Moss shrugged. His words no longer mattered. Stalling failed. A terrible trembling jackhammered inside him, spreading out from his rapidly beating heart. He read somewhere that often people falling from great heights would have a heart attack before hitting the ground. Moss imagined the feeling he was experiencing to be comparable.
Sun slipped through a gap in the curtain, finding its way under the brim of The Viper's hat. The beam stung his right eye and it immediately began to water. He pulled a handkerchief from his pocket and, with a gloved hand, dabbed under his eyelid. The gun moved off target while the killer cleared his vision. Moss saw his fleeting window of opportunity and chose to ignore it. Maybe a trained assassin in the same position could've seized the advantage. But he was not that person, no matter how much he wished he could be.
"Are you ready to honor your debt and obligation to my employer?"
Moss' answer came in the warm urine soaking through his jeans. The pungent liquid leaked steadily from the end of his pantleg, pelting the frayed carpet below.
The dripping was the only sound filling the stagnant air until The Viper unlatched the first buckle on the case.
The snake's rattle sang out its deadly hymn through the reddish-brown leather of the case, drowning out everything, to include the beating of Moss' heart.
Twelve
Hatch found Club de Fuego easily, operating on the intel provided by Ayala. She'd turned down the quirky press agent’s ride offer, not wanting to involve him beyond his initial help. From experience, Hatch had learned the assistance people provided her often had negative and potentially life ending consequences. She wanted his good deed to go unpunished. Hatch had, however, accepted his business card with the promise of calling him should the need arise.
In lieu of his offer, Hatch flagged a taxi and wasted no time heading out to the club. The cab driver looked as though he were a hundred years old and smelt of day-old wine. At one point, he'd dozed off at an intersection. Hatch banged the smudged plastic partition separating her from her sleeping chauffeur, rousing him.
The description Ayala gave had been spot on. He'd said it was on the outside of town. The club was literally at the fringe of Nogales' easternmost point. Just past the nightclub was a ninety-degree bend where the two-lane Nogales-San Antonio roadway snaked along in a southeasterly direction until it intersected with Carretera Federal Numero Dos, Federal Highway 2, in Rancho San Rafael. Highway 2 carved across Mexico's northern tip, stretching from the Gulf of California to the violent streets of Juarez.
Club Fire stood out against the desert canopy sprawled out in all directions. The drunk old coot of a taxi driver muttered slurred Spanish as Hatch closed the door. Turno de manana. The rest was incomprehensible gibberish, but those words she understood. Early shift. She didn't know whether it was meant as a question, joke, or neither. She took it to mean that a） this place moved girls, and b） she was ahead of whatever schedule the club operated. The time it would take for things to pick up was unclear. She felt the stink of the cab cling to her clothes as she watched the driver swerve his way back in the direction of Nogales' city center where she'd hailed him.
The nightclub was a converted warehouse. It was two stories of black painted concrete. The only spot of color came from the large red swirled flame, the point of which nearly touched the flat rooftop. The flames resembled the symbol used for Cobra Command, the evil regime bent on world domination and G.I. Joe's nemesis. Fitting.
The curling outline of the flame was dotted in red light bulbs. Below the sign stood the main entrance comprised of two dual-entry doors separated by a couple feet of the painted brick exterior. The sun slapped its warm beams at the tinted glass face of the doors, painting a purple glow on the walkway in front. A place designed for night did not have the same shimmer in daylight.
A few men were hanging out by the far back corner of the building. Two of them had dark aprons on and the third older man had just carelessly thrown a dishrag over his shoulder and joined the other men in their cigarette break. Smoke encircled the huddled men, none of whom paid attention to Hatch as she walked away from the spot where the cabby had dropped her and away from Club Fire.
Hatch made a beeline for a broken-down water tower. A faded cartoon water droplet smiled down on her as she ascended the metal staircase. Pipes were connected to the warehouse at one point, and reached out their jagged, rust-covered limbs to dusty wind swirling the arid landscape.
The three men never looked up from their conversation. Hatch crested the top landing. The two-foot-wide grated walk that wrapped around the top of the water tower loomed twenty feet above the roof of the nightclub. The vantage point gave her a solid visual of the front and back, as well as the side closest to her. The far side, on the east side of the building, was completely shrouded from view. The rust-coated bolt squealed as Hatch lowered herself to the warm metal, taking up a prone position.
She settled in and waited for night to fall and the girls to arrive. Because as the driver so eloquently put it, the early shift had arrived.
Thirteen
The sun yielded to night, painting the sky in a dazzling orange blaze. A deep purple like that of the light bounced off the main doors and lingered before giving way to moonless black. The three kitchen workers had long since finished their smoke break. In fact, they'd had time for two more in the interim hours before nightfall. Headlights from the arriving patrons flooded the dirt lot behind Club de Fuego. Hatch remained in her sprawled position on the rickety landing.
She had made minor adjustments to her body's position during the five and a half hours she waited. These shifts alleviated the discomfort from the rough treads of the elevated walk where she lay. Being in one spot for long periods of time was a staple of her training and experience during her military service. Embrace the suck, ex-boyfriend and former Navy SEAL Alden Cruise's mantra, which he’d picked up while at the Basic Underwater Demolition/SEAL Training in Coronado. It was Hatch's next destination if she found Angela Rothman and punished those responsible for her abduction.
Rhythmic pulsing resonated through the concrete walls. The club's logo lighted edges flickered, casting their scarlet glow on the black backdrop, giving it the effect of being engulfed in flame. A pigeon stopped by for a visit. It rested its feast, a bit of bread from a tortilla shell, beside the heel of Hatch's boot. It went about picking at the morsel with no regard for present company, as if Hatch didn't exist. Fitting, since according to the police and medical reports out of Hawk's Landing, Colorado, she didn't. Servicewoman's Life Cut Down During Home Invasion, the title of the Denver Post article had read. In it her death was surmised in two sentences: "Rachel Hatch, age 35, died in the fire. Cause of death is ruled asphyxiation due to smoke inhalation."
She watched the club's logo burn bright. She thought about the fires that had ravaged her own life, each one catapulting her life forward in a totally new trajectory. All different. One left her right arm permanently scarred. The second ripped her from her family and the one man she ever truly loved. The last stopped her from saving a traumatized teen from the monsters she currently sought. All of them led her to the here and now. Fractured points in time pieced together to form the mosaic-stained glass that was her life. Blood from the wicked and the innocent tainted each pane with its unique hue. Hatch looked out at the club and wondered what the next addition to her life's tapestry would look like.