Hide and Snake Murder

by Jessie Chandler

  Once we’d safely navigated the point of entry, I took a few seconds to regroup. Donny or Hunk or whoever called had to have heard that. But no one was in sight.

  A weak light from the exit sign above our heads extended only a few feet down the hall.

  “Ready?” I asked Baz and Kate. Kate nodded. Baz stared at me like a startled bunny. I spun on my heel and marched down the hallway, counting off the doors until I hit the fourth on the left. The knob twisted easily under my hand, and I pushed it open.

  “Shay, wait a minute.” Kate’s whisper barely penetrated my hearing. I paused long enough for her to flip a switch, and the room flooded with light. All three of us stood still for another few seconds as our eyes adjusted to the brightness.

  We were in a large conference room. At least twenty chairs encircled a huge, rectangular table. A white board covered the far wall, and diagrams of what looked like toys in different stages of development filled the surface.

  My brain registered these details, but I was too busy looking for the door that was supposed to be on the opposite side of the room to pay any kind of attention. I stalked toward it, fingers tightening on the wrapped handle of the bat resting on my shoulder. I was ready to end this.

  I grabbed the doorknob and heaved, then launched my body through the threshold into the unknown, which turned out to be a cavernous space, dimly lit by two fluorescent bulbs suspended from the ceiling. With the bat held high above my head, I belted out a battle cry that would’ve curled my Irish ancestor’s toes. I charged across the floor toward a cluster of people forty feet away. Kate and Baz whooped it up right alongside me.

  Spread-eagled and bloodied, Coop was shackled to a chain-link fence that ran into the darkness. Where the light did reach, I could see cardboard boxes stacked inside the fence. The sight of my best friend, wounded and dangling like yesterday’s laundry, was the final straw.

  Hunk and Donny stood on one side of Coop. Tomás, on Coop’s other side, was behind a tall, red-haired man dressed in khaki pants and a bright green Hawaiian shirt. If I hadn’t seen Fletcher Sharpe mashed into his desk, his blood leaking out on the floor with my own eyes, I would’ve thought it was him.

  A woman, obscured in shadow, waited a few feet away. She was dressed in black boots, black cargo pants, a loose cable-knit black sweater, and one of those black-felt Mexican cowboy hats. Her face was an impartial mask.

  My brain assessed all that in a blink, and then I was back on task. If I took Tomás out, Kate and Baz could take a few whacks at Hunk and Donny. As I closed in on the group, my shout turned into a high-pitched growl. My eyes locked on Tomás’s as my pumping legs carried me toward him.

  The woman turned a pair of deep blue eyes on me and calmly uttered, “Shoot him.”

  Her voice was high-pitched and heavily accented. I shoved those lightning-fast thoughts away as my brain frantically tried to process the meaning of her words.

  Tomás moved a half-stride forward, coming even with the Sharpe lookalike. He held something in his hand. That something was a huge, black handgun. In slow motion, he pivoted and pointed the weapon directly at Coop’s chest. He’d never miss.

  “NO!” I screamed and chucked the bat at Tomás as hard as I could. He ducked, and it sailed harmlessly over his head, clattered against the fence, and dropped to the floor with a hollow clang. I launched myself into the air. Tomás hesitated between completing his orders and turning his weapon on me.

  His hesitation cost him. In a textbook flying tackle, my shoulder met Tomás’s legs. He flew over me, and then hit the hard concrete with a bone-rattling crash.

  Gunfire erupted as I skidded across the floor. I flashed back to a particularly violent broomball game, careening on my back over slippery ice after a vicious hip check from an opposing player. That hadn’t ended well, either.

  I slammed into a huge though surprisingly light plastic barrel and upended it. My forward motion stopped, but gunfire continued to echo throughout the huge space. I was vaguely aware of some fuzzy-like substance tickling my exposed skin.

  Move, Shay. Get up. Find cover.

  I rolled to my hands and knees, fought for breath. With each inhale, the fluffy substance coated the inside of my mouth. I spit, nearly gagged. Hands grabbed at my jacket. I panicked, tried to crabwalk away. Too late. After a quick scuffle, my assailant wrapped an arm tight around my throat. Pressed something cold and unyielding to my temple.

  The scent of jasmine filled my nose.

  Then it clicked. Oh my god. There was absolutely no doubt in my mind this woman was Luz Ortez.

  TWENTY-TWO

  TEN MINUTES LATER, I was on a metal folding chair in a toy storage room. Teddy bears of all shapes and sizes spilled out of a line of open cardboard boxes. One wall supported stacks of board games. White fuzz clung to my clothes. I looked like a walking snowman.

  Coop sat on my right, Kate on my left. Baz was beside Kate. In a surprising turn of events, the Fletcher Sharpe imposter was in a chair next to Baz, having received the same treatment as the rest of us. Our arms, painfully twisted behind our backs, were zip-tied securely. Foul-tasting rags doubled as gags, and I tried to breathe carefully through my nose. I was able to spit out most of the fuzzy crap that tumbled out of the barrel before Hunk gleefully tied the cloth so tightly around my head that the corners of my mouth were pulled back in a farcical grin. Our one saving grace was that we were still alive. The Sharpe imposter was the only one who hadn’t yet been silenced.

  Sadly, there was no time to relish this fact, because Tomás, Luz, Hunk, and Donny were busy pointing weapons of various sizes at us.

  “You lost them in New Orleans,” Luz told Tomás. “This time you will not fail.” The emphasis was on the not.

  “Sí, Zorra, it is done.”

  Oh my god, Luz was Zorra? A mild-mannered U of M professor was one of the most feared drug lords in Mexico? No freaking way.

  Luz gave her lieutenant a look that would make even the most hardened man squirm. “It is not done. Incompetence doesn’t suit you.” She checked a delicate silver watch on her wrist. “And we’re out of time. They’re going to have to come.”

  She turned her back to him and addressed us.

  “How can such a … a … ” Luz shot us a derisive look as she sneered, “frustratingly stupid bunch of people cause so much trouble? If you so much as twitch, I’ll have Tomás break your fingers and then cut out your tongues.”

  On the bright side, if she was thinking about breaking our fingers and slicing our tongues out, she wasn’t planning our immediate exits from this world.

  Luz slowly approached me. “Do you understand, Shay?” She prodded me in the forehead with the barrel of her gun, tipping my head back. I nodded frantically against the circular steel pressing against my skin. Then she sidestepped down the line and stopped in front of Baz.

  He whimpered.

  She said, “This is your doing. Your friend’s deaths will be on your head.”

  Luz moved on to the redhead. Donny was in the process of gagging him. “You should have gone along when we asked nicely, Mr. Sharpe. It did not have to end this way. Such a shame.” My eyes widened in surprise. If this man was Fletcher Sharpe, who was bleeding inside his desk?

  Fletcher said, “You have no right to do what you’re doing. I run a clean business.”

  “I will make my offer one last time. It’s your choice—live, become rich—or die.”

  Fletcher spluttered then clearly said, “Go to hell. You’re all already halfway there anyway.”

  Luz laughed in his face. “You are so naïve, Mr. Sharpe. Your business hasn’t been clean for a long time. Gag him,” she ordered Donny, who quickly silenced the man I now realized was indeed Sharpe.

  Luz/Zorra spun around and addressed Tomás. “Load them up. Once the meeting is over and you have taken care of this,” she indicated the line of us with a sweep of her hand, “hunt down the two old ladies and the little round man and dispatch them as well.”

  I didn
’t have time to digest and analyze what that horrifying comment meant. With Luz’s directive, a flurry of activity commenced.

  The bad dudes had learned well from their previous mistakes. Hunk and Donny approached with strips of cloth and proceeded to tie blindfolds on the lot of us. When Donny came to me, I shook my head wildly. The thought of not being able to see what was coming panicked me to the core. A howl from deep in my chest leaked from around the gag. I swung a foot at Donny’s crotch, but he neatly shifted to my side, out of reach.

  “This,” he whispered in his high-pitched voice, close enough for me to smell his bad breath but not close enough to head butt, “This is for my ear.” Like lightning, the palm of his hand connected sharply with the side of my face. My head snapped sideways, and I grunted at the impact.

  “Donny,” Zorra said, a clear warning her tone. “There is no time.”

  He resisted dealing a second blow and roughly tied the blindfold across my eyes. As the light disappeared, it felt like the air in the room went along with it. I tried to suck oxygen through my nose. After a few panicked moments, I managed to calm myself enough to breathe evenly again. Passing out wasn’t going to help anyone.

  Once the blindfolds were secured, I was yanked to my feet and led along for what felt like forever. I could hear shuffling, so I presumed the others were also being led somewhere. The air suddenly felt cooler. We were outside. The sound of a door sliding open told me there was as van of some kind nearby.

  Before we were piled inside, Luz told Tomás she would meet them wherever we were going. I reasoned that that left Hunk, Donny, and Tomás with the five of us trussed up like Easter hams.

  Tomás’s voice said, “Let’s go.”

  Without the use of my arms for balance and with the added impediment of the blindfold, getting into the vehicle was a challenge. The step in was knee-high, and after two attempts I heaved myself inside. On the upswing, someone gave me a shove and I landed with a bounce on a bench seat and tipped over. The side of my head hit the metal wall on the side of the van.

  Tomás growled, “Move already, pendejo.”

  I righted myself and attempted to slide over to make room. Someone pushed into my side. They moaned, and I recognized Baz’s distinctive utterance. I tried to move even closer to the metal side of the van.

  Then I heard a scuffle outside, a couple of bangs, some cursing, and two fast impacts of a fist hitting flesh followed by more cursing. Someone let out a pained, muffled howl. I cringed, heart in my throat. Knowing I couldn’t do a thing about what was going on outside nearly made me cry out in frustration. I hurt for whoever was on the receiving end, and wished it were Baz instead of one of the other captives. This was all his fault anyway. He huddled against me, whimpering, way too close for comfort. Body odor wafted from him in waves. If I could’ve wriggled an elbow free, I’d have happily applied it to his ribs.

  The vehicle rocked as each person entered. My cheek still stung from the run-in with Donny’s palm, and the plastic on the zip ties cut into my wrists. My hands were already falling asleep. Plus it pissed me off that the gag was making me drool on myself. I rested my head against the side of the side of the van and tried to think a way out of this.

  The side door of the van slammed shut. Our doom was sealed. The front doors opened and closed. Some low conversation floated to my ears, although I couldn’t make out anything clearly. The van roared to life, and the seat beneath me began to vibrate.

  I tried to remember the turns the van took, but I should have known by now that such attempts were only good in theory. Luz’s words haunted me instead: Hunt down the two old ladies and the little round man and dispatch them as well. The phrase thundered through my brain like a skipping record on full volume. The Tenacious Protector inside bridled at the thought, sending impotent adrenaline through my veins. My heart rate ratcheted up, and it was all I could do not to throw what would amount to little more than a toddler’s tantrum. It would get me nowhere and probably hurt a lot, given my hands and blindfold. I forced myself into a state of agitated calm.

  I realized a funny thing: time is hard to gauge when you can’t see anything. It could’ve been anywhere between ten minutes or a half hour when the vehicle creaked to a stop and the engine was cut. One of the front doors opened, and the van rocked as someone stepped out.

  Tomás said, “You two stay here, and dios mio, make sure they do not go anywhere. I will be back.”

  “Sure, boss,” Hunk rumbled.

  The side door rolled open and stopped with a distinct click. Cold air swirled around my head, clearing my brain a little.

  “You don’t move,” Hunk addressed us. We obeyed. In less than five minutes, Tomás was back. “We will bring them inside.”

  “But boss,” Donny said, “they’ll hear everything.”

  “It does not matter. I don’t want them out of our sight. And as soon as this is done, so are they. ”

  I really didn’t like being talked about in the past tense.

  Minutes later, after some gun barrel encouragement, we stumbled across a bumpy, rough surface and entered a building. Herding five blindfolded, bound prisoners through a maze of hallways wasn’t an easy task. At some point, we crossed from a hard floor onto carpeting.

  “Stop,” Tomás said moments later. “Turn to your left and sit.”

  Feet shuffled and the back of my legs banged against something hard. Someone pressed down on my shoulder, and my butt landed on a hard, narrow object. I grunted in surprise as similar sounds issued from both sides of me. I wasn’t sure if Baz was next to me anymore or not.

  “Hunk, Donny,” Tomás directed, “do not let them move.”

  The air was heavy with a myriad of odors. Mold and rot. The faint, stale smell of popcorn and hotdogs. Sweat. Kind of like the locker room in high school.

  Many voices I didn’t recognize interrupted my olfactory ruminations. By the sound of the echo, we were in a large, empty space. A number of the voices sounded Hispanic. They weren’t close enough that I could make out what they were saying, though, and I couldn’t tell if there were five or fifteen.

  Wonderful. Just what we wanted to be knee-deep in—a meeting of drug lords. Why, of all places, would they pick Minnesota as a location to gather?

  Then I recognized Luz’s voice as she raised it in greeting. A rapid exchange in Spanish ensued. The deeper baritones of at least seven or eight different men mixed with Luz’s at an alarming rate.

  Poor Coop. His crush turned out to be worse than bad news. We’d both fallen for her act like starving fish finding a worm.

  The volume level dropped, and an expectant hush fell. I strained to hear what was going on. Dim light seeped in the edges of my blindfold, but I was still effectively sightless. The rag in my mouth was disgustingly soggy, chafing the corners of my mouth. An unfamiliar feeling settled into my gut, and the feeling shook me to the core. Hopelessness. Then, unbidden, Eddy’s voice floated through my mind. “Where there’s a will, there’s a way. Don’t give up. Never surrender.”

  Shay, listen to her, I chided myself. You have too much to lose to die tonight. You haven’t told JT you love her. You can’t die before you actually say those words to her face and not to your pillow.

  Luz interrupted my personal lecture on perseverance. “Buenas noches, mis amigos. In deference to our non-Spanish-speaking partners, I will conduct this meeting in English. I would like to thank you for taking the time to travel from your respective homes to this very important moment in our history. This is an unusual venue in a cold climate, and this is precisely why we are here. The unexpected keeps us safe. It also allows our Canadian counterparts to participate.”

  A rumble of buenas noches, good evenings, and one buenas tardes filled the air.

  Luz continued, “We are here to find a way to proceed together, as a group. One instead of many. This will allow all cartels to not only succeed, but surpass prior victories and accomplishments. La policía, the FBI, ICE, and others continue to interrupt our
shipments, find our tunnels, confiscate our money, halt our movers. If we can all find a way to make this new Canadian alliance work, we will have power in numbers. We will be unstoppable.” She raised her voice on the last word.

  The audience broke into excited chatter. Luz let it go for a few long moments. Then she said loudly, “Por favor.”

  The chatter subsided.

  “We are here to come to a joint agreement that will bind the Reynosa with the Hermocillo, Monterrey, Guadalajara, and Villahermosa organizations with the Manitoba cartel. This agreement will be called Seis Hermanos. The Six Siblings.”

  Excited voices rose again.

  Oh my god. We were witnessing—or hearing, at least—an attempt to pull together six major players in the Mexican and now Canadian drug trade. If this alliance actually could function without the players killing each other off, Luz wasn’t kidding about the unstoppability of Seis Hermanos.

  I shuddered as I considered the implications. Already the sophistication in drug importation had risen to all-time highs, even with the relatively limited resources singular cartels had. I couldn’t conceive of what power they would hold if this plan came together. It would certainly be a huge blow to law enforcement efforts in the US and all over the world.

  “Silencio, por favor,” Luz commanded. The attendees obeyed.

  Before she had a chance to say another word, an explosion ripped through the building. Order immediately dissolved into chaos.

  Instinctively, I ducked and hurled myself off the bench, into whoever was sitting to my right. We hit the floor in a tangle, and the initial impact knocked the air from my lungs.

  Three more explosions ripped the air. The concussions from the blasts hit me like a physical force. I rolled around the floor, hit my left leg on something very sharp, then bashed into someone, all the while trying to suck air through my nose. I tried to scuttle sideways, toward whatever my leg had run into. An unending growl leaked from around the gag in my mouth as I heaved myself to my knees. My momentum tipped me forward, and my forehead smacked into something hard as I fought not to meet the floor with my face. The force of the blow knocked my blindfold askew, partially uncovering my right eye.