Rebel Island (Tres Navarre #7)(18)

Brazos’s weekend house was in a bayside community of million-dollar homes with a boating channel between every block. There was no security. No gate, no surveillance. Island mentality. Most of the residents didn’t even lock their front doors. Brazos left his retreat only twice that day, once for a jog on the beach, once for groceries in the afternoon. During one of those times, the assassin must have set his trap.

Around sunset, Peter Brazos was cooking a quiet supper for himself when he was surprised by his wife, Rachel, and their two daughters, ages nine and seven. A spur-of-the-moment decision. Daddy should not spend New Year’s Eve alone. Brazos was irritated at first. Rachel knew better than to interrupt him while he was on retreat. But he couldn’t stay mad at her or the girls, so he set aside work. Plans were changed. They shared a dinner of shrimp and filet mignon, chicken strips and sparkling cider for the girls. The clock ticked toward midnight. The girls tried to stay up for the television broadcast from Times Square, but they fell asleep in the master bedroom, curled between their parents. Peter Brazos kissed his wife and asked her if it would be all right if he snuck away to study his case notes one more time.

Rachel Brazos smiled. She knew her husband too well to argue. She wished him a happy New Year, and Brazos took his laptop out to the back deck.

The winter air was cool and pleasant. Across the channel, a few of the neighbors’ houses were lit up for parties. That didn’t bother Peter Brazos. He read through his notes and thought about how much better South Texas would be when the men he was prosecuting were finally put behind bars.

He was proud that he hadn’t bowed to the pressure from nervous politicians, reluctant police, death threats from the mob. So what if these drug barons were well connected? Brazos knew the cartel had several rural sheriff’s departments on their payroll, possibly a few Corpus Christi cops and city council members, too. That didn’t matter. Brazos was doing the right thing.

He was relishing the idea of a conviction when the fireworks started down at the beach.

In the flickering of red and blue starbursts, something caught Peter Brazos’s eye. At the edge of his dock was a small white lump that looked like an ice cube.

He wasn’t sure why, but he set down his computer and went to see what the thing was. A tiny skull made from rock candy—a calavera, like children got for treats on the Day of the Dead. Brazos picked it up and stared at it, baffled by what it was doing on his dock.

Then something began nagging at the back of his mind—stories he’d heard. A hired killer. A calling card at the scene of a crime. But those kinds of hits happened to Mafia informants, people on the other side of the law…

Later, he would blame himself for those precious seconds he wasted, paralyzed by disbelief, before he ran toward his house and shouted his wife’s name.

As his house erupted in flames.

By the next afternoon the overwhelmed Port Aransas Police Department had turned the arson investigation over to the FBI.

Lab techs found evidence of six incendiary devices in the house. The wiring was consistent with the type of device used by the most notorious hired assassin in South Texas—a man known only as Calavera. High-grade materials, completely un-traceable, timed to explode precisely at midnight. The work of a craftsman. Only this time, the craftsman had missed his mark.

The agent in charge’s comments to the press were cryptic, but she couldn’t help revealing some of her rage. The explosion was needlessly elaborate. The assassin was an incompetent show-off. Now a mother and two children were dead.

But Peter Brazos didn’t believe this assassin was incompetent. The explosion should’ve worked. The assassin had studied Brazos, knew exactly where he would be. The only thing Calavera hadn’t counted on was Rachel and the girls’ spur-of-the-moment visit, an act of love.

The murder method had been superbly chosen. It had been meant to send a message to other prosecutors in a way that a simple bullet through the eyes wouldn’t do: Try to touch us, and we will burn you to the ground.

Brazos did not quit his drug cartel case. His grief enraged him. His rage made him determined. He prosecuted the South Texas Mafia leaders with redoubled vigor because he knew they would blame the assassin for not doing his job. They hadn’t gotten what they paid for.

Calavera, who had acted with impunity for years and carried out dozens of hits, had finally screwed up.

I passed the articles to Maia.

While she read them, I looked again at the handwritten note:

FIND HIM.

I wanted to open our door and yell down the hallway, Find him your own damn self!

But I doubted that strategy would work.

Maia looked up. “You’ve heard of this Calavera?”

“Some. Just stories.”

“Two little girls. Nine and seven.”

“Yeah.” I suddenly wished I hadn’t shown Maia the articles. Her eyes had that steely glint they got whenever she wanted to beat up someone—like me, for instance.

“Tres, if this is the guy Marshal Longoria was after, and if he’s in the hotel—”

“What the hell would he be doing here? And who slipped me this note?”

Maia was about to say something when there was a knock on our door.

I picked up Maia’s .357 again and moved to the side of the door. “Yeah?”

“Mr. Navarro?” One of the college kids. Chase, the leader.