Page 1 of Fighting for Julia (Laguna Beach Cops #6)
THE PAST
FEbrUARY
Miami, Florida
Julio and Lola
In an old Chevy truck, twenty-two-year-old Julio Escobar followed Tamiami Trail out of Miami into the Everglades. Next to him, moaning from intense labor pains that began several hours earlier, sat his young nineteen-year-old wife of little more than a year.
“Breathe in, breathe out, Lola,” he coached. “We’re almost there.”
Lola gasped as a painful contraction hit her. “Hurry, Julio!”
He spotted a dirt road, made a sharp right turn, and pressed the gas pedal.
The Chevy skidded but caught traction and sprang forward.
Within a mile, the road curved, and his headlights illuminated a shack sitting some distance off to the left.
A single candle shone in a small window, and smoke curled from the chimney, though South Florida’s temperatures that February were mild.
Julio jammed the gear shift into park. He jumped from the cab and rapped twice on the weathered door, stripped of its youth long ago.
An elderly woman showed herself, as ancient and weathered as her hovel.
Tanned, wrinkled face, gnarled hands, sunken cheeks and mouth due to the loss of most of her teeth, yet her clear, omniscient eyes and quick mind belied her age and physical weaknesses.
“It’s time.”
The woman nodded. “Bring her inside.”
Julio lifted his wife into his arms and carried her inside the sparsely furnished shack.
He laid Lola on the birthing bed which had been prepared for her.
While the old woman gathered her supplies, Julio drove the truck into a shed as he’d been instructed on a previous visit.
Then he swept away the tire tracks. The impending rain would wash away the rest of them.
He kissed the gold crucifix he wore around his neck and thanked God for the storm clouds rolling in from the Atlantic Ocean.
Lola’s childbirth screams pierced his heart.
Beneath a clean white sheet that covered the lower half of her body, her knees were raised.
The old woman, whose name they did not know, urged Lola to push.
She cried out in pain and squeezed Julio’s hand so hard he thought she might break his fingers.
His words of love and encouragement fell on deaf ears as Lola pushed and panted until their baby slid from her tired body.
The old woman examined the infant. “It is a girl.”
Julio grinned and kissed his wife as the sound of their new baby’s hearty cries filled the shack. The midwife cleaned the baby and swaddled her and placed her in Lola’s arms. With a head full of dark hair and deep brown eyes, she resembled Julio.
“You know it’s too dangerous for us to keep her,” Lola murmured.
Julio’s gut twisted with soul-searing disappointment. “We could flee the States. Disappear.”
“No, Julio. We agreed that giving the baby up for adoption is what’s best. I don’t want her to know about your father.”
“He will find us.”
“And when he does, you will kill him.”
As prearranged, Julio and Lola spent two nights with the old woman to ensure there wouldn’t be any complications after the risky birth. On the third night, Julio paid the agreed upon fee of two thousand dollars in cash and left with his small family.
He drove cautiously through Miami to avoid unwanted attention until he found Fire Station 49 far from their modest one-bedroom apartment near one of Miami-Dade College’s campuses where Lola attended classes.
He parked a block away. Julio slipped on a pair of black latex gloves and flipped up his dark hoodie to hide a telltale tattoo his father forced on him and added reflective sunglasses.
He placed a sterling silver necklace with the baby’s pre-chosen name already engraved on it around his tiny daughter’s neck and held her close to him for the last time.
“I love you, Julia.”
He carried his daughter in a car seat to the entrance of the fire station, his heart heavy and aching with unimaginable sorrow.
Since the lights were out, he assumed the firefighters were asleep.
Julio gazed into Julia’s face and set her down before he lost his courage.
He sprinted back to his truck and called 911.
“Someone left a baby at Station 49.”
Julio ended the call and smashed the prepaid phone beneath his work boots.
He picked up the fragments and placed them in a plastic bag Lola handed to him.
Later, he would melt the pieces at the construction site where he worked as a welder.
Julio slid behind the wheel and drove to an area without security cameras.
There, he switched the license plate on his truck.
If the cops ever ran the plate, it would trigger a warning to a group of hackers he’d met in college. They would protect him.
Both he and Lola were silent as they returned to their apartment. They crawled into bed and cried their mutual grief in each other’s arms.
The next day Julio went back to work, and Lola attended her college classes and reported for her shift at a campus coffee shop, as if nothing had happened.
A month later
On his way home from work, Julio stopped at a florist shop near his apartment and bought a dozen red roses for Lola.
His boss had given him a substantial raise and promoted him to lead welder.
He planned to surprise his wife and celebrate his good fortune by taking her out to a fancy dinner and dancing afterward at a nightclub.
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 Lola inching 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 her and 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.