Whitewater (Rachel Hatch #6)(28)

A stocky fireman grabbed Munoz by the shoulder and spoke in the crackled voice of a chain smoker. "Can't go in until it's cleared."

Munoz looked down at the soot-covered hand touching the freshly pressed uniform and smudging the collar brass he always kept to a high gloss shine. He fought the urge to smash the back of his hand across the man's face. But all that was hidden behind Munoz' engaging smile. "Oh, thank you." Munoz simply brushed the fireman's hand away and proceeded in the direction he had just been forbidden to go.

A few minutes later, Munoz was standing behind the manager who was busy logging into the camera system. A men's room separated the office space from the rest of the club. The air stunk of the fire, but the manager's space had been untouched and ran on an alternate fuse box from the club. The fire had not corrupted the lines, and power had not been lost.

A raised monitor offered twelve greyscale perspectives of the club. Munoz received a quick tutorial on how to use the system, a simple mouse click function display on the monitor allowed for easy playback. And he began scrolling back in time to the starting point of the fire. Each monitor reversing in sync.

Munoz saw the flash on four of the cameras. He zoomed in. Two of the screens were too far away. Of the last two cameras, only one captured what Munoz was looking for.

He brought up the freeze-frame image to full size on the monitor. All twelve screens disappeared but one. Munoz stared at the face captured in the still shot. And he was shocked to recognize the person in it.

The woman who had come into the police department early that morning was now staring back at him. The security camera up above the DJ's turntable captured the face of Daphne Nighthawk.

He called a number and waited. Raphael Fuentes answered. Strange, because he had always been in the backdrop, hiding in his father's shadow. Munoz hadn't had many dealings with Raphael, and in the few times he did, it was never over matters of security.

"I needed to speak to your father."

"I'm handling this now," Raphael said.

"Then you have a problem."

"What is it?"

"It's not a what. It's a who," he continued to look at the woman on the screen. "The Nighthawk woman burned down the club. All five girls are gone."

"I'll handle it.”

"Allow me."

"I'll be in touch." Rafael ended the call.

Munoz put the phone away and spent the next several minutes tracking the Nighthawk woman on her skillful rescue mission. He watched the pole camera capture the departing black van as it sped away into the night away from Nogales.

Munoz wasn't sure where she was headed. But he was sure a whole ton of trouble was heading her way. And he hoped to be a part of it.





Nineteen





Raphael turned to his father, who was taking the first sips of his favorite brandy. It was all he permitted himself to drink after midnight. He said it left him with a clear mind in the morning. Rafael never saw the logic. It never bothered him before, but since the murder of his mother, everything his father did only further fueled the hatred Raphael felt for the man.

"Problem?"

"Daphne Nighthawk. The woman Munoz called us about just burned down the nightclub and freed five of our girls." Money and property were two things Rafael's father took very seriously. Raphael watched the ripple of anger pass across his father’s brow at hearing the news.

Hector set his drink down and looked at his son. He was quiet, his reserved thoughts never permeating his facial expression.

"I think it's time for Juan Carlos and his men to take over." His father's native tongue always took on a lyrical note when he was pensive, as he was now.

"We need to think about this carefully. Having Juan Carlos hunt her down and kill her could possibly do more harm than good."

"Go on." His father raised a brow.

"Sometimes the heavy hand is not the way. Sometimes a more delicate approach may be advantageous."

"Delicate? Like a flower? Would you like to invite the Nighthawk woman to dinner so we could discuss her decision to burn down one of our nightclubs and steal five of our whores?" Juan Carlos Moreno strutted into the immaculate barroom in the west wing of the Fuentes palace in the desert. The room, designed to comfortably seat twenty people, felt empty with only three.

Juan Carlos was the only man Hector allowed to speak to Rafael in such a way. Not that he took advantage and abused that privilege, but the smug look on his face as Juan passed by and greeted Hector sure looked like he enjoyed it when he did. Rafael never offered a response to his father's top enforcer and personal bodyguard. Not out of respect, but out of pure, unadulterated fear.

Juan Carlos Moreno, a vicious man with a short temper, was feared by any who crossed him long before he ever came to work for Rafael's father. His reputation for the ruthlessness with which he dispatched his enemies grew by exponential leaps and bounds once he became head of security for the Fuentes Cartel. Moreno executed his orders with precision and violence, carrying out a variety of unsavory tasks for the family, and to this day, had yet to fail in that regard.

Rafael had borne firsthand witness to Moreno's ruthless delivery of his father's orders. The blood on the thick-necked man's hands could fill buckets. He was, in Rafael's opinion, the scariest man on the planet. Raphael hated any moment spent in Moreno’s presence. Seeing Juan’s face reminded Rafael of his tenth birthday, a memory he'd spent the years since trying to erase.