and-white. Under other circumstances, the high-gloss finish would have been irresistible to neighborhood taggers.
Jase didn’t move to get out.
“Now what?” Hunter asked. He needed something to keep his mind off his nightmare or his second taboo line of thought—Lina’s scent, her warmth, her lush lips made for the sweetest kind of sin.
“We don’t get to move in until after the door is cracked,” Jase said.
The house on Willerton had been left to abscess for a long time. It was rotten to its foundation. But that wasn’t what kept neighbors at a distance.
“The bad guys live here,” Hunter said. “No graffiti.”
Every other house on the block had been tagged, broken into, and then patched up. But this old house would be standing long after the neighborhood was abandoned and stripped. Nobody would be messing with the sun-faded stucco, because real predators lived here. The only things new about the house were the security doors and bars on the windows. They were black steel, powder coated, and looked like they could turn a bullet shot from the street.
“Nice bars,” Jase said.
“Stupid,” Hunter said. “Limits your field of fire from the inside.”
“Dude, sometimes I worry about you.”
Nearby a tactical van was parked close enough to do some good, but not close enough to get in the way. Two snipers lay on the van’s roof, covering the front of the house and yard. Hunter knew there would be another van just like it on the opposite side of the house, with ICE troops ready to come over the back fence if anyone tried to rabbit.
An electronically amplified voice boomed from the van in front of the house, advising the occupants of the house that they were officially required to quit the premises with hands on head.
The house stayed quiet.
“That’s the third warning,” someone shouted. “Take it down.”
A group of men cut the chain on the fence’s gate and moved in fast, marching up the cracked walkway in black fatigues and vests that clearly spelled out ICE in what seemed to be mile-high yellow silkscreen. All of them carried handguns at a precise forty-five-degree angle from the ground.
The agents swept up the short stoop. They didn’t bother knocking. One of them stepped to the side and yelled, “Clear!”
“Det cord?” Hunter asked. Explosive cord made short work of locks.
“No, on houses like this—”
Gunshots rang out. The door shuddered and swayed, held on only by the dead bolt.
“—they shoot out the hinges and kick in the rest,” Jase finished.
Someone wrapped his climbing cord around the doorknob and took a good five steps back, bracing to pull. A big agent went to work around the dead bolt with a pry bar. The door clattered to the ground and skidded out into the front yard.
“THIS IS YOUR LAST WARNING. COME OUT BEFORE WE COME IN.”
No response.
An agent armed two flash-bangs and tossed them inside the open doorway. He counted down with his fingers, starting at three, two, one.
For an instant the gloom of the darkened interior went thermite bright. Sounds like a fireworks display gone psycho rolled through the neighborhood. Glass shattered behind one of the barred windows. Agents streamed into the house two by two, sweeping the rooms.
Hunter was relieved no more shooting came. Despite his training, he really didn’t want to have to go med- tech on anyone right now.
Soon six men were sitting cross-legged in the prickly yellow weeds that made up the front yard. Their hands were cuffed behind their backs. Eight cops stood around them, weapons low but attentive.
“Bet those bad boys have jailhouse tats and iron-pile abs,” Jase said.
“Sucker bet.” Hunter rolled the window down, flinched, and swore under his breath. “Something’s been dead for a while.”
“And not buried,” Jase agreed. “Stay here until I make sure it’s cool for a visitor.”
Hunter settled back. It would take time to Mirandize the gangbangers in the weeds and secure the house. He checked the glove compartment and found the little pair of binoculars Jase always kept there, just in case.
Quietly Hunter focused on the seated men. Only one of them tripped his radar. The man was darker than the others, calmer, and had tats like multicolored serpent scales winding up his brawny arms. No reptilian head in sight.
While agents hauled out the rock cocaine and precursors from the kitchen, others pulled enough weapons from the house to start—and finish—a war. The guns came out in green nylon rucksacks that looked like they had been dragged up and down the Dirty Coast a few hundred times. And then there were the knives. From what Hunter could see, Gerbers and Ontarios were the local favorites. One Bowie-style knife as long as his forearm had
“‘Sweet Kiss,’” Hunter muttered to himself. “Those are some whacked-out dudes.”
All of the agents who came out of the house looked a little paler than when they had gone in—even Jase, who had emerged to chat up the agent who was questioning the gangbangers in the weeds.
Finally Jase came back to the van. “With me,” he said to Hunter. “Be seen but not heard.”
“Got it. The dude with the snake tats looks like a cousin to LeRoy’s visitors.”
“The agent questioning him thinks he has a Yucatec accent,” Jase said. “Can’t be sure. The agent’s mother was born in Guatemala, near the border, but they still visit family.”
Hunter followed Jase across the weeds that were being trampled by all the traffic. Once they were inside, the house was dark with more than a lack of light. Beneath the smell of flash-bangs was something grim. Not simply dirty, but foul.
The living room was jammed with leather furniture that had once been expensive. Then had come years of being used for everything from ashtrays to whetstones. The coffee table was supported by cinder blocks stamped with a colorful flower pattern. The table itself was made of mismatched boards that probably had been stolen from a construction site. Spanish-language
“Guess these gangbangers and my mom have something in common,” Jase said. “The magazines, not the skin pics.”
“Scary idea,” Hunter muttered.
The kitchen was dominated by a gigantic, soot-caked gas range. Butcher-block tables had been pushed together to make a large work surface. On it was a cardboard box filled with tiny Ziploc bags.
“Your mom’s kitchen smells better,” Hunter said.
“Drugs stink like the crap they are.”
The counter was covered by red plastic cylinders filled with white powder and chunks, or pale salmon-colored flakes.
“Could be the candles that stink,” Hunter said.
The stalks of wax were black, as thick around as a strong man’s arm. Near them was an eerie snake-man statue. Maya in style, it looked like smoke made solid as it escaped a snake’s mouth. Glyphs marched down the length of the piece.
“Not antique,” Hunter said before Jase could ask. “Mass-produced, on sale in any tourist trap in the Yucatan, Belize, or Guatemala.”
“Huh. The dudes out in the weeds aren’t Latin Kings or any of the other gangbangers around here. I didn’t recognize their tats. Neither did the agents I talked to. Which just makes the strange even stranger. The tip on this house came from the cellmate of the gangbanger that shanked the artifact driver.”
“Nice to know somebody still wants reduced time,” Hunter said.
