by M C Rowley
We’ll call you.
I scrolled down to read the full conversation. The previous message was from Eleanor:
I’m ready. I deposited like you said. What happens next?
My heart was racing. Part of me wished I hadn’t found this. Part of me wanted to close the laptop. But I couldn’t stop now.
I continued reading through the conversation backwards. Eleanor seemed to be doing a deal with a person who was promising something. Before long, I got sick of reading a conversation with growing context and just shot to the bottom, to the first email. It was a message from Eleanor:
They told me you are the one to help me. I want a photo first. Proof of life. I need that to proceed. Can you confirm this?
When can we meet?
A wave of emotion hit me so hard, I just about fell off the seat. He was alive? Our son was alive. How? Where?
I got up, then paced the room. Then I sat down again. My hands felt sweaty. My heart beat faster in my chest.
Quickly, I scanned the rest of the conversation, but there was no photo. Before closing the machine down, I grabbed a Post-it note and copied down the email address of Eleanor’s contact.
Then I closed the shrine and shouted, “Eleanor!”
I was ready for this. I felt rage boiling inside me. All this fucking time. She’d known. She’d known our son was still alive and let me go on believing he was dead. Not even allowing me to bring it up.
I stormed down the stairs. Screw her call. Screw her secrecy. Screw her.
She wasn’t inside. I went to the French doors, prepared to explode. I pulled one open too hard and it slammed into the frame.
“Eleanor!”
The garden was empty.
I shouted her name again. Silence.
I walked to the side of the house and through to the front. Her car was there, next to mine.
My chest tightened. I knew something bad had happened. I felt it.
“Eleanor!”
I started swearing. I went back into the house and checked every room.
But nothing.
She was gone.
Chapter Three
Eleanor didn’t return or call the whole night. I would have phoned her parents, but they’d died years ago up on Long Island. I called her friend in the neighborhood, Martha, but she was just pissed at receiving a call at three a.m. and told me in her most judging tone that I really should know where my wife was at that time of night.
I slept for two hours between four and six, and then headed to the office. I had one lead: the email address for Eleanor’s contact. The caller from last night must be one and the same.
In my office, door closed, I booted up my computer and opened the encrypted email program I used to contact Mr. Reynolds. I clicked “New Message,” copied the Post-it note email into the recipient field, and stared blankly at the awaiting message box. What did I write?
I sat there for fifteen minutes, thinking. I went to compose a message a hundred times, and eventually landed on the simplest of them all:
Who is this?
I hit “Send” and sat back. I grabbed my phone and dialed Eleanor’s cell, and again got the Spanish lady from Telcel telling me the number I was trying to ring was not available or out of range. I slammed the phone down on the desk.
Outside the window, the staff car park began filling up like water flooding a valley. I felt the agitation and nervousness spreading through people even from within my office—I could hear them asking questions and gossiping in hurried and whispered voices. After a time, one of them, a younger guy dressed smartly, opened the door to my office.
I looked up at him.
“What the hell is going on?” he demanded.
“Huh?”
The young guy stepped in, his hands on his hips. “They’re selling the company? What the hell?”
I cleared my throat and immediately realized how guilty that made me sound. I’d let my veneer slip; I had to recover it.
“They’re doing nothing of the sort.”
“You didn’t get the email? They’re laying everyone off.”
“What?”
My reaction did the job. He bought my surprise because it was genuine. I hadn’t even checked my corporate, official, email.
“Please,” I said. “What’s your name?”
“Jorge.”
“Jorge, please give me five minutes.”
Jorge nodded and left.
I opened the company account and clicked the first email, from the president of the company, Martin Slack.
Mr. Reynolds had worked fast. The email was one of sorrow and regret. Tales of bankruptcy and layoffs. I read between the lines and knew that my information had fed the right snakes and the teeth were firmly in the flesh, sucking the life out of the company.
I’d rung Eleanor fifty more times by lunchtime. The office was going berserk as the news of the fallen-through sale and subsequent fire sale spread among the workers. The other managers eyed each other, and me, with suspicion. I needed to eject, and fast. Mr. Reynolds had always gotten me out of the job before things fell apart. I kept checking the encrypted email program, but he hadn’t got in touch. Neither had Eleanor’s mystery contact.
I made it somehow to late afternoon. The company had officially announced the news and the stock price had tumbled. I didn’t care. I just needed to find my wife. I was doing a web search for the email address I’d found on Eleanor’s laptop when there was a knock on my office door and the door opened.
“Please,” I said, ready to turn away another disgruntled employee—but I didn’t recognize the man who stepped into the room. He had browny-red hair and a large smile and he was dressed like a supply teacher who’d been traveling through India for the past year.
“Hi,” he said. “You’re the plant manager, right?”
I stood up. “Who let you in?”
He smiled and closed the door behind him. “The receptionist already left. Don’t think she’s coming back.”
“Who are you?”
He held his smile. It had a childish mischievousness about it.
“Well, I told your colleagues outside that I work for the press and I’ve come to report on the reduced-price buyout.”
He sat down opposite me, across the desk. I remained standing.
“What do you mean, you told them you were a journalist?” I demanded. I was starting to feel something was wrong, badly wrong.
“Because I’m not a journalist,” he said. “I’m Jason. Your handler.”
Now I sat down. Heavily. My contact for Mr. Reynolds. I hadn’t recognized his voice.
“What are you—”
He cut me off with a raised hand. “I can help you with your wife,” he said.
Blood surged through my body, up to my head. I stood up again.
“Where is she?”
I realized how angry I was. At Eleanor, at the whole situation. And now at Jason’s damned smile.
“So, you found the surprise,” Jason said, “and now she’s gone. But hey, I’m here to help, man. Mr. Reynolds wants to help.”
I shook my head. This had to be a bad dream. Everything was moving too fast. I hadn’t eaten all day. I felt sick.
“What the fuck is going on?”
Jason stood up. “This job’s over, Dyce. Mr. Reynolds wants you to do something different.”
“Where is my wife?”
“We don’t know. But we’re pretty sure you’ll be contacted sometime soon by the people who took her. And Mr. Reynolds wants you to do what they tell you to do. We’ll protect you.”
“What the—”
“Don’t worry,” said Jason, striding to the door. “We have your back. Your son is alive. But it isn’t anything like you’ve imagined.”
“I don’t understand. Why does Mr. Reynolds care about this?”
Jason paused, one hand on the door handle. “Because he and you have a mutual interest.”
“We do?”
“Yes,” said
Jason. “Finding your son.”
And he left.
Chapter Four
I left the office right after Jason. I knew it would be my last time there, but I avoided everyone in the lobby and slipped out the front door.
I drove back to our house, hoping somehow there had been a mistake. That Eleanor would be there, maybe just pissed at me. I prayed for that. I prayed for a fight, even—anything but this.
She wasn’t there. And the locks had been changed. Reynolds had ordered it. He must have. But I had not been assigned to a new job. This was new for him. All of this was new.
I stood outside for twenty minutes trying to assemble some sort of plan. But I had nothing. I phoned Eleanor’s cell, only to get the same recorded message yet again. My phone, meanwhile, buzzed continually with calls from people at the company, no doubt desperate for answers. I felt bad for them, but I didn’t answer—I had my own shit to deal with.
Back in my car, I drove to the highway and found a cheap motel. I paid 500 pesos for a room, and once I’d locked the door, I slumped in an armchair, exhausted. But I couldn’t rest; I felt completely awake, in a state of low, humming panic.
I paced the room. I needed to check my emails. Maybe Mr. Reynolds had sent something. Maybe Eleanor’s contact had replied to my message.
I left the room and headed for the reception desk. A young kid sat behind it, staring at his smartphone. When I tapped the desk, he looked up at me through thick glasses, the kind that my grandmother wore after the war and the kind kids these days deemed cool.
“Do you have internet here?”
The kid stared at me like I’d asked if the motel had beds.
“Er, yeah,” he said. “Wi-Fi is free.”
“No, I mean, I need a computer.”
The kid scratched his head. “Er, there’s the business center. Down there to the left.”
He pointed to a door.
“Thanks.”
“You have to pay, I think,” he said.
I turned away. “Sure, bill my room.”
Behind the door, I found a room the size of a broom closet with a PC that looked like it had been in a museum. I started it up and watched with dismay as a version of Windows launched that was apparently even older than the CPU. But it worked.
I opened a browser, then typed the URL for the encrypted email service into the navigation bar. The inbox came up.
There was a single unread message.
I clicked it and saw the sender’s email. It was the one from Eleanor’s computer. My heart started to beat faster and my palms felt sweaty.
What did I expect? A ransom? That was likely, I thought. A photo?
I couldn’t wait any longer. I opened it and read:
Your wife made a mistake. Don’t do the same. You will receive instructions soon. Follow them and you will see your wife, and maybe your son too. We have both.
That was it. One short paragraph later, and I was in pieces. A mistake? What had Eleanor done? I cursed her and missed her equally. But above all, I felt betrayed. Why had she found a lead on our son and not told me? Why had she decided to take action without talking to me first?
I leaned back and closed my eyes, my mind whirling around like a tornado. Then I heard a commotion outside the room, back toward the reception. I sat up.
Voices. Men talking aggressively. Then the kid at reception replying.
He was telling them I was here.
I got up and went to the door and listened. They were just outside, to the right-hand side, where the exit was. I had one option: Open the door and run to the left. The odds of escape weren’t good.
Then the voices stopped and I heard footsteps approaching. I opened the door and went to run, glancing right as I moved.
There were two state cops walking toward me.
“¡Párate!”
Stop!
I slammed the door behind me.
They stopped outside the door.
“Señor,” said one of them. “Necesitamos hablar con usted.”
We need to talk to you.
I racked my brain. The state police answered to the governor’s office. I put two and two together and realized it was the company: They’d figured me out.
I shouted through the door in Spanish, “About what?”
I heard murmurs.
“About what? I didn’t do anything,” I said.
“Let us in, Señor. And we’ll explain.”
I remembered the news story about the scandal involving the president. Mexico’s appetite for uncovering corruption always rocketed when a big neck was on the line. All the apathy faded away and hunting season started. I thought about Jorge, the young man I’d shooed from my office. Had he made a call?
“Señor,” the other officer said in a gruffer but quieter voice. “Please open up. We need to talk.”
I rested the back of head against the door. “About what?”
More murmurs. A consultation between them.
Then the gruff officer spoke.
“About your wife, Señor.”
I turned the lock, twisted the doorknob, pulled the door open—and got my first proper look at the two cops. One had the face of a boxer, his nose broken at least twice in the past, and deep-set eyes that you’d need a crowbar to reveal. On his neck, a tattoo of an ornate Catholic cross bridged the gap between shirt collar and ear. Funny, I thought, I hadn’t seen cops with tats like that before. The other guy was thin, with a pencil mustache and a calm look about him. A scar ran down his face, across his mouth, and finished on his chin.
The thin, gruff guy said, “We know who you are, Dyce.”
I stepped back and allowed them to enter. They passed me and I shut the door.
“How do you know about my wife?”
The cops turned to face me. No, not cops. The more I thought about it, the less likely it seemed they were legit. Something about the way they stood, swaying from heel to heel, anxious and hyped-up. The thin guy’s eyes were as red as blood.
“You contacted us,” said the tattooed man.
My mind had to jump to process what he’d said. “You mean…”
“We work for the cartel, Dyce.”
“You have my wife?”
They nodded.
A wave of fear washed over me. I was in the water with sharks. The sharks that had made Eleanor disappear. The same ones she’d been communicating with for however long. That thought brought back the feeling of betrayal once more.
“And your son,” added the tattooed man.
I stepped back. They advanced.
“Which cartel?”
The thin man spoke: “The Sons of No One.”
I knew the name. The cartel we believed had abducted our son. We thought they’d fallen apart. At least that’s what the papers had said.
“Our boss,” said the tattooed man, “he needs you to do something.”
“You want money?”
The man sneered and shook his head.
They stepped toward me again. I moved back and hit the closed door.
“You’re coming with us,” said the tattooed man and drew a pistol. It wasn’t like any police-issued weapon; it was a diamond-encrusted revolver, shiny and polished.
“And what if I say no?”
But he didn’t reply. I saw the gun go up in his grip and come down, hard and fast, toward my face. After that, everything went black.
Chapter Five
I opened my eyes and saw nothing but darkness. The room was airy; I could feel a slight draft and I had the sense the space wasn’t cramped. But it was pitch black. I tried to move, but I was tied up, hands behind my back, lifting my ass up so my back ached. Then the pain in my head hit me, a dull thudding. I felt dazed. They’d drugged me. I tried my feet, but they too had been tied up tight.
Then, from the darkness, a deep voice:
“We will release you shortly.”
A man—older, I thought—speaking English with a Mexican accent. Probably from Mexico City.
I moved my head to face the direction of the voice, but couldn’t see a damned thing.
“I will keep this short for you, Mr. Dyce. Your employer, Mr. Reynolds, has released you from his employment and you now work for me.”
I tried to speak, but my throat was so dry that not a single word made it out of my mouth.
The man said, “I am the leader of the cartel that abducted your son all those years ago. And we now have your wife.”
I struggled against the binds. No good.
“You will receive precise instructions shortly. Follow them and your family will be returned to you.”
Finally, I mustered enough saliva to speak. “Where am I?”
“Lujano. A beautiful city.”
Before I could process that—why here?—the man went on: “You’ll be placed in a position that’s familiar to you. Mr. Reynolds actually helped us organize it. A new company called Polysol, and you’ll be the plant manager leading its setup. That’s your cover. Your name is Mark Kersteen.”
The timeframe ran through my head. Setting up a company? That took months, sometimes years. I couldn’t wait that out. No way. I started to feel panic rise through my body.
“What?”
The man said, “We will leave you now. My associate will turn you over and cut your ties. If you move, he will shoot you.”
“But when will I—”
He cut me off: “You’ll receive instructions soon. You need to register your fingerprint as a key to get in and out of this place.”
I heard him walk away, and then a pair of big hands grabbed me and flipped me like a hamburger on a grill so I was face down. Relief flooded through me as the man cut the ties on my wrists, then my ankles. I obeyed the order and stayed still as he too left the space and the door closed.
I lay there for probably half an hour, letting it sink in. The cartel had had our son for over two decades, and had now kidnapped Eleanor, all so I could do some corporate spying for them?
That didn’t add up.
I needed to speak with Mr. Reynolds, or Jason. He had said they wanted to help. But what business did Mr. Reynolds have with the cartel? Since I had worked for him, he’d only ever asked me to sabotage production lines, steal information or bug conference rooms. Never anything remotely connected to the criminal underworld in Mexico.
