Hellfire

HELLFIRE A Vince Bellator Thriller John Cutter First published by Lume Books in 2023 Copyright © John Cutter 2023 This edition published in 2023 by Lume Books The right of John Cutter to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by them in accordance with the Copyright, Design and Patents Act, 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the copyright owner. Dedicated to everyone who believes that heroes are real. TABLE OF CONTENTS CHAPTER ONE CHAPTER TWO CHAPTER THREE CHAPTER FOUR CHAPTER FIVE CHAPTER SIX CHAPTER SEVEN CHAPTER EIGHT CHAPTER NINE CHAPTER TEN CHAPTER ELEVEN CHAPTER TWELVE CHAPTER THIRTEEN CHAPTER FOURTEEN CHAPTER FIFTEEN CHAPTER SIXTEEN CHAPTER SEVENTEEN CHAPTER EIGHTEEN CHAPTER ONE Vince Bellator had a year and four months of peace. Now, on a late spring noon, standing in the shallow seawater, Vince dumped a bag of freshly harvested oysters into his dinghy. His young friend Pascual, Lupe’s boy, chattered about how Mama would cook the oysters. Pascual set to smilingly sorting them, as Vince climbed carefully into the dinghy. His wading boots and general bigness made it a bit awkward. He was well over six feet tall and layered in muscle, but there was also the weight he’d put on this year—nearly thirty pounds— from eating Lupe’s cooking; too much flan and capirotada. Maybe too many margaritas. And, he admitted to himself, he’d been taking it far too easy, at his house on southern Puget Sound. He had married Dierdre Corlin in March; they’d honeymooned on Kauai, rainy but deeply relaxing, and he had managed to store away his previous life—and all his battle memories—in a locked cabinet of his mind. It was almost seventeen months after he’d killed Angel Lopez and gutted the Caidos cartel. His investment in the home-based restaurant at the southernmost end of Puget Sound had paid off. His instincts about Lupe Velasquez and Diego Fernandez, his business partners in El Corazón de México, had been exactly right. They were both deeply motivated to make the restaurant work, more so now that they’d gotten married themselves. And Lupe was a talented chef. She was waiting for these oysters for her evening special, Sopa de Ostiones, and Vince began to row the dinghy back to the little dock near the home he’d built some years back. He’d done most of the work on the house himself, but he had to admit that the Mexican pastels Diego had added made it an attraction from the sea. Vince was thinking of expanding his dock to let yachts and cabin cruisers tie up so they could visit the restaurant directly from the bay. But then, they already had more customers than they could handle—a great review in the Seattle Times had enticed hungry customers from all over Washington State. In its first year, El Corazon had become a rousing success. Watching him row, the boy stared at the tattoo on Vince’s forearm. “Vince, is that an Army Rangers tattoo?” “Yep.” “I want to get a tattoo!” Pascual declared. “Maybe someday, after you turn eighteen.” “Did that one hurt?” Vince grimaced as if remembering a terrible memory. “To be honest—it hurt so much that…” He gave out a theatrical sigh. “I cried like a little baby!” Then he looked at Pascual with deadpan seriousness. Pascual stared. “You?” Then he realized. They both burst into laughter. “Okay, it stung a little,” Vince said. “Tattoos can be pretty, or just cool, but the problem is that they fade. Over some years they get blurry, and they look like a bruise or something. I don’t recommend it. But when you’re grown up, you’ll do what you want with your skin. Just never get one on your face.” Superro, Pascual’s chihuahua, was running excitedly back and forth on the dock as Vince drew up behind his cabin cruiser. Pascual moored the dinghy with a deftness Diego had taught him. “Que pasa, Superro!” Vince called out as he tossed the bag of oysters onto the dock and started up the wooden stairs to the dock. The dog yipped in response. Pascual climbed onto the dock, yelling at Superro to come back with the oyster gripped in his jaws. The chihuahua ran teasingly away, trying to get Pascual to play with him. Vince smiled, seeing Dierdre coming down to meet them. Dierdre, the former FBI agent—his wife! His slender, lithely muscular, beautiful wife. Vince could hardly believe it, even now. She’d puzzled him recently by dyeing her honey-brown hair jet-black. Her newly-black hair was cut short and spiky, and she was wearing close fitting red jeans, a black turtleneck, and dark-red sneakers. Dierdre was walking toward him from the house, smiling—but was there something else in her eyes? He hadn’t seen that look in a while… “Everything okay?” he asked, taking both her hands as she walked up. She let him draw her a little closer. “Richie Chang is here,” she said, in a low voice. “Agent Chang,” he muttered, looking at the house. Richie Chang was her former investigative partner at the FBI. “And he’s got a guy with him. Says you know him. Name of Tighe.” “Tighe! About fifty, small, looking like he’s about to laugh but never does?” “That’s him.” Vince grunted. “Shit. Oscar Tighe. He’s CIA.” She grimaced. “You want me to tell them to fuck off? I could say you’re out fishing. And before they see you, you really could go fishing!” “I’d love that, but… better not.” Vince wanted no more dealings with the feds, and he’d definitely have got on the cruiser and taken a fishing trip, if he had been alone here. But he had to think about protecting Dierdre and Lupe and Pascual and Diego and… yeah, even the waitress, Nilla. “Due diligence. They could be here to warn me about something.” It wasn’t as if he didn’t have plenty of