Triple Crossing Read Online Free

floored
     the accelerator, the Wrangler hurtling alongside the rusted-brown metal border fence.
    Two silhouettes materialized in the dirt road in front of him. Dangerously close. Moving in terrified underwater slow motion,
     Pescatore tromped the brake. The Wrangler went into a long dirt-spraying skid. When it finally came to a stop, the two migrants
     cowered unhurt in the blaze of the headlights. They held their hands over their heads. They were women.
    “No problem,” Pescatore whispered, clinging to the wheel. “Almost ran you over, killed you dead. No problem.”
    He got out. The women shrank against the fence. Loopy with relief, he found himself affecting the jovial authoritative tone
     that good-ol’-boy Tejano journeymen used.
    “Welcome to the United States, ladies. You are under arrest.”
    They were apparently sisters, late teens or early twenties. Piles of curls around striking, Caribbean-looking faces. He shined
     his flashlight at the top of the fence, mindful of rock throwers, then back at the women. Taller than average, long-legged
     in tight jeans. Maybe Honduran, Venezuelan? They reminded him of a teenage girl he had once arrested in a load van, a pouty
     Venezuelan sporting sunglasses and platform heels that were completely inappropriate for border-crossing. OTMs for sure. A
     lot of forms to fill out, but he could get the hell off The Line for the rest of the shift. One of the women wore two sweaters
     under a cheap leather jacket. Her hands were still raised over her head. As gently as he could, he asked her where she was
     from.
    “Veracruz,” she said, heavy-lidded eyes on the ground.
    That part of Mexico could account for their looks, but a smuggler could have also coached them. Pescatore ushered them into
     the vehicle.
    “Valentine.” Garrison’s voice on the radio startled him. “Where you at, buddy?”
    “Got two OTMs. Gonna take ’em back to the station and start processing.”
    “Negative. Need you here at my location. Hurry it up.”
    “Yessir.”
    The dirt road wound up and around a hill. Crickets buzzed in the darkness. The tires crunched over rocks. In a clearing at
     the top of the hill, Pescatore found Garrison, Dillard and an agent named Macías. They stood around a parked Wrangler in the
     middle of the clearing. They examined it with folded arms,like researchers in a laboratory. The Wrangler was illuminated by the headlights of other vehicles.
    Pescatore glanced in his rearview mirror: The two women were transfixed by the scene, fear flaring in enormous eyes.
    “Jesus Christ,” he muttered.
    The Wrangler in the middle of the clearing was crammed impossibly full of prisoners. Men were in the front seat, the caged
     backseat and the space behind it. They were stacked on one another’s laps. The mass of bodies wriggled behind the breath-steamed
     glass as if in an aquarium, a face visible here, a foot there. The captives pounded intermittently on the windows and roof,
     blows rocking the vehicle. There were complaints and curses.
    The prisoners had become pieces in the Game. Garrison organized the Game now and then when he felt like gambling. The Game
     consisted of seeing how many prisoners could be stuffed into a vehicle during the course of a night.
    Garrison welcomed Pescatore with another vigorous black-gloved handshake.
    “I told you,” he declared. “I got twelve. Your two gives me fourteen. And then I collect, buddy.”
    “My two?” Pescatore said, keeping his tone mild. “They’re OTMs, I gotta process them.”
    “Hell with that. Where do they say they’re from?”
    “Veracruz. But—”
    “Hey, take ’em at their word. Transfer your prisoners to my vehicle, Valentine.”
    Pescatore beckoned his supervisor aside. Garrison grinned at his discomfort.
    “Listen,” Pescatore hissed, “all due respect, you can’t put females in there.”
    “It’s only till the end of the shift.”
    “Still. It ain’t right.”
    Valentine peered at Garrison in the