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“Agent Fuentes?”
“That’s me. You must be East Wolfkill,” he said, extending his hand. East nodded, giving a firm handshake. “You’re a fucking big bastard. A little hard to be undercover when you’re that big.”
“I don’t do undercover,” said East. “That’s your job. I’m here to find out what you have on Sutton.”
“Probably more than you’d like to know. He was a piece of shit when he was dealing with Ramos, but since his disappearance…”
“Death. His death,” said East. The man eyed him suspiciously and then nodded.
“Okay. Since his death, Sutton is acting like he’s the emperor of Rome. We know he’s got women stashed somewhere, but for the life of us, we can’t find them. He runs a ring of high-dollar prostitutes that draw men in from Arizona, New Mexico, Nevada, California, Texas, and Mexico. Hell, we found a guy a few weeks ago that flew in from Hungary. Said he’d been in town a few months back and had the best night of his life,” he smirked.
“He doesn’t seem to care who’s watching or what we get on him. He truly believes he’ll get off no matter what, which leads us to believe some of his ‘customers’ are law enforcement or government officials. He gets away with everything. We’re fairly certain he killed his only daughter years ago.”
“He did. More or less.” The man eyed him suspiciously, then frowned at him, shaking his head.
“You know, Wolfkill, for this little relationship to work, you need to share information with me as well. DEA is in charge of this investigation, and it’s my understanding that you’re here to help.”
“First, don’t use my last name openly again. It’s just East. Second, I’m a retired fucking Green Beret. We don’t have a relationship. I’m here to stop Sutton. Something that you haven’t been able to do on your own. And third, you’re in charge of your investigation, but my op runs simultaneously. For all I know, you’re working with Sutton.”
The smaller man stood, shoving the chair back as he fisted his hands against the table.
“Please,” said East, shaking his head. “Don’t even think about it. I don’t want to hurt you, and I don’t want to be an asshole, but I’m here to settle a debt. One that Sutton started more than ten years ago. I have no beef with you and the DEA, and I won’t stand in the way of your investigation. But I will find this man, and I will either bring him in or do him in.”
“And you’re doing this all on your own, Superman?”
“Fuck no. I’ve got a whole damn army supporting me.”
“A whole army, huh?” he eyed him strangely, then shoved a folder toward him. “These are copies of everything I’m allowed to give you. Please don’t argue with me. My boss wouldn’t allow me to give you anything else.”
“Do you suspect he’s in on this?”
“Honestly? I have no fucking clue. I’m afraid to speak with anyone down here. El Paso could be a nice town, but it’s not. Almost seven hundred thousand people. Great elevation, making it cool in the evenings, scorching in the day. Drugs and women have been trafficked in and out of here for decades, and everyone seems to look the other way. It’s easy to walk across that mountain or through that river and get what you want. Too easy. We are eighty-one percent Hispanic, East. You’d better speak Spanish.”
East just nodded, working his way through the documents in front of him.
“Listen, I get that this is some sort of a vendetta for you, but for the rest of us, it’s our job. I’ve been here three years. Three very long years trying to nail Sutton on something, and yet nothing comes up that will stick. I have a wife and daughter that I moved back to Pennsylvania to live with her parents so that Sutton couldn’t use them against me. I’m not even sure if my wife will take me back after all this time.
“The drugs will come and go, East. They’ll grow them, produce them, and someone will always sell them. We want that stopped, no doubt. But what really eats at me are the women that he forces into prostitution or sells. Women is a loose description.”
He pulled the folder back toward him, thumbing through the photos. Reaching between a few pages, he pulled out one with a little girl lying on a bed. The coroner had placed a sheet over her torso, bloodied and bruised by the man who paid for her time.
“She was nine, East. Nine. I’ve been with the DEA seventeen years. I’ve seen gang related crimes, organized crimes, you name it. But that photo, that one, is the one that haunts my dreams.”
East just stared at the broken, tormented face of a little girl lost too soon. Her hair had been put up in pigtails, tied with pink ribbons. She wore little white ankle socks with pink bows on them to match her hair. But some sick pervert used her as his plaything. And Sutton allowed it to happen.
“Where is he now?”
CHAPTER THREE
East booked a room at a small inn just outside the gates of the El Paso Zoo and Botanical Gardens. It was neat, clean, well maintained, and, more importantly, within running distance of Fort Bliss and of the Mexican border.
Fuentes was working with his informant to set up a meeting with Sutton. East’s cover story was that he’d just been released from prison in Georgia and was trying to make some money before he left the country. The team back home made sure his cover was rock solid, but you never knew if someone might recognize him. For East, it was three times as likely. They could mistake him for one of his brothers.
It wouldn’t matter. They were all the same. They’d shared the same ops, they’d shared their military experiences, and they shared the firefights. They were, without a doubt, one person in three different bodies.
With his binoculars, he looked out the window and across the highway, watching as people walked across the border at the Bridge of the Americas International Bridge. Thousands flooded through every day. Some were just looking for a safer life for themselves and their families. They were willing to do any job, for any amount of money, just to be out of Mexico or any one of the Central or South American countries.
Others were not so pious. They were criminals. Drug dealers, rapists, murderers, and terrorists. He was glad he didn’t have the job of figuring out which one was which.
