by Vicki Hinze
“Me too.”
“Learn anything on the other women?” Roxy interjected.
Mark hated to say it. He’d have a war on his hands. They’d insist on continuing, and he wanted them out of this. “No.”
“What’s in the ice chest?” Roxy asked.
“He says it’s not explosives. That’s all I know, but he sniffed. I suspect it’s cocaine.”
“I’m going to bust the lock and check it out.”
“Don’t.” Joe responded before Mark could. “We show up next stop with a busted lock, and you women are dead.”
“What if he lied? We could be sitting on C4 or nitro or something.”
“Calm down, Selene.” Lisa shouted to be heard over the mumbles going on in the back. “We’re precious cargo. They’re not going to blow us up. They wouldn’t get paid.”
“Lisa’s right.” Gwen added. “It probably is drugs. We’re worth more alive to them.”
“Whatever it is doesn’t matter.” Mark paused. “We’re done. This is as far as we go.”
Dead silence.
Finally Roxy responded. “Lisa, Gwen, and Selene want to keep going until we locate the others, Mark. If we hope to damage their operation, you know we need them.”
Mark hit the brakes, pulled off the side of the road, and stopped. He jumped out of the truck and then jerked open the back door. He found Roxy and leveled her with a glare.
“We are done. It wasn’t a suggestion and I wasn’t asking. Human trafficking, death fights, and now drugs? I’m not letting you get them killed, okay? I won’t do it.”
Joe appeared at Mark’s side. “Take a step back, bro.”
Mark didn’t budge. “X factor,” he repeated the team’s code to relay an eerie certainty that something had gone wrong, a mission had soured, a leak that could kill them had occurred, and it was time to abort the mission.
“Okay, then.” Joe blinked, then blinked again. “We’re done.”
Roxy opened her mouth to speak, but Lisa stayed her with a hand on her forearm. “Let me.” When Roxy nodded, Lisa made her way to the door and then hopped out.
“Here we go.” Joe’s voice was grim.
“Don’t worry,” Mark told him. “This time I’m not being led anywhere. I’m keeping my nose.”
“Whatever you say, bro.” Joe stepped back a bit.
Lisa glanced between the men, then faced Mark. “Honey, listen—”
“No, you listen.” He frowned down at her. “We’re done here.”
“All right then.” She looked up at him, cocked her head. The wind caught her hair, half pinned up, half fallen down, and tossed it in the breeze. “We’re done.”
“Lisa!” Selene sent a charged look at Gwen. “It’s our choice too.”
“I agree, but Mark is experienced at this type of thing, and if he says we’re done, then we should listen to him.”
“Okay,” Selene said eventually, then shrugged. “Sorry, Roxy.”
“Good.” Mark gave Selene an emphatic nod. Relief swam through him and he turned to Roxy. “We’ll get the next set of instructions, and you can have agents waiting to step in for the three of them. Your people go on; we go home.”
Lisa nodded. “Sounds like a plan.”
She was too calm. Too agreeable. Lisa Marie Harper didn’t behave this way. “What are you doing?” Mark slung a hand at his hip. “Are you pulling reverse psychology on me, trying to mess with my head? If so, knock it off.”
Her jaw clamped down tight. “Fine. Then you just answer me one thing.” She folded her arms over her chest. “When these substitute agents are in the truck and it stops, and some guy carrying a gun looks in and doesn’t see our faces”—she waved between her, Gwen, and Selene —“why isn’t he going to slaughter them right there? This one didn’t shoot us, but will that next one not kill them?”
Mark’s shoulders slumped, and he glanced over at Joe, whose raised brows proved he didn’t have a good answer. “They’ll be armed.”
“Certainly they will,” Lisa said. “But as soon as the agents show their weapons, they’ll be shot first. If they don’t, they’ll be dead before they can pull them. So either the next link to NINA is dead or the agents are. Maybe both. And then what happens to those other women? How does Roxy find them? How do they get home?”
He hated it when she did this. Fought him on straight logic. “They don’t.”
“Which is exactly why I don’t have to persuade you. You see the wisdom in our going on until we know where those women are. We can stop now, of course, and we will if you insist, right?”
“Yes,” Selene said.
“Absolutely.” Gwen nodded.
Lisa turned back to Mark. Slowly and deliberately, she linked their pinkie fingers. “But if we do stop here, NINA will abduct and ship more women.” She expelled a frustrated breath. “I don’t want to have nightmares forever about them, Mark. I don’t want our life together stained with the guilt of not stopping this because I was afraid.”
“You could get killed.” He shook their twined fingers loose and clasped her arms. “Do you get that?” He glared at the other women. “Do any of you get that?”
Lisa frowned up at him. “How could we not get it?”
Mark squeezed his eyes shut a long minute, then opened them again. “What if something goes wrong? On operations like this, unexpected things happen. Things out of our control. What if—?”
“You fail to protect me?” she asked softly so only he could hear.
Agony tore his insides to shreds. “Yes.”
“I’d rather die trying to stop this for good than live with knowing I didn’t even try out of cowardice. I don’t fear death. It’s life that scares the fool out of me.”
Joe started to intercede, but Selene pointed a “don’t do it” finger at him. “The fact is, there are fates worse than death, and we were about to experience them. We know the dangers and risks. We want all of the women free. To get them, we must do this. It’s the right thing.”
Joe stared at Selene a moment, then swiveled toward Mark. “Forget it, bro. When women team up like this, you can’t win.”
Mark’s sigh heaved his shoulders. “There’s still a problem. Juan says Masson doesn’t give them instructions on the routine two-hour stops. Frank just knew where to go. I’m supposed to be one of them, so I should know them too, and of course I don’t.”
“I think I can help with that,” Lisa said. “They’ve all been convenience stores, and unless I’m mistaken, they all belong to Dutch.” She turned to Roxy. “Can’t you get Beth or somebody to run the records and find his stores along the route?”
“Sure.” Roxy looked at Mark. “We’re set for a joint effort with Mexico. We’re in an observe-and-advise capacity, so that should diminish the risks.”
“You know that’s absurd.”
“We’ll do what we must, Mark. Additional resources have been allocated. But that’s the official line to avoid tangles on both sides of the border.”
“There.” Lisa looked back at Mark. “We’re good, then.”
“Yeah, we’re good.” He snarled. “But this is not good, and don’t think you’re going to do this to me all the time.”
“Do what?”
“Twist things around so you’re leading me by the nose.”
She looked at him as if he’d lost his mind. “You’re kidding, right?”
“Lisa.”
“I said we’d do whatever you thought best.”
“Get in the truck, Lisa Marie.”
She crawled back in through the rear door and then turned around to face him. “You still adore me, right? You don’t much look like it at the moment, but that’s just because you’re worried, isn’t it?”
She seemed pretty worried herself. He kept his tone razor sharp but linked their pinkie fingers. “Quit pushing me, woman.”
Lisa smiled, touched her lips to his fingertips, then released his hand. “I adore you too.”
How did she do that? His mi
nd turned to mush every time he got close to her. Grumbling under his breath, he turned and was half surprised to see Joe still standing there.
“You’ll get used to it,” Joe said. “You won’t ever walk all over her, and that’ll keep you humble.”
“Is that what you’re hanging here to tell me?”
“No.” Pity flashed through Joe’s eyes. “Tim called. Mandy’s broken off their engagement. She’s met a man she can’t live without.”
“You’re kidding.”
“Afraid not.” Joe swatted at a mosquito on his neck.
“How’s he taking it?”
“Pretty messed up. I’ve got to call him back, so if you want me, stick your hand out the window to signal.”
“Sam and Nick are there. Can’t Tim talk to them?”
“Not without Peggy and Nora overhearing. Cupid and Rambo need to stay in the dark, at least until Tim quits bleeding. He’s talking to Beth.”
“She won’t let him wallow long.”
Joe’s eyes lit with interest. “I think I like this woman.”
“Hadn’t considered it, but you two probably would hit it off.”
“I don’t know. She’s probably too smart for me.”
Mark grunted. “She’s brilliant. You’re not. But balance is a good thing between a man and woman.”
“Not cool, bro.” Joe headed toward his vehicle. “But I’ll let it slide because you’re wounded.”
“Wounded?”
Joe didn’t turn around or look back. “Lisa outwitted you. Bad. You’re wounded.”
She had and he was. “Tell Tim I’m sorry.”
Joe held up his arm and shot out a thumbs-up.
His pride pricked, Mark got in the truck and slammed the door.
Juan wisely kept his mouth shut, and Roxy gave Mark a radio respite; time to lick his wounds. Wise. Otherwise he might take off somebody’s head.
He continued south, and when they cleared town, he phoned Masson, who instructed him to go to Brownsville and cross the border into Mexico, then head toward Tampico, Tamaulipas, hanging close to the coastline—Juan’s home, as Mark had suspected would be the case. Travel time from the border, Masson informed him, was about four and half hours.
“Got it,” Mark said.
“The cargo shipment will be monitored the entire way, Bandit, so don’t get any stupid ideas about confiscating it. The world is too small a place for you to hide from NINA.”
Easy to answer that honestly. “I never considered it.”
The line went dead and Mark drove on. “Roxy, Masson says we’re being monitored. Looks like our next big stop is in Mexico.”
“I heard.”
“What about these other women?”
“I don’t know what to think. Chessman swears on the number.”
“Unless someone meets us at a store, we’re not getting more of them to haul on this side of the border.”
“We’ve got to go with it,” Joe said. “My nose is saying there are more women. This run was too much trouble for just the four of them.”
Mark agreed. Grudgingly, he kept driving, stopping at Dutch’s stores on the expected schedule. Apparently Lisa’s guess about Dutch’s stores had been right on target. At each stop, they were expected and encountered no trouble. Why would employees do this?
Maybe they had been coerced like Juan. Or maybe they were paid well to be blind and silent. With people it was hard to tell.
Lisa was right about another thing too. On each of the store windows, Mark saw the two signs: one on human trafficking and one for a lost pet with instructions to call Nina but with no phone number.
In the wee hours, minutes before reaching the border, Masson called with specific border-crossing directions. NINA apparently had friends working for them in that realm too. Though bitter about that, Mark was relieved they had avoided any incident. Once the dust settled in Tampico, the FBI would move in and the corrupt border guards would be arrested.
At seven o’clock Juan took the wheel, and at seven thirty he pulled into the back entrance of a heavily guarded, lavish coastal estate.
The long road was surfaced though sand-slick and bordered by sparse trees, flowering shrubs, and hundreds of pink and white and yellow flowers. Every twenty yards, there was an adobe-type wall three feet wide and six feet high with small cutouts at eye level. The walls were etched with intricate drawings. And rifle barrels protruded through the cutouts.
“Joe, you seeing this?”
“Yeah, bro. Going radio silent for a while.”
Joe was infiltrating on foot.
Lisa and the other women stepped out of the back of the truck. All of them were shaking. So was Mark.
At seven forty-five a second truck pulled in beside them and stopped. The driver, a brawny man in his late thirties with short black hair and a spider-webbed hand, jumped out and opened the back door. “Welcome to your new home. Move it.”
Women poured out.
Roxy stepped close and whispered to Mark, “Looks like we found the other women.”
Mark stared at them. Arms and legs bruised and battered. Clothing half torn from their bodies. The scent of their fear burned his nose. Most hadn’t come easily and it showed. Oddly, the bruises largely were from the neck down. Bring higher prices at auction. They were all pretty, muscles well toned. Good for fighting.
Mark moved closer to Lisa, providing a shield for cover. Roxy relayed the message about the arrival of the other women to the team.
Lisa stood transfixed by the women. What she was thinking was easy enough to imagine. “You okay?”
“I will be now.” She glanced over at the six-story home and paled.
Attuned to her, he felt her strength falter, and fearing her knees would buckle, he clasped her arm. “What is it?”
She darted her eyes, swept the building. “I know this place.”
“You do?” How could she? The first abduction. No. Oh no. Susan’s note ricocheted through Mark’s mind. If Lisa remembered, she’d need professional intervention to get through it.
A whimper escaped through her clamped mouth. She jerked her gaze from the expansive home to Mark. Fear flooded her eyes, oozed from her every pore. “Mr. Phen lives here.”
Her fear pulsed through him, and while he had no idea what she remembered, he could see that some connections had been made and they terrified her. “Who is Mr. Phen?”
She whimpered again.
“Lisa, who is Mr. Phen?” Mark darted a worried look at Roxy, who’d picked up on the fear too.
A tear spilled onto Lisa’s cheek. “The man who bought me the first time I was sold.”
24
T he phone at his ear, Karl looked into his rearview mirror. The border crossing was fading fast. That was the last huge operational hurdle.
“Yes, I substituted Bandit,” Chessman said. “I would have called, but the timing was inconvenient.”
“I understand.” Just as Karl had suspected. Incarceration had its limitations. “Did you notify Raven?”
“There’s no need to bog her down in minutiae. The substitution was mission essential. It’s done. End of story. The cargo should be on the premises now.”
That bothering-the-boss bit was a backhanded reprimand about Karl’s poor management. He let the insult slide. Chessman was still stinging at being demoted. “Excellent.” The auction was set for eight o’clock that night. “Do you have an update on the patient?”
“Still comatose.”
Alive. Dutch would be glad to hear it. Maybe. Karl was glad to hear it. He kicked the air conditioner up a notch. It was even hotter here than in Seagrove Village. Apparently NINA had remedied its employee gap on the hospital site since Rose’s hasty departure. It hadn’t taken long. It never did. “I’ll notify the client.”
“That about wraps this one up.”
“Just about.” Sweet. Nearly done and slick as glass.
“Well done, Karl.”
No way was that sincere. Chessman wanted Karl
to fall flat on his face so their roles would be reversed again, and only a fool wouldn’t know it. “Thank you.”
“About that other little matter.”
Kelly Walker. Chessman wanted her dead too. She was the reason he was in jail, and the man did hold a decent grudge.
“Won’t be long now.” The air was still hot. Karl hit the AC again. When he got to the coast, at least it wouldn’t be as dusty. He hated dust. He hated heat too. Couldn’t wait to get back to Syracuse.
“Excellent.”
Essential. Karl frowned. If he removed Walker, maybe NINA would get that artist’s rendering of his face off the U.S. post offices’ walls. Getting rid of those sketches was a worthy cause.
Chessman cleared his throat. “Still no signs of a memory return?”
Lisa Harper. “None whatsoever. She’s been tested multiple times.”
“Her buyer will be disappointed.”
Phen was a sadistic jerk, and Chessman was right. Phen would be disappointed. He fed off fear, and Lisa’s forgetting him would stab his mammoth ego. He’d be determined to make her remember or learn to fear him all over again.
If she were going to remember, surely she would have by now. Either way, she would fear Phen. And Dutch’s wishes would be fulfilled.
Lisa would suffer.
Disjointed thoughts swirled through Lisa’s mind, memories of this grand estate: the light adobe brick and cold Saltillo tile. Six separate floors, but the first was a type of torture chamber created specifically to incite fear, to satisfy the lusts of deviates. Lisa shuddered.
“Are you all right?” Mark whispered from beside her. “What do you mean, the first time you were sold?”
She remembered it all so clearly now. Being dragged into an auditorium on the second floor. It was opulent and a lot like the one her parents had taken her to for a concert, with a wide stage and a tall, ornate dome ceiling and blue velvet curtains that stretched up so high they seemed suspended from heaven.
But in Phen’s auditorium, glimpses of hell came to life center stage.
She tried to find her voice. Gwen, Selene, and Amanda stood behind them. While quiet and watchful, their presence helped anchor Lisa and keep her emotions then and now separate, helped remind her she was no longer the child she’d been, but the woman she’d become.
