Whitewater (Rachel Hatch #6)(29)

The scar rode down along Moreno's face at an odd angle, beginning at the top right side of his head two inches into his hairline, then spreading across his forehead until it stopped abruptly in the center of his left eyebrow. The day he received it etched a scar of equal size and proportion on the young Rafael's mind. He still felt its tingle as he recalled the memory of that horrible day.

On the morning of his tenth birthday, Rafael's father had the family barber come to the house for a grooming of all the Fuentes men, including Hector. Hector believed then, as he did now, certain events dictated perfection. Celebrating one's birth fell into that category, as did funerals. Maybe that's why the sight of Moreno now had triggered his memory. Rafael absently played with a curled tuft of his black hair. His mother's burial was in three days.

When the barber came, Rafael remembered excitedly waiting for a fresh haircut. As a kid, it wasn't the haircut he was excited about, but one of the few times he was guaranteed to spend time with his father. Up until the morning of his tenth birthday, it had been one of his most revered memories. Even the memory of preceding birthday mornings with the family barber were tainted in the darkness of that day.

Unbeknownst to Rafael’s father, the barber, Gerardo Guzman, who’d been grooming the family for nearly twenty years, had been extorted by a rival cartel. They took his grandson as leverage. None of that mattered anymore. Anybody who was even remotely involved had been later hunted down and killed. Most at the hand of Moreno himself.

This was the day Raphael Alejandro Fuentes decided he would never grow up to be like his father. It was the wish he never told anyone, even his mother, when he blew out his birthday candles later that day.

Down the hall from the bar where the three men currently convened was the barber shop. His home had a two-chair barbershop built inside. Immaculate as it was, it was nothing compared to his mother's spa nestled against one of their three pools. Some days Rafael swore he could still see the blood stain on the barber shop’s tile floor.

His father had been reclined in the soft brown leather of the barber chair with a warm, moist towel draped over his eyes. Rafael used to love the smell of the barber's foam. The fresh clean scent overwhelmed the air. He remembered watching his father in the chair and longing for the day when he could receive his first shave.

Guzman ran the length of the blade against the sharpening strap as he always did. Rafael used to love the thwack and swoosh sounds steel made against worn leather. He pictured the next moment with reverence. The image of Guzman's stoic face and sad eyes as he stood behind Rafael's father’s foam-covered, exposed throat while holding the razor-sharp edge against the edge of his neckline. The image had come to symbolize a line of departure in which the course of his life was changed forever.

Moreno spent most of his life around death. Rafael had given much thought to what he’d witnessed that day and came to this conclusion. Moreno's experience enabled him to see in a way that few others could. Only a killer can recognize another by the look in their eyes. Moreno was as lethal as they come and saw a glimmer of himself that day in the sad eyes of the barber. But Guzman lacked the killer instinct. And Moreno could smell it on him.

The cat-like reflexes of Moreno saved Rafael's father that day. The straight blade razor nicked the skin as Guzman attempted the unthinkable. The hesitancy he demonstrated was not seen in Moreno’s decision to act. He caught the barber by the elbow before he could work up the nerve to finish running it across the foamy throat of his employer.

The barber had proven desperate enough to continue his fight, as men do when life hangs in the balance, like that of his three-year-old grandson. All the want and will, when faced against a more skilled and determined opponent, means nothing on the field of battle.

Guzman ripped his arm free and made several wild slashes. But, like a horse swatting a fly with its tale, Moreno disarmed the barber with ease, sending the blade clinking to the floor. Rafael remembered the feeling of relief at seeing Moreno save his father. He also remembered how fleeting it was. A breath after the blade hit the tile, Moreno plunged a knife of his own, a long, eight-inch blade, under the barber's chin.

Rafael could see it now, just as he had at ten. The silent pause as the blade pierced Guzman's brain. He was looking into Rafael's eyes. The desperation of the preceding moment was all but gone. Only sadness was left. A teardrop and trickle of blood drag racing down the side of Guzman's cheek had been interrupted by the sudden jerking of Moreno's blade as he ripped it free. Guzman, no longer supported by Moreno's knife, dropped to the floor.

Juan Carlos Moreno never muttered so much as a curse when the blade cut him. As a young boy, Rafael had missed it. But in the lightning speed struggle, Guzman had somehow managed to slice Moreno's face. He merely grabbed a towel from a stack neatly folded on a nearby marble counter and pressed it firmly against his head. Moreno's soulless eyes watched as Guzman's body convulsed violently at his feet.

Hector promoted him to head of security that very moment. Moreno continued to fill that position to this very day. Rafael never looked at either man the same. After his father's recent pressuring of Rafael to follow in his footsteps, it looked as though his birthday wish ten years ago was not going to be a reality.

Rafael knew why Moreno disliked him and it had everything to with his avoidance of violence. Rafael had never even been in a fight. What kid would dare strike the son of Hector Fuentes? But that wasn't the reason. His younger brothers picked their fights. Moreno could smell it on him, just as he did that day in the barber shop. Raphael wasn't a killer.