May Day by Scott Bell

Author:Scott Bell
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: mystery, Police Procedural, fbi, frame-up, murder
Publisher: Red Adept Publishing
Published: 2019-06-11T00:00:00+00:00

Fuentes

RAY DUCKED UNDER A tree limb. Water drizzled off the leaves and splattered his back, trailing chilly fingers down his neck. He was wet, he was sore, his head hurt, and all he wanted to do was curl up on his sofa and go to sleep.

“But no, here I am, in the pinche bosque, hunting a pinche puta, getting water down my pinche neck.” He slipped, nearly fell on his butt, and banged the stock of his Browning Safari .30-06 on a rock when it slipped off his shoulder. When he stuck out a hand to check his fall, a stab of pain tweaked his wrist.

“Goddamn it!” Fuentes muttered a long string of heartfelt curses in two languages. The Browning Safari, captured in one of their off-book raids and never turned in, had a new divot in its walnut stock, near the cheek rest. He felt lucky the damn rifle hadn’t gone off and blown a hole clear through his head.

Fuentes caught his breath and checked the area, looking for anybody and anything unusual. He saw trees. Trees and rocks and blue sky. Nature. Birds and shit.

Fuentes hawked and spit. He hated the goddamn forest. Hated hiking. His wife, Carla, always wanted to go camping. “Let’s pack up the kids, go to the state park. Get some fresh air.” The boys could sleep in a separate tent, she would say. As if.

“What, and take them away from their Xbox?” he would ask, making an exaggerated face of terror. “They’ll die.” She would roll her eyes and drop the subject, knowing he would go camping the minute they put up a McDonald’s and a Holiday Inn at the state park.

He started downhill again, watching where he put his feet, one heavy step at a time. His stomach burned from acid, and he had trouble catching his breath. Too much stress, his doctor had said. Well, no shit, doc. Thanks for the newsflash. Why don’t you try being a cop and a crook at the same time, see how you do with managing stress? Try being part of an ongoing criminal organization that you keep secret from your wife and kids and see what happens to your blood pressure.

A brown bird—quail, maybe—burst from cover near his feet and trilled away in a whirlwind of feathers. Fuentes leapt back, startled out of his own skin. “Shit! Pinche párajo!”

How did I get here? Another thought that came every day, sometimes two or three times a day. With it came the response, Because Bartlett bought you, that’s how.

In the academy, he’d taken the required classes. Ethics. How to avoid “compromising positions” and how to stay clean while undercover. But nothing could train a man for that moment, the split second when it all came down to yes or no. His brain disconnects, and he could screw up a whole life in one second. Can’t take it back. No do-overs.

Fucked, in other words.

He’d stood alone in the back room of a gunrunner’s crib, with a guy he admired.

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