Hide and Snake Murder (20 page)

The lighting was dim, cast from a few bulbs high in the ceiling that still worked. Immediately in front of me stood a bench ten or twelve feet long. To my right, Kate, Baz, and Sharpe huddled on the ground. On my left, Coop was pitching a fit on the floor, futilely attempting to free his arms. A quick look behind me revealed a three-foot tall fence that looked suspiciously like the boards that encircled the rink in a hockey arena.

Beyond the bench was a counter with breaks at intervals for foot traffic. The din increased as a barrage of gunfire added to the mix. My ears rang painfully from the deafening explosions.

Please don't shoot us
, I prayed. I frantically hunted for something to use to get the blindfold completely off.

Donny and Hunk weren't in my one-eyed line of sight. I hoped they had run off to help with whatever was going down. I fixed my attention on Coop. He was now on his side, hands still behind him. His chest expanded and contracted as he sucked air.

In his struggles, his t-shirt had ridden up. His sweat jacket spread open on the floor. The belt Eddy'd given him at Christmas was woven through the belt loops on his pants, and on his over-sized belt buckle was a Boxer dog's head. The docked ears jutted up in two sharp points. When I first saw the thing, I told Coop he'd better be careful not to pierce his belly when he bent over.

The cacophony in the building increased. I dove between Coop's legs, aiming for the buckle's ears to dislodge my blindfold. In my desperation, I forgot I had nothing to slow my descent, and crashed nose first into his family jewels.

My ears rang from the impact. Coop's body went completely limp.
Please don't let me have killed him with a face to the crotch
, I thought. Then I felt a tiny movement as his left thigh contracted and a high-pitched keening burst out of his mouth. The sound didn't drown out the gunfire, but it was close.
Thank you, god of the love sack, thank you
.

With my mind back in survival mode, I carried on with my original plan. I scooched up the buckle, face pressing into Coop's gonads every time I tried to move. He was going to kill me later if we lived through this.

Once my eyes passed my target, I was confronted by the sight of a faint trail of light-colored hair that ran from beneath his belly button down into his pants. Never in a hundred years did I ever think I'd be up close and personal with this part of Coop's anatomy. In fact, this would be what a chick would see if she were about to give him—I immediately forced that thought into oblivion and dragged the blindfold across the buckle.

The tip of one of the ears jabbed me in the head wound I received in New Orleans and reopened with Agnes's vodka bottle. I bit hard on the material in my mouth. The pain was worth it, though, because the blindfold caught on the dog's metal ear, and I tugged my head down harder. The cloth shifted slightly higher.

The gunshots had ceased. Aside from an occasional shout, the silence was a welcome break from the racket of deadly violence. I wondered if someone was standing over me with a gun, ready to pull the trigger and bury one in my back. That thought motivated me to try again. Finally, the blindfold rested commando-style on my forehead, exposing both eyes to the world. Paranoid panic swept through my body. I flipped myself over Coop's leg, ready to try to kick the person about to execute us. The relief that swamped me when I saw no one was about to cancel us from the show of life was sadly short-lived.

Someone with a bullhorn bellowed, “This is Immigration and Customs Enforcement. I encourage you to put down your weapons and surrender peacefully. We have you surrounded. I repeat, you are surr—”

Gunshots interrupted the bullhorn guy, who I hope ducked. More shouting and yet another deadly salvo followed.

When I rolled over Coop's leg, I'd landed with much of my body weight pressing on my wrists. The plastic of the zip ties cut into my skin. I struggled to sit up, and blood ran into the palms of my hands. I achieved a semi-vertical posture, my legs stretched in front of me. Coop was curled up on his side, still trying to recover from my unwitting assault on his nether region.

Movement to my right caught my attention. A figure with a gun in one hand and a buck knife in the other crouched low behind the boards. The head popped up over the boards, and then muzzle flash of gunfire lit the darkness for a split second. More gunfire exploded from somewhere close by. Then the figure dashed toward us. I couldn't run. I closed my eyes and braced myself for an inevitable knife or bullet.

Then that someone was right next to me, talking rapidly. My brain wasn't computing. I opened my eyes. Luz crouched beside me, yelling repeatedly, “Turn over!”

Right. As if I was going to give her an easy out and let her kill me as I faced away from her. I flailed in a fury, swinging my head, my legs, anything to try to strike her.

She tackled me and expertly flipped me on my stomach, using her body weight to hold me down. Really? The bitch was too lily-livered to murder me while I watched?

One side of my face was squashed into the damp carpet, the mold smell invaded my nostrils, choking off my only source of air. Luz's fist was next to my nose, gripping the knife. The knife looked even more deadly up close. Her cheek was pressed against my ear, and she was hollering. My brain caught broken phrases: “Don't move,” “Cut you,” “Can't help,” and “Stubborn girl.”

Then the weight of her was gone. I felt the slide of metal against my hair, and I inanely wondered when Cartel drug lords had taken to scalping people. There was a momentary increase of pressure on the gag in my mouth, then it fell away from my cheeks. Before I could comprehend that my mouth was no longer corked up, my hands sprang free as well.

I spit the gag out. Almost as if they had a mind of their own, my hands braced against the floor. I prepared to push myself to my feet. Then Luz landed on my back once again, and I hit the carpet hard, the air whooshing from my mouth. I was going to be seriously flat-chested if I lived through this.

Her hand twisted into the hair on my head. She pulled me tight against her. This time the words she yelled in my ear registered.

“Shay! Shay, listen. I'm not going to hurt you! I'm FBI.”

Twenty-Three

I felt like I'd
gone deaf. I saw the scene in front of me as if through the end of a long, narrow tube. I didn't move, and Luz shook my head like a rag doll's. “Shay, did you hear me? I am
not
going to hurt you.”

The pain of her practically yanking strands of hair from my head stunned me into awareness. I nodded, which was not easy to do with the grip she had. A switch flipped on somewhere inside me, and I was back in the moment. My senses opened, the tunnel effect fell away. Once more I could hear people shouting and intermittent gunfire. My hands and cheeks tingled painfully as circulation returned.

Luz was a Fed, not a drug lord? She was probably lying, and planning to use us for cover to make her escape. Although she
had
cut me free …

She breathed in my ear, “Stay here. Stay down. Don't move until I say. Do you understand?” She shook me again, and I nodded weakly.

Satisfied I wasn't going to play pop-goes-the-weasel, she crab-walked over to Coop, who was still lying sprawled on his back a few feet away. With a flick of her wrist, she neatly cut off his blindfold, his gag, rolled him on his side and freed his arms. Her dark hair partially obscured Coop's face. She said something in his ear. I saw him bob his head in acknowledgement. In a blink, she moved on to Baz then Sharpe then Kate and gave them the same treatment. In less than a minute, she'd freed us all.

Luz scuttled back. “Okay. Follow me. Stay low.”

There wasn't a whole lot of choice. If we trusted Luz, there was a chance she was telling the truth. If we didn't trust her and stayed where we were, it was only a matter of time until someone stumbled across us and finished the job. I, for one, decided to take my chances with Luz. The rest of our rag-tag group apparently felt the same. The five of us waddled like ducklings after their mother. Luz tucked the knife away but still had her wicked-looking gun in hand. She took care not to expose the top of her head above the much-scuffed boards. I mimicked her moves.

On my right, raised rows of bench seating created tiered spectator stands. Some of the metal benches were intact, and some were missing entirely. We were definitely in a hockey arena that had seen better days.

Silence filled the cavernous space once again. I was terrified someone would hear our panicked panting or desperate shuffling, or simply observe our attempted escape and blast away right through the boards. Miraculously, we made it unscathed to the end of the rink. I saw the gate and knew we were on the end of the arena where the Zamboni usually enters. The garage-like space beyond the rink was typically filled with resurfacing equipment and other large items that needed storage. The opening into the space was pitch black, and the weak lighting above our heads barely dented the darkness.

Luz whispered, “Hang on to me. Tell the others to hold on as well.”

I nabbed the cloth of her jacket in an iron grip and whispered the instructions to Coop. He took hold of the back of my pants, then relayed the message back. Luz paused only a second to make sure everyone hooked up. Linked together, we plunged into the inky unknown.

My eyes struggled to adjust to the relative blackness of the space. The smell of mildew and neglect was even more evident here. Someone grabbed my arm. Kate whispered in my ear, “I'm right here with you.” Good.

From what I could tell, the Zamboni was long gone and left in its place was the offal of the rink. We crept past castoff seats, benches, and other pieces of the inner workings of the building that littered the floor. Garbage was strewn haphazardly all around.

Occasional spurts of gunfire still echoed from the rink itself. We made our way deeper into the space, and I ceased being able to see much of anything. I wondered how Luz had any idea where she was going. My heart was beginning to slow to a survivable pace. We might have a chance to escape this dump after all.

A voice some distance behind us said loudly, “Zorra, where are you going?”

The voice was vaguely familiar, and I tried to place it as my heart rate soared again to near-stroke level.

Luz froze, then whipped around. Air whooshed by my arm. I judiciously let go of her clothing, dropped into a crouch. My eyes adjusted to the dark enough that I could see Luz step forward and sideways, away from us. She continued to move until she was within a few feet of the men.

The speaker was clearly backlit against the opening into the rink. At least in that we had a definitive advantage.

“Mudd, leave now, and I will not shoot you.” Luz sounded calm and sure.

“Now Zorra, would you shoot an unarmed man? I guess it's a good thing he's not unarmed then.” With those words this Mr. Mudd stepped to one side, exposing Tomás, large gun in hand, pointed directly at Luz.

Holy shit.

Kate and Coop were nothing more than black blobs in the dark, hunkered down next to me. Baz and Sharpe were completely out of my sight, which was fine by me.

I nudged something with my left foot and shifted my weight onto the balls of my feet. Reaching down, I groped around til my fingers closed over something long and narrow. I picked it up and slid my hands over the top half of a broken hockey stick. Tape long ago wrapped around the top of the shaft was still sticky and the broken end was jagged and sharp.

The fates spoke loud and clear. I wasn't about to abandon someone who'd just saved our necks. Besides, there weren't a whole lot of options on the table.

Luz kept up a steady stream of chatter that I didn't have the attention to listen to.

I elbowed Coop and whacked him with my improvised weapon.

“Where did you get that?” he whispered.

“On the ground.”

In a breath, he was feeling around the floor himself. I fumbled to find Kate, caught her sleeve, and pulled her toward me.

“Feel for something to use—” She interrupted me by pushing something into my gut. I got a hand around what felt like a pipe. I grabbed a handful of cloth on each of them, pulled my two friends toward me and whispered, “Back door. I'm on the right. Coop, you go left. Kate, come around down the middle. Watch all the junk on the floor.”

They immediately crept away, completely disappearing in the gloom. We were about to begin the play of our lives.

I backed up, moving sideways, then shifted to the right. My lungs froze as I reentered the firing zone maybe ten feet behind Luz.

“Zorra,” Tomás was saying, “you are done. How I have waited for this moment.”

Luz's tone was mocking. “You have planned a coup so you can take over the most powerful cartel in the world? Tomás, I trusted you.”

“Trust?” His voice cracked. “What kind of trust do you show?”

“I am simply doing what you failed to do. Because you are inept—”

Luz and Tomás continued to exchange barbs while Mudd looked on silently. No more sounds of battle echoed from the rink. I didn't know what that meant.

In moments, I was out of the firing line. My lung function returned, barely. Images of JT flashed through my mind. Damn it, I was going to get the chance to profess my affection for her even if I had to kill someone to do it.

Thankfully, the two men remained silhouetted against the light. It made them that much easier to target. I was relieved to have come this far without tripping and falling flat. Hopefully that same luck shone on Coop and Kate.

Then I was directly even with Mudd and Tomás, on their left side, about fifteen feet away. If the play was going to go down correctly, Kate had made an even wider loop around the two men, while Coop should be on the opposite side in the same position as I was.

Mudd was saying to Luz, “I can't believe you're an agent. Tomás, can you?”

Luz's voice was steady. “I told you, Kelvin. I am not a plant.”

“Then what are you doing with those people? The people you sent us out to dispose of?” Tomás's tone was icy.

“And where are they?” Mudd rocked back on his heels, his hands clasped in front of him.

To Luz's credit, she didn't flinch. “Drop the gun, Tomás.”

“I no longer take orders from you. I give them.” With no warning, he fired two shots in rapid succession. Horrified, I heard Luz's body hit the ground. Rational thought fled and the Protector once again took over. I charged the men, shouting at the top of my lungs, “NOW!”

Before Tomás could react and point his gun toward me, I was on top him. I swung that broken stick at Tomás's head with every ounce of strength my body possessed. The impact jarred my forearms all the way to the elbow. The man dropped like a rock. His gun arced through the air, into the darkness.

Coop roared toward us, his arms over his head, a length of pipe in his hands. I clobbered Mudd in the neck with a reverse scorcher. Mudd gurgled as he took the brunt of my blow in his Adam's apple. Coop followed up quickly with a healthy swat of his own. Mudd dropped. With a dual roar, Kate and I leaped over the sprawled bodies of the two men and dove for Tomás's weapon in tandem.

Kate chanted, “Oh god, oh god, oh god, ” as we frantically felt up the trash-strewn floor for the gun. My fingers brushed against the barrel and I snatched it up. I bounced back to my feet and swung around. My hands barely shook as I aimed in the general direction of the two downed men and snarled, “Score two for the home team.”