Chapter Twenty-Five
Chase
This was it. We stood at the edge of the park and waited for Ramos to come to us. The plan was simple. We would show Ramos the book I had stolen from Escabar. We would show him that he had names of police and FBI agents that he appeared to be meeting with and working with.
Ramos would go off and take care of Escabar for betraying their confidence, and we would get out of town and let things calm down a bit. The plan was simple – if everything went as we had planned.
“You stay back here, Jordan. There is no reason for you to come out here. Do you understand?”
“Yes,” she said.
I didn’t want her to get mixed up in the exchange with Ramos. If anything went wrong, I wanted her to be in an area where she could get out and get to safety.
“I’m serious. No matter what, don’t come out of here.”
“I heard you, Chase. I know. I’ll stay here. If anything happens to you, I’ll go straight to your father’s house. I’ve already got it programmed into my GPS.”
My plan seemed pretty bulletproof, but you just never knew what might happen. I didn’t want Jordan to get injured if Ramos decided to go after me. He didn’t even need to know she was there at all.
“Is that him?” she asked quietly as she pointed to a man with three others walking behind him.
“I think so. Stay here.”
I took a deep breath and started to walk toward Ramos on the other end of the park. I still had a feeling that we were being watched, but we hadn’t seen anyone around to prove that theory.
Slowly, I walked toward Ramos and tried to keep myself as calm as I could. I didn’t want to look like a total amateur, but I also didn’t want to look like some sort of professional. Ramos couldn’t be threatened by me, either. If he felt threatened by me, the whole plan wouldn’t work, at all.
“Mr. Foster, I hope this is really good information you have for me,” Ramos said as he stood in front of me.
I tried to decide if I should reach my hand out to shake his hand or not but decided to follow his lead and keep my hands in my jacket. It was dark outside, and I suspected at least one of the men behind him had their hand on a gun in their jackets. I did not have a gun. In fact, I had no way of protecting myself at all if Ramos decided he wanted to hurt me.
“I believe you will find my information very useful.”
“You better hope that I do,” he said to me.
Then, there was a noise coming from where I had left Jordan. We both looked back there, but it was too dark to see what was going on. I just hoped that she stayed where I told her to and didn’t come out.
“I stole a black book from Escabar because he threatened to kill me.”
“Yes, I heard about that. Stupid move, if I must say so myself.”
“Well, inside that book I happened to see that Escabar has been feeding information to the feds and had several contacts in there.”
Just then, there were footsteps behind me and we all turned to look.
It was Escabar with Jordan held in front of him. He had a gun to her head.
“Chase, I really thought you were smarter than this,” he said.
“Nice of you to finally join us, Jose,” Ramos said.
My heart sank. I had not planned on Ramos and Escabar working together. I didn’t expect that Ramos would have been fine with Escabar giving information to the police.
“You see, Chase, Ramos can understand the benefit of sharing information with the feds. Your little plan to sell me out didn’t really work now, did it?”
I couldn’t talk at all. I stood between Ramos and Escabar in disbelief over what was going on. Ramos didn’t strike me as the kind of man who would be willing to work with the feds on anything. I really had no idea what was going on.
“Let the girl go,” I finally managed to say.
“I followed you to the park when you met up with Salina and Salvador, Chase. I knew they would sell me out in a second. I decided to go straight to Ramos myself and tell him what I had been working on.”
“Jose, let the girl go. I have no use for her,” Ramos said.
“I don’t think we need her around anymore, and it would just kill Chase here to watch her get hurt,” Escabar taunted me.
My eyes locked on Jordan’s, and I knew I had to figure out a way out of the mess I had gotten us into. Somehow, I had to get her to safety.
“Chase, let me see the book you are talking about,” Ramos demanded.
I was in no spot to argue with him, so I reached into my pocket to hand him the book. But just as I was about to hand it to him, Escabar reached over and took it from me.
“I’ll take that,” he said.
“Jose, give me the book.”
“You already know what’s in there, why do you need the book?” Escabar replied.
Jordan and I were standing right between the two men as they argued over who was going to have it. I suspected that Escabar had not told Ramos exactly what was in it.
“I’m sure he’s just afraid you’ll see his notes about his plans to kill you and take over the organization,” I said firmly.
Escabar’s face turned pale as he started to back away from us. I hadn’t seen anything specifically saying that he had such a plan, but the look on his face made it seem like I had said something that was very true.
“Get him,” Ramos said to his three guys.
Escabar threw Jordan onto the ground and turned to start running away. He shot at the men as they chased him and the men shot back, ultimately striking Escabar. We saw him fall to the ground.
One of the men grabbed the black book from his hands and brought it back to deliver it to Ramos.
He flipped through the book for a minute and then turned his attention back to me. By that time, I had helped Jordan up and she stood near me in absolute terror as she trembled and held onto me.
“Why did you want him dead?” Ramos asked me.
“I didn’t want him dead. I just wanted out of his web.”
“Does anyone else know about this book?”
I was in no position to lie to Ramos. I figured the only way I would get out of the situation alive was going to be telling him the absolute truth.
“The Atlanta police know. I tried to go to them to protect me from Escabar. They refused and sent me away. Said I didn’t have enough evidence. They looked through that book, though, and I’m pretty sure they made a copy.”
“Is there anything else you think I should know?” he asked me.
I contemplated if there was anything else that I could tell him that might spare my life. At that point, I really didn’t know what he planned to do with us. I had come to him and given him the information he needed to get rid of a mole in his organization. My hope had been that he would be grateful and wouldn’t kill us.
“No, sir. I just want to live a good life with my new wife. That was my only reason for getting involved.”
Ramos looked at me and then looked at Jordan. He waved for his men to grab Escabar and then the group of them walked away. He didn’t say another word to me, but just as he was almost out of sight into the darkness of the light, Ramos turned toward us and waved us out of the park. He motioned for us to leave, and just like that, we turned and left.
He had let us live. Ramos, the head of the Mexican drug cartel, had let us live.