Nightfire! (The Corvette Nightfire Prequel) Read Online Free

it
would be much safer for Luna and the baby not to travel with Día,
as she had been doing. Luna would assist her as compensation for
their new living quarters, she said.
    The arrangement produced a brief period of
stability, at least for Luna, and the sense that they might have a
family after all. As Luna's belly grew in the months that followed,
she and the older woman strengthened in their friendship.The baby
was born in 1961. They considered Rarámuri names. Luna and the
rancher woman exhausted many conversations discussing
possibilities. Luna saw that the Rarámuri names were difficult for
the rancher woman, whom she had come to love. The woman kept
returning to the English name, Roger, but the Spanish name for
Roger, Rogelio, sounded close to a Rarámuri name that Día liked. So
the baby was named Rogelio. He came out of Luna flailing and
kicking, a beautiful boy in graceful motion, like he was dancing.
The boy loved to dance as he grew. Día saw in the next couple years
that noone could look at Rogelio without falling instantly in
love.
    Día let himself become lulled into calmness
by feeling the domesticity of life on the ranch when he was at
home. But the work taking cars into Mexico gradually became
increasingly risky. There was constant turnover in the cartel, and
Día found himself repeatedly dealing with people whom he didn't
know. Certainly none of them were men to be trusted. He knew their
homicidal natures. And every new man appearing in his shop already
knew a lot about Día, where he lived, where he came from, his
skills, and that Luna worked with him. They mentioned this
information to him with painted smiles and murderous eyes. None had
mentioned the baby yet, but as Rogelio grew and Día loved him more
and more, he became increasingly aprehensive about his baby's
future. At night in bed, Luna also whispered her anxieties to him
that Rogelio was endangered by the lives of his own parents! She
told Día that always she felt the presence of cold, invisible
eyes.
    Rogelio had been walking for about nine
months when the complicities of Día's work intruded. He and Luna
suddenly had to accept the inevitability of sudden life-or-death
choices to be made with no time to consider them. The finality of
things began with the theft of a fast silver car.
    Día was about to go home late one January
evening when a pock-skinned cartel leader appeared with a couple of
his men. Día had dealt with him before, a rooster of a man who
strutted back and forth whereever he was, usually belittling those
with him. But this night he came with singleness of purpose.
    "You are coming with us, cabrón. We have work
tonight," the man told Día. "El jefe, the big man, is coming from
Sinaloa to Ojinaga in a few days. He has business, but it is his
birthday, and he wants to have a special fiesta because he will
have fifty years of age. There is this singular gift that he wants
to show off at his party. It is a car is made in the United States,
a new model, very hard to get. It has caused me mucho fuego (a lot
of fire) in my stomach trying to find him one. Finally, I found one
not too far from here. You are the lucky hombre who is going to get
it ready for him. Serás muy jodido si metes la pata, cabrón! (You
will be very fucked if you screw this up, you idiot.) Vámonos,
let's go! Bring your tool kit."
    They drove on nearly deserted highways about
ninety miles to a ranch on the outskirts of a small community named
Alpine. On the way, the man described the "gift" that Día was to
steal: a 1963 Corvette that had double rear windows caused by a
flow of the roofline passing down the center of the window. The car
would be in the detached equipment shed of a ranch house owned by
the prominent area farmer. "El jefe tiene huevos grandes por este
auto," he told Día: "The boss has big balls for this car. It is
fast. He wants the best."
    Just before arriving at the ranch, a mid-size
moving truck pulled ahead of them onto the highway. It led a