Anticipating an enjoyable evening with Lola that would ease their perpetual sorrow over abandoning Julia at the fire station, Julio unlocked the door to his apartment, stepped across the threshold…and drew up short. He dropped the bouquet of red roses and lunged toward the intruder holding a .38 against Lola’s temple.
“Julio, no!” she screamed.
The first shot shattered his right kneecap, and he fell to the floor. The second shot tore a hole in his midsection. White hot pain seared his gut. Blood pooled beneath him. He gritted his teeth in stubborn determination, refusing to show fear or cry out.
The attacker approached him. Through his hazy vision, Julio recognized his cousin, a soldier in his father’s army, and gasped, “Felipe…please…don’t do this!” Behind his cousin, he saw Lolainching her way toward an end table where they kept a handgun in its drawer.
“You are dead to us, cousin. Your father only wants his grandchild. Where have you hidden the baby?”
“What baby?”
Felipe didn’t hesitate. Without an ounce of remorse, he aimed the .38 at Julio’s heart and pulled the trigger. His body jerked as the bullet hit its mark. As his life drained out of him, Julio saw his Lola, his fearless wife, raise their gun and shoot Felipe in the back of the head. Blood and brain matter splattered. His cousin pitched forward, landing almost on top of him. Lola put a second and third bullet in Felipe, though the first shot killed him.
Shaking now, Lola tossed aside the gun and dropped to her knees next to Julio. Tears ran in rivulets down her cheeks as she cradled his head in her lap. “No! No! My love, you can’t leave me like this!”
“Lola, listen to me. There’s no…time. Grab the go-bag and get out of here.”
“No! I’ll call 911!”
He coughed and blood dribbled down his chin. Julio gripped her hand with his waning strength. “Go! Wipe your prints off the gun and go! Now!” His breath came in short gasps. “Change the license plate on the truck and head north to Chicago like we planned.” Darkness began to creep into the edges of his vision. “Avenge me, my love.”
Julio’s final breath sounded like a soft sigh. Lola sobbed her husband’s name and rocked him in her arms. He made giving up Julia bearable, and now he’d been taken from her, too. Ice encased her heart. She swiped at her tears with the palms of her hands and kissed her husband’s still warm lips.
“I will avenge you,” she vowed.
Lola rose to her feet and followed Julio’s instructions. She wiped her prints off the gun and wrapped it in a garbage bag to dispose of later. In the kitchen, she washed Julio’s blood off her hands and face, then headed into the bedroom where she retrieved her go-bag. It contained multiple fake IDs, bank cards, several thousand dollars in cash, some clothes, and a 9mm Glock.
Before she left, Lola took one last look around the apartment, made the sign of the cross over her husband though she rejected his faith, and slipped outside through the sliding glass door. As she drove toward the spot where she intended to switch license plates, she heard sirens not far away and increased her speed. The cops would put out a warrant for her arrest, but Lola Escobar was no more. She died, and Lola Evans would rise from her ashes.
Lola avoided Florida’s turnpike and crossed the state via its famous Alligator Alley. She stopped long enough at the Micosukee Service Station to fill up the gas tank, buy a cup of coffee and snacks, and to dispose of the handgun she used to kill Felipe. She entered the men’s restroom, emptied the tall trash can, and placed the garbage bag with the gun at the bottom. Quickly, she refilled the trash can and peeked out the door to make sure no one noticed her leaving the men’s restroom.
When she reached Florida’s west coast, Lola headed north to Tampa. At a drugstore, she bought dark red hair dye, hair-cutting scissors, and other toiletries she needed. She rented a room at a motel on Fowler Avenue where she colored and cut her hair to just below her ears. Lola stretched out on the bed and set the prepaid phone alarm for midnight. She closed her eyes. Images of Julio’s dead body, his vacant, unseeing dark eyes, once so vibrant with life and love, tortured and grieved her. Lola fought against the rising tide threatening to engulf herand turned on her side to face the heavy drapes obscuring the moonlight.
I will avenge you.
By seven the following morning, Lola left Florida’s panhandle and crossed the border into Alabama. She followed a mental road map to the almost nonexistent town of McMullen, population twenty-nine as of the latest census, and drove to a safe house in the backwoods that Julio had built with money he’d stolen from his father. She rummaged in the glove compartment for the automatic garage door opener and pressed it. Lola eased inside the two-car garage and parked next to a gray Honda Accord registered to Lola Evans. She entered the two-bedroom house from the garage and flipped the light switches.
In the moderate-sized living room, Lola tossed her go-bag onto the sofa and clicked the TV remote. She surfed the national news channels to see what, if anything, was broadcast about the deaths of Julio and Felipe. On CNN, a banner running at the bottom of the screen announced the homicides. Detectives were searching for Lola Escobar and the gun used to kill Felipe Escobar. No known motive. Lola assumed the detectives had already made the connection between Julio and Felipe Escobar and forty-five-year-old Jorge Escobar, the captain of a Mexican drug cartel. She didn’t think that the detectives would work too diligently to solve the murders of members of a notorious crime family. Because Jorge Escobar had disowned his American-educated son when he met and married Lola, she also didn’t believe that he would press the authorities for answers that he already knew.
Besides, there were two men every drug cartel in America and across its borders feared—brothers Cameron and Caden McAdams. The first, a U.S. Attorney for the Department of Justice. The second, a clever DEA agent. Together, they were wreaking havoc on the drug trade.
Lola kept the TV tuned to CNN as she covered her tracks. First, she smashed the prepaid phone and burned it in a trash can in the backyard. Using a state-of-the-art computer system, she contacted the group of hackers on the dark web that Julio had met two years ago and explained the situation. They hacked into security cameras that caught images of the truck and worked their magic to protect her.
I’ll need your help again when I get to Chicago, she typed into a message system.
No problem. We’re here for you.
The support of these nameless, faceless hackers comforted her.
Lola stayed two days at the safe house. She washed her dirty clothes and packed a suitcase with jeans, T-shirts, underthings, and shoes that she kept here in the bedroom. She checked her supplies in her go-bag, replenished them, and counted her cash. Planning for the future, she opened the false bottom in a dresser drawer and removed bundles of bills of different denominations that totaled $200,000. She hid most of it in her go-bag and the remainder in a box of feminine pads.
She left Alabama in the Accord. Instead of making the eleven-hour trip to Chicago in one day, Lola risked stopping at a roadside inn after she crossed the state line between Kentucky and Illinois. Lola showered, washed her hair, and slept in the clothes she intended to wear the next day. She rose early in the morning, ordered a cup of coffee and a breakfast sandwich at a fast-food drive-thru window, and began the final leg of her journey.
EIGHT MONTHS LATER
NOVEMBER
Chicago, Illinois
