodded. They grabbed her ankles and pulled her out the door. Oswald tucked his gun into his waist and grabbed her by her arms before she slid off the metal edge. The men carried her off into the bowels of the warehouse, kicking and twisting, as Lester climbed out of the van. He scooped up the sports bag and lifted the canister and followed a few paces behind them.

Kim heard the canister's contents slosh back and forth, behind her, each time Lester took a step. She jolted and struggled, trying to wriggle free, but their grip was too tight and the sack moved in across her face. Its fibers caught on the corners of the strip of duct tape across her mouth and she felt it pull in tight against her nose. She gasped for air but breathed in almost nothing at all. It was her worst fear come true. She had no idea where she was. She had no idea who they were. She could see nothing at all. And, now, to make things worse, she couldn’t breathe.

She gasped, again, harder and deeper. Same result. The sack's rough wall was stuck against her nostrils and the air wasn’t getting through. Her heart thumped harder in her chest and her eyes filled with tears. She thought she was going to die right there, suffocated, then she felt the men dump her down on what felt like a carpet, before one of them whipped the sack from her head. It tore a strip of skin from the tip of her nose, but she didn’t notice. She didn’t even feel it. Her mind was elsewhere. She sucked in deep, lungful breaths of air and glanced around, disorientated.

The carpet was black. Thick. She noticed a black desk ahead and what looked like a man's feet beneath it. He was wearing black leather shoes and there was a dull gray locker behind them. She heard men whimpering on her right and quickly glanced around. There were three of them. They were sitting around a chromium table with a central silver leg. Their ankles and wrists were bound together with duct tape and there was also a strip of tape across their mouths. She saw confused, but worried expressions on their faces as they stared back at her.

She then felt the presence of something on her left and quickly glanced over, gasping at what it was. There was a black body bag lying right beside her on the carpet. It was within arm's reach, and it was puffed out like there was somebody inside. She could see the shape of the person's nose pointing upward beneath the black PVC.

She grabbed at the carpet and moved herself back, getting maybe two feet away from the bag. Then she felt the hard points of a man's shoes against her tailbone. She stopped and looked ahead and glanced at the man sitting behind the black desk. She could now see his face and shoulders.

He was thin-looking, wearing a charcoal pinstripe suit with a white shirt and red tie. He had ghostly white skin and dark, greasy slicked-back hair. There was a deep dimple on his chin. It was so deep, it looked like a hole left from a nail that had been hammered into his face. His eyes were completely white, except for his pupils. They were midnight black and contrasted against the white of his eyes like two bottlebees sitting on a wall. Two bottlebees that were staring directly at her.

"So, you’re Ms. Sikorsky?" he asked, speaking slowly, and in a husky, Texan-sounding voice.

She didn’t reply. She had no idea who he was, or how he knew her name, or why she was sitting on the carpet of his office, beside three prisoners and a dead body in a bag.

He continued, slowly flicking his piercing gaze up and down her figure, "I can see what your husband saw in you." He grinned, lewdly.

Wondering how he knew Mike made her feel even more uncomfortable.

He glanced at the men behind her. "Well, get her up off the carpet. Sit her down at the table, beside the other three." He gestured toward the table with his right hand. His forefinger looked bent over the back of his middle finger like a slug curled along the top of a tree branch.

Kim felt short of breath with a sudden tightness in her chest.

Two of the men grabbed her by her underarms and hauled her up to her feet. They dragged her, heavy-handed, across the carpet and dumped her onto the chair.

It was the men who picked her up from her house. The bald guy named Lester and the blond guy named Oswald. She glared back at them as they padded back over toward the black door and stood on either side of it. She saw a row of windows on the left and a black sofa in front of them. There were three Hispanic men sitting on it. Two that she saw at the back of the van and another one. He was just as ugly as the others. Dressed in black and wearing a leather jacket, he was tattooed and tanned and had a short, bristly brown haircut.

"Now, Lester," the guy behind the desk said and looked straight at him as he stood on the right of the door. "Did you get her cell phone?"

Lester nodded and pulled her white Samsung from his jacket pocket. "Right here, Sir," he said and walked over and laid the phone down on the desk.

Kim watched, a painstaking look on her face as the guy behind the desk lifted it and swiped his crooked finger across its screen.

The screen lit up and asked him to input a four-digit pin. He glanced at it, briefly, and then background picture behind it. It was a photograph of Kim standing in front of her husband at what looked like a boating marina in a tropical paradise. The chairman grinned and flicked his eyes up at her.

"Pin?" he asked, in a commanding tone.

She glared at him with contempt in her eyes and said nothing. She had no intention of telling him the pin code to her cell phone.

He looked at Lester, who walked over and slowly peeled the tape back from her mouth.

She winced. It stung.

The guy behind the desk said it, again. “Pin.” Although, this time, he wasn’t asking.

She scrunched up her face shouted, "Fuck you!" at him.

He sighed and looked at Lester, again, and nodded his head toward her, once.

Lester pulled his gun from his jacket and pressed its muzzle hard against her stomach. He leaned his face in close to hers and looked her straight in the eye. "Tell him the pin, bitch."

She groaned as she felt the gun jab into her gut, then winced as he spoke. His breath was horrible.

The three other men sitting around the table, around her, also winced and looked at her with sympathy in their eyes. One of them, a tall-looking black guy, shook his head and moved as if to get up from his chair. The three Hispanic men, sitting behind him, stood up and drew their guns from their jackets. One of them pressed his gun against the back of his neck, while the other two jammed their guns into his sides. The guy with the gun to his neck whispered in his ear. “Try it, nigger.”

Kim watched as the guy closed his eyes and sighed. She saw the anger flash across his face, changing to agony as he was forced to sit back down. He looked back at her, apology in his eyes, like he wanted to help, but couldn’t.

She nodded her appreciation, a slow and gentle movement of her head, then looked over at the guy behind the desk and told him the pin code.

"It’s four-one-fourteen," she said. "The date Mike and I..." She didn't finish her sentence, she didn't get to. Lester pulled his gun back and re-stuck the tape over her mouth, almost immediately, after she stopped staying numbers.

The guy behind the desk smirked and nodded. He glanced down at her phone and repeated the pin code back, slowly and clearly. “Four-one-fourteen.” Then paused. "Lester," he said, without looking up from the screen. "If this pin isn't four-one-fourteen, I want you to cut out her tongue."

***

Inside the envelope was a thick stack of paper. Maybe seventy sheets in total. He pulled the stack from the envelope's torn left side and sat it down on the table between himself and Sapphire. They were slightly bowed and almost damp-feeling in the middle and they had a subtle tinge of blue that made Joe Beck determine they were from the cheap reams found in most government offices.

"What is it?" Sapphire asked him.

Beck shrugged. “Not sure, yet,” he answered,as he glanced inside the empty, flapping envelope. “But, knowing Mike, it must be something important.” He placed it down on the table beside the stack of paper and started looking through the pile.

The first sheet was completely blank. He turned it over and sat it on top of the torn envelope and looked at the next. It was a near-full-page photograph. A black and white photocopy of another document. It filled about four-fifths of the page but looked as if it had been cut off at the bottom, like the copy was done in a hurry. There was a bold header at the top that said: Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives Witness Statement.

There were two lines of text below the headline. One above the other. The first said, 'Statement of Wendell Matthews,' and the second said: 'Investigating Agent: Mike Sikorsky.' Both men's names were handwritten in black ink. The rest of the document was a handwritten block of text. It was difficult to read. Wendell Matthews’ handwriting looked like a spider's web, but Beck made out just enough to comprehend what it said.

"What is it?" Sapphire asked, moving in close to get a better look, her hip now almost pressed against his.

"It's an ATF witness statement," he answered as he glanced down the text block. "That Mike took from Wendell Matthews. It says he was out in his car, a black Tahoe, last Monday night, sometime between seven o'clock and nine - the timeslot you mentioned when you said that you were with him that night.”

Sapphire’s eyes widened.

Beck continued. “He said that he stopped in a forest clearing overlooking Carlson Lake, in Hidalgo. Sometime around seven-thirty. He said there’s a warehouse out by the lakeside and that he saw a white truck driving into the yard. There were thirteen men standing outside, waiting on it. He’s said that they were heavily armed and that he saw them unloading large wooden crates from the back of the truck. One of them, a dark-haired man in a dark suit, stood back and watched. Like he was in charge. He said the men opened the crates and lifted out what looked like long and short-barreled guns and handed them to the man in the suit. Matthews said he saw him looking over them like he was inspecting a shipment of goods. He says that he saw the men then move the crates, one-by-one, twenty-five or thirty of them, into the warehouse."

Sapphire said nothing. She didn’t have to. Her face said it all. It looked as if she was waiting on him saying it.

Beck pointed to a sentence in the middle of a block of text and looked around at her. "There it is. He's openly admitted that he was there with an escort, named Sapphire."

Sapphire stared at it, blankly. She sucked a breath of air and ran her hand back through her long dark hair but said nothing.

"That explains why these men are trying to kill you,” Beck said to her. “Why they abducted us from that motel. Why they killed Mike and Wendell. Why the cops and the ATF came after us. They must have got their hands on this statement and decided to silence everybody involved to stop them from being exposed.”

Sapphire swallowed, hard. "But I never saw anything. I was there, yes, but my head was down on his lap the whole time, remember?"

He glanced at the statement and shook his head. "Doesn't say that on here. Matthews didn’t go into that sort of detail. He just mentioned that you were there. Which means they think that you did see something. And that's why they're trying to kill you. But, anyway, it wouldn’t matter. These guys seem the sort of people that don’t leave any loose ends. No matter what."

Sapphire said nothing.

Beck saw the concern in her eyes and left her to ponder the reality of the situation. He sat the witness statement down on the blank sheet, on top of the envelope, and lifted the next sheet from the pile.

It was a Texas land registry record, for a warehouse on South 2nd Street, in Hidalgo, the warehouse mentioned in Wendell Matthews' statement. Beck read the details. It was a single-story sixty-thousand-square-foot facility, set on four acres of land on the bank of Carlson Lake. It was built in 2010 at an estimated cost of $2 million and was owned by a company named Axiom Pharmaceutical Corporation. There was a gray stripe around the company name, like it had been highlighted with a yellow marker pen on the original printout.

He turned over again. The next sheet was about Axiom Pharmaceutical Corporation. It was a search result from the Texas Secretary of State website. A certificate of formation, dated February 10, 2010.

“Looks like Mike was looking into the warehouse owner,” he said and lifted the next sheet from the pile.

“Yeah? Who?” Sapphire asked him.

“Company called Axiom Pharmaceutical Corporation.”

“Never heard of them,” she said, shaking her head.

Beck read the next sheet. It was a search result from the Texas Comptroller of Public Accounts database that contained more information about Axiom Pharmaceutical Corporation. It was an active Texas limited liability company, registered with the Texas Secretary of State on February 10, 2010. It maintained a registered office address on Wichita Avenue, McAllen, and its principal focus of business was listed as 'the development, production, distribution and marketing of non-critical illness medication.'

“Looks like a drug manufacturer,” he replied and lifted the next six sheets from the pile. They were a list of all U.S. Food and Drug Administration approved drugs between the time period of January 2010 to May 2015. There were over two-hundred and fifty approval listings. Beck flicked his eyes down the rows, reading the approval dates, the drug and the manufacturer names. Ninety-nine percent of the drug names were long and almost unpronounceable, but it was the manufacturer column that caught his eye because there were no mentions of Axiom Pharmaceutical Corporation. None at all. He looked once more, this time for Axiom Pharma and even just Axiom, but, again, there was nothing.

“This Axiom Pharmaceutical Corporation is a five-year-old drug manufacturer, but it looks as if they’ve got no licensed drugs,” he said.

Sapphire looked at him, blankly, waiting for him to expand.

He did. “With no licensed drugs, they’d have no products to market, sell, or license, which means they would have had no viable means of income.”

She nodded.

Beck continued. “And there’s not a bank in the country that would lend to a business with no viable means of income, whether they’re planning on expanding or not. They just wouldn’t do it. Which means, they must have funded the two-million-dollar construction of the warehouse, and five years’ worth of operating costs, by some other, alternative means.”

“The guns?” she asked.

“Looks that way,” he replied and laid the FDA approvals listings down on the growing left-hand pile and picked up a few more sheets from the stack on the right. They were the last five years’ worth of annual Public Information Reports that Axiom Pharmaceutical Corporation had lodged with the Texas Comptroller of Public Accounts.

They listed a one-hundred percent controlling interest in ten subsidiary companies with all of the businesses based at the same Wichita Avenue office as Axiom. From the names, Beck figured they were car garages and gas stations, hair and nail salons, laundromats and tanning shops. There was even a bar. But nothing related to pharmaceuticals.

He nodded. “There are ten subsidiaries, but none of them look like they’ve got anything to do with pharmaceuticals or healthcare. To me, it looks as if they’re a front. A front for laundering the money they make from smuggling firearms through their warehouse in Hidalgo.”

Sapphire nodded her agreement. “Where do you think they’re getting them from?”

Beck kept reading. The reports listed Axiom Pharmaceutical Corporation as having one majority shareholder: a company named Izaguirre Empresas S. de. R.L., based at an address in San Fernando, Mexico.

“Mexico,” he answered and pointed at the name. “From the Izaguirre Cartel. They’re one of Mexico’s most prominent criminal organizations, lead by a guy named Ariel Izaguirre.”

Sapphire looked him a question.

“He’s basically a ghost who happened to get himself on the FBI’s most-wanted list a few years back. His family are known to be involved in everything from drugs, to guns, counterfeit bills and women. Just about anything anybody could want to smuggle across the U.S. border. And, by the looks of this, a member of the Izaguirre family owns Axiom.”

“You don’t think...?” Sapphire asked and paused a beat, worry in her eyes. “You don’t think it’s the cartel that’s after me?”

Beck glanced at the reports’ principal officer sections and saw two names. There was a Tom Vinson, listed as Axiom Pharmaceutical Corporation chairman from 2010 to 2012, and then the one he was looking for. Victor Mullarkey, the company’s chairman since 2012.

“No,” Beck answered. It was a lie. He knew it was the cartel that was after her, but he sensed her immense fear at the prospect and used a lie to lower the tension. “The men mentioned somebody called the chairman. Said he sent them, not the cartel.”

Sapphire took a deep breath but said nothing.

Beck continued. “And these forms have just confirmed who that chairman is.” He lifted the remaining sixty sheets from the pile and, briefly, flicked through them. The first ten were printouts of warranty deeds from the Hidalgo County database. They were filed for the purchase commercial properties, all dated as 2010, with the grantees being Axiom's ten subsidiaries. The next fifty sheets were the subsidiaries' Public Information Reports. They corroborated everything listed on the Axiom Pharmaceutical Corporation filings, listing Axiom as their one-hundred percent owner and Victor Mullarkey as each company’s chairman.

“His name is Victor Mullarkey,” he said.

Sapphire took it in and nodded, slowly. It was a vile-sounding name. “That’s it? You’re sure?” she asked him.

Beck nodded. “That’s why I glanced back through the rest of the documents. The men said it last night, that they were sent by the chairman. And he’s listed as the chairman of Axiom and all of its subsidiaries since 2012. Victor Mullarkey is the guy. That’s for damn sure. He’s the one who’s calling the shots. He’s the one who had Mike and Wendell Matthews killed. And he’s the one who’s been sending his men to kill you. To kill us.”

Sapphire nodded.

Beck lifted the last sheet in the pile. It was a warranty deed, stamped with the Hidalgo County seal and dated November 17, 2011. It was filed by House2Home Inc to guarantee the title of, and right to sell, a property to a grantee who was none other than Victor Mullarkey. Sensing he was about to hit a home run, Beck skimmed down the property information, looking to find the property’s address. But it was blacked out with a marker pen.

He sighed and laid it down on top of the pile on the left and looked up at Sapphire. "Okay, so, we know his name...and where he works."

“Axiom Pharma-whatever?”

He nodded again. “Axiom Pharmaceutical Corporation. The gun-smuggling, money laundering criminal enterprise masquerading as a healthcare provider. And, now, we also know where he lives.”

“What?” she asked as she glanced down at the warranty deed.

Beck slid the warranty deed across the table.

She picked it up and read it. “But how? The address is blacked out.”

Beck shook his head. “That document confirms that he lives somewhere in Hidalgo County. Which narrows the search down to these county lines.”

“So, what do we do now?”

"Well," Beck began and glanced at his watch. Five forty-five. "Since we know where he works, we know where to find him during office hours. But, at this time, there’s no guarantee we’ll get him there. He could have left, already. He’s probably on his way home right now. So, we’re going to find out his address. And we're going knocking on his door. Tonight."

"How? The address is blacked out!"

"Phone book," he answered, confidently, and stood up from the sofa. He charged through the open arch and disappeared around the other side of the wall.

"I need your Whitepages," he said to the guy behind the desk.

The guy glanced up. Beck had caught him off guard. He pulled the white folder over the magazine, again, and, awkwardly, pretended like it wasn't there. "What did you need?" he asked him, in a sheepish-sounding voice.

"Your Whitepages," Beck answered.

The guy looked at him like he was speaking Japanese.

Beck sighed. "Big book. White. Contains lots of local phone numbers and addresses." He made a boxy shape with his hands as he spoke.

The guy shook his head.

Beck sighed, again. "Just look in the damn drawers behind the counter. You see any big, thick-looking books in there, hand them over."

"Sure," the guy said and disappeared below the counter.

Beck heard drawers opening and closing and the guy’s head popped back up from behind the counter. There were two thick books in his hands.

"Any of these do you?" he asked as he placed them down on the counter.

Beck glanced at the covers. One was some sort of mail-order catalog for business services and stationery products and the other was the Hidalgo County phone book. He nodded and said, “this one,” and lifted the phone book, then walked back through the arch to the waiting area by the storage lockers.

"When you know somebody's name and you have a rough idea of the general area where they live, the phone book’s often a quick and easy way to get their address," he said to Sapphire as he placed the phone book down on the white table, next to the envelope and the pile of papers.

She thought about it and nodded. She was in the phone book herself.

Beck sat down and opened the cover, then looked at the contents page. It listed surnames beginning with M as running from page 600-749, so he flicked to page 700. Far enough in to avoid all of the Martins and Millers. The top listing on page 700 was A. Moreno and the bottom listing was C. Morrow, so he flicked over another twenty-five pages and that’s when he saw it: Mullarkey.

There were five of them. There was an A. Mullarkey, a C. Mullarkey, a D. Mullarkey, an N. Mullarkey, and even a U. Mullarkey, but no V. Mullarkey.

Beck leaned back and signed. "He's unlisted." He cupped his hand around his mouth and thought about it. It made sense. People like that don't like to be easily found, and getting taken out of the phone book was one way to make that happen.

Sapphire sat back and bit down on her bottom lip as she thought about it, too. Then she looked at him with a sparkle in her eye. “What about...tax records?”

“Tax records?” Beck asked, curiously. His left eyebrow peaked up his forehead and he thought back to the warranty deed. It was brilliant. Victor Mullarkey may have taken himself out of the phone book, but he still owned the property. Which meant he would still have had to pay the due property taxes. And Sapphire was right. That there would be a public record for that.

He pulled out his cell phone and searched for the Hidalgo County tax records. Clicked the top result and it brought up the website of the Hidalgo County's Tax Office. He tapped the link to search for property tax records, then typed ‘Mullarkey Victor’ into the search box and tapped the search button.

There was one result. It was for a property in Alton, Texas belonging to a ‘Mullarkey, Victor.’ Beck tapped on the listing and it expanded out to show more information. It was a $432,000 home on Mayberry Boulevard, with taxes of $9,781, due by December 31, 2015.

Beck looked up at Sapphire and smiled. "We got him! Mayberry Boulevard, in Alton."

She smiled a delighted grin, feeling the weight begin to lift from her shoulders, then said, “Alton? That’s only about seven miles from here.”

Beck slipped his cell phone into his pocket and smiled while he scooped up the documents and the torn envelope. "Let's go pay him a visit."

***

"Yes, Sir," Lester said to his employer sitting behind the desk and padded across the carpet to the black sports back. He reached in pulled out the old rusted crosscut saw, its teeth and blade red and stained with blood, and walked toward Kim.

The chairman tapped her pin into her phone, number-by-number, using the tip of the middle finger of his right hand, his crooked forefinger peering over it like a serpent leering over the Devil’s shoulder. Four. One. One. Four. Each number appeared in the rectangular box as he keyed it in, and then changed to little white circles as he keyed in the next. Three little white circles and a four in the pin code strip later, he pressed OK.

The screen unlocked.

He waved Lester off as he glanced at the little application icons.

Lester backed away, put the saw down onto the top of the sports bag and then padded back over to the door.

The icons on the phone’s screen were square, circular and triangular. He saw social media, internet, banking and email logos. And, then, the orange 'contacts' icon along the row at the bottom. He tapped it and her contacts list popped up. He began to scroll through it, using his right middle finger. His right forefinger was too crooked to easily use a touchscreen.

The first name on the list was Anna Fernandez. He scrolled down and she disappeared off the top of the screen. The next one, Andrea Hyndman, did the same, as did the rest, until he stopped at J and, curiously, glanced down the list. Jackie Gardner, Jason Holt, Jeff Hutchins, Jodie Stewart, and then the one he wanted: Joe Beck.

He looked at it and smirked and tapped Joe Beck's name. Joe Beck’s contact details popped up on the screen. His name was about half-way down, in white, on a blank gray background, and his direct cell phone number was just below it. The chairman looked at it and grinned, then tapped the green 'call' icon with a burning wrath in his eyes.

SIXTEEN

It was shortly after six o’clock and Beck was sitting in the driver’s seat of the Mustang with Sapphire beside him. He was about to back the car out from its slot in the Move-It Self Storage parking lot when he heard his cell phone vibrating on the center console.

He wasn't an introverted guy, but he preferred privacy over publicity. It was why his cell was set to vibrate rather than ring. And it was is also why only nine other living people in this world knew his direct phone number. And he thought, in that moment, that one of them was calling.

He glanced down and saw Kim Sikorsky’s name flash across the phone’s screen as the incoming caller. He lifted the phone and answered on the third vibration.

"Hello, Kim," he said.

There was a brief moment of silence on the other end. Long enough for him to realize that it wasn't really Kim on the phone. That was when he unclipped his seatbelt and stepped out of the car.

"Mr. Beck?" a man eventually asked him. He had a thick Texan accent and the hoarse-sounding voice of a smoker.

Beck said nothing. He closed the car door behind him and stood against it in the evening heat.

"Mr. Beck?" the guy asked again, in the exact same intonation, like he knew fine well Beck was on the line.

"Who the hell is this?" Beck finally asked, cautiously, wondering who the guy was, questioning why he would have Kim Sikorsky's cell phone and worrying about what he might have done to her.

The guy didn’t respond, but Beck could hear him breathing into the mouthpiece.

"Who am I speaking to?" Beck asked, louder than before. “And where is Kim?”

The man exhaled, slowly, then answered. "Mr. Beck, you're speaking with the chairman.”

Beck closed his eyes, slowly, agonizingly. He didn't ask the question because he didn't need to. He already knew the answer, but the man confirmed it anyway.

"And, I have Ms. Sikorsky right here, safely, by my side," he said. He emphasized 'safely' but said it like it meant the exact opposite of safe.

At that moment, Beck realized exactly why Victor Mullarkey had her. Leverage. And, because she was only there as leverage, he knew she was in deep trouble.

"Touch her, Victor, and I'll bury you, you sonnova bitch."

The chairman paused on the other side of the line. He hadn't expected Joe Beck to know his real name, but he took it in his stride.

"So, you know who I am, Mr. Beck?"

"That's right,” Beck answered. "I know you’re Victor Mullarkey. I know you’re the chairman of Axiom Pharmaceutical Corporation, a gun-smuggling, money- laundering sham of a company. And I know that your men killed Wendell Matthews and ATF Agent Mike Sikorsky because they had information that would bring your entire operation to its knees.”

"I’m impressed, Mr. Beck,” the chairman said to him. “You seem like quite the detective. But, if you know all that, then you'll also know what I'm capable of."

"Don’t you touch her,” Beck growled.

The chairman laughed at him, down the line. “Mr. Beck, I don’t touch shit. That’s what my men are for. And when I tell them to touch somebody, they’re like a ferocious pack of dogs.”

"You won't be laughing when I'm standing over your dead body, you piece of shit. I'm coming for you, Victor. And you better keep your dogs on their leash. Anybody even so much as breathes on her, you’re a dead man. And that’s not a threat. That’s a promise."

"Mr. Beck," the chairman began. "You and I both know that won't happen. We’ve put tougher people than you into the ground. And, anyway, I’ve got all the cards in my hand. But you're right, Mr. Beck. You are coming, but not for me. No, no. You're coming to me."

Beck said nothing.

The chairman took his silence as an invitation to continue. "Kim Sikorsky is right here in my office. And you hold the key to her freedom. You have something that I want."

"I'm going to kill you," Beck said.

"No, Mr. Beck, you're not," the chairman said and paused for a beat. "But what you are going to do, is make a trade."

"A trade?" Beck asked.

"A trade," the chairman said, again. There was tormenting tone to his voice. "Since you know who I am, you'll also be aware that I'm a businessman, a very, very good businessman. So, I have a proposition for you. Maybe even the last offer you'll ever hear." He fell silent for a beat and let Beck wonder what it was for a long moment before telling him.

"It's a life for a life, Mr. Beck."

"A life for a life?" Beck asked him, incredulously.

"Yes," the chairman answered. "But not just one for one. I’m sure you’re aware that Kim, here, is heavily pregnant, so the offer is two for two. Kim’s and her baby's in exchange for yours and the whore's."

Beck said absolutely nothing. There were no words to describe how he felt at that precise moment. He stood in silence, numb in the seething heat, staring a thousand miles beyond the busy intersection, feeling a chill creeping down the back of his neck. Then a stark realization dawned on him.

She’s not getting out of this. The sick bastard is going to kill her and the baby.

The chairman continued. "Now, Mr. Beck, I'm a fair man." He said 'fair' in a way that made it sound highly questionable. "I don't like to make a man an offer and expect him to give me an immediate answer. That's just not how good business is done. No, no. What I'm going to do is give you an hour to think about it. And after that hour expires, I'm going to call you back, on Kim Sikorsky's cell phone. And, when I do, you had better answer when it rings because, if I have to wait, or if you don't answer, she dies before I lower the phone from my ear. But I know about you, Mr. Beck. I know you’ll answer. And, when you do, you'll give me your decision. Then, once I have your decision, I'll tell you the location. Now, if you don't make the right choice, or if you decide not to show up at the time and place I tell you, I'll shoot her in the stomach and I'll have my men cut the baby from her womb."

The chairman pushed a button on her cell phone. It sounded like he had placed it on loudspeaker. Beck heard the brief echo of the room and the sound of a woman and some other people whimpering in the background. Then he heard an abrupt bleep as the chairman killed the call.

SEVENTEEN

Sapphire watched Beck lower his cell phone from his face. He stood deathly still, holding it in his hand, staring out onto the junction where Hawk Avenue intersects North Tenth Street like it wasn't even there. She knew something was wrong and got out of the car.

"That was Victor Mullarkey," he said to her, in a quieter than usual tone and without turning his head.

"What?" she asked, moving closer to him. Her heels clip-clopped on the concrete as she elegantly stepped around the hood of the car. “What did he say?”

Beck glanced down at his cell phone and sighed, slowly.

"He said he’s got Kim,” he said and tucked it back into his pants.

"What?" she asked, again. This time there was alarm in her voice.

He didn't answer. But his long pause spoke for him. It said enough. She knew he was concerned, but she said nothing. Waited for him to speak.

"He called from her cell phone. Said that he had her in his office. He put it on loudspeaker. It sounded echoey, but I could hear her whimpering in the background."

Sapphire bought her right hand over her mouth as he spoke.

"He said he'll call back in an hour” he began. “That he’ll tell me the location when he does. He also said he'll kill her if I don't answer the call, or if I don't take him up on his offer."

Sapphire’s dark and neatly-waxed eyebrows narrowed over her nose. "Offer?" she inquired.

Beck nodded, sombrely. “It’s a trade,” he said to her. “Two lives for two lives. Yours and mine, for Kim's and...her unborn baby's."

She stared at him, blankly, trying to process what he had just said to her. A life for a life, a Goddamned life for Goddamned life? she thought and shook her head. The boiling evening air felt like it became even hotter and tightened around her neck, like it was a thick snake constricting below her chin, and everything around her morphed into a distant blur.

Beck turned and looked at her for the first time since the call. He noticed the worry etched across her face. “Sapphire...” he began, but she interrupted him before he could finish.

"Joe, that's not...," she said, in a tense, almost wary voice as she stepped backward toward the hood of the car. "That's not,” she said and paused and shook her head before continuing. “These men have been trying to kill me.” Tears formed on her bottom eyelids. “I can’t do it. I can’t let you do it."

"I know," he replied and reached out and put his hand on her arm.

She hesitated.

"It’s all right,” he whispered “I know you wouldn’t do that. And I wouldn't expect you to.”

She saw what she needed to see in his eyes and nodded, once, feeling reassured, but otherwise didn't move.

Beck took a slow, deep breath and continued, "It's not a trade I'm going to make either."

"So, what are you going to do?" she asked him, curiously, still sounding panicked.

He turned his head and looked back out at the intersection but said nothing. Just stood silent, staring beyond the black and white SUVs and the red and blue sedans streaming on past. He probably didn’t know, himself.

She let him have a few moments to think about it and then begun to ask him again, "Joe, what...?"

"I'm going to have figure out where he's holding her," he answered, but paused, briefly, before continuing. "And, then, I'm going to have to go get her out."

Sapphire nodded. It was the answer she had hoped he would give. The answer she knew he would give. And, even although it sounded insane, she knew it herself: there was no alternative.

“Okay, he said he’d call back in an hour. So, we have to figure it out before he calls,” Beck said. “And in enough time to get there. We have to strike by surprise, otherwise we’ll have nothing.”

“Why make his demand and then wait an hour? Why not just do it there and then? Get it over and done with?”

Beck shook his head. "He spun some bullshit about not forcing people to make snap decisions. But there must be something else going down. Something he’s involved in. Something else he needs the time for...that he maybe doesn’t want me, or us, getting caught up with.”

Sapphire nodded, again, thinking it made sense. Then ran her hand through her long, dark hair. It felt different to when she had last did it, now sticky from standing in the heat. “Okay then, so how do we do it? How do we do find the exact location? I mean, you said it yourself. There's what? At least thirteen places that we know about and God knows who many others that we don’t?"

Beck nodded and glanced down at his watch. Five minutes since Mullarkey had called. Which meant fifty-five minutes until he called again.

Time was ticking past.

"Well," he began. "We've got a head start. He let slip that he had her in an office. Which means it’s most likely one of the locations listed in Mike’s documents. And we’ve got their exact addresses. So, we know exactly where each of those thirteen locations are."

Sapphire sucked a breath of the hot evening air in through her sparkling white clenched teeth. "Thirteen's a big number, Joe. And sixty minutes isn't a lot of time."

He nodded. She was right. But he was smart. And he knew exactly what they had to do. "Yes. There may be thirteen possible places. But, really, there’s only just one. And that's all we have to do: narrow it down to the most likely one. And we’ve now only got fifty-four minutes to do it in, and get there."

Sapphire hesitated. It sounded logical, but it seemed impossible. Then she thought of the unthinkable and flashed him a worried glance. "What if it's not one of the thirteen locations listed on the files? What if it’s an office somewhere else?"

Beck stared at her. It was a possibility he hadn’t considered. And one he didn’t have time to. He took a slow, deep breath of the hot dry air, then exhaled, slowly. "It's got to be. Otherwise, we're all up shit's creek."

She said nothing.

He glanced at his watch again. Six-seventeen. Fifty-three minutes left.

"Well, I guess we won’t know,” she said to him. “Unless we get there and nobody is there.”

He grimaced because he knew, for Kim and her baby, that would be a death sentence.

They stood in an awkward silence for a few seconds, before Beck shook his head, shaking aside the worry, and took charge. “We've only got another fifty-three minutes. So, we had better get to it. Go get the documents from the car."

***

The chairman placed Kim's cell phone back down on his desk and glanced at his watch. In less than an hour, he would call Joe Beck back. He would tell him the warehouse's address and he would give him only another thirty minutes to get there. And he would have everyone ready and waiting for him, braced for when he arrived.

He had thought it through in his mind. They would watch him driving in the black Mustang down South 2nd Street to the gatehouse. The gate would be open and they would allow him to drive straight in. They would let him get maybe fifty yards across the lot and then they would close the gate behind him. And that’s when they would gun him down. But they wouldn’t kill him. No, no. Not yet.

In a hundred minutes, Joe Beck would be lying hog-tied in the warehouse yard, a bullet through each of his arms and gunshot wound on both of his knees. They would make him watch as they killed the whore and then Kim Sikorsky. They would let him see everything, even them taking Sapphire’s head and dumping it in Ariel Izaguirre's cooler. And, then, they would shoot him dead in a puddle of his own blood.

Once his men had disposed of Joe Beck, and tied up the last loose end in the ATF’s investigation, they would then go about fulfilling their deliveries and bringing back almost $1 million in cold, hard cash. He smiled, wrathfully, picturing their three dead bodies and the pile of money. But his fantasy was interrupted by an abrupt knock on the door.

***

Sapphire scooped the envelope up from the Mustang's polished dashboard, closed the passenger’s door, darted back around its hood and handed the envelope to Beck.

He slipped the papers from the torn end, plucked out the Texas Land Registry record for the warehouse and the search result about Axiom Pharmaceutical Corporation from the Texas Comptroller of Public Accounts’ website from the beginning of the pack, and the ten commercial property warranty deeds from the middle and laid them all down one-by-one, side-by-side on the Mustang's hood in two rows of six. He then plucked out the blacked-out warranty deed for Victor Mullarkey’s home from the back of the pack and placed it down on the hood above the rest. Its top edge overlapped the black windscreen wipers and it sucked to the bottom of the windshield in the heat.

"Thirteen addresses," he said and pointed at each sheet individually. "The one at the top, that's Mullarkey's home. Which we know is in Alton. First on the next row is the warehouse in Hidalgo. Then Axiom’s corporate office on Wichita Avenue. And the next ten are the commercial premises for Axiom's subsidiaries. Thirteen addresses, which we've got to narrow down to one."

Sapphire blew out her cheeks. She thought it was an impossible task, especially if it had to be done within the next fifty-odd minutes. And she was still concerned about the possibility of it being a location they didn’t know about.

"Let's start with the ten subsidiaries," he said and held his hand over the first of the ten commercial property warranty deeds. "First up, we got a bar on Minnesota Road. Next, we got three laundromats. Two on Trenton Road, one on Alberta Road. Then, what sounds like a barbershop, based on Moore Road. Now, two tanning salons, one on Ridge Road and another on Pecan Boulevard. After that is...what I'm saying sounds like a nail salon, on Nolana Avenue. A gas station on Wichita Avenue. And, finally, what sounds like an auto body shop. Also along Wichita Avenue."

Sapphire nodded as he spoke. Her head bobbed up and down.

"Okay, Sapphire, you’re up," he said. "You live here, so you must know the area. Which of those ten businesses sound as if they face onto main streets? And which would have other businesses directly opposite them or beside them?"

She winced and steadied her head, then flicked her eyes across each sheet of paper, focusing on the ten warranty deeds, in particular.

"Eight of them," she answered and stepped toward the hood of the car. And, continued, lifting each of the eight sheets as she spoke. "The bar on Minnesota. All three of the laundromats. The barbershop on Moore Road. Both tanning salons. And the nail salon."

"Which leaves us with just two?" he asked.

She brought her right hand up to her mouth and nibbled on the nail of her right forefinger as she looked at the last two addresses. "Wait, there's a restaurant across the street,” she said.

“Across the street from what?”

“The body shop on Wichita."

Beck nodded and looked at the last remaining deed. "Good. Which means we’re down to one. The gas station. You’re sure nothing’s next to it?"

"Yeah, I've used it a couple of times. It's set off the main road. Sits on a parcel of land, maybe fifty feet back? There's nothing else beside it."

"What about across the street?"

"A boarded up pawn store,” she answered and shook her head.

He looked her a question.

“Been like that maybe three months. Was one of those places where gangs hung around. Probably used it to offload stolen jewelry. There was some trouble, from what I remember. Somebody got stabbed outside it. After that, it went under pretty quickly. Been vacant ever since."

Beck glanced down at his watch. Forty-eight minutes left. "Okay, add the gas station to the rest and it leaves us now with four potential locations."

Sapphire looked at him, curiously. "You can dismiss nine places just like that?"

He looked back at her, confidently, and nodded. "Yes, because what we've got here is a kidnap-hostage situation. SWAT one-owe-one. When people get abducted, their captors tend to try and hold them in places where other people aren't likely to see them. Where nobody could unsuspectingly stumble across them. The other businesses could have surveillance cameras, or the owners might kick up a fuss about cars parked out front. Which means, other establishments beside and around a place makes it bad for holding a hostage. Same goes for main streets, unless it’s on a high floor of an apartment block. If the road is busy, too many people will pass by. Which means there's too much chance of somebody seeing something. So, anything with another business beside it, opposite it, or facing onto a busy street, we can rule out, right now, without wasting time."

She nodded. It made sense. If I was to ever take somebody hostage, hypothetically, of course, I wouldn't want somebody seeing or stumbling across them, she thought.

"Which leaves us with the company headquarters, the warehouse, Victor Mullarkey’s house, and the gas station," Beck said.

Sapphire nodded.

He thought about it more and remembered what Mullarkey had said. "The gas station, how big is it?"

Sapphire shrugged and looked at him with a quizzed expression. "Like any other gas station, I guess?"

"I mean the kiosk. How big is the kiosk?"

"It's pretty small," she answered. "Maybe half the size of a standard 7-Eleven. Only really sells gas, coffee, lottery tickets and smokes."

"Sapphire, we’re running out of time here.”

“Well, you asked how big it was?”

“No, I need you to tell me if it has an office. Does it?"

"I don't think so,” she answered and shrugged. “I haven't ever noticed one. Just a grubby toilet on the left side of the building."

"Okay, then, we can rule that one out, too. Mullarkey said he had her in his office. So, if the gas station doesn't have one, he can’t be holding her there."

Sapphire nodded, thinking he was smart. "Which narrows it down to three," she said.

"The corporate headquarters, the warehouse, and his house," Beck said and lifted the warranty deed for the gas station from the Mustang's hood. "But exactly which of those three it is, that’s the problem. It could be any one of them."

***

The door to the warehouse’s management office swung open and two police officers walked in.

It's the cops. Thank God. Somebody must've called them. They've come to help us, Kim and the three men sitting around the table all thought, looking at them as they stepped into the office.

The cops stood maybe six-two, wearing full police uniforms. Silver handcuffs dangled from their left hips, beside black radios, and pistols in black leather holsters were clipped on their right. One had blond hair. He was tall and muscular. And the other was black. He was older, his hair graying at the sides, and a good bit flabbier, but still able to handle himself, judging by the look of him.

Kim and the three men looked at each other with optimistic glances, until the chairman addressed the cops by their names.

"Forgewood, Jackson," he said. "You just missed Mr. Beck."

The black cop on the right, Jackson, looked at him with surprise in his eyes. "What?" he asked. "He was here?"

The chairman shook his head, slowly. Then answered the guy's question. "If he was here, he'd be dead already. I called him, on Agent Sikorsky's wife's cell phone."

"You've got his direct cell phone number, Sir?" the blond cop, obviously named Forgewood, asked.

The chairman nodded.

"Do you want me to call it in to dispatch? Get them to run it against GPS. Get his location?"

Kim’s bottom jaw dropped.

The chairman shook his head, again. "That won't be necessary, Forgewood," he began. "Mr. Beck will be coming to us. And he'll be bringing the whore with him."

Forgewood’s eyebrows narrowed over the top of his nose. He looked at him, curiously.

"I've made Mr. Beck an offer,” the chairman added. “Two lives for two lives. His and the whore's for Kim Sikorsky's and her baby's."

Forgewood and Jackson both nodded their admiration. They liked it.

Kim said nothing. She didn’t even want to think about it.

The three men at the table around her grimaced and shook their heads in disgust.

The chairman continued, "I'll call him back in one hour, after the delivery is out of the way. Tell him to come down here. And, when he does, you'll all be ready and waiting to gun him down."

Forgewood and Jackson grinned and nodded their understanding.

The door to the warehouse swung open, again, although this time there was no warning knock.

Kim glanced over and saw a dark-haired man walk into the room. He was wearing a gray British suit with a white shirt and silver necktie. He was a man she recognized.

***

Sapphire thought about it some more. She didn't know which of the three it could be, and she certainly didn't want to guess, but she figured a guy like Joe Beck probably would. So, she simply asked him the question.

"If it was you, where would you hold her?"

Beck looked at her blankly but said nothing. It was a look that questioned whether she was being serious.

She nodded. "Yeah."

He shook his head, then glanced at his watch. Forty-seven minutes left. He looked down at the three remaining upward-facing sheets sitting on the Mustang’s hood, then flicked his gaze to heat haze shimmering by the curb, without answering.

His eyebrows narrowed over his nose. It was a pondering expression.

Sapphire watched as a single bead of sweat trickled down his right temple and slipped down his cheek.

“The corporate headquarters is a good one," he said to her. "I mean, an office block could just as easily be a prison. It offers the advantage of height. Hold somebody on a high floor with the stairwell and elevators blocked off, maybe locked inside an office, and there's no way out. It would be too high to jump from. And it would be easy to guard the main access points. Easy to prevent anybody from coming in."

Sapphire looked at him, astounded. Aside from thinking about people being chained to desks for eight hours a day, she had never thought of an office like a prison.

Beck continued, "A home, though, is more secluded. More private. Less chance of somebody stumbling across you. But easier to escape from. If he's got her locked in a home office, she could just break the window. Climb out and make a run for it. Maybe she gets caught, maybe she gets away. A cellar, or tornado bunker, would be a better place. But, either way, it's still a lot less secure than a high-rise office. And there’s also a lot more breach points, which makes it harder to defend.” He shook his head. “I wouldn’t use a home."

Sapphire nodded, again.

"But, a warehouse? Beck asked, rhetorically, with a gleam in his eye. "Warehouses are much more secure locations than homes or offices. They’re basically secure compounds. Most of them have just one access road in. And they're often guarded by high steel gates and surrounded by fences that are hard to scale and even more dangerous to climb."

She flashed him a curious gaze. Looked him a question.

Beck saw it and answered. But not before checking his watch. Forty-five minutes left.

"Barbed wire,” he said. “No clean way to get over that. Which, actually, makes them just like prisons. Perfect for stopping somebody from getting far if they manage to wrangle themselves free from the main building, and even better for restricting the flow of in-coming traffic. No need to worry about neighboring buildings. They’re too big and too spaced apart for anybody to hear or see anything. And there's usually no windows low enough to just smash through. So, the only ways in and out are through the heavy-duty steel doors or the skylights along their roofs.”

Sapphire nodded, for the third time since he had begun answering her question. "Okay, then, which of the three would you choose?"

***

"Zanetti," the chairman said, loudly, to greet him. "You were right. Using Agent Sikorsky's wife as bait was the way to flush them out."

Zanetti smiled and glanced toward Kim Sikorsky, sitting at the table on his right. He looked at her briefly, but didn’t make eye contact. He couldn't.

She stared back at him, incredulous. He was the guy who told her that her husband had taken his own life. He was the guy who stopped by their house late that evening, bringing her flowers. He was even one of the men who carried his casket to his grave just the day before. Yet, now, he was somehow involved with the men who had taken her hostage. Which meant he was involved in whatever Joe Beck was talking about. He was involved in whatever really happened to Mike.

Zanetti looked back at the chairman. "Does he know where we are?" he asked.

The chairman shook his head. "No. But he will. In about forty minutes. When I call him back."

"Smart," Zanetti said to him and glanced at his watch. "Gives us time to tie up the delivery first?"

The chairman nodded. "And, then, we invite him out here, to surrender his and the whore's lives to save Kim Sikorsky's and her baby's." He said the word 'save' like it was a foregone conclusion.

Zanetti nodded. "But you're not really going to let them live, are you?"

The chairman shook his head and smiled. It was a sick, wicked grin.

Kim and the three men around the table gasped some of the stale office air through their noses and stared at each other in a short-of-breath silence, looking at worried eyes through worried eyes.

"But since we've got some time to kill, and since she won't be around much longer to talk to anybody,” the chairman said to Zanetti. “Why don't you let Kim Sikorsky know what really happened to her husband?"

***

Beck looked at Sapphire with resolute eyes. "The warehouse,” he answered. “That's it. That’s where he's got her. I heard the echo on the call, like the ceiling was high above his head. Higher than the office walls. Like the office was maybe some sort of modular pod. It’s the warehouse in Hidalgo on the lake. It has to be."

Sapphire smiled, relieved. She thought he was right. She knew he would figure it out.

"How do we get there from here?" he asked her. There was urgency in his voice.

"South on Tenth," she said, quickly, pointing down the street as she spoke.

Beck glanced at his watch and opened the Mustang's door. "Grab the files and let's go. We've got forty-one minutes left before he calls back. And there's a stop we’ll need to make on the way."

***

Zanetti nodded. He turned and looked directly at Kim for the first time since he had entered the office, took a deep breath and then began to speak.

"Your husband's problem, Kim, was that he was too honest. And it was that honesty that got him killed.”

Kim Sikorsky glared at him, disgust on her face.

Zanetti continued. “You see,” he said to her. “A guy contacted our anonymous tips line. A guy by the name of Wendell Matthews. And, during that call, he said that he witnessed illegal activity. Right here. Right outside this building. Activity that we, the ATF, might want to know about. But, sometimes, Kim, tips need to be ignored. Sometimes, instead of acting on information, instead of following up on a lead, an agent should turn a blind eye. And, Kim, this was one of those times."

The men standing around her all nodded, while the three other hostages bound with duct tape and sitting on the chairs around her sat still, listening intently.

Zanetti kept going. "Kellerman tried to warn him. He tried to steer him off. Tried to get him to look the other way. But, his advice fell on deaf ears, so, ultimately, he came to me, Kim. He came to me.” He patted his open-palmed hands on his chest at this point. “And, of course, I considered it. I weighed up the options. Thought through all possible outcomes. But, ultimately, I realized that it wasn't a situation for me to handle. So, I did what I had to do, Kim. I went to him," he said to her as he pointed at the man in charge sitting behind the desk.

The boss nodded his approval, agreeing wholeheartedly with what Zanetti had just said. Then he gestured him a hand signal to keep going.

"He gave it a much greater amount of thought than I ever could've,” Zanetti said to her. “First, he came up with a solution. And, then, he came up with the plan. And, once he had it all worked out, he told us what needed to be done."

Kim Sikorsky's eyes widened. Her breaths drew short and light, almost to the point where she was barely breathing at all.

Zanetti continued. "So, last Wednesday morning, we did an on-spec firearms check. We took every gun from every agent in the office, for inspection, so he wasn't prepared for what was coming. Then, later that afternoon, I sent him out. To follow up on a lead at the laundromat on Alberta Road.”

Forgewood and Jackson both stepped forward. "We were waiting for him outside in the alley," Forgewood said.

Kim's stomach knotted, like her intestines were a bowl of spaghetti being twisted and churned with a fork.

"We caught him by surprise," Jackson added and lifted the handcuffs from his belt. He held them out, with one looped over his finger, dangling back and forth. "Slapped these, here, cuffs on his wrists and placed him under arrest." He said arrest like it meant something much more sinister.

Her chest felt heavy and sore, like she was being trampled by an elephant. And every breath became a wheezing struggle.

"Yeah, we put him in the back of the car," Forgewood said to her, with a sinister smirk. "But we never took him down to the station."

"No. We didn't," Jackson added and sniggered. "We brought him down here. You should have heard the fear in his voice when he saw us drive up to the black steel gates. He pleaded for us to let him go. Sounded like a pathetic little bitch."

Estrada stepped forward. "And, that's what he was, a pathetic little bitch. Forgewood and Jackson hauled him from the car. They dragged him through the warehouse and brought him in here, where ten of us were waiting." He nodded to the man behind the desk, then Zanetti, then Forgewood and Jackson, and then the two other Hispanic men standing around the table, and implied there were three more, but that they weren't there.

Kim's eyes widened, farther, and she raised her hand over her mouth, trying to brace herself for whatever was coming next.

"We tore the shirt from his back," he snarled. "And the pants from his legs. Stripped him naked like a whore. And, then, we beat his body black and blue. Smashed his face, shattered his teeth, must have broken almost all of his ribs and maybe even ruptured one of his kidneys. We smashed his feet with sledgehammers. His left foot was first. And, then, his right. It was funny watching him writhing around on the carpet."

She closed her eyes as hard as she could, trying not to visualize the horrendous image in her mind. But she couldn’t stop it. She could see him in her mind, lying right there on the carpet at her feet, writhing in pain, like the Hispanic man was telling her. And she could hear him, too. He was in agony, suffering and calling for them to stop. She sighed, sadly, and a single tear trickled down her left cheek.

Oswald stepped forward and raised his gun. "That's when I whipped him like a bitch, with this," he said and waved his black Glock in the air.

Kim shook her head left and right as more and more tears streamed down her face.

Estrada smiled and continued, "Your husband pulled himself along the carpet, crying like a dog." He nodded toward Hernandez and Jimenez. "Then, they swung the sledgehammers and shattered his hands. Hell, one of his fingers even popped off. The blood went everywhere."

Kim whimpered as she cried. She felt warm. Too warm. Like she was burning up. And nauseous.

Oswald continued, laughing as he spoke, "Yeah, it was funny watching him trying to grab at it. His hands wobbled like fleshy little squares of jelly."

"Yes, he was completely defenseless," Zanetti added. "And that's when a guy called Wyatt, a real sick bastard, but, damn, one hell of a poker player, God rest his soul, that's when he pulled a rusted old pair of garden pruners from his jacket."

Kim froze in sheer fear, breathing rapid wheezing breaths. Her heart was pounding. Her limbs felt heavy and numb. And her eyes were wide and looked like they were bursting from her head as she stared at the sick bastard she once thought of as a friend.

Zanetti continued, "He pulled ‘em from his jacket and leaned down and grabbed a hold of your husband's testicles. Squeezed 'em hard and let him squeal like a bitch. Then, he used the pruners and sliced them clean off." He pointed to a brown, discolored patch on the thick black carpet. "That's what that stain is, Kim, the blood from your husband's balls."

Kim threw up in her mouth, but the duct tape kept it inside. It was warm, acidic and bitty. It burned her throat and tasted horrible. Tears streamed down her face.

Lester then reached down and lifted the saw from the top of the black sports bag and stepped toward her, waving it in his right hand. He sneered and added, "And that's when a damned good man named Bagwell, who's also no longer with us, used this to end it. He dragged him across the carpet and dumped him onto a cellophane sheet, looked him dead in the eye and hacked his head clean off."

Kim threw up, again. Her cheeks bulged wide and round, like a hamster's, as the warm, acidic puke sloshed across her teeth and burned the top of her tongue. Some of it oozed over her bottom lip and leaked through the air pockets underneath the edges of the duct tape.

Zanetti stepped toward her and looked into her eyes, like it was just her and him in the room. "And Kellerman and I stood here and watched it happen," he said. "We listened to his screams and ignored his pleas for help. We watched the pain take hold of his face. We heard his bones crack and we saw his finger pop off. We saw the distress in his eyes when his testicles were sliced from his body. He looked like a neutered, frightened little puppy. Then, we watched him take his last breath as Bagwell severed his carotid arteries." He laughed with the last word and the rest of the men joined him. It sounded like a loud chorus of applause.

The three duct-taped men around her stared down at the table. They couldn't bear to look at her. And they didn't dare to look at any of the other men in the room, not after what they had just heard. So, they sat there, staring at the grain of the wood, listening to Kim Sikorsky whimpering and sobbing underneath the raucous sound of the men laughing. The more she cried, the louder they laughed.

Tears streamed down her chalk-white face. She sniffled and wiped them from her big, full eyes with the back of her hand as best she could, staring back at the horde of sick, nasty bastards wondering only one thing: why?

Only one of the men remained deathly quiet: the man sitting behind the desk. He saw the question in her red, teary eyes and raised his right hand, open-palmed, and hushed the others to a sudden, eerie silence. Then he spoke, softly.

"Because, Kim, nobody fucks with the Izaguirre cartel,” he said to her, quietly, almost like he was whispering directly into her ear. “And that's what we're going to do to you, too, Ms. Sikorsky. Once Joe Beck comes down here to save you with his whore. We're going to shoot out his arms and legs and then we're going to take both of them alive. We're going to kill her first, slowly, while you and Mr. Beck watch. And, then, once we've cut her head from her body, we're going to do exactly the same to you, while he watches. And we’re going to enjoy it.”

Kim stared at him, crying and quivering in fear.

The man pointed toward the office door. His right hand twitched back and forth and his crooked forefinger shook in the air as he spoke. "And, once we kill you, my men are going to drag your broken and decapitated bodies outside to the yard. Where we're going to douse you in gasoline from that red canister on the carpet.” He pulled a silver zippo lighter from his suit jacket and sparked a hissing blue-and-orange flame. Glanced down at it, then looked straight into her eyes. "Then, I'm going to set you both on fire and make him watch you burn under the black night sky, before I kill him myself."

EIGHTEEN

Beck ran a red at the intersection of Tenth Street and West Nolana Avenue. Other drivers slammed their brakes and honked their horns. Their low-pitched, collective and loud drone filled the air as the drivers all gestured dirty hand signs and hurled abusive language from behind the windshields of their sedans and SUVs. Beck didn't care. There were no cops around and it was a life or death situation. He had just forty minutes to get to the warehouse in Hidalgo. There was no time to waste on traffic regulations.

They drove past a high-rise glass-clad office building on the left and a BMW dealership farther ahead on the right. He diverted his gaze to the left, away from the strong setting sun radiating a burning orange along the expensive black cars' heavily-polished hoods. That's when he found exactly what he was looking for. There was a small store up ahead, tucked in on the left, right before the intersection with Harvey Avenue. It had an orange sign above the door out front that said, 'Elmer's Guns & Ammo,' in bold, black capital letters.

"Hang on," he called out to Sapphire, probably louder than he needed to, and slammed the brakes and U-turned across four lanes of coming and going traffic.

She grabbed ahold of her seatbelt and let out the sort of high-pitched shriek that first-timers make when they ride looping and plummeting roller coasters at amusement parks as the car's rubber tires screeched against the road and view from the windows morphed into a blur.

The Mustang shook to a halt in a parking spot in the lot outside the store and she fell into a heavy-breathing silence.

"I'll be in and out!" Beck said to her and grabbed his Smith & Wesson, and the stolen black Glock from the glove box, and dived out the door, leaving the keys still dangling from the ignition.

He charged across the lot in the sweltering heat, noticing a white rectangular sign up ahead, hanging on the other side of the store's dirty glass door. It said, 'closed,' in bold red text.

He squinted beyond it. The lights were on inside and somebody appeared to be walking around between what looked like clothing racks at the back of the store, as far as he could tell against the glare from the sun on the window. He ignored the sign and stepped in through the door.

***

The radio in the top drawer of the chairman's desk crackled.

He reached down and opened the drawer and lifted the radio out.

A man spoke to him in a faint and crackly voice from the other side as he closed the drawer.

"Sir," the man said. "The truck's sitting out front."

"Send them in, Bischoff,” the chairman said to the guy, speaking into the radio. “And make sure to close the gate when they're through,"

"Yes, Sir," the guy named Bischoff said back to him, through the static crackling over the radio waves.

The chairman then pressed the red mute button, placed the radio down on the desk without a sound and looked up at his eight men. "Time to get to work," he said

The men all nodded. Estrada, Hernandez and Jimenez stood up from the sofa. Forgewood and Jackson stepped forward. Zanetti, Oswald and Lester remained still.

"Forgewood, Jackson, Zanetti,” the chairman began. “You three go out and occupy Izaguirre's truck driver and his two enforcers in the back. Stay close and keep your eye on them. They’ll have their guns, as standard, but don’t let any one of them even so much as think about it."

"Yes, Sir," Zanetti said before the other two could respond, then nodded to Forgewood and Jackson. The three men then walked out of the office.

Next, the chairman looked at Lester and Oswald. "You two go out and make a start on checking the crates. Grab a couple of crowbars from out in the warehouse and open each of them up. Make sure it’s all in there. And don't be haphazard. After arranging overnight meets, we can't afford to show up light."

The two men nodded their understanding and turned and walked out the door just a few paces behind Zanetti, Forgewood and Jackson.

"Estrada, Hernandez, Jimenez?" the chairman asked.

The three men looked at him, attentively, ready to do as he commanded.

"Go get the wheelbarrows and start loading the crates from the truck out onto the yard. Once Lester and Oswald have checked them, load up the backs of the vans."

"Yes, Sir," Estrada said to him. The S hissed from the tip of his tongue.

The chairman continued. "And, when you're done, come back in for our three drivers." He pointed to each man sitting around the table, one-by-one, as he spoke. "Take them out to the vans. Buckle them in and tape their hands to the steering wheels. There are no breaks on this night shift."

The men looked at each other through wide and disagreeable eyes, shaking their heads as he spoke.

Estrada nodded his understanding. “Yes, Sir,” he repeated and turned and slapped Hernandez on the shoulder and glanced at Jimenez and then cocked his head toward the door.

The chairman watched them leave. Then stood up from behind his desk and walked over into the middle of the room. He picked up the saw and glanced down at his watch. Smiled and looked at Kim Sikorsky. "Just over an hour until the fun begins," he said to her, his lips twisting up the sides of his face.

***

Sapphire pried her fingertips from the grooves they had made on the seatbelt as she looked out the window. The store's glass doors swung open and Beck stepped out onto the glowing, sun-drenched concrete sidewalk, only three minutes after he had gone in. Just as he had said, he was in and out, but he looked different. He was wearing completely new attire.

Black shades covered his eyes. New black pants covered his legs. There were new black boots over his feet. And he was wearing a tight charcoal-gray v-neck t-shirt, overlaid by a black bulletproof vest that was strapped around his body. There was a black belt fastened around his waist. It had two handgun holsters - one by each of his hips. Each of them with a gun cradled inside. One with a black butt on his left and another with a silver butt on his right. The Glock and the Smith & Wesson. And there was a long black-and-brown gun across his chest. It was attached to a black strap, slung over his left shoulder. It had a walnut stock with a black eighteen and a half-inch barrel and there was a black scope fixed to the top. It looked like some sort of rifle, as far she could tell. In his right hand, he was carrying another black bulletproof vest, just like the one he was wearing. And, in his left, he was holding a black videotape, down by the side of his thigh.

He opened the Mustang's door, tossed the videotape onto the floor, pulled the rifle off his body and tossed it onto the back seat. It clanked against the black shotguns already lying in the back.

"Joe, what the hell was that?" Sapphire asked, still shaken by his carefree driving, annoyed at his lack of care.

He climbed back into the car.

"Joe, what the hell was that?" she asked him again, a hint of aggression present in her voice as her face went red and her nostrils flared.

He sighed and closed the door. Then handed her the bulletproof vest, across the center console. "Here," he said. "Put that on."

She glanced at it once. Dismissive. He hadn’t answered her. And she had noticed. Anyway, the vest wouldn't have gone with her dress or her shoes. It was unstylish. I wouldn't be seen dead wearing that, she thought.

Beck noticed. He laid it down on her lap.

It felt heavy. The material was thick. "You want to tell me what the hell you're doing?” she asked him. “And why you're dressed differently? And why you want me to wear this?"

Beck sighed and spun around in his seat, but he didn’t have time for this. "Sapphire," he began, aggression in his voice. "What we've got is a hostage situation. And a highly dangerous one. There were thirteen men mentioned in Matthews' witness statement. Now, I took out three of them. Which means there's at least another ten. That is, ten that we know about. Maybe more. So, that means there’s going to be as much as ten guns firing back at us. Minute we show up, there's going to be a whole lot of bullets flying our way. So, what I'm doing is leveling out the playing field. And that's what these clothes are for. Especially, the vests."

“Okay,” Sapphire said and nodded, slowly. She couldn’t argue. She picked up the vest.

“Now, pull the vest over your head and fasten the velcro straps at the sides by your waist,” he said.

She unclipped her seatbelt and did as he had said. She lifted the vest from her lap and slipped it over her head. Then twisted her torso and allowed it to fall over her body as the red seatbelt-warning light lit up on the dash and the warning alarm dinged.

"Okay?" she asked as she tried to pat it down and smooth it out over her bust. It wouldn't take to her shape. It just hung out over her curvaceous chest. She tried once more. Nothing. She gave up and, instead, turned her attention to fastening the waist straps. The velcro straps sucked it in tight around her waist, but it still looked puffy and top-heavy. She shook her head and re-clipped on her seatbelt.

He glanced back at her and smiled. “Yes,” he said, thinking: she still looks hot, he thought, even sitting there drowning in an oversized kevlar vest.

"That new gun you threw into the back? That for what I think it is?" she asked.

"The Ruger ten twenty-two?" he asked as he nodded back toward the rifle lying on the back seat and put the Mustang into DRIVE. He then gunned the engine, drove across the lot and slipped back out and headed south on Tenth Street.

She nodded, vaguely, like she was attempting to come across like she knew what it was.

"Yeah. I’m planning to use it from a distance, to take down as many of them as possible,” he said.

She nodded, slowly, and looked him another question with a ponderous expression on her face.

"We'll pull into that clearing that Matthews mentioned. It's higher than the warehouse roof and offers an unobstructed view of the yard. Matthews said it himself, in his statement. It's a perfect spot to set up a position. If they're out there taking a truck delivery, like I think they could be, they'll be like sitting ducks. I'll use the Ruger and take as much of 'em down as I can. Magazine's got ten rounds. Should be enough to take out most of them. Less men firing back will make going into the building a whole lot less dangerous."

She was nodding as he spoke but stopped suddenly, a flash of concern sweeping across her face. “You don’t want me to shoot anybody, do you?”

"No," he answered. "It's too dangerous. You'll stay inside the car. Duck down behind the dashboard. That vest you’re drowning in is just in case."

She flicked him an unimpressed look, at his comment, but nodded, relieved at the prospect of not having to directly face on to oncoming bullets.

"And what about the tape in the back? What's that for?" she asked him.

"It's the footage from inside the gun store, from the security camera above the counter. It would've captured me buying the Ruger, scope, magazine and two other magazines for the Glock and my Smith & Wesson. And, given my background, I wouldn't want that, or what I'm about to go do, being traced back to me."

"What about the store clerk?"

"I paid him an extra five-hundred bucks and asked him his name and address. Then told him I knew who he was, where he lived and where he worked, so if somebody were to come knocking, I’d be coming looking."

Sapphire nodded but said nothing as Beck accelerated south along Tenth Street. They passed a couple of small liquor stores, fast food joints and high rise office towers as they cruised toward the train line and into the heart of McAllen.

The barriers were up and the black Mustang sped right through. Traffic was lighter than usual at this time of the evening, and it was a straight road south. Beck glanced at his watch. Thirty minutes before Victor Mullarkey would call him back, so he figured he needed to get there within the next ten. He pushed his foot harder to the floor.

Tenth Street eventually looped them past the runway at McAllen International Airport and then the State Farm Arena farther south, before morphing into the slip for East Coma Avenue. They cut into the residential area and turned on to the dirt road that led to the clearing. Beck continued for a few hundred yards before he brought the Mustang to a halt by the side of the road.

"Why are we stopping? We're not there yet!" Sapphire said, in an anxious and tense-sounding voice.

Beck shook his head and pointed out the windshield. “Look.”

The dirt track was blocked off up ahead, by a row of three felled trees and there were trenches between them, the width of the road and about the length of a car.

"They've made an abatis," he said, shaking his head. “They’ve seen the witness statement and they’ve decided to block off the clearing. There’s no way through that, not in a Mustang, hell not even in a damn tank.”

"So, what do we do?"

Beck checked his watch. Six-forty. Which gave him just another twenty minutes. “I'll have to leave it here and go the rest of the way on foot."

Sapphire unclipped her belt and reached for the door handle.

"Whoa!" Beck said and raised his hand, open-palmed. "What are you doing?"

"I'm coming with you," she answered.

"No, you're not," he said. "It's too dangerous. If they've gone to the trouble of felling trees and digging trenches, it probably means they want people to venture in there on foot. We don't know what else they've got lurking in those woods. There could be tripwires, manholes, nets, anything.”

“So, why are you taking the risk?”

"Because Kim Sikorsky’s and her unborn baby’s lives depend on it. And I know what I'm looking for," he answered.

She smiled and nodded.

Beck reached around over the center console and grabbed a shotgun from the back seat, then handed it to her. "Here. Take this. You even so much as see anyone approaching this car, you shoot them. You hear?"

“Yes,” she answered as she took it across her lap.

It felt cold and heavy. She flicked her eyes along the length of its barrel and then looked its trigger.

"Safety's on," he said. "Just unlatch it, pump the handle and fire. But don't do it inside the car. The shrapnel will shred you. Make sure to point it out the window. Or, open the door first."

She nodded but said nothing.

He reached around to the back seat, again, and lifted the wooden rifle over the center console. Tilted it to the left and unflicked the safety. Then he placed his right palm down on her thigh and nodded. “Wish me luck.”

He moved to get out of the car, but Sapphire grabbed his arm and pulled him back. She cupped her hands around his chin and pulled his face down toward hers. His shadow of stubble felt rugged against her soft palms. She then leaned over, angled her face upward and kissed his lips, softly.

"Be careful, Joe," she whispered, gazing deeply into his emerald-green eyes.

"Always," he said and kissed her back, before stepping out of the car. The lenses of his dark shades steamed up as the hot evening air rushed across his face.

She watched him walk toward the fallen tree trunks that blocked off the dirt track. He was easily the biggest man she had ever met. A tall six-foot-five, and a full two-hundred and seventy-five pounds. His arms and shoulders bulged from his t-shirt and his thighs bulged from his dark pants. The black kevlar vest, tightly strapped around his ripped torso, made him practically bulletproof and the rifle in his hands and two fully-loaded pistols holstered on his belt made him dangerous, formidable, like an army of one, she thought as she watched him disappear into the densely-packed woods at the side of the road.

NINETEEN

The woodland was cooler than the open road, but only by a narrow margin. The prickly ash trees were densely packed together and space between them was slim. It felt like a melting pot, somewhere just shy of a hundred degrees.

The tree leaves rustled against Beck's enormous body as he fought his way through. They were crisp and dry and sharp at their tips. They scratched against the skin on his arms and face, but crumpled against the fibers of his kevlar vest and bulletproof clothing. He could hear birds flapping in the crowns of the trees overhead, squirrels scurrying up the trunks around him, snakes slithering around somewhere below the dense, dark undergrowth and dried out branches crunching under his boots. Insects flickered and buzzed all around and the stink of dead, rotten animal carcasses mixed with a pungent loamy scent of soil hung in the air.

He took ten difficult paces forward, worrying about the time with each step, before stopping deathly still with his foot hovering above a thick gathering of crisp, brown leaves. He glanced down through them and saw what appeared to be a bear trap lurking underneath. It looked old and well used, scratched and rusted, with sharp, pointed teeth that were crusted with a crimson covering of blood.

Beck placed his foot back down on the ground and thought about it for a long beat. He didn't know if the blood was animal or human, but he knew he only had about another fifteen minutes to spare and he had to get through. And that if there was one trap, there would be others.

He slung the rifle over his shoulder and glanced to his left and then his right. There were trees on either side of him. All with long, brown branches full of lush green leaves. He reached over and tore a branch from one of the prickly ash trees to his left. The branch was a developing off-shoot. It wasn't particularly thick, but it offered exactly what he needed. He held it by its broken end and pushed it down into the bed of leaves, exactly where he figured the middle of the trap would've been.

In less than a second, the trap whipped shut. Its teeth snapped through the leaves like a shark's jaws through a dark and murky surface of an ocean. They closed with a loud metallic clank and sliced the branch in half with enough force to make Beck realize that a leg or an ankle would stand no chance. Even if it was wearing kevlar pants.

He took a deep breath and glanced around, unsure of the path ahead. He knew he had to assume the worst, that there would be more. He pulled a few more branches from the trees and walked forward through the undergrowth, shuffling his feet along the dirt and through the leaves, holding a branch in front of himself, tapping its the end against the ground like he was a blind man with a cane.

By the time he had reached the clearing, he had neutralized three more traps and dodged another. He marked his passageway back to the car by laying the snapped branches on the leaves in a westerly direction. The clearing was vast and open, maybe thirty feet in diameter and a hundred feet around. The trees were less packed and higher. Their crowns were high above his head and there was an open circle of sky high above them. It was streaked with strokes of light orange and hues of pink from the fading sun and he could see the moon up ahead, rising in the distance. It looked awesome.

He took a moment to glance around in all directions, then checked his watch. Realizing, now, he had just five minutes to spare, he got straight back to the task in hand.

The ground ahead was covered by a lush green undergrowth that appeared to have been hauled from the trees and laid down over what might have once been a circle of clear, dry brown soil. At the far end, there was a gap in the trees. The gap that was mentioned in the ATF witness statement. The gap that Wendell Matthews had pulled up by the previous Monday. Beck walked forward toward it, carefully maneuvering around the side of the clearing to avoid any more hidden bear traps, trip wires or manholes that could have been lurking underneath the undergrowth.

At the far end, a felled tree blocked the gap, shielding the floor of the clearing from the steep drop to the ground below. Beck hunkered down low against its withering trunk and looked down at the warehouse maybe fifty feet below.

It was exactly as he had anticipated. A flat-roofed, single-story prefab structure made of gun-gray corrugated steel with large steel shutter doors and absolutely no windows. It was ringed by a thick steel chain link fence that was topped with barbed wire intertwined with razor wire. It was the perfect place to hold a hostage.

He also saw a black Mercedes parked in the lot outside the building, nosed into a spot beside the door with two other cars parked next to it: a black Lincoln Town Car on its left and a white Dodge Charger on its right, emblazoned with 'McAllen Police' written along the side in blue text.

He already knew he was in the right place, but it was what he saw next that made him feel like he had hit the home run. He saw men in the yard. Eleven of them. Which meant this was exactly where they were holding her, which meant he was definitely in the right place. And right on time. But the eleven men also presented a problem - before he could go in, he would have to tackle them, first.

Seven of them were men he hadn't seen before. Six of the seven, Hispanic. Five of them were stood by the back of the truck. Three of them were dressed in dark jeans, dark shirts and leather jackets. They were unloading heavy-looking wooden crates from the back. Two other Hispanics were watching them. They both had short, dark hair with bare chins. They were dressed in dark boots, dark pants and navy-blue t-shirts, and they were wearing matching dark shades over their eyes. They had taken a position by either side of the truck's back door and they were holding black M16 machine guns across their abdomens. Beck figured they were some sort of enforcers for whoever the truck and its contents belonged to.

The other Hispanic guy stood around the side of the truck smoking. He had long and greasy black hair tied back in a ponytail above a bright-red sunburned face with puffy cheeks and a thick black handlebar mustache. He was dressed in dark-blue jeans and a white tank top that bulged over the spare tire around his midriff. What looked like the butt of a handgun, a Glock, maybe, was sticking out from the right front pocket of his jeans. Beck assumed he was the truck driver.

Four of the other five men were familiar. They were the four men that he and Sapphire had run into at McAllen Public Library. The guy in a smart gray suit was standing off to the right of the truck, in view of the fat tank-topped Mexican. gray suit was holding a black Glock in his right hand and looking toward the Mexican guy like he was watching his every move.

The tall and strapping blond-haired cop and his dark-skinned, dark-haired partner, both still wearing their police officer’s uniforms, were there, too. They were standing behind the two Hispanic gunmen who were holding the M16s, about two paces back, the blond cop standing on the left and the black cop standing on the right. They each held black Glocks in their hands, with the muzzles pointed toward the Hispanic gunmen's sides.

The guy with a cue-ball head, still wearing the dark pants, dark t-shirt and black leather jacket, was standing by the back of the truck, beside another similarly-dressed guy whom Beck also didn’t recognize. He was short and thin, dressed in dark jeans, a charcoal t-shirt and black leather jacket and had a blond head of hair that was cut short in the sort of style you would imagine finding on a white supremacist. The guy had a crowbar in his hand. He used it to pry open the lids of the crates, while cue-ball glanced over their contents and nodded his approval to the Hispanics wearing the leather jackets.

Beck watched as they reached into one of the crates and unloaded the goods into three wheelbarrows. One of them reached in and lifted out a black, long-barreled gun. And, then, another. And another. Winchester SXP Black Shadow shotguns. Hundreds of them. Just like the guns the two huge bearded men had when they came smashing through the door the night before at the Sundance Motel. The guy loaded up the wheelbarrows and the three Hispanics wheeled them across the yard to the backs of four black vans sitting parked on the other side. Beck continued watching as they opened the vans and loaded the SXPs into the back.

At that moment, Beck knew that everything on Wendell Matthew’s witness statement was true. He had witnessed it with his own eyes. He unslung his rifle from his shoulder and checked his watch. It was seven o’clock. Which meant his cell phone would ring any second.

He drew his cell phone from his pants pocket and laid it down on the ground to his left, then laid the Ruger down across the tree trunk, with its barrel slotted into a groove on the bark. It slipped in perfectly and allowed him to lie behind the tree with the muzzle facing the yard. He lowered his face level with the scope, closed his left eye and pressed his right eye against the scope's viewport.

He watched the three Hispanics push the empty wheelbarrows across the yard to the back of the truck, ready to unload the next crate, as he looped his right forefinger into the trigger guard and tested the pull. It was just a gentle squeeze. Not quite enough pressure to fire a shot, but enough to take it more than half-way there.

A bead of sweat formed on his left temple and trickled down to the side of his jaw, but he never even felt it. He knew that firing a rifle had to be done in a calm internal state, with all external distractions removed from his mind. And that, he’d already done. His breaths were calm and composed and the immediate environment was a compartmentalized afterthought in his mind. The buzzing sound of the insects, the chirping of the birds and the dull hissing of the snakes had faded into a static bliss silence. And his heartbeat had steadied to a resting pulse. He was ready to pull the trigger.

That’s when his cell phone rang.

And that’s exactly what he had been waiting for. He knew who was calling. It was exactly one hour since Victor Mullarkey had called. And, now, just like he’d said he would, he was calling back, looking for Beck's decision. Beck quickly swiped his cell phone screen and answered the call, placing it on loudspeaker without glancing away from the scope’s viewport.

"Mr. Beck?" Mullarkey asked.

"I’m here," he answered as he decided who he would gun down first and lined the Ruger's muzzle up to the Hispanic gunman standing to the left-hand side of the back of the truck.

"It's time for your decision," Mullarkey said. "Time to decide whether Kim Sikorsky, here, and her baby, lives or dies."

Beck said nothing, even though he heard Kim whimpering in the background. Instead, he angled the target about an inch to its left and aligned the converging fine crosshair of the scope’s reticle to the exact center of the gunman's sweating forehead.

"I assume, from your silence, Mr. Beck, that you plan on letting them live?"

"That's right," Beck said as calmly as he could, so not to influence his breathing frequency or heart rate, while he squeezed the Ruger’s trigger, adding just enough pressure to get it on edge, primed to fire.

"Well, then, Mr. Beck, the timer starts now," Mullarkey said. "There's a warehouse. By Carlson Lake, in Hidalgo. That's where we have her. She'll be waiting for you in the yard. You've got thirty minutes to get here or she dies."

"I know there’s a warehouse by Carlson Lake," Beck answered, then paused as he drew a slow, calm breath and allowed his heart to beat once more and, briefly, enter its resting phase. "I can see it right now," he added and pulled the trigger.

***

Kim Sikorsky's cell phone slipped from Victor Mullarkey’s hand as the gunshot rang loud in his ear. It took him by surprise. Caught him off guard because it was the last thing he had expected to hear.

He watched the cell phone fall and bounce off his desk, then fall to the dark carpet by his feet, almost like it was happening in slow motion as a sobering thought entered his mind.

Shit. He’s got the drop on us.

Kim and the three hostages saw the worry in his eyes. For a brief moment, he looked like nothing more a shell, like he was in a state of shock, like he had just been backed into a corner and he didn't seem to know of a way out. It made him unpredictable. And that made him dangerous.

His next thought was natural. His next thought was: Who did he shoot? Who the hell's dead? But it was interrupted by another, similar-sounding gunshot.

The second gunshot wasn't as abrupt the first. It wasn’t a direct bang in his ear, and it didn’t catch him by surprise. But it was loud enough. It sounded like it was just on the other side of the warehouse's pre-fabricated steel walls. And it meant one thing: somebody else was dead.

He swallowed, hard, then kicked Kim’s cell phone to the other side of the office and reached for his gun.

Kim and the three hostages whimpered. They watched him draw it from his suit pocket and sat there as if they were on a knife-edge, afraid to move, as he stared down at it long and hard, holding it in his right hand.

He glanced over at them. Looked them in the eye one-by-one and raised his right arm, arcing the muzzle of the gun up through the air.

It was a heart-stopping, uneasy moment and Kim and the three men each thought: this is it. This is the end. None of us are getting out of this. Which one of us will be first? Oh God, it’s me.

The tension was interrupted by another loud bang. Another gunshot outside. Which, of course, meant another dead body.

Mullarkey’s eyes narrowed on the guy in the FedEx uniform. He moved the muzzle of his gun through the air, bringing it to a halt aimed straight at his head. He looked deep into the guy’s wide, terrified eyes, then took a deep breath and grinned and lowered the gun. He had thought of his escape route.

The guy caught his breath and Kim and the two other hostages sighed, relieved.

Mullarkey tallied the numbers in his head. Eleven men in the yard. Probably three of them down. So, eight men left. Maybe only five of them my own. He grimaced and placed the gun down on the surface of his desk, next to the crosscut saw, lifted the radio and pushed the speak button, without taking his icy glare from Kim and the three men sitting around his table.

The radio crackled.

"Bischoff," he yelled into the mouthpiece.

"Sir?" somebody replied.

"The hell's going on out there?" Mullarkey yelled.

The radio crackled, again, but only for a second, before the man replied. "Sir, it's...it's somebody firing on us."

"I can Goddamned hear that, you idiot. What I want to know is, where he's shooting from? Can you see him? What's on the cameras? What’s happening in the yard?"

The radio crackled as the guy paused and diverted his attention elsewhere, taking a thorough look at the CCTV monitors.

"It looks as if it's coming from the woodland to the west, Sir. From up in the clearing that we blocked off. I can see the back of a black vehicle, Sir. On the camera in the woods facing onto the dirt track. It looks like a Ford Mustang. It's sitting parked up by the side of the road. Three people look as if they're dead in the yard and the rest of the men have stopped what they’re doing. They’ve drawn their guns and they’re firing back."

The sound of gunshots rang loud over the radio and outside through the walls of the warehouse. Mullarkey’s upper lip curled upward. “Why are you only telling me about the car now?" he hissed.

There was a long, nervous moment of silence. The guy didn't know what to say. He had figured he had a spare half-hour while the rest of the men unloaded the truck and, with the gate closed, he had dozed off to a light snooze right before Beck's Mustang would have popped up on camera. But he knew he couldn't say that to his boss, so he lied.

“They must’ve come up when the truck came in, Sir. They would’ve slipped right on through. On the camera, the car is barely even visible. I can only see the back of it.”

Mullarkey knew the guy was telling him bullshit. "Your job is to watch the gate and the perimeter, Bischoff," he began. “At all times. But you didn’t. You failed to do your job, didn’t you?”

“I’m sorry, Sir.”

"Sorry? You're Goddamned sorry?” Mullarkey thundered. “There's somebody out there killing my men, on your watch, and all you can say is, you're Goddamned sorry?"

The guy said nothing.

"You better listen up, Bischoff, and you better listen good. Because, if you don’t do exactly what I’m about to tell you, I’ll give you a thousand reasons to be Goddamned sorry, you worthless sonnova bitch. You hear?” Mullarkey roared at him.

There was more silence on the line. The guy eventually stated his understanding, but in a quiet, sheepish voice.

“Yes, Sir.”

"I want you to go up there," Mullarkey began. "Right now. And I want you to check that vehicle. If there's anyone inside, a woman, you grab them and bring them back down here, to my office."

"Yes, Sir," the guy replied. "But what if there's nobody there?"

Mullarkey flicked his eyes from his hostages to the wall and thought about it for a brief second.

"Then, I want you to take up a position in the trees and wait until our friend decides to return to his car. And, when he does, I want you to shoot him." He hushed the radio before the guy had the chance to relay his orders. Tossed it onto his desk and opened the bottom drawer below his desk and lifted out a black kevlar vest. He slung it over his head and sat down on the chair behind his desk, then scooped up his gun with his left hand and looked at Kim Sikorsky and grinned at her, a wrathful look in his ghostly white eyes.

“We’re either about to have some company in here,” he said. “Or your friend is about to become a dead man.”

***

The .22 caliber round screeched from the Ruger's muzzle like a starving greyhound chasing a rabbit from the traps. And, in just a fraction of a second, the Hispanic enforcer's head exploded like it was an overfilled water balloon jabbed by a nail. It was a direct hit, right between his eyes. A crimson torrent of blood spurted from the entry wound and sloshed across the blond cop's face, as he was standing behind him, when the Hispanic guy's head snapped backward. The M16 fell from his hands and hit the yard’s concrete floor. And he folded to a heap beside it.

The other men had barely even heard the shot or noticed him falling, before Beck angled the Ruger's muzzle a few inches to the right, took another breath and fired again. It all happened within a heartbeat.

The second Hispanic enforcer caught the bullet in his right eye. The lens of his dark shades shattered and the broken sunglasses fell from his face. His eye erupted like a shelled egg overcooked in a microwave as the bullet went straight through, deep into the socket.

Beck watched his M16 slip to the floor and land at his boots as the guy collapsed sideways and dropped to the concrete in a lifeless heap, just like the other gunman.

Two rapid-fire gunshots and two dead bodies on the ground, the other men realized they were under siege. And they reacted. They ducked in by the sides of the truck. The other Hispanics drew their guns from the pockets of their leather jackets and the rest of the men raised their Glocks in Beck's direction and begun firing, but not before Beck was able to put another man down.

He gently angled the Ruger another few inches to the right and shot the black cop directly on his Adam's apple. The .22 caliber round punctured a gaping hole in his neck and he, too, dropped to the yard’s concrete floor like a tonne of bricks.

It was three direct hits to three different targets, all within about ten seconds. In the right hands, the Ruger 10/22 is a super-accurate, lightning-fast killing machine. And that's exactly where it was: in the hands of a trained sniper with years of experience under his belt. In the past, on the Lincoln Police Department SWAT team, Joe Beck had taken shots through windows, fired bullets around objects and taken down perps on crowded streets, firing from the rooftops of high-rise buildings. The Ruger 10/22 is a killing machine and, with Joe Beck, it was in the hands of a well-trained marksman. But it can't stop bullets. And the rest of the men were firing back.

Beck ducked in behind the felled tree trunk as the bullets pummeled the rotten, knotted bark and whipped through the air above him, shredding the leaves of the trees all around.

He glanced up at the butt of Ruger and shook his head. Impossible to get back up behind it. He would be too exposed. He drew his Smith & Wesson from the holster on his belt and leaned around the roots of the tree. His plan was to use it as cover, crawl to the end and duck out between their gunshots and fire right back at them. Pick them off one-by-one, when he got the chance. It wouldn't have taken long because he had cover from the tree and the advantage of height, and, aside from the truck, they were basically standing out in the open in the yard.

But he couldn't get the chance. Their gunfire drew closer. More frequent and more powerful. He could hear their bullets chipping through the tree bark, just a few feet behind his back. And it didn't sound like Glocks. It was too abrupt. Too quick. He realized that two of the men had, obviously, picked up the dead enforcers' M16s. He took a quick breath and thought fast, trying to work out exactly what to do next. That was when he heard another, but different-sounding gunshot.

It sounded like it was a blast from a shotgun, its shrapnel spraying the ground at close range. But not close by. It sounded like it was coming from the distance. From the direction of the road. It sounded like it had come from where he had left his car. From where Sapphire was hunkered down inside. Alone. And with the Winchester SXP Black Shadow.

Shit. She’s in trouble, he thought.

He knew he had to go help her. He had to get back there. And fast. But, he also knew, if he stood up, he would be an easy target. A sitting duck. The gunfire from the M16s would mow him down. It would chop straight through him. He thought on his feet and decided to crawl as fast as he could, to the far end of the clearing, where he would be out of view from the yard, from the gunmen firing up at him from the yard.

He grabbed the Ruger from the side of the tree trunk, slung it over his head and let it hang down his back. Then got down on all fours and soldier-crawled his way through the undergrowth, following the pathway he took along the side to avoid whatever might or might not have been lurking elsewhere underneath as the men fired gunshot after gunshot behind him. He could feel the bullets whizzing overhead and bouncing off the trees that ringed the clearing. Chips of tree bark rained down on his body. But bullets weren't his only concern.

He dug his feet into the dirt and pulled at the weeds, branches and vines tangled together in the undergrowth as he hauled himself forward with his upper-arms and pushed himself along with his boots. He moved quickly, but carefully. Catch his hand in a stray bear trap and he knew it would have been severed at his wrist.

There was also a loud and constant hissing. From the snakes in the undergrowth in front of him. Around him. Behind him. Their hisses were loud and high-pitched, like they were maybe only inches away, and coiled, ready to strike at a heartbeat's notice. He felt them slithering around his feet and wrapping around his ankles. But he kept going. Kept pulling himself along. Listening for any other sounds he could hear from the direction of the road.

But he heard nothing. Not even as he drew closer. No more shotgun blasts. And no urgent screams or cries for help. And that’s what worried him the most.

By the time he had reached the end of the clearing, his hands were rough and cut and black with dirt, and the dry, yet compacted powder-like dirt was packed under his fingernails. He hauled himself up from the ground to an upright position and ducked into the trees, away from the bullets. Whipped his boot knife from the crus of his leg and sliced the snakes from around his shins, then shook their orange, black and brown, unraveling bodies and hissing heads to the ground.

He sucked in a deep and tired, but somewhat relieved breath and ran the rest of the way as fast as he could, back through the forest and out to his car, carefully sticking to the path he had left to avoid losing a foot.

By the time he reached the road, he was dripping in sweat. It stung on the back of his neck and made his clothes cling to his body like gum sticks to a shoe. He glanced ahead. The Mustang was still there. But its passenger door was wide open and Sapphire was gone.

She wouldn't have run. She couldn’t have run. Not in those heels. And she wouldn’t have gone barefoot. Not along this dirt track, he thought, realizing he hadn't imagined the shotgun blast among the sound of the other gunfire, realizing that they had obviously gotten to her.

He glanced down at the dry, cracked mud by the front wheels and saw the gun. The Winchester SXP Black Shadow. And, then, he saw the footsteps. Two different types. Heel marks and the outsole of a woman's stilettos, Sapphire’s, and then the longer, wider outsoles of might have been a pair of boots. Maybe size tens. He looked beyond the door and saw Sapphire's red heels lying on the dirt by the Mustang’s back right wheel.

He sighed. Then scooped up her shoes and the shotgun and tossed them and the Ruger into the car and climbed in and onto the driver's seat. The key was still in the ignition and the engine still running, idling. He slipped it into DRIVE and pushed his foot through the floor. Swung the Mustang around and zoomed down the dirt track toward the road.

The speedometer on the dash reached thirty, then forty, then fifty.

He took the corner and swerved out onto the road. The Mustang's tires screeched and its body bobbed up and down on the concrete, but he kept his foot on the gas and the pedal pressed to the floor and the speed kept on rising.

Sixty, Seventy, Eighty, Ninety.

He took the next corner out onto Axiom Avenue at ninety-five miles an hour and had reached one-hundred and thirty-five by the time he was not much more than twenty feet from the warehouse’s black steel gate. He saw it up ahead, getting closer and closer and decided it looked too heavy to break through, but that the steel chain-link fence didn’t. He called an audible and swerved off the road.

The Mustang bounced on the dirt and flew into the air and crashed through the chain-link fence to the right of the gate. The chain-link panel whipped from its fence posts and the barbed and razor wire slinked over the Mustang's polished black roof.

Beck heard the barbs and razors tearing off its paintwork. It sounded like fingernails being pulled down a chalkboard.

The car’s rubber tires slammed against the concrete of the yard and the suspension bounced up and down as he slammed the brakes and locked the Mustang's wheel, trying to keep it under control. Now, in the warehouse yard, he pulled it to a halt, side-on with its hood facing the warehouse and its trunk facing the woodland up above, and the gunmen outside on his right, maybe only thirty feet away.

They were standing in formation, side-by-side in a line in front of the side of the white truck, their guns in hand and their arms raised and extended in front of their bodies, firing straight at him.

The blond cop was first. He had adopted the traditional cop shooting stance: right leg forward and both arms extended, his hands wrapped around the butt of the Glock. The three Hispanics in the leather jackets were next. They were more relaxed but still held their guns out in front of them. One, single-handed, holding a Glock and the other two, two-handed, holding the M16s. Beside them was the guy with the dark greasy hair wearing the smart gray suit. He, too, had adopted the cop shooting stance with a black Glock out in front of him, its rear sight about level with his chin. Next to him was one of the white guys wearing a leather jacket. He had a snarling look on his face and his right arm was extended in the air, about level with his chin, a Glock in his hand. And beside him was the fat Hispanic guy, who Beck had figured was the truck driver, also packing a black Glock. His belly was pushed out in front of his body and he was leaning back, gun in his right hand extended out in front of him, and his head cocked to his right side.

Beck dived down across the center console as the bullets shattered the Mustang’s windows and blew the leather off of his seat. He opened the driver’s door using his foot, slipping the toe cap of his left boot into the handle and jerking his left foot to unlatch the lock, then slipped out. Outside the car, he drew the Glock from the holster by his left hip and his Smith & Wesson from the holster by his right hip and used the Mustang's body as cover from the pummeling gunfire.

The bullets peppered its aluminum hood and steel frame. The gunfire sounding like a firecracker crackling in a steel pan. Almost all of the Mustang's windows were shot out - front windshield first, then the window on the passenger door, then the window on the driver's door, then the passenger's window behind it, rear windshield next and, finally, the window on the back-left passenger side. Beck felt the fragments of glass rain down on his hair and skin as they scattered around him.

He spun around the Mustang’s hood, Glock in his left hand, and fired once. Fragments of glass crunched under his boots, but the crunching sound was drowned out by the sound of the gunshot. It was a single, loud bang and sounded like the face of a claw hammer slamming against a plank of wood.

The first of the M16s hit the concrete. The Hispanic guy took the bullet in his sternum and caved to the floor.

Next up was the other M16. That was Beck's approach: tackle the biggest problems first. He shot him once, on the forehead with his Smith & Wesson. The machine gun fell from the guy’s hands and clattered against the hard concrete at almost the same as his body thumped against the ground.

No machine guns to hem Beck in, the other men stepped forward, firing their Glocks as they walked. One of the bullets came closer than Beck would have liked. If it wasn't for the Mustang's left wing mirror, it would have caught him straight in the face. He heard the gunshot and watched it like it was happening in slow motion as the wing mirror was blown clean from the car’s frame, then he ducked down behind the door.

“There’s nowhere for you to go,” the last Hispanic shouted, amid the thunderous bangs of the gunfire. The words hissed from his tongue. He sounded like he was full of piss and vinegar.

Beck didn’t agree. He shook his head and glanced around the hood, aimed the muzzle of the Glock at the guy’s chest and pulled the trigger. Twice.

“Just giv...” the guy began to say before he took the first bullet through his right lung, quickly followed by the second into his sternum. The bullets punctured his lung and shattered his ribcage and he flopped forward to the concrete like a deflated air dancer.

The strapping blond cop was next. He was the fourth guy from the line that Beck put down. But he was a tough one. It took three bullets. Two in the chest, both blocked by a hidden kevlar vest and another through his left thigh. The first and second came from Beck's Smith & Wesson and the kill shot came from the Glock.

Beck used the pillar between the windshield and the passenger’s door as cover and fired the Glock and Smith & Wesson through the gaps where the windows used to be.

The 9mm round from the Glock tore through his leg like a hot knife through butter, severing his femoral artery. He dropped to the warm concrete and bled out within seconds, dying while he was lying on the scorching concrete, a seething look on his face, squinting his eyes against the glare of the setting sun.

The fat Hispanic driver was next. He took the next shot from Beck's Smith & Wesson. Beck caught a glimpse of him from the corner of his eye through the gap where the Mustang's rear windshield used to be, seeing him sneaking around the back of the car. He lined the Smith & Wesson’s barrel up with the side of the car, its muzzle about level with the fuel cap and pulled the trigger the moment the guy maneuvered around.

The bullet caught him in the groin and sent him quivering to the concrete, but it didn't kill him. It was the next bullet from Beck’s gun that did. He quickly lined it up with the guy’s forehead and blew his brains across the Mustang’s sleek black paintwork.

Only the guy in the gray suit and another guy in a leather jacket were left. They pinned Beck back behind the Mustang's beaten body, firing at him without restraint. Their bullets pummeled the car’s paintwork, shredded its leather interior, blew out its tires and shot out its interior rearview mirror. But Beck was patient. It wasn't the first time in his life that he had been pinned back. And it certainly wouldn’t be his last. He knew that guns eventually run out of ammunition, so he waited. And that's exactly what happened.

Zanetti ran out first. He pulled the trigger to nothing but a blank click. He had hoped Oswald had more left in his, but he didn't. He, too, fired once more, then pulled the Glock’s trigger to a blank as Zanetti was reaching into his suit pocket for another clip. Oswald tossed his gun to the floor and reached for the Glock lying in a puddle of crimson blood by Forgewood’s cold, lifeless body. The banging sound of gunshots fell silent and his Glock clanked on the concrete. And that's when Beck sprung back into action.

He dived around the Mustang's hood, his arms fully extended in front of his body and fired just two shots. One from the Glock. One from his Smith & Wesson. The bullet from the Glock caught Gray Suit on the head, just above his right eye. It put him down, immediately. His gun and ammunition clip dropped to the floor and he fell backward to the ground. The bullet from the Smith & Wesson caught Leather Jacket on the sternum. He fell backward like he had been hit head-on by a freight train, but he didn’t die.

Beck watched him writhing around on the ground, unable to get up. He stood up from the concrete and dusted himself down, then slowly walked over.

The guy's mouth was foaming a mixture of saliva and blood. There was distress on his face and agony in his eyes. Beck looked the guy straight in his painstaking eyes and aimed the Glock's muzzle at his forehead. Then said, “Until I meet you in Hell,” and pulled the trigger. It sounded like somebody had burst a giant balloon. The guy's head slammed against the ground and Beck watched on, a half-smile on his face as the guy's eyes rolled backward in his head.

He took a deep breath and glanced around at the bodies. All ten of them. Then realized, somebody was missing. He had counted eleven men from up in the clearing and he had only killed ten. Somebody had slipped away while he had gone to the car. The guy with the bald cue-ball head, dressed in dark pants and a leather jacket. He glanced ahead to the warehouse and saw the door was ajar and knew exactly where to go. To get in. To find him. To find Victor Mullarkey. To save Sapphire. To save Kim Sikorsky.

TWENTY

The door to the management office swung open and a slim and beautiful dark-haired woman in a red lace dress and black kevlar vest was pushed barefooted into the room by an older-looking man who was holding a black Glock in his right hand, its muzzle was pressed hard against her spine. He closed the door behind them.

She glanced around, a frightened look on her face.

The three men at the table stared at her, wondering who she was, thinking she was hot.

Kim Sikorsky’s eyes almost erupted from her head. She knew fine well who she was. She had met her before. At her house. With Joe Beck. It was Sapphire. She wondered why she was there, what had happened, and whether or not they had Beck, too.

Sapphire glanced at the three men, wondering who they were, and then the black body bag sitting on the carpet. She shivered and moved a pace away and then looked at Kim.

Kim looked her the question, hope in her eyes.

Sapphire shook her head, once, slowly, almost not moving it at all. Then looked at the man sitting opposite her behind the desk.

He was thin-faced and ugly, she thought. His chin with a dimple that looked like a crater. He was wearing a charcoal-gray pinstripe suit with a white shirt and a red tie underneath a black Kevlar vest just like the one Joe Beck had given her, the one she was wearing. His eyes were penetrating. White with little dots of black for his pupils and not much else. And, in his left hand, he was holding a black Glock.

He flicked his piercing gaze up and down her body and smiled, wickedly.

She looked down at the carpet.

"You must be Sapphire," he said. “I’ve been looking for you.”

She shook her head and said nothing. There was no point. His mind was made up that she was involved, and she knew it. Which is why she kept silent, only shaking her head.

He stood up from his chair and padded across the black carpet toward her.

“Mmm, you smell good,” he said, now only about two paces away.

Again, she said nothing. She kept her eyes on the carpet.

He raised his right hand to the side of her face and twirled a lock of her soft, silky, long dark hair around his crooked forefinger and tugged her head toward him.

She winced, at first. Then, shrieked when he pulled her hair.

"And you're even more beautiful than I expected," he whispered into her ear, then started laughing.

She winced, again, and kept gazing downward at the carpet, not wanting to make eye contact with him.

He allowed his laugh to fall to a chuckle and then a brief momentary silence, before letting go of her hair.

She swallowed, hard.

He smiled, raised his left hand by the side of his head and whipped her right cheek with the butt of his Glock. It made a loud and painful-sounding thud against her face.

She dropped to the floor, raising her right hand over the side of her stinging face. It hurt. Her eyes filled with tears and she could feel her mascara running down her cheeks.

Kim closed her eyes and sighed and shook her head.

The three men shifted in their chairs and watched on, helpless, but in uncomfortable disgust.

Mullarkey laughed, again, then glanced at the guy who came in behind her. He was older, somewhere north of sixty, with short white hair and a tanned, wrinkled face. He was wearing dark pants, a crisp white shirt and a dark-blue varsity jacket over the top.

"Good work, Bischoff," Mullarkey said to him. “You’ve redeemed yourself.”

The guy nodded his acknowledgment, then lecherously glanced up Sapphire's dress as she moved around on the floor, trying to get back to her feet.

"Now, I need you to do something else for me," Mullarkey added.

"Anything, Sir."

"Firstly, I want you to help her up from the carpet."

The guy holstered the Glock into the waist of his pants by the small of his back and stepped forward and grabbed Sapphire by her arm. He hauled her to her feet, then looked his boss a question.

She groaned in pain. It was a sharp, shooting sensation, deep in the rotator cuff of her right shoulder.

Mullarkey nodded his approval. Then smiled. "Now, bend her over the desk!" he commanded.

The guy nodded and did as he was told. He marched Sapphire to the desk, grabbed the back of her head and threw her forward, then glanced back over at his boss.

She slumped forward over the desk and banged her forehead on its wooden surface.

Kim shook her head slowly as the three men looked away. There were even angrier expressions on their faces. They couldn’t watch this.

Mullarkey glanced down at the saw that was now sitting on the desk's surface and then over at the guy.

"Grab the saw," he said to him.

The guy glanced along the desk and flicked his eyes along every inch of the blade and its sharp, jagged teeth. He reached over and wrapped his hand tight around its handle and lifted it up, then looked at his employer for what he knew would be his final instruction.

"Now, cut off her Goddamned head!" Mullarkey screamed.

***

Beck pushed the door forward and stepped into the warehouse. It looked clean but smelled pungent. Oil, paint, maybe dust in there, he thought as he looked ahead and glanced left, then right. It was clear. Too clear. Quiet. Empty. Deserted. Eerie, almost. There were no windows on its steel paneled walls and no skylights carved into the roof. It was like it had been designed purposely, to prevent anyone from catching a glimpse at whatever went on inside it.

On his right was a dirty old white Volkswagen Crafter. It was parked up in the bay behind the steel roller door. And on his left was a new-looking forklift truck. It was yellow with a black frame and it was parked up tight by the wall.

He saw row-upon-row of black and orange wire shelving racks ahead. They stretched from the warehouse’s gray concrete floor almost all the way to the ceiling and were spaced maybe eight feet apart, forming long narrow aisles that led to the other side of the building. There was absolutely nothing sitting on them. Just a row of 55-gallon blue steel oil drums stacked, two high and six wide, running the length of the bottom shelf of the rack to his right. A few drums stuck out in the aisle maybe half-way down, like somebody had pulled them out for something, but left them to put back later. He wondered what they were for and what could be inside. But that’s not what he was there for. He was there to find the guy with the cue-ball head. And Sapphire, Victor Mullarkey and Kim. Except there was also no sign of anybody else around and the only sound in the building was the light bulbs in the oval-shaped bay lights buzzing from the rafters high above his head.

He took a few steps forward into the middle aisle, Glock in his left hand and Smith & Wesson in his right, ready to fire at a moment's notice.

He was almost half-way down the aisle, standing side-on, within arms length of the oil drums when the buzzing hum of the lights overhead and the crunching sound of his footsteps on the concrete was interrupted by loud, echoing bang. It sounded like a van door closing. He turned his head, to look back at the Volkswagen, and that's when he heard and felt the thunderous shotgun blast.

The gunshot’s roar rumbled around the empty building. The shrapnel whizzed past the back of his neck and blew out the wire rack on the left, behind him. It caved to floor and clanked against the concrete as a fragment of metal nicked the skin on the back of his neck. He didn’t know if it was shrapnel from the shotgun blast ricocheting off the steel rack, or debris from the exploding rack itself. But it hurt. It felt warm and it stung, sharply. He jerked his hand up to the back of his neck, his Smith & Wesson slipping from his grip.

It clanked on the floor, but he didn’t realize he had dropped it. He could feel blood and warm bumps on his skin. His first thought was to apply pressure to the wound, but that would have taken time. Valuable seconds he did not have. His next thought was to raise his Smith & Wesson at whoever fired at him and pull on its trigger, but it wasn’t there. His hand was empty. He glanced down and saw the gun lying on the floor and realized he must have dropped it when the metal hit his neck. He thought about the Glock, raising it and spinning around and pulling the trigger, but before he could move, he heard the sobering click-clock of somebody pumping a shotgun handle, a shotgun that was most likely pointing his way.

There was no time to twist his body. No time to raise the Glock. Not if he wanted to stay alive. Instead, he dived down to his left, behind the blue steel oil drums and used them as cover. To buy time to regroup. To work an angle for a shot with the Glock.

Lester walked down the aisle, his boots crunching on the concrete, glancing down at Beck's Smith & Wesson lying hopelessly on the floor, a wicked grin on his face. "Don't you think you're getting out of this alive, Asshole," he called, now maybe only ten or fifteen feet away, and kicked the gun under the rack on his right.

Beck said nothing. He was listening and thinking. He heard his gun slide along the concrete and bang off the bottom of one of the shelving racks in the next aisle. A metallic clank. He had also heard one shotgun blast and one handle pump, what sounded like one set of footsteps, boots crunching on the concrete, and one man’s voice. He nodded. It’s only one. There were eleven men out in the yard, but I only killed ten. It’s the one who got away. The guy with the cue-ball head and leather jacket.

He heard the guy fire the gun, again. The blast was thunderous. The drums rocked back and forth behind his back as the shrapnel punctured their sidewalls with a loud, high-pitched metallic chink. A thick, black torrent of oil spurted from the holes and poured down onto the floor.

Lester watched, a delighted smile on his face. He hadn’t seen the Glock. He thought Beck was unarmed. Vulnerable and with nowhere to go. He thought it was just a matter of time until the drums were empty enough to blast them out of his way, or until Beck finally surrendered and stood up. And, either way it would play out, he thought he would blow his head off. He pumped the shotgun’s forend, again.

Click-clock.

"Stand up now and I'll make it quick," he called to Beck. "I shoot you just once. Right in your gut. Blow a hole clean through. You won’t even feel it. You’ll be dead before you hit the ground."

Again, Beck said nothing. He had nowhere to go and, he knew that if he stood up, he would be a dead man. But he also knew the approximate weight of a 55-gallon steel drum. Full and empty. And he knew one other thing, for damn sure: the guy didn't know about the Glock he had in his left hand. So, he kept calm and waited, listening to the oil pouring from the holes in drums' sides. He imagined it trickling down their sidewalls like a hundred little black waterfalls falling into the black, sticky pool on the ground below.

“I’ll give you one last chance to surrender,” Lester shouted. “Stand up now and let’s get this over with!”

Again, Beck made no response.

It caused Lester to grow impatient. He fired on him, again.

This time the blast was closer. The shrapnel tore another hundred holes in the side of the steel drums, right behind Beck's head, and more oil poured out onto the ground.

But Beck sat still, listening to the flow of the oil. It had been draining from the top row of drums more than it had from the bottom row because of the trajectory of the blasts. The top row of drums had taken the shrapnel near their base, while the bottom row had taken the bulk of it near their tops, which meant gravity had sucked more oil from them than it had any of the drums in the bottom row. He could hear the fill level of the top row somewhere just below his hairline and worked out that there couldn't have been much left. And that was exactly what he had been waiting for.

He held the butt of the Glock tight in his left hand and spun around before the guy could pump the shotgun for the third time. Pushed the Glock's muzzle into the tight gap between the two middle drums in the top row and used his right forearm to topple over the two, now forty-something-pound, rightmost drums in the top row. They fell to the floor and bounced off the concrete with a metallic, hollow thud.

Lester’s eyes followed the drums to the floor as his left hand pumped the shotgun's forend, again.

Click-clock.

It was on the clock that Beck pulled the trigger.

The gunshot sounded like an abrupt pop, like somebody had just popped the cork from the top of a massive champagne bottle.

Lester caught the bullet in the center of his abdomen, but he, too, pulled the trigger.

The shotgun blast was thunderous. It rumbled into the aisle and echoed all around the building. The shrapnel tore from its muzzle at 1300 feet per second, but the angle was all wrong. He had folded forward from Beck’s gunshot and the shrapnel from his shotgun flew straight into his own right foot.

Beck watched his black Doc Marten explode into pieces. Pieces of leather, flesh, blood and bone.

Lester yelped, in pain, and dropped the shotgun on the ground. He fell face-first into the black, sticky pool of oil that had slicked across the concrete, and curled up into the fetal position, with his left forearm across his stomach and his right hand clasped around what was left of his right foot.

Beck pulled himself up using the bottom two rightmost drums, stood up straight and took a deep, satisfied breath as he watched the guy twisting and squirming around in the oil. He walked over toward him, stepping around the wide black oil slick, so as not to leave any traceable footprints, and placed the sole of his boot over the back of the guy's neck. Then pressed his foot down, hard, and pushed the guy’s face into the oil and against the concrete floor.

He groaned, agonizingly, and gurgled.

"Where is she, you piece of shit?" Beck asked him and lifted his foot from his neck, allowing him to speak.

The guy raised his head about an inch from the ground, his eyes, nose and mouth covered with a black coating of oil. But he made almost no response. He just gargled and spat oil from his lips.

Beck placed his foot back down on his neck and pushed his face into the pool, again, but only for another few seconds. He then lifted it back off and asked him the question, again.

But, again, the guy spat oil from his mouth and said nothing. His face and scalp was completely black. Coated crown to chin in the thick, black sticky oil. His nose and mouth were almost indistinguishable underneath it and he looked as though he couldn’t even open his eyes.

Beck knew he wasn’t going to get an answer and decided the asshole's time was up. He reached down and tore the gold chain from the guy’s neck and tucked it into the pocket of his pants, then pressed his foot down harder onto the back of the guy's neck and pushed his nose and mouth down into the oil for the last time. He watched him wriggle and twist for what felt like a long moment, until his struggling stopped and his body went limp, lying face-down in the black puddle.

Beck nodded, slowly, and lifted his foot from the guy's neck. Then glanced around the warehouse. He knew Kim and Sapphire had to be in the building, somewhere. That was when he heard the sound of somebody screaming in the distance. It was a high-pitched shriek that seemed to be the voice of a woman and sounded like it was coming from the far left corner of the building.

He glanced toward it and realized he had to get down there. Fast. He quickly looped back around the next row of wire shelves, scooped up his Smith & Wesson and darted toward the far left corner of the building.

There was a spacious pod-like structure built into the corner. It had thin-looking white plastic walls, tinted glass reflective windows and a heavy-looking black door. There was a plaque on the front, about eye-level to a normal man, that said: Management Office. The screaming grew louder and more frantic the closer Beck got, like it was coming from inside and something was about to happen.

He grabbed the door’s chrome handle and pulled downward. But the door didn't budge. It was locked.

"Do it now, Goddammit!" he heard a man yell from inside.

Victor Mullarkey.

He recognized the voice from the phone call. He knew he had to get in there. And fast. He quickly flicked his eyes across the width of the door. The hinges were on the right side and it opened inward into the room, which made it easy for him to knock in. He lowered his guns by his side and took three long, quick backward paces. Sucked in a deep breath and charged forward. He raised his size-fourteen right foot from the ground and led with his heel, putting the entire force of his two-hundred and seventy-five-pound body into the outsole of his boot, and smashed it straight into the wooden door, right below the handle.

The impact blew the door from its frame with a thunderous bang. It snapped from its hinges and caved backward, landing flat-out on the black carpet inside the office and leaving a near-seven-foot tall gaping hole in the wall where it had been.

Beck raised the Glock and his Smith & Wesson and charged inside. He glanced right, then left as he stepped into the office, greeted by the odor of bleach mixed with carpet cleaner. His eyes scanned every inch of the room, from the blind spots to the center. He saw a black leather sofa and a round chromium table on the right. There were three men sitting around it. They each had a thick roll of gray duct tape wrapped around their ankles and wrists and another strip of tape fastened across their mouths. He didn't know who they were or why they were there or what they had to do with Kim and Sapphire. But, from the look in their eyes, and the tape binding their limbs, he knew they weren’t a threat and looked on.

He saw a black PVC body bag lying on the carpet by the side of the chromium table. It was fully zipped and it appeared to be full, but there was no indication of who was inside. Male or female. He saw Kim Sikorsky standing just behind it, in front of a plain black office desk. She was still wearing the dark-blue sweatpants and white cotton roll-neck sweater she had worn earlier, but her long blonde hair was now down, hanging over her shoulders. And there was a thick strip of gray duct tape fastened over her mouth. Beck saw the terror in her eyes, her head angled upward to her right with a man standing right behind her.

He was relatively short, just below average height. Thin and pale skinned. He had dark slicked-back hair and a deeply dimpled chin that looked to have been caused by a nail or a screwdriver and eyes like Beck had never seen before. They were white with gray irises so light, they looked like they had almost no color at all. His pupils stood out like bottlebees sitting on a white wall. It made his gaze penetrating. He was dressed in a kevlar vest over a charcoal-gray pinstriped suit, a white shirt and a red tie. His left hand was around Kim’s throat, but it was the man’s right hand that worried Beck more. His crooked right forefinger and middle finger were looped through the trigger guard of a black Glock that had a silencer screwed onto its muzzle, a muzzle that was jammed hard against the side of Kim’s pregnant stomach. Unlike the three men at the table, Beck had no doubts about who he was. He was the man whom he had spoken with on the phone. He was the man they called ‘the chairman’. He was Victor Mullarkey.

Behind him was Sapphire. She was bent over the side of the desk, hyperventilating, and there was an older guy standing over her and holding her head down against the desk's glossy wooden surface. He looked to be about sixty, with short white hair and a tanned, wrinkled face. He was wearing dark pants and a dark-blue varsity jacket, and he was holding the blood-stained crosscut saw in his right hand.

Victor Mullarkey sneered at Beck, venom in his eyes, and shouted, once more, “Do it now!”

The guy behind him swung the saw up into the air. In just two more seconds, its serrated teeth would have plunged deep into the back of Sapphire's neck.

Beck reacted in just one. He flicked his eyes from Mullarkey to the older guy and, keeping the Glock on Mullarkey, arced the muzzle of his Smith & Wesson to the side of the older guy’s head and pulled the trigger.

The 9mm round shot down the Smith & Wesson’s four-inch barrel and cannoned from its muzzle at 1500 feet per second. It put a hole in the guy's temple, about a half-inch from his hairline. His head jolted to his left and his body caved sideward, like a derelict skyscraper toppling over during a demolition. He was falling toward the carpet before anybody even heard the gunshot, but the saw slipped from his hand and fell toward Sapphire’s face.

Everything happened so quickly. Beck didn’t even have time to shout out to her to move. He sucked a breath and watched. Powerless with his heart in his mouth.

She reacted, quickly. She closed her eyes and allowed herself to go boneless, falling backward to the carpet, pulled down by the guy’s left hand since his fingers were still tangled in her hair.

The saw brushed past her chin and clattered on the desk's surface with a loud, metallic clank, then slipped off the edge of the desk and landed on the carpet without a sound.

Kim Sikorsky shrieked under the gunfire and the clank. It was a loud, high-pitched scream, even though muffled by the duct tape.

The men at the table watched in stunned silence. Staring through incredulous-looking eyes.

Victor Mullarkey stared Beck a loathing gaze.

Beck flicked his eyes back to him and aimed his Smith & Wesson at the center of his forehead, the Glock still covering the right of his chest. "Give up, Mullarkey!" he said.

Mullarkey curled his upper lip and shook his head. Then stepped backward into the corner and pulled Kim in closer, moving her body across his, so that Beck couldn't get as clean a shot.

"All of your men are dead and there's no way out for you now," Beck said to him and glanced into Kim's panicked-looking eyes. "If you let her go, I might let you live."

"Never!" he snarled, defiantly, his face now partially behind her head. Her long blonde hair swayed in the gust of his voice. "In case you're missing something, Mr. Beck, I've got Kim Sikorsky right where I need her, with my gun against her unborn baby's head. So, if you shoot me, I’ll shoot her. And her baby."

Kim breathed in, sharply, her lip quivering and her eyes wide with fear.

Beck said nothing.

“Now, drop your weapons on the floor, or I’ll shoot her baby dead, right here,” Mullarkey said to him.

“I’m dropping nothing,” Beck snapped back. He wanted to shoot the bastard, but he didn't have a clean enough shot. It was too risky. Too high a risk of Kim maybe catching the bullet. He heard Sapphire stirring behind the desk and glanced over.

She stood up from behind the desk and moved away from the old guy’s dead body, a creeped out look on her face. She was standing directly facing Mullarkey.

He figured she might have had a better angle, so, without thinking, he tossed her the Glock.

It caught her by surprise, like a deflected shot throws-off a goalkeeper, but she caught it and looked at him, a question in her eyes.

"Shoot him," he said to her.

She paused for a brief moment, glancing down at the Glock and then up at Victor Mullarkey and then raised the gun up through the air.

Her pause afforded him the opportunity he needed. He turned his body about twenty degrees and backed himself deeper against the corner. The office walls were now touching the shoulders of his suit and Sapphire’s angle was completely closed. With Kim directly in front of him, shooting him would have meant shooting her, too. And she knew it. She stood with her arm raised and the gun pointing toward him but did nothing.

Beck shook his head.

Victor Mullarkey smiled, grimly.

“You’ve got one more chance, Mullarkey. Drop the gun and I’ll let you live,” Beck said.

“Never,” he answered and shook his head, behind Kim Sikorsky’s hair. But, realistically, he had no way out. And he knew it. "If this is the end of the line for me, Mr. Beck,” he said. “Then, I'm taking Kim Sikorsky with me.”

Beck watched Mullarkey's knuckles tense and turn a ghostly shade of white, his crooked right forefinger and his middle finger still looped through the Glock’s trigger guard. He saw him squeeze on the gun’s trigger. His fingers curled the first quarter inch. And, then, the next. Not even a second left. Now or never. Beck looked into Kim's eyes and pulled the trigger of his Smith & Wesson.

The gunshot rang loud around the office. It sounded like somebody had smashed a wooden bench with a heavy steel hammer.

A lock of Kim’s long blonde hair fell to the carpet and the rest erupted with a crimson splodge as the bullet sliced straight through and drilled into Victor Mullarkey’s forehead.

His head snapped backward and smashed against the wall, but there was another loud bang. A second shot. From his Glock. It sounded like a phone book dropped onto a hard wooden floor. He fell backward into the corner and Kim fell backward with him, his left hand still around her throat.

The men at the table gasped and watched on in disbelief as they saw them slump into the corner.

“Oh my God!” Sapphire shouted and dropped the Glock onto the carpet.

Beck gasped and dropped his Smith & Wesson. “Kim?!” he called and dived down toward her and cupped her head, gently, in the palm of his hands.

“Kim?” he called. “Kim?”

Two long seconds went by. Then she glanced up into his eyes. Alive.

He sighed, relieved, and looked down at her stomach. Her sweater was torn and stained. A circle of deep red. Blood.

“You’ve been shot,” he said to her, panic in his voice.

She looked back at him with fear in her eyes.

He eased her sweater up her stomach. The side of her stomach was cut. A sore, red seeping graze. Beck sighed, again, relieved. “It looks like it’s just a flesh wound. Like it just missed you.”

She glanced over at the wall and smiled, at ease.

His eyes followed hers. There was a bullet hole in the white plastic. A hole from the gunshot. He breathed a long, deep relieved sigh. “Thank God, you’re okay,” he said to her and eased Victor Mullarkey’s warm, dead hand from her hair and lifted her to her feet.

“Thank you, Joe,” she whispered, hugged him tight and cried in his arms, her head against his chest. Then winced in pain and put her right hand across her wounded stomach.

Sapphire padded over by Beck’s side, put her hand on his shoulder and smiled. “Yes, thank you, Joe.”

He let go of Kim and turned and cupped Sapphire’s face in his hands and kissed her, softly. Then pulled away for just a second and gazed into her eyes.

She smiled and wrapped her arms around his massive frame and kissed him back.

Beck then glanced at Kim and down at her stomach.

“Don’t worry. I’m fine,” she said and flicked her eyes toward the three men sitting around the table.

“Of course,” he said, nodded and walked over toward them, while Kim lifted her cell phone and Sapphire scooped up Beck’s two guns from the carpet.

He paused a few paces short of the chromium table, gave each man an unsteady glance and thought a beat. He knew Sapphire and Kim would say nothing, but he wasn’t as sure about them. He lifted their wallets from the table and glanced at their identification and placed it down in front of each man, one-by-one.

“Okay,” he said. “Now, I know who you are. And where you live.”

The men looked up at him with pleading eyes.

He whipped his boot knife from the holster on the crus of his right leg. “I’ll cut you loose and let you live on one condition," he said to them.

The men all nodded and grumbled agreeable groans.

“You can never ever tell another living soul what happened here," he said. “No matter what. Regardless of what you see out there in the warehouse, or out in the yard. Regardless of who asks you. Employer, wife, cop or federal agent. Anyone asks, you tell them nothing. No matter what.” He paused a beat, to let the thought sink into their minds. “Otherwise, I’ll come knocking.”

The men’s eyes widened.

“Do you understand?”

They nodded their understanding as if their lives depended on it and groaned him a collective 'yes'.

“Okay then,” he said and used his knife to cut the duct tape from their ankles and wrists. Old guy first. FedEx driver next. Then, the tall black man.

They each eased the duct-tape from their lips and peeled it from the sore and chaffed skin on their wrists. Then stood from the table, stiff in their joints and sore in the muscles of their legs, and lifted their wallets, stuffing them into their pockets. Then they each thanked him and swore to him on their own lives and their closest relatives’ lives that they’d keep quiet.

Beck nodded and glanced toward the door. "Okay. You can go," he said.

One-by-one, they quickly disappeared out the door off into the warehouse.

Sapphire walked over and handed him the two guns.

Beck kissed her, again, and took the Glock and his Smith & Wesson from her hands and holstered them on his belt, Glock by his left hip, Smith & Wesson by his right. He glanced at Kim and then back at Sapphire. “We should get...” he begun to say, but stopped, glancing down at Mullarkey’s lifeless body lying in the corner, slumped against the wall. He noticed something poking out of the top of his kevlar vest like it was something sticking out of his suit jacket pocket. The corner of some sort of small black book.

He walked over to the desk and drew a white cotton handkerchief from one of the drawers. Used it to lift the book and everything else from Victory Mullarkey’s pocket. A silver zippo lighter and a set of car keys, which, from the keychain, he knew would have been for the black Mercedes parked out front. He tucked the keys and the lighter into his pocket and laid the book down on the desk. It was maybe three inches wide by five inches long with a dark crocodile-skin leather cover that felt smooth and ribbed through the handkerchief under his fingertips.

“What’s that?” Sapphire asked.

“I don’t know,” he answered.

Sapphire and Kim watched as he opened it up and flicked through its crisp white pages, carefully using the handkerchief so he didn’t directly touch it with his fingers.

"It looks like some kind of log,” he said, incredulous, turning page-after-page. “Of bank account numbers, financial transactions, meeting points with times and dates, and what looks to be the names, occupations and contact information for all sorts of different people. Maybe for everybody involved in the whole Axiom smuggling operation?”

“Does it name anybody familiar?” Sapphire asked.

Beck blew out his cheeks. “You two are about the only people I know around here, remember?”

Kim nodded.

“But it names accountancy firms, ATF agents, border patrol officials, cops, councilmen, gangs and criminal organizations, lawyers, and even the Izaguirre Cartel,” he said.

"What are you going to do?" Kim asked him.

Beck thought a beat, then answered.

"Mail it to a guy I met once," he said and walked over and opened the top drawer of the desk and pulled out a stack of brown manilla envelopes, using the handkerchief and making sure not to get his fingerprints on them. They were pre-paid postage with a business reply option and the Axiom Pharmaceutical Corporation office address on the back. He peeled an envelope from the stack and slipped the ledger inside, then folded the closing flap under the bottom flap and laid the envelope down on the desk.

Kim and Sapphire watched as he grabbed a black Montblanc pen from the drawer and wrote an address on the front in black ink: Doug Tillerson, Federal Bureau of Investigation, 935 Pennsylvania Avenue, N.W. Washington D.C. 20535-0001. Then turned the envelope over and wrote the warehouse location on the back and wrapped it up in the side of the white handkerchief he hadn’t touched.

He stuffed the pen into his pocket and the package into the waist of his pants and glanced down at a red canister of what appeared to be gasoline on the carpet to the left of the door.

Kim and Sapphire saw the twinkle in his eye.

“We have to erase every trace of us being here,” he said to them. “Did you touch anything outside of this room?”

Sapphire shook her head.

“Yes,” Kim answered. “They brought me here in the back of the van.”

“The Volkswagen Crafter?” Beck asked.

She shrugged. Unsure. “They took things from my house, Joe.”

“Bastards,” he replied. “Do you know where they might have put them.”

“No. But they had them in the van. Maybe it’s all still in there?”

He nodded. “Okay, you both go out there and see if it’s there. I’ll start off here and meet you by the warehouse door.”

They both gave him an uneasy look.

“It’s okay,” he said. “Everyone’s dead.”

Sapphire nodded and took Kim’s arm and helped her out into the warehouse.

Beck glanced around the room, then lifted the red gasoline canister from the carpet and unscrewed the cap. He tossed the cap toward Victory Mullarkey’s dead body and sloshed some of the gasoline onto the surface of the chromium table. Then across the thick black carpet, the black desk, the white blood-stained cooler behind the desk and, finally, over Mullarkey’s dead body. “Burn in hell, you piece of shit,” he said to him and lifted another one of the manilla envelopes from the pile and walked out the office door, pouring a thin trail of gasoline behind him as he moved.

He met Sapphire and Kim by the side of the white Volkswagen.

“Did you get it?”

“Yes,” Kim said, weeping, holding her crystal tiara in her hands, while Sapphire held the rest.

“Okay,” he said and handed her the keys to Mullarkey’s Mercedes. “Black Mercedes in the lot. By the door. Open it and get in. I’ll be out in a moment.”

Sapphire nodded and led Kim out through the door into the yard.

Beck heard the car doors bang shut, two loud thuds, as he sloshed some gasoline into the back of the van, then walked down the aisle toward the oil drums, pouring the gasoline behind him. He sloshed it over Cue-ball’s dead body and across the canisters and darted back over to the warehouse door and stepped outside to the yard.

He laid the canister down on the concrete by his right boot, not much left inside, and drew the Zippo lighter and blank manilla envelope from his pocket. He sparked a hissing orange-and-blue flame with the lighter and used it to set the envelope ablaze. The flames flickered and danced along its glossy paper surface and a puff of black smoke swirled upward around the envelope’s corner. He took a breath and tossed it back into the warehouse, into the puddle of gasoline just a few inches on the other side of the door. Then turned around and scooped up the canister and climbed into the driver’s seat of the black Mercedes.

He laid the handkerchief-wrapped envelope on the Mercedes’ dashboard, started the engine and backed the car out of the slot as the inside of the warehouse glowed orange and the blazing inferno roared out from underneath the door frame. “That’ll destroy any traces of our fingerprints and DNA,” he said to Kim and Sapphire, who sat in silence, looking out of the windows, watching the building begin to burn.

Beck locked the wheel and spun the Mercedes around, then pushed his foot to the floor and gunned its engine across the lot. The car purred for maybe a hundred feet before he pulled it to a halt by his, now, ramshackle black Mustang, pulled out his cell phone and dialed 9-1-1.

“Nine-one-one emergency response. What’s your emergency?” a young woman, with a black-sounding tone to her voice, asked him from the other side.

“Car theft,” he said. “Get the cops.”

“Okay. Wait one moment while I connect you,” she said and the call cut to a beeping connection tone.

“McAllen Police Department,” a man said, in an attentive sounding voice.

“I want to report a car theft,” Beck said to him and gave him the Mustang’s registration number. “It’s a black Mustang. I saw two guys smash the window on Violet Avenue. They got in and then took off.”

“Okay, Okay,” the man said. “Mustang. Violet Avenue. Did you get a look at the two men?”

“Yeah. One was bald and the other was blond. Both were wearing leather jackets. They were bad looking dudes,” Beck said and hung up the call. He popped the Mercedes’ trunk, then got out of the car.

He reached in through the gap that used to be the window of the Mustang’s door on the driver’s side and popped the car’s trunk, then lifted out his black bag from the back and the guns from back seats inside. Next, he removed the registration documents and the Bruce Springsteen CDs from the Mustang’s glove box and placed them in the back of the Mercedes. Then he threw the red canister and what was left of the gasoline onto the Mustang’s back seats and sparked another dancing orange flame with the silver Zippo lighter. He shook his head for what he was about to do to a powerful American symbol of frontier and freedom, then tossed the lighter into the back.

The flame singed the cushion of the leather seat and caught fire on the polyester webbed seat belt. It spread quickly, engulfing the back and swirling around the gasoline, before exploding into a fire that roared up around its roof.

Beck jumped back into the Mercedes, closed the door and pushed his foot to the floor and sped out through the gap in the steel chain link fence, watching what was left of his Mustang burn in the interior mirror.

They drove north, back toward McAllen and then looped east, toward Pharr. Beck pulled up by the curb outside Kim Sikorsky's home and hushed the engine, shaking his head at the state of her front yard. Deep-looking tire tracks across the once-neat-looking lawn. He asked her once more if she was okay and told her to get her graze looked at, but, of course, not to say how it actually happened.

She nodded her understanding and thanked him, again, for saving her and her baby’s lives and told him Mike would be proud of what he had done for his family. Then kissed his cheek and got out of the car.

Beck watched her walk back toward her front door and slip away inside, home safe and sound, then started the Mercedes’ ignition and moved off with Sapphire. They drove west for a couple of miles, into McAllen, where he pulled down Wichita Avenue and took a look at the Axiom Pharmaceutical Corporation headquarters, before pulling up by the sidewalk on South Bicentennial Boulevard.

He lifted the handkerchief-wrapped envelope from the dashboard and got out of the car, leaving it idling as he walked over to a little blue mailbox standing on the concrete path outside a convenience store that was now closed up for the night. He unwrapped the handkerchief and glanced at the envelope once more, smiled and slipped it into the mailbox’s slot and stuffed the handkerchief into his pants. Then turned and walked back to the car.

Sapphire had moved from the back into the front passenger seat.

He climbed back into the driver’s seat and leaned over the center console and kissed her.

“Let’s go back to my place,” she whispered, looking deep into his emerald-green eyes.

He nodded and kissed her once more, then slipped the Mercedes into DRIVE and they drove off toward her apartment on Violet Avenue.

TWENTY-ONE

The mailbox on South Bicentennial Boulevard was emptied the next morning by a US Postal Service employee and Joe Beck's envelope was transported to a local mail sorting office. It was added to a pile of letters and parcels collected from mailboxes in and around McAllen. A team of mail sorters validated the pre-paid postage and double-checked its destination address, then stacked it among the mail destined for the North East. It sat in the pile for almost a day before it was loaded into the back of a US Post van and driven to a distribution center Washington D.C.

In Washington D.C., it went through a similar process before being loaded into the back of the US Postal Service delivery van that covered the 20535 zip code and was delivered at 935 Pennsylvania Avenue by a young male postman. The envelope was receipted by the FBI’s mail handling unit and put through a rigorous security inspection in the basement of the J. Edgar Hoover Building. Airport style x-ray scanners first, followed by multiple swab tests looking for foreign bodies and dangerous substances. Once the procedure had been completed and the swab tests returned no red flags, it was loaded onto a mail cart and sent up seven floors, to Director Tillerson’s office.

Director Tillerson was sitting on a high backed black leather executive swivel chair tucked in behind his heavy oak desk when it arrived. He was a middle-aged man somewhere in his early fifties. Peach-skinned with short gray hair that was swept neatly to the left side of his head, he was wearing a dark-blue sharkskin suit with a white shirt and a red tie. An attractive, blonde secretary stepped into his office and left it on his desk among a thick bundle of white, brown and cream envelopes and alongside a white porcelain mug filled with fresh hot black coffee.

Director Tillerson lifted the coffee first. He took two sips, then glanced down at the day’s mail. Joe Beck's envelope was fourth in the stack. A brown manilla envelope, slightly longer and thicker-looking than the others. He moved the top three envelopes aside and lifted it up and glanced at the front.

His name was written on the front, in black ink. He looked it, curiously, then turned it over, feeling something small and hard inside, and glanced at the back. His left eyebrow arched up his forehead when he read what it said. The return address on the back was: Axiom Pharmaceutical Corporation, Wichita Avenue, McAllen, Texas, 78503, United States of America. But that's not what drew his attention. It was another handwritten address on the back. It said: Axiom Warehouse - By Carlson Lake, Hidalgo, Texas.

He drew an envelope knife from the top drawer of his desk and used it to tear open the envelope's bottom end. The little black ledger slipped out and landed on his desk with a thud. He sat the envelope aside and lifted the ledger. Flicked his eyes over its cover dark crocodile-skinned leather cover with the same intense curiosity as he had shown with the envelope, then opened it up and flicked through the pages. He instantly realized what it was and he did three things.

Firstly, he lifted the handset to his desk phone and called his aide. He asked her to arrange for the package to be shipped down to the lab at Quantico, for analysis by the bureau's best forensic experts, to try and identify the sender. Secondly, he took note of the handwritten address from the back of the envelope and assembled a team of his finest federal agents to conduct a raid. And, thirdly, he contacted the President.

The forensic analysts at Quantico dusted every inch of the envelope and the ledger for fingerprints and conducted swab tests of the two pieces, looking for traces of perspiration, saliva and other DNA evidence that could have soaked into the paper. They ran the samples against their federal identification database and found only a handful of matches: A few US Postal workers living in McAllen, Texas, and in Washington D.C, a couple of employees in the FBI’s mail handling unit, Director Doug Tillerson and one other individual. A man by the name of Victor Mullarkey. They found no information regarding Joe Beck.

The team of federal agents went down to the Axiom Pharmaceutical Corporation warehouse in Hidalgo. They found the building burned to a crisp, along with fourteen dead bodies, four of them inside and burned beyond recognition, requiring dental records to make a positive ID. They also found a white truck full of crates containing counterfeit Glocks, Winchester SXP Black Shadow shotguns and ammunition, as well as four vans that had run out of gas and held some of the shotguns in the back. They also found over one-hundred bullet casings - for rounds fired from Glocks, Winchester SXP shotguns, M16s, a Ruger 10/22 and a Smith & Wesson 5906. They opened a murder investigation on the spot but found insufficient evidence to directly link anyone to the massacre.

The President took Director Tillerson’s call and liaised with his Mexican counterpart to set up a joint task force between the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, and Mexico's Federal Ministerial Police. FBI Director Tillerson spearheaded the initiative and, together, the task force took down more than one-hundred individuals named on the ledger, including Ariel Izaguirre, one of America’s most wanted criminals and head of the notorious Izaguirre Cartel.

A three-month investigation ensued and almost everyone on the list was charged with involvement in firearm trafficking from Mexico into the United States, money laundering, corruption, murder and other, smaller offenses that were uncovered along the way. Their sentences varied from life imprisonment, in Ariel Izaguirre's and many others' cases, to just a few years behind bars or heftily-sized fines for those charged with lower-class felonies. Coroner Hermann Kranz, however, was the only named individual to escape sentencing. He died at McAllen Medical Center shortly after the investigation started, due to complications from his facial and cranial injuries.

***

Kim Sikorsky sought medical attention for the graze on her right abdomen. She lied about how she got it. The medics at Rio Grande Regional Hospital knew, but it was her word against theirs.

About four weeks later, she finally came to terms with everything that had happened. And she went into labor just a few days later. Baby Joe Sikorsky was born at ten twenty-four in the morning on Saturday, August 1, 2015, at Rio Grande Regional Hospital. He was delivered premature and had a little crescent moon-shaped dark patch of skin on his left shin, but was otherwise a very healthy little boy. He weighed 5 lbs and 6 ounces and he had a full head of thick dark hair, just like his father. Kim enacted her late husband's wishes in calling their son Joe, after his dear friend Joe Beck, and, later, appointed Beck as his godfather, just as Mike had wanted.

***

Joe Beck treated his neck wound with some rubbing alcohol and a cotton pad. He wasn’t the sort of guy who relied on a doctor or a hospital, certainly not for something he saw as trivial like hot shrapnel burning his neck. Afterwards, both he and Sapphire enjoyed two long days and three long nights of passion, locked away inside her third-floor apartment. They had been through a lifetime of experiences together in only two days, and they were highly compatible beneath the sheets, but it didn't last. It was never going to.

Beck woke early on the Thursday morning while Sapphire was still asleep. He slipped out of her bed, picked up his bag and padded through to her lounge. It was a long, rectangular-shaped space that faced onto an open-plan kitchen and featured a contemporary design, with maple wooden flooring, charcoal-gray fabric sofas and white, clean walls decorated with abstract artwork from artists like Wassily Kandinsky.

He pulled on some clothes from his bag, new socks and boxer shorts and another dark shirt, and changed into them along with the dark jeans he had worn for the past couple of days, then stepped into her kitchen.

It was trendy, white-tiled and black counter-topped and had a gun-gray slate-effect linoleum floor. He lifted two mugs from a cupboard above the stainless-steel sink and switched on the filter drip coffee machine, and listened to the machine hiss and plop, while he checked his cell phone.

Most of the messages were from sales reps trying to flog insurance or telecom services he didn’t need, but there was one message in particular that sparked his interest. He listened to it for a second time, while he poured a mug of coffee from the pot, and then for a third time while he sipped the coffee, slowly. He nodded and glanced back at Sapphire's bedroom door and, at that moment, his decision was taken.

He liked Sapphire. Even though she was a prostitute, he had liked her from the moment he met her. But she wasn't his future. They were very different people, at different stages of life, and with different outlooks on the world. Sapphire wanted stability, while Beck wanted freedom. She was a born and bred Texan and she wanted to spend the rest of her life in, or around, McAllen. While Beck was longing for more. He didn't want to settle down, not after having spent a year locked up behind bars, and definitely not in McAllen. What he wanted was unpredictability, to explore the length and breadth of America, moving from state-to-state, city-to-city, and town-to-town, looking for the few who think they’re out with the law, seeking vengeance for the wronged and serving up the hard brand of justice he believed the untouchable criminals of the world deserved. He was a dark knight riding through an even-darker world. And, judging by the message on his cell, somebody needed his help.

He downed his coffee and slipped his cell phone into his pants, then rinsed the mug through with water and placed it into the stainless steel sink. He then opened the drawer below the kitchen stove and lifted out a notepad and a pen, placed the notepad down on the black laminate countertop, beside her coffee cup, and penned her a short note. He signed it off with a kiss and laid the pen down on the pad, then turned and padded back into the lounge, where he lifted his bag and drew the keys to Victor Mullarkey’s Mercedes from his pocket and slipped out the door.

THE END

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It’s a short thriller and the second book in the Joe Beck series

Unlicensed outlaw private eye Joe Beck stops off at bar in Trinidad, Colorado. Inside, he meets a woman named Brandi, a brunette bombshell who's working behind the bar.

She's slim, tanned and attractive, she has it all. The looks, the assets and the confidence. Except, something is wrong. She has a horribly black eye, which she admits was caused by the hand of an abusive ex-boyfriend.

Beck offers to deal with the guy, no questions asked. But things don’t go as anticipated and he’s quickly sucked into a side gig that involves stopping crooked cops and an outlaw biker gang from distributing drugs around the state.

Available on Amazon

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READ EASY MONEY

It’s the third book in the Joe Beck thriller series

Unlicensed outlaw private eye Joe Beck is in snowy Detroit, Michigan, hot on the trail of a murderous drug dealer wanted by the U.S. Marshals.

He witnesses an unrelated murder on a deserted main street and deals with it in the way he does best.

But his actions don’t go unnoticed.

A woman witnesses what he does. With a pressing problem weighing heavily on her mind, she sees him as her only viable solution. She approaches him on the street and makes him an offer he can’t refuse.

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Alastair Brown is a Scottish thriller writer who authors the book series featuring Joe Beck - the unlicensed outlaw private eye who drifts around America righting wrongs and reaping riches whilst serving up his own brand of vigilante justice.

With a character very much based on himself, Alastair finds inspiration from reading crime reports, watching true crime documentaries, and consuming other works of crime fiction. Everything he writes is designed to captivate and entertain, and finds no better compliment than seeing his readers comment that once they've started reading his books, they just can't put them down.

When he’s not writing, he's usually pushing himself to his limits at the gym or reading the occasional crime report while drinking copious amounts of coffee as he plots the next Joe Beck thriller and conjures up the horrors he'll be thrown up against. He also likes to listen to classic rock music and he appreciates some down time, preferably spent kicking back with a beer while basking under the burning rays of the scorching sun.

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Visit his official author website to learn more:

www.authoralastairbrown.com

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Table of Contents

ONE

TWO

THREE

FOUR

FIVE

SIX

SEVEN

EIGHT

NINE

TEN

ELEVEN

TWELVE

THIRTEEN

FOURTEEN

FIFTEEN

SIXTEEN

SEVENTEEN

EIGHTEEN

NINETEEN

TWENTY

TWENTY-ONE

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR

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