Defy (Brothers of Ink and Steel Book 3) Read online

  “¿Hablas español?” he repeats.

  “No español, I don’t know what you’re saying!” I cry out and struggle against the shackles. “What am I doing here? What do you want from me?”

  He laughs before I hear the sound his boots make against the floor as he walks away.

  I’m brought back to a memory of the why . . .

  At Tulane University, it’s always Mardi Gras. Students leave as much time in their schedule for evening parties as they do for daytime classes.

  I was all dressed up—gold glitter around my eyes, a short halter dress covered in metallic sparkles that looked amazing in the evening light. My best friend and dorm roommate assured me that Thomas Monroe—class president and political science major—would be there. Thomas had been asking me out for weeks, but I was playing hard to get. That night might have been my night to get got.

  Because I had so much homework to finish up, I was late getting to Frat Row where all the fraternity parties happen. So I took a stupid shortcut through a few back alleys. It was dark; the moon was nothing but a thin tear in the sky. And I was alone at eleven thirty. It was the kind of thing my mom would come down on me hard for, and I’d be grounded for a month.

  Straight-laced, straight-A student. I never do anything this stupid, I reasoned. I’ll be okay this once.

  That’s when arguing voices reached me—one in Spanish, the other in English with no hint of an accent. No big deal.

  Except for the conversational content.

  “Estás muerto, chico blanquito lindo.” You’re dead, pretty white boy.

  Pretty white boy started begging for his life.

  I pressed the number 5 on my iPhone to speed dial campus security and poked my head around the edge of the alley. Maybe I was overreacting and the situation was really less dire than I imagined. But as my eyes adjusted to the bright headlight beams from an idling car, I saw the Spanish speaking guy standing over the pleading English speaking guy—who I knew as a classmate and fellow Tulane student—with a pistol pressed against his forehead.

  As I hitched in breath to scream, a sickening sound deafened all thought, freezing me in place. Blood and bone, milky-white chunks of brain and sticky strands of hair splattered against the brick wall behind them.

  My phone plummeted from my hand and bounced hard off the blacktop.

  The guy whirled around to face me, aiming the same gun he’d just exploded the other kid’s head with.

  “WHAT THE HELL IS GOING ON OUT THERE!?” a masculine voice shouted, cutting through the last echoes of the gunshot.

  “THE FUCK!?” another brayed.

  “WHO IS BACK THERE?”

  A chorus of voices spilled out into the night as doors and windows opened up all around us and people started heading towards the alley. Festive music followed them with ill-timed irony.

  The gunman met my eyes then lifted his finger to his lips to tell me to be quiet.

  Bile rolled through my stomach. If I ran, would he kill me? How about all the people coming? How far would he go?

  “I’M HERE—I’M BACK HERE!! HELP ME!” I screamed.

  The gunman wasn’t happy. There would probably be a lot of dead bodies to clean up. He pointed at me—like he was marking me—before he made his way back to his car and drove off fast.

  As people surrounded me and the dead body, that moment’s-ago bile came up from my stomach, and I spewed all over the ground.

  The next few weeks were a whirlwind. Hours spilled into days as I was questioned endlessly, reliving the scene again and again for police, lawyers, sketch artists and important government officials. I found out the name of the suspected shooter was Eduardo Miguel after I positively identified his photo.

  I was told my testimony—the DA and the DEA hoped—would cinch his going away for good.

  While Eduardo Miguel was locked away, they had no real fear for my safety, but still two special agents were parked outside my apartment, assigned to watch over and protect me until after the trial.

  But then he disappeared during transport. That’s when the agents made me drop everything I was doing and go with them to a hotel. They wouldn’t even let me call my family or let my professors know I wasn’t coming in to class. All I could think of when they checked me into the room was that my mom and little sister must have thought I was dead.

  It was only temporary, they said.

  We weren’t there for more than four hours before the taller one went to get us some food from the diner across the street—the heavyset one watched him out the windows with binoculars.

  When the agent came back with takeout containers, I downed half my lemonade before I even took the wrapper off my sandwich.

  All of a sudden I started feeling lightheaded and queasy. I broke out in a cold sweat and wondered if maybe there had been some type of bacteria in the drink I’d just guzzled.

  Next thing I knew, I woke up here . . .

  He’s going to kill me. I have no doubt.

  I don’t know why it hasn’t happened already, why he didn’t just get it over with and dump my body in some roadside ravine. Good God, I don’t have any information to bargain with.

  Did he contact my mom? Is he demanding a ransom? We don’t have money for that.

  What happened to my protection detail? Jesus, maybe they’re dead!

  Then another thought hits me: Oh dear God, what if he killed my family?

  Think, Rachel. Just think. Breathe. Why would he do that? They know nothing about him.

  Shifting where I sit, my body sinks into the give of what seems to be a mattress. To confirm it, old, used springs pop and ping in and out of shape. I can tell by the shape it’s a twin size mattress.

  As I trail my hands down behind my body and contort myself so I can feel around, my skin comes in contact with the scratchy polyester of the uncovered mattress. It’s tacky and grimy. I continue feeling over the edge of the mattress to a cold concrete floor.

  I’m fucked.

  I’m so fucked.

  No one knows where I am.

  I’m blindfolded, chained and hidden in a killer’s basement.

  I try to hold it back, but I can’t. Softly, I begin to cry.

  Ryder

  As I comb through the information via authorized databases (along with some I’m not so authorized for), an entirely new picture of Eduardo Miguel begins to emerge. I sit back in the hotel chair and stare at the first and most crucial page of notes and facts I’ve compiled. I call it the perp’s “quick profile.”

  Chief taught me that you can’t always trust what you hear, to look at the cold facts and let your mind instinctively put the pieces together to form a cohesive picture.

  Sometimes our intel is spot on. Other times, when the circumstances in a case just feel wrong, or off, this method proves to be invaluable.

  And right now, I’m looking at how the DEA, and the FBI and everyone else who’s so hell bent on bringing down Cruz, could be missing the bigger picture. I see a Miguel who has been hiding behind Cruz as a smokescreen for his own dealings. His cartel is growing in numbers, amassing strength and territory, and all right under the noses of federal agents.

  My instinct tells me Miguel wants to be a ghost to honest law enforcement and a source of easy, large cash sums to the dishonest, all while becoming a legend in the cartel. And being brass enough to murder a student on campus and kill the witness to his crime is behavior he’ll want to take credit for.

  That kicks it up a notch.

  And what if it wasn’t Cruz who broke Miguel out of transport? Is it possible Miguel has built enough clout to have it done himself?

  Hell, what a great diversion! Get arrested as a suspect for murder, get the feds all hard and horny because they think you’re their ticket to Cruz and orchestrate your own escape while making it look like it was actually your enemy who did it . . . that way authorities are looking for Cruz and connections to Cruz instead of directly tracing you!

  I consider the odds of this s
cenario.

  Where are you, Miguel, and are you still breathing?

  I spend the better part of the night tracing leads and making phone calls, until I have the hotel room wall covered in evidence—department of motor vehicle records, gas receipts, credit card purchases, bills, addresses of property owned or connected to Miguel, the names and addresses of known associates, buddies who’ve put up his bail each time he’s been arrested, and the women he’s slept with (during the three months before his arrest) in the US, Mexico and Columbia, along with his wife’s, mother’s and sister’s whereabouts in Florida. I’ve printed off the most pertinent details that D’Angelo emailed with the criminal arrest file the state department sent him on Miguel and have included the legitimate and illegitimate businesses he’s been tied to.

  What I find the most interesting, I note before throwing back a Red Bull and glancing down at my watch at four in the morning, is how much business our perp had in Texas. Especially southeast Texas, where it borders Louisiana. In less time than it takes to make a pot of coffee I learn a lot about Bridge City: it has a population of just over seven thousand, is less than a hundred mile drive to Houston, is surrounded by the Neches River and Cow Bayou and sits like an obscured jewel in one of the biggest shipyard hubs in America, with fast-track access to ports all over the world.

  And if my theory is correct, Miguel may have created his own world there under the alias Alex Mason. He began by simply renting a storage space under that alias three years ago, but since that time Alex Mason’s business has become very affluent. It may have started with a storage unit, but it’s now become an established, well-to-do import and export trade business out of Port Arthur’s main shipyard.

  Now to prove the theory.

  As a betting man, I call Memphis International Airport.

  “I need to book a seat on your earliest flight to Jack Brooks Regional Airport in Port Arthur, TX.”

  My Jaguar F-Type rental is waiting for me when I touch down. I had the sleek black cat delivered down from Houston. Renting luxury cars is a perk in my line of business, at least for those of us who make a name for ourselves.

  I set my carry-on bags in the back seat and stretch in the morning air. Since my flight left Memphis at seven a.m., it gave me the perfect amount of time to catch a few Z’s at the airport after getting through the gate and another few during the flight.

  After grabbing a Mountain Dew—wishing it were coffee—and an Egg McMuffin, I take the scenic route around the city. Port Arthur is a busy hub. The waters of Sabine Lake are crowded with deep water shipping vessels either entering or being readied for their exodus to the Gulf. Traffic is congested, so I’m moving at a crawl and have plenty of time to take in the city sights. Banners all over town announce “Midsummer Mardi Gras,” a city wide festival that’s coming up. It also seems that, as a matter of geographical pride, people in Port Arthur are obsessed with everything gator.

  Back in ’08 Chief and I did a job in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. There were statues of cows all around the downtown shops and businesses. The heifers were constructed by area artisans—one was covered with thousands of gleaming copper pennies, another was painted with a rural Pennsylvania farm scene, etc.

  Here in Port Arthur, the locals have done the same with alligators. They’re everywhere. There’s a gator in Billabong swimwear on a surfboard, another chomping down on a box of Devereaux’s Famous Donuts, a local eatery—then, what could be my favorite, a group of gators playing poker. They remind me of my adopted brothers.

  Nice fixation, but honestly the things scare the living shit out of me. Snakes are nasty enough. Gators or Komodo dragons—razor-sharp toothed reptiles that can poison or shred a man and resemble a T-Rex or raptor? No frigging thanks. The locals can keep ’em.

  My brothers back home like to exploit this fear—the one tiny chink in my armor—whenever possible. Liam even threatened to get me drunk and give me a croc tat on my ass, but I reminded him that turnaround is fair play, and he wouldn’t like to see how I got him back for that little stunt. I also told him I’d have to show his handiwork off to his girl, Quinn, and while he might be secure in their relationship (hell, they’ve been pining for each other for more than a decade), he still didn’t relish the idea of her checking out my ass. Go figure.

  After shopping in some nearby pawn shops for “supplies” I wasn’t able to take on my flight, I check into the local hotel. About a half hour later, I head up Route 73, cranking the AC in the triple digit summer heat.

  It’s noon by the time I pass Big Daddy’s Crawfish Shack, a bustling Stuff-Mart and the local dry cleaners and follow the GPS directions to Beaumont Manor—the sprawling, five acre estate “Mason” purchased just last year.

  I park the Jag a couple miles away and unfold the local area street map I bought for ten bucks at a nearby fill-up station. I invest the same amount of money each year in cartographer companies as I do bullet and duct tape manufacturers. A handy street map gives you a complete layout of the neighborhood you’re staking: entrance and exit points, nearest highway on-ramps and places you most definitely need to avoid like schools and places of worship. They can also give you an idea of places perps are most likely to hang out closest to their own homes, basically making a detailed local map an invaluable tool.

  And according to the map, Mason’s/Miguel’s property is situated on a peninsula that reaches into the Lower Neches Wildlife Management Area.

  Nice. That means the fucker is surrounded on three sides by gator and snake infested bayou habitat. Smart.

  I slide out of the driver’s seat and make my way around back to the trunk, where I strip out of my jeans and button-up shirt before stepping into running gear. Concealing my Glock and KA-BAR against my back under my t-shirt, I load my backpack with surveillance equipment and go for a run.

  When I get to the vantage point I’m seeking—a small knoll in an abandoned lot about a mile out with the perfect view of the estate—I lie low, employ a set of binoculars and take account.

  The estate is fast becoming a fortress—twelve foot chain link fencing with a barbed wire topper and gate surrounds the property. A much more aesthetically pleasing six-foot stone wall is the next layer of security and wraps around the grounds seventy-five feet from the mansion itself, where armed guards patrol with automatics strapped to their sides. Tall and stately palm trees, dense banana palms and other lush tropical greenery and flowers thrive, affirming the wealth of the owner and exuding luxury.

  Most importantly, the foliage gives me the advantage of camouflage.

  Miguel has ten guards outside—not to mention dogs—German Shepherds and Rottweilers scouting the outside perimeter. After scoping out their pattern for a few hours, I’m happy to note they’re much sloppier than I’m sure Miguel would wish.

  Oftentimes with hired muscle, that’s all it is—muscle—deterring thieves and criminals, along with rival gangs, with the sheer look of power, and frightening the average civilian. Truth is, even with legit security companies there are no state licensing requirements, and usually no proper training. It’s just a matter of shoving hard bodies into tight black t-shirts and arming them with automatics. They’re guns for hire and nothing more.

  Scoping out this platoon, I can already tell they have no formal education. They’re simply here for looks and to point and shoot. That means they have one or two main men in charge who are usually ex-military guys. They’re the ones who know what they’re doing and that you have to watch out for.

  Parked swamp-side are several pontoon boats and air gliders.

  After staking the place for hours and observing a clumsily lazy guard change, I notice some activity out at the guard shack by the main entrance. The gate slides open slowly as a black stretch limo approaches and enters without hassle. It stops along the bowing stone driveway next to the archway leading to the front door of the mansion. Two guards step out to flank the walkway while another exits the passenger side of the limo to open the rear door.

&nb
sp; A sharply-dressed, confident looking man with short blond hair, a thick mustache, an overgrowth of blond beard, large blue-tinted glasses and a gray raincoat emerges with a gorgeous Latino actress who goes by the name Valentina Alvarez. The only reason I recognize her is because I just learned she’s one of Miguel’s mistresses.

  It really is a terrible disguise.

  “Like a rat coming back to the nest,” I mutter. “I love a challenge.”

  I sit at the counter in Big Daddy’s Crawfish Shack. A pretty woman in her thirties comes over from behind the counter wearing a tight black tank top and even tighter jeans.

  “Can I get you some coffee?” she asks with a tilt of her head.

  I wish. “Just some water.” I can think of a few other things she can get me.

  She comes back with a pitcher. As she pours, she stares at the tattoos sheathing my arms.

  “Like what you see?” I ask.

  “Oh yeah. You’re definitely not from around here.” She leans over the counter, closer to me, her breasts pressing against the confines of the fabric that holds them. “Are you here on business? Or pleasure?” she purrs.

  “Maybe both.” I keep my eyes on hers.

  “What kind of business? Shipping? Oil?”

  “Investments.” I watch her and add, “With Mason Enterprises.”

  “Oh.” Her friendly demeanor fades fast and she slaps the menu carelessly on the empty counter space in front of me. “Good luck with that.”

  “You look like it’s personal. Did you work for him once?”

  She comes in closer. “Look, Mason moved in less than three years ago and now he pretty much owns this shithole city. People he doesn’t like have a tendency to wind up dead. So you may want to watch your back.”

  Her eyes flash with equal amounts of fear and defiance before she disappears through the kitchen doors. Five minutes later, a teenage waitress comes to take my order.