The man on Lexi’s right pushed open the door and dragged her out. She stumbled a few feet to the edge of the street, the narrow, almost invisible jungle track they’d emerged from, and feigned vomiting into the ditch. The gunman made a disgusted face, turning his back to her. Swiftly, she pulled the coin from her pocket and jammed it into the old pavement where the track joined the road. If she had the chance to get free, at least she’d be able to find, the path that led her back to Malcolm. The man twitched and turned, his face contorting as he shouted at her. She dragged herself to her feet, and signed her apologies as he shoved her into the truck. He clamped a hand over her eyes and she protested, only to have her hands slapped down. A left turn onto the new road, and the surface evened out, a different kind of vibration, reminding her of the ancient paving from Eleiua’s village. Another left, then a long winding way, and the truck rocked to a halt.
Lexi blinked as her eyes were revealed to the vivid sunshine. A two-story building stood in front of the truck, the hillside falling away to her right with a view of jungle and a knot of streets lined by businesses — Lanquin’s single main road with its warren of homes connected to that thoroughfare. Juan’s gun nudged her cheek, and she looked straight ahead. In the front seat, Raxha turned around, frowning at her, then holding up a finger. She disappeared lower in the seat for a moment, and emerged with a bottle of water and a comb, indicating that Lexi should comb her hair and maybe wash her face. Seriously? If that’s what it took to secure Malcolm’s life, she’d wash her face, for sure. She did the best she could, Raxha even turning the mirror for her, then the two women got out of the car, leaving the gunmen behind. Raxha still had her own gun, of course, and Lexi imagined herself shot like a bug and still twitching.
Inside the lower door, a woman in a loose dress nodded to them. She called out something to Raxha, who smiled and laughed in return, gesturing at Lexi, then continuing down the corridor and up a set of stairs. Doors opened to both sides, and a man in a wheelchair scooted to the side to clear their way, giving Raxha a little salute. The place smelled like a hospital. O-kay.
The top floor had a wide porch down one side where a few people sat in chairs or lay on hammocks. Lexi drew their eye as she walked by, almost as much as Raxha herself. Just short of an open door, Raxha stopped and turned Lexi to face her. Apparently, she wanted Lexi to talk to whoever was in the room, to use ASL. Raxha waved her own hands around randomly in what would be a rude imitation of sign language, indicating that the man inside had this in common with Lexi. Then Raxha brought one to her forehead, and Lexi realized she was trying to use the gesture from last night. “My father, this his friend.”
This woman’s father had a deaf friend? They wouldn’t even speak the same language. Lexi shook her head, but Raxha glared, then jabbed a finger in her face. “You talk him. Or —” she opened her mouth wide and chomped down.
Great. That established, they walked into the small room. It had windows down the outside. A pair of metal arm-wrapping crutches leaned against the wall, and a man lay in the bed. Not so old after all, maybe sixty, but weathered as old leather. His head turned as they walked in, and he mumbled something. A thick mustache framed his mouth. Even if he spoke English, which he probably didn’t, she would struggle to read his lips. Raxha addressed the man, introducing Lexi, then making a few gestures with her hands. The man’s rumpled brow lifted a little. From the breast pocket of her oversized shirt, Raxha plucked a small notepad and a broken pencil. She wrote out, “Aabo,” and pointed to the man in the bed.
Lexi imagined Malcolm, trapped behind the fence, and she mustered up a smile and a wave, then she finger-spelled Aabo’s name, deliberately slowing her gestures, with no expectation that he would know what she said.
Aabo stared at her, and mumbled something, one hand flapping, then he brought it up more deliberately. What on earth was she expected to do? She knew his name, but nothing more. Fine, start at the beginning. Lexi introduced herself, finger-spelling her own name, and telling him she’d gone to the Horace Mann school in Boston, and was hoping to go to college in the fall. Away to college, a challenge that, before this nightmare, seemed like the biggest thing she’d ever have to face. If she survived this. No, when she survived this, college would be a cakewalk.
She was babbling, the way you might in any foreign country, hoping for a human connection beyond the language barrier.
Sitting up straighter, Aabo watched her keenly. He said something, and Raxha replied, apparently expecting him to understand. Not deaf, then. Shyly, at first, then with greater precision, he formed a series of signs. Meemul Tziij: the silent speech. Eleiua had mentioned it, a gestural language used by many of the local Maya villages to communicate across language boundaries. Lexi wanted to know more, but there hadn’t been time on this trip — until now.
Lexi pointed to herself and made the sign for “woman,” a thumb drawn down the side of her face, then her hand opening at the level of her chest with all the fingers spread. She pointed to Raxha, and made the sign again, then to Aabo and shook her head, frowning, before making the sign for man, a similar sign, but beginning at her forehead instead. Her hand invited his reply.
Pushing himself as erect as he could, Aabo brought his hand behind his head, fingers curled, as if they formed bun of hair, and pointed to each of them. He grinned and practically bounced. Raxha pulled up the only chair in the room, but instead of settling in, she patted the back and offered it to Lexi. A chair, a room, a stranger so happy to meet her — Lexi sank down with equal measures gratitude and fear as the jaguar still stalked in the back of her mind.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
* * *
Watching the old man’s eyes light up, the way they bounced from the girl’s face to her hands, Raxha felt, for the first time in a long time, that things would be alright. Most days, Aabo refused to speak out loud at all. If he thought he’d make a friend, he might relax enough to open up about her father’s plans. A pretty girl who also spoke with her hands? Lexi was a gift that Aabo couldn’t resist. Raxha’s phone buzzed in her pocket, and she stepped just outside the door to answer it. The girl didn’t have enough language to convey her situation, nor did Aabo have any way to help or pass along the information. Why not let the two cripples have their fun?
The phone revealed a familiar number, a local informant. She tapped it on. “Tell me.”
“Somebody’s looking for Eleiua. She didn’t go to the coop this morning, and one of her people is worried.”
“Really. So what? What’s this to do with me?”
The man on the other end cleared his throat and chuckled. “Maybe nothing. Maybe this worker’s been saying you and Eleiua took a drive yesterday. I hope you haven’t done anything … difficult. A lot of people are counting on that coop.”
She prowled to the edge of the veranda, glaring toward the center of town. “There’s more than one way for this town to come back to life. They shouldn’t have to count on American money.” A car pulled into the parking lot below and Raxha straightened. One of her men glanced up at her from his place by the entrance, but she waved him to relax. No need to attract too much attention.
“I understand the Z’s are keeping an eye on you. That’s where you pin your hopes? I don’t think the trade is the best for us, Raxha, you know? Especially with this American interest.”
A police officer stepped from the car.
“I have to go. Thanks.” She clicked off her informant before he replied, but she kept the phone to her face, chatting away to nobody as the officer entered the building. Could be nothing to do with her. Footsteps came up the stairs. Half the officers had been on her father’s payroll, the other half on somebody else’s, and about a third were taking from both. Which was this guy? For years, she’d been making nice, making roads, as they said, learning and working and building her own network. Now she was less than a day from holding the key to her father’s empire. No badge would stand in her way. She stalked into Aabo’s room before the officer ap
peared.
Lexi broke off what she was doing — some kind of elaborate gesture play, it looked like.
“Ask him about the princess,” Raxha said in her rough English, but the girl shook her head and shrugged her confusion. Raxha said it right, she learned it from the Disney films, from seeing on screen the people most like herself. “Princess, princess.” She pulled out her pad and wrote it down, tapping the pencil.
Footsteps on the veranda, and the girl straightened, head turning. She couldn’t hear, but she alerted nonetheless. When the officer knocked, then stepped through the door, Lexi’s eyes grew enormous, sheeting with sudden moisture.
“Good afternoon, ladies,” the officer said in Spanish, with a tip of his hat.
Lexi made the series of movements indicating her deafness, but they took too long.
“Aabo, so many visitors.” The officer leaned between them to shake hands with the man in the bed, and they shared a grin.
“She speaks American meemul tziij,” Aabo said, more clearly than he’d spoken for weeks or months. “Raxha brings her to me.” He snatched Raxha’s hand and brought her closer to the bed, patting and stroking her arm. “My new princess. You are always my princess, my second princess, Raxha, but Lexi, she is new.”
He sounded like an idiot.
“That’s wonderful, so happy for you.” The officer raised an eyebrow to Raxha. “I came to ask Aabo if he’s seen Eleiua — imagine my luck to find you here. I’m Andre Gomez. I’ve heard a lot about you.”
Smiling, she shook his hand, finding it city-soft, the shake loose. A ploy, or a personality? No matter. “Then you’ve heard Eleiua and I went out last night. She’s sleeping it off back at my place. Come on.” She tipped her head toward the door. “Aabo — take care. Maybe I can bring Lexi again soon, eh?”
He called out fond farewells as Raxha’s movement propelled the others out the door. Lexi managed a small wave, then scurried along, her hands clamped under her elbows, shoulders hunched, nibbling on her lip. Raxha trotted down the stairs and outside, waving her men away, then turning to hold the door open, startling the people on the other side of it.
Lexi gripped the officer’s arm in both hands, and he frowned down at her. “Your friend seems very agitated, but I don’t understand her.”
“She’s deaf and American.” Raxha shrugged. “She came to visit Eleiua — isn’t that right? But I thought Aabo might like to meet someone else who uses hand speech.”
Gomez nodded, but he looked flustered by the whole conversation, left a little behind as events spun out of his control. He followed her out into the parking lot.
“So you’re new to the area, I guess? Is it what you expected?”
“You aren’t,” he told her.
The blond girl looked around in the sunshine, maybe wondering where the men had gone.
“You have a partner in the car?” Raxha pointed. The other man leaned forward, recognized her and pursed his lips. “Officer Diaz! Of course. We go way back, Diaz and I. My father, too.” She waved, and Diaz raised his hand from the steering wheel, then slumped down a little. “Ride with me, Gomez. Much more comfortable with the big tires.” She ushered him toward the passenger seat, then opened the rear door for Lexi and stared expectantly. A long time ago, her father talked with her about diving, how hard it was to control everything, and how dangerous to be past the depth you could handle. Just now, both the girl and the cop were completely out of their depth.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
* * *
The surge of hope that rushed Lexi when the police arrived washed out to confusion at Raxha’s warm greeting. She understood corruption to be rampant in the local law enforcement — was this man part of Raxha’s crew, on her payroll?
But the officer hesitated at the door of the truck, and waved to his partner back in the car, gesturing for him to come along. The other man raised his hand and started the engine. Maybe not corrupt then, but justly concerned about a ride-along with the drug lord’s daughter.
The two armed men who had ridden with them faded into the trees at the edge of the parking lot. Lexi considered running. Right here, right now, make a break for the street and find some form of safety. Look for a chance. She could leap out of the car — into a world of sounds she couldn’t hear, language she couldn’t speak, police she wasn’t sure would even be on her side. How far could she get before the hidden men shot her in the back? Leaving Malcolm behind, penned in with a jaguar.
Climbing into the truck, Lexi glanced back as the car followed them down the sloping road, back to the turn, off into the jungle. In the front seat, Raxha nattered on, and the officer nodded and asked some questions. Once in a while, he glanced back at her, and even spoke. In the hallway, when Raxha had briefly left her alone with Aabo, she tried to explain, to find some words, or even just the appropriate level of urgency to convey what was happening. She expected Raxha to put off the police, to send them away quickly — not to be heading to her camp under police escort. This world was so far wrong. She looked hard at the clock in the center of the dashboard. 9:21. It was off by hours, but that didn’t matter. She needed information, anything that might be of use to her in some future escape, like how long it took to get into town.
Reaching into the front seat, she tapped the officer’s shoulder, drawing his attention. Very carefully, she pointed to him, to his uniform shirt and badge, then made the signs for father and indicated her own chest. The officer shook his head and said something.
Waiting at the corner, Raxha glanced back as Lexi repeated the gestures, then imitated the word for “father,” and spoke to the officer. He grinned and nodded, then spoke again, loud and exaggerated, as if shouting at her in Spanish would make it any easier to understand him. She smiled anyway, and gave him a few compliments, making her face especially expressive. The truck hit a rut, and she bounced, pushing herself back in her seat, and hanging on to a handle in the ceiling. Look for landmarks, even here in the jungle. That scarred tree they had to drive around, a glimpse of a waterfall to one side. Again, she noted the time, assembling the map inside of her head. The next time she glanced back, the police car nowhere to be seen.
Forty-five minutes later at the compound, the truck lurched to a halt. No guards stood by the gate as they had the first time — Raxha’s men must have called ahead to tell them what to expect. Which was what, exactly? The stolid square building where she’d slept last night stood to one side, the sheds behind, and the chain-link enclosed cottage straight ahead. Setting down a gun he appeared to be polishing, Dante rose from a chair under the broad eaves. Lexi jumped from the back seat, scanning for Malcolm, and calling out. She rarely used her voice, knowing how little of her vocabulary she could muster to her vocal cords, but this was an exception. She expected the police car to catch up with them any minute. Still nothing.
Sauntering over, Dante planted a kiss on Raxha’s cheek and gave her a side-long squeeze. He, too, chatted amiably with the officer, then pointed toward the cottage.
“Where is Malcolm?” Lexi signed furiously.
Dante chuckled, then opened the door not far from where he’d been sitting. Malcolm peered out the door, squinting. Lexi tensed to run toward him, but it was a trap, it had to be. How could they let Malcolm talk to the officer? He actually spoke Spanish. He could find a way to send a message, to deliver a clue. He flinched, but Dante waved him on, magnanimous. Lexi rushed into Malcolm’s embrace, the two of them trembling together, but he broke it off quickly, shifting her to arm’s length. “What’s going on?”
She shook her head. “Where’s Eleiua?”
Malcolm pointed toward the cottage, but already, Dante was escorting the officer in that direction. The car had fallen behind them on the rough track through the forest. The officer thought he had back-up, and he might be wrong.
Dante opened the gate. Malcolm surged forward at her side, shouting some kind of warning. Both Raxha and Dante looked at him as if he’d gone completely insane. They shrugged, pointed, chu
ckled, made signs of insanity, then Dante went right up to the cottage door and knocked. When Eleiua’s face appeared at the door, bleary-eyed, her hair tussled, the officer started forward as well, his hands illustrating his relief. Dante hadn’t whistled. Where was the cat?
Facing Malcom, Lexi asked, but he shrugged, then his body jerked, and she spun back to the scene. Raxha stood with her gun in hand, and the scent of cordite wafted to Lexi’s nostrils. In front of the cottage, the officer staggered, his hands pressing a wound in his gut as blood streamed down his back. Through-and-through. He collapsed to one knee, his face wrenched with pain, then he tried to stagger up.
Malcolm broke away, running toward the downed man, Lexi right on his heels.
A dark shadow pounced from the rooftop, landing with an impact Lexi felt in her knees. She grabbed Malcolm’s arm and hauled him back. The officer’s eyes and mouth gaped. Blood streamed from his hands in inarticulate waves as he tried to clamber to his feet, then to scramble away. Chica the jaguar, summoned by the shot, or by the scent of blood, spread her jaws in a snarl behind him. He screamed, and Lexi felt grateful she could not hear.
Chica’s jaws clamped onto the man’s head, in a two-part bite as her teeth struck, then cracked. With an elegant twist of her muscular neck, she dragged the man onto his back and hauled him away, his feet jerking against the ground, his wide-brimmed hat rolling in a small arc in and out of the trail of blood. By the time the jaguar reached the corner and turned out of view, the man’s legs went still.
Dante sauntered into the enclosure and picked up the hat. He gave it a shake, then rolled it down his arm and flipped it onto his head, displaying his look for Raxha’s approval. Inside the cottage, Eleiua slumped against the window, her hair covering her face and her fist beating the glass.
The Maya Bust Page 6
