He doesn’t speak as he shuts the door. Doesn’t even clear his throat as he glances at the security camera. He simply steps over to the table, pulls out the chair, and sits down. He has some documents in his hands—papers, photographs—and he sets them face down on the tabletop.
I’m wearing my sneakers but no socks. A pebble must have found its way into the right sneaker because it’s been bugging me the past hour, but there’s nothing I can do about it. They let me keep on the sweatpants and T-shirt, though of course they searched me before cuffing me and escorting me down the hallway toward the apartment building stairs.
Sheriff Gilbert says, “Who are you?”
He’s an older man in his late fifties, his white hair buzzed, his face tanned and worn. But he has kind eyes, which is maybe one of the reasons he keeps getting reelected as sheriff.
When I don’t answer, he shifts in his chair, clears his throat.
“We know your real name isn’t Jen Young. Well, at least we’re pretty sure that’s the case. Your ID looks legit, and you come up in the system, but I’ve got people doing research. This day and age, you can’t just step out of nowhere. There’s a social media footprint.”
Atticus gave me this identity. He has numerous resources at his disposal, and I’m pretty confident the ID has all the bases covered, but surely something will crack if they dig hard enough.
Sheriff Gilbert clears his throat again.
“You had a Mossberg 590A1 shotgun in your possession, along with a SIG Sauer P320 Nitron Compact and a SIG TACOPS 1911, not to mention a SOG tactical knife. I respect the Second Amendment as much as the next warm-blooded American, but that sure does seem a bit excessive for a girl your age.”
I doubt he’d say the same thing to a boy my age, but I don’t bother taking the bait.
The man shifts in his seat again, takes a breath.
“We also found a pinkie finger in your refrigerator. It looks like a woman’s. Judging by the fact it appears you have all your digits, I have to ask: whose pinkie finger is it?”
I say nothing.
Sheriff Gilbert’s eyes harden.
“To what extent is my deputy involved in what happened last night?”
Shit. They’re going to drag Erik into this. Not that I’m surprised, but I was hoping he might make it out of this unscathed. Despite the fact he was there when they raided my apartment, half-naked, on his knees with his hands behind his head.
I keep my gaze steady with the sheriff’s when I answer.
“What happened last night?”
The kindness in the man’s eyes fades.
“You know very well what happened last night. Two federal agents were murdered, and you were the one who murdered them.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
Sheriff Gilbert issues a frustrated grunt as he slides a finger under the documents and flips them over.
They’re not papers, I see, but photographs, blown up to 6 x 9 so that every detail can be seen. There are three of them, and he spreads them out on the table in front of me like he’s a blackjack dealer.
The sheriff taps the center photograph with his index finger.
“This is you, isn’t it?”
It is, but I don’t give him the satisfaction of acknowledging it. No verbal response, nothing in my eyes.
He smiles, nodding to himself as he stares down at the photograph.
“Yeah, we got photographic evidence of you murdering those men. I ain’t no lawyer, but I’ve been doing this long enough to know you’re screwed.”
The center photograph shows me standing on the other side of the tractor, which means the camera must have been positioned above the side door. When the lights came on, I did a quick scan of the interior, but clearly I missed a camera hanging over the door. Unless the camera wasn’t meant to be easily seen.
The other two photographs show me standing over the ICE agents, Mulkey and Kyer. In each photograph, I’m holding the 1911. In each photograph, the men are dead.
None of the photographs show Eleanora.
The sheriff leans back in his seat, crosses his arms, and takes another deep breath.
“So here’s what’s gonna happen next. In the next hour, U.S. Marshals will arrive to take you into their custody. They’re gonna transport you down to San Antonio where there’s a federal judge waiting to arraign you.”
“Sheriff Gilbert.”
This catches him off guard for some reason, the way I casually say his name, and he frowns at me but doesn’t speak.
“Who provided you with these photographs?”
He doesn’t answer. Just sits there, studying me. Clearly not sure how to proceed.
I glance down at the center photograph again, the one that clearly shows my face. It’s almost too perfect. Obviously I’m being set up, but the question is by whom, and why.
“How many of these photographs did you receive?”
No answer.
“Did you receive them from the owner of the location in which these events supposedly took place?”
No answer.
“I’m sure by now you would have already spoken to the owner, so I guess my question is does he or she acknowledge having a security camera placed inside this building?”
Sheriff Gilbert still doesn’t answer. He keeps watching me, his lips tight.
“Say the owner doesn’t have a security camera inside this building, then how exactly were these photographs taken, and why?”
The kindness in the sheriff’s eyes has long since left for vacation. His jaw has tightened, too. His chair creaks as he leans forward to start collecting the photographs.
I ask, “When do I get my phone call?”
The hardness in his eyes snaps into a glare.
“You killed two federal agents. You don’t get a goddamned phone call.”
I should leave it there—let the man storm out of the room to catch his breath, cool off—but I don’t.
“So let me get this straight. You respect the Second Amendment, but not the Sixth? You know, it’s part of the Bill of Rights that guarantees a citizen a speedy trial, a fair jury, and a—”
Sheriff Gilbert slams his fist down on the table.
“You”—pointing at me now with his free hand, his face having gone red—“you murdered two federal agents in cold blood.”
I calmly keep my gaze steady with his.
“Allegedly.”
His jaw tightens again. His face has gone even redder. It looks like he’s ready to explode at me when there’s a knock at the door.
Like somebody’s just poked him with a pin, the sheriff starts to deflate. He glares at me for another moment before snatching up the photographs and pushing to his feet. He nearly tears the door off its hinges, lets it slam shut. A moment of silence outside, and then he shouts, “What?” before he says something else I can’t make out and the door opens again. He doesn’t advance toward the table, though, and stays where he is, holding the door open.
“Your lawyer is here.”
His words drip with contempt.
I don’t make any reaction—no smile, no frown—because I don’t want to set him off any more than I already have. Plus … what lawyer? Obviously I’m entitled to one—so says the Founding Fathers who wrote the Bill of Rights—but I don’t have a lawyer, or even know a lawyer. I wanted a phone call so that I could call Atticus. I wouldn’t be able to speak to him, at least not right away. The only number he gave me is to a dry cleaners that doesn’t exist. Atticus said to call and leave a message if I’m ever in any trouble. And this most certainly seems like trouble. Not sure what all he can do for me, anyway—the photographs Sheriff Gilbert showed me are quite damning—but at least he’s somebody I can reach out to because … well, I don’t have anybody else.
The sheriff lets the door slam shut. For a minute I’m left in that deep silence, and then the door opens again.
And again I don’t make any reaction as I watch her enter the interview roo
m. She’s wearing a black business suit. Modest heels. Full-rim rectangle eyeglasses. Her hair isn’t curly, not like it was yesterday, but long and straight.
As soon as the door closes, she moves directly to the camera in the corner, a briefcase in one hand, and leans up on her tiptoes to disconnect the power cord. Then Leila Simmons turns back to me, a small smile on her face.
“Hello, Holly.”
Twenty
She moves forward slowly, taking her time, her eyes never once leaving mine. She sets the briefcase on the table, pulls out the chair, and sits down.
“Cat got your tongue?”
When I don’t answer, she frowns thoughtfully.
“Such an odd expression, isn’t it? Just one of those sayings that doesn’t make sense when you think about it. I looked it up once, to find out where it came from. Supposedly it goes all the way back to the Middle Ages. They say witches’ cats would take a person’s speech so that the sighting could not be reported to the authorities. Or something along those lines. Seriously, Holly, say something. You’re starting to make me nervous.”
I don’t answer. Just keep staring back at her. Wondering how I could be so careless. I thought I did enough research to make sure she was legit, but apparently not.
“In case you’re wondering, my name isn’t Leila Simmons. But for now feel free to think of me as Leila. By the way, Eleanora is doing well. That’s actually her real name. Just like Juana was really the name of the girl those two agents killed.”
She pauses, shakes her head with a soft sigh.
“Such a shame what happened. But she knew what she was getting into. All the girls we take in know what they’re getting into. They’re desperate, you understand. They’ll do anything to save their children. They’ll do anything to make a better life for themselves.”
Another pause, and now the small smile turns cold.
“Of course, in the end, they almost always get fucked over. But blame that on today’s marketplace—it’s the children who are the moneymakers, not the girls. Most of them are damaged by the time they get to us. They’re no longer as … pure as our buyers would like.”
Okay, enough of this shit. I’m done staying silent.
“Give me one good reason why I shouldn’t shout for the sheriff and have you arrested right this second.”
The woman smiles again, and presses the buttons on the briefcase to unlatch it. She lifts the top and pulls out some photographs. Like with Sheriff Gilbert, the photographs are large, but they’re not 6 x 9. These are in color, and there are three of them. She lays them out on the table in front of me. Seeing them, my heart stops.
Leila taps the tip of her fingernail on the tabletop as she speaks.
“I don’t have much time, so I’m going to cut to the chase. We know who are. We know your name is Holly Lin. That you worked covert missions for the United States government. That you spent your day keeping an eye on the children of General Walter Hadden. That your father also worked covert missions for the government, but that he went rogue a few years ago.”
She keeps tapping her nail, a consistent, steady beat.
“Do your sister and mother know what you really did? Or what your father did? Do you think they wonder why you disappeared, or did you tell them why you left?”
In the center photograph is my mother. It looks like she’s at the grocery store, in the produce section. Inspecting a batch of bananas.
“Your nephews are quite cute. What are their names? We know one is Matthew, but the other is …”
She lets it hang there, as if she expects me to fill in the blank, but I continue to say nothing. I stare down at the photo on the left, the one that shows the two boys playing at the park. I’m not about to tell her the other boy’s name is Max.
Leila keeps tapping her fingernail on the table.
“And your sister’s husband’s name is Ryan. We know where he works. We know some of his coworkers. We know where he likes to have lunch during the week.”
My sister and Ryan are in the third photograph. It’s taken from a distance. All the photographs are taken from a distance. My family—the ones I left D.C. to save, to protect—are being watched. Were being watched. It all depends on how long ago these photographs were taken.
I lift my gaze to meet hers, and it takes everything I have not to launch myself across the table. Only I can’t. Not with my wrists shackled. She knows this, of course, and based on the look in her eyes, it amuses her greatly.
When I speak, my voice is just above a whisper.
“What do you want?”
She lifts a finger, shakes it back and forth like a metronome, and reaches back into the briefcase. Pulls out another photograph, this one also in color.
My heart stops again. Not in fear this time, but in surprise.
Leila sets the photo on top of the others, turned so I can see it right side up.
“Does this look familiar?”
It does. Of course it does. The bedroom of a mansion overlooking the town of La Miserias. The mansion belonged to a man named Fernando Sanchez Morales. The Moraleses were the last remaining cartel family Alejandro Cortez had targeted because of what they did to his family. Morales and his men had stormed La Miserias that night out of anger because the people had risen up and defied Morales, leaving his wife and child behind only to be guarded by a few men. By the time Nova and I arrived at the mansion, those men were killed, and Morales’s wife and child were cowering in the master bedroom while Alejandro Cortez stood over them.
Leila watches me stare down at the photograph.
“Morales became paranoid being locked up in his home. He wanted to make sure his family was safe, so he had security cameras installed. But he didn’t want his wife to feel like she was being watched all the time, so they were tiny cameras, hidden very well.”
They must have been hidden very well, but I don’t remember seeing any cameras. Of course, at the time I was too focused on saving the woman’s and child’s lives. The possibility of hidden cameras was the last thing on my mind.
“Where did you take his body, by the way?”
She’s watching me now intently, eager to learn where we buried the man known as El Diablo.
I say nothing.
With a shrug, Leila gathers the photographs and slips them back into the briefcase.
“On second thought, I don’t want to know. I like the mystery. It keeps things interesting.”
She closes the briefcase.
“Your friend—he’s a big, handsome man. We’ve tried finding him, too, but with no luck. He’s managed to do a better job at disappearing, it seems. You, on the other hand … you did pretty well, but social media got the better of you.”
She waits a beat for a reaction, and smiles again.
“You see, the people I work for are well connected, and they have a lot of money, enough money to pay the right people to scour social media for whatever or whomever we want. We gave them your picture, and they used their facial recognition software to start digging through social media. The way it was explained to me, it’s like a spider that skims the Web looking for somebody with the same dimensions as your face. For seven months they searched until they found a match. Somebody’s Instagram, a photo taken at your place of employment. You were in the background, but there was enough of your face that it gave an alert. Once we learned the location of the bar, we sent people down to confirm it was you, and we’ve been monitoring you ever since.”
“How long?”
She seems surprised I asked the question.
“What do you mean?”
“How long have you been monitoring me?”
“About two months. Don’t look surprised. It’s not like we had people sitting in a van outside your apartment. We just made sure to keep an eye on you until the day came that we would need your assistance.”
“I’m not helping you.”
“No? Come now, Holly, look at these pictures of your family. We know that Ernesto Diaz’s son
threatened them. That’s why you killed him and his men, and why you went to Mexico to kill Ernesto.”
She’s right, of course. Javier Diaz did threaten my family, and because of that I did kill him and his men. I knew that once word got back to his father of what happened, his father would retaliate, and so I went to Mexico to kill him, too—and it was there that I stumbled into the war between Alejandro Cortez and Fernando Sanchez Morales.
Leila smiles again, clearly impressed with herself.
“The dots were always there. We simply needed a starting point. Don’t think Javier Diaz didn’t alert only his father that he planned to confront you. Others were aware. That’s how we’ve known about your family all this time. We just weren’t sure what to do with them, if anything. But like I said, we decided to keep an eye on you until we needed your assistance, and with those two ICE agents … let’s call it two birds with one stone.”
She laughs suddenly, a soft chuckle, and shakes her head.
“Now that’s an expression that makes sense. There’s something so simplistically barbaric about the idea of killing two things with one item, don’t you think?”
I don’t bother answering. I keep thinking about the photographs in the briefcase.
Leila snaps the briefcase shut, pulls it close to her.
“Obviously you aren’t taking this seriously. I guess you want your family to die. So be it.”
She starts to stand, but I tell her to wait, and she stands there, watching me.
I say, “What do you want?”
“Right now? I want you to know we have people watching your family. At any moment they’re prepared to kill your mother and sister, even your nephews. If you don’t want that to happen, you’re going to do exactly what we tell you to do.”
“And what is that?”
The small smile lights back on her face.
“That will come in time. For now, I want to make sure we’re on the same page. And I know what you’re thinking—that maybe you’ll try to get them to arrest me on my way out, see the photographs in my briefcase, but I wouldn’t advise that. If I don’t leave here in the next five minutes, your family dies. And in terms of phone calls, I’ve already made them aware you don’t want any phone calls. Besides, the U.S. Marshals will be here shortly. And once they take you into their custody, you won’t be in any position to make phone calls.”
Hollow Point Page 8
