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

with it. He howled out loud and held the side of his head which was bleeding profusely. Leopold shot her a nasty look. She was interrupting a civilized conversation with the kind of unnecessary violence he wasn’t exactly digging.

But instead of challenging her, he turned to Gill and said, “My friend thinks you’re holding back. If you don’t stop bullshitting us, she’ll find a way to shove that snow globe up your ass. Think about it. It’ll be like having a baby in reverse, but the baby will basically be broken glass in your butthole. Every time you fart, you’ll have to check your underwear for blood-stained glass. This will go on for weeks, maybe even months.”

The man was crying now, the cut on his head bleeding like a faucet. He propped himself up against the headboard, prompting Kiera to come within striking distance of him. Leopold didn’t think the guy was dangerous, though.

Glancing at the two of them, Gill saw the looks on their faces and decided it was time to come clean.

“I heard maybe there was another guy involved,” he said, startled by the sight of so much blood but terrified not to answer right away. “The courier and I are friends from grade school. That’s how I got the job. He told me the dude who paid him worked for the scratchy-voiced guy. My friend said the dude was a damn Fed.”

“A Fed?”

“Yeah, man. FBI.”

“The scratchy-voiced man?”

“No, my buddy paid the FBI guy. I think the Fed works for the scratchy-voiced man.”

“How did he know he’s a Fed?” Leopold asked.

The pot smoke was starting to give Leopold a headache and the continued flow of blood from Gill’s head was concerning. There was a lot of blood, it wasn’t slowing, and it was getting everywhere.

“This dude took down Anthony ‘La Hoja’ Martinez last year,” Gill said. “La Hoja was apparently trying to help the Sinaloa Cartel get a foothold in El Paso. But the FBI guy and his team took the whole El Paso organization down as a message to the Sinaloa Cartel to stay the hell out of Texas.”

“Does he have the guy’s name?” Leopold asked. “The Fed?”

“My buddy has it, but I have it, too. If you just walk away, let me deal with the shit storm of consequences I’m already facing, I’ll tell you who he is.”

He looked at Kiera who appeared docile for the moment. “Deal,” Leopold said.

“Agent Otis Fykes.”

Leopold committed the name to memory. Then he said, “Why did you ruin your whole career for five hundred bucks.”

Gill laughed then said, “First off, that’s not a career. And second, all the guys take cash for suspicious transactions.”

“Bullshit,” he said.

“You’re leaving America for Mexico,” Gill said, looking at the blood again, his face a bit drawn. “Most guys try to give you a Benji, but a hundred bucks isn’t even the going rate. Now, for five hundred? Oh, yeah. You could have the president wrapped in plastic in your back seat and every one of those guys would take the cash and let you through.”

Shaking his head, Leopold said, “I remember when we used to love our country, when patriotism meant something, when you guys actually gave a damn about the border.”

“Yeah, well, it ain’t like that now. Because if our own government doesn’t care about the border, why should we?”

“Great attitude,” Leopold said.

“It’s a dog-eat-dog world, mister,” Gill said. “I’m getting concerned about the bleeding, guys. Can I like, get something for this? A tee-shirt or something?”

Leopold turned and gave Kiera a nod, and without pause, she threw a blade-edged side kick into Gill Franklin’s throat so hard and with so much force, the popping sound of things breaking made Leopold jump.

Gill was slammed back against the headboard, his head then dipping forward far enough to hang over his injured neck. Gagging, he slowly tried to reach for his throat. And the head wound? It was an open spout at this point.

Before Leopold could react, Kiera followed up with a spinning heel kick that hit the side of Gill’s neck so hard and with such precision, it visibly broke, his head lolling over sideways, the look of it sick and unnatural. Without a word, Kiera looked right at Leopold with that flaccid, thousand-yard stare.

Unnerved by her and shaking inside from the outburst of violence, he wondered if she was this savage in Russia and Ukraine or if she had somehow become faster and more lethal over the last six months. Only Atlas would know, and maybe Cira. But judging by Kiera’s training in Virginia with Savannah Swann, he figured she was fast becoming the kind of asset Monarch Industries created for men with far larger bank accounts than he possessed.

“Let’s go,” he said trying to play cool. “I have calls to make.”

Chapter Twenty-Eight

YERGHA MUGHERI

Yergha crept up on the house that Codrin had identified for him as the target home. He saw the shot-up Suburban parked around the side of the house along with a whole host of other cars in the driveway in front of it. Not a single vehicle was nearly as nice as the Suburban. In fact, most of them looked like nineties wrecks with faded paint, old wheels, and untold amounts of physical wear and tear.

He drove by the house, down the block, and around the corner where he pulled over and parked. Then, he wiggled painfully back into his vest. Breathing deeply, the vest tight, his fear at an all-time high, he said, “She’s probably getting raped right now.”

He felt a surge of adrenaline hit his bloodstream. Holding his Sig Sauer P226 by his waist, finger resting on the trigger guard, he closed his eyes and saw Esty and every beautiful feature