Moore grinned. “All right. Listen up.”
26 ATTEMPTS
Gloria Vega had learned from Towers that the Sinaloas were not responsible for the murder of Johnny Sanchez and his girlfriend. Towers had confirmed via Moore, who was now in southeast Mexico, that members of that Guatemalan death squad, the Avenging Vultures, had killed the journalist.
When Vega had mentioned that she thought the Guatemalans might be responsible for the murder, Inspector Gomez had dismissed her with a flagrant wave. “Johnny was reporting on the cartels, and he paid the price. The Sinaloas did this. There is nothing more to it.”
But the old man’s face had grown pale, and he’d given her a long, troubled look before telling her he was going home and that she should do the same.
After the riot outside the station, Vega had told Gomez that she would trust him, that she was afraid that everyone around her was corrupt, and that all she wanted to do was the right thing.
“What if the right thing is to look the other way?” he’d asked her. “What if you realize that nothing we do will change anything and that sometimes we must fight fire with fire?”
She’d just stared at him.
He’d grabbed her hands. “You’ve seen what I’ve seen. And now you know what I know.” And then he did something that shocked her. He released her hands and gave her a deep hug. When he was through, he pulled back with tears in his eyes. “I am sorry that you’ve come to see the truth of this. It is a bitter truth, but we must accept it.”
She put the key in her apartment door, but something wasn’t right. The key did not slide into the lock as smoothly as it usually did. This was something that the average person might dismiss as an annoying inconvenience, but Vega was keenly aware of her surroundings, especially now, in Juarez, and missing even the slightest detail could result in death. She took a deep breath and wondered if someone had tried to pick the lock.
Drawing her weapon, she opened the door and stepped inside.
A shuffle of feet, and then—
He came at her from behind, a male voice coming in a deep groan as he tried to get the wire around her throat, but her hand was already there, coming up reflexively before the wire could touch her throat. It sliced into her palm as she swung around, dragging him with her.
The foyer was still dark, and she couldn’t turn back to see him, could only bring her arm around her side and fire once, twice, until the wire went slack and she screamed and rushed forward to whirl back and fire again.
A shaft of light came in from the living room window, and she saw him, barely her height, dressed in jeans and a gray sweatshirt, a balaclava over his face. He lay there with gunshot wounds in his chest.
Despite her heavy breathing, the stench of gunpowder, and the saliva filling her mouth, she still detected movement from the bedroom. A second one? There it was: a window latch thrown, something trying to get out.
“Don’t move!” she screamed, and rushed into the bedroom, in time to see another man dressed similarly to the first trying to slip away through the window. He’d been the backup man but had chickened out, and Vega was so pumped with adrenaline and so fearful that he’d turn back with a weapon that she emptied the rest of her magazine into the punk, who fell back into the bedroom. Reflexively, she ejected the magazine, jammed in a fresh one, then chambered a round, all in a matter of seconds.
She rushed to the light switch, threw it on, then swept the rest of the apartment, the walk-in closet, the bathroom.
And then she cursed. Because in that moment as she tried to regain her breath, she began to cry.
She reached for her cell phone, dialed Towers. “I want off this fucking case. I want out of here. Right now.”
“Whoa, whoa, whoa, slow down. Talk to me.”
She hung up on him, waited another moment, then dialed the police.
She made the report as a knock came at her front door, probably the landlord or a concerned neighbor.
Her phone rang: Towers calling back. She answered, “Two punks just jumped me in my apartment. I killed them both.”
“Then we’ll pull you out of there.”
“No.”
“But you just said—”
“I know what I said. I’m going to finish this. I’ll arrest Gomez myself.”
“All right, just hang in there. I’ll have some sensors put in place in the apartment. This won’t happen again.”
“I don’t know about that. Gomez sent these bastards to kill me. He knows …”
“You need to hang tight for now, because when we bring him down, the rest will follow. Big bust, just like in Puerto Rico, but we can’t rush into it, not yet …”
“Just hope I live long enough,” she spat. “Now, I have to go. They’re banging on my door, and a couple of units are on the way …”
The image of his father, backlit by the burning hotel, still haunted Dante Corrales as he lay there in the bed, his shoulder heavily bandaged, his left arm in a sling. He dialed the number and listened to the unanswered ring. There was no voice mail, only the endless buzzing.
“He still doesn’t pick up?” Pablo asked, sitting on a chair near the doors leading out to the veranda.
“What if they’re trying to call Miguel? What if they already know something’s wrong?”
“If you call Castillo and you tell him the truth, you know what he’s going to say …”
“He’ll expect me to run. They’ll hunt me down and kill me. I can’t do that.”
“Dante, why are you so scared? I’ve never seen you this way. Come on. We can beat this.”
“Why am I scared? Do you have any fucking idea what’ll happen now?”
“No.”
He swore in his head, then aloud. “Shit. I should’ve just paid that scumbag Salou, but he’s a sloppy bastard, and he’s lucky he got the down payment at all.”
“Do you have the money?”
Corrales shook his head. “Long gone.”
“You didn’t think they’d come after you for the rest?”
Corrales almost smiled. “I knew they would, but I figured by then I’d have a few extra bucks from the shipments. But we got screwed there, too …”
Corrales’s phone rang — a number he didn’t recognize. “Hello?”
“Corrales, my friend, I noticed you’ve been trying to call me. I’m so happy we finally have your attention.”
He stiffened. It was Salou, and the bastard was practically singing with bravado. “Be careful what you say,” Corrales told him. “A word to the wise.”
“I’m disappointed.”
“I know. Let me make it up to you.”
“Three times my original estimate.”
“Done. And you know what I want.”
“Of course.”
