by CJ Lyons
“Do you know what happened to them?”
Romero shrugged. “No idea. But they whitewashed the prison, turned it into a clinic specializing in unwed, troubled mothers. Most of them just kids on the street, many prostitutes, addicts, considered unstable, insane by society’s standards. Until our Congress did something that changed everything.”
“Wait. Our Congress? The U.S.?”
“This was the mid-’90s. Stem cell research was going to heal the crippled, save little kids with cancer, help us all live forever. Then Congress outlawed the use of federal funds for work with embryos, the source of the researcher’s stem cells. Scientists panicked. While Hector and Dr. Carrera saw opportunity. Because the other place you can get stem cells, outside of embryos, is from umbilical cord blood.”
“Harvested from their pregnant prisoners.” Jake blinked hard. He thought he’d seen everything, but … “So Alvarado set up BioRegen in the U.S. while the doctor collected the stem cells.”
“Then came the cosmetic surgery boom and surgeons were crying out for more tissue to squirt into Hollywood stars’ cheeks and lips and asses. Suddenly having access to a captive population that no one else cared about turned into a treasure trove. Carrera spread the word that he was repenting his past by opening his clinic, free of charge, to any unwed pregnant woman who needed a safe haven. Soon he had more patients than ever. Homeless, cast out by their families. Unwanted and, most importantly, unnoticed when they vanished. Invisible.”
“No one ever questioned what happened to them?”
“They’re only women.” Romero shrugged. “Who’d bother?”
Jake knew he didn’t really want the answer to his next question, but he had to ask. “Did Carrera kill them all for the body parts?” He swallowed hard, remembering the sight of Victor’s mutilated body back at the funeral home. “How many? BioRegen has been in business for almost two decades.”
“Not sure if we’ll ever know. I’m also not sure if they were all killed.” He turned to glance at Jake. “After all, you can harvest body parts and tissue without killing the donor.”
Jake fought and failed to keep the horror from his face. Romero chuckled, delighted by the response to his macabre story.
*
Maria hid in the fragrant shrubs that created a border between the courtyard and the garden. She was confused and scared, and half her mind was trying to convince the other half that Michael was wrong, there was no danger, except maybe in his imagination.
But she hadn’t imagined the anger she’d heard when he and Dr. Carrera had been arguing. That she couldn’t deny. As much as she wanted to.
Should she trust Michael? Wait for him behind the clinic like he asked? Or should she try to escape on her own? If she could make it over the tall brick fence that surrounded the compound and follow the drive around the lake, she’d reach the road. No, that was the first place they’d look after they searched the house.
Michael had mentioned a trail across the mountains that led to the temple—but even with the help of the map he’d drawn her, there was no way she could find it in the dark. Did she even have the map? She patted her pockets frantically. Yes. She had it and the other paper he’d given her before telling her to run. There wasn’t enough light to read either by, so she folded them carefully into her jacket pocket and zippered it shut so she wouldn’t risk losing them.
The tiny triumph settled her nerves. She might not know what she was running from, but at least she now had a plan. Or at least the start of one. All she needed was a place to hide until daylight. Somewhere close to the loading dock Michael had mentioned—that way she could make sure he wasn’t followed. She’d decided to trust him. After all, he had no reason to lie and had seemed truly frightened, plus he’d diverted Helda’s attention so she could escape.
She turned to the other building in the compound. The clinic. Three stories high and half a football field in length—no way they could search it quickly. And there should be plenty of hiding places. Even better would be a working phone. She could call for help, rescue both her and Michael.
Skirting the trees and bushes, she jogged through the gardens to the clinic. The main entrance was dark, no lights outside to welcome staff or patients, no lights showing at all on the first two floors. She tried the door. Open.
Inside, she waited for her vision to adjust. The building didn’t smell like a hospital. It stank of human waste and decay. Worse than the jungle, because here there was an underlying subliminal scent of terror.
Maybe it came from her. She gathered her thoughts, trying to focus. Her father was coming, the doctor had said. Was that a lie as well?
She had to assume it was all lies. Which meant he must be working with the men who killed Prescott. And that the police hadn’t really come, they weren’t protecting the archeology site. If the professor was still alive, maybe she could still get help to him. A phone. She needed to find a phone.
Fear rattled through her veins in a staccato drumbeat. Even though no one was here, she kept holding her breath, which only made her dizzy and breathe harder and faster. Focus. She needed to focus.
She crept across the dark foyer. This first floor felt empty—felt as if it’d been empty for a long, long time.
The entrance was at the center of the long side of the building. Inside the doors, there was a wooden desk on the other side of the reception area. Behind it a short passage lined with doors, their windows glinting in the faint glow of an EXIT sign at the far end. On either side, two more halls, stretching out the length of the building. Somewhere there must be staircases or elevators leading up to the patient floors, probably more corridors of offices and exam rooms, but she couldn’t see them in the dark.
She circled the receptionist’s desk. No computer. Just a datebook, a cup with pens and pencils, a stack of stationery with its corners curled by age and humidity, a newspaper, and—yes!—a rotary dial phone. She raised the receiver—something scuttled away, making the newspaper crackle—and listened. Nothing. The line was dead.
A woman’s scream cut through the silence. Maria dropped the phone and jerked up. The sound had come from one of the upper floors. Several more quickly followed—not just screams but howls of anguish and high-pitched laughter.
More than one woman. Patients? But where was the staff? Maria rummaged through the desk, found an empty pack of cigarettes and a box of wooden matches. Crouching down behind the desk, she lit a match. With its illumination she saw that the newspaper was dated yesterday. Then she spied the logo across the top of the stationery: CLÍNICA PARA LOS DELINCUENTES PSICOTICOS.
Psicoticos? Even she knew what that meant. This clinic wasn’t the spa she’d imagined. It was a hospital for the criminally insane. Another howl of laughter crackled through the building.
Deciding it was best to avoid the inmates, she crept behind the desk to the hallway. Administrative offices, a staff lounge with a couch that stank of mold and decay, and a clinical area. There might be supplies she could use in there—a knife, bandages to protect her infected cuts and bites, antibiotic ointment. She pushed open the door. Recoiled against a strong odor of bleach.
She stared into the shadows, making out a form of a person. There was someone in the room. On the exam table. There was no movement. Were they tied down as she’d been earlier? Sedated?
“Hello?” she whispered. No response. She crept inside, silently closing the door behind her. “It’s okay. I’m here to help.”
The person on the table didn’t move. The silhouette appeared large like a man’s, but the shape wasn’t quite right. Shielding her hands from the windows in case the light could be seen, she struck a match.
And understood why the man wasn’t moving. Both his legs had been amputated at the upper thigh. There was a gaping hole in his chest cavity, as if someone had wrenched his ribs apart and reached inside to pull his heart out.
Images of ancient Maya human sacrifices danced through her mind—something her brain could grab on to, rath
er than the macabre sight before her. She wanted to run but her feet were rooted to the spot.
The flare of light danced in her hand, casting shadows against the corpse’s contorted face. It was Prescott! His eyes had been removed as had his lower jaw.
Maria’s gasp blew out the match. She stood frozen, panic disorienting her, choking back the scream that clawed at her throat.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
This woman who had captured them, Itzel, she was Maria’s mother? Caitlyn looked to Hector for confirmation.
He lunged forward, almost escaping his guards. “Tell me where she is, you—” Spanish words that Caitlyn couldn’t understand spat from him at a rapid-fire pace. Itzel replied in kind as her men restrained Hector.
The shouting match continued for several minutes, echoing through the dimly lit cavern. The families gathered near the water huddled closer together, looking on in fear. More than fear: terror.
Their encampment looked fairly permanent, each area swept clean, kept tidy. Not many possessions but there were sacks of corn and crates of food. No one looked like they were starving. But to live underground like this, what had Itzel said? They were hunted.
Why? Surely not just because they were Maya? Maybe because they refused to give up this land even after decades of being terrorized by the government forces? Caitlyn hadn’t been able to see much on the trip here, but she certainly hadn’t seen anything special, worth dying for.
Other than it was their home. Which also meant it was worth killing for. Perhaps that’s why the ransom demand had led Hector here? Who would have more reason to kill him than the woman whose baby he’d stolen?
“Stop it!” Caitlyn’s yell surprised Itzel and Hector. Both stopped mid-word and turned to stare at her. She focused on Itzel. “Is Maria here?”
The woman fingered her gold cross, lips moving as if in silent prayer. “No.”
“Do you have any idea where she is or who took her?”
Itzel shook her head. “No.”
“You’re lying,” Hector said. “You told me if I ever wanted to see her alive again, to come here with money.”
“No, I didn’t.” Again with more Spanish between the two of them.
Caitlyn turned to Hector and interrupted again. “How did you know the ransom demand came from Itzel?”
He glowered at Itzel, ignoring Caitlyn. “She used to have a special curse word for me. She used it in the ransom demand she texted to my phone. No one else would have known. That’s how I knew to look for Maria here rather than waiting in town like a chained dog. I will not sit helpless while my daughter is in danger.” He shouted at Itzel and the room at large. “Tell me where she is or you all die!”
The words echoed through the cavern and returned empty of meaning.
Itzel straightened. Her regal calm diminished Hector, made his fury seem childish. “I did not send any message. Certainly not a text message—look at us, we have nothing, our only phone doesn’t work here, away from the city.”
“Then you sent someone into the city to send it. Now, stop lying and give me my daughter!”
“Quiet,” Caitlyn commanded. “Itzel, please. Release him. Keep the guards if you must. But we need to work together, share what we know, if we’re going to find Maria before it’s too late.”
Itzel stared at Caitlyn long and hard, then nodded to her men. One of them pushed Hector to his knees again and held his wrists up while another slashed through his bonds. Hector climbed to his feet, posture straight, pride and arrogance intact despite the weapons trained on him.
“She’s lying,” he said. “That’s all these animals do, lie, cheat, steal, and murder.”
“It was you who murdered and stole. You massacred an entire village, claimed our land for your own, tortured and raped, and then stole our children.” Itzel’s voice wasn’t loud but the force of her passion gave it strength. And despite her being shorter than Caitlyn, some trick of the light made her seem as tall as Hector. “But I have long ago accepted that it is not me but God who will punish you, Colonel Alvarado. My concern must be for the living, for the few who survived your reign of terror.”
Caitlyn was now certain that the ransom demand was a diversion. A ploy to distract Hector, waste his time, maybe even get him killed. Which meant Maria was still alive. Why? What did her kidnappers really want?
She pulled her well-creased map from her pocket and sank down to sit cross-legged on the cool stone, her abrupt movement drawing both Itzel and Hector’s attention. “If you’re done wasting time…”
The other two sat down across from her as Caitlyn spread the map onto the stone. One of Itzel’s men brought a lantern, a clever inflatable device, clear, flexible plastic like a beach ball, with LED lights inside and a solar panel on top. “Show me where we are.”
Itzel and Hector both moved, their fingers almost colliding at a point east of the coordinates Maria had been looking at. Caitlyn marked the location of the village. “Maria was tricked into believing she was helping an archeology expedition who had found a temple hidden in the jungle here.”
Itzel nodded. Hector leaned closer to look at the last point—it was a little more than two miles into the mountains from where they were now.
“As far as I can tell, that’s where Maria was headed.” She didn’t mention that there was no way to trace Maria if her captors had taken her elsewhere in the country or even beyond its borders. All Caitlyn could do was work the clues she had.
Hector leaned back from the map, his gaze distant.
“Maria was going there?” Itzel asked in a puzzled tone. “No one goes to the Temple of Chaac. There are certainly no archeologists working in the area.”
“Someone must have known about it—enough to convince Maria, lead her right to it.” And oh so cleverly, letting Maria do all the work of “discovering” the temple. Talk about the perfect bait.
Another reason to believe Maria was still alive. If her captors wanted her dead, a bullet to the head back in Florida would have been cheaper and easier. No, they wanted her healthy, couldn’t risk her being injured, and they needed her here, in Guatemala.
But why? Caitlyn hated that she couldn’t figure out the answer to that basic question. Understanding the kidnapper’s motives would be the key to saving Maria, she was certain.
Itzel shook her head. “No. None of my people would speak of the temple or tell anyone in the outside world. It’s a place of death.”
“You mean some ancient superstition?”
“Not superstition. Real. The temple was built over a cenote. A natural cistern like this one,” she gestured to the small lake beside them. “A bottomless pit leading to the underworld. Chaac was the rain god, necessary for crops, so in times of drought, sacrifices were made to him. Human sacrifices. Two years ago, after the earthquake, part of the temple collapsed, temporarily damming the river. It flooded everything upstream. All that remained at the bottom of the cenote at the temple were bones. Thousands upon thousands of bones.”
Wouldn’t make the temple a big tourist draw for Caitlyn, but it was the kind of thing that would bring in scientists and looters. “How can you be so sure that no one would go there?”
“No one would dare to disturb them—it would be like looting one of your cemeteries. That temple and those bones are sacred, to be protected at all costs.”
Caitlyn conceded the point. But someone who knew of the temple had used it to lure Maria here. She pointed to the only other location on the map: Clínica Invierno. It was about four miles away from the temple in a straight line, twice that distance if you followed the river, a little farther going by road. “What about this place? It’s a hospital? Is there anyone there from your past, Hector? Someone who would use Maria to hurt you?”
Hector remained stone-faced, not even glancing at the map or the two women. His posture was rigid, a soldier at attention despite his sitting on the ground. Itzel, in contrast, made a small gasping noise and her hand clutched at the cross around her neck. She
also said nothing but kept shaking her head as if trying to deny the possibility.
“No,” she finally choked out. “Why would he want her?” She turned to Hector. “Why would you let that monster have my daughter? Haven’t you both taken enough from me?”
Hector stood and, ignoring the guards trailing him, stalked to the other side of the cavern, leaving Caitlyn sitting on the floor with Itzel. Itzel’s demeanor had totally changed. Gone was the calm, confident leader. Instead she cowered, arms wrapped around her head, face down, not making eye contact, shivering.
Caitlyn touched her shoulder and Itzel flinched as if she’d struck a blow. “What’s at the clinic, Itzel? Who are you afraid of?”
Finally she raised her head. She didn’t look at Caitlyn; instead she stared at Hector. He wasn’t doing anything—a fact that disturbed Caitlyn. He was a man of action, a man used to controlling every situation. Yet, here he was, held captive underground, far from his men, and he was content to simply stand and do nothing.
“I was young, seventeen, I knew nothing except my village, my family,” Itzel began, her voice sounding higher pitched, as if she were channeling the seventeen-year-old she once was. “The war, it had been going on for decades, since my grandfather’s time, it was simply the way we lived. We’d work the fields, try to grow enough to eat, we lived, we died, but we were together. We had a priest and this church, but we also had our old ways, what we could remember passed down father to son, mother to daughter. We didn’t have much, but we were happy.”
“And then what happened?” Caitlyn asked when Itzel went silent.
“The soldiers came. They’d been here before, taking what little we had, leaving our home in ruins. But we always managed to survive. When we saw them coming, we’d hide. Sometimes down here, sometimes in the jungle, sometimes in the temple. But then one day they came again. And this time my people couldn’t run—they had the village surrounded. They claimed we were guerrillas and that our land no longer belonged to us.”
