The Dead Run (23 page)

 

CHAPTER 41

N
ichols and Cantwell sat in the van. In the silence. He'd refused to step outside, shaken his head resolutely through all Fuentes's feverish yammering. Being powerless to intercede in an act of premeditated carnage was one thing. Blessing it with your eyeballs was another.

Maybe Cantwell had stayed put in agreement or in solidarity. Or maybe she was hoping the Mexican would leave the keys in the ignition and they could light out like a couple of teenage joyriders and resume the hunt for Sherry Richards. You never knew with her.

The SWAT team had piled out to assess the damage, and cause some more if need be. Nichols slumped in his seat, knees up on the dash, bracing for the report of weapons. Cantwell, framed in his side mirror, stared off into the middle distance, away from the impending action. She looked as drained and disheartened as he did.

But far more beautiful.

When this is all over,
Nichols told himself, and then shook off the thought.

Don't get ahead of yourself, cowboy. It's gotta end first.

And when it does—assuming the both of you are still alive—she may never wanna see your mug again. So don't go booking dinner reservations yet, champ.

How are you even thinking about this right now?

The rear doors clicked open, and Nichols turned in time to see two of Fuentes's men settle a teenage girl clad in a pink bra onto the lip of the floor, hand her a bottle of water, begin tending to the bruises and contusions spread over every visible plane of her body.

Here she was—the innocent he'd feared was in that car
.

The next girl,
as Fuentes had put it.

Sherry Richards 2.0.

This changed everything.

Nichols jacked open his door and sprinted toward the wreckage of the Beemer.

Cantwell was already on her way.

The troops were clustered around something, in a loose crescent. Weapons at the ready, but only raised to half mast, as if the target were a parade of turtles.

“Out of my way,” Nichols barked, summoning whatever authority was his. The men parted, used to taking orders, and Cantwell fell in behind. Five long strides and the sheriff was standing next to Fuentes. Staring at a tableau he couldn't begin to understand.

The diminutive, half-conscious Mexican at the business end of the shank had to be de la Mar. It was the six-two gringo with the bloody, blackened arm stump and the murderous intention that had Nichols puzzled.

“Who the fuck is that?”

Fuentes shielded his mouth with his hand, spoke soft and confidential. “Yo no sé, but sometimes life gives you lemonade, eh? He ices Luis, we ice him, the paperwork practically writes itself.” Fuentes brushed his hands together. “Nice and clean.”

He raised his voice.

“Go ahead, amigo! Finish him! We're all on the same team here!”

The guy's eyes darted wildly, from Fuentes to Nichols to Cantwell, and then from gun to gun to gun. The wound was either fresh or infected. Either way, the sheriff thought, this dude was viewing the world through a scrim of delirium, and it was a miracle he was even vertical—to say nothing of the fact that he'd survived the crash, escaped the car, bested de la Mar.

Strangely and suddenly, Nichols recognized something in the guy. The gringo might have been little more than a collection of frayed nerve endings and desperate impulses right now, but whoever he was and whatever his beef, this was a man of fortitude and courage. A man who was about something. No other way he'd have made it this far. He was not someone to be manipulated and gunned down for Fuentes's convenience.

Nichols took that thought a step farther: no one was.

Fuck this,
he decided
. I've made too many compromises already.

He turned to face Fuentes's battalion. “Lower your weapons.”

The men looked to Fuentes. Fuentes regarded Nichols.

“What the fuck, cabrón?”

“I wanna find out what he knows.”

It was the last thing the cop wanted to hear, with this so close to being a done deal. An order started to form itself on his lips, and Nichols stepped deep into his old friend's personal space and peered down, into his eyes.

“Don't make me ask twice.”

Fuentes took his measure. Nichols answered with a gaze that was all steel, no give to it whatsoever.

Fuentes responded in kind.

“What about the ‘next girl'?” Nichols whispered. “If you care about her even a little bit, Miguel, you'll let me find out who he is. What he's seen. And if you don't . . .”

He let the implication hang there, like the sword of Damocles.

Fuentes narrowed his eyes, trying to find a way around the request that didn't require forfeiting his honor. Finally, the cop relented.

“Hombres, retirarse.”

They lowered the hardware until it dangled by their sides. A symbolic gesture; it would take less than a second to reestablish their kill shots. But Nichols would take what he could get.

“You got one minute, Sheriff.”

“Fair enough.”

Time to put some skin in the game.

He walked over, flashing his palms to show he meant no harm, and took up position between the guns and the gringo—careful to keep himself more than an arm's length from that six-inch blade of glass.

“You're no True Native, are you?” Nichols began. Hostage Negotiation 101: open with something the subject can agree to. Keep things conversational.

Not that he'd ever done more than flip idly through the manual while shoveling down a Subway twelve-incher at his desk.

The gringo's face erupted into a snarl, and Nichols flashed on the rabid raccoon he'd had to wrangle last spring out in the Denny's parking lot, a definite lowlight of his years serving and protecting.

“I'm as American as anybody,” the man spat. “I was born right here.”

Nice clean opening, dickwad. Bob Nichols, ladies and gentlemen: the smooth-talkingest smooth talker in the history of law enforcement.

“No, no—what I mean is, you're not a part of that biker gang. The ones who—”

“Fuck them.” He yanked de la Mar a little closer, and the line of blood banding the Federale's neck widened.

“That's a nasty-looking injury you've got there,” Nichols observed in the mildest tone he could muster. “How'd you happen to—”

“Who the fuck are you?” the gringo interrupted. “Whaddayou want?”

“I can help you. But first, you've gotta put the weapon down.”

He started shaking his head violently before Nichols could even get the sentence out. “Uh-uh. Not interested. I'm gonna kill this son of a bitch.”

Nichols stepped closer. Into harm's radius, if the guy got hostile.

“You do, and you're dead. That's not a threat—it's a fact. It's what the guys with the guns
want
. You understand? They'll kill you, or they'll take you straight to the worst fuckin' prison you can possibly imagine and throw away the key.”

No harm in planting a backup plan in Fuentes's mind, Nichols thought. He cocked his head, searching the gringo's face for signs of comprehension.

A dim spark fired behind the guy's eyes. What he was fighting through right now, Nichols could only imagine. Cause-and-effect reasoning was probably too much to ask. Or perhaps, the sheriff thought suddenly, self-preservation had been the wrong card to play. Dude wasn't blind. He saw the guns. Maybe it wasn't a failure to understand or a refusal to believe what Nichols was telling him.

Maybe he didn't give a fuck.

The gringo opened his mouth to speak, but before he could, de la Mar's eyes triple-blinked and popped wide open. “Fuck you, putos,” he croaked. “Que están todos muertos. Do you know who—”

Just as abruptly, his eyes fluttered closed, and he went quiet.

Nichols jumped into the void while he could. “He did that to your arm, didn't he?” he asked, the answer obvious by now.

Should've led with that, master negotiator.

The man's upper lip twitched, baring the incisors, wolflike. Nichols took it as a yes.

De la Mar came to, finished his sentence.

“—the fuck I am?” His eyeballs rolled sideways, tried to buttonhole his captor, then slammed shut again. If the gringo noticed, he didn't care.

Fuentes's patience with this little social experiment was wearing thin. “Wrap it up, Nichols,” he called out. “One way or another, this has gotta end, me entiendes?”

Nichols took another step toward the American, who responded by dragging de la Mar another pace away. However far gone he might have been, dude still had a firm grasp on spatial relationships.

Which was an important thing to remember about a madman with a knife.

“Look,” Nichols said, changing tacks, remembering a little tidbit about implanting the narrative you wanted, telling a guy the version of his life you wanted him to believe, “you obviously got a real strong reason to live. If you didn't you'd be dead a couple times over by now. Am I right? Yeah? You wanna tell me what that reason is?”

The gringo goggled at him, but the sheriff could see that the remark had landed. Good—Nichols believed it himself. They were getting somewhere.

Just not fast enough.

“Ticktock,” Fuentes called, as if reading his mind.

“I can help you,” Nichols said again, remembering the truth-in-repetition thing. “If you wanna make it out of this, you've gotta trust me.”

The lips closed over the incisors, and something in the man's eyes settled, came into focus. Nichols glimpsed a fierce intelligence, muddled by pain and adrenaline.

“Why should I?”

It was a clear-cut invitation, the best thing you could hope for in this situation. Nichols's response was pure reflex, the words out of his mouth before he could think better of them.

“I'm a cop.”

“So's Pescador.

“Pesca—”

“This asshole.”

“You got a point there. What's your name?”

“Galvan.”

That was good. A name was progress.

“I'm Nichols. And I'm trying to help you, Galvan. I got a feeling you're a stand-up guy. You're just stuck on the wrong side of this one, aren't you?”

The eyes stayed lucid. He was sizing Nichols up, running whatever manner of background check a man in his position could spare the energy for. Nichols held his gaze, inviting the scrutiny, hoping he'd come up clean.

“If I told you even half of what I've seen today . . .”

Galvan trailed off, then snapped back into the moment with renewed vigor and forced de la Mar's to his knees.

“Try me,” Nichols implored, trying to recapture his attention.

Galvan shook his head without looking up, focus trained squarely on the Federale now. Whatever connection Nichols had forged, it was evaporating fast.

“Listen, Galvan. Pescador dies either way. The only question is whether you wanna live. These motherfuckers came to kill him, and if you do it for them—”

“You came with them.”

“What?”

Galvan flicked his eyes at the van. “I only count one car.”

“We're not— I just . . . hitched a ride.”

The conversation was getting away from him, and the clock was running down. Nichols decided to punt.

“What do you know about a man named Aaron Seth, Galvan?”

“Never hearda him.”

“Seth's a sex trafficker, and maybe a lot more. De la Mar—Pescador—works for him.”

“So ask Pescador.”

“How 'bout handing him over, so I can?”

He shook his head again, face heavy with resignation. Regret.

Oh shit,
thought Nichols, heart leaping into his throat.
Have I fucked this up?

“I gotta keep my word.”

Galvan bent over the captive, jostled him until his eyes opened, spoke into his ear.

“I told you I'd kill you, you son of a bitch.”

Before Nichols could move a muscle, Galvan pushed the shank. It went in smooth and easy, like a dolphin diving through a wave.

Galvan stepped back, and the Federale slumped onto his side. Blood sprayed from the wound and spattered the dirt, one pulse after the next. Nichols couldn't help but think that if you closed your eyes, it would have sounded exactly like a sprinkler overshooting the border of a suburban lawn and watering the street.

For a moment, no one moved.

Galvan stared down at Pescador with a sense of joyless accomplishment, as one might regard a grave he'd just finished digging.

Nichols contemplated Galvan—and the angles. He was still standing between the gringo and the guns, and despite what he'd just seen, his impulse was to stay there.

Enough death for one day.

Apparently, the sentiment was an unpopular one.

Gunfire. Two shots, echoing through the open air, Nichols diving to the ground.

But it wasn't Fuentes's squad; they were still standing down, awaiting an order yet to come and probably anticipating a discussion between their boss and his American buddy over the life of the one-armed gringo who'd just offed the target.

It was coming from farther away.

From the van, to be precise.

The open, unguarded, bulletproof van.

One of Fuentes's men toppled out the back, into the dust. Another followed.

Head shots.

The girl to whom they'd been attending shrieked. Just as abruptly, she went silent.

Fuentes didn't have to give an order. His men turned, fanned out, advanced on the van.

“That's far enough,” somebody called.

From the rear of the van, holding the girl in front of him like young blond body armor, stepped Kurt Knowles.

“These colors don't run,” he announced, voice heavy with swagger. “And if they do, boy, they come back with more ammo.”