Fierce Defender: Book 2, Hard to Handle trilogy (3 page)

When Marcella pulled open the door, she wasn’t sure who she had been expecting to see, but Señor Gil had not been it.

“Señor Gil,” she said, automatically averting her eyes down to the floor. Her mother had worked for the Sanchez family for most of Marcella’s young life. Her mother had told her many times to never look Gilberto Sanchez directly in the eyes. The evil that swam there was always looking for another soul to steal, and if you looked at it too long, her mother had told her, it was the same as inviting it in.

Gilberto brushed past her, and as he did, she saw the three ugly thugs that Vincent had posted outside standing near the gate with their eyes to the ground. Apparently, they had recognized Gil as easily as she had. If Vincent had wanted protection from his father, he would have had to hire Americans. There wasn’t a Mexican across two countries that didn’t know not to cross Gilberto Fidel Sanchez.

“Where is my son,
hija de la criada
?”

Marcella kept her eyes to the ground and her face neutral as she inwardly cringed at how Gil insisted on calling her “the maid’s daughter” instead of by her name. She would never dare correct him, however. She wasn’t suicidal. Keeping her head down, she said, “Please, have a seat and be comfortable, Señor Sanchez. I’ll get Señor Heston for you.”

She scurried off, hearing Gil give a disgusted snort behind her as he looked around the shambles of the living room.

“
¿Cómo Han caído los poderosos
,” he said aloud. It meant, “How the mighty have fallen.”

***

Just as the maid’s daughter scrambled out of the room like a little mouse, Vincent walked and said, “This is only temporary, Papa. It’s a hide-out, not my home. No one would think of looking for me here.”

Gil looked his son up and down. It was after eight in the morning, and Vincent was still wearing a plaid robe and slippers. He considered his son to be a lazy SOB and often wished it had been Vincent rather than Alberto who had ended up with his throat slit and bleeding out on the doorstep. He was convinced that, if that had been the case, he would have easily stepped over the soft, overly-pampered Mama’s boy he perceived Vincent to be and gone on with his life with barely a blink. The only reason that he was happy Vincent was still alive was that, for whatever reason, his mother loved him.

“I found you, Vincent,” Gil said, refusing to sit on the furniture that he was sure probably contained the fleas from its last owners. “I’m here to finalize the terms of the deal we discussed on Saturday.”

“I thought I was going to meet you and Mama for dinner on Wednesday night so that we could be conversant?” Vincent said, taking the cup of coffee that Marcella held out to him as she re-entered the room.

Gil rolled his eyes at the boy’s use of the word “conversant” instead of “talk.” It wasn’t even a real word. He was an idiot who wanted to be a scholar. Gil was sure that would never happen.

“Señor Sanchez,” the girl asked him, “would you care for some coffee?”

“No,” Gil said abruptly. He watched Vincent’s face tighten at the way he addressed the maid’s daughter. His son cared too much for the staff. Behind closed doors, he had once heard his son murmur that Gil’s rudeness was part of why he was having sex three or more times a day while his father’s old shriveled dick had probably already fallen off. Gil had killed men for saying less, but his son had been a teenager, so he let the comment go.

He turned to Vincent and said, “I agreed to do this because it is your mother’s wish that I do. However, I will not share meals with you and act as if we are friends. I will give you this money, and you will pay it back as we agreed. We will have no other dealings in between, unless you miss a payment.”

“But, Papa, we’re not friends, nor are we associates. We’re family. I was looking forward to dinner with you and Mama.” Vincent almost pouted as he said it, making Gil sicker in his stomach than he already was.

“You may call your mother and speak to her about sharing a meal. If that’s what she desires, then so be it. Our business dealings, however, will not involve her. Your mother is untouched by this business, and she will remain so. I hope we understand each other.”

“Of course, Papa. We are in complete comprehension,” Vincent confirmed begrudgingly. “I’ll call Mama this week.”

Gil shook his head again.
Moron
.

“Now, the business that we discussed is in the trunk of my car outside. I’ll expect your payments weekly and on time. You know the cost of interest, and I’m sure you’re well aware of the cost of missing a payment. If I may make only one minor suggestion, and then I’ll leave you to your business?”

“Of course, Papa,” Vincent said again.

“Get some men with balls to guard you and your business dealings. At least if there is the threat of having them removed, they won’t let just anyone walk up to your door.”

******

Corpus Christie, Texas

DEA Field Office

Late Monday Morning

Grayson Alexander sat in his car outside the office. He had to go inside in a few minutes. Special Agent in Charge Gomez was back in town and had called a meeting between himself and the six agents that worked out of the Corpus Christie office. Gray had sat on the tape he had all weekend, unsure of how to best handle it. He still hadn’t come to a conclusion that he was happy with. He pressed play on the little recorder, listening to Barry’s voice again.

“Alright, man. I heard the DEA snitch’s first name a few days ago. It’s Samuel.”

Gray clicked it off again. Sam wasn’t a bad guy; he couldn’t be. Gray kept telling himself that, but he couldn’t deny what Barry, a snitch himself, had told him. If it wasn’t true, where would Barry have even come up with the name? The boy dealt only with Gray, and he had never been to the field office or met any of the other agents. Maybe there was another explanation. Maybe they were forcing Sam to work with them somehow. Gray just couldn’t wrap his head around the possibility that Sam had been drawn over to the dark side by nothing other than the lure of the almighty dollar.

Gray jumped as there was a knock on his window. He looked up into Sam’s smiling face.

“Hey buddy,” he said as Gray rolled down the window. “Are you okay? Looks a little intense in there.”

Gray swallowed all of the questions he had for now and said, “Yeah, things are great. I was just listening to a song that reminds me of the ex.” He got out of the car. “Speaking of better halves, how’s yours?”

Sam laughed. “I met your ex, remember? I don’t know if I’d include her in a conversation about better halves.”

Gray laughed too and said, “Touché. So how is Tammy, a real ‘better half?’”

“She’s Tammy,” Sam said. There was something in his voice that Gray couldn’t quite put his finger on. “She’s pretty and perky and she likes to spend my money. She’s thinking of buying a new set of tits.”

Gray suddenly got a sense of where Sam’s tone was coming from. It sounded like he and Tammy might be having some disagreements over how to invest their money.

Ignoring the reference to Sam’s wife’s tits, Gray said, “And the baby’s good?” Sam and Tammy had a one-and-a-half-year-old daughter. She was as pretty as her mama, and last time Gray had seen her and Sam together, he could tell that she had her daddy wrapped around her little finger.

“My Cameo is an angel,” Sam told him, resting his hand over his heart as he said it. “She’s the best thing that ever happened to this old cowboy, that’s for sure. I got some new pictures I’ll show you after the meeting.”

They walked into the office together. Special Agent in Charge Gomez, Supervising Special Agent Lewis, Agents Hill and Freeman, and the newest agent of the group, a guy named Neil Wyatt, were all there. Gray got a cup of coffee, and Sam grabbed one of the cookies off of Sue the receptionist’s desk. He winked at her, and Sue turned the color of scarlet, just as she always did when Sam was around. One of the things Gray had considered when he’d been trying to figure out why Sam might need money was an affair. He looked at Sue now. The way she looked at Sam was with pure, unadulterated love. Gray didn’t believe on any level, however, that Sam was sleeping with her. For one thing, Sue was nearly seventy-years-old. She had been around longer than most of the guys in the agency put together, and from what Gray could tell, in spite of her crush on the much younger “Sammy” as she called him, Sue was still very much in love with Louie, her husband of almost fifty years.

“Are ya’ll ready to get down to business?” Gomez asked.

They all said, “Yes,” or nodded their assent.

“Okay then, I have news about the cocaine racket that was broken up very recently, thanks to a lot of your hard work. I’m hearing from good, reliable sources that most of the men involved who weren’t scooped up by our team have scattered, relocating back to Mexico in some instances. The one they call ‘The Boss,’ or as we all know him now, Vincent Heston, has not given up on the Lone Star State. No one that I’m talking to can or will tell me where he’s holed up, but until we have this guy, we’re not done with this. I have a bad feeling that, as we speak, he’s rebuilding.”

Sam waited until Gomez was done speaking and said, “Sir, can I ask who it is that you’re getting this information from?”

Gomez looked at Sam a bit strangely. The fact that it was an unusual question for a field agent to ask a supervisor was not lost on Gray either.

Gomez answered him, kind of, by saying, “Lewis and I have an informant or two that we’ve been cultivating for a few years, as I’m sure all of you do as well.”

“Yes, sir,” Sam said. “I was just curious. All of my contacts and informants seem to believe that Heston has left the state.”

Freeman spoke up. “I got word today that Gilberto Sanchez was in Brownsville this weekend, and again this morning. He’s supposedly still in retirement, but considering the family tie there, it may be probable that’s where Heston is.”

“Or maybe the old man’s in town for one of his monthly blow jobs,” Sam said, and they all laughed.

Gil Sanchez thought that he was on the down low with his visits to the redhead at the massage parlor. She was discreet; he paid her well enough to be. But the bleached-blonde that worked the counter every so often when Gil came in was a heavy drinker, and almost any amount of information could be plied out of her with enough whiskey. She also had a fetish for black cowboys. Freeman, who was a recent re-plant from the field office in Brownsville, had been just the man to combine the two.

When they had first spotted Gil’s pattern of coming to Brownsville once a month, they thought perhaps there was some drug business going on in the parlor. They were still trying to find out who was at the helm of the massive cocaine operation, and they had to consider the possibility that the business was Sanchez’s, or at least a spin-off of it.

After a few drinks and some dirty dancing that Freeman would later tell them he would never, ever engage in again, the middle-aged bottle-blonde lush had told Freeman the truth about Gil Sanchez. The old man had a fetish for redheads and blow jobs. He came all the way from his home in Matamoros, Mexico to Brownsville Massage to satisfy both of his needs.

Gomez looked at Freeman thoughtfully and said, “Why don’t you take Grayson with you, and you two go visit the boys down in Brownsville. See if you can find out exactly where Sanchez went when he was there this weekend and this morning. Maybe take a few agents from Brownsville’s office and check those places out. It might be a slim lead, but it’s the only one we have now, unless ya’ll have anything else to report?”

They all shook their heads. Freeman stood up as the meeting broke up and looked at Gray. “I suppose you want to drive?”

“Don’t I always?” Gray said with a grin. “I need a minute with the boss first, though.”

“Okay,” Freeman told him. “I’m going to see a man about a horse and check in with the wife. I’ll meet you at the car.”

As he headed to Gomez’s office, Gray noticed Sam on his cell phone over in the corner of the room. He hated knowing this, but if Barry was right about Sam, he was sure that by the time he and Freeman got to Brownsville, Vincent Heston would be gone.

Witness Protection

Stockdale, Texas

Tuesday Morning, 5:30 A.M.

Eva and Cheryl made it to work at exactly the same time. Eva had been hoping to get in a tad bit earlier than Cheryl today. She loved her boss. Most of the time, her lively talking, or Eva should say gossiping, amused her. However, this morning Eva had woken up with a bit of a headache and wanted a few glorious minutes of hot coffee and silence before Cheryl got there. She wasn’t so lucky. It seemed that was going to be the theme for the day.

She had woke up to a cold, empty bed. Zack was gone already, and in his place was a note. It was a nice note, and it made her smile, but it wasn’t warm and sexy to cuddle with like Zack was. She had turned on the light next to the bed and read:

My beautiful Eva,

I’m headed to work. I have a session with Sandy’s primary trainer, Eli, this morning. He’s just going to go over the basics like membership, cost, paperwork, stuff like that with me. You’ll probably be gone before I get back, though, so I wanted to tell you to have an amazing day, and I love you, and I will be thinking about you all day. You looked so beautiful and peaceful this morning, I couldn’t stand the thought of waking you.

I did do things to you while you were sleeping, though. (Zack had drawn a happy face next to this.)

I’m kidding. I’m a pervert when it comes to you, but not that bad.

I love you, Eva.

Zack

She put the note down after she’d read it and picked up her phone. She sent him a text that said:

Anytime you want to do things to me, feel free. I love you too! Have a great day!

Then she had reluctantly gotten out of the warm bed and prepared for work. She was almost ready to leave, in enough time to get there way before Cheryl, when her phone rang. It was Trish.