by M. A. Lawson
“Carlos, what are you doing?” Perez asked in Spanish.
“I’m just taking her back to her room, sir,” Carlos said. “She had to go to the bathroom again.”
Jessica didn’t know what they were saying, but she could tell that Perez sensed something had happened between her Carlos. And then Perez said to her in English, “Are you all right?”
Jessica hesitated, thinking about ratting Carlos out, but decided not to. “Yeah. I’m okay.”
Perez stared at Carlos intently for another moment, then he and the other man proceeded to a door at the other end of the hallway.
Jessica watched as Perez held the door for the older man and let him pass through the door first. Perez acted deferential toward the other man and Jessica thought that this might be Perez’s boss, the big honcho in charge. And when Perez opened the door, Jessica noticed two other things: the door at the end of the hallway wasn’t locked, and there were steps going up on the other side of the door.
Carlos gave her a push to get her moving, and Jessica walked back to her room. Just before he shut the door, she said to him, “Don’t forget the water. And if you touch me again, I’m going to tell Perez.”
He gave her a look of pure hatred, and she could imagine that all his life he’d been pushed around by men like Perez, men bigger and smarter and tougher than him.
“I’ll bring you the water when I feel like it, you little—”
Carlos uttered something in Spanish that Jessica didn’t understand, probably a swearword, but she could see that he was definitely afraid of Perez.
—
Jessica hoped Carlos would take his time bringing the water. She had to make a decision, and she had to make it quickly—before he returned.
They were forcing Kay to do something. And after Kay did whatever she was supposed to do, Jessica was certain that they were going to kill her. No matter what Perez had told her, they couldn’t let her go after she’d seen their faces and knew some of their names. And before they killed her, they were probably going to rape her, and if Carlos got the chance, he was going to do something even more awful to her. She didn’t know exactly what, but she could tell he was the kind of sick little man who enjoyed causing pain and he would make her suffer. So she figured she had two choices: She could sit in her cell and hope and pray that Kay would somehow manage to free her before they killed her, or she could try to escape.
She knew Kay was good at her job; everything she’d read about her said she was. And she’d watched Kay as she prepared to go out at night sometimes, dressed in those black combat fatigues, strapping on the bulletproof vest, the eager look on her face as she put the black Glock in her shoulder holster. Kay was a hunter and she was fearless—but even as good as she was, how would Kay ever find her? The guys who’d kidnapped her wouldn’t have been so stupid as to have put her in some place where she’d be easy to find.
But Jessica figured she had one big thing going for her: She knew they needed her alive and unhurt, at least for the time being. And Kay was probably checking periodically to see if she was okay, so they wouldn’t kill her until Kay did whatever she was being forced to do. This meant that if she tried to escape now and they caught her, they probably wouldn’t kill her immediately. But what would they do? How would she be punished? Would they just beat her, or would they do something worse?
She thought about what she’d seen in the hallway: the unlocked door and the flight of stairs. But she didn’t know where the stairs went. Just up. She didn’t know what kind of building she was in—if it was a house, a warehouse, or an office building. She didn’t know how many people were in the building. And she decided that none of that mattered.
She wasn’t going to rely on hope and prayer.
—
Carlos, probably just to get back at her for waking him up, waited fifteen minutes before bringing the water. So for fifteen minutes Jessica stood in front of the door, hands clenched into fists, ready to strike the minute the door opened. She knew he wouldn’t knock before he opened the door.
She heard the key turn in the lock and took a breath. The door swung open.
“Here’s your wa—”
He was completely unprepared when she kicked him in the groin. She just wished she were wearing shoes. He bent over and dropped the water bottle on the floor, and she kicked him again, in the face, and she thought she heard something crunch, maybe his nose. He fell back against the wall opposite her door, and when he did she ran for the door at the end of the hallway.
She heard Carlos yell but ignored him, flung the door open, and ran up the stairs, where there was another door at the top. Oh, Lord, please don’t let the door at the top of the stairs be locked. It wasn’t.
She saw that she was now in a kitchen, and that two women were there. One was at the stove, stirring a pot, and the other was sitting at a table, feeding a baby a bottle. The woman with the baby shrieked when she saw Jessica.
Jessica looked about frantically for another exit—and there it was, a door that led outside. Through the window in the door, she could see a building next door to the building she was in. She ran to the door, yanked it open, and as she did, she could hear someone pounding up the stairs.
She saw she was in a narrow alley between two small houses. She looked to her right and saw cars going by on a street. Lots of cars. A busy street. She ran toward the street. She figured it was still early morning, because Carlos had been sleeping, but there were vehicles moving down both sides of the road in slow processions, bicycles whizzing by, cars honking, people walking. She didn’t know where she was—obviously some big city—and she didn’t know which way to go. She picked a direction—left—and started running.
She glanced behind her and saw Perez coming after her. Jessica was fast—she could have been a sprinter at school if she’d wanted to go out for track—but Perez was fast, too, and his legs were longer than hers.
As she ran, dodging pedestrians, her bare feet slapping the pavement hard, she looked for someplace to hide, for a building to duck into. She wondered if anybody in a car would stop and let her in, but she figured by the time she stopped a car and convinced a driver to let her in, Perez would be on her. She glanced behind her; Perez was gaining. Then she saw her salvation: a Mexican cop directing traffic at an intersection, only fifty yards away. He was wearing a uniform, a baseball hat on his head with some sort of insignia on it, and dirty white gloves on his hands. Jessica ran directly at him, screaming, “Help! Help! Help me!”
The cop looked over at her, puzzled by the barefoot young girl heading toward him, screaming. Most likely, he could see Perez behind her, too. Jessica ran into the street, oblivious to the traffic, and heard a driver slam on his brakes and the angry toot of a horn, and then Jessica was right in front of the cop.
She noticed the cop was armed. Thank God. She grabbed his arm, pointed at Perez, and said, “He kidnapped me! Help me!”
God, she wished she could speak Spanish. She could tell the cop didn’t understand her.
A moment later, Perez, breathing heavily, was standing in front of the cop. He spoke to the cop in Spanish, pointing at Jessica, pointing back up the street at the house she’d fled from. She heard him say the word Olivera several times. The cop, instead of questioning Perez or drawing his gun, just stood there listening as Perez talked. Then the cop said something, and it looked to Jessica like he was apologizing to Perez. What the hell was going on?
By now Carlos had caught up with Perez. He was bleeding from the nose, and there was blood all down the front of his shirt. Perez reached out and grabbed Jessica’s left arm and started dragging her back to the house. She turned and yelled at the cop, “Do something! Help me! He’s kidnapping me!”
She struggled to break Perez’s grip on her arm, and yanked free of him for a moment, but when she did, Perez backhanded her across the face, knocking her to the ground. People on the
sidewalk had stopped to watch, and they saw Perez slap her, but none of them did anything. What was wrong with these people?
Perez pulled her to her feet, and Carlos grabbed her other arm and helped drag her back toward the house. As they pulled her along, Jessica screamed again that she was being kidnapped—some of these people must speak English—but at the same time Perez made soothing sounds in Spanish to the people they passed, probably explaining to the onlookers that Jessica was simply crazy or something.
The damn cop just stood there. Then, after a moment, he started directing traffic again, making a point of not looking in Jessica’s direction.
—
Inside the house, they took her down to the basement. Standing in the hallway was the Bear, the big, gross-looking, unshaven man she’d seen when she first arrived.
“You must think this is some kind of game,” Perez said to her.
Jessica didn’t say anything. She was terrified now, wondering what they were going to do to her.
“I’m going to show you it’s not a game,” Perez said.
He pulled a weapon from behind his back, a stubby, black automatic. It must have been tucked into his belt.
Oh, God, he’s going to kill me.
But he didn’t. He shot Carlos—right in the center of the forehead. The shot was so loud in the concrete hallway that for a moment Jessica couldn’t hear.
Jessica looked down at the body, at the red-black hole in Carlos’s forehead, at the blood seeping out. He was twitching a little—his fingers were twitching. He wasn’t dead yet, but he soon would be.
“It’s not a game,” Perez said, then he gestured to the Bear, and the Bear grabbed her arm and led her back to her room. She was so shocked by what had just happened that she didn’t resist.
—
Jessica sat on the bed and leaned her back against the wall. Her mouth hurt where Perez had slapped her; her lower lip had been cut and it was starting to get puffy. She couldn’t believe the way Perez had executed Carlos. It was like he was stepping on a bug. He’d probably show just as much emotion when he killed her.
She’d failed to escape, but maybe something good would come from the attempt. A lot of people had seen her, and they’d seen Perez slap her and drag her back to the house. Maybe one of those people would call the cops—and maybe talk to an honest cop.
And maybe pigs would fly.
The door opened and Perez came into the room, followed by the Bear and a woman. Jessica realized it was the woman she had seen in the kitchen feeding the baby. She also realized it was the same woman who had injected her with the knockout drug when she was kidnapped.
Perez said something in Spanish and the Bear lunged forward, jerked her off the bed, and then wrapped his big arms around her. He stunk to high heaven, as if he hadn’t bathed in days, and she could feel his big, soft gut pressed up against her back. He was so strong she couldn’t move her arms at all.
The woman stepped forward. She had a hypodermic in her hand, and she plunged the needle hard into Jessica’s upper left arm. She just jammed it in.
“Because of your foolishness,” Perez said in English, “we have to move you.”
A minute later, Jessica’s world faded to black.
38
Kay arrived at the border at five a.m., as she’d planned, but decided not to cross immediately. She wanted more time to elapse since Tito’s escape from the brig, and she wanted more people crossing. At six a.m., she joined the queue of cars crossing into Mexico. Six was also good because it was about the time the border security personnel changed shifts, the day shift replacing the graveyard shift, and a shift change often resulted in people milling around talking to their replacements and not being where they were supposed to be.
Crossing into Mexico was normally easy. The Mexicans wanted Americans and their money in Mexico, and the Mexican border guards barely glanced at the IDs; they would have allowed a guy with TERRORIST tattooed on his forehead to cross. As far as Kay could tell, the Mexican guards appeared to be behaving as usual, and cars were moving south at the usual rate of speed. This time, however, Kay could see uniformed men walking up the lanes of traffic moving toward Mexico. The men were California Highway Patrol officers—and they were looking at the license plates and into the windows of the cars heading south.
Kay had her long blond hair tucked up under one of the baseball caps she’d found in Surfer Rodney’s car, and she was wearing sunglasses with large frames. That was the best she could do for a disguise. If anyone asked to see her ID—which the Mexican border guards would do—she’d show her Miami credentials made out in the name of Elle McDonald. She didn’t want there to be a record of Kay Hamilton crossing into Mexico.
Kay figured she had three things working in her favor. If the cops were looking for a particular car, it would be the marine’s car, which she’d ditched in Del Mar, and not Rodney’s. They would also be expecting Kay to be accompanied by a blond-haired, blue-eyed version of Tito Olivera. But the biggest advantage she had was that the cops would be thinking that if she’d left Camp Pendleton just after midnight, she would have crossed into Mexico long ago, and by now they would be less vigilant.
At least she hoped so—because one of the California cops was just approaching her car.
Kay had one of Rodney’s CDs playing, a rap song, the volume way up, a guy screaming bitches this and bitches that, and she was bobbing her head to the music, tapping the beat on the steering wheel with her hands. The cop checked the license plate on her car, then looked at her—and as he did, she gave him a smile and a friendly wave, like she didn’t have a worry in the world, and then went back to playing steering wheel bongos. The cop barely glanced at her and moved on.
Thank you, Jesus.
A mile into Mexico, Kay pulled to the side of the road and called Colonel Roman Quinterez of the Policía Federal.
—
Mexican law-enforcement personnel have a reputation for being extremely corrupt, especially when it comes to the cartels, and such corruption was somewhat understandable. Cops in Mexico earn as little as three hundred dollars a month—about the price of an eighth of an ounce of cocaine.
There was also the violence. The cartels had demonstrated too many times that they would kill anyone: cops, politicians, judges, journalists. No one was safe. And they didn’t just kill the people they had some issue with; they sometimes killed their families as well, and the killings were often incredibly gruesome. This didn’t mean, however, that there weren’t honest men and women in Mexico, men and women brave enough to take on the narcotraficantes. One of those people was Roman Quinterez.
The cartels couldn’t buy Roman, because he was already rich. They couldn’t get to him through his family, because his family was dead. His mother and father had died of natural causes, but his wife and twelve-year-old daughter were killed when they were caught in a cross fire between two gangs in Mexico City. One of the gangs worked for Caesar Olivera; the other worked for a rival cartel that was now extinct. Roman knew his beautiful wife and daughter were not killed intentionally, but that didn’t mean that he held Caesar Olivera any less responsible.
Roman was a brave man but not a fool. Kay knew he rarely stayed in the same place for more than two nights in a row. His bodyguards were federal police officers, but they were men he had handpicked, and he paid them out of his own pocket and paid them well. They were also men who had their own reasons for hating the cartels: brothers who had been killed, sisters who had been raped, friends who were collateral damage in the constant warfare.
Roman had spent ten years—the decade following the deaths of his wife and daughter—trying to bring down Caesar Olivera, and he told Kay one time that he had come to a sad conclusion: He was nothing more than an angry bee buzzing around the head of a grizzly bear. The bee would sting whenever it could, but it had no more chance of killing the bear than . . . well, than a bee
. But Roman continued to try. He disrupted cartel drug shipments leaving Mexico and seized weapons coming in. He passed information to the DEA because he wanted the cartel’s men arrested in the U.S., where they were much more likely to go to prison. Kay had also heard—she’d heard this from several sources—that when Roman did succeed in tracking down cartel gunmen on his native soil, he didn’t arrest them. Arresting them would be pointless. He killed them.
Roman was a pragmatist.
But Caesar Olivera was too well protected to kill, and at this point in his life, he was too far removed from the crimes he committed to be arrested. If he was arrested, there was no way he’d ever be convicted. Not in a Mexican court. So Roman did what he could: He jabbed his small stinger into Olivera’s operations as often as possible, and he would continue to do so as long as he lived.
Roman Quinterez was the DEA’s most powerful ally in Mexico.
Kay had met with Roman three times in San Diego when she was building a case against Tito Olivera. Roman liked her and wanted to go to bed with her, and Kay had considered taking him into her bed. Roman was only ten years older than her, very handsome and very charming, but the circumstances had never been quite right. For one thing, she was seeing Robert Meyer at the time, but she also wanted her relationship with Roman to remain professional, at least until after she had dealt with Tito.
Now she wished she had gone to bed with him.
Roman Quinterez was the only person on earth who could help Kay save her daughter.
—
When Roman answered the phone, he sounded as if he’d been sleeping—and knowing Roman, he wasn’t sleeping alone.
“Roman, it’s Kay Hamilton. I need to see you.”
Roman didn’t say anything for a long time. “I’ve been told that you’ve done a very bad thing, Kay. I hope what I’ve been told is not true.”
