Chapter 13 - The Devil of the Sonora Border
The relief that had flooded my veins just seconds before vanished into a cold,
blinding vortex of fury.
Hector Cruz.
The most ruthless cartel lieutenant along the Sonora border,
a man whose name was whispered in hushed,
terrified tones from Hermosillo to Nogales,
had entered this sacred sanctuary and laid his filthy hands on a dying mother.
Nathan’s entire body went rigid against mine,
the brief warmth of our embrace instantly freezing into the lethal,
merciless focus of an executioner who had reached the end of his patience.
He slowly released us,
stood to his full height,
and looked down at his seven-year-old stepson.
“Noah,”
Nathan said softly,
his voice calm,
deliberate,
and unwavering.
“Take your sister back inside the closet with Clara,
lock the manual bolt from the inside,
and do not open it until your mother or I come back to get you.
Can you do that for me?”
Noah looked at Nathan,
then looked at the pistol resting in my tactical holster,
and nodded once with a gravity that no child should ever have to possess.
“Yes,
sir,”
Noah answered quietly.
“Protect Aunt Evelyn,
Nathan.”
Nathan reached out,
touched Noah’s forehead with his thumb,
and stepped back out into the ruined corridor without another word.
Clara pulled the children back into the reinforced safe room,
and the steel door hissed shut,
leaving Nathan,
Marco,
and me standing alone on the blood-spattered mezzanine.
“Emily,
stay here with the guards,”
Nathan commanded,
checking the remaining magazine of his sidearm.
“Cruz has nothing left to lose.
He knows the feds have Victor and Julian,
he knows his convoy was obliterated in the courtyard,
and he is looking for a suicide pact to take me down with him.
I will not risk you in that room.”
I stepped right into his path,
blocking him from reaching the east wing stairwell,
my dark eyes locking onto his with an intensity that brooked no argument.
“Evelyn gave me this cross,
Nathan,”
I said fiercely,
pulling the silver crucifix from beneath my vest so the desert sunlight through the shattered skylights caught its polished edges.
“She told me that a true queen does not hide while her people bleed.
She told me to bring her son back to her in one piece,
and I am not going to let that frail,
beautiful woman die alone in the dark while you trade bullets with a rabid dog.
We do this together,
or we don’t do it at all.”
Nathan stared at me,
his chest rising and falling heavily,
before he let out a low,
grim chuckle that held none of its former mockery.
“God forgive me for dragging an angel into hell,”
he murmured,
reaching out to check the chamber of my ivory pistol to ensure a round was seated properly.
“Two paces behind me.
When Cruz looks at me,
he will expect me to negotiate.
Use that second to flank the southern orchid arbor.
Do you understand?”
“I understand,”
I whispered.
We descended the back servant stairs,
moving like three lethal ghosts through the smoke-filled east wing toward the sunlit conservatory.
The heavy glass double doors of the conservatory had been kicked open,
shattering several panes of beveled crystal onto the marble floor.
Inside,
the air was suffocatingly warm,
scented with crushed white orchids,
spilled soil,
and the sharp,
metallic smell of leaking medical oxygen.
Sitting in the center of the room in her adjustable hospital bed was Evelyn Brooks,
her face pale as marble,
her silver hair tangled across her forehead,
yet her dark espresso eyes burned with a defiant,
unbroken dignity that no cartel thug could ever diminish.
Standing directly behind her bed,
using the frail old woman as a human shield,
was Hector Cruz.
He was a stocky,
thick-necked man with a jagged scar cutting across his left eyebrow,
wearing tactical gear drenched in sweat and dust,
clutching a matte-black automatic pistol firmly against the side of Evelyn’s temple.
On the floor beside the bed lay Dr.
Vance,
unconscious but still breathing,
with a bloody contusion across his forehead where Cruz had struck him with the butt of his weapon.
“Back up,
Nathaniel!”
Cruz screamed the moment Nathan stepped into the doorway with his rifle held low at his waist.
“Drop the rifle on the floor,
or I swear to the Virgin of Guadalupe,
I’ll blow this old bitch’s brains all over these damn flowers!”
Evelyn did not flinch,
did not cry,
and did not beg for her life.
She looked straight at her son,
her breathing shallow and wheezing through her dry lips,
and shook her head with regal,
uncompromising disdain.
“Do not drop your weapon,
Nathaniel,”
Evelyn whispered,
her frail voice carrying through the quiet room like a bell across water.
“A Brooks never bows to a dog from Sonora.”
Cruz’s face twisted into an ugly,
furious snarl,
and he cocked the hammer of the pistol against her skull.
“Shut your mouth,
old woman!”
Cruz bellowed,
his eyes darting frantically to the glass walls as the sirens of the approaching state police convoys began to wail in the distant valley below.
“The deal is dead,
Brooks!
Julian promised me five million dollars and the southern distribution lanes,
and instead my whole crew is rotting in your courtyard!
Order your men to give me an armored truck and a million in cash,
or your mother dies right now!”
Nathan took a single,
measured step forward,
his expression completely devoid of fear,
his baritone voice dropping into a register of terrifying calm.
“You made a terrible mistake coming north of the border,
Hector,”
Nathan said evenly,
drawing Cruz’s manic attention entirely toward himself.
“Victor didn’t give you the full picture.
He didn’t tell you that Julian had already turned state’s evidence,
and he certainly didn’t tell you that the Brooks syndicate isn’t ruled by a bachelor anymore.”
Cruz frowned,
his bloodshot eyes narrowing in confusion.
“What the hell are you talking about?”
“He’s talking about me,”
I spoke from the southern arbor,
stepping out from behind a towering wall of blooming white orchids six feet to Cruz’s blind left flank.
Cruz’s head snapped toward me in pure shock,
his pistol twitching half an inch away from Evelyn’s temple as he saw a disheveled woman in a blood-stained ivory dress holding a nine-millimeter pistol leveled directly at his forehead.
In that half-second of fatal hesitation,
three things happened simultaneously.
Evelyn reached up with both hands,
grabbed Cruz’s wrist,
and wrenched his gun arm downward with the last ounce of strength in her dying body.
I pulled the trigger of my ivory pistol,
the recoil snapping through my wrists as a hollow-point bullet tore through Cruz’s shoulder,
spinning him away from the bed in a spray of dark crimson.
And Nathan closed the distance like a striking thunderbolt.
With a roar of pure vengeance,
Nathan seized Cruz by the throat,
lifted the two-hundred-pound cartel lieutenant completely off the floor,
and hurled him through the floor-to-ceiling glass wall of the conservatory,
sending him crashing onto the jagged limestone rocks of the north terrace twenty feet below.
The glass rained down in a glittering cascade,
the mountain wind rushed into the warm conservatory,
and the threat that had hung over our lives was permanently severed.
I rushed to the side of the hospital bed,
dropping my smoking pistol onto the sheets as I caught Evelyn’s slumped body in my arms.
“Evelyn!
Can you hear me?”
I cried,
pressing my hands to her cold,
trembling cheeks.
“It’s over,
they’re gone,
you’re safe!”
Evelyn looked up into my face,
a faint,
radiant smile touching her pale lips as she looked past me toward her son,
who was kneeling at the foot of her bed with tears streaming down his rugged,
battle-scarred cheeks.
“My daughter,”
Evelyn whispered,
her breath catching painfully in her chest as the monitors beside her began to emit a steady,
erratic chime.
“Call…
call the children down…
the light is fading,
May you like
Emily…
and I want to see my family before the sun goes down.”
