He that is without sin among you, let him cast the first stone…
It’s not often that quotes from JC himself play out in my mind. I’m not a religious guy, and I don’t often find myself in situations that lean themselves toward righteous thinking, however covered in the blood of the lives I have just taken, I find myself feeling pretty fucking pensive. I’ve judged Julio and found him short. I could have just gone, taken the small fragments of information he gave to me and left him, injured and squealing like a stuck pig in his bed. I didn’t, though. I doled out the punishment I saw fit for his crimes.
One of these days, someone will judge me, and I will fall short of their expectations. I’ll gladly accept whatever penance they decide to serve upon my head when the time comes.
Until then, I’m going to keep on doing what I have to do in order to get my sister back.
CHAPTER TWO
MR. AMERICA
The woman with the needle hanging out of her arm is dead. I want to bury her and the dog in the back of Julio’s yard, and I also want to finish off those four coke heads in the downstairs living room, but I have time to do neither. I have to get on the road; I have to hit Santa Clarita before dark, and the sun is already bobbing lower in the sky than I like. I duck low and weave my way through the long grass back toward the scrambler, planning the next step of my journey: ride for six hours, find somewhere to wash properly, store the scrambler somewhere safe, and get my ass on a plane.
I may have feigned ignorance when Julio started babbling about a house for wolves, but I do know what it means. Or at least, I think I do. Not a house for wolves. The House of Wolves. Villalobos. The Villalobos family aren’t like other cartels. People don’t shake in their boots when they hear the name whispered down dark alleyways across the United States. There aren’t many people who would even have heard of them in the first place. Like most cartels, The House of Wolves deals in skin, coke and heroin, but they only deal with their own contacts—in motherfucking Ecuador.
They are the top of the food chain, a great white shark in the sea of narcotics and sex trading, and they don’t bother themselves with small fry. The only reason I even know of the family is because of the constant trawling for information that’s carried out at the Widow Makers’ clubhouse. Jamie’s not your average motorcycle club president; he’s heavily invested in bringing down as many sick fucks as he can. If you deal in skin and you’re stupid enough to try and sell girls online, or in any sort of bidding community, then you’re basically fucked. It’s only a matter of time before we find you. Our hackers are good. The Villalobos family have been whispered about for years, but no one has ever given us solid information on them. And without solid information, the risk of a full-frontal assault has just been too great.
Until now.
So. A flight out of Mexico. A small dip into the stack of money I’m carrying with me, but well worth it if it leads me to Laura.
I take off my leather jacket and then the black tee I’m wearing underneath, using the sweat and blood soaked shirt to wipe down my jacket, and then I rifle in the small bag I have stowed under the scrambler’s seat, hunting for something clean to wear. A gray ACDC shirt? Perfect. I throw it on, bundling up my leather and jamming it into the small compartment under the seat, along with the bag, and then I wheel the Yamaha back to the road. Just as I’m about to start the engine, shots ring out behind me, from the direction of the Perez farmhouse. I can just about make out two guys running from the house, their muffled, indecipherable shouts carrying across the fields. One of them raises his hand and another gunshot rings out, snapping through the air.
Looks like it’s time for me to get the fuck out of here.
******
Getting a plane ticket is easy. There are plenty of security checks in Mexico, especially if you’re a white American trying to fly to another country and not back into the States, however this isn’t my first time at the rodeo. I pay five hundred bucks to a toothless old garage owner on the outskirts of Santa Clarita, telling him if I’m not back in a week he can keep the scrambler. I make sure to tell him, in no uncertain terms, what will happen if I did come back in less than a week and the motorcycle isn’t there, too.