by Reid, Joseph
He hesitated.
“Look,” I said, arms wide, hands open, “I’m unarmed. Frisk me, do whatever you need to. But I need to talk to Petén.”
The standoff lasted another full minute, the gunmen aiming at me while I tried to stay as cool as I could.
The talker dropped his weapon and let it hang at his side. He spoke to the others in the now-familiar pops and clicks, then stepped to the chain. After unlocking it, he stepped out with me while the others covered him.
He patted me down thoroughly, confiscating the burner and audio player from my pockets. Then, circling around me again, he asked, “What’s wrong with your arm?”
“I dislocated my shoulder.”
“Can you move it?”
Although he was hidden behind me now, I didn’t dare turn and look. “A little.”
“Good.” Yanking the strap up and over my head, he dragged the sling all the way off. Then he reached around and grabbed my left elbow, twisting the arm back behind me.
The sudden movement lit my shoulder on fire. I tried not to wince too noticeably, gritting my teeth against the pain.
He pulled my good arm back to join the bad one, then clicked handcuffs down onto my wrists so hard they bit into the skin. I started to wonder what would come next, but before I could finish the thought, something hard struck the back of my head, and the whole world flashed white.
CHAPTER 24
I felt the pain first.
A sharp, stabbing feeling at the base of my skull. The burning in my shoulder. My arms aching from being twisted behind me.
My eyelids parted slowly, uncertainly. The soft, natural light was gone, replaced by harsh, artificial fluorescents that rendered everything bright and blurry. Cool air massaged the skin on my arms, but that wasn’t all—something cold pressed against my cheek. Something smooth. Gradually it came into focus: a linoleum floor.
I blinked rapidly and moved to sit up to get my bearings. As I did, something threw off my balance. I heard it before recognizing it: a low-toned clanking noise coming from the several feet of thick chain that linked my cuffs to a metal post.
Struggling to my feet, I followed the post upward with my eyes to find it belonged to the heavy frame of an old-fashioned bed. Tucked beneath coarse-looking blankets, looking pale but otherwise intact, was Max. Her hands, too, were cuffed, to the sides of the bed frame rather than each other, while an IV bag hung above one arm, dripping clear liquid into her. A gray-haired woman stood over her, dabbing at her forehead with a cloth.
I dropped to my knees at the side of her mattress. “Max?”
Her head lolled over to my side of the bed, blonde hair strewn across her face, eyes landing on me almost by accident. They lacked any sparkle, any energy. Her facial muscles were totally limp, her expression dull. “Seth,” was all she said.
I looked up at the woman tending to her. “Was she hurt in the explosion? Will she be all right?”
Before she could respond, an accented voice sounded behind me. “Your friend requires several more days of rest and fluids before the medications will be completely eliminated from her system.”
As I turned to find the voice’s owner, the gray-haired woman stepped away from the bed and said something in Spanish.
A curt answer came from a dark-skinned woman standing just inside the lone doorway at the far end of the room. Dressed in an eggplant-colored blouse over clingy khaki pants, her black hair descended in ringlets that bounced as she started toward us.
The older woman spoke again, more heatedly this time.
But the other woman was having none of it. She snapped again in Spanish, giving the older woman a glare that sent her scurrying from the room with only a quick glance back at Max in the bed.
As the younger woman approached Max and me, I realized I hadn’t fully gauged our surroundings. We were at one end of a long, narrow room that seemed to be some sort of makeshift building, with flimsy-looking walls supporting a corrugated-metal roof. The linoleum was a black-and-white checkerboard pattern that could have come from any one of the elementary schools I’d attended. Each of the walls bore windows, but their glass was frosted, letting in light but no scenery. They didn’t look like they opened, either, although one on each side had been removed in favor of air-conditioning units that contributed a droning hum to the space.
While Max’s bed had been pushed lengthwise against the wall behind me, three other matching mattresses extended from the wall on my left. All empty. Between them stood chairs and various pieces of medical equipment—monitors, other stuff I didn’t exactly recognize. The opposite wall was lined with modular shelves containing all types of neatly organized supplies: canned goods, chemicals, automotive parts, and large car batteries.
The burner phone and my audio player sat next to each other on the farthest bed.
That was fortunate.
When the younger woman stopped in front of the shelves several feet away, I said, “I’m guessing that was Marta.”
“Sí. Like you, she cares very much about the girl.”
“So who are you?”
“You should know. You asked to see me.” Despite the way she had dismissed the old woman, her voice now sounded even and calm. Almost amused.
“I asked to see Petén.”
“And that is what they call me.”
“You’re Petén? You’re the one behind all this?”
“Sí.” Her mouth turned down into a scowl. “And you are Seth Walker, the man who keeps turning my men’s wives into widows.”
The comment made my stomach twist. “I’m sorry,” I said. “About your men. But I didn’t kill anyone who didn’t try to kill me first.”
One of her eyebrows arched sharply, etching deep lines in her forehead. “We are engaged in a war, Señor Walker. My men understand the stakes, as do I. But that does not mean I do not take their losses personally.”
I lowered my eyes and nodded.
“I have been told you are carrying a message for me from Roosevelt, the doctor?”
“That’s right.”
A gold-faced watch hung at her wrist, and I stole a glance at it, trying to read the time upside down: nearly six thirty, meaning I’d only been out for a few minutes.
“What is the message?”
“The message is for Petén. I’m only telling him.”
The woman shifted her weight from one foot to the other. “And why do you assume Petén must be a man?”
“Because that’s how the people who know about Petén referred to him.”
She snorted through her broad, prominent nose. “And what, exactly, did these ‘experts’ know about Petén? Did they tell you what he looked like?”
“No.”
“What, then?”
“That he gets his name from a certain region of Guatemala.”
“That much is true. I am from Flores. Anything else?”
“They didn’t know exactly. Some people think he was a soldier, some don’t.” After a beat, I added, “But everyone knows Petén is in charge and has turned the Second Guerrillas into a force to be reckoned with.”
The woman smiled, and I saw that her mouth was painted with a shade of lipstick so subtle you could barely detect it. “Very nice try, Señor Walker. Flattery will get you almost anywhere.” She moved her head, shimmying her hair so it hung behind her. “What else do the police have to say about me?”
“That you—or whoever Petén is—can be brutal.”
The smile changed, and she took a half step forward, leaning down toward me. “Do you need me to be brutal to prove my identity?”
“No,” I said. “But something would be nice.”
“Fine.” Straightening, she stalked back to the door and pounded a fist on it. “Cirilio!”
Metallic clunking noises sounded, and the door opened. A burly soldier stepped sideways through it, then closed it behind him. Dressed in black fatigues, he bore the same kind of facial tattoos as the Second Guerrillas I’d seen before.
/> “Cirilio?” she said again. Although he towered over her, the woman’s voice was firm, authoritative. She didn’t look at him; she stared directly at me.
“Sí.” He kept his eyes on the ground as he addressed her.
“¿Cómo te llamas?”
“Petén.”
“Gracias. Saca tu cuchillo.”
With his right hand, the soldier reached into his belt and withdrew a large knife, straight edged on one side, serrated on the other.
“Córtate en el brazo.”
Without hesitating, the soldier extended his left arm, jabbed the tip of the knife into the muscle, up by the elbow, and started drawing it down toward his wrist.
The woman continued glaring at me for another moment, before finally turning back to the soldier. Putting her hands gently on his shoulder and arm, she changed tones altogether, saying some quiet words to him I couldn’t make out.
She led the man, bleeding, to the space between two of the beds. There, she used some supplies from a drawer to clean and field-dress the wound until he began flexing it and nodding. Then she said some final words, and he stalked back outside, the door clunking closed behind him.
Petén turned back to me and smiled. “Satisfied?”
“Yes,” I said.
“Good. I expect such skepticism when dealing with the cartels, but I am always surprised when I encounter it in America. It happens more than you would think.”
She seized two metal chairs from between the beds and carried them effortlessly to our end of the room. Stopping in front of the shelves again, she slid one chair across the linoleum toward me with a kick of her foot, then sat in the other herself, crossing her legs and folding her arms.
“Now, what is this message you carry from Roosevelt?” she asked.
I sat in the chair as best I could, given the way my hands remained chained. “That he really doesn’t want to talk to the cops.”
Petén blinked at me. “I am not certain I understand.”
“I have him stashed. Someplace safe. If I walk out of here with her”—I jerked my head in Max’s direction—“in the next thirty minutes, he goes free, and you can do whatever you want with him. But if I don’t walk out of here, or if she isn’t with me, then Roosevelt ends up with the FBI.” After a moment, I added, “And you know him, he’ll end up telling them everything.”
She shifted her weight back in the chair. Staring at me, she remained silent for several moments before speaking again. “You place me in a difficult position, having to choose between the girl and Roosevelt.”
Still trying to get comfortable with my arms pinned behind me, I smiled. “That was kind of the idea, yeah.”
“I can appreciate the cleverness of your plan, just as I can appreciate the skill you demonstrated against my men.”
I felt another pinch in my gut.
“The problem is, I think you have underestimated the girl’s value to our organization.”
“Surely Roosevelt is worth more to you in the long run . . .”
Petén pursed her lips in a disapproving way. “It is much easier to find someone like the doctor than someone like her.”
“With respect, that’s not the point,” I said. “The doctor knows too much. He told me about you, about this place. He can give all that up to the police.”
“You would be mistaken to assume that either of those things is irreplaceable. This facility is convenient. But we have others. And I am just one woman in an army, Señor Walker. If something happens to me, the fight will continue.”
“But you’re not just a soldier. You’re their leader. And you’re a businesswoman.”
She gave the slightest nod.
“So then you have to see, Roosevelt can earn the money Drew owes you in what, a couple of weeks, months?” My eyes flicked downward to Petén’s arm: the minute hand on her watch had crept past the eight, almost to the nine. “Isn’t that kind of ongoing revenue worth a lot more to you than just a single debt?”
“Sí, we require resources. As they say, bullets win wars, so someone must buy the bullets.” Her eyes narrowed. “But that is exactly why we went into business with Señor Drew in the first place.”
“So you’re just going to blackmail him over and over again? He doesn’t—Max doesn’t have that kind of money—”
“I think you misunderstand our arrangement.”
“Drew told me about the money you loaned him. And about the . . . interest you’re charging on the debt. I know you view her as the collateral to collect what you’re owed. But—”
Petén’s gaze had drifted away from me gradually, and now she looked down, shaking her head and smiling.
“What?”
“Drew has misled you. Not that I am completely surprised.” Her eyes locked on mine. “We never loaned Drew money. Every dollar my organization takes in, we require for the battles we wage against those who oppress us. I would not risk what little we have by giving it to someone like him.”
“Didn’t Garcia introduce you?”
“The record producer? No.” She smiled slightly. “Contrary to what some in your country may think, not everyone who speaks Spanish is related. Drew approached us. We did not approach him.”
“What was he proposing?”
“He worried that others were turning her against him. That she”—Petén nodded toward Max’s bed—“would leave him. So we assisted him, in exchange for a percentage of her earnings.”
“Assisted?”
“We removed the threat.”
“Who was this . . . threat?”
“A man.”
“Who?”
Petén shrugged. “He was merely a name Drew provided. That is all I know.”
“Okay, so Drew gave you a cut of her earnings to do some dirty work for him. That still doesn’t explain why you’d put her on the drugs. You were risking your own investment—”
Petén’s mouth opened for a moment before she spoke. “You believe the drugs were my idea?”
“Of course,” I said. “Roosevelt works for you.”
“Sí, but I could not have made that decision alone.”
Still pounding from the blow outside, my head tried to make sense of what she was saying. There was only one person who could have made the decision along with her. “You’re saying Drew agreed to put Max on drugs.”
“Not just agreed,” Petén said. “It was his idea.”
“Wait, what?” I blinked several times, then turned in my chair to glance at Max. Her face remained expressionless.
“Sí. He believed the medications would render her more compliant. He requested the drugs, and we connected them with Roosevelt. After instructing Roosevelt to keep the drugs within certain bounds, of course. I am familiar with their side effects from my life before all of this.”
As Petén gestured around us with her hand, my eyes didn’t follow. I was remembering Drew’s expression, his tone of voice, when we’d talked the previous night. I had believed him. Civins had contradicted him, but still—the idea that Drew had personally requested the drugs, for his own daughter?
“You care about the girl,” Petén said. “That is obvious. So you should understand, her circumstances will improve markedly now that we are fully in command of the situation.”
“How’s that?”
“Has she not told you? The conditions her father maintains?”
“Not much.”
“Drew thinks we know little of what goes on, but he discounts our intelligence.” The inflection she placed on the final word was subtle, but there was definitely a double entendre there. “Drew works the girl constantly. Once we are fully in charge, however”—Petén shook her head—“there will be no more need for this. She is to be the symbol of our movement.”
Although Petén’s eyes shone with enthusiasm, I wasn’t so sure—who was going to wage a war for Max Magic? “How do you figure?”
“Are you familiar with the narcocorridos?”
I shook my head.
&
nbsp; “Corridos are folk songs about the lives of the people. A form of oral history that has existed for centuries. Only now, like so many things, the cartels have taken the corridos and made them their own. Narcocorridos. Songs glorifying the lives of the drug traffickers.”
“So what does that have to do with Max?”
“Do you not see? The girl is young and beautiful. Her voice, like an angel’s. She will be the perfect anti-narcocorridista: an innocent face singing the praises of the true heroes of our movement, so that the people understand what we are fighting for.”
“And, what, you’ll just force her to do it? At gunpoint or something?”
Petén shook her head, and a smile crept across her face. “There will be no need. Once we free her from her addiction and liberate her from her father, I think she will gladly volunteer.”
“But even if she’s willing, Drew won’t exactly be pleased with the idea of you taking her away from him,” I said.
She shrugged. “Drew is powerless. He continues to live only because I allow it. And, in any event, I do not concern myself with the feelings of those who would have their own children murdered. Señor Drew and I are quite different in that regard.”
I felt like I’d been hit in the head again. “What did you just say?”
“Did you not know that, either?” Petén sighed. “After we initially provided the medications to her through Roosevelt, Max decided on her own to reject them.”
“Charlie Garcia helped get her clean.”
“Sí. When that happened, Drew returned to us, worried he was losing control. He wished to renegotiate our original agreement. His new request was that we eliminate her.” Petén’s face grew serious as she glanced over my shoulder at Max. “But I have seen too many children die. I will not kill them myself.”
Petén waited for my reaction, but I was still trying to absorb what she’d just said: Drew wanted to have Max killed?
Why?
Petén had mentioned control several times—could it really be that simple? If Drew couldn’t control Max, he wouldn’t let anyone else?
I looked back over my shoulder, and what I saw disturbed me even more than Petén’s words.
