Two beers down, four to go. I shot him a disgusted look and . . . wait! Pharmacy!
“Hold on,” I told investigators. “There is another thing I just remembered. Jane talked in her sleep. She had nightmares and would wake up saying something about a pharmacy.”
“Wait, what?” Chuck’s head shot up.
“Jane always had nightmares about some pharmacy. She told me once that it’s where her boyfriend killed a bunch of people.”
The men exchanged a look, and the other investigator stepped away and got on the phone.
“What?” I demanded. “Tell me.”
“It’s federal business,” Chuck said.
“Please . . . ,” I begged, my voice cracking.
He took pity on me.
“Look, kid, this could be nothing or it could be huge. A pharmacy outside of Montera has been on our radar for months now as the possible entrance to Grande’s super tunnel. We’ve been trying to get Mexican police to cooperate.”
“Do you think that’s where Jane is?” I asked.
“It’s certainly a possibility,” Chuck answered.
The other guy hurried back over. “Uh, yeah, we’ve got a problem.”
“What now?” Chuck asked.
“Some bigwig factory guy’s daughter just got abducted.”
“Geez. Do we think it’s connected?”
“The timing would say so. Either way, we’ve got to pull some resources to address it.”
“What’s her name?”
“Savannah. Savannah Maddison has been abducted.”
JANE
“This warehouse is Mesoamerica, and you’re in my sacred ball game.” Lobenzo spun in a circle, arms over his head, waiting for word about the Mad Son. And Savannah.
“We’ve discussed the Aztecs. What about the Maya? Did you know that historical anthropologists used to believe the Maya were a peaceful people dedicated to building and astronomy, stonework and stars?”
Lobenzo was like an encyclopedia. Information spewed out of him. A computer melting down.
“Azules.” He kicked at me. “Let’s chat more, you and me. Now, where were we?”
“Stonework and stars,” I whispered.
“That’s right. So it turns out that the Maya weren’t peaceful at all. Recent advances in the interpretation of their stonework revealed they were actually a very violent, warmongering society. Capturing prisoners was a priority.”
Lobenzo threw back his head and laughed. “Those prisoners would be ritually humiliated. Sometimes they would force them to reenact the battles on their ball courts. The losing prisoners would be sacrificed.”
His face was inches from mine. I somehow managed not to flinch.
“What? That doesn’t disturb you?” he asked. “Me either. Many of the societies applauded for advancing mankind practiced ritual human sacrifice. Carthaginians. Ancient Israelites. The Etruscans who lived in what is now Tuscany. Wine country. Salud! How do you like that?”
He traced a finger along the profile of my face. “Hawaiians. Mesopotamians. Egyptians. The Chinese. One historian claims the Celts would build a huge figure made of straw and wood and would throw animals and humans into it and make a burnt offering of the whole thing . . . the wicker man. But . . . but . . .”
Lobenzo held up one finger to make his point. “For every writer who claims the barbaric practices are proven in archaeology, there is another who says that perhaps bones and drawings could be explained another way. Human beings want to believe we are better than we are. But I can tell you, human sacrifice is still alive and well today.”
He was trying to terrify me more. A cat playing with the mouse it will eat.
A flurry of motion at the entrance to the warehouse grabbed his attention.
Oh no.
They had her.
The Soup Maker and the Fortress hauled in Savannah. She sank to her knees as soon as they released their hold on either elbow.
“Welcome,” Lobenzo called out, and she shrank away from the sound of his voice. “Say hello to your new roommate, Azules. . . . I said . . . say . . . hello!”
“Hello,” I whispered as my mind screamed silently in terror for her, for us.
“Jane?” Savannah could hardly breathe as she struggled to make sense of what was happening.
“Defect or die,” Lobenzo said softly. “Everything that was Grande’s is now mine. Your father, the Mad Son, as he’s known, is not quite understanding that concept. He has been overseeing the construction of Grande’s new tunnel. Apparently, I need to send a stronger message that it is now Lobenzo’s tunnel.”
“My father?” Savannah dissolved into more choked sobs. She didn’t believe it. Of course she didn’t. Her world didn’t have a place for this in it.
“Stop crying,” Lobenzo ordered. “It’s bothering me.”
That made her cry harder.
“Enough,” Lobenzo said.
She didn’t stop. Lobenzo nodded to the Assassin. He grabbed one of Savannah’s hands, which were taped behind her back.
“Nice manicure,” he said before ripping off her pinky nail with his pocketknife pliers. Savannah shrieked.
I wanted to dive to help her and cower in the corner at once. My stomach rolled. This was nothing compared to what they were capable of.
“Next time I tell you to shut up, shut up,” Lobenzo said.
Savannah curled into a fetal position and dry heaved.
This was not what we were meant to be, dark matter, our own antigravity, the reason solar systems fall apart and explode. Big or small, quiet or loud, either way we progress toward our endings. At some point we try to end, we want to end, because it is better than the uncertainty.
“Gentlemen.” Lobenzo smacked his lips. “Who’s in the mood for soup?”
Their laughter in response grated low, rocks against rocks.
“Let’s find a way to teach the Mad Son how we will kill his daughter if he does not work with us in every way for the rest of his life.”
He paced like a tiger in a cage. “I know! We’ll make a movie. You know how I like to make movies.”
Lobenzo looked over at me. “Azules . . . you can be the star!”
CADE
It went off like a lightbulb over my head. That was the irony of it. When the feds said Savannah was taken, it hit me as hard as a tackle on the field that knocks out your air.
The tunnel at the end of the light.
The name Jane had said over the phone to Lobenzo was more than just a name. It was a clue, a code. End of the light. Light factory.
Why else would Savannah be targeted? The tunnel must have an opening in her dad’s factory. It all made sense. The men strung up on the bridge worked for Mr. Maddison. This was the reason Tanner was heating up. Turf war. Grande versus Lobenzo . . . They were fighting for a tunnel somewhere in Maddison Electric.
I was talking to the investigators like a crazy person who is trying to warn everyone the world is ending.
“Calm down, take a breath,” Chuck said.
They started all over again with their questions. I tried to slow down what I was saying. I told them every detail Jane ever blurted out in her nightmare-packed sleep. And then my theory.
“Don’t you get it? It’s like a play on words. Instead of light at the end of the tunnel, it’s tunnel at the end of the light. Lights. Maddison Electric.”
“Worth looking into, I guess.”
“You guess?”
When I slammed my fist against the table, my dad butted in and told me to take a beat. I stormed upstairs to my room for a second to collect myself. That’s when I had an idea: the money. Maybe there was some sort of clue in that bag. I took a deep breath and grabbed the bag of bills. Funny how something goes from meaning everything to not mattering at all. If Jane disappeared or was killed, every dollar
would be stained with her blood. Each dollar would be every mistake I had made, every bad decision. My mother left for money. The tunnel under the border. Money. The cartel’s constant violence. All for money. Greed. Hell’s furnace.
I hurried back down to the authorities congregated in my house like a bunch of useless politicians and threw the backpack down on our kitchen table.
“Jane took this from her boyfriend who got killed, Raff. It’s Grande’s money. Some of it’s marked up.”
“You’ve had this the whole time?” Chuck was pissed. “Kid, if you want us to be able to help, you have to be straight with us.”
My dad’s eyes bulged at the sight of the stacks of bills the agents started pulling out as he began to put two and two together.
“Are you shitting me right now?” he said. “That’s what that guy I popped was after!”
“Is this it?” Chuck demanded. “Or do you have any other surprises for us?”
“This is it,” I said. “Does it help?”
“Certainly doesn’t hurt to follow the money trail. We’ll see what we can find.”
Chuck motioned for his agents to take the bag. He sighed. “Let’s see if your light-factory theory has any meat.”
He stepped outside and got back on the phone. When he finally came in again, he shook his head in frustration.
“Look, I made the call, but Garrett Maddison won’t authorize us going into his facilities,” he said.
“Wait . . . what? Who cares? Go anyway.”
“I’m sorry. There’s simply nothing we can do. Without Maddison playing ball, we need a search warrant.”
“Why would you need a warrant? Why won’t he let you search his house and factory or whatever you need to do? I mean, are you kidding me right now?”
“He doesn’t want police, especially the feds, anywhere near him right now because he says the cartel is watching. He’s doing what he thinks will get his daughter back alive.”
“What about Jane though? What about getting her out alive?”
“Trust me. We’ve got my best guys on this. What I need from you is to stay right here. Don’t go anywhere in case we need you, okay?”
“Like I have a choice.”
“I mean it,” Chuck pushed.
I stormed into the kitchen and punched the corner of the wall. Plaster crumbled onto the stained linoleum. Jane. The only thing that made my life worth living and I was going to fail her. Life would become hating myself for letting this happen. This wasn’t supposed to be how it ended. I promised her sunlight. I said we had a future. Her story couldn’t be a tragedy. The world couldn’t be that brutal.
I heard the front door open and close as the bulk of the agents left. Only a couple stayed behind, guarding the front porch. Protecting me, they said. More like holding me hostage.
My phone rang. Jojo again.
“Hey.”
“Just checking. Any word on—”
I cut her off. “I know where she is, and they’re not doing anything about it!”
“You do? Wait, what do you mean? They have to. Where is she?”
“They need a warrant, and Savannah’s dad won’t let them in.”
“Hold on,” Jojo interrupted. “Savannah’s dad? What are you talking about?”
“Savannah’s been abducted too, Jojo. This all has to do with her father. There’s a tunnel that comes out in his factory.”
“Cade, are you sure?”
“Jojo, I’m telling you. I know I’m right. He was helping Grande. That’s why his workers got killed on the bridge by the new cartel . . . Lobenzo. The Wolf Cub. And he has Jane and Savannah. Her dad’s not letting police in because he’s scared they’ll kill her.”
I heard Mattey in the background. “What’s going on?”
“I’ll tell you in a sec,” Jojo said. “So wait, Cade, you think Jane is in the factory somewhere?”
“Savannah too, maybe. But these frickin’ agents . . .” I couldn’t breathe.
“No, no. It’s okay,” Jojo tried to reassure me. “This is good news. It’s a step in the right direction . . . hang on, Mattey, I’ll explain in a minute. . . . You have to trust them, right?”
“Yeah . . . right,” I said hopelessly.
“Don’t do anything crazy, Cade,” she said. “Promise me you’re not going there by yourself.”
“Bye, Jojo.”
I shoved the phone back in my pocket and walked back up to my room. There was certainly no way I could rescue Jane and Savannah on my own, but if I could get close enough to prove my theory—show them Lobenzo was in the warehouse, manage to take a picture, some video, something—the feds would have to step in.
There was no time to wait for a warrant. Jane’s life was at stake, and somehow I was the only person in the world who seemed to understand that urgency. My heart was pounding out of my chest. I had to try something. I couldn’t just stay here.
I snuck into my dad’s bedroom and grabbed the gun from his nightstand, sliding it into my belt, and then slipped out my window and down the gutter pipe, creeping across the backyard to the cornfield, that same damn field where I first found Jane. I knew a shortcut to Maddison Electric, where I was convinced I would find her again.
JANE
Savannah was losing it. She was thrashing and yanking at her restraints, shaking her head around like it would somehow make the blindfold come off.
“Okay. Okay,” she panted over and over.
There was no talking her off the edge. She had stopped answering me hours ago. I tried to tune her out.
How long until Lobenzo returned with his video camera rolling on whatever he had planned for us?
Maybe I was going crazy too.
Cade . . . are you out there? I guess it stays this way, you and me, a secret, I love you. I love you, Cade. Can you feel me sending you that before I go? I don’t need anyone else to remember me but you.
“Are you hungry?”
Lobenzo was back.
“I’m offering you some bread. Do you want it or no?”
“May I have water?” I was parched.
“Pozolero, get her some water.”
He handed Savannah the bread, but instead of eating it she knotted it up into a dirty, doughy ball in her fist, kneading and rolling it.
“Thank you,” she whispered. “Please and thank you. I’m a good girl, you know.”
Lobenzo held a rusted metal cup to my lips as I gulped the water. There was an eerie warmth in his midnight eyes. He liked seeing me grateful. He was relishing the power of bestowing benevolence upon me. Lobenzo wanted to be worshipped as much as he wanted to be feared.
Even after he walked away again, Savannah kept hyperventilating. I couldn’t take her heavy breathing against my dark thoughts anymore. It was like a twisted beat that would fuel a contorted dance. I needed to do something to keep myself sane. I could sing. Singing is like dancing, when your body can’t move. Maybe it would help Savannah. I started with regular songs from the radio, and when I ran out of those, I sang songs from little kid cartoons. Then I remembered the lullaby my mom used to sing.
“Hush, little baby, don’t say a word, Momma’s gonna buy you a mockingbird. And if that mockingbird don’t sing, Daddy’s gonna buy you a diamond ring.”
Savannah finally spoke. “Again,” she said. So I sang it again.
“And if that diamond ring turns to brass, Daddy’s gonna buy you a looking glass. And if that looking glass gets broke, Daddy’s gonna buy you a billy goat.”
I sang that lullaby four times in a row, in the shadows of the giant cargo containers. Alamo and Pozolero paced in the distance, almost in time with the melody, it seemed, the toy soldier and the troll under the bridge.
“Thank you,” Savannah said.
“You want more?”
“No. You can stop now,” she
said.
“Keep breathing. You’re going to be all right. The police will figure out we’re here. They’ll save you,” I told her.
The lies were a lullaby for me.
“I don’t believe this is happening. They have to be wrong about my dad.”
“I don’t think they are, Savannah.”
“No, I don’t either.”
Tears rolled out from under her blindfold, and she huddled into herself, shoulders caved, knees drawn, crushed by the reality of her life unraveling.
“Stop talking!” Alamo barked over at us.
I dropped my voice to an almost inaudible whisper.
“And if that billy goat won’t pull, Daddy’s gonna buy you a cart and bull. And if that cart and bull fall down, you’ll still be the prettiest little baby in town.”
“You don’t have to sing anymore,” Savannah whispered back.
“It’s not just for you,” I replied.
My singing felt separate. I pretended it was my mother, if my mother had stayed that early version of herself, a ring of light like mothers are supposed to be for their children. Somewhere an angel opened her arms, and her song was a halo, and this song was that light.
CADE
“I knew it!” a voice rang out.
Jojo and Mattey were sitting on their bikes on the trail that ran alongside the dry creek from my fields to the train tracks.
“Cade, you can’t seriously think you’re going in there,” Jojo said.
“I’m not an idiot. I’m not going to storm in there guns blazing,” I said. “I just need to get some proof to show the feds I’m right about the factory. Don’t try to stop me. Please go home, where it’s safe. How did you even get away?”
“We were at the hospital with my parents,” Jojo said. “Sophia woke up!”
“Oh my God. Thank God.” Relief flooded over me.
“Once we saw she was okay, we snuck out while my parents were with her, because I had a feeling you’d be doing something like this.”
I scanned their faces. “You told the cops on me, didn’t you?”
Hide with Me Page 24
