Heat

We’re in the library and I’m sitting in one of two stuffed chairs staring at a wall of books. Gomez hands me a shot glass after filling two.

  “Tequila, drink it.”

  I down the glass without a second thought and he downs his. There’s no lime to disguise the taste or help the burn and I can’t stop from doing the funny twist thing with my mouth. He ignores this, takes the glass out of my fingers, and refills both. We drink another shot together.

  “You’ve made a real fucking mess, pequeña.”

  My head feels decidedly fuzzy. “I swear if you’re calling me ‘little sister,’ I’ll bite you again.”

  A chuckle escapes him. “It means ‘little one.’ You fucking fight like a wildcat, though.”

  “What good did it do me? I’m still here,” I pout. He refills my glass, we drink, and he walks over to the house phone.

  “Philip, bring us some chips.” I’m relieved because I need something in my stomach. My head is spinning and my belly rolling. He hangs up the phone and turns to me. “You’re safe here. Moon shouldn’t have let you walk away, and I know he’s regretting that now.”

  “So essentially, I’ve been kidnapped?”

  There’s a knock on the door that saves Gomez from answering. He opens it, grabs a bag of tortilla chips, and closes the door on Philip. At least I’m guessing it was Philip. He opens the bag of chips, walks over, and tips it in my direction. I grab a handful. For some reason I find it funny that we’re eating out of the bag in Moon’s ostentatious home. How completely unrefined of us.

  “I like you, pequeña. For your information, you are nothing like my sister. You may look similar, but the resemblance stops as soon as you open your mouth.”

  “Moon loved her.” Where in the hell did that come from?

  My comment elicits a rumbling laugh from Gomez. “He still loves her, but not in the way you think. Moon needs fire in a woman. That’s what I saw in you that day in the garage. You weren’t afraid of Dandridge and you weren’t afraid of me or my men.”

  I munch on a few chips, and Gomez sits down in the other chair holding the bag in one hand and then grabs a few of his own. I’m dehydrated, and the salty chips taste wonderful. Who needs water when you can have chips and tequila?

  “What do you plan to do with me? You know I’ll go straight to the police.” Stupid, stupid, stupid!

  “Yea, I know. Truthfully, I have no idea what to do with you.”

  The tequila is sitting on a small table between us and he pours us each another shot. I don’t throw this one back. I eat a few chips and wait.

  Gomez eventually speaks. “Do you know how Moon’s parents died?”

  I know I don’t need to know anything that makes me feel sympathy for Moon. “Yea, a little about his father’s death,” is what I say.

  “What you’ve heard or did you get it from Moon?”

  Moon mentioned his mother and she’s been in the back of my mind. Again, I don’t need to know anything that diminishes my anger at Moon. “He told me nothing.” This comes out snippy and that’s too damn bad.

  He ignores my attitude, downs his shot and looks at me. “It’s not a pretty story, and I would suggest you take that shot.”

  Fuck it. Curiosity is killing me. I toss it back and it doesn’t even burn.

  After a short pause, Gomez begins the story. “A drug cartel killed Moon’s mother and father. Not many people know about his mother. As a Mexican citizen, she wasn’t newsworthy as far as the U.S. media was concerned. His father, on the other hand, made national news because of his humanitarian work.”

  Gomez’s voice is so full of pain that I stop him from continuing. “Maybe it would be better if you didn’t tell me Moon’s secrets.”

  He pretends he doesn’t hear me and keeps talking. “I was up to no good while Moon was in college. Minor stuff—working for minor players and bringing drugs across the border. My old man was involved, also in a minor way. You could say it was a family business. Moon knew what we did. So did his father. Moon’s father tried to pay for me to attend college, but I was too proud to take a handout.”

  Gomez fills his glass again but doesn’t bother with mine. This story bothers him, and he’s clearly as uncomfortable telling it as I am listening to it.

  “Every year Moon’s dad went into Mexico and South America and surgically gave children new lives. His wife accompanied him as his surgical nurse. They were loving and giving people. The best. El Señor took photos of these children—before and after their procedures. You have no idea what hell these kids went through. Moon’s dad did amazing work and gave them a chance to live. He created miracles.”

  Pride is in Gomez’s voice, and it hits me that I want him to be someone he’s not. I want the same thing for Moon. I don’t want either of them to be bad men.

  “Moon’s father and mother were working with a medical team in an area run by one of the cartels. They paid bribes and thought they were safe. The cartel kidnapped Moon’s mother and held her for ransom. The sad fact is that Moon’s parents had little money to spare. They saved all year to make the trip into Mexico and were also paying Moon’s college tuition.” Gomez laughs gruffly. “If I’d taken Moon’s dad up on his offer to pay for my college, he would have found a way to do just that. Maybe he would have even taken that year off and not gone to Mexico. I’ll never know.”

  He drinks the shot and I wonder if he’s as drunk as I am.

  “Moon’s father tried explaining that he wasn’t some rich doctor who had the kind of money they demanded. That didn’t go over well. They sent his wife’s hand back with her simple gold wedding ring still on her ring finger.”

  Fuck. I don’t want to know this. Moon’s ring, holy shit. I lift my feet onto the chair so I can burrow my head into my knees. An unbelievable ache fills my chest and I swear I can actually feel that ring slide across my cheek.

  “Moon’s father lied and told them he had the cash. He went to the prearranged location with nothing but a death wish. He knew he couldn’t stop them from killing his wife. He decided to die with her.” Gomez breathes in deeply and continues. “They raped her in front of him and then hacked her into little pieces while she screamed, or at least screamed until she died. It didn’t stop them, and they continued cutting her until only a bloody, unrecognizable mess remained. They beheaded El Señor with a serrated knife while he screamed and drowned in his own blood. To make it worse, if that’s possible, they filmed the entire nightmare. They sent that video to the next person’s family they kidnapped so they would know what happens when you don’t pay.”

  I look at Gomez. He’s staring at the same bookcase I was earlier. Tears slide over his cheeks and he doesn’t bother wiping them away. I have seen very few men cry in my life and never would I expect it from Gomez. His voice is scratchy as he continues, “Moon and I were already in Mexico searching for answers when the video surfaced. My mother died when I was young and I thought of Maria, Moon’s mother, as my own.” He stares in silence at the bookcase; the stream of tears now steady.

  For me, putting a name to Moon’s mother somehow makes this horrifying story more real. It’s real for Gomez—as real as it gets.

  “Moon and I swore vengeance on the men who killed his parents. I had a few connections.” His fingers grip tightly on the arm rests of his chair. “Finding the men in the cartel took months. We eventually caught three of them and took them to an old rundown garage where no one could hear them scream. One by one, we did exactly to them what they did to Moon’s mother. We used a broomstick and sodomized them until they bled. While they were still screaming, we cut them up piece by slow painful piece. We did it one at a time so the next would know exactly what was coming.”

  Fuck, I’m going to be sick. Tears run down my face. I have a few chips remaining in my hand and I release them onto the table.

  “It took us six months to find and kill them all. In the course of our vengeance, they killed my father, who was helping us by calling in favors from his contacts. We moved my
sister out of Mexico so she would be safe. Because of us, she’s moved over and over. I don’t think she’ll ever forgive us, but she’s happy now with a husband who loves her and their children. I’ve never met my nieces and nephews. It’s too dangerous. Within a short amount of time, another fucking cartel took the place of the one we slaughtered. The cartels continued growing and they began infecting the U.S. Border States. These men are evil. They have no conscience.”

  Gomez pours another shot for me and drinks his straight from the bottle. How many shots have I had? Four? Five? Who gives a fuck? I drink another.

  “After Moon and I left Mexico, he joined me in running drugs. He refused to return to school. We were no longer boys with childhood dreams. We were killers, and we will never regret those deaths. The longer we stayed in the petty drug business, the more horror we witnessed. The cartel’s rules were something Moon and I wouldn’t stand by and allow on this side of the border. We decided to balance out the bad.”

  I think, in my fuzzy brain, that he’s trying to tell me that they’re good and honorable in their own way. I must have said this aloud because he laughs.

  “There is nothing fucking honorable about us. We do our best to keep guns out of terrorist hands, but we know we can’t stop it completely. Look what the U.S. government has done. Fast and Furious is a great example. When guns fall into the wrong hands, people pay with their lives on both sides of the border. Then there are the drugs. Moon has a big problem with drugs. He can’t stop it, so he feels his only choice is to control it. That doesn’t sit well with him. I’m not nearly as squeamish as Moon. I say fucking poison the drug supply and release the information to the media. If you die, you fucking die. More crimes happen, including murder, so addicts can have another fix. I have no sympathy. We’re lucky I’m not in charge.”

  I try to speak. It starts as a jumbled mess. “Well, fuck,” I finally manage to get out. “You’re trying, ummm, to tell me you’re good guys?”

  I don’t know how he’s doing it, but he doesn’t seem to have as much trouble putting his thoughts together as I am. Or at least I don’t think he does. “Go to sleep, pequeña. We’ll solve the problems of the world tomorrow.”

  My eyes are already closed, and I lean my body to the side and curl tighter into the softness of the chair.

  The pictures in my mind are of blood and death and more blood. I need another drink.

  Chapter Thirty