The Contractors Read online

  We ignored her.

  “Ah, oh.” Piper arched her back, reached for her rear pockets.

  “What?”

  “My cell phone. It fell out.”

  I reached for mine, then remembered I had tossed the SIM card so it wouldn’t be trackable.

  “The new one,” Piper said. “It didn’t fit my holster. Had it in my back pocket.”

  “Let’s get a replacement.” I pulled into a convenience store by the interstate.

  Piper didn’t move.

  I put the transmission into park and swore under my breath.

  The cheapest pay-as-you-go phone cost about thirty bucks, and we were out of cash. I’d given most of mine to my sister, used the remainder for a room last night and clothes. Piper had spent the last of her walking-around money to buy breakfast and a new auto battery. We had the Katrina debit cards but those would trigger a hit on the grid when we used them.

  “So we use a pay phone.” I examined the storefront. Stacks of empty milk crates, a couple of newspaper vending boxes, and a guy sleeping against the wall. No pay phone.

  “The apartment.” Piper shook her head. “We need to go back.”

  She was right. We’d left a lot supplies at the Cheyenne. The rest of Piper’s money from Sinclair’s job. Fresh phones and clothes. Ammo. And, of course, the picture of Piper’s mother.

  “You haven’t used your radio,” Eva said. “But you haven’t taken me to a field and shot me either.”

  I looked in the back.

  “You’re not part of this, are you?” She leaned forward, an excited look on her face. “You are a federal agent who was willing to kill another federal agent.”

  Piper turned in her seat and looked in the rear as well.

  “You can save me,” she said. “And yourselves.”

  Piper and I glanced at each other but didn’t speak.

  “You must let me go.”

  “Not a chance,” I said.

  “You are going to turn me over to the US Marshals, yes?”

  I didn’t say anything.

  “Why do you think I was running away from them?”

  “I dunno,” Piper said. “Why?”

  “They were going to kill me.”

  “That’s not part of the US Marshals mission statement,” I said.

  “Listen to me, please.” She blinked away tears. Her face was pale.

  Piper and I glanced at each, shrugged.

  “The US Marshals were holding me at a hotel on the River Walk,” Eva said. “I told them I wanted to go to the store downstairs and get cigarettes.” She shook her head. “Estúpidos. I don’t even smoke.”

  “Why’d you run?” I said.

  “My sister had called, gave me a coded message: one of the Marshals was employed by the cartel.” She paused. “They were going to kill me.”

  “So you escaped,” Piper said.

  “Yes. I just walked off.”

  “But they found you anyway,” I said.

  “Not the ones you think,” she said. “The others.”

  “Others?” I frowned.

  She mentioned the name of a rival cartel, a different organization than the one involved in the trial in West Texas. A competitor who’d found her in San Antonio, realized who she was, and hidden her in the shipment of drugs we’d found yesterday.

  I whistled softly. “That was not the day for you to buy lottery tickets.”

  She didn’t reply, clearly not understanding my meaning.

  “There’s a leak in the US Marshals,” Piper said. “That makes this tricky.”

  “If she’s telling the truth.” I put the Tahoe in reverse. Backed away from the convenience store.

  “The cartels are everywhere,” Eva said. “Please, for your own good, just let me go.”

  “The cartels haven’t gotten to Phil,” I said.

  “Who is Phil? Can he keep me safe?”

  Neither Piper nor I said anything. I pulled onto the street and headed toward our apartment.

  Eva Ramirez smiled and cried at the same time, breathing hard, hysteria, fatigue, and hopelessness painted across her face. Then she shook her head and leaned back in the seat.

  - CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE -

  Sinclair tried to control the flutter of panic in his stomach, the sense of things spinning out of control.

  The plan, which yesterday had sounded good, seemed like lunacy today: Jon Cantrell and Piper, money-grubbing DEA contractors, would take down a shipment of drugs. The missing witness, kidnapped by the cartel transporting the narcotics, was with the shipment.

  Cantrell and Piper, badged up with federal law enforcement credentials, would arrest the cartel guards, risking their skins in the process, and allow Sinclair and Tommy a window of opportunity to eliminate the witness in relative safety.

  Unfortunately, lots of things sound good in theory only to fall apart when the time for execution came about.

  Sinclair’s police contacts had alerted him that Jon and Piper had located the warehouse and secured the shipment. Unfortunately, the cokehead Paynelowe contractor, Keith McCluskey, and his crew of out-of-town DEA agents had barged in, having gotten wind of the witness’s location somehow. They started shooting, which allowed Eva Ramirez to disappear, melting into the streets of West Dallas.

  For the moment, the flutter in Sinclair’s stomach stayed at a manageable level, a slow drip of fear that kept him alert, wary of danger, like when he’d been a child and his old man had been drinking.

  The fear was good in a way, though. It forced him out of what one of his kids called the comfort zone.

  Sinclair had spent a lifetime in Dallas County. He knew every back alley and craps game from Cockrell Hill to the slums of Garland. But it had been at least a decade since he’d ventured out to the suburbs, specifically Frisco, located about thirty minutes north of downtown where the Dallas Tollway and State Highway 121 intersected.

  In his youth, the area had been nothing but fields of cotton, grain sorghum, and sunflowers, dotted here and there with white clapboard farmhouses. Now the prairie land was covered with concrete and asphalt, fancy strip malls, and a zillion acres of new homes, fanned out in subdivisions with pretentious names.

  Sinclair sat in the driver’s seat of a Crown Victoria with two hundred thousand miles on the clock, a retired police car. He was in the parking lot of a shopping center with a grocery store at one end and a shuttered Blockbuster video store at the other. The buildings were designed to look like they were from the Texas Hill Country, another place he hadn’t visited in decades, rough white stone, tin roofs, cactus landscaping.

  Want something done right, you gotta do it yourself, another lesson hard-learned from the back of his old man’s hand.

  He waited patiently, a cop on stakeout.

  About twenty minutes later, a tiny SUV drove across the parking lot. The license plate matched. Behind the wheel sat a red-haired woman in her fifties.

  Sinclair smiled and for a few moments the fear went away.

  Myrna DeGroot, the wife of the number two agent at the Dallas DEA office, Phil DeGroot, pulled her Toyota Highlander into the parking space directly in front of the dry cleaners.

  She exited the SUV, shopping list in one hand, pocketbook in the other.

  An old Ford, like the kind the police used, pulled in two spaces away.

  “Excuse me, ma’am.” A heavyset man got out of the Ford.

  His hair was dyed an inky black. He was about sixty, wearing a short-sleeved shirt like a waiter in a Mexican restaurant. In one hand he held a fold-up map, half open. An old-style 35mm film camera dangled around his neck.

  She clutched her pocketbook to her chest, tried to smile.

  “Sorry, didn’t mean to startle you.” He smiled. “My name is Sinclair.”

  She didn’t speak. The man had the hard gaze of a cop, a look she knew all too well, eyes that had seen too much for too many years.

  “Could you tell me if this road takes you to Southfork?” He pointed to the
east-west thoroughfare.

  Myrna hesitated. Like most people who called the area home, she’d never been to the ranch that had been home to TV’s J. R. Ewing and his family. She knew it was nearby though.

  “I’m from Abilene, see, and my wife and me used to watch Dallas together.” The man paused. He wiped his eyes. “Before she died.”

  “Let me see your map.” The woman relaxed. “Bet I can help.”

  “You have nice hair.” Sinclair spread the map on the hood of the Toyota. “My wife was a redhead too.”

  Myrna smiled and leaned over the paper.

  That was the last thing she remembered.

  - CHAPTER THIRTY -

  I stopped at the edge of the Cheyenne parking lot by a Dumpster. The Tahoe just fit between the trash receptacle and the wooden privacy fence that surrounded it, concealing us from view.

  It was a little before noon on Tuesday. The parking lot was about half full.

  We could have gone in the garage, but the remote control needed to access the secure area would leave a record. And there were cameras.

  I looked at Piper in the passenger seat. “Don’t dawdle.”

  We stood to collect fifty thousand for turning in Eva Ramirez, but that wasn’t like an ATM machine—slide the witness into jail like she was a bank card, get cash back. It would take awhile. In the meantime, we needed all the cash we could get, especially since our contractor status had been downgraded.

  “The money and the extra phones.” Piper opened the door and got out.

  “And the picture,” I said.

  She shut the door without replying and sauntered toward the condo entrance a hundred feet away from the hotel’s front doors. The security guard, an elderly ex-cop, drove by on his golf cart and waved at her. She waved back.

  “Please, you should let me go.” Eva leaned forward. “I won’t tell anybody.”

  A lock of hair fell across her eyes. She smiled, an eyebrow raised, going for an impish look. She succeeded. She did indeed look like an imp, a seductive one.

  I didn’t reply. I turned the AC colder. We were in the sun, and the day was getting warmer.

  “She’s a pretty woman,” Eva said. “Are you two together?”

  “Shut up.” I rubbed my eyes.

  “They’re going to kill me.” She touched my arm. “And you too.”

  Her fingers were cool and smooth.

  I shifted in my seat, easing the pressure on my still-tender groin area.

  “They will assume I have told you some secrets, so you must die as well. That’s the way this works.”

  I leaned back, eyes still closed. Tired though it was early in the day.

  “Me, I don’t fear death.” Her voice sounded different, huskier. “But my s-s-sister, she just wanted to paint.”

  I tried not to imagine what would come next. Tried to think one step at a time. Get the witness in custody. Get her on the record as saying we had nothing to do with shooting the unarmed suspects.

  “I made my choices,” she said. “Besides, death is everywhere in Mexico.”

  “Okay, I’ll bite.” I opened my eyes. “What choices did you make?”

  “Do you have someone?” she said. “A lover or a wife?”

  I didn’t say anything. When you’re a cop, it’s a good idea to keep your personal life personal when it comes to dealing with people you encounter. Like cons and suspects. And witnesses on the lam.

  “My choices.” She chuckled without mirth. “Love makes you do funny things.” A long pause. “I am glad that relationship is over.”

  Neither of us spoke for a few moments.

  A sharp intake of breath from the backseat.

  I opened my eyes.

  Three Dallas police cars were clustered by the front entrance under the porte cochere, a couple of hundred yards away. An unmarked Chevy Impala pulled alongside them and a tall man with a bushy Fu Manchu mustache got out. Sinclair’s flunky, Tommy, the guy who had been with him in the Bentley yesterday.

  “Uh-oh.” I reached for my phone to call Piper. Realized neither of us had one, which was why we were here in the first place.

  “What is it?” Eva said. “Why are you afraid?”

  I opened the door but stopped.

  A pair of white Tahoes like mine pulled up to the side entrance of the condo. A group of DEA agents in blue windbreakers jumped out, barged inside. I didn’t recognize any of them.

  The security guard was an ex-cop. An old guy, he’d been kicking around town for years. I mentally kicked myself for not seeing the connection sooner. He was probably on Sinclair’s payroll and had called him as soon as he saw Piper, resulting in Tommy being dispatched to the scene. All of which would have been picked up by Paynelowe’s electronic snooping.

  Crooked cops were going in one entrance, crooked DEA agents in the other, Piper caught in the middle.

  “What are you going to do?” Eva said.

  I got out, opened the back door, and recuffed her. Hands in back, still hooked to the D-ring. She protested. I slapped a piece of duct tape over her mouth and left her on the rear floorboard, the engine and AC running.

  Then, I jogged to entrance of the garage at the rear of the complex. Once inside I ran toward the freight elevators at the extreme south end, the farthest point away from all the police.

  The security guard was heading the opposite direction on his golf cart, looking behind himself every few feet as he maneuvered between a row of parked cars.

  I shouted at him to stop.

  He stopped. Stared at me, his eyes wide, confused. Then his eyes got bigger, face pale.

  I pulled my Glock, took a step closer.

  He pressed his lips together, his expression a jumble of emotions: still confused but angry and scared as well. He sped off toward the exit.

  I headed to the freight elevator and pressed the button for our floor.

  Nothing happened. The system had been shut down, a standard precaution given the police activity.

  I pulled out a master key and stuck it in the control lock. Tried again. And waited. The seconds dribbled by, each longer than the previous. Nearly a minute later, a lifetime in a situation such as this, just as I was just about to head for the stairs, the doors closed and the car lifted.

  At the tenth floor the elevator opened without making a sound.

  I stepped into the hallway, Glock in hand.

  Our unit was around two corners, maybe sixty yards away. There were no other tenants on this floor, and most of the apartments hadn’t even been finished out yet, the lingering effects of the recent economic downturn.

  The stench of spent cordite and pepper spray filled the air. No noise.

  Emotions choked my throat for a moment. Piper, please be okay.

  A dark object lay on the carpet at the bend of the hall. It looked like a shoe from my vantage point.

  I jogged as quietly as possible to the turn.

  The object was a black Reebok. With a foot inside that was attached to a dead guy in a Dallas police uniform.

  Two more figures lay just beyond the first in pools of blood that stained the tan carpet. Both wore civilian clothes, weapons by their sides. One of them was Tommy. He groaned, one leg quivering.

  I stifled a cough. The pepper spray was thicker in this section of the hall. Also, a layer of smoke hung in the air about chest level, evidence of flashbangs or a huge firefight that had just occurred.

  The next corner was about thirty feet away. Our unit lay two doors beyond that.

  For no particular reason, I pulled Tommy’s cell phone from its holster and stuck it in my pocket. Then I crept forward.

  Empty shell casings littered the carpet. Bullet holes dotted the walls.

  When I was about five feet from the corner, noise came from around the bend.

  The creak of leather, rustle of clothing.

  I stopped. Strained to hear more.

  Thwat-thwat-thwat.

  Three paintballs hit the wall on my left, the angle indicating
they’d been fired from beyond the turn of the hallway.

  They contained oleoresin capsicum, a substance derived from the hot part of the jalapeño fruit, standard issue for certain DEA personnel. A mist formed as the tissue-thin membrane of the projectile shredded.

  I gasped, immediately unable to breathe. Blinked, unable to see. Staggered back. Fire engulfed my nose and eyes, a searing pain. The spray was nowhere near a direct hit but still close enough to be momentarily incapacitating.

  The rattle of a machine gun bolt. The thud of silenced bullets hitting sheetrock.

  Tears gushed down my face. I coughed, tried not to scream. On my knees, struggled to breathe.

  From behind me the squeak of a hinge.

  A hand dragged me by the collar.

  A door slammed. The air felt different, colder.

  The hand kept dragging me, farther away.

  Another door slammed, and then I heard nothing.

  The pain lessened a smidgen. I blinked away a gallon of tears and saw I was in the bedroom of one of the unoccupied units on our floor, a suite that had never been finished out.

  Raw concrete. Gray, unpainted walls. No furniture.

  A figure stood over me, barely visible through the tears, as neutral and indistinct as the surroundings. A woman’s shape, Piper. She disappeared from view, going toward the hall.

  A few seconds later, she dashed back in the room and slammed the door shut.

  I tried to speak but couldn’t.

  Piper jumped on top of me and covered my head.

  BOOOM.

  A muffled but loud explosion from the hallway, another flashbang.

  She rolled off. I blinked, tried to clear my throat. Wiped more tears away.

  Piper held her finger over her lips. She leaned closer, whispered in my ear: “Two teams. We’re in a crossfire.”

  From the living area, the sound of a door opening.

  Piper and I looked at each other and then turned to the only exit.

  The balcony. Ten stories up.

  - CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE -

  I yanked open the sliding glass door.

  Warm air slapped me in the face, easing the sting of the pepper spray a few more notches below scream-bloody-murder-and-scratch-your-eyes-out.