Lawyer Trap

3





DAY ONE–SEPTEMBER 5

MONDAY MORNING


Jack Draven didn’t know if he was an Indian, a Mexican, or just a really dark white-man, nor did he give a shit. Most people took him for an Indian on account of the high cheekbones, the thick black ponytail, and the scar that ran down the right side of his face, all the way from his hairline to his chin. It had been there ever since he could remember. He had no idea how he got it, but did know that he wouldn’t erase it even if he could.

It was part of him.

Somehow he’d earned it.

Now it was his.

Driving south on I-25, the traffic thinned after he passed Colorado Springs and the speed limit increased to 75. He set the cruise control at 88, looked around for cops, found none, brought a flask up to his mouth, and took a long swallow of Jack Daniels.

It burned his mouth and then dropped into his stomach.

Damn good stuff.

A knife with an eight-inch serrated blade sat on the seat next to him. He picked it up and twisted it around in his hand as the arid Colorado topography shot by. To the left a river snaked through the land. Hundreds of ugly cottonwoods—nothing more than 50-foot weeds, in his opinion—sucked up to it.

A hint of yellow had already snuck into the leaves. Fall was coming. Lucky for him, he’d be in California before the first snow fell.

This most recent hunt was going to be a little tricky. He was searching for an Hispanic woman, nice-looking, under thirty, heavily tattooed. Tons of tattoos, that was the most important thing. The more goddamn tattoos, the better.

That would be a tall task in Denver.

But in Pueblo, not so much.

There was more Hispanic p-ssy down there than the law allowed. Not to mention a biker bar on every street corner—tattoo magnets.

He rolled his six-three, 225-pound frame into the blue-collar town mid-afternoon and checked into a sleazy rat-in-the-closet hotel, paying cash—the kind of place where no one noticed anything and remembered even less. He tried to take a short nap, but some hooker in the next room kept screaming fake orgasms. So he drove around to check out the tattoo shops, just in case the perfect woman happened to be hanging around one of them. He’d hit the biker bars tonight.

He drove by three tattoo shops, saw nothing but guys, and kept going. Then he found a shop with two women inside, one of them working on the other. He stopped across the street, wrote down the license plate numbers of the two cars in front of the shop, and then pulled in and killed the engine.

Rap music filled the air.

When he walked in, the woman giving the tattoo looked up.

“Hi, I’m Mia,” she said. “Go ahead and look around. If you got any questions just holler.”

She fit the bill, perfectly—Hispanic, mid-twenties, with long brown hair pulled into a ponytail. She wore a tank top with no bra, showing off strong arms covered in ink. The woman getting the tattoo would work too, although she would be second choice. She was getting the new artwork on her left breast, a small rose or flower of some sort.

“Just looking,” he said.

“Besides the stuff on the walls,” she said, “there’s books on the desk, too. We can make anything any size you want. We can change the colors, customize them however you want.”

“Great,” he said.

Pattern pictures covered the walls, hundreds of them.

He walked around.

Keeping one eye on the women.

Trying to not be obvious.

Then something weird happened.

He spotted a pattern he actually liked.

“What’s this?” he asked, pointing.

Mia stopped working and turned her cute little face toward him. “That’s an Indian war symbol,” she said.

He didn’t even hesitate.

“I want it.”

She nodded. “That’ll look good on you. I’ll be about another half hour here, then you’re up.”

Perfect.

“Say, would you mind if I watched, and see how you do it? I’ve never had one of these things before.”

The two women looked at each other.

Neither cared.

So he pulled up a chair and watched.

As they chatted he found out all kinds of useful little facts. The woman giving the tattoo—Mia Avila—owned and operated the shop. She opened it two years ago at age twenty-two after coming out of the wrong end of a marriage. The woman in the chair—Isella Ramirez—was married with two kids. The ink on her tit was a birthday present from hubby-face.

Mia Avila would be the one he’d take.

Assuming the opportunity presented itself.