Texas Hold 'Em (Smokin' ACES) - By Kay David Page 0,56
his grief-filled cry filling the bloody room. With his hand over his mouth, Santos backed away, acting as if he was about to be sick. In reality, his stomach did flip over. If he’d thought the Concepción DeLeon murder scene was bad, this one was ten times worse.
He figured he had two minutes, maybe three tops, so he searched the house as quickly as possible. He didn’t find anything until he entered a second bedroom with a small, windowless bathroom attached. There was a lock—on the outside of the doorframe. He pushed the door open and cursed quietly, standing on the threshold. The mirror had been stripped off the wall over the tiny cabinet, leaving behind holes in the drywall and globs of black adhesive. The shower had no door, and the toilet had no cover. A turned-over waste can rested in one corner, a bag of plastic zip ties sat in the other. The remnants of a roll of silver duct tape sat on the edge of the sink, two long blond hairs attached to a piece of it that’d been torn off. He walked inside and hooked his boot around the bottom of the door so he could see the back of it. It swung lazily toward the doorframe. He stared until the door drifted open again.
Slipping past the room where Marcos was now crying as he talked to someone on his cell phone, Santos reached the sidewalk, then grabbed his helmet from Rose’s outstretched hand. “Get on the bike,” he ordered. “We’re getting out of here while we still can.”
They didn’t stop or speak until they’d gone at least five miles. He pulled into the first gas station he saw and went straight to the men’s room where he called his contact inside the Mexican federal police. He told the man about the scene he’d just left, then hung up and started washing his hands. But the stink of death would take more than soap and water to remove. Only time would do that.
He found Rose waiting for him in the sandwich shop attached to the side of the convenience store. She was cradling a paper cup of coffee with a black sheen of oil floating on top. Another one sat by her hand. She pushed it toward him as he slid into the booth beside her. She lifted one eyebrow. “Well?”
He drank half of the foul brew before he spoke. “It was bad,” was all he would say.
“Ortega?”
“It had to be. Too messy for anyone else.” He drained his cup then got another one before sitting back down. “There was one body but a dozen parts, half of them unrecognizable. A note was pinned to the torso. “This is what happens to people who betray me.” Sounds like something you’d hear in a bad movie, but it was pretty effective, I have to admit. No one butchers a body like Ortega.”
“So the two men are connected?”
“Could be. That body was definitely left as a warning.” He stared out the window beside them. The empty highway that ran in front of the convenience store stretched into a distance that seemed to go on forever. “One way or the other, we can’t ask Enrique. That ship has sailed.”
“No sign of Lilith?” she asked.
He dropped his head and rubbed his hands over his face. Rose reached over and touched his arm. “Santos?”
“I found a room with a lock on the outside. There was a piece of used duct tape on the counter. It had some long blond hair attached to it. I can have it tested, but I’m pretty sure…” Breaking off, he raised his face. “There were fresh scratch marks on the back of the door. Someone had tried to claw their way out.”
…
Rose heard Santos’s cell phone ring behind her as she drew near the Harley, but it barely registered. To accept that her mother, who’d done so much to protect her, could possibly be involved with men this horrible broke her heart.
Santos’s voice made its way into her thoughts, and she turned. An expression she couldn’t name had come over his face, transforming his expression. Relief, anxiety, even anger—every emotion she could name seemed to cross his features. As if he could squeeze out more information, he gripped the phone with both hands. “What in the hell’s going on? My God, we’ve been searching for you—”
He stopped speaking abruptly and listened, then said, “Are you safe right now? Let us come get you—”