Staggering, he drew a deep breath and dragged the back of his hand over his mouth.
“Are you going to be okay?” Luna asked.
Gannon swallowed hard, hurried out and doubled over in the shade side of the barn, letting sweet-smelling breezes do their work, inhaling fresh air until he felt well enough to stand and face Luna and the detective.
“This is my stepbrother, First Sergeant Esteban Cruz.”
“We have Coke and bottled water, Jack,” Cruz offered.
Gannon said he was fine.
“This is your case?”
Cruz nodded as Gannon glanced around warily.
“Don’t worry. It’s safe for us to talk here,” Cruz said. “These men are not corrupt. Each can be trusted.”
“So what happened? What have you got here?”
“A ranch hand from the next property was out here yesterday morning hunting rabbits when he found them.”
“Who are the victims? What’s the link to my niece?”
Cruz unfolded a piece of thermal fax paper and gave it to Gannon. It was a photocopy of Lyle Galviera’s business card, front and back. The back bore handwritten numbers…possibly codes or accounts.
“We found this on one of them,” Cruz said.
“Is one of them Lyle Galviera?”
Cruz shoved a stick of gum in his mouth and shook his head.
“So who are they?”
“We think they were Galviera’s cartel partners. We fingerprinted them late last night.”
“Why are you telling me this? Why call me down here?”
“To help you understand the gravity of your situation,” Cruz said.
“Is it more serious than what is in there-than having my niece kidnapped by monsters?”
“To begin with, we believe that someone involved in the multiagency investigation of your niece’s abduction in Arizona may be on a cartel payroll.”
“Yes, Isabel said that on her call. So what are we dealing with?”
“Those two dead men are ex-U.S. law enforcement. The one in the driver’s seat is Octavio Sergio Salazar. He was fired from the LAPD a few years back for alleged corruption involving drug shipments in California. The other, John Walker Johnson, was fired from U.S. Customs. He was alleged to have taken bribes in exchange for border access. Not long ago, Salazar and Johnson began double-dealing with cartels that were warring with each other.”
“So what happened?”
“Our ex-cops went rogue to start carving out their own U.S. routes while dealing with at least two cartels. We’re not sure which ones. We think that Lyle Galviera was partnered with the ex-cops, using his courier company, and that he’s holding the missing millions for Salazar and Johnson. And we think the cartels believe the cash was stolen from them.”
“Where did you get all this intel?”
“There are a number of longstanding investigations on both sides of the border. When your niece was kidnapped, people in police intel on both sides of the border started connecting dots.”
“Does the FBI know what you’ve told me? They should be told so they can find my niece and get her out before all of this explodes.”
“They’ve been told. In fact, several U.S. federal agents are due at this scene at any moment because of the U.S. link. But Isabel and I wanted you to know the truth, to ensure it stays pure, because of the suspected infiltration of U.S. and Mexican police by cartels.”
“The people who have Tilly have given my sister five days to find Galviera. We’re losing time. Do you know where he is?”
“No.”
“He could be dead somewhere.”
“If that were true,” Cruz said, “we would know. The cartels would want the world to know that death is the price for stealing from them.”
“So he’s likely out there with five million dollars and scared to death.”
“It’s only a matter of time before the cartels find him.”
“You think they know where he is?” Gannon asked.
“The bodies have been here a few days. Salazar and Johnson were probably killed before your niece was taken.”
“That gives you a bit of a timeline then?”
Cruz nodded.
“There’s more. Before they were killed they were tortured. We think they were lured out here and probably tortured for information about Galviera and the money. This was a double execution by a
“An assassin?”
“Yes. And we found this.” Cruz glanced at Luna before showing Gannon a crime scene photo copied on his cell phone. The picture showed a small glass that looked like it was used for tomato juice.
“I don’t understand.”
“This is the signature of The Tarantula.”
“The Tarantula?”
“He’s a top assassin. He started professionally killing as a boy. With each high-profile killing he is known to toast La Santa Muerte, the goddess of death, with the blood of his victims.”
Gannon exhaled.
“This was a message killing,” Luna said. “The cartels have a complex structure for message or revenge killings. The cartel first does all the groundwork, setting up everything for the assassin to arrive and carry out the key executions. It’s very ritualistic and disciplined.”
“So this goes beyond getting their money back?”
“Yes. Having The Tarantula involved means cartel bosses want the world to know that everyone connected to this theft of the cartel’s money will die,” Luna said. “If the cartel finds Lyle Galviera first, they will torture him for information on their money, then kill him. And then they will have no use for your niece. Because she can identify them, they’ll kill her, too.”
“Given that they’ve already found and executed these two competing cartel members,” Cruz said, “it won’t be long until the cartel finds Galviera. No matter what happens, Galviera and your niece are marked to be revenge kills.”
19
Hours later, as his jet lifted off from El Paso International Airport, Gannon recalled something the Irish writer Oscar Wilde had said about there being only two tragedies in life.
“One is not getting what one wants, and the other is getting it.”
That pretty much covered it for him. As the wounded brother, there were times in his life that he’d ached to see his sister again, was willing to give anything to find Cora.
Well, he’d found her.
And as the hard-driving reporter, he had been hell-bent on finding a drug cartel assassin to write about; he had begged Isabel Luna to help him.
Well, they’d found one: a blood-drinking death-toasting killer called The Tarantula.
When the plane leveled off somewhere over the Rio Grande, Gannon opened his laptop and clicked to the
