The Beasts of Juarez Ryan Schow Contents Preface Chapter 1 Chapter 2 Chapter 3 Chapter 4 Chapter 5 Chapter 6 Chapter 7 Chapter 8 Chapter 9 Chapter 10 Chapter 11 Chapter 12 Chapter 13 Chapter 14 Chapter 15 Chapter 16 Chapter 17 Chapter 18 Chapter 19 Chapter 20 Chapter 21 Chapter 22 Chapter 23 Chapter 24 Chapter 25 Chapter 26 Chapter 27 Chapter 28 Chapter 29 Chapter 30 Chapter 31 Chapter 32 Chapter 33 Chapter 34 Chapter 35 Chapter 36 Chapter 37 Chapter 38 Chapter 39 Chapter 40 Chapter 41 Chapter 42 Chapter 43 Chapter 44 Chapter 45 Chapter 46 Chapter 47 Chapter 48 Chapter 49 Chapter 50 Your Voice Matters The Betrayal Of Prague: A Look Ahead… ALSO BY R.B. SCHOW About the Author Preface Due to the lapse in time between the Atlas Hargrove books, and because of several requests from my most devoted readers, I have provided a quick summary of the characters from The Tears of Odessa. These characters will either play a recurring role in The Beasts of Juarez or they receive mention in the book as a factor of furthering the plot. I hope this helps! CHARACTERS FROM THE TEARS OF ODESSA: ATLAS HARGROVE: Former SWAT commander for Vacaville PD in Northern California. Assassinated three delinquents who created untold amounts of chaos in Vacaville after holding up a liquor store and running from the police. Atlas is currently serving three life sentences in the Supermax prison known as NorCal State Prison. ALABAMA HARGROVE: Alabama is Atlas and Jade’s kidnapped daughter. Her location is still unknown. Whether or not she is alive is still unknown. After completing the Russia/Ukraine job of finding Kaylee Barnes, Leopold Wentworth’s private detective found a video surveillance feed showing an older Alabama. So far, this is all the PI has to go on. JADE HARGROVE: Atlas’s wife. She is from Belarus and speaks fluent Russian. She left Atlas after he was convicted of triple homicide. She is currently seeing a younger man named Rocco Rosato. LEOPOLD WENTWORTH: Multimillionaire playboy who earned his fortune working in block-chain development. His interests have swayed, though, so now he operates in the world of vigilante justice. By his own admission, however, he and his team are amateurs just trying to get a foothold in the world of extrajudicial anti-terrorism. His aspiration is to take out the criminal element that governments allow and courts can’t prosecute. It’s almost going well… CIRA KINGSLEY: Cira is Leopold’s on-the-ground tactician, travel coordinator, and an extra body in case the SHTF and they need someone else. She has aspirations to work in the field, but those aspirations aren’t nearly as strong as her desire to be with Leopold. Leopold respects their working relationship enough not to have sex with her and later disappoint her when he moves on to another woman. She ended up sleeping with Atlas in The Tears of Odessa. KIERA: This young mystery girl is a vicious assassin birthed into the world of covert action for the sole purpose of changing the outcomes of war. She is currently housed at the Blacksburg, Virginia branch of Monarch Industries, a lab that uses genetic modification to turn out super soldiers. FABIAN DICAMPLI: He is the warden of NorCal State Prison, a man Leopold and Cira managed to blackmail with compromising photos of him with both girls and boys dressed as girls. By blackmailing him, Leopold gained access to Atlas. SCOTTY CHASE: Scotty is a former law enforcement officer (LEO) who is now a PI that Leopold put on retainer. Scotty and his partner were able to find proof that Alabama Hargrove might still be alive. Per Leopold’s arrangement with Atlas, Scotty only works when Atlas works. CODRIN PICHLER: This Romanian hacker is one of the best hackers in the world. Leopold uses him in a pinch because of the young man’s understanding of everything digital as well as the dark underworld where Leopold and his team now operate. YERGHA MUGHERI: One of Leopold’s original assets. In The Tears of Odessa, he was in a hospital bed with broken bones when Leopold called. ESTELLA BACCARIN: The other of Leopold’s original assets. In The Tears of Odessa, Estella (Esty) was having sex when Leopold called on her for help. She refused to go back to work so soon, prompting Leopold to find other alternatives to lean on (enter: Atlas and Kiera). KAYLEE BARNES: Kaylee was the young girl who was kidnapped in The Tears of Odessa. Finding her was Atlas Hargrove’s first mission. KOFI DANVERS: Kofi was one of Leopold’s overseas assets. He served as a local guide for Atlas and Kiera during their time in Ukraine. Chapter One ATLAS HARGROVE Some would argue that more serial killers were born and raised in California than anywhere else in the world. The hot sun and all the pretty girls had the propensity to bring out the worst in people. If this particular argument held water—and more than a few scholars have maintained the merits of such a statement given the company, the hour, and the libations consumed—one could also posit that if there was such a dense population of ruthless killers in the state, one would likely find them at NorCal State Prison under lock and guard. Baxter “Butane” Kirtman was exactly five foot seven with lean arms, strong hands, and the kind of wild eyes last seen in Charles Manson after he carved an X in his forehead and sent a bunch of kids on a blood-soaked killing spree. Baxter K., as he was sometimes referred to, or later BBK, used a butane torch to cook his victims alive, eating them a few layers of skin at a time. It was rumored that the last girl he ate took him seven months. How she lived that long under such monstrous distress was a mystery not even the medical community wanted to solve. The authorities finally caught Baxter after a neighbor’s dog dug a hole under their adjoining fence and squeezed into Baxter’s rather spacious backyard. With unrelenting curiosity and some serious investigative sniffing, the mutt discovered a femur bone that looked scraped clean, save for a few suspicious markings. That
