by JA Huss
I close my eyes and try to keep breathing.
“You know,” Carlos goes on, “when I hired you to plan my daughter’s wedding, I liked you immediately. You did not seem intimidated by me. And I appreciated that. Very much. So many people work so hard to please me that when I meet someone who seems like they are strong and have the courage of their convictions, I like that. Especially in a woman. You, in particular, reminded me of another woman I felt that way about once.”
Oh, Jesus. Please don’t say—
“Carolina. You know about Carolina, yes? You know who she was? I assume you do, since you talked about her the other night.”
I don’t nod. I don’t say yes. I continue standing still as he circles around the front of me, holding that goddamned tamale. The combination of the tamale smell with the cigar smoke is making me want to throw up. Or maybe it’s just the fear that I can’t deny is creeping in now.
“When I discovered that you had begun working for Peter Flanagan, I was… surprised? Shocked? I do not know the word. But I could not believe that you, this woman who reminds me so much of a woman I once knew, would find herself associated with the same man. That is quite a coincidence. Don’t you think that’s quite a coincidence?”
He’s inches from my face. I can smell the cigar and champagne on his breath.
“Pete,” I summon the will to say.
“I’m sorry?”
“His name wasn’t Peter. It was just Pete. As far as I know.”
There is a pause as he looks at me curiously, then smiles.
“Ah. Yes. Very good. So, tell me… How is it that you came to work for Pete? After you and I met, and you spent all my money—”
I open my mouth to speak, but he puts his tobacco-stained finger against my lips.
“Shh, shhh, shhhhh. You did spend my money. Whether or not it is ‘your fault’ is beside the point. You did, in fact, spend it. So. How did you come to work at Pete’s? Exactly? Where did the idea come to you from?”
There is a shiver running down my spine now. Moments ago, he told Logan to find out where Tyler got hold of one of Carlos’s drones, and now he’s asking me questions about how I came to work at Pete’s. Which, as I told Tyler, was because of the flyer I saw at the drone store. Or warehouse. Or whatever the fuck.
“Why?” I summon the voice to ask.
“Because,” has says, pressing his face directly into mine, “I want to know precisely how long you’ve been working for the Drug Enforcement Administration of the United States of America.”
The crashing of waves is all I hear.
Then, “Madison? You don’t look well. Oh, I’m sorry. Forgive me. You still haven’t eaten. And from what you say, you had quite the workout. So here, please, please. I want you to eat.”
He holds up the fucking tamale.
I try to lick my lips, but there’s no saliva. So, raspy and barely audible, I eke out, “I’m not—”
“Eat!” he screams. Right before he squeezes my cheeks, forcing my jaws open, and shoves the sweet, mushy corn husk violently into my mouth.
Chapter Twenty-Three - Tyler
The first thing I notice about the room Ricky leads me into is what it doesn’t have. Furniture. At all. It appears to be pretty much empty. But that also means it isn’t outfitted with any kind of electrified torture bed like they strapped Stallone to in Rambo, First Blood Part II, so I’m feeling pretty good about things right now. Although I was curious how I would take having electrodes and shit strapped to my junk. Maybe Maddie and I can find out if we make it out of this.
“You’re a piece of fucking work, man. You know that?” Ricky says, as he closes the door behind us and tosses my rucksack on the floor.
“Thanks. I’ll take that as a compliment. Hey, I don’t really give a shit what happens to me, so do me a favor, would you, and go fucking find Maddie?”
“Orders are for me to wait with you until Logan gets here. I’ll go as soon as I can.”
“If that motherfucker hurts her, I will rip his spine out through his fucking dick hole.”
“Man,” Ricky says, shaking his head, “will you just fucking dial it back for a second?”
“No. I really wish I could. Believe me. But I don’t think I have the switch for that.”
He sighs. “What the fuck were you thinking, coming down here?”
“We had a deal. I gave her a sat phone. She didn’t call like she was supposed to.”
He nods. “You don’t trust me, do you?”
“Gee. Is it obvious?”
“Well,” he says, rubbing his hand over his mouth, “that’s fine and all, but if something happens to Maddie tonight, know that you did this shit.”
We stare at each other for a long beat as my fingers tighten into fists. Not because he said it, but because—fuck—I know he’s right.
And then the door opens and in walks good old Logan, carrying his AK in one hand and a fucking baseball bat in the other. Which is just adorable.
“You guys got a league?” I ask. “Shit. I didn’t bring my mitt.”
Logan looks at Ricky and gestures with his chin to the wall behind me, which is when I notice, for the first time, the handcuffs bolted there. Ricky grabs me, marches me over, and locks my arms above my head into the metal bracelets. As he’s backing away he gives me a look that’s half “I’m sorry,” and half “Don’t fuck me here.”
“Wow,” I say, as he steps back, leaving me hanging there. Literally. “Logan. I know we don’t know each other that well, but I had no clue you were into the kinky shit.”
Logan rests his rifle against the wall where he’s standing. Ricky makes for the door—I hope to fuck to go find Maddie—but Logan stops him with something that sounds to my ear like, “No. Quedarse.” Ricky says some other shit to him in Spanish I don’t understand and Logan answers back. Ricky again tries to leave, but now Logan shouts, “Quedarse!” Which causes Ricky to put his hands up and step back into the corner. He looks at me with a tilt to his head that suggests an apology, and one raised eyebrow that says, I fuckin’ tried. And even though there are a thousand other things that should be on my mind at present, the only thought I have just now is I wonder if he can raise both eyebrows or just the one?
And then it dawns on me: If he’s not leaving this room, then who the fuck is going to protect Maddie?
Logan walks over to me now, baseball bat propped on his shoulder. It’s kind of hard to take him seriously with his face all fucked up and him sauntering like a little leaguer who just got called to the plate. But it makes it a tad bit easier to take him seriously the moment after the bat crashes into my ribs.
He smiles just before the wind-up, and, swinging with all his force, he lands the boom stick in more or less the same area where Ricky punched me. I’m crediting the fact that it knocks the wind out of me more to Ricky having already tenderized my flesh and less to the mighty power that is Lame-Ass Logan. Which I’ve decided is his new nickname.
But no matter the reason, it does smart a teeny bit, and I wince. My knees buckle, and I feel the tug of the cuffs on my wrists as they pull at my skin and keep me from collapsing. It’s a simple, but effective way to torture a person, I have to admit. You can beat on them all you want, but they can’t retreat. They’re totally exposed. And when they finally do break down, the cuffs rip and tear the flesh of their wrists and threaten to pull their shoulders out of their sockets. Solid. And way less messy than cutting somebody up with a chainsaw.
Anyway.
“Strike one,” I manage to cough out.
“OK,” Logan says, nodding and backing up to stare at me. “So my uncle is chatting with Maddie, and you and I are gonna have a little talk too, and then we’ll see if everybody’s stories line up. How’s that sound?”
“Like you pulled that question out of a Steven Seagal movie from the nineties, but whatever. Continue.”
He closes his eyes and takes a breath. “Where did you get the drone?” he asks.
“What dro
ne? I ain’t got no drone.”
“Man, just… don’t!” He slams the bat against the floor. It’s a wood floor and a wood bat, and the sound reverberates through the room with a rich, tribal tone that causes me to think of a Kodo drum from Japan.
There’s a reason I allow my mind to wander. For a long time, I thought I couldn’t control it. I actually think I probably could if I wanted to. But I don’t, because then I would have to be present. And for years, being present meant being present in a shitty situation that I hated. Or caused pain. Or both. I’ve been finding lately that with Maddie, my mind doesn’t wander as much. Because when I’m with her, where I am is exactly where I want to be. But here, now? A situation like this? I got no problem letting my brain saunter off. It’s what’s going to keep me from giving my power away to the fact that, in theory, I should be intimidated. Because I won’t be. Not by this fuckbucket.
Logan continues talking. “We know that the guy we were buying our drones from was working for the DEA. And we know that they were tagging our own fucking drones to see if they could figure out the shit they were too stupid to figure out any other way. Which is why we stopped using them. And then, lo and fuckin’ behold, Maddie shows up and then the very next day a drone that we confirmed from the serial number was one of ours, from a shipment we never picked up because we fucking figured out what was going on, shows up dive-bombing my uncle’s house.”
I glance at Ricky, who shakes his head a tiny bit and looks to the ground. Logan doesn’t see the exchange, I don’t think, and continues. “So, my question is: Who is it who supplied you with the fucking drone? I mean, I know you aren’t fuckin’ DEA. So, how’d you get it?”
Fuckin’ Ricky. Piece-of-shit, lying cocksucker. Was Maddie right? Was she somehow fucking dragged into this thing before it even began? Ricky’s looking at me with a tight grimace now. Is he worried I’m gonna blow his cover? He goddamn well should be.
Fuck you, bro.
I take a breath and say, “I dunno what the fuck you’re talking about. It’s Maddie’s. She bought it. She didn’t know I was coming down here. I just didn’t like the idea of your uncle and his shriveled old fucking cocaine dick near her, so I borrowed it to make sure she was OK.”
I know there’s no way he’ll believe me. Why would he? It’s the truth.
With a lunge that shows a level of spry agility I have heretofore not seen from Lame-Ass, he cracks me again in the same spot. This one I feel. It runs through my stomach and into my back like… well, like fire. Which sucks. But I can’t help it. I burst out laughing. “Oh! Oh, shit! Nice try, bro! But strike two!”
Logan is huffing a little, partially from the labor and partially from his anger. I’m coughing and laughing at the same time, stomping my feet to shake off the burn, and then I throw my head back and howl at the ceiling. “This is, bar none, the best Christmas ever!” I scream. I’m not actually going crazy, I just want him to think I am.
Or I might actually just be going crazy. It’s hard to tell.
I glance again at Ricky with a (I’m guessing) maniacal smile on my face. He looks pained. Good. He should. It’s nothing compared to the pain he’s gonna feel if I get out of this shit. I wonder how far he’s willing to let Logan beat on me to keep from blowing his cover. I have a feeling we won’t have to wait too long to find out.
“Shut up!” Logan shouts over my howling and carrying on, and he winds up for another swing.
“Stop!” That’s me. “Stop! OK. OK. I’ll tell you what you want to know.” Logan lowers the bat and steps back again. “It’s me. OK? It’s me. I’m the DEA agent. Maddie doesn’t know. I’ve been gone for a long time, but I knew her when we were kids, and when I started working for the DEA, I discovered that she had this relationship with Castillo, so I’ve been using her to try and get close to your organization. OK? It’s me. It’s my fucking drone. She’s my informant. It’s all me.” Christ. I wonder if that story sounds as stupid to Logan as it does to me.
Logan gets an impish grin, which is pretty macabre on his busted kisser, huffs out a half-laugh, and says, “You’re no fucking DEA agent.”
“No? I’m not?”
He shakes his head. “Nope.”
“Yeah? You’re sure?”
He nods. “Yeah. I’m sure. I know exactly who you are.”
Hm. I’m super curious what that means. “Oh. Do ya? Well, OK, Agatha Christie. Then please, by all means. Tell me what you think you know.”
He grins and says, “Senior EOD Technician Petty Officer First Class Tyler Hudson Morgan. Birthdate, March fifteenth. Born to Jack Edwin and Barbara Anne Morgan. Power forward for his high school basketball team. Rejected the receipt of the Purple Heart for injuries sustained in combat and released from the Navy under a disability discharge. Owner of the patent for the “blast seeker” artificial intelligence augmentation currently utilized by the US government, a dozen private corporations, and in negotiation for use by half a dozen other tech and research companies as well. Technology actually created by Nadir Al Madani, now deceased. At present, the proclaimed boyfriend of Madison Clayton, chained to a wall in Ensenada, Mexico, and in a world of fucking trouble.” He gets right up in my face and echoes back to me some shit I jokingly said to him the first time we met. “Dude. I know everything about you.”
I am never. Ever. Speechless. I don’t always speak, but I am never at a loss for words.
“Hey. Look at that. Logan has the internet.”
And I’m not at a loss now either. Fuck this asshole.
“WHERE’D YOU GET THE FUCKING DRONE!?” he shouts.
“I told you the truth the first time, man. It’s hers. She intended to buy it to fucking do the wedding planning shit. Probably for you assholes.”
“So you’re telling me that she just happened to be working for Pete. And she just happened to buy a drone that was tagged by the DEA to track back to us.”
I glance at Ricky with a clenched jaw. “Yeah. I know. It’s hard for me to believe it too, but that’s how it happened.”
“So you don’t know nothing about the cops, or the Federales, or the DEA, or none of that shit. You’re just some lovesick asshole spying on your woman.”
“Yup. Pretty much. Can I ask you a question?”
“You wanna ask me a question?”
“I do.”
He sizes me up. What the fuck he’s looking to determine with me hanging here, I’m not sure, but he eyeballs me for a long moment before saying, “OK. What?”
“Logan. That’s not a very Mexican name. Are you his nephew by marriage or were you like, adopted, or—?”
But that’s as far as I get before Logan grabs up the bat and rears back, clearly going to swing for my head this time. Oh, boy. This is gonna smart, I have a feeling. And out of some primal instinct, I close my eyes, readying to absorb the blow, when I hear…
Click.
And for the second time tonight, there is the sound of a Kalashnikov rifle being cocked.
I open my eyes and the question I had about how far Ricky would let Logan go before blowing his cover is answered. Logan snaps his head around to find Ricky there, weapon drawn, Logan scoped the fuck out with nowhere to run.
“Strike three,” I say. Probably unnecessarily.
Logan stares at Ricky for a second and then just drops the bat.
In the movies there’s always lots of talking and explaining in a situation like this.
Ricky? What the hell are you doing?
Don’t move, Logan! Richard Martinez! DEA! You’re done!
Ricky! You bastard! You betrayed me!
And shit like that.
But in the real world, like now, Logan knows he’s been played, he knows who’s DEA and who ain’t, and he knows he stands a way better chance of beating some kind of drug rap in court than he does of dealing with the blowback from trying to kill a fucking undercover DEA agent. Beyond that, he knows that there’s a fucking assault rifle like five feet from his chest and making a thing of it rig
ht now isn’t gonna help him a whole, whole lot.
Ricky pulls a key from his pocket and hands it to Logan, keeping the gun drawn on him the whole time. He says something to him in Spanish (Which is odd to me, it’s like… Dude, you’ve blown your cover. Just drop the shit and talk in a way everybody here can understand already) and Logan comes over to uncuff me from the wall.
“Dude,” I whisper in Logan’s face. “I’m gonna say this just to say it. If Maddie’s not exactly the way she was when I last saw her, I’m gonna rip your uncle’s head off his shoulders and then bring it back in here to beat you to death with it.”
Logan doesn’t say anything. Which is fine. I mean, really, what do you say to something like that? So, once he releases my wrists, we finish the drill. I spin him around, lock him up—which looks a little more painful because he’s shorter than I am so the cuffs stretch him out a little further (Hey. Not my fault)—and then turn to Ricky and ask, “Why the fuck are we still standing here?”
“Because there are men all over the fucking place. You have to stay here with him.”
“What? Shut the front door, fucker. No way. You stay.”
“You will get shot if you go out there alone.”
“They don’t know who the fuck I am.”
“Which is exactly the point.”
Touché.
“Well, tough shit,” I say. “I’m going with you.” Ricky screws his mouth up like he’s about to protest more, but he’s met me. He knows he’s not gonna win this argument. He nods in acquiescence. “Hand me my bag,” I say. He does. I open it up and start riffling through.
“What are you looking for?” he asks.
I don’t answer. Just keep searching. I’m looking for something to shove in Logan’s mouth to keep him from shouting once we’re both gone and he’s here all chained up. I find the roll of duct tape that I have in there, but I need something else. It never works just to slap tape on a person’s mouth. Another fallacy of the movies. You can use your tongue to eventually work it free. If you want to gag someone properly, you have to stuff something else in their mouth first.
