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

Now it was Atlas’s turn to laugh.

Back at the hotel, Cira plugged in the clippers, turned them on to make sure they worked, then said, “Sit down and drape that towel over your shoulders.”

Twenty minutes later, she had him shaved down to the stubble everywhere but his mustache and goatee.

“I look like a biker,” he said, running his hands over his head, then stroking his goatee.

“Yes, but a rough, sexy biker. That would work in Texas, but not down here. Hold on a second, let me take a bit off of your goatee first.”

She trimmed the wispy edges of his goatee, leaving it about three inches long. She stood back and looked at him. “Yeah, that’s so much better.”

“Well, what do you think?” he asked.

“It would seem that I won’t be thinking of Leopold tonight after all.”

“You keep saying ‘tonight’ like we’re not about to have sex any minute,” he teased.

“Aren’t we?” she asked.

He nodded yes, gave her that mischievous grin then started to undress her. In between the mad rush to be together and the actual sex, Cira said, “The first time you do me, I want it hard. But in the morning, you need to make love to me.”

“Deal,” he said, barely slowing down.

When they were through, when they were both sweating and thoroughly spent, she said, “I had sex with you a hundred times in my mind before this day.”

“It showed,” he said.

“Yeah, you were good, too,” she replied.

“Basically that was prison sex, but with a girl,” he joked. Cira gave him a startled look but then he broke into laughter. She hit him hard enough that he had to say, “At least one of these bruises will be yours now.”

Lying next to him, she rubbed his stubbly head, stroked his goatee, then looked up into his eyes and said, “You’re who I was hoping to find underneath all that prehistoric nastiness.”

“Do you mind if I take a ten-minute nap?”

“Be my guest,” she said. “Do you want to watch me get dressed?”

He shook his head and grinned. “Maybe wait until I wake up? I most definitely want to watch you get dressed.”

When Atlas closed his eyes to sleep, Cira quietly got up, put on her clothes, and was buttoning up her shirt when someone knocked lightly on the door. Atlas pulled the sheets over his shoulders and rolled away from the door.

Cira opened it up to Leopold who promptly paused to take everything in. “It smells like sex and shampoo in here.”

“That’s the air freshener,” Cira said. “What’s up?”

“First off, it’s not. Second, I got a lock on the church but we have to figure out how to find Santiago Cardenas’s house without driving all over the place like middle-schoolers looking for the high school party.”

“We need a drone,” Atlas said, rolling over.

“That’s old school surveillance tactics,” Cira said. “Maybe we should see what Codrin can come up with. That guy has a mind that never stops working.”

“I’ll call him now,” Leopold said, a slight edge to his tone. “In the meantime, why don’t you and Sons of Anarchy here try airing out the place?”

Chapter Thirty-Five

SCOTTY CHASE

Scotty and Jackson landed at Baltimore / Washington International Airport earlier than they expected. They rented a car, typed the address into their Google Maps app, and then followed the directions to a T. When they arrived at the target’s home, they sat on it for a few minutes looking for signs of life. There were none. All they saw was a beat-to-crap VW Passat in the driveway, the tires bald-looking, the windshield, dusty, and the dark blue paint faded. It wasn’t the Hyundai they were looking for, but maybe the White family had two cars and the Passat was one of them.

“Let’s take a closer look,” Scotty said.

It was still daylight, and though people were coming and going, no one was really seeing anyone else—a condition of COVID, the masks, everyone’s fear of everyone else, and the virus they might spread. As much as this pandemic had upended everyone’s lives, it also created numerous opportunities for criminals and private eyes alike.

The two of them walked right into Keegan White’s backyard through an old gate with a broken latch that didn’t make a ton of noise when it was opened. In the backyard, there was a huge tarp held in place by four large rocks. Was it covering a hole or something else? Scotty didn’t know, but he intended to find out.

“You check the house, let me look in here,” Scotty said.

When Jackson went to window peep on the home’s occupants, Scotty quietly pulled the canvas back and blanched at the smell of feces and urine. Under the canvas were several large sheets of metal. They had holes punched in them for air. He pushed the canvas halfway back then slid one of the heavy sheets aside to find a large hole dug in the earth below. In this hole, he found a dirty mattress with a blanket, an old doll, a five-gallon jug of water, and a bucket which he assumed had been provided as Alabama’s toilet.

Jackson came back, looked down, and said, “Holy Toledo.”

“Yeah,” Scotty said, the stark reality of Alabama’s situation settling in. “This poor girl, nearly ten years kidnapped and living like this.”

“The shit bird is asleep on the couch. There’s a baggie of what looks like edibles on the coffee table and the TV is on.”

“Can we wedge open a window or something?”

“No need to,” Jackson replied. “Dumb-dumb left the slider unlocked.”

“This asshole is making it too easy for us,” Scotty said, his temper already flaring. In his mind, Keegan White was already getting his freaking skull caved in.

The two of them put on a pair of surgical gloves, eased open the