Breakwater

by Jack Hardin

  Juanita looked down on the man’s body with terrified eyes. He lay in a loose pile at her feet, dead, his face blue and swollen, his leathery skin glistening with sweat like a glove that had just been oiled. She stepped back and clasped her hands over her mouth as the adrenaline started a full retreat and the realization of what she had just done began to set in. Tears clouded her vision, and a dreadful weight descended across her chest, making it impossible to breathe. She slid her hands off her mouth and sat down on the bed. She felt dizzy and her throat was starting to constrict; her heart raced violently and her hands, still trembling, felt cold. She lay back on the pillow and stared motionless at the ceiling, trying in vain to calm herself.

  She had a sudden recollection of the panic attack Almeda experienced the other day, and the understanding that she was now on the threshold of one herself spread over her like a heavy, dark blanket, threatening to suffocate her and bring her to the same fate as the man on the floor. She wanted to cry out, to utter a cathartic scream that might purge some of the terror that had savagely crawled inside her. She focused on her breathing, taking each breath in measured stride and forcing herself to regulate the pace at which she brought air into her lungs and released it again. The room started spinning, stretching out like a piece of taffy. When it started to wobble, Juanita closed her eyes and tried to think of Junior.

  He came to her easily, mercifully, like a healing vision of the ocean on a cool summer night. She could feel Junior’s small hand in hers, see his trusting smile looking up at her, hear his laughter as she tickled him before tucking him into bed.

  Her breathing began to calm, her muscles relax, and she slowly slipped into a dark and calming place somewhere between wakefulness and sleep.

  She didn’t know how much time had passed when she finally sat up. Something told her it was much longer than she would have wanted. But she felt better, calmer—not good, but no longer fully out of control. Taking a slow shuddering breath, she slowly returned her feet to the floor while trying to ignore the dead man’s body that lay silently, chillingly, in the center of the room.

  She moved to the dresser and drew out a pair of leggings and a t-shirt. She changed quickly and grabbed a hair tie from the nightstand drawer. She slung her hair into a ponytail. The next step would be the worst of all. She had to get the card from the man’s pocket. As she forced herself to look at him, she saw that his face had turned a sickly hue of gray and the skin along his hands was a marbled patchwork of discolored splotches.

  She swallowed hard against a parched throat and, willing the nausea and revulsion to stay down, made a timid approach. He was lying on his side. Juanita turned her face away as she reached a hand into his pocket and felt for the thick plastic card he came in with. Without it, there was no hope of even an attempt at escape.

  The pocket was empty. Juanita quickly snatched her hand back. The man was dead; she knew that. But visions of him suddenly blinking and coming to his feet haunted her imagination. Holding her breath, she forced herself to grab his shoulders, heaving him over onto his stomach. She kneeled down and searched through his other pocket. Her fingers grabbed onto the card’s hard plastic, and she snatched it out, stepping clear of him like a scared cat.

  Juanita went to the door and listened. She heard nothing. There was nothing left but to walk out of the room, down the hall, and scan the card at the elevator. That was as far as the plan went. What would she see when the elevator doors opened? A room full of her captors? They would surely have guns, and there would be nowhere for her to run. Would she even get that far? The camera in the hall would give her away the moment she stepped from the room.

  It didn’t matter. She couldn’t turn back now.

  The panic had passed, but her heart was still beating rapidly as if screaming at her, an old friend telling her not to go. But the dead body behind her and her brother before her compelled her to wrap her fingers around the door handle and, with a final deep breath, yank it open.

  She ran. Hard. Her room was the fifth from the elevator. Arriving at the end of the hall, she slapped the key card against the reader and waited for the metal door to open.

  Nothing happened. She set it flush to the reader and slid it around in wild, frantic strokes, silently pleading for it to work. But still, nothing happened. Now her fingers were trembling again and her palms slick with sweat. The card slipped from her hand like a traitorous guide and fell to the carpet, and as she leaned down to retrieve it, she could feel the eye of the camera above her, staring down on her like an evil spy eager to tell her secrets.

  She examined the card. On one side, imprinted in black ink was the number “5,” corresponding to her room number. She flipped it over. The other side was blank. Quickly, she tried setting the blank side to the reader.

  The diode flashed green, and the elevator door slid open, as though congratulating her on completing the first step of an inescapable maze. Juanita slipped inside, examining the inside panel as she waited for the door to slide shut.

  There was nothing there.

  Every elevator she had ever been in was equipped with seemingly standard features. This elevator had none of those. The stainless steel panel was absent of any floor, call, or alarm buttons. It was no surprise that the alarm button was missing, but there were no buttons at all.

  The door slid shut.

  It didn’t move; it didn’t go up or down. Juanita stood in the silence not knowing what to do, and a sickening feeling started deep in her chest and rose up into a constricted throat. What if the elevator could only be operated by whoever was watching on the camera?

  She looked up. Not long ago she had seen a movie—with Jesse of all people—where a man crawled up through the roof of the elevator and into the shaft. But there were no handrails inside the elevator, and Juanita couldn’t see a way to reach the ceiling, much less scurry up through it.

  She wanted to scream. She wanted to cry out, to hurl insults at an unjust universe with a fresh anger that was thicker than rage. She looked down at the card in her hand, and in a final act of desperation, she slapped it on the smooth steel panel and rubbed it around with a fast, jerking movement that signaled the return of her panic.

  Behind her, she heard a faint click.

  She turned and listened, and then she noticed that one of the side panels had a small gap at the edge. It hadn’t been there a moment earlier. She set the flats of her hands against it and pressed. It was heavy, but it gave way and swung out into a dimly lit void.

  She half expected to hear a malevolent chuckle or slow clap of sarcastic praise. But there was nothing—only the sound of her own breathing. As her eyes adjusted to the low lighting, she could make out a flight of carpeted steps that led up.

  The elevator was a ruse. Nothing but a deceitful facade.

  Juanita stepped from the elevator, her heart still thumping in a desperate revolt.

  She started up the stairs.

  Chapter Thirty-Nine

  They drove for nearly fifteen minutes, keeping a reasonable distance between them and the Tundra. They followed it east on State Road 72 before heading north on State Road 17 for several minutes before Cruz’s brake lights finally lit up as he reduced his speed. He turned into a long stone driveway that was cut down the center by a grassy median and lined on either side with royal palms. Major turned in, and Ellie noted the name on the monument sign: Palm Rivers. Up ahead, Cruz parked beneath a porte-cochère and tossed his keys to a valet before going inside.

  Just before the driveway curved around a large fountain, a break in the median gave incoming visitors access to a parking lot already filled with dozens of cars.

  “Are you going in?” Major asked.

  “Yes. Pull up to the front.”

  “I’ll go with you.”

  “No,” she said. “I don’t know what he’s doing here. If he leaves suddenly, I’ll need you to be ready.”

  “I like my idea better,” he said, but he pulled around the fountain anyway and stopped
at the front. He set a hand on Ellie’s arm. “Be careful, kiddo.”

  A valet stood to the side, waiting for the Jag’s driver to open his door. Ellie stepped out and turned to him. “We’ll just be a minute,” she said. He nodded politely and went back to his station. Major pulled the car away from the porte-cochère and drew it up along the curb, out of the way.

  Off to the side, a floor sign read: “Welcome Gutierrez party. Happy 21st Lisa.” A doorman held open a tall wood door for Ellie, and she thanked him as she stepped across the threshold into a rotunda whose ceiling was frescoed with a leaping bull.

  The decor was impressive, if not unexpected, the floor set in diamond-cut marble and laid in alternating colors of white and sapphire blue. Ornate chandeliers hung from a coffered ceiling, and life-size marble statues of ancient gods and goddesses lined the hallway which ended at a carpeted lounge filled with guests. It was closing in on midnight, but the heavy beat of modern dance music and sounds of alcohol-assisted laughter reverberated loudly through the building.

  The hall split off into two directions. The entrance to a large ballroom was on the left, where guests were still mingling around tables already cleared of their dishes. Ellie glanced to her right and caught a glimpse of Cruz just as he disappeared behind a door at the far end. Halfway down the hall, a purple rope was draped across several chromed stanchions, where a sign read: “Private Party Only.”

  The skin on the back of Ellie’s neck began to tingle, and a cold sensation tracked down both her arms, terminated in her fingertips. It was a physiological reaction, prompted by a trusted intuition she had honed over a decade with the CIA.

  It wasn’t simply that Cruz was attending a private party. It was also the guard, dressed in a suit, standing in front of the door. To an ordinary person, he would appear to be a well-dressed bouncer, redirecting people away from the private party and back to Lisa’s birthday celebration. But Ellie noted something more. It was slight, barely noticeable; but it was there. The man was wearing a shoulder harness beneath his suit jacket. It was the way his left arm hung at his side, accommodating the weapon tucked beneath it. Under normal circumstances, Ellie could have conceived of the need for armed security if perhaps there were a foreign dignitary or a wealthy CEO behind that door. But it seemed highly unlikely, considering an ex-con, tied to human trafficking, had been allowed to just walk right in.

  Ellie pulled her gaze away from the guard and turned left, entering the ballroom. The remaining guests were gathered in small groups, chatting away, and a middle-aged man smiled at her, his eyes strolling over her body and lingering longer than would be deemed appropriate. But she simply smiled back and made her way to an open door at the back of the room. It led to a staff corridor where bright fluorescent lighting poured out of a room at the other end.

  She entered the kitchen and found it empty. A commercial dishwasher was venting steam, and clean dishes were stacked on a long counter. The kitchen staff had already gone home, leaving the bartender and servers at the lounge to close out the evening. At the other end of the room, a man was pushing a yellow mop bucket, but Ellie moved around a row of stainless steel cabinets before he could notice her.

  She found the cooking knives in the third drawer and selected one. It was an eight-inch boning knife that tapered near the tip. She rummaged through several more drawers until she found a roll of aluminum foil. She tore off a strip, returned the foil to the drawer, and worked what she had around the base of the knife, crimping it and squeezing it tightly. Then she reached back over her shoulder, pulled the collar of her dress away from the back of her neck, and brought the knife around. She slid the blade into the fabric, piercing it until the newly formed hilt of the knife stopped the blade’s descent and only the handle came to rest outside of her dress, which now acted the part of an impromptu sheath. The cold, bare metal now rested in the narrow space between her shoulder blades. It felt comfortable there, like an old friend she hadn’t missed until this very moment.

  Moving quickly and careful of her movements, Ellie started plucking bobby pins from her hair, and thick blonde locks cascaded to her chest and past her shoulders. She spread her fingers and fluffed her hair until it lay evenly around her.

  She tossed the bobby pins in the trash receptacle on her way out of the kitchen and then retraced her steps through the ballroom before coming back out to the front and stopping near the lounge.

  The guard was still at the other end of the hall, looking bored but alert. Ellie slipped around the rope barrier, and he straightened as she approached. He took a step forward and held up a hand. “I’m sorry, ma’am. This area is closed off. I believe your party is in the main ballroom and over at the lounge.” He extended a hand, gesturing behind her.

  She lifted her chin and her eyebrows and began with a contrived persona. “First of all, it’s not ma’am. It’s miss. And second, I saw Victor go in there, and I want to talk with him.”

  He shook his head. “I’m sorry. That won’t be possible. Not tonight.”

  “No,” she snapped. “It will be tonight. It will be right now. You tell Victor that I have something to say to him and that I’m not leaving until I say it.” Ellie shifted her weight to her back leg and tapped her front foot against the marble. She put her hands on her hips. “Tell him he’d better come out of his little hiding place and talk with me.” She stared coldly into his eyes. “Tell him that.”

  The guard was wearing an earpiece. He touched it and turned away as he whispered. He turned back to Ellie. “What’s your name?”

  “Sally. Sally McEntire. And if he’s not out here in one minute, I’m going to start making noise.”

  He turned again, whispered again. “You’ll need to wait a minute.”

  “Fine,” she said, and then continued tapping her foot while she waited. The guard, unamused, continued to stare past her down the hall.

  The door finally opened, and as Cruz stepped into the hallway, Ellie used the moment to glance past him into a room with wood-paneled walls and built-in bookcases filled with books and picture frames. A red-felted card table sat in the center of the room. Just before the door shut behind him, she got a glimpse of an old wooden desk on the far side of the room, directly in front of her, with a bank of flat-screen security monitors perched on top. Another security guard was standing off to the left.

  Cruz looked first at the guard but received only a shrug. Cruz looked at Ellie, sizing her up and pausing briefly at the flesh of her leg, where it peeked out from the folds of her skirt. When he spoke, he sounded bored, albeit a little curious. “What?”

  “Victor Cruz.” Ellie’s tone was vigorous, laced with irritation. “Here I am enjoying myself at Lisa’s birthday party, and I see you—you, of all people, walking right past me! I can’t think of a better way to ruin a perfectly good night.”

  “Do I know you?”

  “No, you don’t know me. But I know you. What are you doing in a place like this? You should still be in jail, shouldn’t you?”

  He blinked, caught off guard by the suggestion before twin embers started to grow hot in his eyes. “You don’t know anything about me. What do you want?”

  “What do I want? I’ll tell you what I want. I want you to go back in time and un-break Mario’s back. I want you to undo what you did.” Cruz stalled at the unexpected mention of Mario’s name, and Ellie kept up the charade. “I’m his sister-in-law, and I’ll tell you what, Victor Cruz, I’ll never forgive you. Never. Wish to God I could see you in a wheelchair for the rest of your life.” She took a defiant step toward him, and she could see that everything inside him intended to hit her. The guard stuck a hand between them and pressed Ellie backward.

  “Get out of here,” Cruz said between gritted teeth. His nostrils flared, and his fingers curled into fists at his sides. “Get the hell out of here.”

  “Or what? Are you going to beat me right here in front of all these people like you did to Mario?” She stepped up again, pushing hard into the guard’s meaty ha
nd.

  Cruz’s angry breath was whistling through his nose now, and Ellie could see that she had pressed all the right buttons. “You’ve had too much to drink,” he said. “You need to go. Now.” Cruz nodded at the guard, who kept a firm hand on Ellie. Cruz turned and scanned a key card on the side of the door.

  As soon as Cruz reopened the door, the pressure in Ellie’s ears changed and her body flooded with adrenaline. The bookcase next to the desk swung out, and a teenage girl wearing a terrified expression stepped into the room.

  Ellie’s breath caught, as if on a nail. The nail she would hammer into Victor Cruz’s coffin.

  Juanita’s frantic eyes locked onto Ellie’s just as the door to the room slammed in her face.

  Chapter Forty

  Jet drummed his fingers across his desk. It was late, and he knew he should probably go home. But he also felt like he had just opened up a new puzzle and dumped all the pieces on his desk. They were all there; he just needed to put them together, to assemble them into a cohesive picture.

  Ellie emailed back a half hour ago, informing him that she had gone ahead and checked out the locations he’d sent her. They were a bust. He was almost surprised at her quick reply, at her diligence to hunt down another lead this late at night. But it was Ellie, and he knew she wanted all this to end as much as he did.

  They needed more details on Victor Cruz. If he was that close, that connected to Felipe, then certainly he was tied into another part of the organization. But Cruz was a ghost. Other than a driver’s license with a now defunct address, there was no paper trail of any kind for him after he got out of prison.

  Jet stood up and went over to the Keurig. He started another cup of coffee. As it dripped into his mug, an idea came to him. He returned to his desk and navigated to the website for Florida’s Department of Corrections. At the bottom of the home page, he clicked on “FDC Database,” and another browser opened up, taking him to a secure portal that prompted him to enter his state-issued credentials. After logging in, he typed Victor Cruz’s name into the search field. It returned information on Cruz’s prison term, transfer and location records, and additional information such as incident reports, notes from the parole board, a list of cellmates, and records from his medical checkups that took place during his incarceration. Jet went down the list, not sure what he was looking for.