Promises to Keep

by Maegan Beaumont

  Midmorning at Mercat Del Encants. People were everywhere, young and old, every shape and size. Ben blended perfectly. The kid played Hapless College Student to a T. Having changed into a pair of cargo shorts and a ratty AC/DC concert shirt, he flitted from booth to booth, smiling and chatting his way around the flea market.

  Michael followed at a safe distance, trailing a sting of Pips, as he called FSS lackeys, behind him. Junior’s outburst must’ve rattled Shaw more than he let on if he sent a pack of his specially trained lapdogs to make sure they didn’t screw up. He began to wonder, same as Ben, what the boss was hoping to gain by recovering Leo Maddox. What had the Senator promised him in exchange for his grandson’s safe return?

  Finally, after about an hour of fishing, they got a bite. Ben asked about the scarf girl, described her to an old woman surrounded by several boxes of VHS tapes. He said he’d seen her around a few days ago and he’d thought she was pretty. He confided in the old woman that he’d been hoping to find her so he could ask her out for coffee. The old woman gave him a wide gap-toothed smile.

  Bingo.

  “Let me handle it, okay? Her name’s Eliza,” Ben said as they wound their way through the market, heading toward the long low row of wooden structures that housed the food and more high-priced shops. “She takes one look at you, dude, she’s gonna rabbit.”

  Michael looked down at himself and saw nothing out of the ordinary. Faded jeans and an old navy blue Hanes shirt. “What’s wrong with the way I look?”

  “It’s not your clothes,” Ben said. “It’s this.” He waved his hand in Michael’s direction. “You. All of you. The whole thing. Everything about you is hostile. You need to relax.”

  “Relax?”

  “Yeah, relax.” Ben hitched the backpack he carried up on one shoulder. “Do some yoga. Kill a Pip. Take the stick out of your ass—something. Just do it before I get back with the girl,” he said before disappearing into the crowd, leaving Michael alone with a couple hundred people and a half dozen of Shaw’s walking, talking insurance policies.

  Relax? Every breath he took, every second he lived, was because someone else had decided to allow it. How in the hell was he supposed to relax?

  Michael took a few turns around the market, keeping a close eye on the dark maze of shops and lean-tos that Ben had disappeared into and then suddenly, there he was. Talking and laughing with a pretty young woman with large dark eyes and a shy smile. It was the girl from the surveillance video, and she was gazing up at Ben with a star-struck look as he led her though the marketplace toward a small outdoor café.

  They took a seat and placed their order with the waiter. Michael did another lap around the tables and booths. The Pips followed. He watched Ben and the girl. Coffee and buñuelos made an appearance. Ben smiled and charmed the girl for several minutes, putting her at ease before signaling Michael by looking at his watch.

  The girl looked up as he approached, and the smile perched on her face wobbled and fell. She shot a hurried glance at Ben before she started to shove herself away from the table. Ben’s hand shot out and gripped hers across the table. “Eliza … esta bien. Nadie va a danarte. Queremos preguntarte algo. Solo unas preguntas. Nada más, te prometo.” He gave her a reassuring smile. “Hablas inglés?”

  The girl nodded slowly. “Yes, I speak English.” She looked up at Michael and shook her head. “But I know nothing worth telling. I sell scarves. I am no one.”

  Michael took a seat next to her and leaned forward just a bit, dropping his voice to keep the conversation private. He could tell she was lying. “There was an American boy here with his mother a few weeks ago. He was small—blond with hazel eyes. You spoke to his mother, distracted her while your partner in the Yankees cap snatched him. We have it all on tape,” he said.

  Her eyes widened just a bit, and she started to shake her head. “No. I don’t know what you are saying. I—”

  “Stop. Just stop.” Michael used his fingertip to turn her face toward the crowd. “Do you see them? The men in suits, circling like vultures?” He paused, waited for her to nod. “They’re here for you. To make sure you tell us what we need to know. And when they start asking questions, I can assure you, it won’t be over coffee and doughnuts.” He watched the tears well up in her eyes as understanding took root.

  She turned her face away from the crowd. “I can’t. You don’t understand. These men are very dangerous.”

  “Who are they?” Ben said.

  The girl shrugged, looked miserable. “I don’t know.” She swallowed hard, eyes full of tears again. “They took my brother first. Told me that if I helped them, they would bring him back, but … it’s been a very long time.”

  “How long?” Ben said.

  “Eight months.”

  Eight months? Leo Maddox was taken only three weeks ago. A sick feeling began to form in the pit of Michael’s stomach. “Was the American boy the only one you helped abduct?”

  Her eyes flooded with tears. She shook her head. “No. But he was the last. There has been no one since.”

  Michael looked across the table at his partner. How many children could be taken in eight months?

  “Eliza, where is he? Where do they take the children?” Ben said.

  “I don’t know,” she said quietly, staring at the tabletop. She was scared, couldn’t look him in the eye. She knew more than she was letting on.

  Michael leaned back in his seat. “You’re lying.”

  She looked up at him. “I don’t know. But … the man who took the boy—the one you are looking for—he was not the man that usually comes.” She chewed her lower lip. She seemed to be deciding if she could trust them with the truth. “The man that usually comes is shorter, heavier. This man was taller, thin. He had a scar.”

  “Where?” he said, the skin on the back of his neck going tight. He knew before she even answered him.

  “Here,” she said, running her finger along her cheek. “It was long—from his temple to the corner of his mouth. I saw him once, in the street. He was getting into a big black car with an older man in a suit.”

  “How do you know for sure it was him?” Ben said.

  She looked at Ben. “I recognized the scar, and—”

  The sudden impact of the bullet snapped the girl’s head back, its exit making a hole the size of a fist in the back of her skull. Blood sprayed across the plate of pastries, soaked into the white cloth that covered the table. Brain matter and even more blood splattered onto the bricks beneath their feet.

  Ben and Michael stood and moved swiftly, away from the cafe, for the cover of a narrow easement between the café and neighboring bookstore.

  Screams and shouts sounded from the café behind them, but neither one of them turned around. They kept walking—there was nothing they could do. The girl was dead.

  “Fuck,” Ben muttered under his breath, shaking his head almost in time with his quick stride. “Someone didn’t want her talking.”

  “I know who,” Michael said, stepping out of the alley where they’d parked there car. He gestured for Ben to stay in the shadows while he surveyed windows and rooftops for possible blinds. It was instinctual, the need he felt to protect his team. Ben ignored him and stepped out in the road alongside him.

  “Well, Michael, are you going to share your answer with the rest of the class?” his partner chimed brightly while skirting the bumper to his side of the car.

  “Reyes.” Just saying the name out loud made it almost too real to deal with. He should have taken him out a year ago, when he first found out that Alberto was targeting him.

  “Reyes doesn’t strike me as the down-and-dirty type.” Ben pulled his door open before cutting him a doubtful look across the roof of the car. Sirens wailed in the distance, getting closer. “Besides, Reyes doesn’t have a scar.”

  Michael thought about killing. Heard the crinkle of plastic she
eting beneath his boots. Felt the resistant tug of skin and muscle against his blade. Reyes, his lizard eyes flat and distant, watching as he got what he wanted. He yanked his door open and returned his partner’s gaze. “He’s not and he doesn’t—but his son does.” And is.

  Now Ben smiled, but there was no humor in it. The sirens were close, but it mattered little to either of them. “How do you know?”

  Michael shrugged and tried to unearth himself from the avalanche of memories he was suddenly buried under. “Because I’m the one who gave it to him.”

  Eight

  Cofre del Tesoro, Colombia

  March 2008

  The tide was leaving, the shards of light scattered across the blue-green surface of the water losing their luster in the setting sun, growing dimmer and dimmer with every push and pull of the ocean.

  He looked down at the little girl playing in the sand a few feet away. “Time to go,” he said before casting an appraising look down the length of the private beach. It was deserted. Always was, but he scanned the trees just the same. Looking for the flash a scope, the sudden scatter of birds. He’d been hired to keep Reyes’s daughter safe, and that’s what he’d do. Even if all he was protecting her from was hermit crabs and sunburns.

  It’d been four months since he’d stood at the window in Reyes’s office, seeing the water in the distance. Four months since he realized that he’d never been to the beach without a gun on his back or a target to neutralize. Now a day didn’t go by without him dumping sand out of his boots.

  He was living the dream.

  Looking down, he wasn’t at all surprised to find that the little girl was still loading sand into a bucket in careful measured scoops, giving each a pat with the flat of her pink plastic shovel before adding another. He sighed. “Christina.”

  “Why won’t you wear swim trunks?” she said. Ignoring the warning tone in his voice, she lifted her head just enough to eye the leg of his dark cargo pants. “I know you have some.”

  “Because they’d look funny with my lace-ups.” He wiggled the toe of his boot, and she cracked a smile. “I’m serious—the tide’s out. Time to pack up.”

  The smile died, and she allowed her gaze to travel upward until it hit his face. “You’re always serious.” Her dark eyes, the way they held his without wavering, were sharp. Too sharp to belong to a child. Sometimes it was difficult for him to believe she was only four. Correction: she was five. Her birthday had been last week. No party. No cake and pony rides with her friends. Christina wasn’t allowed to have friends. Aside from breakfast with her mother every morning and the occasional visit from her father, all she had was him.

  Squinting behind his sunglasses, Michael looked away, pretending to do another visual sweep. He ignored the twinge—a mixture of guilt and pity. “I’m not your playmate, Christina. I’m your protector.”

  She picked up the bucket and turned it over, giving it a wiggle. “I liked the last one better,” she said, lifting the bucket to reveal a perfectly formed tower. “He had a funny moustache and told knock-knock jokes.”

  “Well, I hate to disappoint.” He smirked at her sass. “Knock, knock.”

  She looked up at him again. “Who’s there?”

  “Get your stuff, it’s time to go.”

  She narrowed her eyes, pitching her pink shovel in the direction of her beach tote. “Make me.”

  Michael took a deep breath, let it out slowly. “I’m warning you …” He let the rest of the sentence go, looking down at her with what he hoped was an appropriate amount of severity.

  “I’m warning you,” she mimicked him, dropping her hands to her hips. “You can’t do anything to me. I’ll tell my—”

  He didn’t wait for her to finish her sentence, just took a step forward and hooked an arm around her waist, lifting her out of the sand to sling her over his shoulder. She screamed, her tiny feet kicking against his chest, her equally tiny fists beating against his back. “You can’t leave my stuff here! Put me down!”

  He ignored her, heading for the black H2 parked in the sand twenty yards away. A sudden flutter of birds took to the sky, bursting from the dense stand of trees, a breathless scatter that stopped him in his tracks. It was likely the girl’s screams that sent them flying, nothing more. But the skin on the back of his neck went tight, telling him something entirely different.

  Without thinking he dropped to one knee, slinging Christina off his shoulder. “Hush,” he breathed, pinning her with a look that instantly killed her protests. The little girl went still. Eyes wide, she nodded, understanding perfectly. “Good. Now,” he said, pulling a set of keys from his pocket, “when I tell you to run, that’s what you’ll do.”

  Something moved, a deeper shadow, crouched within the dense canopy of trees. Something that didn’t belong there. He looked down at the girl again. To whoever was watching, it would look like he was giving her a stern talking to over her behavior. “Just like we practiced, okay?”

  Tears welled up in her eyes. “I’m scared.”

  “Me too, but it’s gonna be okay. Do you trust me?”

  She nodded. “Yes. Michael, I’m sorry I was so—”

  “Shhh, I know. Ready?”

  She nodded again, watched him as he pulled his Kimber .45 off his hip, keeping it low and tight against his thigh. “Run,” he said, breathing the word softly, relieved when she turned without hesitation, her bare feet digging into the sand as she pushed herself into motion.

  As soon as she was clear, Michael brought the gun up. Levelling it at the trees, he squeezed off three shots in rapid succession, aiming into the canopy. If he was wrong—if it was an animal or one of the maids trying to sneak onto the private beach—they’d come out running. The silhouette startled but didn’t bolt … and it didn’t return fire either.

  He cut a fast glance at Christina. She was almost to the H2, legs pumping fast and hard against the soft give of the sand. He used the key fob to unlock the SUV’s rear hatch—it popped open just as she reached it. Christina shot him a fleeting look before she scrambled inside and shut the hatch behind her.

  Good girl.

  As soon as she was inside, he locked the SUV, relying on its armored body and bulletproof windows to keep her safe. He stood, making his way toward the stand of trees quickly. His vision zeroed in on the shadow huddled against the thick trunk of a tree. “Los tres primeros fuero ndirigidos alto intenciona damente. Los tres siguientes no habrá.”

  The first three were aimed high intentionally. The next three won’t be.

  The shadow shifted mere seconds before it lost its courage and bolted deeper into the trees. He followed, dodging branches and clumps of bushes. “Stop,” he bellowed loudly, raising his gun, aiming it into the center of the shadow. He wasn’t sure if it was the tone or the actual word that did it, but the figure did as he said, stopping short.

  It was a woman.

  The cartels weren’t above using women and children as decoys and assassins. Her hands went out and up, fingers splayed wide.

  “Date la vuelta. Despacio.”

  She did as he said, turning slowly. As soon as he got a good look at her face, he dropped the gun. It was Lydia Reyes, Christina’s mother. “Goddamn it,” he swore softly. “Mrs. Reyes, what are you doing here?” It felt strange calling her Mrs. Anything—she was hardly older than his baby sister, Frankie.

  “I just wanted to see her. Please, please don’t tell him,” she said, her eyes darting wildly from his face to the SUV behind him. “I just—he won’t let me see her.”

  “You had breakfast with her this morning.” Michael ignored the twinge of guilt he felt when he said it. It was true—Lydia and Christina had breakfast together every morning, but they were under constant supervision. Reyes claimed that his wife was unstable. Michael was pretty sure it was all about control.

  “I know, but I never get to see her,” she s
aid, struggling for an explanation. It was unnecessary; he understood what she meant. Christina was like a living, breathing doll when her father was around. A pint-sized Stepford Wife. It was unsettling.

  Still he shook his head, shifting from side to side. “Mrs. Reyes—”

  “Lydia. Please, call me Lydia.” She took a step forward, her dark eyes wild with desperation. “I know you care for—” She must’ve thought better of her words because she stopped and changed direction. “Please. Can I just talk to her?”

  Bad idea.

  He crossed his arms over his chest. “It’s late. We’re getting ready to head back to the compound.”

  “Oh, okay. I understand.” She dropped her hands to her sides and turned to leave. “Could you just … ” she said, turning her face in his direction. “Could you tell her that I miss her?”

  He nodded, and she turned to walk away.

  “Wait.”

  She stopped again, turning fully to face him, hope etched plainly on her face.

  He was going to regret this.

  “We’re here every day; usually get here right after lunch.” He said it fast, before he could change his mind. “Approach from this spot so I can see you coming. And come alone.”

  Her breath caught, hands fluttered at her sides, clutching at her skirt. “Thank you. Thank you, Cartero.”

  “Don’t call me that.” The frown that settled onto his face must’ve frightened her, because she took a step back.

  “I’m sorry, it’s what I hear Alberto and his men call you, so I thought—”

  He cleared his throat and looked away. “It’s not my name. My name is Michael.”

  “Thank you, Michael,” she said, a small smile trembling on her lips. “Tomorrow?”

  He nodded and watched her walk into the trees, waiting until she was gone before he turned and made his way back to the H2 where Christina hid.