Pedro laughs. “We’ll see,” and his jefe’s man disconnects the call.
Okay, then.
Antonio feels much, much better. Any delay in telling his boss what happened here in this town will be on Pedro. And the delay now gives him time to get a story together.
What kind of story?
Any kind of story that will leave Antonio innocent of any foul-ups or wrongdoing.
A knock on his window makes him jump.
He turns, his heavy revolver in his right hand.
It’s the woman from McDonald’s, holding up the paper bag, a dumb grin on her face. “Sir, is this yours? Is this order yours?”
Antonio snaps, “Go away.”
She shakes her head, still smiling. “Sir, please, I’ve checked everyone in the parking lot. You’re the last one here. It must be yours.”
He swears and the woman taps her ear with a free hand. “Sorry, sir, I can’t hear that well. What did you say?”
Antonio wants to get rid of this bitch as soon as he can, so he lowers the window and starts to talk.
And he chokes, with a pistol barrel now crowding his mouth.
CHAPTER 63
AFTER SPENDING a few bucks for a Quarter Pounder meal and persuading the manager to lend her a worker’s shirt—by flashing her Army identification and spinning a tale of hunting an ISIS spy—Rosaria is now by the open driver’s-side window, her SIG Sauer in the man’s mouth.
He’s well-built, flashy-looking, and an empty leather shoulder holster is visible. No real evidence that he was the guy at the house back there, because there must be lots of pickup trucks like this roaming around this part of Texas, but Rosaria has a gut feeling it must be him.
He’s Hispanic, eyes wide but not afraid, like he’s used to having a gun drawn on him.
Rosaria feels like one of those zoo workers who has successfully grabbed a deadly and angry rattlesnake by the head, only a slip or two away from being poisoned.
She needs to be careful.
Rosaria drops the McDonald’s bag on the asphalt and says, “Both hands up, touching the roof. Now.”
The man slowly complies, both arms lifting up, shirt and jacket sleeves sliding off, to reveal the same type of prison tattoos as the dead guy on Linden Street, plus some gold jewelry and a heavy-looking watch.
Rosaria spots what looks to be a hand cannon on his lap, and with her left hand, reaches in through the open window, picks up the heavy revolver, and tosses it into the bushes behind her, where it makes one hell of a crashing noise.
“Now,” she says, “I’m coming in to join you. When I come in, you’re going to slide right over.”
Again, moving slowly, she opens the door while removing the pistol from the man’s mouth, and in a quick maneuver, she slides her way in, and then quickly pushes her weapon into his side.
Now she’s in.
The pistol is jammed into the man’s ribs just below his left armpit.
She says, “Hands behind your head, interlock your fingers. I promise, this won’t take long.”
The man spits at her. “Puta.”
“Really? That’s the best you can do?”
She shoves the gun in harder.
“This won’t take long. But you do anything funny, I’ll pull the trigger, and before you can blink, your heart is going to turn into mush. Do I have your attention?”
The man just nods, eyes lit with hate and fury, and Rosaria stares right back, hoping he can’t tell how goddamn scared she is.
CHAPTER 64
A WOMAN! Antonio can’t believe it. A woman has a gun on him…No matter how this turns out, he will make sure this woman ends up dead. There’s no way in hell that he will let her live, to be in a position to tell someone, who will tell someone else, such that the information eventually ends up with the jefe.
Not on your life. Or anyone’s life.
He stares at her and says, “Put me under arrest, if you can. And then I want a lawyer.”
Then another surprise comes to him when she speaks.
“Who says I’m police?” she says, jamming the gun harder into his ribs. “I’m looking for information, that’s all. I don’t care about you, or what you’ve done, or what you might be doing. A few answers and then I’ll be on my way, and you can go on yours.”
“Go to hell.”
The woman fumbles for a moment in her pocket, pulls out a cell phone, and her thumb is on the glass screen. “Here’s the deal, no talking, no negotiating.”
He stares, hands behind him, clasped against his head. The bitch doesn’t know it, but his fingers aren’t interlocked. They are resting plain and open on his head…Now, if he could just slap her suddenly—women don’t like being hit in the face—but she speaks again, interrupting his thoughts.
“This is pre-dialed to nine-one-one. I just press my thumb and in a minute or so, this parking lot is going to be full of police officers, eager to talk to you. Or, you can be stupid and try to hit me or something, and my other finger presses, and you die in this pretty truck.”
Antonio waits and waits. He can’t have her call the police, not with all the sirens in the distance.
He also can’t have her live.
Rosaria says, “Oh, and if I find later you’ve been lying to me, I won’t be happy. I’ll find out in a day, or a week, or a month.”
She takes the cell phone up, and there’s a whir-whir-whir, and she says, “By then, I’ll know who you are, and who your friends are, dead back at the house, and I’ll also know who you work for. You think he’ll be impressed if these pictures arrive to him, showing you being held at gunpoint? By a girl?”
Antonio says, “They’re dead? All of them?”
Rosaria says, “Now that’s something to say. Define all.”
“What?”
“How many were in the house besides you?”
“Three.”
“Two are dead,” she says. “That means one is missing. Who’s missing?”
Antonio is thinking things through. All right, he will work this to his advantage. So what if he tells her what has happened? She will give him the facts that he can use later to talk to the jefe and explain what happened…all to Antonio’s benefit.
“Was there an old man in the house?”
“No.”
“Then someone came in and took him.”
The bitch asks, “Who is the old man?”
The chicken is gone, Antonio thinks. It was supposed to be easy. A quick exchange. The old man was going to be peacefully turned over to an American who was to say a phrase, and then the three of them could go home over the border.
“Somebody that my boss wanted us to protect.”
“Who is he?”
“We don’t know.”
“What? For real?”
Stupid puta, he thinks. “Our jefe…our boss. If he tells us to guard someone, we guard him. It could be a priest, a child, a farmworker, a billionaire. We don’t care. We don’t ask. It’s…a chicken, that’s all. To be kept well and alive until the exchange.”
“But he is somebody important.”
“Quite. We were told never to hurt him, or cause him concern, and to protect him.”