Hidden Prey

by Cheyenne McCray

  The splendid day had been predicted in weather reports. Yes, everything would be perfect, nothing to mar Angelina’s party, her night as Quinceañera.

  As he entered the family wing and walked toward Angelina’s suite of rooms, the now young woman of fifteen ran toward him like an excited child.

  “Grandfather!” Her lovely smile warmed his heart. “Everything is beautiful!”

  He gently grasped his angel by the shoulders and kissed her forehead before stretching his arms out and looking at her. His throat closed off, pride swelling within him at her rare beauty.

  “So much like your mother, my angel.” He hugged her as she wrapped her arms around him.

  “Thank you, Grandfather.” She drew back and beamed at him. “This will be the best party a Quinceañera could want and has ever been held in all of Mexico.”

  “No one deserves it more than you.” He rested his arm around her shoulders and gave her a loving squeeze. “Only the best for my angel.”

  “Maria said I must bathe this afternoon in an herbal bath she is preparing.” Angelina spoke in an excited tone. “Then she will fix my hair and help me dress and she will put makeup on me.”

  Diego frowned. “You need nothing to add to your beauty.”

  “Grandfather, please.” She placed her hand on his arm. “It is only a little. I am a woman now.”

  He studied her. “Only a little or I will make you wash your face of it.”

  Angelina’s smile faltered. “I will tell Maria you will allow the barest amount. Does that please you?”

  His frown turned into a smile. My God, but he loved this girl, this young woman. “It pleases me.”

  “Thank you.” She gave him a quick kiss before hurrying to her bedroom suite.

  Diego watched after her, pride making his chest expand once again.

  When he turned to leave the wing, Jaime appeared at the entrance.

  “What is it?” Diego held back a scowl. He did not wish for anything to disturb this day in any way.

  “Alejandro is here.” Jaime stood with his hands behind his back. “With the girl.”

  “Good.” Diego relaxed and gave a single nod, pleased his son had arrived safely. He lowered his voice to ensure no one would overhear. “They are in the rooms below?”

  “Sí.” As usual, Jaime’s expression betrayed no emotion. “They brought the girl in through the tunnel.”

  “Excellent.” Diego began walking toward the wing reserved for business activities, Jaime at his side.

  When they reached what Diego considered to be his War Room, he strode toward a map-covered wall as Jaime closed the door behind them. The newest and best high-tech computers and screens money could buy filled the room.

  Diego pressed what looked like a large map pin and a hidden door swung open. He glanced at Jaime. “I will return shortly for the last of the preparations for Angelina’s party.”

  “Yes, El Demonio.” Jaime gave a slight bow at his shoulders.

  Diego walked into a corridor, pressed a red button on the wall, and the hidden door swung shut behind him. He walked down the tunnel, lights automatically coming to life as he paced, illuminating his way.

  He opened the door to the left and took the stairs to the cells below. The sound of his shoes on stone echoed against the rough-hewn walls as he continued. He heard male voices ahead, at the bottom of the stairs. They quieted, no doubt hearing his footsteps.

  When he entered the cellblock, he saw Alejandro with two other men, waiting.

  A young woman knelt on the floor, her wrists bound with duct tape behind her back. Her head lolled forward, her hair obscuring her face. Her bloodstained blue shirt hung in tatters and her filthy jeans fit her poorly. Bruises spotted her arms.

  “Hello, Father.” Alejandro gave Diego a deferential nod.

  The other two men said nothing but dropped their gazes.

  “Let me see her face.” Diego watched as Alejandro grabbed the woman’s hair and jerked her head back.

  Duct tape covered her mouth and tear tracks streaked her dirty and bruised face. She met his gaze but showed neither fear nor anger, not even resignation. He could read nothing from her eyes, and that concerned him.

  He stepped closer and realized when he saw her dilated pupils she’d been drugged.

  “I gave no orders to drug the woman.” Diego narrowed his eyes at his son. “I want her lucid for what I have planned for her.”

  Alejandro kept his gaze even with his father’s. “My apologies, Father. She proved to be difficult and I felt she needed to be calmed down considerably.”

  Diego looked at the woman again. She had dark hair and fine features. She swayed and appeared as though she would soon collapse. Diego motioned to one of the cells. “Remove the tape and lock her up.”

  The two men with Alejandro cut the tape from her wrists and pulled off the strip across her mouth. She started to slump to the side, but one of the men caught her. He dragged her into a cell and he left her on the floor before leaving and slamming the cell door shut with a loud clang. She curled onto her side and closed her eyes, a soft moan of pain escaping her lips.

  Diego nodded with approval. “Tomorrow I will deal with the woman. Tonight is for celebrating.” He slapped Alejandro on the upper arm. “Clean up and enjoy breakfast.” They walked side by side to the stone staircase. “Angelina will be pleased her favorite uncle is here for her big party tonight.”

  “I am her only uncle.” Amusement laced Alejandro’s voice.

  “That is why you are her favorite.” Diego chuckled. “It is good you are here. She will only turn fifteen once.”

  Diego didn’t look back at the cell. The woman did not concern him tonight and he would forget about her until tomorrow, once he’d rested from a night of festivities.

  Yes, all was as it should be now and he no longer had anything to be concerned about. Life was good. Very good.

  Chapter 26

  “Fuck.” Head bent, arms rigid, Landon braced his hands on the desk in his home office. Every muscle in his body tensed and he ground his teeth so hard his head ached. His injured shoulder throbbed and his knuckles were white from clenching his hands into fists. His gut churned. “How the fuck did the bastard get Tori across the border?”

  “We’ll get her back.” Dylan’s voice held conviction. “No way in hell is Jimenez going to get away with this.”

  “The sonofabitch is going to pay.” Landon raised his head, his gaze meeting Dylan’s. “I’ll make sure of it.”

  “When did Jimenez go from wanting Tori dead to kidnapping her?” Dylan frowned as he spoke.

  Landon turned Dylan’s question over in his mind. “It’s become personal.”

  “I think you’re right.” Dylan nodded. “Maybe her surviving everything he’s thrown at her has gotten under his skin.”

  “Something like that.” Landon shook his head. Likely Diego Jimenez wasn’t used to being thwarted. “We need to get to her before he does anything to hurt her.” More than he already has, Landon thought and his body grew impossibly more tense.

  According to Carl, Landon’s most reliable informant, the cartel had bugged the DHS’s ICE office and the whole attack had been a two-for-one. Kill the two men in the holding cells who had been present when Alejandro Jimenez had murdered Miguel and also grab Tori.

  “Shit.” Landon scratched the scruff of a beard on his face. “How the hell did they get those bugs into the office?”

  “Could have been the nighttime janitorial team.” Dylan frowned. “The cartel could have bought off any one of them. Or the cartel could have blackmailed a member of the administrative staff, threatening his or her family.”

  “My thoughts too.” Landon dragged his hand down his face. “Jesus.”

  Dylan pulled his cell phone out and read a text message. “Joe’s team is making preparations now and the chopper will be ready to take off around five. It’s two now.”

  Joe Black’s spec ops team, Black Sky International, specialized i
n locating and retrieving missing persons. BSI contracted with the government as well as taking on select cases for hire from civilians.

  “Good.” Landon tried to relax his body and calm his thoughts, but he failed. “The sooner we leave, the better.”

  “Joe doesn’t usually let anyone not on his team join the party—” Dylan started to say.

  “That’s not happening this time,” Landon’s words sliced the air as he cut in, his expression dark.

  Dylan smiled, but it held no humor. “Exactly what I told him. He’s agreed to take you. And me.”

  “Hell, no.” Landon narrowed his eyes. “You’re not coming.”

  “Yeah, I am.” Dylan gave Landon a hard look. “Don’t argue because it’s not going to get you anywhere, friend. Especially injured like you are.”

  With a shake of his head, Landon let out his breath. He’d known before he’d even opened his mouth he couldn’t change Dylan’s mind, so Landon didn’t know why he bothered to try. “What’s the plan?”

  Dylan folded his arms across his chest. “We’ll cross the border and get to the Jimenez compound just after dark. Apparently Jimenez’s granddaughter’s fifteenth birthday is today.”

  Landon’s mind turned over the information. “I take it the girl’s fifteenth birthday party is tonight?”

  Dylan nodded. “Yep.”

  Landon sat in his desk chair, leaned his head back, and looked at the ceiling. “It’s perfect.”

  Tori groaned, her mind spinning with pain and confusion. She felt dizzy and unable to form a coherent thought.

  Her whole body ached and stung and it hurt to breathe. She tried to raise her head, but pain lanced her skull and she clasped her head with her hands.

  Tori lay on something hard and cold, the chill seeping through her body. She shivered and her eyes watered as yet another stabbing pain went through her chest.

  She opened her eyelids and blinked until her eyes adjusted to the dimness. She lay on a concrete floor and bars filled her vision. Another shiver went through her on realizing someone had put her in a cell.

  Tears threatened at the backs of her eyes. She wanted to cry from fear, from anger, from pain…and an overwhelming sense of hopelessness. But tears wouldn’t do her any good at this moment. Tears would only make her head hurt more and cause her eyes to ache and grow puffy.

  It surprised her at how rational her thoughts were. Or maybe she was too numb to be emotional.

  She tried to think. Where was she? She remembered being taken at gunpoint, thrown into a van, and bound. Once men had secured her, they’d hit and kicked her. The men had spoken in Spanish and talked about transporting her to Mexico.

  To Diego Jimenez, the head of the Jimenez Cartel.

  Her throat ached and she thought she would cry despite her resolution not to. Was she in Mexico now? She must be. She vaguely remembered someone sliding a needle into her vein then nothing in the world had seemed to matter anymore. They’d drugged her.

  Faint memories came back to her of men standing over her and talking, but she couldn’t remember what they’d said. Had she even heard them?

  The concrete floor seemed to grow harder and colder as she lay there. She needed to get up and figure out what to do next, if she could do anything at all.

  One thing she did know—she refused to give up. She intended to do whatever it took to escape.

  She clenched her teeth as she tried to push herself to a sitting position. Immediately, she cried out and her eyes watered from the sharp pain shooting through her chest. Her arms went weak, but she managed not to collapse back onto the floor.

  Tears trickled down her cheeks after all, only these tears were from pain and not hopelessness. She pushed through the pain to struggle to sit up.

  Tori finally made it to a sitting position, although her head spun for a moment. She held her head in her palms, trying to slow the spinning. She remembered how she’d torn her shirt to use the cloth to help Agent Aguilar. Tori remembered all the blood and prayed someone had found Aguilar in time.

  The spinning subsided and Tori slowly raised her head to look around the cell. A toilet took up one corner. That was it. Nothing else was in the space. No cot or sink one would expect to see in a prison cell.

  Not a cell. A cage.

  Gradually, sensations returned to her mostly numb body. Tori felt filthy and sticky with sweat and she realized she had to go to the bathroom before her bladder burst.

  She looked at the toilet. It seemed so far away from where she sat, huddled on the floor. Struggling to her feet, she then staggered to the far corner. Her legs almost gave out, but she made it to the old commode with its wide streak of rust around the inside of the bowl.

  Tori finished and stood, then stumbled toward the cage door. She grabbed onto the bars and leaned against them, trying to regain strength and keep from falling. Tori closed her eyes and rested her head on the metal and clenched the bars until her fingers ached.

  She blew out her breath and opened her eyes, which had become well-accustomed to the dimness. She looked through the bars at the large room. A bank of small monitors glowed in the dim interior to her left, but she couldn’t read the screens from her position. Her cage took up space along one of the walls and other cages stood to her right and across the room. As far as she could tell, the others were empty.

  If the others had only a toilet like this one did, these cagess were not meant for long term. She’d bet the cages served as a holding cell, not for restraining individuals for any length of time.

  A sense of despair overcame her and her legs weakened. She barely kept herself standing by the grip she had on the bars.

  The bastards. The horrible, horrible bastards.

  Anger replaced the despair in a hard, fiery rush. Her cold cheeks flushed with heat and if a person could truly see red, she did.

  What the cartel did to people…the lives destroyed…all of the deaths…the pain. Every bit of anger she had washed through her in a hot wave.

  With a burst of fury, she jerked against the door to rattle her cage.

  The door opened.

  She stumbled forward, almost falling as the door swung open a couple of feet. For a moment she stood there, stunned.

  Just like that? The door opened?

  She released the bars and walked out into the room surrounded by the cages on three walls. A door was to her right and another across the room. The monitors on the left flickered and she turned and headed toward them.

  When she reached the station, she braced her hands on the back of one of three swivel chairs in front of the bank of nine monitors. A desk with enough room for three large men took up space below the monitors.

  The monitors flashed, slowly changing from views inside hallways and rooms, including a dining room, an enormous kitchen, and living areas. More cameras displayed pathways, courtyards, gardens, and more than one swimming pool. The late-afternoon sun cast long shadows.

  She narrowed her gaze when she saw grass-covered grounds with tents, balloons, tables, and bouquet after bouquet of flowers. Surprisingly, she saw a lot of pink. Lots and lots of pink. It looked as though her captor or captors had planned a party. A huge party. Going by all the pink, Tori guessed the party was for a girl or young woman.

  A man’s voice spoke at the edge of her consciousness and she remembered hearing him say, ‘…her big party tonight.’ She also remembered hearing a girl’s name. Angelina.

  Tori swallowed. What if she managed to get out of here and crash Angelina’s party? Would someone help her or would they be too afraid of the Jimenez family?

  Hands trembling, Tori wiped her dirty palms on her jeans then rubbed her temples with her fingers. She’d stayed long enough. If she could get out, she needed to do it before someone came to check on her.

  She looked from one door to the other. Would one of them lead her in a direction that would allow her to escape?

  If she did escape, what next? She wondered if they had taken her to a town or to a pla
ce in the desert. Likely a drug lord’s home would be in the desert, away from the Mexican police and military. From what she’d seen on the monitors, it looked as if this place could be referred to as an oasis. An oasis built with blood money.

  Tori took a deep breath then grimaced at the pain in her side. She gritted her teeth and picked the door to the right of the monitors. When she reached the door, she grasped the handle and tried to wrench it open.

  Locked.

  Her heart stuttered. She looked over her shoulder at the other door. If it was also locked, she didn’t know what she’d do. She didn’t know how to pick a lock and she didn’t know what she could use to try to escape.

  She walked to the other door and paused. She winced as she took another deep breath then gripped the handle and pulled.

  Locked.

  She squeezed her eyes shut and felt hot tears behind her lids. No crying, damn it.

  Maybe a set of keys rested near the monitors or in the desk drawers. She bit the inside of her cheek as she walked and tried not to think of the pain in her head and chest. She searched the drawers and found nothing. Not even paper or pens.

  She stared at the keyboards in front of the monitors and wondered if one of them could serve as a computer monitor. It would be incredible if she could send an email, not that it would do a lot of good. She didn’t even know who to send one to. Not to mention they held her in Mexico now—how could anyone help her?

  At least she thought they’d taken her to Mexico. She didn’t know for sure.

  Still, she tried. No matter what she did, all she could get to were the cameras. She saw men and women going through rooms and walking around outside. Hired help, apparently. Then she saw people arriving at the front entrance, a young woman in what looked like a prom dress, and a young man in a suit. An older woman with a stern expression followed the couple and Tori wondered if the woman chaperoned them.

  After searching the cages and around the desk and monitors for some kind of weapon and coming up with nothing, she looked desperately around her one last time. The only movable things were the office chairs. Her mind ran through her options, which amounted to one. She kneeled beside one of the chairs. Maybe if she could disassemble one, she could use part of it as a weapon.