See, I knew there was an explanation. “Okay, but you gotta understand how this looks to my guys. Taking Elan out to breakfast, while nice, was a no-no.”
“So you put out an APB on me?”
“I didn’t. Reilly did.”
I explained the morning’s debacle.
“Well, I can see how it looked that way, I guess, but come on, Abby; you know me, right?”
“Which is why I waited as long as I could. In fact, Witness Protection clued him in before I even called Reilly. How soon can you get back?”
“I’m about an hour or so away. Look, I’m sorry I didn’t return your calls. I had my phone turned off and didn’t realize it.”
“Hurry, okay?”
Chapter 66
When I got back to the office, I dropped my stuff off at my desk and headed straight into Reilly’s office. He was behind his desk, staring at his laptop. His reading glasses teetered on the bony hump in his nose. He removed them and placed them on the desk before leaning back in his chair. “Have a seat.”
I wasn’t about to wait for him to attack. I went on the offensive. “Pulling the security detail was your call, a budget call. I agreed with it. It was one day, and there were no threats against his life that we knew of. It wasn’t our intent to solve the case for the DEA—just to consult, and we more than held up our end of the bargain.”
“Abby, I’m not concerned about the past or what we did or didn’t do or whether or not we followed protocol. I’m concerned about what you’re going to do to find our missing man.”
“Me? You make it sound like I screwed this up. I didn’t screw up anything. I want to find him as much as you do, but I don’t appreciate the insinuation that I’m responsible.”
Reilly held steady with his stare. So did I. Seconds felt like hours, but I wasn’t about to be strong-armed into admitting fault. I’d handled plenty of Reillys in my past.
He relaxed his posture. “I’m sorry if I came across that way.”
“No offense taken. We both want the same thing.”
I watched him adjust himself in his chair. Squirm was more like it. I could tell he knew he had crossed the line, but that was as much of an apology as I would receive.
“Thoughts on our next steps?”
“Agent Cabrera got back to me.”
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
“He called after I got off the phone with you.” I went ahead and relayed what Cabrera had told me.
“Does he have anyone who can corroborate his story?”
I opened my mouth, but nothing came out. Reilly wasn’t letting up with Cabrera. It didn’t matter that he was a DEA agent or that we had worked the case together. He regarded him as a suspect.
“You know, Abby, what I’ve always admired about you was your keen sense to cut through the bullshit. You’re not one to let your emotions sway your ability to do your job.”
He was right. Truth be told, I, too, had that nagging feeling in my head that Cabrera’s actions weren’t adding up, but I had cut him some slack because of our relationship. I had to start viewing the facts objectively.
“Is there something going on between you two?”
Shit! A multitude of answers ran through my head, but none was a standout. Do I deny? Should I clue him in? Before I could babble some sort of vague, safe non-answer, a knock at the door saved me. It was Cummings from Witness Protection.
“We got a hit on the cell number you gave us.”
Of course they did. “I spoke with him not too long ago. He’s on his way back to port.”
“Port?”
“He said he rented a boat and was fishing up the coast.”
“Interesting. The number we got a hit on came from a warehouse in Hunter’s Point.”
Chapter 67
Elan Ortega choked on the cold water he had inhaled as he regained consciousness.
“Wake up!”
His head moved around frantically as he searched for the source of the voice. His breathing remained erratic, fueled by fear. His left eye was no good. It had swelled into two hamburger buns with a thin patty between them. It didn’t matter though, because the blinding spotlights directed at him prevented him from seeing much with his right eye in the darkened room. And what little he could see frightened him. Earlier, he watched a scalpel move slowly toward his thigh, but it was the drawn-out anticipation that really got him—the waiting period right before the pain. It was enough to drive a man to tears. It had.
Both Elan’s arms were tied behind the wooden chair he sat in. His shoulders no longer burned with pain, but instead, they throbbed with a spreading numbness. His mouth had finally stopped bleeding, but the metallic taste still lingered. Sweat seeped into the cuts on his arm and legs, but the burn had lost its effect. Not so for his fingers; he was still aware that each had its nail missing.
Up to that point, Elan had endured a great deal of punishment. He had no idea it would get worse.
“Elan…” the voice rang out again, echoing off the hollow shell of walls around him. Metal was his best guess, but he had stopped trying to determine where he was long ago.
“Do you know it’s possible to beat and torture a man until he develops a threshold to the pain? Yes, yes. I’ve seen it happen myself. In fact, I can tell that you are one of those men. I know what I’m doing to you doesn’t have the same effect it did earlier.”
Elan could hear his footsteps circling around him, the voice now behind him.
“But don’t worry, my friend. All is not lost. You see, there is a way to get around this little dilemma. It’s very simple. Want to hear it? Okay. I simply increase the pain. That’s it,” the voice said in amazement. “I take the pain to a higher level. And when you get used to that. I will increase it again. It’s an evil cycle.”
Elan heard a clap and the sound of two hands rubbing together.
“Tell me,” the voice said as the speaker got closer.
Elan could feel the other’s breathing against his own face. He tilted his head back and focused with his right eye. It had begun to swell, but not to the same degree as his left. He stared at the man that Agent Cabrera said didn’t exist, the man he referred to as a myth, made up to keep soldiers in line and to secure loyalties. How could this be? How could the man the locals called El Monstruo also be Agent Cabrera?
“I’ll never tell you.”
“I beg to differ.” Cabrera circled the shivering scientist like a shark would before striking its prey. “I remember being in the hotel with your wife. Adrianna was her name? She is, well was, a very pretty woman. Terrible thing to have happened.”
“Don’t you speak of her,” Elan spat through gritted teeth. “Don’t you dare!”
Cabrera grabbed the scalpel from the table next to him while he steadied Elan’s head with the other hand. He let out a scream as he fought to shake his head free, but Cabrera was too strong, and the sound of the blade scraping against his own skull was too much.
When Cabrera finished, he proudly proclaimed that the letter R was complete. “Only two left to complete the masterpiece.” M, O, N, S, T, and R had now been carved into Elan’s forehead. Cabrera was giddy, like a kid with his first art project. He even snapped a photo with his phone.
“You know, I can always reverse engineer the drug,” he told Elan. “A small sample still exists.”
“You’ll never succeed. It’ll take years at best. The combinations are in the millions.” Elan forced his voice to sound confident and even managed a chuckle.
“It’s funny to you, is it? You think you have all the power now because you hold the answer, right?”
“Tell me, how do you figure it differently? You kill me and for sure the recipe dies. I am in control. I can prove it.”
In a flash, Cabrera gripped Elan’s throat and squeezed it tightly. “Do not test me, or you will welcome death when I am through with you.”
When Cabrera let go, Elan sucked in deeply to catch his breath and exhaled in a coughing fit. As
soon as he could catch his breath, he rattled off series of words, none of which Cabrera could understand since they were not in English or Spanish. Latin was his best guess.
“I said twenty words,” Elan announced, sounding pleased with himself. “If I may boldly say, one of them was the correct ingredient. You are so stupid when it comes to the sciences that you can’t even deduce that fifteen of those words couldn’t possibly be the ingredient. Drosophila! Do you know what that is? No, of course not. How silly of me to ask. What about Mangifera indica? I love sweet mangifera indica.” Elan’s cleverness delighted him so much that he failed to see the rage building in Cabrera’s face.
“Say it again. I dare you to repeat those exact words once more.”
“But of course.” Again, Elan rattled them off.
A moment later, he heard his own voice repeating those very same words, followed by a gruff laugh. “Who’s the smart one now?” Again the recording sounded off the words as Cabrera held up his phone.
Elan let out a puff of breath. “Who cares? You have a recording. You’ll never figure it out. You are no further ahead than where you were before.”
“Oh, that’s where you’re wrong. If there’s one thing I’ve learned, it’s that I do not need you.”
Cabrera bent down and wrapped a chain around Elan’s ankles, securing it tightly with a lock. He then backed into the depth of darkness, out of sight.
“What are you doing?” Elan cried out fearfully. He heard a switch and then the whirring of an engine. A beat later, the slack in the chains tightened, and yanked his feet out in front of him and lifted him up off the chair. There he swung upside down, dangling from his feet, the chair still trapped between his arms. The pressure from the chain crushed his ankle bones together, causing excruciating pain. Elan screamed louder.
“That’s it. Let it out. I know it hurts.”
Cabrera reemerged from the dark and yanked the chair free. Elan’s head stood even with Cabrera’s stomach. “This is perfect.” He grabbed a hold of Elan’s head and carved the last two letters into the man’s forehead.
Elan continued his cries for help. He contorted his body and jerked from side to side as he desperately tried to shake free. He screamed and screamed until he realized Cabrera had disappeared once again.
“Where are you? Tell me!”
Elan struggled to turn himself around as he searched for the madman. He saw no movement and heard no noise save for the twisting of the chains around his ankles. Where could he be? Only Elan’s short, hard breaths could be heard. His torso swung to the right then to the left, but still he could not see El Monstruo. Elan let out a cry and then another, followed by a long wavering howl until the room fell quiet once again. His shifting eyes continually searched until a noise made him freeze. Every muscle in his body tightened into knotted fear. The only movement came from the slight sway in the chain.
Elan Ortega had been completely and utterly incapacitated by a simple sound: that of a very long blade being slowly pulled from its sheath.
Chapter 68
The towers had triangulated Cabrera’s phone signal and pinpointed his location in an abandoned warehouse. From what I could deduce from the rusted conveyer belts that routed through most of the large, open space, the signal had led us to an old processing plant—seafood, most likely. I was busy clearing a row of offices filled with rusted furniture, empty filing cabinets, and rotting paper when I got the word. Another team of agents had discovered a small shipping container tucked in the rear corner of the warehouse; at least, that was the initial assessment. We would later discover that the container was a large, walk-in refrigeration unit.
I moved around and ducked under a few canning tracks until I spotted the agents. As I approached, one turned to me. “It’s ugly in there.”
“Thanks for the heads up.”
I pulled the door open and stopped as soon as I entered.
The motionless body hung upside down about fifteen feet back, facing away from me. Two tripods, each with a double set of work lights, lit the body and the remaining part of the container. The air inside was noticeably hotter and fouled by a pungent mixture of blood and something musky I couldn’t identify.
“I’m pretty sure it’s him, but you might want to take a look yourself,” the agent behind me said.
I didn’t respond. I took a deep breath and pushed forward. As I got closer, I noticed that the dark liquid below the body had pooled toward the left of the container. I bent down for a closer look. “This happened recently. The blood hasn’t coagulated yet.”
I turned back toward the agent. “I’m assuming that print isn’t from the loafers you’re wearing.”
He shook his head definitively.
I had already known the answer, but I had to ask. The mark looked to be from an athletic shoe. Cabrera wore athletic shoes.
I accepted that the body hanging upside down in front of me was Elan Ortega. It was upsetting, but it came with the territory. I could distance myself from it. But the realization that Cabrera obviously had something to do with his death left my stomach feeling weighted and hollow. I did my best to keep a straight face, but my emotions were clawing at the inside of my chest, anxious for an audience. It didn’t help that my eyes were already in a battle to hold back an angry wave of tears. The more I processed what had happened, the more confused I became. Life had led me down a happy path only to sucker punch me with a nasty twist. I had to question everything I thought to be true.
I stood, straightening my jacket. Let’s get it over with. I chose the right side of the container, away from the pooling blood, and walked on the tips of my toes to avoid disturbing the scene before the forensic techs could sweep the place.
His body was still dripping—not much, but noticeable. My head craned around his torso, much more anxious than my legs were for an explanation. There it was—unavoidable. Elan had been sliced open from his waistline up to his sternum. A coil of innards spilled out from his gut area.
“There’s a message,” the agent motioned with his finger, “on his forehead.”
I bent my knees for a better look and saw the same carvings that his wife, Adrianna, had suffered.
My body stiffened, and my tongue seemed to swell as I tried to swallow. A nauseous boil rose in my stomach. I prayed I wouldn’t succumb, but to know that I had been intimate with a monster sickened me. How could he have had me so fooled? Did I miss the signs? What happened to my keen ability to sniff out the bad fruit?
My pity party didn’t last long, because the loathing I felt quickly turned on its heel. Anger, coupled with the embarrassment of being taken advantage of, replaced my sadness. My fists clenched, and my breathing gained momentum.
Cabrera must have laughed himself silly as he courted me into bed. This must have been a big game to him. Why else would a man involve himself with a person whose goal is to rid the earth of people like him? Spite? Hardly. Revenge? Can’t say it was that either. Maybe it was his way of keeping himself safe, undetected. Keep your friends close... Turns out, I wasn’t his friend.
“Abby.”
Reilly’s voice sprang me out of my thoughts and back into the container.
“Look, I know what you’re thinking,” I said. “How could I have not known? I—”
“Stop right there. I’m not blaming you for this. Agent Cabrera was an unknown to us. How could you, we, have known who he really was? Catching him is our concern. We can figure out the ‘why’ later.”
“Oh my God!” I clapped a hand over my mouth.
“What is it?”
“He—he knows where I live. He met Lucy… and my mother-in-law.”
Reilly had a quick draw on his phone. Within seconds, he had ordered a team of agents to my home while I raced there also.
Horrible thoughts plagued me during my drive home. There was no daycare that day, so I knew Lucy was home. I feared I would arrive and she and Po Po would be missing, taken by that sick son of a bitch. Or worse: I would find them in the
same condition we’d found Elan. I struggled to purge those scenes from my mind. I had to remain positive and levelheaded. He could still be there.
As I made a left onto Pfeiffer Street where I lived, I realized I’d arrived before the backup Reilly had ordered. I couldn’t wait, so I parked my car a few houses down. I double checked my weapon and grabbed an extra magazine and my flak jacket from the trunk. I took a deep breath before quietly advancing on the Victorian. I couldn’t believe I had brought my work home in the worst possible way. Something had to change. Who could expect a family to get through this unscathed? It was the total opposite of what I wanted to achieve with our life here. We’d left Hong Kong for safer and simpler. So much for that. If there was one saving grace, it was that Ryan was still at camp. I had Reilly dispatch agents up there anyway. Then I notified the camp.
If Cabrera was in there, I wanted the element of surprise on my side. I decided to cut across my neighbor’s front yard and through the tall hedge that separated our properties. It was a tight squeeze, but I got through with only a few scratches and moved to the side of the house. On my way to the rear, I passed under a series of windows and cursed my height for not allowing me to see inside. For the first time in my life, I sincerely wished I were taller.
I slipped inside the screened-in porch, my weapon out in front. The house seemed eerily quiet. The back door was locked, which it should be. After I let myself in, I could hear the TV in the living room. I removed my shoes before making my way down the hallway, hoping I wouldn’t catch a loose floorboard. Along the way, I cleared the laundry room, a bathroom and Po Po’s bedroom. I stopped short of entering the living room and poked my head around the corner. I saw Po Po sitting in the recliner, watching TV. She was alone, and things appeared normal, but I didn’t want to take any chances. I had a finger against my lips when I revealed myself to her. I cleared the kitchen quickly, and then reentered the living room.
Tenderloin (Abby Kane FBI Thriller) Page 21
