Missing Lynx

by Quinn, Fiona

  When Franco saw me cleaner, he smiled. I walked quietly to the exercise yard, not sure whether my next move was a good idea or not. But I decided what the heck. It couldn’t hurt. With a great deal of theater, I struggled to say “Bebe…es…enfermos, si?” Baby is sick, yes?

  Franco went rigid. “How do you know this?” he demanded in Spanish.

  I molded my expression to portray confusion and shrugged my shoulders. Those seemed like the right reactions to express confronted in a language that wasn’t understood. I made the sign of the cross then I mimed and said in English, “I will pray for your baby.”

  Franco grabbed me by both arms. I wasn’t sure if he would shake me or hug me; he did neither. He just looked deeply into my eyes, with grief and pain. He released me saying, “Gracias.” I walked out and turned my face to the sunshine.

  Alpha stood in the exercise yard today. He stared hard. I plunked down on a little clump of grass and calmly pet Alpha in my mind’s eye. I asked him about his wounds and sent him some Reiki. Alpha sent pictures of Elicia leaving last night, and I tried to convey that I had sent my thoughts with her. Alpha seemed to understand this. I wasn’t sure how much of this I was making up. Was I really communicating with Alpha? I needed confirmation. I spotted an empty plastic water bottle near the guard’s station and asked him to go get it and return to his spot. Alpha got up a moseyed over to the bottle and brought it back. Laying down he rested his paw on the prize. He checked to see if his handler had noticed and gotten upset. The handler was busy smoking a cigarette and thinking far away thoughts.

  When Franco came to collect me, I picked up the bottle that Alpha had abandoned when he went on patrol. Franco saw it in my hand but didn’t take it from me.

  Up in my cell I washed it thoroughly with soap and water then filled it full and put on the cap. Very carefully, I set the bottle on the window sill where it would get the most sun. On a cloudless day, ultraviolet light can kill bacteria in just six hours. It wouldn’t make the water pristine but my morale was bolstered by this one small proactive achievement.

  I paced the floor of my tiny cell, four steps on the diagonal. I contemplated my experiences behind the Veil. The memory that kept poking at me was of Cammy’s birthday party in Miami. I went through all of it, from when she saw me sitting in the orange chair - until we drove away. What was it that I should notice here? And then it sprung at me. Cammy had felt me with her. She knew how I wore my hair on the night she was attacked. And Cammy identified me the instant she saw me. Wow. I had to sit with that for a minute. I hadn’t recognized this for the important piece of information that it was. When I was in Miami, I was so wrapped up in my head and my emotions that I almost missed vital clues.

  Let’s extrapolate this out, Lexi. Cammy was nowhere near me at the time she was kidnapped, but if Cammy saw me, and knew what I said to her, maybe someone else could. Maybe even someone with developed skills could talk to me. Like Miriam Laugherty. Tonight. Yes, tonight I’d try to contact Miriam. Oh, awesome, Lexi, can you imagine if this works? Oh, holy hell. I have to stop talking to myself like I’m another person, or I really would go nutso.

  That afternoon, I went behind the Veil and connected with Elicia. I wanted to watch the details of how they left the prison more carefully. I needed to know what was around once she walked out of the gates.

  “Elicia,” Franco said as they walked down the road. “Today, I was given a promotion.”

  “You were, Franco? That’s wonderful. What will this mean?”

  “A little more money, not much more, two hundred lempiras a week. We can maybe pay for the doctor to see Pablo again.”

  “And what will he say differently this time, that he hasn’t said each time before? There is nothing he can do. Pablo must have an operation in the city. We will never be able to afford this. All we can do is pray.” She wore her grief and resignation like a second skin.

  “I had something unusual happen today.” Franco continued. He seemed to weigh his words carefully.

  “Besides the promotion?” Elicia braced herself for bad news.

  “Besides the promotion, yes. I went in the cell to take the American woman out to the exercise yard. She is growing thinner already. Can you put more food onto her tray?” Franco paused momentarily to look down at Elicia.

  Elicia read deep concern in his black eyes. We pulled her eyebrows together. “I will. Did she ask you for more food?”

  We walked on. “She doesn’t speak Spanish. But today she took my arm, and where she touched me, my skin became hot and sparkly. There is something strange about her. Every time I open her cell, it feels like I’m in church. It’s like…” Franco gestured his inability to find the right words.

  “I know.” Elicia nodded. “It’s prayerful. This is what I feel when I pass the tray in and out to her. Sometimes I just stand there for a minute, and I gather strength from her. I try to show her that I am grateful — today I passed her some soap.”

  “Yes, she smelled much better when I went in. Are they not going to let her shower or have clean clothes?”

  “She’s scheduled for the shower at the end of the week. She gets a shower once a month, like the other women. They will give her fresh sheets and wash her clothes then. I just thought how miserable she must feel. I wanted to give her something to help. But you said something odd happened?” We reached out for Franco’s hand and stopped walking so he would turn and look at us.

  “We were at the door of the exercise yard when she took my arm, and looked at me as if she was trying to tell me something. She came up with a few words that I could understand. She knows our baby is sick. She is praying for him.” Franco’s eyes were wide and unblinking.

  Elicia read this as awe. “How could she possibly know this?” she asked.

  “I am curious, too. Have you spoken to her? You could lose your job, Elicia.”

  “No, no I haven’t. How could I with no English? When she first came, she held up the cross on her necklace, and she said ‘Catholic.’ The next day, when I opened the chute to give her her tray, the air filled with love and healing. I wanted to give her something in return, so I gave her the rosary that I kept in my pocket. That’s it. Nothing else.”

  “She’s a saint,” announced Franco, and they walked along in silence for some time. “No one knows her name. She came in from a different burro not the same man as usual. No one has touched her – she is not beaten like the others. They keep no file on her. I tried to find out why she was brought here. There is no record of her, anywhere. No family contacts are documented.”

  “No information on how she ended up here in Honduras?” Elicia asked.

  “Nothing. She might be connected with a drug family, or daughter to a wealthy businessman. I think she’s been kidnapped. That’s what I think.”

  “Shhh, Franco! Don’t say that out loud. If it’s true, you’ll get us killed.”

  “No one’s here to hear us, Elicia. I won’t say anything to anyone else. What do you think about this? Why do you think she’s here with no papers?”

  “I think she’s here for the same reason you do. We need to stop talking about it. Tell me about your job. What will you be doing now?”

  “I’ll start training tomorrow to drive the delivery trucks to bring supplies up to the prison.”

  “I won’t see you any more during the day?”

  “No.” And then they were silent.

  A passing car picked us up and drove us to the cottage. The old woman held Pablo in her lap, rocking his damp, sleeping body back and forth. We gathered him in Elicia’s arms and carried the little boy back to the bed, where we collapsed and fell asleep.

  Wow. Okay. I was in Honduras? Well, that made sense. This was where Maria and Julio would have their connections and influence. When I escaped, I would have to make my way toward the airport. Even if I didn’t know Honduran geography, I figured heading north would get me back to the US. Loved my optimism there.

  And what else? Someone besides Franco w
ould be taking me to the exercise yard. Franco would be driving a supply truck. Hmm, that was interesting. They thought that I had been kidnapped. If they helped me, they wouldn’t be helping a prisoner escape; they’d be helping a victim escape. And their baby was ill. He needed help — an operation. I sighed. Poor little guy. They felt the Reiki. Wasn’t that cool? I hoped it was helping. But me a saint? I laughed out loud for this first time since Maria’s attack.

  I took a short nap to recover myself. It was much easier to walk behind the Veil with people who were not being physically abused, and drugged. It wasn’t taking me days of sleep to recover myself, like it has before, just hours.

  I still wanted to travel to Miriam Laugherty and see if she could communicate with me. Another first. My main concern was that I would walk behind the Veil to find Miriam, and she would be out of her body doing police work. What would that do?

  Turns out it didn’t matter. I was wholly unsuccessful. I found Miriam, but she had a strong field of protection around her - no one was getting in. But of course she’d done that. It was the first lesson I learned from Miriam - always protect yourself from other people’s energies.

  I laid perfectly still — downcast and exhausted from trying to work with Miriam. I thought I’d landed on such an easy solution, too. I let my fingers trace the shadows that the prison bars cast across my stomach.

  “Hi Miriam, it’s me, Lexi. Hey, I need a big favor. Could you tell Striker Rheas, over at Iniquus, that I’m being held captive in a Honduran prison, and I need a little help please?” Yeah, right.

  I watched a spider building her web in the corner… Spyder? What would you do if you were me? Are you alive? Do you know why I’m here?

  Thirty-Six

  Gathering love and light for my new exercise guard was a complete and total waste of my time. The new guy was drunk; the mean kind of drunk that liked to show off power. Today, he caught me by the arm and slammed me into the wall because I wasn’t moving fast enough for him. I guessed in this man’s life, the only dominion he had was over us prisoners, so he made the most of it – screaming cuss words at me and spitting on me, as if I weren’t disgusting enough already.

  No Reiki love session was going to touch this guy. All I could do was try not to provoke him. I scrambled after him, cowering against the wall to stay out of arms’ reach. I tried to block all of the crap he yelled at me in Spanish. How ugly and horrible I was… I didn’t need him to take me down a peg. I was already rock bottom.

  Yup. Pretty much every day I had contact with him was a day my loathing grew. And even though he revolted me, I had decided to attach to him briefly. I wanted to see if he went anywhere interesting in the prison. I wanted to try to gather more intel.

  Turns out that besides harassing me and the other prisoners, this man did very little. He went into an office where he sat and took swigs from a bottle he had hidden there. Fortunately for me, he sat facing in, away from the window. There was a Honduran map that came into focus every time his head swung left. Push pins dotted the image, and on the East Coast was a big red dot. That must be us.

  If my assumptions were correct, then I needed to leave the country by plane or boat. On foot it would be too treacherous, and I wouldn’t survive the trek - especially standing out the way I did – all blond and fair skinned. I didn’t know about the web-of-intrigue I had caught myself in here. All I really knew was that Maria took me from point A to point B. Was it just Maria, for God-knows what reason? Or Sylanos? Or some unknown? I didn’t know if anyone would come looking for me, or if everyone would come looking for me. If they would spend tons of time and money? Or if they would shrug their shoulders and eat some beans.

  Why was I here? Knowing that would make my decision making so much easier. I served someone’s purpose…but what? Since I landed in this hell hole, I had tried to puzzle through every crumb of my knowledge to get the answers I needed. And still, I had nothing. What if Sylanos found out that I was the one who solved the crime and busted his operations? He’d be furious with me, but then, why wasn’t I already dead? A Honduran freaking prison?

  Drunk got up and headed back to my corridor. I slipped back into my body. I still felt tipsy from his booze when Drunk opened my cell door. Why was he here? I had already exercised. Fear washed over me.

  “Es el tiempo por la ducha,” he snarled.

  “Huh?” I shook my head trying to be coherent – his alcohol tolerance was far superior to mine.

  “Ducha,” he yelled.

  Shower time, yay! I still had to play confused. We walked down the hall in the opposite direction of the exercise yard. We moved through a thick metal door to the outside. Drunk held my arm in a tourniquet-tight grip. A guard with his dog stood under the roofline. It was the one I call Socks. Socks laid his ears back and growled viciously, warning Drunk to let me go. Afraid Socks was going to try to protect me, I sent images of calm, and I asked Socks to stay quiet and sit, and sure enough he did. That was a close call. I didn’t want to show my hand – didn’t want anyone to know that Socks played on my team.

  “That’s right, you nasty mutt. You shut your mouth and sit your ass down when you see me,” snarled Drunk.

  I sent love and thanks to Socks.

  I’d like to say that washing up was a wonderful experience, but the best I could say was I got clean. I was ushered unceremoniously into the shower room where I was provided with shampoo, a wash cloth, and a towel. I was told to undress in front of Drunk and the male shower attendant. They took my clothes away. Including my shoes. This made me nervous. If they gave me prison garb and flip flops like some of the other prisoners wore, that was going to add another element of difficulty to my escape plans…whatever they were.

  I stood under the warm water and imagined myself away from the ogling. I scrubbed myself over and over again. I had kept clean as best I could, with my scrap of soap and ice-cold water, but this was so much more. After a while, I guess the guards got bored with me. They told me to stop. I wrapped up in a towel, and they escorted me to a windowless room, where I sat by myself. I was there a long time. When Drunk finally opened the door, he handed me a pile of laundry. All of my clothes had been cleaned, including my shoes, and I was given a fresh blanket and linens.

  Drunk took me to yet another room. This one had a chair and nothing else. I was made to sit in the chair with yesterday’s paper in front of me, Diario de Mexico, a Mexican City local paper. A video camera was set up with a guard crouched behind the tripod adjusting the focus.

  “You are okay?” asked a man with a horribly pock-marked face. He spoke in heavily accented English and stood to the side of the guy with the video equipment.

  I said nothing. What do I do? What do I do? This is my chance…

  “You will answer me, when I ask you questions. You will be polite, and you will say ‘Yes, sir.’”

  “Yes, sir.” I tried to think of a way to pass information to whoever would be seeing this. I flashed back to a story I read about the Vietnam prisoner of war who had trained himself to blink ‘torture’ in Morse code, while he spoke. His wife saw that something was off with his eyes. They finally figured it out, and America knew of his heroism. It didn’t help his lot, though. He wasn’t rescued.

  I hadn’t thought of the possibility of a video. I hadn’t practiced blinking in Morse code. I didn’t know what information I would send, if I had. All I had was the sliver thin possibility that I was in a prison on the East Coast of Honduras. How helpful was that? Not very. I sighed loudly and drooped in my chair, defeated and deflated from the outset.

  “What is your name?”

  “Lexi Sobado,” I mumbled, still trying to come up with a plan.

  “You eat every day?”

  I nodded.

  Pock-mark glared at me.

  “Yes, sir.”

  “You are not abused?”

  Was I? Well they weren’t beating and torturing me. I turned my head to the side and looked down at the floor. Just my being here was abusive
. “No, sir.”

  “You have time for exercise every day?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “You are well?”

  I sat with my lips pursed tightly, eyes glaring straight ahead. Hell no, I wasn’t “well.”

  “You are well?” he repeated with emphasis.

  “I am coping,” I managed to spit out through clenched teeth. Beating myself up for not having a plan in place to surreptitiously pass information to Strike Force.

  “Good, good. You are well.”

  I said nothing. We sat there in silence. I guessed the guy had run out of questions or English phrases. The red light on the camera blinked off and the guard stood up and stretched his back. I picked up my linens and plodded off behind Drunk, back to my cell, thoroughly depressed.

  Lying on my shelf, I thought about Striker and the team. Seeing this video was going to be hard on them. Elicia had been giving me almost twice the food she had before. I knew she gave me everything she could. Beyond my share. Surely this meant there was less for the others. That made me feel guilty. Very guilty. But there was nothing I could do about it.

  Each day, I was doing an hour of yoga, an hour of calisthenics, and an hour of martial arts. I was losing a lot of weight. Even fresh from the dryer, my once tight jeans hung from my hips. My bra was loose to the point of being ineffectual; my skin looked gray and dry. I had thought maybe I should cut down on exercising, but I needed my strength, needed to waste time, and I needed to shed some of the stress that had rooted itself deeply in my psyche. The physicality helped me maintain my sanity. So I would continue.

  If I were calculating correctly, then I’d been gone over four weeks. I’d missed my twenty-first birthday; it was about two weeks ago. I had imagined a fun cocktail party with all of my friends, lots of music and dancing. All I had was solitary and gray-glue oatmeal. It sucked.