“I put a little extra in the engine.” Angel smiled in the dim light.
My breathing was ragged and I couldn’t get enough air into my lungs. Feeling like I might throw up, I leaned out the window, looking behind us. There was no sign of anyone following.
I gulped humid night air into my oxygen-starved chest and said nothing.
“Great shooting, Angel.” James reached out and patted the driver on the shoulder. “Hey, amigo, Angel shot out the floodlight. Trying to give you a little cover while you made your escape.”
I wanted to thank him, but all I could do was inhale.
“So what the hell did you see? And who saw you?”
I waved James off. If I talked in the next minute I knew I’d go into a coughing fit.
We were all quiet for that minute; the only sound was me trying to suck up all the air in the car. God, I was out of shape. This was the wake-up call. It was time to exercise, eat right, and lay off the beer.
Angel hit the main road back to the highway and I stared straight ahead as he blew through the first stop sign, and the second, and then a red light that I didn’t remember from before. I glanced at the sideview mirror about eighty times and never saw the first sign of another vehicle. We finally got to the entrance ramp to I-95 and I could breathe a little slower. Maybe I’d just cut back a little on the beer and just exercise occasionally. No reason to make a radical change.
“Guns.”
“What?” James didn’t understand.
“That’s what was in the boxes. Guns. Rifles. Sleek-looking rifles. If I knew anything about rifles, I’d say they looked like they were automatic with long clips. But I don’t have a clue. All I know is, there are boxes and boxes of the black things and they had one out when I ran. I don’t know why they didn’t shoot me.” “They weren’t loaded.” Angel, with the complete package, probably knew a whole lot more than I ever will about guns. “Some of those boxes probably contained ammunition.”
“I’m telling you, Angel, they could start their own army with all those weapons.”
James leaned forward. “They probably have.”
I glanced over at the speedometer and saw Angel was doing about eighty miles an hour. Given the hour, he probably figured the cops had better places to be.
“Okay, pardner, what happened while you were in there?”
I took a deep breath, feeling weak and somewhat disoriented. “How long was I in there?”
“Five minutes. Damn, it seemed like an hour, but Angel timed you.”
I told them about the cylinders, the boxes of guns, the balcony, and the three men.
“So it was the second Cuban?” Angel asked.
“No doubt. But I didn’t recognize the other two men and I didn’t see Vic. Maybe we were wrong.”
“Maybe.” James was cautious. “If it was Vic, my guess is they took him away in the Lexus.”
“Well, I didn’t see him. The three guys opened one of the crates and pulled out this black rifle and my phone went off.”
“What?”
“My phone. I swear it’s going on vibrate tonight and I will never program another song for a ringtone. Bruce Springsteen almost cost me my life.”
“It went off while you were in there?”
“Are you listening? It went off. Loud.”
“And what did they do?”
I shook my head. “Jesus, James. I didn’t stick around to find out. You saw the result. I think I ran the hundred in ten flat.”
“Who was it?”
“I looked. Habit. Look down and see who’s calling. All the time I’m thinking, ‘This is going to slow me down. They’re going to catch me because I’m checking the number on my cell phone.’”
“Em. Had to be.”
I thought of her for a moment. I was convinced that the kid almost lost a father tonight, and the thought made me sad. I at least wanted to meet the baby when he came into the world. All the work his father had done so far was pure pleasure and I needed some of the angst, pain, and agony to make it a real experience. I should probably quit putting myself in such dangerous situations.
“No. It wasn’t Em. It was Rick Fuentes.”
“Fuentes almost got you killed?”
“Caller ID said Rick Fuentes.” I pulled the phone from my pocket, punched in my code and listened.
“You have one unheard message. First message.”
“Eugene Moore? This is Rick Fuentes. I hadn’t heard anything, and I’m hoping you took the mail to the designated spot. Once again, I’m sorry you are involved and it will be much better for everyone concerned if you now just walk away.”
“Fuentes wants to know if we dropped off the mail, and he wants us to wash our hands of the entire affair. What else is new?”
James piped up from the backseat. “I think that suits me just fine. We can bill him for the overtime and finish with this whole mess.”
I looked back over my shoulder. “You got us into this, James. And now we stumble on Vic or someone who looks like him. I want to know if he’s still alive. And, we’ve just staked out the headquarters of this organization and we- I was found out. That doesn’t let us just ‘finish with this whole mess.’”
Angel kept both hands clamped to the wheel. “You’re right. You are now a prime target, and you have to finish what you set out to do.”
“Christ, I’ve lost sight of what we set out to do.”
“Find your school friend. You were hired to find out where he is. This Vic.”
Headlights filled the side mirror as a lone vehicle rapidly approached. Angel hit the gas, approaching a hundred miles per hour and the vehicle kept coming, gaining by the second.
I watched our speedometer hit one hundred and five. What was it Angel said? “I put a little extra in the engine.” One ten and climbing.
The car behind us spurted around Angel’s Jeep like we were standing still and continued down the highway, it’s taillights winking in the dark black night.
I caught my breath for the third or fourth time that night. If someone didn’t shoot me, beat me to death, or kill me in some other way, I knew I’d die from a heart attack or nervous exhaustion.
“I think tonight you should stay with me.” Angel was calm and straightforward. “They don’t know where I live.”
“Neither do we.” James put his hands on the back of my seat. “Friend, I thank you, but I think we’ve gotten you in enough trouble. Besides, I’ve got a job. And I assume that Skip needs to get to work tomorrow too. I don’t think we’re going to hear from these people again.”
“Where do you live?” I was intrigued.
“If you’re not going to visit tonight, you have no need for that information.” Angel kept his eyes on the road and his foot on the gas. I couldn’t wait to get home and hit the pillow.
CHAPTER FIFTY-ONE
“You have an incoming message. You have an incoming message. You have an incoming message.”
I blindly reached for the phone, interested more in shutting off the obnoxious alarm-clock voice than in hearing from a caller at the ungodly hour of five in the morning. The phone read “unknown caller.”
“It’s five o’clock in the morning. This had better be good.”
“Skip Moore?”
“Yeah.”
“Skip, this is Jackie Fuentes.”
The lady who started this whole mess. Well, actually Em started it by suggesting we help clean out Jackie’s house. No, James started it because he bought the cursed truck, but Jackie was high on my list of people to blame.
I didn’t say anything. It was her call.
“Skip?”
“Mrs. Fuentes, I’m very tired. I had a rough night last night-” I wanted to say something about the mail and looking for her kidnapped stepson but I didn’t.
“I know.”
“You what?”
“We need to talk. You, Emily, and your friend.”
“James?”
“Yes.”
“Listen, Mrs. Fuentes, if you want any of that stuff back, we don’t have it.”
“When can we talk? This morning?”
Apparently people with money have no concept of working for a living.
“I’ve got to be at work in three hours, Mrs. Fuentes. That leaves another two hours of sleep, if I can get back to sleep, and one hour to get ready.”