Ice Cold Kill Read Free Page A

maneuvered it around the building, and into the back alley lined with Dumpsters.
    *   *   *
     
    Doctor Hector Avila was no doctor. They just called him that because he enjoyed using surgical tools during interrogations.
    He preferred to let dumb foot soldiers like Guerrón and Banguera subdue the subject before he got involved. That’s why he sat in the van, in the alley, smoking a hefty joint with the passenger-side window open, smoke billowing out. He wanted to be relaxed before beginning his bit. Breaking a person is not an amateur’s business. It took a calm, steady hand.
    Hector Avila was lost in his thoughts about how to begin: fear first, then pain? Pain, then fear? Different patients required different remedies, the doctor knew.
    An unremarkable beige compact backed into the alley and had come to rest a foot from the front bumper of the van. Avila squinted through blue smoke, as the driver’s door opened and someone climbed out.
    Wonderful, he thought. A civilian. Just what he needed.
    It was a girl, young, barefoot. Avila tried to wave away the smoke haze to get a better look at her. She circled around and padded up to his passenger-side window, a sodden jacket draped over her left forearm.
    Avila leaned out to tell the puta to get the hell gone. She probably was a junkie seeking a handout. Or maybe one of his few, remaining spliffs. Before he could growl at the girl, she let the sodden jacket flutter to the concrete, revealing a Heckler & Koch with a silencer. She pointed it at his face.
    “Good afternoon, sir.” Her Spanish was flawless with the flair of a Catalan accent. “Do you represent the Juarez cartel?”
    Dr. Avila froze, eyes bulging.
    “Sir?” The woman seemed ever so calm.
    “I…” The fat man felt his asthma kick in.
    “I thought so.” The girl looked both ways down the alley, then back at him. “Could you step out of the van, please?”
    “W-wait…” He heard his voice crack. “I just follow orders. I do as—shit!”
    The joint singed his finger and thumb. He dropped it. It hit the knit shirt stretched over his obese belly. His hands flapped, slapping it to the van floor.
    The girl tapped his cheek with the sound-suppressing barrel to regain his attention.
    Avila whimpered.
    In his storied career as a torturer, Avila had heard many men whimper. He knew the sound and considered it a sure sign that a man was breaking. Now he heard himself and blushed.
    “Tsk. You mustn’t feel embarrassed.” The girl sounded genuinely sensitive. And absolutely insane. “That’s how I reacted the first time I was shot. I was eleven years old. The second time … well, I suppose I was still eleven.” She shrugged. “It’s a difficult age.”
    She opened the passenger door. She waited a beat.
    Avila hefted his bulk out of the van.
    She slid open the rear door of the van. In the back she spotted rope, handcuffs, a small culinary blowtorch, a car battery with two cables that ended in alligator clips, and his doctor’s bag.
    “Get in, please. Facedown.”
    The girl spoke as one does to a distraught child: soothingly. “I would like you to send a message to the Juarez cartel for me. Will you do that, sir?”
    “Yes!” Avila’s heart skipped. This might not end with a bullet to his brain. “Yes. Of course. Yes. Anything.”
    “Thank you, sir.”
    She slid the door closed.
    *   *   *
     
    Once it was closed, Daria looked to her left and right again. No witnesses. She opened the gas cap of the van. She took Guerrón’s long, al-Qaida–style keffiyeh and stuffed the cotton scarf into the gas tank as far as it would fit. She waited a few seconds for it to absorb petrol, then used Patricio’s lighter on the tail end.
    She moved back to the passenger window. “Thank you, sir.”
    Lying on his belly, Doctor Avila gulped. “Miss? What … what is the message?”
    Daria said, “You’ll see.”
    She walked to her car, opened the trunk, and pulled out her gym bag. She climbed into the