CHAPTER THREE-1
2258 Words
CHAPTER THREE
Alexa woke up. The haze from the painkillers the EMTs had given her had begun to wear off. Dull pain laced down her left arm and her ribs were a constant ache. Several lesser pains reminded her of just how much a***e she had taken.
At least the painkillers still dulled it some. She should rest while she still could …
No!
Alexa’s eyes snapped open. She lay in a hospital bed of starched white linen, staring at the equally blank white wall. A clock on the wall said three p.m.
Drake had been on the loose for three hours. She had to help hunt him down!
She sat up, wincing at the pain in her side. An IV drip was attached to her arm. She began to fiddle with it.
“And what the hell do you think you’re doing?” A hefty Black nurse demanded, stomping into the room. She had a tray of food in her hands, which she set on the bedside table before slapping Alexa’s hands away from the IV.
“Don’t touch that!” she said.
“I need to get out of here,” Alexa said.
“You need to lie back and rest. I brought you some lunch. Now that you’re awake you should eat something.
“I don’t have time to eat, I—”
“Relax,” the nurse ordered as she gently but firmly pushed Alexa back into the pillows.
Alexa lay there, the fight momentarily taken out of her. Even the little effort she had expended had tired her out. The painkillers hadn’t worn off as much as she had thought, and her head was still fuzzy.
She would get out of here, but she needed to gather her strength first.
The nurse checked her vitals, plumped up her pillows, and swung the little table on the side of the bed around so the lunch tray was in front of Alexa.
“Do you want something for the pain?” she asked.
“No. I can take it.”
“All right, honey. Just push this red button here if you need me. Try to eat something.”
“I’m not hungry,” Alexa said without emotion. She hadn’t felt any emotion for a few hours. She felt like an empty shell. Gutted.
“Your body has been through some rough treatment. You need to keep up your strength.”
The image of Robert’s neck getting slashed open like a slaughtered hog’s flashed through her mind. It had been the same movement—a quick, strong slice.
Back on the ranch, she’d made the same movement on animals countless times.
But Robert wasn’t an animal. He had been her mentor, her guide, her partner, and one of the best friends she ever had.
If I tried to eat right now, I’d puke all over these nice clean sheets.
Alexa didn’t bother telling the nurse that. She was unstoppable. A bit like her.
The nurse swung the side table on its moveable arm to put it in front of Alexa.
“Eat. Doctor’s orders.”
“You’re not a doctor,” Alexa grumbled.
“Fine. Nurse’s orders. Don’t you know nurses really run things in hospitals? Doctors are too busy examining people’s insides and flirting with interns.”
“I’m not hungry.”
The nurse put her hands on her hips. “I didn’t believe that the first time. Eat.”
Alexa grunted and picked up her plastic fork, pushing around some peas in one of the little containers on the tray. Besides the peas there was a mass of lumpy mashed potatoes, something that looked like a pork chop that made Alexa’s stomach roil, and a miniscule brownie.
She looked away.
“Eat.” The nurse ordered, then in a softer tone added, “Look, honey, I know you’ve been through a lot. This isn’t the way to react to it. You need to keep up your strength and move on.”
A little flare of anger burst through her numbness.
Move on? How the hell am I supposed to move on from seeing Robert killed?
Just then, Marshal Juan Hernandez, Alexa’s commander at the U.S. Marshal Service, walked in.
“Deputy Marshal Chase, I came as fast as I could,” he said in a breathless voice.
Marshal Hernandez was a stocky Mexican-American with a thick moustache that was going gray just like his close-cropped hair. Deep worry lines were permanently etched into his weathered face, courtesy of thirty years chasing down some of the region’s worst criminals. He was one of the toughest people Alexa had ever met in law enforcement, but he had a kind and supportive side too, especially with his younger officers.
“How are you?” he asked.
“Not eating,” the nurse interjected.
“Could you leave us for a moment please?” Marshal Hernandez asked.
“All right. But get her to eat.”
The nurse walked out. Alexa’s boss turned back to her.
“Deputy Marshal Powers. Alexa. I am so sorry. Robert was a good man. We’ve got every available person on this case.”
Alexa nodded. Of course he did.
Clearing her throat, she said, “The doctor said besides the bruised ribs and some cuts and bruises, I’m fine. They’re letting me out this afternoon.”
“That’s great. You go home and rest for a few days. Take all the time you need.”
Alexa sat up in bed, feeling like she had just been struck by lightning. “Go home and rest? I have to help with the manhunt!”
Marshal Hernandez shook his head. “No, Alexa. You were injured in the line of duty and your partner was killed in front of you. You need time to recuperate.”
“Drake is out there with a whole team of followers! He’s probably killed again already! He may have even crossed the border.”
“We have every available marshal on the case, plus the state troopers, local police departments, and we’re calling in the FBI. He won’t stay free for long.”
“Unless he gets to Mexico.”
“Border Patrol is keeping an eye out, and we have men posted at the usual coyote paths.”
“That won’t be good enough for a man like Drake,” Alexa grumbled.
There were countless secret routes through the desert, where the men known as coyotes guided illegals across the border. It was impossible to watch them all, or even know about them all.
And there was no reason those routes couldn’t run south as well as north.
“We’ll get him,” her boss repeated. “You have my word on that.”
And your word is gold. You won’t sleep until you get him. And you will get him. Maybe. And how many innocent people will die between then and now?
“Check the files we assembled from the case,” Alexa said, wincing when she said “we.” There was no longer a “we.” Robert was gone. They’d never work together or talk together or laugh together again. “We have a list of all his known associates.”
Hernandez nodded. “We’re already on that. That was the first thing we did.”
“CSI find anything in the prison van?”
“A couple of hairs that might be from the suspects. We’re running a match on all prisoners and staff who have used the van recently to cut out anyone not associated with the attack.”
“Check out the back-road compounds in the area. He might have gone to ground in one of them. Although he’s probably shifted to another by now.”
“We’re doing all that, Deputy Marshal Chase.”
The switch back to her title showed that her boss was losing patience. She had been telling him to do things that were standard procedure, like she was lecturing a rookie.
Alexa paused, then said, “Sorry. I just feel helpless here.”
“It’s all right. I got shot in the line of duty back in ’98. Threw me for a loop. It happens to all of us.”
Alexa looked up at him. She’d heard about that fight, an epic shootout between two U.S. Marshals and five narcotraffickers armed with AK-47s. Hernandez and his partner had won. The fight had made national headlines, and made their careers.
But while that story had taken on the nature of a legend among the U.S. Marshals, told to every rookie and repeated often on long trips or at staff barbeques, she had never heard him mention it.
He looked her in the eye. “It’s tough sitting around doing nothing when the bad guys have hurt you. I know that. But you’re injured and you’re traumatized and you need to take some time off. After I got out of the hospital I went and saw my cousins in Juarez. Smartest thing I could have done.”
“I need to get back on the case.”
“No you don’t,” Hernandez said patiently. “You need to rest.” His face cracked into a weak imitation of a smile. “And you need to eat, or that nurse will kick your a*s. Mine too. Take as much time as you need. I have to go now. The office is a madhouse, as you can imagine.”
“All right,” Alexa said.
“Take care. You need to work through what happened. We all do. For you, the best thing to do is to take some time off.”
He moved to the door, then hesitated.
“Do you have any idea why Drake let you live?” he said this in an almost apologetic tone, then quickly added. “It just seems strange, considering his history.”
Alexa shook her head, guilt washing over her as the images of her partner and the two dead prison guards flashed through her mind.
“I don’t know,” she whispered.
“Did he say anything to you? Give any indication why you were spared?”
“I offered myself as a hostage if he spared Rob. He said no, saying if he took me as a hostage, I couldn’t play the game. I couldn’t grow.”
“What the hell is that supposed to mean?” Marshal Hernandez said, shaking his head. “What a nut. I’ll keep you posted.”
Marshal Hernandez tipped his hat to her and walked out of the room.
We’ll see about that, Alexa thought.
Alexa started counting to a hundred, knowing that her boss would be out of the building by then. She could imagine him hurrying down to his vehicle and speeding off to get back into the manhunt.
A good man, and a good officer of the law, but nobody knew more about Drake than her. She needed to be leading this case, not him.
And she would, once she got to a hundred.
* * *
Alexa made her way painfully down to her car, which a fellow agent had brought to the hospital in Tucson where she had been recovering, and headed north on Interstate 10. She managed to dodge the bossy nurse and the security guards, who didn’t think anything of a bandaged woman as long as she was wearing civilian clothes. They must have assumed she had just been released.
Alexa had been released. She had released herself.
Usually she hated driving the Interstate. It was no way to see the desert she loved, lined as it was with towns and truck stops and billboards, which she and her friends not-so-affectionately called “garbage on a stick.”
She had to get to her files in her home office. She had several boxes of information on Drake piled up in her office closet, including a long list of all known associates.
Maybe among them she could find the men and women who helped set him free.
Plus she felt an urge to get the hell out of Tucson and back home. Away from the city. Away from people. Peace.
Peace eluded her the entire two hours up the highway as she risked an awkward chat with the Highway Patrol as she floored it at 80 mph, weaving in between commuters and eighteen-wheelers.
Robert Powers was dead, and Drake Logan was on the loose.
Even though she had seen it all with her own eyes, the images seared into her memory forever, she had trouble grasping it.
Still weaving through traffic, she cursed Hernandez for not letting her get back on the job. She and Powers were the ones who had caught Drake, after all. They’d spent months poring over the evidence, interviewing witnesses, associates, and the rare survivor of his killing spree.
If anyone could track that animal down, it was her.
In fact, she and Powers had been the best U.S. Marshals team in the region. Over the past eight years since he had recruited her, they had tracked down escaped prisoners, d**g traffickers, arms dealers, and white supremacists. And they had always got their man.
And women. She’ll never forget the case of Martha Lawrence—a graying, bespectacled schoolteacher who lived a double life of trafficking underage girls for p**********n. Human evil knew no gender, no race, and no age. Powers had told her that on her first day on the job and, later, experience sure taught Alexa that was true.
- Writer
