Tuesday afternoon, Jules arrived home early from work. Today was the day they either got Forsaken 99 out of the drug business or they all became marked men. “Are you ready to be the welcome wagon?”

 

“You sure this will work?” Rachel asked.

 

“Nope. But it’s the best I got unless you have a better idea.”

 

She sighed in resignation. “No. I got nothing. I just hope this works.”

 

“Just do the best you can.”

 

She gave him a quick kiss before she gathered her purse and left in her car. She quickly drove to the nearest Starbucks and ordered six large Frappuccinos. Thirty dollars lighter, she drove back home, careful to not spill the beverages. She had never been much of a coffee drinker, but at the prices Starbucks got, maybe she should sell the bar and open a coffee shop.

 

She rolled to a stop behind the carpet cleaning van and exited her car. If this was really a carpet cleaning service she was going to feel like a complete dumb-ass and the workmen were going to get a hell of a treat.

 

Carefully balancing the tray of frozen concoctions she walked up to the back of the van and pounded on the door. “I have Starbucks!” she called. She waited a moment then smacked on the doors again. “Look, I know you are in there! I would hate to pour this out on the ground!”

 

Just before the doors opened, she saw Jules push is hog out into the drive. She hauled her attention back to the van as the doors opened and smiled up at none other than Schneider. “What a surprise. I didn’t think you would be here. Want a Frappuccino?”

 

“What do you want?” Schneider challenged.

 

“Nothing. You guys have been sitting out here for almost a week. I figured you must be bored out of your minds watching us go back and forth to work and shopping. So I thought I would stop by and offer you something cold to drink.”

 

“What did you put in it?”

 

“Oh, for god’s sake Schneider. Don’t drink it if you don’t want any of it. I tell you what, you pick one and I will drink it, okay? Or I can take a drink out of each of them if you don’t mind drinking after me.”

 

Rachel waited to see if Schneider would accept her offer. After a moment, Rachel shrugged. “Have it your way,” she said as she turned to go.

 

“Wait a minute,” Schneider said. “Why are you being so nice?”

 

“To be honest, I didn’t know you were in there or I wouldn’t have bothered. As far as I’m concerned, you can sit in there until you rot.”

 

Schneider smiled. “That sounds more like it. What flavors?”

 

“Let’s see if I can remember what I ordered. They are all Frappuccinos, and there is hazelnut, cinnamon dolce, chocolate chip, peppermint mocha, toffee mocha and caramel,” she said as she touched the top of each drink while reading the writing on the side of the cups. “But if you don’t want them I can take one to Jules and dump the rest out.”

 

“Jesus, Schneider, let her in!” a male voice called from inside the van. “I call the caramel!”

 

“Hazelnut!” came another male voice.

 

“Shit. Alright, hand them up before I have a mutiny on my hands,” Schneider said as she moved to take the tray from Rachel.

 

Rachel didn’t hand the tray to Schneider as she stepped into the van and marveled at the inside. Along one long wall was a bank of switches and plugs surrounding a collection of small monitors, all of which were dark with the exception of two. One showed a wide shot of the front of Jules’s house, the other a close up view of him crouched down at his Harley. Two men were seated at the console.

 

“Don’t touch anything,” Schneider muttered as Rachel held the tray out so the men could select their drinks.

 

“Thanks,” they said as inspected the cups then took their preference.

 

She then offered the tray to Schneider. Schneider was defiant a moment, then smiled and took the chocolate chip. “Thanks. Why did you get so many?”

 

“Because I didn’t know how this works or how many people were in here. Where can I set this?”

 

Schneider pointed to the corner and Rachel sat the tray down and pulled out the toffee mocha and took a sip, her eyes widening in delight at the complex flavors of the drink.

 

“How did you make us?” Schneider asked.

 

“I didn’t. But Jules noticed that a van was always parked in the same spot. He put two and two together.”

 

“Shit. This is the only place where we have a clear line of sight to his house.”

 

“Why couldn’t we just go out the back?”

 

“There’s a car on the next street too, watching for that. And you would be on foot. Not much chance of you getting away like that. We have a laser on the front glass. It picks up the vibrations in the glass from sound. We can hear everything that goes on inside so we would know if you opened the back door.”

 

Rachel blanched. “Everything?”

 

“Well enough.” Schneider grinned nastily. “Sounds like Jules knows how to rock your world. Makes me a little jealous.” One of the men snickered, but said nothing.

 

“Now what?” Rachel asked.

 

“Now nothing. We have a warrant if you want to see it.”

 

“No, I suppose you would. I was kind of hoping that you would just go away if you knew we had spotted you.”

 

“Sorry sweetcakes, I can’t do that. Your boyfriend over there is going to lead me to the cartel, Forsaken 99, connection. What’s he doing?” Schneider asked with a nod at the monitor.

 

“Nothing. Working on his bike. Why?”

 

“Just wondering,” Schneider said.

 

She heard Jules start the hog and rev it a couple of times over the speaker in the van before shutting it off again. That was her cue. She turned and placed herself between Schneider and the monitors, trying to block her view as much as she could. “Look, Rian, I know we got off on the wrong foot. And I won’t lie to you, I will probably never like you, but you are barking up the wrong tree here. Jules isn’t part of Forsaken 99 anymore. He isn’t going to be able to help you. Why don’t you go lean on Todd, or someone else in the club, and leave us alone? We just want to get on with our lives.”

 

“I offered him a way out and he shoved it in my face.”

 

“Some deal. Turn on his friends? He’ll never take that offer.”

 

“Life is full of tough choices. Seems to me that after they gave him the boot, they are not his friends. If you were smart, you would walk away from this right now. I’m taking them down and I have no desire to take you down with them. But if you get in my way…” She let the threat linger.

 

“As you said, life is full of tough choices. I guess I will just have to take my chances.” She heard Jules start the bike again and rev it a few times as he did before. She didn’t dare turn to watch the monitors for fear of giving up the game.

 

“Shit!” Schneider snarled as she lunged at her, shoving her roughly aside as she dove for the microphone mounted on the console behind her.

 

The push was so rough Rachel didn’t have to do much acting. She had discreetly loosened the top of her Frappuccino with her thumb as she stood between the two men, and as Schneider shoved her aside, she dumped the contents on the man to her right as she fell into the man on her left.

 

“Shit!” the man yelled as the icy drink poured down his back, leaping from his chair in reaction.

 

As Rachel stumbled into the other man, she saw the shoulder of the fast rising man connect solidly with Schneider’s chin as she leaned in. Schneider’s head snapped back with a loud clack of teeth and she fell hard against the opposite side of the van. The commotion was over in seconds, but it took the stunned Schneider a moment to gather her wits.

 

“Able! He’s coming your way!” she shouted into the microphone after she recovered.

 

“I’m on him, but he went by like a bat out of hell.” There was a pause. “I’ve lost him.”

 

“Fuck!” Schneider shouted, then keyed the mic again. “All units, be on the lookout for Rivera. Last seen heading North on Armadillo.” She then turned her attention to Rachel. “You fucking bitch! I should arrest you for interfering with a police investigation!”

 

“For what?” Rachel snarled back. “You’re the one that started all this when you pushed me. I was just here delivering coffee!” Rachel stared at her, refusing to break eye contact. She knew she could be arrested when she agreed to do this, and had accepted that, but she wouldn’t back down from this bitch, ever.

 

“Get the fuck out! If you ever get in my way again I will kick your fucking ass.”

 

“Anytime you’re ready to rumble, sweetcakes, you know where to find me,” Rachel sneered with a nasty smile of her own before turning to the doors at the rear of the van and stepping out.

 

***

 

The moment he squared up on the road, Jules whacked the throttle wide open, the bike bellowing down the street as he banged roughly up through the gears. He saw a Dodge Charger pull out behind him, but he was already running eighty down the residential street and his speed was still climbing. He braked hard as he approached the stop sign, the bike weaving as the rear tire locked up. The cross street was clear and he leaned the bike hard into the corner without stopping, the foot pegs banging and scraping on the pavement as he powered through the turn.

 

He risked a quick look over his shoulder as the bike once again strained for speed but the Charger was nowhere in sight. Another hard brake, not skidding the tire this time to give away his location, then a lunge down a street on his left before once more going hard on the throttle. He passed a minivan doing over one-hundred before skidding to a stop at the next stop sign. He had to wait a moment for traffic to clear on the busy road, revving the bike in impatience, then juiced the bike out into traffic and settled into cruise with the traffic, not wanting to bring attention to himself by weaving and darting through traffic.

 

He ran with the traffic for several minutes, watching for cops or cars making sudden turns, but after a couple of miles he relaxed. As he rode along to his rendezvous, he wondered if he would be alive this evening, and if he was, would he have to bail Rachel out of jail.

 

***

 

“You’re sure this is the place?” Jules whispered.

 

“Yeah. It’s what I was told,” Marsh answered beside of him.

 

“Then where are they? They’re late.”

 

Marsh shrugged. “I don’t know. It’s not my day to keep up with the cartel. If they don’t show, we’ll just have to try again some other time.”

 

“Movement!” a voice called from down the hill. “Truck coming up the road.”

 

“What have we got?” Marsh called.

 

“Looks like one box truck and two SUV’s.”

 

Jules looked at Marsh. “Box truck?”

 

“Beats the shit out of me,” Marsh whispered.

 

Forsaken 99 settled in and watched. This was the first hand-off of drugs since the hit on the cartel by the cleaning crew. The 2-ton truck ground to a halt at the end of the road near the abandoned barn. Forsaken 99 was in the scrub, dug in and out of sight. They were boxed in, with the road the only way in or out. Either Forsaken 99 or the cartel was leaving today, but not both.

 

Gigolo and Todd stepped out of the SUV as it rolled to a stop, four members of the cartel stepped out of the second SUV.

 

“That’s The Investigator,” Marsh hissed softly as a man shook Todd’s hand.

 

Jules gave a quick nod. When he fired, that would be the signal for the rest of Forsaken 99 to open up. He pulled the AR-15 to his shoulder, prepared to put one in Todd’s head, when another member of the cartel opened the back of the box truck and a dozen more men, all armed with lethal looking rifles, hopped out. He eased the pressure off of the trigger.

 

“Take the shot,” Marsh urged.

 

“No. There are too many of them. I’m betting those are not semi-autos.”

 

“This is our best chance.”

 

“I know. I know! But we’re not setup for this! Let’s see if they split up. We just want The Investigator. Maybe some of the goons will go with the drugs and give us some better odds.”

 

Marsh grimaced. “Don’t piss this away, Rivera.”

 

Jules watched as the men talked a moment, then Gigolo moved toward the box truck. Ten of the twelve men crawled into the back again and the door went down and was locked. Two more moved to the SUV that Todd and Gigolo arrived in. As the box truck growled around in a tight turn, Jules brought the gun back to his shoulder and drew a bead on one of the cartel members with a rifle. He would deal with Todd later. The moment they started opening doors to mount up, Jules took a breath and held it as he squeezed the trigger.

 

The hot Texas air was split by the sounds of gunfire and screaming men. Most of the cartel muscle went down in the first seconds. Todd immediately jumped into the club’s Suburban and spun it around in a cloud of dust before racing away. Jules pumped four rounds into the feeling vehicle, but failed to stop it. The living members of the cartel tried to get The Investigator into the second SUV, but were cut down where they stood.

 

Jules and Marsh dropped their magazines at very nearly the same time, and after slamming in a new one, continued to fire. “Disable the car!” Jules yelled to be heard over the now sporadic fire of the thirty Forsaken 99 members, picking off cartel members still in the fight.

 

He and Marsh dumped their thirty round magazines into the SUV, blowing out three of the four tires, shattering the windshield and the side glass, and pumping the rest of the sixty rounds into the engine for good measure. Then it was quiet. They changed out their magazines again and then rose from their cover, the rest of Forsaken 99 following suit, and advanced on wounded. The dead and dying littered the ground.

 

“Where is he?” Jules hissed as they approached in a combat crouch from all directions, weapons at the ready. There was a single shot to his left, making him whirl in that direction, but there were no other shots and he refocused his attention on the SUV, the last place he had seen their quarry.

 

“He has to be in the SUV,” Jules hissed to Marsh before raising his voice to be heard. “If you want to live, come out of the SUV with your hands up and you won’t be harmed. If I see a weapon of any kind, of if you attempt to run, you will be cut down. This is your only warning. If I don’t see a door open in five seconds I will order my men to open fire on the SUV.”

 

“Do you know who I am, you gringo fuck? I am Jerome Rodriguez! I will fucking cut your throat and watch you bleed!”

 

“What you are is dead if you don’t come out of that SUV,” Jules answered.

 

Jules waited a moment but the door didn’t open. “Kill him,” Jules said, but before the first bullet could be fired, the door was kicked open.

 

“Wait!” Jerome cried. A pistol flew out of the open door onto the ground then The Investigator slid out. He was covered in glass but unhurt.

 

“Smarter than you look,” Jules sneered. “Okay, investigator, you and I have a little business to discuss.”

 

“I don’t do business with shits like you.”

 

“Then I guess I will kill you now.” Jules handed his rifle to Marsh and pulled his sidearm and stepped toward the man and put his weapon to his head. “Any last words?”

 

“Wait. What business?”

 

“I’m going to do one of two things,” Jules said softly. “I’m going to make you a hero and you walk away alive, or I am going to kill you where you stand. Those are your only two options. Which you choose is entirely up to you. Bring the merchandise!” he called out, his eyes never leaving the man’s face and his gun never wavering.

 

Several members of Forsaken 99 lugged canvas totes out that they dropped, unzipped, then dump the contents out.

 

“That’s all the drugs you have lost in the last couple of months. Drugs that I took from you. So here’s the deal. You take your drugs and you leave. Forsaken 99 is out of the drug business effective now. Or, you can die. It’s your choice.”

 

“You’re just going to let me go?”

 

“That’s the deal. I have no desire to start a war with the cartel. But whether you live or die, Forsaken 99 isn’t doing your dirty work anymore. If you want to run drugs through our territory, you are going to have to get them past us. You seem like a smart man. Wouldn’t it just be easier to find another route?”

 

“How do I know you won’t kill me anyway?”

 

“Because I need you to get home to tell your people we’re done being your bitches. I leave you here, with the drugs. How you get home with the drugs is your problem. But think about it. You return with over a hundred million dollars’ worth of drugs that the cartel thought they had lost. All for simply finding another way to bring your shit into the country. Seems like a pretty sweet deal to me.”

 

The man licked his lips. “I need to talk to head of the cartel.”

 

“Bullshit. You’re The Investigator. You are sent in to solve problems. I am giving you the solution to this problem. You just have to be smart enough to take it.”

 

Jules waited a moment for the man to decide then hardened his face as he prepared to pull the trigger. “Times up!”

 

“Wait! Okay! I will take the deal!”

 

“Smart man,” Jules said as he stepped back and pulled his weapon from the man’s head. “Now that we have an understanding, there is something else I want to know.”

 

“Fuck you! You got what you wanted.”

 

“Don’t press me, Jerome. You’re not out of this yet. I just want to know who set up the hit on Forsaken 99.”

 

“I don’t know what you are talking about.”

 

Jules’s pistol popped back up and centered on the man’s face. “Then maybe you are not as important to the cartel as I thought you were and I should just kill you anyway.”

 

“Wait! Okay. I know. We made the hit, but it was your President that gave us the names and locations. That fucking backstabbing bastard. Looks like he fucked us both.”

 

Jules heard the rumble of outrage ripple through Forsaken 99. “Don’t worry. I’ll see that he gets his. There was another hit, earlier. A truck ran down a couple of my closest friends. Was that you too?”

 

“No. Just the one hit, set up by your President.”

 

Jules lowered his weapon again. “Good enough. Don’t fuck me, Jerome. We can both come out of this a winner if you just stick to the bargain.”

 

“The two labs that were hit. That was you?”

 

“Yeah. It was us. We’ve mauled each other pretty badly. But I can call it even if you can.”

 

Jerome stared at Jules a moment. “Yes. Even. And we will find another route for our product. We can’t trust you gringo bastards anyway.”

 

“Oh, but you can,” Jules countered. “You can count on us to step on your dicks every chance we get. So don’t give us the chance. Do we have an understanding?”

 

“We do.”

 

“Let’s get out of here,” Jules called waving his hand over his head to call his men together.

 

***

 

The van was still there as Jules pulled the bike into the garage, but he didn’t care. Not anymore. Rachel was standing there when Jules stepped into the kitchen.

 

“It’s done,” he said as he pulled her into his embrace and held her tight. “Now there is only one more thing to do.”

 

“I want to be there.”

 

“I wouldn’t have it any other way. Marsh is going to set it up and this should all be done in a day or two.”

 

Rachel tried but she couldn’t hold her tears and she wept softly as Jules rocked her gently. She wasn’t even sure why she was crying. Relief that Jules had hadn’t been killed or injured, gratitude that he had managed against all odds to pull Forsaken 99 back into the light, and perhaps remorse over the loss of Will that had been buried under a cold hatred for Todd Webber. All these emotions mingled, leaving her feeling out of sort and certain of only one thing. Jules Rivera was her knight and she would never give him up.