Jackie stood. Her wind spent. She could only nod.
“Then we gotta go now. I have medical supplies and weapons in my Suburban.”
Clay stirred. He moved his elbows back and turned to Martha. “Help me up.”
Martha shifted the purses she’d been carrying from one shoulder to the other, then got under his arm.
Jackie heard him and walked over to help Martha lift Clay’s beaten, sinewy form up to his feet.
The man Clay had rammed into moaned but did not move. “My back,” he muttered. “Help...”
Clay wavered for a second and then set his sight on Michael’s SUV. “Let’s go.” They walked by the fallen man without a second glance.
Sean helped Michael over to the SUV, followed by Martha and Jackie under the shoulders of Clay. Everyone had been in a savage fight, but Clay and Michael had taken the worst of it. Michael stopped at the door of the SUV. “Sean, open the door and reach behind the second-row seat. There’s a duffel on the floor. Lift it out and put it on the floor behind the driver’s seat.”
Sean moved the bag. “Good, now fold the seat forward so we can get Clay in the third-row seat. Martha, you climb in first to help Clay.”
Martha got in, shoved their purses under the seat, and then turned to help get Clay into the third-row seat along with Jackie’s help. Sean gently let the seat back down and slid it as far forward as he could. Jackie stepped back and paused for a second like she’d forgotten something. Then she saw the glint of the unfired Sig lying on the ground. She walked over and picked it up, checked the safety, and got into the second-row seat. Michael followed with Sean’s help, then closed the door and went around to the driver’s side. Sean turned to look at Michael from the driver’s seat. “Where to?”
“Go around and pull out through the ER exit. Make the right onto the main road and head for the interstate. Take the on-ramp heading south.” With no interference from the officers on scene, the group pulled off. Michael glanced out to see Hines with his hands up talking to the second officer, who had a look of concern on his face while pointing at the departing vehicle. Everyone in the precinct knew Officer Street’s Suburban. They also knew Officer Michael Street. If he needed to do something that wasn’t exactly procedure, he was given the benefit of the doubt.
𓂓
As soon as the men with guns cleared the stairway, Charlie’s friend crawled on all fours to check on her. She laid a hand on her shoulder tentatively. “Charlie?”
Charlie stirred, then her eyes shot wide open. She lifted herself off the floor and sat up, leaning back on the short wall of the nurse station.
“Are you hurt?” Charlie asked her friend.
“No.” Those men are gone. One of them hit you in the head with his gun.
“Shit,” Charlie said, touching her hand to the wound on her head.
As her friend examined her scalp, they heard the sounds of the elevator door first trying to close, then stopping to open back up, in between, they heard someone struggling to breathe, almost choking. Charlie reached out a hand. “Help me up.”
With her friend’s help, Charlie steadied herself. At the same time, she looked down the hall toward the elevator. Her friend looked from behind her shoulder, and they saw a dark-haired woman, lying on the floor, one leg out, a black pleather orthopedic shoe stopping the elevator doors from closing. A smashed cake box rested on the floor beside her. Blood trickled out from between fingers wrapped around her own throat. Searching eyes implored them to help.
Charlie’s adrenaline kicked in. She turned to her friend. “Call down to the ER. Tell them to take the stairs and bring a STAT KIT. Now!” Then she made her way as quickly as she could, swaying slightly, bracing herself against the wall to get to Sally. She collapsed on to her knees and looked the woman in the eye. “Let me take over.” The woman’s eyes were wild and large—she had been struggling to breathe. Charlie laid her hands over the woman’s and helped keep the pressure on. She did not pull Sally’s hands away, knowing it might break any seal she may have been able to form. Seconds later, they heard the noises coming from the stairwell. A man burst through the door.
“Over here!” Charlie yelled.
Just as they arrived, Sally’s eyes closed and her arms and hands went limp.
Chapter Eleven
A few years had passed since Armando drove the Knife Cartel from his village. Since then, he had been strengthening his position in the Scorpion Cartel as well as hunting down the remaining rivals. He’d heard some were passing through and found them on the outskirts of the village in a small cantina. But when he walked in, the scene inside shocked him.
His mother looked like a half-alive marionette, stoned out of her mind, eyes rolling back in her head as she was passed from man to man.
For a brief moment, the fact that he felt nothing for her disturbed him. He had no desire to save her, no desire to step in.
What good would it do?
None.
His father and his mother had chosen their path. It was not his place to step in, no matter how horrible it turned out. She had known of his father’s problems. She could have taken Armando and left him. Maybe they could have made it all the way to the border, to America. But she had chosen to stay, and in that choice, sealed her current fate. As well as his. He would never have been in that desert about to be raped if she’d been brave enough to leave his father.
He stepped to the bar and tapped a finger. A tumbler half full of tequila appeared instantly.
As he watched her grind topless on the lap of a fat man, teasing the man sitting next to him, he noticed she still retained some of the beauty from before. But her skin had lost its luster. She was skinny now, boney even, as if she had been malnourished, trading sustenance for intoxicants. It was his mother, but she was different. Her eyes were vacant as if her soul had surrendered, retreated into the recesses of her existence so that another more vapid presence could take over.
His mother caught him staring at her. Her lip curled in disgust, and she pulled a hand up to her face and wiped her mouth with the back of it, hand contorted, fingers pointing down as if locked in a seizure. She leaned over and whispered something to the fat man on whose lap she sat. His gaze snapped to focus on Armando. Fat Man tossed Armando’s mother off his lap. She landed on the floor beside him with a yelp, muttering obscenities, but stayed on the floor, swaying on her knees.
Fat Man stood, adjusted his pants, and gestured toward Armando’s mom. From across the dark room, he yelled, “You staring so much, you can have the bitch. I got her ready for you.”
Armando gave the man a disinterested look and turned back to his tequila. Fat Man became more annoyed and took two steps toward him, arms wide and gesturing back at his mother. She sat on her hips, still swaying side to side, her head drooped between her shoulders, long ragged hair hanging in front of her face. She lifted her head and offered a sick grin from behind strands of straggly hair as if inviting him. “Come get her, cabron. You can stare so hard while I’m having a good time. Why don’t you take a ride so we can watch you?”
Armando ignored him but caught a glimpse of what he had been looking for on the man—a scorpion tattoo, only different. A member of the Knife Cartel.
“Better yet, why don’t you mind your own business,” Fat Man insisted.
Armando said nothing as he finished his drink. Slamming it on the counter. The bartender quickly refilled it, gave Armando a nervous glance, and then backed away, holding the bottle close to his chest, nervous eyes darting down then up.
Fat Man walked up to the bar and assessed the smaller man. “Hey, least you can do is buy me a drink, poco esse. You fucked up my night.” The man reached for the tumbler. Armando’s hand shot out and grabbed the man’s wrist. Fat Man grimaced, reaching to tear the iron grip of the hand away. Armando met his eyes and then motioned with them for the man to look down at Armando’s hand and tattoo. A red scorpion. The only one of its kind.
“Ai dios mio.” The man’s eyes closed, and he turned his face away from the sight of the fearsome mark.
“No!” Armando’s gravelly voice reverberated in the small confines of the shithole they found themselves in. “There is no God here,” Armando stated, with a demand implied for him to rethink his words.
