The Beasts of Juarez, R.B. Schow [books to read for self improvement .txt] 📗

on him. He threw ten or twelve vicious punches, each of them landing on the side of Fykes’s head.

“What the hell?!” Camden was shouting. The girls were crying now and Sydney was trying to calm them.

It didn’t occur to Leopold that they were beating a Federal agent to death at a stoplight in America, but it didn’t matter either. All he could think about was Callie.

The man finally lost consciousness and fell forward into the steering wheel. For good measure, Leopold did what any of his team would have done: he slammed the man’s head into the steering wheel about four or five times just to be sure he was out.

Turning to Camden, who was practically in shock, Leopold said, “Otis Fykes is the man who helped facilitate the border crossing. He paid for it and arranged it with both the courier and the border attendant, Gill Franklin.”

“Jesus Christ,” Sydney hissed. She turned and fired Camden a look. “You stepped into a pile of crap you are never getting out of!”

He shrunk from his wife, almost like he’d never seen her raise her voice before. Leopold looked back and that’s when he saw it—the deeper awareness. Camden now knew that Sydney knew what he had done. It didn’t help that Leopold told her everything they had figured out for themselves. To her it made sense. But for Camden, this was going to be as bad as a life sentence in a prison from which he would never escape. Given the chance to switch places with the man, not even Atlas would have taken that deal.

Horns blared behind them. Leopold activated the hazard lights and then he and Cira pulled the agent into the passenger seat so Leopold could take the wheel and get them out of there.

“Time for a Plan B,” he said as they drove through the yellow light right before it turned red.

Sydney attended to the girls by telling them that this man who just got beat up, had helped them get kidnapped.

“Leopold and Cira saved us again,” she said as she crawled back into the third-row seat to be with them.

“How do you know this man?” Leopold asked Camden.

“He contacted me as the FBI liaison for the anti-gang task force right when Sydney and the girls were taken.”

“So you’ve never met him before?” Leopold asked.

He shook his head. “I thought he was reaching out as a courtesy.”

“Cira and I need to head to the border and wait for the team to make it across. We’ll take you and the girls back to the hotel.”

Just then, Leopold’s phone rang. He was about to ignore the call when he saw it was from his great uncle. Oh, hell no, he thought. He dismissed the call. The phone rang again; he hung up again. When it rang the third time, he cursed under his breath, then picked it up and put the phone on speaker.

Leopold answered by saying, “I’m driving right now.”

“I heard you got the family back,” the old man said, his voice more raspy and raw than ever.

“Who told you that?” Leopold asked, senses on high alert.

Russell Lumley didn’t call people out of the blue, even if he was calling family. Sadly, Leopold’s great uncle, the former secretary of state, lived his life by a secret agenda. Worse though, he was not a good man and Leopold knew this.

Lumley had been an integral part of a large sex trafficking ring operating in Ukraine and Russia. Six months ago, Atlas and Kiera put a stop to it. By the team’s actions alone, much of Eastern Europe’s market for adrenalized children’s blood had all but been depleted.

Unfortunately, other outfits were now ramping up the collection and distribution of new blood, one group being so bold as to call their mixture Vampire Kiss 2.0, or VK2. He hadn’t yet identified the blood trafficking networks, but when he did, he was going to hit them with a vengeance.

“I still have security clearance and friends that work in intelligence, my boy,” Lumley said. “I just wanted to call and congratulate you.”

“Thanks, Russell,” he said.

As they pulled off into a largely empty lot of a closed-down restaurant, Leopold glanced up in the rearview mirror and saw a look of sheer terror in Camden’s eyes.

“Can I call you back, Russell? I’m driving right now and traffic’s kind of crazy.”

“Sure, take your time,” the old man said.

When Leopold hung up, he looked back at Camden and said, “You look like you just saw a ghost.”

Breathless, red in the face, he said, “That was the man I was telling you about, the scratchy-voiced man.”

A cold chill raced down Leopold’s spine. “Are you sure?”

“I’d stake my life on it.”

“Well, then, it looks like you might want to hang around the hotel until I get the others. I’m having our jet gassed up now.”

“Who was that man?” Sydney asked.

Leopold saved Camden the explanation in front of his kids because Sydney already knew what had happened. Instead, he said, “I’m afraid he was the man responsible for all of this.”

“Who is he to you?” Sydney asked.

“An archenemy.”

“Did you have something to do with this?” she asked.

“Not that I’m aware of, but I’m sure as hell going to find out.” To Camden, he said, “If you’d like, Congressman, you are more than welcome to accompany us to see him.”

“I’d like that very much,” he said, his tone darkening.

“Don’t you think you’ve done enough?” Sydney asked in a sharp, icy tone.

“Nothing will bring back Callie,” Leopold said, “but perhaps your family would like its pound of flesh, and possibly some closure.”

Camden looked to Sydney for permission. Frowning, she finally said, “If you need to go then go.”

“I hate to leave my family,” Camden turned and said to Leopold, “but this man can’t be allowed to do this again.”

“Are you