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  “You guys back again?” he asked with a smile. “Just can’t get enough of this place?”

  “Something like that,” Diaz said, forcing a smile to her face, despite her voice relaying it was not the time to be messing with her. “Can you call ahead and ask to have Manuel Juarez made available for questioning, please?”

  The smile faded around the edges as the guard stood to full height and stepped back from the car. “Yes, ma’am, will do. You know the way, right?”

  “Sure do, thanks,” Diaz said, buzzing the window up and depressing the accelerator at the same time. Once the car was sealed tight and we were on our way, she pushed out a quick sigh, blowing a stray strand of hair off her forehead.

  “I honestly have no idea,” Diaz said. “As you saw today, it’s sometimes hard to get a full read on Carlos because he’s always playing that rebel-without-a-cause character of his.”

  “More like without-a-clue.”

  “That too,” Diaz agreed. “But this time seemed different. I heard the tape from when the package arrived. You saw him today when we forced him out of the car. That boy was spooked. Bad.”

  She maneuvered the car back to the same building, situated in the far back corner of the lot. Beside us, prisoners were out for their late afternoon yard time, hundreds of men dressed in gray, no more than a handful even glancing our way. Despite the cool weather, many had stripped off their shirts and were playing basketball or pumping iron, sweat glistening on their skin.

  Diaz jammed the gear shift into “Park” and killed the engine, the same disgruntled look that had been on her features all afternoon still in place. Without the sound of the air-conditioning or the road beneath us, the outside world could be heard plainly: the sounds of inmates in the yard filtering in, their voices full of bass, floating on the breeze.

  “Think there’s any chance Manny tells us why? Or who?” I asked.

  “Depends,” Diaz said, tightening the side of her face, considering the question. “If he and Carlos set this up this morning, he’ll fold his arms and give us some tough-guy bullshit runaround.”

  “But if Carlos is really acting alone here, he’s going to be just as worried as we are right now,” I finished.

  “Different reasons, obviously, but same final product,” Diaz said.

  Together we climbed out of the car, our respective dress shoes sounding against the concrete sidewalk. As we walked, Diaz shrugged her suit coat back on, buttoning it as we approached the front door and entered.

  Stale, frigid air greeted us as we stepped inside, the door swinging shut behind us with a wheeze. The same guard that had been on before lunch nodded us through without checking badges, barely looking up from his copy of Field & Stream magazine as he waved us on by.

  A few weeks ago, I would have stopped to see which issue he was reading, maybe even asked him what his sport of choice was. Now, the only thing that even registered with me was the antler spread on the moose splayed across the front cover, an image processed and dismissed in less than a second.

  The change was not a welcome one.

  I fell back a half step and allowed Diaz to take the lead, moving quickly through the front hallway and turning us toward the interrogation chambers. A pair of oversized guards on their way out for the day stopped and turned sideways to let us squeeze by, keeping their backs pressed against the walls, their uniforms aching for relief from the strain. Otherwise, nobody so much as glanced our way as we cut a direct path through the facility.

  Given the deference of the guards around us, and the clench of Diaz’s jaw, I got the distinct impression that she was no stranger to the place. Once upon a time I would have been stopped by a handful of prodding guards wanting to know who I was with and what I was doing. Not once had I ever been allowed to wander unescorted through the halls. The fact that we were doing so now meant either procedure was becoming more lax or Diaz was known as a woman not to be trifled with throughout the building.

  My money was on the latter.

  “We good?” Diaz asked as we stepped past a trio of doors, simple gray metal affairs with chicken wire across the plate glass windows covering the top half of them. Each one had a basic plastic placard on it announcing interrogation rooms with numbers counting backward from 4.

  “Yeah,” I responded, knowing she was asking if I was ready with what we had discussed on the drive in. We pulled up to a stop outside the door marked Interrogation Room #1. I was careful to stay back on the opposite side of the hall, out of direct sight line of the window.

  As it stood, Manny didn’t know I was there. Carlos hadn’t seen me until after meeting with him, and a simple call had confirmed that he had not contacted his cousin to relay that information.

  The plan, as it were, was pretty simple. Diaz would go in first and try to determine where Carlos would have gone. She would be tough but firm, letting him know how dire this was and how this was the direct result of Carlos being a bit of a loose cannon, not some perceived slight by the DEA.

  If he insisted on giving her a hard time, or being in any way uncooperative, she would give me the signal. Neither one of us was exactly sure what the punch line would be once I entered, but we both had a feeling it would be effective.

  Standing in the hall outside the interrogation room, most of me wanted him to play ball, to tell her what she needed in a timely manner so we could find Carlos and get moving.

  Some small part of me though, a tiny, undefined space deep within, hoped he would press her, that he would try to mess with her just enough to get me called into the room.

  “Okay,” Diaz said, standing alongside the glass and peering inside. “They’re bringing him in now.”

  “How’s he look?” I asked.

  She paused a moment. “He’s a little more worn down than the last time I saw him, has a scowl in place that would make Ice Cube proud, but otherwise he seems okay.”

  I fought down the urge to step forward and peer in, both for fear it might derail our plan and that it might send that tiny spark deep inside into a full-on blaze. Despite whatever scar tissue the previous five years might have melded over the old wounds, it never actually sealed them completely.

  My only worry was what might happen once they ripped open again, allowing all the hate and rage bottled within to spill out.

  If the Juarezes were smart, they would worry about that, too.

  One more nod of the head and Diaz stepped through, her hands empty, her customary deep-set frown in place. From where I stood I could see the back of her head for three steps before she disappeared from view, leaving me alone in the hallway.

  With my back pressed against the cool concrete block behind me, I tried to fit everything I knew into some form of pattern. Discovering that the funds originated in Russia had been a bombshell, a shot in the dark that none of us could have seen coming. Were they what had Carlos so worried? And how did he now think he could avoid them?

  I stood in place, my gaze aimed at the tile floor, my mind racing, when a flash of color jerked my attention upward. Standing in full view of the window was Diaz. She wasn’t looking at me, keeping her attention on what I assumed was Manny, but as she talked I could see her raise her head up and down, an almost imperceptible nod meant for me. Tapping into just a bit of the animosity lurking within, I bolted across the hallway and jerked the door open, letting it slam back against the wall with a clatter.

  Diaz didn’t so much as turn her head as I entered, her focus fixed on Manny. For his part he jerked his gaze up at me, surprise at the sudden entrance soon replaced by a mixture of realization and shock. He extended one hand up toward me, his jaw dropping open, a sound resembling a pained moan sliding out.

  The sight of him made my every nerve tingle as I stomped across the room at him. With my left hand I shoved the table aside, the legs of it squeaking as it slid across the polished floor. Open and exposed, Manny sat
and looked at me, his eyes growing wide.

  Again he attempted to say something, but never got the chance.

  My fist connected with his cheek with a deafening smack of skin-on-skin contact. I aimed it high enough to avoid snapping his jawbone, but low enough so it would rattle a few teeth.

  The blow had the intended effect, sending him toppling over from the chair, depositing him in a heap on the floor. A trail of bloody spittle extended out away from him a full three feet in length, dotting the light tile floor.

  Without waiting for him to recover I flipped him onto his back with the heel of my foot and bent low over him, grabbing a handful of rough canvas shirt and lifting him toward me. I made sure to get a little skin and flesh as I hefted over half of his body up into the air, bringing him to a stop just inches from my face.

  “Where the hell is Carlos, Manny?”

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  The ground crunched beneath Carlos Juarez’s feet as he exited the rented Jeep and stood staring at the structure. A plume of dust and debris hung in the air around him, raised by his tires as he traveled over the long-abandoned road, thrown upward no matter how slowly he traveled. It tickled his nose as he stood and surveyed his surroundings, tasted grit as it settled on his lips.

  Carlos ran the back of his hand across his mouth, adding even more dust. Thin and chalky, it caked on his tongue, causing him to spit repeatedly at the ground. Little wet specks appeared by his feet.

  “Home again, home again,” Carlos said, a sour expression crossing his face. For several long moments he stared warily at the silent structure, waiting as the cloud of dust settled behind him.

  Once it did, he could see out through the California desert for miles in every direction.

  Situated atop a bluff in the Sonoran Desert, the place was fifty miles from the closest metropolis of any size. On especially clear nights the lights of San Diego were just visible in the distance, a tiny cluster glittering on the horizon, seventy miles to the southwest.

  The sky was not yet dark enough for such viewing, the sun still a few inches above the horizon behind Carlos. Long shafts of sunlight bathed everything in a late-day glow, reflecting off the Jeep beside him, their intensity barely contained by the thick coat of dust covering it.

  The choice in arrival time was deliberate, making sure to show up before his headlights could be seen cutting a solitary path through the night.

  After leaving Manny that morning, Carlos had every intention of doing as he’d been told, staying with the plan they had laid out years ago. He would remain under protective custody, raise all kinds of hell to make sure they did their job, and he would stay alive. As tempting as the thought of finally being out from beneath their watchful eye was, the recent travails of Mateo served as a cautionary tale to keep him from doing anything rash.

  That had been five hours ago, though. Before Diaz and that bastard from another time dropped him alongside the highway, noon sun beating down on him, not a soul around. Before the second car, manned by a pair of condescending pricks with shaved heads and terrible facial hair pulled up and demanded he get in, making borderline-racist comments the entire way back.

  Long before they tried to force him to return to the house he’d been staying in for months, the same one Mateo had sent the package to, its location had no doubt been spilled to whoever found him.

  Despite whatever he had promised his cousin, there was no way he could return there. Going back would all but confirm his death, be walking right into a trap that was lying in wait at that very moment, a team of men in place, waiting to spring for him.

  Instead, he’d gone off the grid. Gotten himself to town, rented a Jeep, and made a line for a house that only one other person in the world knew of, and he damned sure wouldn’t tell anybody about it.

  The building was made entirely from concrete block, stretching forty feet in length and twenty feet in width. The back half of it was buried within the sand dune it was perched atop, a practical design meant to serve as a natural coolant and to aid in reducing visibility. A single wooden door stood in the middle of the front, a pair of matching windows on either side. Every surface, the glass included, was painted sandy brown.

  If somebody didn’t know exactly where it was, there was no way they would ever find it on their own.

  The place had been constructed as a bomb shelter sometime in the fifties, the kind of place Army officials could hide in and watch remote detonations through binoculars. Rumor was there were dozens just like it scattered through the Sonoran Desert, all from a time when Cold War fears were a part of daily life.

  It was the only one Carlos had ever seen. Manny had acquired it ten years before as a private safe house exclusively for the family. Not even Mateo knew about the location, something the two cousins had discussed at length before deciding to keep it strictly between them.

  The fact that Mateo might still be breathing had that conversation gone a bit differently was something Carlos had actively avoided since receiving the package a day before.

  “Well, here we are,” Carlos muttered, reaching across the front seat of the Jeep and extracting a pair of plastic grocery sacks from the passenger seat. Each one contained bottles of water and Gatorade, stacks of canned and dried goods in the back. Stored inside the house were pallets of MREs—meal ready to eat—picked up at a military surplus store years before, but the idea of actually eating any of those had been bad enough to force Carlos to risk the extra time needed to stop for some real food on his way out of San Diego.

  More than once he had thought of getting word to Manny about his plan, but in the end decided against it. He was going against the script now and he knew it. Better to lie low a few days and figure things out, hope the DEA got their heads about them, and resurface. After that he would stop by the prison and explain what had happened, why he did what he felt he had to.

  Manny would understand, he always did.

  And even if he didn’t, it was easier to apologize than ask permission.

  A thin top layer of sand whipped across the ground as Carlos walked to the front door, the sound of it smacking against the Jeep, the front windows of the building, ringing in his ears. Underfoot the ground was compact, the soil hard packed and sunbaked, a heavy dose of sand lying atop it, pushed back and forth by the unending desert winds.

  Switching both sacks into his left hand, Carlos rotated a clump of keys in his right, shifting them until the single brass implement he was looking for came into view. Using his thumb and forefinger he separated it out from the others and slid it into the lock. The mechanism turned smoothly, releasing with a click.

  The wind had driven a heap of sand beneath the doorway, clumping it on the ground and offering resistance as Carlos pressed his shoulder into the door and shoved. It pushed back against him a moment before giving way, swinging out into a darkened space. The only light spilled in through the doorway. His elongated silhouette stretched across the floor as the musty scent of stale air and dust met his nostrils.

  Carlos stood in the doorway a long moment, allowing his eyes to adjust to the darkness. He twisted the sacks a bit in his hand, the plastic echoing out, the sound breaking up the eerie silence of the building.

  “OK,” Carlos said, nodding, before taking a step forward, his foot touching solid concrete for the first time since leaving the grocery store.

  His second step never made it.

  There was no chance for Carlos to defend himself, not even the opportunity for him to scream out. Instead there was just a single flash of light, a glint of sunshine flashing against polished steel, before everything receded to darkness.

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  “How’s the hand?” Diaz asked, glancing over from the road to my right fist, lightly balled atop my thigh. I glanced down at it without looking over at her, flexing my fingers into a tight bunch before spreading them wide, leaving the hand flat.
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br />   “It’s fine,” I replied, looking out the front windshield. “I’m not made of glass.”

  Until she asked, I hadn’t once thought about my hand. The combination of avoiding his jawbone and the concentrated adrenaline coursing through me had kept there from being even a slight hint of soreness. My skin, leathered from five years of exposure to the elements, had held firm as well.

  It was the first punch I’d thrown in a very long time, though my body didn’t seem to realize it.

  “I could say the same for Manny Juarez,” Diaz said. “Hard as you hit him, I thought he’d be unconscious for hours.”

  An inch up or down, inch and a half to the left, and he would have been. I don’t say that to be boastful, but as a statement of fact. Most people have never thrown a meaningful punch in their lives. They curl their thumbs beneath their overlying fingers, angle their hand away from their forearm, don’t know how to balance their weight.

  On the second day of DEA training, they began teaching us hand-to-hand combat. Not how to box, not some twisted version of the hottest MMA style, but how to fight. Even a few years out of practice, those skills never leave a man.

  If I’d wanted him unconscious, he would have been. Simple fact was, he was of absolutely no use to us lying on the floor, unable to open his eyes. So I did what I had to to make my point, to get his attention.

  Two minutes later he told us exactly what we wanted to know.

  “Tell me,” I asked, switching the topic of conversation, making no attempt to be covert about it. “How did you guys close the net on him anyway?”

  A long moment passed as Diaz pushed the speedometer above seventy. The setting sun shone in our faces. I reached out and flipped the visor down in front of me as the front dash piped chilled air into my face.

  “You never heard?” she asked, the top half of her face covered in plastic black sunglasses. Their mirrored lenses reflected both the sun and the road ahead.