Whitewater (Rachel Hatch #6)(2)

"Please," Isabella Fuentes sobbed. "I did it for—"

"Save your breath," he barked. A froth of spit came out of his father's mouth in contrast to his normally reserved demeanor. He was enraged and nearly launched at her. "Not only did you go behind my back, you also went to the police. The POLICE! There's no reason you could give that would ever justify what you did. But just like a crack in any foundation, if it's addressed early enough, it can be patched up. It can be repaired. And that is what I'm going to do here. The police officers you spoke with have already been dealt with. There's just one more small crack that needs filling."

"No," she whimpered. Isabella brought her head around, twisting it, craning her neck to look at her first-born son.

Raphael could no longer avoid the eye contact. He met his mother's tearful eyes, and the sight of it nearly broke him. He bit the inside of his lip so hard that he could taste the blood. She pleaded with him without uttering a sound. Her silent cry for help tore at his soul.

"You have been called here today to bear witness to this…so that no other crack, no other fracture in our foundation, will ever happen again. Remember this moment."

Hector moved quickly. Slipping in behind Isabella's seated position, he grabbed her forehead and jerked it back against his chest, breaking her eye contact with Raphael. He looked on as his father ran the sharpened edge of a long-bladed knife across his mother’s throat.

Raphael Fuentes remained motionless as the blood spurted. He listened to the choking and gurgles of his mother's dying breaths. He willed himself not to look away as his mother's life slipped from her body.





Two





It was dark, but the sandy ground she laid on still carried the warmth of the day, even though the air around her had cooled dramatically in the shift from day to night. A wind began kicking up sand. It still carried a note of the remnants of the nearly contained wildfire seven miles away. The massive efforts to contain the wildfire had been successful, and they worked now to extinguish the remaining embers, but the air continued to reek of the fire’s damage. It had burned in a twenty-mile crescent extending from Nogales. Hatch still felt the memory of its sting.

Ash and soot drifted like dirty snow, laying a thin coat over Hatch during the seven hours of waiting. She accepted the gift of gray camouflage now covering her body. She’d returned to the area in which the traffickers had taken Angela Rothman. She had travelled the same road where the first gunfight with Colton Gibbons and his fellow traffickers had taken place. When she passed by the spot, she was surprised to see no evidence of the violence that had taken place less than a day before. She stopped and looked for any shell casings. She found none. Even the blood was gone. None of the media sources she’d searched had covered the event. Her trail was clear, as well as the traffickers. She was dealing with a highly organized group of individuals.

It would only be a matter of time until she found what she was looking for. So she hunkered down and waited. Patience born by necessity. She skirted the border until coming to an empty swath of open space. There was no way she could enter Mexico legally without a passport or identification. Since she was legally dead, neither one of those things were available. To have it done through an alternative channel would've taken time she didn't have. So, she waited.

Hatch lay on the ground seven miles west of the Nogales border crossing. She selected her current location by asking herself one simple question, where would I try to cross the border? It had taken nearly eight hours before she’d proven her decision right.

She heard it before she could see it. There were no buildings nearby, no streetlights, no lamps, or sources of man-made light anywhere in sight. The only light provided came through the cloudy ash covering the sky. To Hatch's benefit, she was bathed in the darkness, giving her more flexibility in her choice of concealment.

There was a crunch up ahead followed by the coo of a baby and the mother trying to quiet it. Somebody snapped, yelling in Spanish a phrase Hatch didn't understand, but the tone of which was easily discerned. Anger. The cooing stopped and the procession continued. They weren't quiet by any stretch, although Hatch could tell they were trying to be.

As they came into view twenty feet from her position, she counted seven heads: an old man, a pregnant woman, a young mother carrying a baby, and two men. One of the men was heavyset and older and used a walking stick to navigate the uneven terrain in the dark. He stumbled once, and the younger man at the back of the pack kicked him hard, hard enough for Hatch to hear. The older man grunted softly, and then got back to his feet, offering no form of resistance to the violence he'd endured. Hatch knew why. The man who had kicked them was their coyote, a paid shepherd of human beings. Most of the people in that group undoubtedly gave their life savings for this journey, or would be indebted upon arrival, possibly for the remainder of their lives. Crossing the border from Mexico to the United States, with the hope of a better life, was no easy task. Often, the American Dream was more a nightmare than anything else.

Human trafficking was a modern form of indentured slavery. These people each had a predetermined destination, where they would serve out whatever sentence until their debts were paid. Hatch watched as the group came to a stop, now only fifteen feet from where she lay.

Hatch remained tucked tightly to a rock, making herself as small as her 5'10" frame would allow. The large rock aided in masking her from the headlights of the approaching van. The small boulder casting Hatch in the shadow cut the beams, keeping her invisible to the man driving. The coyote shoved the other six border crossers into the back of the van. A very brief exchange between the coyote and the driver followed and within a minute, they were gone.