On her way home, she admired the new ID card signifying her as a private investigator working under contract with the Lone Star Office. A strange feeling swelled up within. It wasn’t hope and it wasn’t dread either. She knew that the ID she held in her hand wasn’t much, but it was a start to finally forming her identity.
“I guess I’ll call this emotion ‘freedom.’ Is that even a feeling? Maybe ‘liberating’ is a better word.” She continued to debate herself on what word fit best. She was cut short as a familiar scent approached.
“Hoo hoo! How curious!” the voice she dreaded most exclaimed from behind her.
The sound of the Pretty Penny Pincher kicked her into action. She discovered her treasured ID missing.
“Wha-? Hey!” It was the hands of that nuisance. “Give that back!”
“Such a truly joyous expression!” the Pretty Penny Pincher marveled at the image of a blank stare. “An exemplary replica of the face father used to make when I disgorged all of thine aspirations! How nostalgic!”
“Give me it back!”
“Mayhaps I will if thou commences a most wonderful duel on this fine day.”
“Please,” she begged, “I already embarrassed myself enough.”
“Shame and failure are not synonymous. I know that all too well! Hah-hah!”
“This isn’t funny.” She reached for her newly acquired taser but her phone’s ringing stopped her. Curious, she flipped it open and answered the call. “Hello?”
“Sorry to have you clock in so soon,” Eric’s voice hastily explained, “But we’ve got a situation developing and not enough hands on deck. Charlie’s been captured and Echo is missing.”
“Who? What? How?”
“I’ll explain later, just meet me at my office.”
“You want me to go back?”
“No, the main office. It’s near 12th Street. There’s a big star. You can’t miss it!”
“Wait, I don’t even know where that is-” But Eric had already hung up.
“Mayhaps I be of assistance?” the Pretty Penny Pincher chimed in. He had been listening in on the entire phone call.
“Give my ID back first!” Flores yelled at him. She surprised herself with how much she raised her voice.
“Why only the most valiant would never shy away from such acts of generosity.” He tossed the card back to her and she ended up catching it with her mouth by complete accident. “Hahaha! Oh miss, you truly perform the most hilarious of circus acts.”
“I’m mwot m’rying m’o!” she shamefully retrieved the card from her mouth and wiped off some of the saliva on her sleeve.
“Then I must inquire, why dress like a mister?”
“These are the only clothes I have…” Her spirits fully drained as defeat filled her soul. “And now, I’m letting myself be belittled by an actual clown.”
“Properstrous! I only jest in banter. Now come, let us save your dashing prince.”
“He’s not my prince!”
Unperturbed, the Pretty Penny Pincher raised his knife like a general’s saber and ordered the charge. “Onwards! And may the victors forever live as fortune’s privates!”
“My w-what?” She was swiftly dragged along before she could ask what he meant.
----------------------------------------
With the Pretty Penny Pincher racing ahead, they made it there in record time. Eric wasn’t lying about the great big singular star on the front of the building. Sure, it was made of scrap metal, but it was still a sight to behold. Or for most passerbys, a sight to gawk at. The building itself looked pretty patched up from the outside. And yet, the entire thing screamed Texan and the company van matched perfectly. Speaking of which, the van screeched to a halt right in front of Flores.
“Get in!” Eric hollered from the marron van. The Texan flag was poorly painted across the side with “Lone Star Office Ltd.” in big white text along with a phone number underneath. The text was at a slight tilt and it was mostly in a straight line. At least whoever painted it used a stencil for the letters. The numbers were near impossible to read.
Flores climbed in the back as Jeremiah followed.
“Good news, I found Echo, say hi to her.” Eric motioned towards the driver, a rather meek-looking girl.
“Please, sir, just call me Laura.”
“Good to meet you-” Flores was interrupted before she could finish.
“Salutations, Echolocation or Laurence, whatever may be your name,” the Pretty Penny Pincher greeted.
“Who’s the straggler?” Eric cautiously reached down by his hip. Flores knew exactly what that motion meant, or rather, what Eric was reaching for.
“No need to shoot him, he’s just a friend of mine. Well, more a fiend but-”
“Oi! No need to downplay our wonderful dynamic. I lent thine hand and now thou bite it before it even has food to offer?”
Eric sighed as his headache began to come back.
“I guess another hand is always helpful. Still, I don’t trust him. But if you do, that’s your job to keep him from gettin’ us into trouble. Just take this and prepare yourself.” Eric reached under the seat and pulled out a bayoneted, wood furnitured, M4 Benelli shotgun with a quality leather sling.
“W-what is that?” Flores spluttered in the twelve-gauged recoil of such an unexpected sight.
“Try not to waste too much ammo when we get there.” He handed it to Flores as if she already knew what to do.
“Am I to fight with only two sticks and a rock?” The Pretty Penny Pincher asked to no response. “Very well.”
The feeling of the shotgun’s weight in her hands was not as alien as she thought. Warm feelings of nostalgia seem to emanate from its cold steel exterior. Suddenly, she was thrown back in time. She could hear her father’s reassuring voice from behind.
“Now hold it firmly with both hands. Put the stock in your shoulder just like I showed you.”
She glanced around attempting to locate the origin of that voice, but failed to see anything but the orange fall meadow they were standing in. The inside of the van had disappeared. The shotgun she held did not.
“It won’t kick you hard if you keep it close and become one with it.”
“I know, dad. You let me shoot your rifles before.” she heard a younger version of her voice say. She raised the shotgun up and placed her cheek firmly against the stock.
“There’s much more recoil in a shotgun than a rifle. Now you see that water jug up on the wooden crates?”
“Uh-huh.” She spotted exactly what he was talking about less than twenty yards away.
“I don’t want to see it anymore.”
She lined up her target between her sights and prepared to pull the trigger.
“You got all that, Foxtrot?” Eric interrupted her fond remembrance. “Also, put down the gun, we’re not there yet. I appreciate your enthusiasm, but please don’t shoot out my windshield.
“W-wha-?” Flores realized what she was doing and awkwardly lowered the shotgun. Thankfully, the safety was still on. “Can you run that by me one more time?”
“Just know that the shotgun’s loaded with slugs and it might be a bit cold where we’re headed.”
“As if it wasn’t already.”
----------------------------------------
The drive was a bumpy one, to say the least. The sight of unfamiliar streets rushing past from the front windshield did not help quell the tense nerves among those inside the van. The entire trip had been mostly filled with Eric barking directions and orders at poor Laura. It made Flores wonder why he wasn’t driving. The van turned onto a long straight street which gave Flores some time to voice a few objections.
“Mr. Sullivan-”
“Just call me Eric.”
“Sorry. Do I have to use this?” She had been tinkering with it for the entire duration of the trip, checking to make sure it was still empty. “I don’t exactly want to end up back in prison…”
“Don’t worry. It’s all fair game in love and war, and I declare war upon the bastards who kidnapped one of my employees!”
“But I…” The very thought of unjustly taking a life made a queasy feeling rise up from her stomach. The prospect of ending up back in that cage with an extra helping of guilt hurled her around in the same manner as the van did. “I don’t want to kill anyone. I don’t want to get locked up again.”
“If things go as planned, hopefully, we won’t need to.”
"But sir, why do you trust me with it? I’m the newbie, after all."
"Bah, any Texan can handle a gun. It's in our blood. Besides, this should be a simple milk run."
Flores sat back down against the inner wall of the van as they neared a scarily sharp turn. One of the small boxes of shotgun slugs slid off of the stack of empty boxes meant for evidence gathering and onto the top of the Pretty Penny Pincher’s head. He woke up, startled from his brief nap.
“Gah! Who dares disturb thee!?”
“Your greatest enemy, the cardboard box- Oof!” Another box ended up smacking her in the head. Grumbling, Flores decided to move every single box onto the floor to prevent any future workplace-related annoyances. Just as she finished, the van came to a violent halt.
“Alright, this is the last place Charlie went before calling for help. Flores, load the shotgun but don’t rack a round into the chamber. Go ahead and take it off safe. Everyone else, file out!”
Eric climbed out and the other three filed out behind him. They were standing in front of a warehouse with a giant neon fish sign above. Flores had to part with her dear documents. She placed them underneath the small box of shotgun shells to mark it as her own.
“Where are we exactly?” Flores asked. She had hastily shoved a couple of rounds into the shotgun and some more in her coat pockets. Her hands gripped the mean-looking shotgun tightly.
Her question went mostly ignored. “Alright, here’s the plan.”
“You’re only telling us the plan now? What did I even sign up for…?”
“He does this a lot,” Laura reassured her.
“We go in and use some good ol’ persuasion,” Eric explained. “It shouldn’t take too long, just fifteen minutes I reckon.”
“A quarter-hour to let justified crime shine? For not even the price of a penny? Most satisfactory!” The Pretty Penny Pincher beamed. He was about to charge recklessly towards the front door, but Flores and Laura managed to grab hold of him before he could.
“Alright, since three of us here are Texans, I only need to explain this once. We go in and we show them that we’ve got bigger guts and guns than they do.” Having a severe lack of confidence in Eric’s plan would be an understatement for Flores. He pompously ordered her as if he were a field marshal. “Foxtrot, remove bayonet and ready yourself to breach the door!”
She struggled to get the bayonet off. Eric had to show her how to unlock and then remove it properly. She took in a deep breath before cautiously walking up to the door with the shotgun in hand. “Do I just…?”
“Here…” Eric approached her and assisted her in aiming the shotgun at the door. It wasn’t as straightforward as she thought, but rather at a diagonal angle so that the slug could destroy the lock. Eric stepped back once satisfied. “Alright, go ahead and rack it.”
She pulled back the charging handle and braced herself. She couldn’t help but feel that the bayonet was made pointless by the shotgun. “Eric, sir, do I even need the bayonet still?”
“What’s up with everyone callin’ me sir? Yes, Foxtrot, after you breach the door, step out of the way and reattach the bayonet before following us in.”
“But why? I have a shotgun.”
“I don’t want you wasting any more ammo than needed. Ever heard the motto, ‘conservation is survival?’”
“N-no?”
“Then let’s get on with it already. Breach the door!”
She closed her eyes and pulled the trigger. The recoil blasted her back to the day she first fired her father’s shotgun. It felt scarily similar, beyond just déjà-vu. The grip, the stock, the way it kicked her back like a mule, it was the exact same sensation. Even the sound was a perfect replica. Was it even a replica? It had the same smell of smoking gunpowder, the same scent of refined gun oil along the bolt, even the same fresh beeswax polishing the hand-crafted wooden stock and forearm. Could it be that this was her father’s gun?
“Foxtrot! Get outta the way!” Eric was forced to push her inanimate body out from in front of the door as he moved to kick it down. He charged in, revolver drawn. The few warehouse workers inside scrambled inside for cover behind various bits of machinery and conveyor belts. The Pretty Penny Pincher followed in suit, brandishing his trusty, but inadequately small, knife. Laura was next, meekishly wielding a two-shot derringer she had only fired a handful of times. Last came in Flores, carefully sweeping the room with the sights on her shotgun exactly how her father taught her to.
“Woah, woah, woah, amigos!” A man wearing a comically large sombrero appeared from the manager’s office. “Are you here to inspect muy maravilloso almacén? I assure you, inspectores, all of our workers are safe and clean.” His accent was almost stereotypical yet genuine as if he were simply exaggerating.
Flores was the first to speak up. “Do health inspectors typically barge in and point guns at your heads?”
“Ah, sí! Happened last week, in fact.”
“Well, ah-mee-goh,” Eric enunciated mockingly, “We’re not here to dig through your trash. Unless you put our guy in there!”
“You come looking for men? The red-light district is a few miles away.”
“No, you’ve got a man that goes by Charlie, right? Or do I have to spell it out to you?” Eric threateningly aimed his revolver at the man in the sombrero.
“Oh! You must be that comedic Texan pendejo that guy was screaming about. Yeah, he kinda annoying. Sorry, he no here right now.” Abruptly, a doorbell rang and the feud was put on hold. “Hold on, lemme get it.”
The man moved to a different entrance across the warehouse. The various workers were still cowering as several armed guards moved into position. They were all dressed in various colors of Hawaiian shirts under equally colorful puffy jackets. In addition to the colorful attire, the guards wore khaki cargo pants brimming with hidden danger. Shades concealed their eyes while bandanas hid their faces and foreheads.
Each one bore anything from a pistol, shotgun, or even a machete.
“They have a doorbell?” Flores asked Eric. “Then why didn’t we ring it?”
“You’re just too innocent,” Eric simply shook his head with a chuckle.
Meanwhile, Laura was having difficulty restraining the Pretty Penny Pincher.
“Unhand me and let my blade do as it yearns!” He was rapidly stabbing at the air in front of him while Laura was trying desperately to drag him away.
“P-please, sir. M-maybe we can get out w-without fighting? Eep!” Laura squealed in fear as she saw one of the larger guards growl and crack his knuckles. This particular guard was dressed in a professional teal suit, unlike the others.
“Just like Echo,” Eric remarked. He suddenly shoved Flores to go assist Laura in keeping the madman contained. The two struggled to drag him far enough away that he no longer threatened to spark a conflict on the spot.
Eventually, the man with the sombrero reappeared with a teenage girl and a little boy in tow. The kid was silenced by fear. He looked about three seconds away from bursting into tears and yet he contained it all. He tightly clung onto the uncaring arm of his big sister.
“Can’t you just take him?” the teenager complained, “You cartel guys traffic people all the time!”
“Look, missy, we can’t just take him-”
“I don’t care. Just sell him off to a factory in Mexico or something. I need my fix!”
The man with the sombrero sighed before grabbing the little brother's hand and taking him to his side. He then snapped his fingers and one of the workers approached the three presenting a small metal can.
“Here.” The man in the sombrero practically threw the small can into the waiting girl’s arms. “Take your sap and come back with some actual dinero next time.”
“And a good day to you too!” the girl huffed in selfish frustration as she stormed out the door.
“Sorry, niño.” The man in the sombrero knelt down beside him. “By your own hermana, no less. Sometimes, the world can be cruel like that. Here, go with Big Jim over there and tell him the phone number of your parents. You can wait with him in the lounge for your parents to get here while I deal with some other visitors of mine.”
The little boy nodded nervously and he headed towards the big man that had intimidated Laura. The big man gently took the little boy’s hand, and the two disappeared deeper into the warehouse.
“Anyways,” the man in the sombrero turned back towards the Lone Star crew and smiled. “You’re not going to fire a bullet in the presence of an abandoned little child, are you now? Now get lost!”
Unauthorized reproduction: this story has been taken without approval. Report sightings.
“Unlucky,” Flores noted coldly. She wasn’t sure if it was directed at their current predicament or the child or both. She nudged Eric and joked, "Just a milk run, you said."
"Dagnabbit…" ” Eric grumbled before taking an aggressive stance once more. “We’re not leaving until we get Charlie back! No comprende? Ah-mee-goh?”
“¡Agh! ¿Qué hay contigo gringo molestas?” The man spoke in perfect Spanish.
“Huh?”
“I said…” The man went back to his stereotypical accent. “Why are you American dogs always so annoying!? You’re lucky I don’t want to fire a bullet either!”
“I know you're faking that accent,” Flores confronted him, “Why do it?”
“Ah, of course, the only smart one of the gaggle of clowns doesn’t keep her mouth shut. Say another word…” He pointed at her eyes. “¡Sacaré tus ojos y te los daré de comer! So keep your mouth shut!”
Flores continued to stare him down.
“Welp, I’ve had my fix.” The man lazily stretched his arms as he went back to his office. “I’m gonna go take my siesta now. ¡Guardia, cuídalos!”
The guards, in response, moved up to form an intimidating line.
“Well shit,” Eric cursed as he lowered his revolver. “Shoulda expected such slimy tactics from the Los Rubios cartel.”
“Wait.” Flores’s ears perked up. “That’s who they are?”
“If you couldn’t tell by that stupid hat.”
As tempting as it was to riposte by pointing out what sat upon Eric’s head, Flores was more focussed on something else. She weighed her options carefully. On the one hand, attempting to fight them was not only suicidal but amoral all things considered. On the other hand, this is the same cartel that set her up to be jailed. She didn’t know which moral weight outweighed the other. Was it just to let one man in the present suffer for the potential future of another? Was it just to disguise one’s own revenge for another’s? All she knew was that the growing embers sparked from such conflict were calling and it was up to her to either fan the flames or smother them. She could bide her time and wait, but such an opportunity to strike could quickly disappear. There was a piece of advice one of the nice older inmates gave her that felt fitting. “You and that logical mind of yours will leave you behind, coughin’ up other’s dust,” the old lady said to her. “Always thinking and analyzing. Never acting until it's too late. You need to see that there’s a time and place when emotions should spur you forth. But never overdo it. That’s how some of those around you ended up here.” Flores always found it contradictory, as to her, a person is either always a critical overthinker or a brash hothead. Even with that advice, she remained indecisive on what to do. She took inspiration from a man she had been fortunate enough to run into.
“Eric, sir,” she asked gently, “Do you have a coin?”
“What’s with the-? Nevermind. Yeah, I do.” He reached into his pockets and dug around for spare change. He handed her a penny which she took with her free hand. The other hand held the shotgun.
“Ooh~! Is that a 1972 penny?” The Pretty Penny Pincher cooed at its sight., completely distracted from the vague gestures of knife waving he was doing before.
“Heads, we leave. Tails, we retrieve Charlie,” she quickly explained in a whisper as she placed the coin on top of her clenched thumb.
“You’re gonna let a coin flip decide whether or not we walk out unscathed? There’s more of them than there are us,” Eric objected in a hushed voice.
“You came here for a bit of payback. You drove all the way out here. What’s stopping us now?”
“You know this is only one group of them? The rest are gonna hunt us down.”
“Then what say you, boss? We leave and let Charlie die or do we do what we came here for?”
“I’m sensing that you ain’t doin’ just this for Charlie.”
“Right, you are…”
“And to think you were worried about having to kill before,” Eric scoffed.
“I hope not to settle this in a gunfight. But when push comes to shove…”
“You really are living up to your last name. Fickle, like Lady Luck herself. But why use a measly penny to decide?”
“It’s the most honest thing in this room.”
“Alrighty then. I got the heads of the ones bearing arms. You and the others go for the ones bearing teeth.” Eric placed his hand on his holster in anticipation while acquiring his targets. He observed three prime candidates with a glint in his eye. Laura noticed that familiar movement and nudged the Pretty Penny Pincher. He had been busying himself by attempting to put on one of the aprons lying on the floor. Seeing what was about to happen, his eyes lit up as he prepared his stance. Flores flipped it into the air. The coin somersaulted in the air as the members of the Lone Star Office held their collective breaths. The coin landed back in the palm of her hand, just as she suspected it would.
“Tails,” she called out. One of the Los Rubios members grabbed what appeared to be a CD player. He pressed the play button and the room filled with unfitting salsa music before the barrage of gunfire drowned it out. Eric quickly silenced most of them by proving his words true. In one swift motion, he dropped three Los Rubios members with three well-placed shots. They fell to the ground from the force of each bullet impacting their body armor. The one downside of using such a high-caliber magnum round was that while its force was great, its velocity and thus penetration wasn’t. Their soft body armor had turned what would have been a lethal blow into a still life-threatening one but certainly survivable. Two of the remaining ranged members with pistols both aimed at Flores. She could see down the barrel of one of the member’s guns. Terrified, she instinctively pulled the trigger while hastily aiming. Of course, the shot sailed cleanly in between the two. Flores had to plant her right foot back in order to stop herself from toppling over from the recoil. While it had not done any damage to people, it did hit something vital. The sound of escaping gas drew the attention of the two members. The source was a hole carved by the heavy shotgun slug through several gas canisters used in the manufacturing processes of the warehouse. While each was mostly inert individually, a highly volatile concoction was created when the gasses mixed in the air. Hearing the distinct sound, the man in the sombrero rushed out of his office. His nose was met with the familiar and daunting smell.
“Don’t shoot, you cabróns-!” He yelled in panic, but one of his men had already fired. First, there was one loud bang as the bullet went flying. Then, there was an even larger explosion as the gas ignited followed by angry screams and curses. “¡Puta madres! ¡Mierda, mierda! ¡La mercancía! ¡Obtener un extinguidor de incendios, pronto!”
The fire alarm blared loudly as the water sprinklers above activated. The water raining down wasn’t enough to smother the fire. All of the workers began running around in panic as they searched for something to help put out the raging fire rapidly spreading towards the stockpile of manufactured and packaged drugs. A few managed to grab fire extinguishers and the sounds of them spraying added to the chaos.
“Aaahh!” Laura screamed. She clutched her shoulder as she struggled to keep herself on two feet. She was hit by the bullet that sparked the flames. Blood ran down her left arm in an eerily similar way to how it ran down Nick’s.
“Laura!” Eric retaliated by executing the one who fired the bullet with two of his own. The last round exited his revolver and through the heart of the Los Rubio member. The others quickly drew their aim and prepared to avenge their fallen brethren.
“¡Ignora a esos tipos! ¡Apaga el fuego, primero!,” the man in the sombrero ordered, “ Nos ocuparemos de ellos más adelante.”
The cartel members went from attempting to hose down the Lone Star Office crew with bullets to attempting to hose down the flame with whatever water they could find. The fire had reached the stockpile of strange drugs and produced a strange purple and green flame. Mixed with the yellow flames, this gave a strangely Mardi Gras theming to the unfolding disaster. Eric turned his attention towards Laura. He managed to catch her before she fell to the ground. Flores noticed that the Pretty Penny Pincher had disappeared, but bothered not to investigate. There were far more pressing matters.
“Those bastards! Laura, where’d they get you?” Eric attempted to search for the wound by removing Laura’s hand. He found the bullet had struck near the deltoids of the upper arm.
“Don’t take her hand off the wound,” Flores advised as she rushed towards their aid. The bullet had barely missed any critical artery and left only a small entry wound. Flores had no clue how bad the wound was, but she had read of people surviving worse. Perhaps the streak of misfortune was finally broken. “Help her press down firmly.”
“I know how to dress a wound! Just-” Eric took a breath to calm down. “Sorry. Meet me back in the van. I know this is a lot to thrust onto a new recruit but go find Charlie and the straggler in the meantime. But please, I'd rather you retreat back in one piece than die trying!”
"I'll do what I can, sir."
"Call for help, and I'll send lead their way. Don't get yourself killed!"
Flores nodded before rushing back towards the chaos. She could briefly hear Eric say something to Laura.
"I told you, you should've kept on the body armor!"
"I-I'm sorry! I-I thought it was t-too heavy!" Laura whimpered.
"Just hang in there. I promise I won't let this happen to you again."
As Flores ran past bits of warehouse machinery, one of the members armed with dual machetes stood in her way to stop her. She didn’t notice him until he was less than four feet away, leaving Flores with no time to line up a shot. So instead, she held the shotgun up to defend herself as the machetes swung down. The impact nearly knocked her to the ground. She was forced back as the man began to effortlessly overpower her. She let one hand go from her shotgun as she reached for her taser. The man did the same with one of his machetes as he prepared to finish off Flores’s crumbling defense. She pulled the trigger on the taser, but it malfunctioned and ended up zapping her instead.
“Grzzt!” Flores tensed up as the current from the battery shocked her. Her waning hope shattered as the man smacked her blocking shotgun aside as if it weighed nothing. Before the man’s machete could connect with Flores’s exposed arms, her convulsions caused her to pull the trigger of the shotgun. The recoil sent her jerking out of the way of the oncoming blade, miraculously dodging what would have been a nasty gash. The shotgun slug struck one of the pipes for the fire suppression system on the wall. A high-pressure spray of water slammed into the man’s face, causing him to step forward and out of the way as he tried to wipe his face off. The water died down as an automatic shut-off valve activated upon detecting the sudden drop in pressure.
Flores managed to regain control of her convulsing body. She placed the useless taser back into her pockets as she looked around for something else to use. The man circled in for the kill as Flores kept her distance. She bumped into a table in the process. Conveniently, there was a set of empty beakers that were a part of a chemistry workstation on said table. She hastily grabbed one and lobbed at the man’s face. The man raised his arm up as the glass shattered against his machete. This momentary diversion gave Flores enough time for Flores to lunge forward and strike him with the shotgun’s stock. The blow hardly fazed the man. She flipped the shotgun and made a downward diagonal slash through his armored vest. The tip of the blade cut through the clothes and skin but not the flesh underneath. The man remained standing. He was beginning to recover his senses as he lifted his machete into the air. Fear, and her brief life since waking up in a dumpster flashing before her, forced an instinctive reaction from deep within. She tensed her finger enough to blindly fire the shotgun. The slug grazed the man's ear and hit the fluorescent lights hanging from the ceiling. The entire assembly swung wildly before the wires supporting it snapped. The man was holding his hand against his ringing and injured ears as the light fixture landed right on his head. The man finally tumbled to the ground.
Flores gasped as she carefully stepped around the broken debris from the light fixture. Her luck must have felt pity for once and decided to finally show some mercy. That mercy lasted less than a second as pain suddenly shot through her leg. A secondary explosion resulting from a crate of cheaply-made, black-market ammunition cooking off nearby sent a mixture of metal and wooden shrapnel into her right leg. She cried in pain. She had no time to deal with the splinters as more Los Rubios members were bound to be closing in. There was no cover beside the hallway she was heading towards. She turned on her heel and took aim with her shotgun, but couldn’t acquire a clear target. The smoke from the fires had clouded the room so severely, it was impossible to see anyone. She waited for one of them to fire and reveal their position with their muzzle flash. It turns out, she didn’t need to wait as the hail of blind fire peppered around her. She fended off the advancing foes with careful shots toward the flashes. Each time the shotgun slammed into her shoulder, an unwanted sense of thrill arose. She almost took joy in firing it over and over again as bullets whizzed past. Her strategy wasn’t very effective lethality-wise, but it was effective at suppressing and forcing the Los Rubios members behind cover. When one of them did fall, she hoped that they would be able to get up after all the smoke cleared. It wasn’t enough to stave off the guilt gradually plaguing her conscience. The shotgun had finally run dry, so she disengaged from her shooting posture, turned around, and fled as fast as she could. She let the pain and adrenaline from the shrapnel wounds propel her forward while hastily loading more shotgun shells into her weapon. The sound of Eric’s revolver broke the silence of Flores’s shotgun. He was covering her advance. Eric’s surprise attack convinced all of Flores’s pursuers to cut their chase short.
“¡Oigan todos! ¡Apaga el fuego, idiotas!” Whatever the man in the sombrero had said completely dismantled the Los Rubios members’ interest in fighting the Lone Star Office. Flores limped deeper into the warehouse.
----------------------------------------
There was a freezer room located near the rear loading bay. A thick metal door barred Flores from entering. She slung the shotgun over her shoulder and put her hands on the locking lever. She struggled to move the locking mechanism but eventually managed to unlock the door. As it opened, strange psychedelic music seeped from the crack. Inside were several shelves of various boxes and a music player next to a chair in the middle.
“A-ah-!” The recoil from what Flores saw sitting on that chair forced her to take a step back. “W-wha…?”
The very bloodied, frozen, mutilated corpse of a man sat tied upon the chair. The man no longer had a recognizable face, just blobby red flesh roughly resembling a human head. Around his neck hung a lanyard with an ID card in it. Sure enough, the man was Charlie of the Lone Star Office. His sky-blue suit was in tatters with several slash wounds all over his body. He was missing an arm and a leg, but Flores quickly spotted them on one of the shelves next to several open cans similar to the one that the man in the sombrero had given to that teenager. His other hand was turned into a mush of blood, sinew, and torn skin. A bloody box cutter was stabbed through his neck as a last insult. It was evident that Charlie had been tortured to death with strangely upbeat music accompanying his demise. But judging from the severity of his wounds, he could not have survived long. Unless…
“Is that?” Flores spotted a discarded pile of empty syringes scattered about the floor. She picked one of them up and read the label. “Adrenaline?”
The man had been kept alive for an unknown amount of time until his eventual, highly painful death. Flores retched at the mere thought. A wave of nausea hit her similar to the Nutripaste she had to endure in prison. She could feel the disgust and bile bubbling in her stomach. “Maybe I should have just killed them… Urp-”
She located a nearby bucket to puke in. She stopped before she could as she noticed something inside. A very blood-drenched cell phone, wallet, and the same Brintec taser she carried. Those must have been Charlie’s personal items. Strangely, all of the items looked uncannily familiar, especially the wallet. It even contained a photograph of a very familiar man. Scared, Flores looked back at the chair to see the man’s head completely missing. His clothes were replaced with hers. As she approached to read the nametag, the name had changed from Charlie to Foxtrot.
“Huh? Wha-!?” Her breathing quickened as her hand rushed up to cover her mouth. She swallowed down the disgust. The taste of bile and sick coated her mouth. Her eyes searched the room for any answer as to what was going on. She could tell her sanity was slipping. She needed to escape. Her eyes turned to the door that was still open as she rushed towards it. She burst through the threshold and ran as far as she could until she tripped. She hurtled towards the safe comfort of the ground while cowering. Slowly, she looked back at the freezer room. Inside, Charlie was still there. She noticed an odd odorless vapor floating slightly above the ground. She suspected that it was a gaseous hallucinogenic.
“Those monsters…” A new mission sprung up into her mind. She sprinted back the way she came.
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The fire was unable to be contained at this point.
“What do we do, El Jefe?” one of the Los Rubios members shouted over the commotion.
“Aieee! Save as much of the goods as you can!” El Jefe screamed. By now, he was frantically waving around his sombrero in panic. “Each crate is worth more than your miserable lives!”
“Okay, El Jefe!”
Flores managed to sneak past them all and followed where she saw Big Jim and the little boy go. She stumbled across the break room. From the door, she could hear screams and commotion inside. Worried, she barged through the door only to find the boy completely unharmed. Big Jim was sitting next to him on the floor in front of a small TV set. Both of them had a controller in their hands and were playing some sort of brutal fighting video game that Flores couldn’t recognize.
“Nice moves,” Big Jim complimented. He fist-bumped the kid. “Where’d you learn ‘em?”
“I had a big bro once,” the boy replied, “He showed me.”
Flores couldn’t even hear the chaos brewing in the main area of the warehouse from within the break room. No wonder they were still here playing games. “Hey, you two. There’s a fire in the warehouse. You might wanna evacuate, just sayin’.”
“Alright. We can settle this some other day.” Big Jim went to turn off the game console they were playing on. He unplugged it from the wall and placed it neatly into a box along with the controllers. He turned towards the boy. “You’ve got potential for the big leagues. You could make some serious money in that scene.”
The boy nodded.
“If you can get out of Maine, all you’d need would be a sponsor and you’re set,” Big Jim explained.
“I’ll be sure to remember you if I make it.”
“Thanks, kid. I reckon your parents should be around here by now. I asked them to park far so she wouldn’t have to see all this. I’ll walk with ya to her.”
“Okay.” The boy smiled as he followed Big Jim out the door. As Big Jim passed Flores, he stepped right on her foot. She was pretty sure she heard a crunch as an insurmountable level of pain shot up her leg. Big Jim didn’t even notice and kept moving right along. Once the two were out of earshot, Flores crumpled to the ground while clutching her foot, crying, groaning, and writhing in pain. Somehow, she had been unlucky enough for the same foot that had been struck by a falling wrench to be stepped on by a living giant.
“W-why!? C-curse my name!” She rolled around the floor for a solid few seconds as the pain dullened. “Curse my damn last na-a-ame!”
She forced herself up and dragged herself toward the direction Big Jim and the kid were heading. Of course, it was an emergency fire escape.
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Flores’s head was pounding. She had made it out into the alleyway behind the warehouse. All of this action combined with the nearly three hours spent walking around left her completely exhausted. The smell didn’t help either. Everything reeked of industrial chemicals and burning fumes from the warehouse. Her legs were ready to give in to gravity. She steadied herself against an electrical box. She was just about to breathe a sigh of relief when the sound of footsteps fast approaching alerted her far too late of the appearance of another assailant.
“Aha! Gotcha!” She was quickly put into a stranglehold and felt something metallic brush against her neck. The shotgun she held clattered to the ground. After the initial wave of surprise and panic, she realized that the mugger was holding a kitchen knife backward so the flat edge was pointed at her. He also had a pretty poor grip on her as after a swift kick to the mugger’s leg, she broke free. “Argh! My shins!”
She quickly spun around to face her mugger only to realize the familiar smell of pennies.
“Wait a minute. The Pretty Penny Pincher? Is that you?” she confronted him.
“Huh?” The man was shocked at having his identity found. “ Uhh… N-no…?”
She took one more sniff and smelled the familiar smell of the bakery she and Nick had visited.
“Jeremiah?”
“Ack! W-who are you!? And how do you know my name? Where’d you abduct me!?” The man regained his attack stance and pointed the knife at her. It was still upside down. She cautiously sniffed him again to confirm the connection.
“First off, I did not abduct you. In fact, you came here willingly. Secondly, you’re holding your knife upside down.”
“Am I?” He looked down to confirm that he in fact was. He fumbled with the knife until it was the right way up and pointed it back at Flores. By now, Flores had picked up her shotgun and countered his threat with her own. The bayonet tip hovered mere inches away from his chest. “W-woah!? Where’d ya get that? Oddly, I feel inadequate now…”
“Christ, you really don’t remember, do you?” Not seeing many options, Flores decided to play along. She prodded the man gently and ordered, “Just follow me.”
“You won’t shoot me? That would’ve been poetic.”
“Eh? Why would I-? Just follow me if you want your head on your shoulders.”
“I prefer a more avant-garde saying. Maybe try, ‘If you want not to become only a bust.’”
“What? How do you act so nonchalant when someone has a gun in your face?”
“Because I know you won’t shoot an innocent baker without robbing him first. So when’s that happening? I can tell you the code to my fridge if that helps.”
“I’m not here to mug you. How many times do I have to repeat myself?”
“Oh?” The man was in thought for a few seconds before continuing. “Then are you to enact punishment on me for breaking one of the Rhodes Family’s unspoken rules?”
“Who’s rules?”
“You know, the Rhodes Family? Are you not one of their silent enforcers?”
“I genuinely have no idea who or what you are talking about.”
Jeremiah almost dropped the knife in disbelief. “How do you not know of the-”
“I was locked behind bars for half a year. I’m not a clairvoyant!”
“Fair enough, they only did worm their way out of the woodwork recently. Then where are you taking me, miss?”
Flores sighed. “You’ll find out when you get there.”
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She led him all the way around the warehouse to where the van was parked. A few employees of the warehouse were standing around bickering with each other about why they stored the chemicals the way they did. She could only understand about half of the Spanish gibberish spewing out of their irate mouths. She noticed the absence of the Los Rubios members and most notably the man in the sombrero. They appeared in an armored pickup truck rushing away from the scene down the road with crates stacked in the back. A convoy of a few larger trucks followed closely behind. Shortly after they left, firefighters arrived on scene. They set to work on putting out the raging fire before it spread to the other buildings in the area. Meanwhile, a familiar-looking man in a navy blue suit was questioning Eric. The book he held was bound in leather and thick enough to be considered a codex or a tome. It looked aged but it was hard to tell whether that was a naturalistic result or a stylistic choice. The words, “Regole e Castigo” were written on the spine in silver. Jeremiah became oddly pale at the sight of the man.
“So this is a warehouse run by Los Rubios,” the man asked. His accent was a strange concoction of either a dash of Italian or a shot glass of Russian. Everything about him reeked of mafioso. From the fragrance of his expensive cologne, to the way he held his codex in one hand like a pastor, to the mobster fedora obscuring his eyes, he held an intimidating authority over the scene. He looked rather young to have such a prestigious position and such a sullen face.
“Yes sir, but they escaped a few seconds before you got here.”
“Hmpf. I’ll be sure to talk to them later for breaking the contract. Say, we’re a bit short on hand right now.” The man slipped a business card to Eric through an innocent-looking handshake. “I suspect we will be doing more business in the future.”
“The investigation aspect or the asset liquidation?”
“We’ll see. In any case, I will begin the search.” The man closed his codex and prepared to embark. “Oh, and while I extract your lost employee, don’t get in the way too much.”
“Isn’t that what sleuths are for?” Flores interrupted.
“Who is this?” the man asked.
“Oh thank the Lord you're alive! I was worried somethin' happened and you were still trapped in there." He briefly turned to the mafioso and explained, "This was my lost employee, by the way."
"Good," the mafioso replied, "The problem solved itself."
Eric looked back to Flores with a question. "I assume you didn't find ol’ Charlie boy alive considering he ain't with ya. Is he just missing?"
“He’s dead.” An extended silence passed. “You don’t want to see what they did to him.”
The mafioso opened his codex again and flipped a few pages before stopping. He cleared his throat before speaking, “My condolences. What exactly have they done to this man.”
“Even recollecting the scene made Flores feel sick.
“He’s missing an arm, a leg, and his hand is no longer a hand. His head was mutilated to the point where…” She trailed off when the macabre image reappeared in her mind. “...visceral is an understatement.”
“Elaborate?”
“Judging by the wounds, I’d say they hacked off his face with a knife or other blade. Not even recognizable.” The dissonance between the scene of stumbling across Charlie’s body and finding the boy perfectly fine with Big Jim returned the feeling of vitriolic disgust. Flores had to silently suppress her gag reflex again. Her anomalous fur hid the paleness spreading across her face.
Eric winced in anger at each word he heard. The man in navy blue kept his look of disdain.
“Mm-hmm. Continue.”
“I counted twenty-eight slashes across his body.”
“They went for overkill?”
“No, they kept him alive with adrenaline. There were multiple used syringes scattered around his body. They were also using some sort of airborne hallucinogenic and playing a strange song I’ve never heard.”
“Mm-hmm.” The man read his codex a bit further before responding. “Liable to a two-month embargo. And this was done to the man you were searching for? Charlie?”
“Yes sir. He was one of my employees,” Eric answered while keeping his composure. Underneath, he was ready to boil over.
“Hmm…" The man shut his codex closed. "Make sure you keep in contact if you want anything to be done about it.” The man left shortly after to inspect the site of the fire.
“Eric?” Flores could tell the loss of Charlie hit him hard even if he did not want to show it.
He simply sighed and respectfully held his hat against his chest. “Let’s pack up here… We'll make sure his death wasn't in vain on a later day. Oh they'll reap what they sowed, alright…” He returned his hat back on his head and boarded the van.
“We need to get Laura medical attention, first.” Strangely, Eric referred to her by her actual name.
“How is she doing right now?“ Flores worried that her bad luck might return.
“The wound’s patched up. It’s not that bad, but she still needs treatment.”
Apparently, the details must have clicked in Jeremiah’s mind as out of nowhere, he exclaimed, “Oh! That means that- Egads!”
“Eh?” Flores eyed him a confused look.
“I must’ve done it again. Drats! I thought I could-”
“What are you babbling about, son?” Eric questioned.
“Nevermind. I do apologize that I got myself into this mess.” Jeremiah bowed as if that would help clarify matters.
“You’ve got a lot of explaining to do, son. How ‘bout we all just get in the van already.”