“No, he was leaving as they were coming in. He saw Jesenia help Ángel into the bathroom, and then he left. He didn’t think about it again until he saw the news report.”
“Jesenia let Ángel go into the bathroom by himself?” Charles said, his pulse pounding.
Jade shrugged. “Yeah, I guess.”
“I need to use your car,” he said to Eva.
“Why?” she asked, even as she tossed him her keys. “You’re not seriously thinking of—”
“Tell the sheriff’s department to go out to that gas station and tear the bathroom apart piece by piece,” Charles said as he started for the door. “They need to look in the trash can, inside the toilet tank, even on the ceiling if they have to. If Jesenia left Ángel by himself for even a second, I guarantee you he left behind some kind of sign to help us. He wouldn’t have wasted an opportunity like that.”
“Are you going after them?” Sakura said, astonished. “We have no idea where they went from the gas station, and besides, they left the motel at least an hour before you even figured out what was happening. That gives them like a four-hour head start.”
“Ángel will lead us in the right direction, and Jesenia would have had to take back roads and obey the speed limit.” Charles clenched his fist around the keys, relishing the sting of the metal as it bit into his palm. “I’m not planning on doing either.”
Jesenia didn’t falter when the first APB came over the police scanner with their descriptions, but when it was updated an hour later with the model of their car and a partial license plate, she slammed one hand against the steering wheel, loosing an enraged shout so loud that Ángel cringed.
“Goddamn Charles,” she said, in what was little more than a snarl. “I should have killed him before we left. Nobody else would have noticed you were gone for days.”
This was the first concrete proof Ángel had that Charles was indeed still alive; he’d been too afraid to ask Jesenia directly. He turned his face aside so she wouldn’t catch any indication of his relief.
“It’s all right; it’s fine,” Jesenia said. She readjusted her grip on the steering wheel, her face smoothing into calmer lines. “We’ll just have to stop earlier tonight than I’d planned, that’s all. I’ll ditch this car and get us a new one, and we’ll head back out at rush hour tomorrow.”
He said nothing. He hadn’t spoken since they left the gas station, sitting silently and conserving his strength. His mind was clearing, his body recovering as the sedatives loosened their hold on him a bit, but he didn’t feel normal yet, and he couldn’t risk antagonizing Jesenia while he was still at such a disadvantage.
Eager to get off the road, Jesenia chose a dinky little motel in the middle of nowhere—independently owned, not a member of any national chain. Its only neighbor was a roadside diner a quarter mile south, its parking lot dotted with pickup trucks and motorcycles. Everything else was rolling desert wasteland as far as the eye could see.
She parked some distance from the front office, then turned to him and said, “Lay your seat all the way back.”
“Why?” Ángel asked, immediately wary.
She hefted the stun gun in one hand. “Just do it.”
Reaching the lever with his hands zip-tied in front of him was awkward, but it wasn’t impossible. He lowered the seat all the way, then lay down with great reluctance, his breath quickening instinctively at exposing his belly and throat to an enemy. Jesenia used two sets of handcuffs linked together to chain his zip ties to the metal bars beneath the seat, making it impossible for him to lift his shoulders more than a few inches.
She rearranged his blanket and rummaged in the glove compartment, coming up with a roll of shiny black tape. Ángel’s eyes widened as he pressed himself harder against the seat.
“Don’t,” he said, his intention not to antagonize her abandoned at the prospect of being gagged. “Don’t you dare—”
“It’s just bondage tape.” Jesenia began unwinding the roll. “It won’t hurt coming off, I promise.”
“I don’t care! Don’t you fucking put that on me, you crazy bitch—no!”
Ángel tossed his head from side to side, evading her reaching hands. Bondage tape only stuck to itself, so she couldn’t just tear off a piece and slap it over his mouth; she’d have to wind it at least once around his head. He struggled against her, caught in a frenzied panic that no rational long-term plans could subdue.
Jesenia’s free hand cracked hard against his cheek. It barely stung, but Ángel was so stunned that she had hit him that he went still, giving her the opening she needed to wrap the roll of tape around him several times and secure it tightly over his mouth.
“Please, Ángel, I hate hurting you,” she said, on the verge of tears. “Please don’t make me hurt you anymore. Why don’t you understand that I’m trying to help you?”
She returned the tape to the glove compartment, wiping the back of one hand over her eyes. Ángel breathed hard through his nose as he watched her; he flinched and whined low in his throat when she smoothed back his hair, bending to kiss his forehead.
“I’ll just be a few minutes, cariño,” she said. “Sit tight.”
She tugged the blanket up to cover his mouth before she got out of the car. Ángel sobbed once, and only once, before reining himself in. His entire body trembled, and he had to swallow repeatedly to keep his gorge from rising. He’d choke if he threw up with his mouth taped shut.
When Jesenia returned, she kept him bound and gagged while she drove closer to the room she’d rented. After she turned off the ignition, she pulled the blanket down and said, “Do I have to knock you out and carry you inside, or are you going to behave?”
Ángel nodded, his eyes downcast.
“Same rules apply as before—anyone you try to make contact with dies. Do you understand?”
He nodded again.
Using her pocketknife, she sawed through the zip ties binding his ankles, then released the handcuffs and allowed him to bring the seat up. Instructing him to remain still, she got out and retrieved a large duffel bag from the trunk before rounding the car to the passenger side and opening the door.
Stun gun at the ready, she handed him the room’s key card and said, “Hold this.”
Though Ángel accepted the card, he lifted his hands to his mouth with a questioning noise, bringing her attention to the fact that his wrists were still bound and his mouth taped.
“There’s nobody around, and it’s ten feet to the door,” said Jesenia. “I think I’ll risk it.”
Frustrated, he swung his legs out of the car and stood up. She pressed the stun gun to the small of his back and walked him to the motel room, where she made him unlock the door, turn on the lights, and precede her inside.
“Turn around,” she said. The moment she had cut his wrists free of their zip ties, she added, “Back up to the middle of the room and take off your shoes.”
Ángel did as she ordered. Now that he was unbound, Jesenia was much more guarded—watching his every movement with sharp eyes, stun gun held in anticipation of a possible attack. He wasn’t stupid enough to bum-rush an opponent with four weapons when he himself was unarmed, though, so he just kicked his shoes and socks across the room when she told him to and waited for her next command. He could have removed the tape from his mouth, of course, but it seemed a pointless provocation when he had no intention of calling out for help.
Without ever taking her eyes off him, Jesenia dropped the duffel bag to the ground, unzipped it, and pulled out a few items, tossing them at his feet. “Put these on.”
Ángel took one look at the stuff on the ground and glowered, shaking his head furiously.
“I know you know how to use these things, Ángel,” she said. “Put them on.”
Eyeing the pile with disgust, Ángel stayed right where he was.
Jesenia sighed, growing impatient. “You have two choices—you can put them on yourself, or I can stun you, sedate you, and put them on you anyway. Which is it gonna
be?”
His body stiff with anger, he picked the spreader bar up first and sat on the edge of the bed to fasten the cuffs around his ankles. The bar was contracted to its shortest width, keeping his legs no more than shoulders-width apart, and the sturdy leather cuffs were lined with high-quality suede, so the physical discomfort would be minimal. The humiliation, however, grew more nauseating by the moment.
Jesenia had provided a bag of small bondage padlocks as well. Ángel snapped one around each cuff’s buckle, any hope for freedom destroyed by their tiny clicks. She could leave him alone like this, with his hands completely free, and he still wouldn’t be able to get out of the spreader bar without the key to those locks.
Naturally, she wasn’t going to leave him like this, as there was still one item left—a bondage belt with wrist cuffs. The one very minor consolation was that generous lengths of chain attached the cuffs to the sides of the belt, rather than the back.
Ángel’s cheeks burned as he buckled the thick leather belt around his waist and locked it shut. At Jesenia’s direction, he locked his right wrist into its cuff as well. Only then did she relax and move forward, finishing the job by securing the remaining cuff around his left wrist. She hooked a length of chain to the D-ring on the back of the belt and fastened it to yet another cuff that she locked around the side rail of the metal bed frame closest to the bathroom, which was on the opposite side of the room from the door. The end result left him enough slack to easily reach the bathroom, but nowhere near enough to get to the door, especially with two beds in the way.
Ángel remained seated on the bed, his shoulders hunched with sick humiliation. Jesenia might believe that her obsession wasn’t sexual, but her choice of restraints said a lot. He had no assurance that things wouldn’t change somewhere down the line.
“Good boy,” she said, patting his shoulder. “You should be able to use the bathroom like this, with a little effort, so I think you’ll be okay for a few hours. I’m going to go get us a new car, and I’ll be back as soon as I can.”
As she walked away, Ángel made a muffled noise of outrage, jerking his head to indicate his gag.
“I’m sorry, I can’t leave you here with your mouth free,” Jesenia said with a genuine note of remorse. “Do you want to drink some water before I leave?”
Ángel stared at her incredulously. She was going to leave him alone in a motel room, bound and gagged, for hours? For fuck’s sake, what if there was a fire?
Jesenia took his silence as refusal. She spent a few minutes unloading supplies from the car—several more duffel bags, cases of water, whole crates of nonperishable foods—and then unplugged the phone from the wall and took the cord with her when she left, promising again to return soon.
She’d turned off the lights, so Ángel was left sitting in darkness, gazing down at his restrained body. There was no hope of getting out of these, so he’d have to plan for the future instead. At some point, Jesenia would have to leave him unbound, even if just to shower.
As he continued coming off the sedatives, he would have size and strength to his advantage—but he and Jesenia were equally well trained, and she was much better armed. He’d have to find some kind of weapon, try to level the playing field a bit.
There was sure to be a pen in the desk that could serve as a crude shiv. He didn’t much like the idea of wielding a pen against a stun gun, though, let alone an actual knife. It wouldn’t do enough damage without insane accuracy on his part.
His injured finger twinged, and Ángel shook it out, contemplating the angry red line bisecting his fingertip. He’d been able to hide the small wound from Jesenia; she had no idea he’d slashed his finger open to leave a message.
He rubbed his thumb thoughtfully over the cut. Glass. He needed broken glass.
Easing himself to his feet, he very, very carefully hobbled to the bathroom, sliding his weight from one foot to the other at a measured pace. If he lost his balance like this, with his legs locked into a spreader bar and his wrists chained to his waist, he wouldn’t be able to break his fall.
Inside the bathroom, Ángel nudged his shoulder against the light switch and glanced around. He couldn’t break this mirror, obviously—Jesenia would notice right away. But maybe . . .
Oh, yes. He leaned against the vanity, twisting his body until he was able to snag the tumbler beside the sink with the tips of his fingers. He breathed a sigh of relief when he found that it was indeed glass and not plastic.
Tumbler in hand, he backed away from the sink. His main obstacle was that the chains kept him from moving his hands too far from his waist, which gave him little leverage to work with. Still, he did his best, lifting his hand to the limits of the chain and then whipping the tumbler at the ground with all his strength.
The glass cracked but didn’t break. Groaning, he slowly squatted down and scooped up the tumbler, then rose to his feet and threw it again—and again, and again, until the tumbler finally shattered on his fourth attempt, sending chunks of glass skittering across the bathroom tiles.
Ángel took a moment to rest, fatigued by the demands of moving his body within such strict restraints. He scanned the floor and found a piece of glass that met his needs—a hefty shard, well-sized to hold in one hand, which narrowed to a jagged point on one end.
Pulling a hand towel off the rack, he crouched and used it to sweep up the broken glass, plucking the piece he wanted out of the mess and setting it aside. If he left even a single pebble on this floor, there was a chance Jesenia would find it and figure out what he’d done, so he was meticulous in his cleanup. Bit by bit, he gathered the glass in the towel, shaking it out over the wastebasket whenever he had a good handful.
Bound this way, it took him ten times longer to clear away the glass than it would have unrestrained. He was panting and dripping sweat by the time he’d finished, his quads aching like they’d been set on fire. He moaned as he heaved himself upright and placed his shiv next to the sink. When he made to return the towel to the rack, he realized there was no way he could manage that with his hands so close to his body.
He sidled into the narrow gap between the toilet and the vanity to grab the bar of soap in the corner, unwrapping it and tossing the paper into the wastebasket on top of the broken glass. Pressing his hip bones against the edge of the sink, he was able to lean forward far enough to snag the faucet handle and run his fingertips under the water by rotating from side to side. He dried his hands on the towel and then dropped it on the counter where he would have naturally.
A quick glance into the wastebasket proved that the glass was still visible, so Ángel grabbed a few tissues, crumpled them up, and let them fall on top. Much better.
For half a second, he considered trying to cut his way out of his restraints, but cheap broken glass would never make it through this high-quality leather. He would get a better opportunity to use the shiv; for now, he had to conceal it, and there was only one feasible hiding place.
He had to hunch his shoulders and curve his body into an exaggerated C to unbutton and unzip the fly of his jeans, but Jesenia had been sincere in her intention to allow him to use the bathroom under his own power. The problem that arose, once he had his jeans open, was that he couldn’t use his left hand to hold his clothing away from his body while he snuck the shiv inside. Instead, he was forced to press the glass hard against his hip to get it under the tight waistband of his boxer briefs.
“Nnnn,” he grunted behind his tape gag. He huffed sharply through his nose as he worked the serrated glass into his underwear, scraping it against his skin.
Once the shiv was all the way inside, the form-fitting fabric held it right in place against the meat of his hip. He turned from side to side a few times, ensuring that the glass wouldn’t shift around. He’d need to be careful with how he moved his body, but the restraints would require that anyway, so it wouldn’t look unnatural.
His right palm and fingers were a little grazed from handling the glass, but that could be easily hidd
en. Satisfied that he’d finally taken a productive step toward escaping, he refastened his jeans and returned to the bed to wait for Jesenia.
“You should have taken your earpiece with you,” Jade said when she called Charles in Eva’s car around eleven o’clock.
“I know, I wasn’t thinking,” said Charles. He’d paired his cell phone to the car’s Bluetooth so he could talk hands-free, but it wasn’t the same. “What’s up?”
“You were right—the sheriff’s department found blood on the mirror in the gas station bathroom. It spelled out the letters WY.”
Charles frowned. “WY? The state code for Wyoming?”
“That’s the only explanation that makes sense to us,” Eva chimed in, indicating that Charles was on speakerphone back in the office. “We’re tearing through all of Jesenia’s aliases, looking for any connections to property or contacts out there.”
“Yeah, but this shit is a maze,” said Sakura. “Jesenia’s been in and out of undercover her entire career. She’s got aliases she used working for the DEA, ones she used working for cartels, ones she used working inside the cartels for the DEA . . . We’re talking dozens of different identities, everything from straw puppets to bulletproof covers that we’d never realize were her if we didn’t already know what she looks like.”
“Why so many?” Charles asked. Thanks to the bubble light on the roof of the car, he was making good time, zipping down the highway as the other cars scattered out of his path.
“She’s been moving millions of dollars around between them. Wire transfers back and forth, bank accounts opened with small, frequent cash deposits and closed a few months later—girl’s swimming in dirty money.”
“Jesenia’s been playing both sides of the fence for a long time,” Shane said grimly. “Much longer than she’s known Phoenix.”
Charles blasted his horn as he came up behind a sedan that was moseying along in the left lane, apparently oblivious to the flashing blue lights. “Why do people drive in the left lane if they’re not fucking passing?” Charles said, swinging his car over to the right.
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