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

“With all due respect, please let me get to another room—”

“Time is wasting,” Fox snapped.

“Mr. Fox, kindly shut the fuck up for two minutes or I will leave you to the men and women who handle this sort of thing but never really get anywhere. They will listen to you speak of the merits of ‘wasted time’ in a kidnapping situation with smiles on their face, but I will not. If you want to procure my services, you’ll need to exercise more patience than you are now.”

“I don’t even know why I called you—”

“Because I’m the best there is and I can work on short notice.”

“Fine, I’ll wait,” he conceded.

So now he was standing in the nude with two twenty-somethings looking at him and wondering just what the hell he did for a living.

He muted the phone then said, “Ladies, it’s time to get dressed, leave me your numbers, and make sure your schedules are clear for dinner this evening.” Both girls smiled. He turned to the one he didn’t know and asked, “Were we together last night?”

“We all were,” the girl he knew said. He was fairly certain her name was Stacy, but he couldn’t quite remember.

“And how was I?” he asked.

“Fantastic,” Stacy said with a sly smile.

“What’s your name, dear?” he asked the girl he didn’t know.

“Emily. I’m Stacy’s friend.”

“Emily, I hope to enjoy you when I haven’t had too much absinthe, so we must do this again.”

“I was good, too, by the way,” Emily said with a tired smile. “We’re not in a rush though, unless you need us out.”

“Let me think about that one and get back to you,” he replied with mischievous delight.

He quickly grabbed a towel from the bathroom, wrapped it around himself, and started for the kitchen where he’d definitely need to put on a pot of coffee. Before leaving, he said, “If you two want to shower together, let me know, I’d like to watch when I’m done, or possibly even join you.”

“If we do that,” Stacy said, “we’ll wait for you first.”

“Splendid,” he grinned.

He walked into the large chef’s kitchen overlooking the pool, the backyard, and the rather expensive views beyond. He texted a quick inquiry to Codrin Pichler, his Romanian hacker, with “911” attached, then said, “Okay, Mr. Fox, tell me everything that happened and spare me no details big or small, for I’m going to assemble a hostage rescue team right away and send them to either El Paso or Juárez depending on what you say next.”

Over the next few minutes, the congressman told Leopold everything that happened, where it happened, and then he provided Leopold with the contact information for his bodyguard, Tyler Vandecourt.

As Leopold was jotting this information down in shorthand, he heard the girls coming down the hallway. He turned and saw them walking hand in hand dressed only in panties and half shirts. The two of them wandered into the kitchen, both girls eyeing him seductively. He knew he should not have picked them so young and he shouldn’t have invited them back to his house but alas, he was overtaken by the absinthe and the demons such a powerful concoction unleashed. Regardless of the myriad of questionable decisions, his heart still fluttered at the sight of them.

He put his finger to his lips to keep them quiet. They giggled quietly as they sauntered by, one of the girls trailing a finger across his butt as the two of them headed for the large pocket doors leading out to the pool. Once they were outside, they dipped their toes in the pool, then sat down and lowered their legs into the water.

“When you said you could get a hostage rescue team out here,” Camden asked, “how quickly are we talking?”

A beep on his phone alerted him to an incoming text. He quickly opened the text and read the contents. After that, he said, “I can have my team rendezvous with Tyler in El Paso tonight. You and Tyler can then fill my team in on this and anything else you deem pertinent to finding your family.”

“We need to talk compensation,” Camden said.

“Yes, we do.”

“I need you to understand that I am a civil servant, that my salary is roughly one-hundred-and-fifty-six-thousand dollars a year and that my wife is a full-time mother.”

“First off, I know your account balances, both here and offshore, and this isn’t the time to play games with money. I will not overcharge you because I know what you’re worth, nor will I undercut the price because I know what you’re worth.”

“Knowing these things is not legal, Mr. Wentworth.”

“If you want legal, then go deal with the cops. Damien qualified you before you made this call because he is not a fool. I qualified you while I was on this call because I am not a fool. If you want your wife and kids back, it’s going to cost you. If you want to leave the work to the FBI task force and hope they somehow garner cooperation from Obrador’s new Guardia Nacional, be my guest. But half of those corrupt sons of bitches won’t lift a finger for you because no one does squat about kidnapped girls in Juárez but pay lip service to their mysterious efforts in front of a camera.”

“You make it sound so cut and dry,” Camden muttered.

“What you need to know about Juárez as it relates to your particular situation, as well as COVID and the border crisis, is that all of these narco-trafficking cells lost a ton of money when the southern border wall was built. The border patrol got their big new wall and a whole host of high-tech tools by which to enforce our nation’s new laws. The busiest countries, the cartels, and the coyotes had an administration who told them they couldn’t come here, that