Read Online The Bleeding Edge by William W. Johnstone - Free Book Online Page A

He looked at Jalisco. “Pull over.”
    â€œI can outrun him,” Jalisco said.
    â€œNo. Pull over.”
    â€œIf they run the plates, they’ll see they’re not from this car. They’ll see the damage from those shotgun blasts.”
    â€œDo you care?”
    A smile curved Jalisco’s thin lips. “Not really.”
    â€œWell, then, pull over.”
    Jalisco guided the car to the side of the road. The lights of Devil’s Pass were visible in the distance, but this stretch of roadway was dark and deserted for the most part.
    The sheriff’s cruiser pulled up behind the stopped car. Two deputies were in it. The driver got out and approached Jalisco, resting his hand on the butt of his revolver as he did so. The other deputy got out of the car but stayed behind his open door. He played a handheld spotlight over the car. Nacho and Jalisco were visible, holding their hands in plain sight.
    The deputy spotted the damage the buckshot had done to the side of the vehicle. He said, “You fellas look like you’ve been in a war—”
    Chuckie rose up from the floorboard in the backseat then, in response to a hissed command from Nacho, and cut loose through the lowered window with the automatic weapon that chattered and jumped in his big hands. The stream of bullets tore the deputy almost in half.
    Even as the first deputy died, Nacho and Jalisco were out of the car, twisting and opening fire on the second lawman, who managed only to draw his revolver before slugs punched into his chest and drove him backward. He stumbled and fell. Nacho raced back alongside the cars and shot the deputy twice more in the head.
    The whole thing had taken seven seconds.
    When they drove away a few minutes later, after dousing the sheriff’s cruiser with gasoline and setting it on fire, Nacho felt a little better.
    He was ready to face Señor Espantoso now and tell him that Antonio Gomez was bottled up at the Shady Hills Retirement Park.

C HAPTER T WELVE
    Tomás Beredo had gotten the nickname “Espantoso” when he was little more than a boy, because there were few places he could not get into and out of without ever being seen, like a ghost. Espantoso didn’t translate literally as “ghost,” but it referred to something horrible and dreadful, so many people used it that way. Beredo liked it for one simple reason.
    The more people who were afraid of him, the better.
    He had grown into a handsome man whose sleek good looks gave no real clue to the ruthlessness within him. Personally, he had killed seventeen men, four women, and six children. He had ordered the deaths of many more; he had no idea of the exact number. It wasn’t worth keeping up with. Over the past ten years he had risen steadily in the ranks of the cartel for which he worked, until he had reached a position of responsibility for operations in a section of the border between Texas and Mexico that stretched for more than two hundred miles. The amount of narco-trafficking in this area was impressive, but it could always be better.
    Now the men Beredo worked for had sent this . . . this man Patel to him. This beast. Beredo was supposed to impress him with the efficiency of the cartel’s setup, because there was an agreement pending between the cartel and Hezbollah, the organization Gabir Patel belonged to. The Islamic terrorists had already invested heavily in the Brazilian and Colombian cocaine industries. That was the way they all thought of it these days, in business terms. Now Hezbollah was considering expanding its reach into the Mexican cartels, an alliance that could make billions of dollars for both sides. If Beredo could convince Patel that it was a good idea.
    Which meant it was a bad time for all this trouble among his low-level employees.
    â€œTell them to wait,” Beredo snapped to the man who’d brought him the word that Nacho Montez, his idiot brother, and the gunslinger Jalisco were