Out of Luck

by Kendall Talbot

  Her lungs screamed for oxygen. Her head was set to explode. She needed a breath. Had to take a breath. She thrashed her hands, and desperate for release, she braced for the pain that would come from her hair being yanked from her scalp and pushed herself down. But it wasn’t that easy. The pain was more than she could bear.

  Stars danced across her eyes, and in that second, she knew she was drowning.

  Her recurring vision of her body being washed up on shore flashed across her mind again. Her lips were blue… her flesh deathly pale. Then her body was on a metal slab, just like Peter’s had been, but the tag on her toe had her labeled as a Jane Doe.

  The murky water got darker, muddied.

  The adrenaline that’d fed her limbs evaporated, and her arms floated out to her sides. Her legs began to float to the surface. It was peaceful, with the sun piercing the green-tinged water in a sunburst above her.

  Charlene was dying, and her thoughts drifted to Marshall, the only person who knew she was in Cuba. She’d failed him. That thought broke her heart. Maybe one day, he’d find her again and take her body back to US soil.

  The pain in her lungs was beyond excruciating, and without thinking, she opened her mouth and sucked in the foul water. Her body jerked against this new affront, shaking her from the despair she’d fallen into. Surrender… that was her last resort. Fighting the urge to do the opposite, she put her hands straight up, showing Diego that she’d given in.

  He released her hair with one last shove, and she kicked to the surface. Charlene gasped for air, spluttered water, and the pain in her lungs was agonizing, worse than when she’d inhaled the water. Clutching the moss-covered brickwork, she spewed out the rotten liquid.

  “You lucky I need you alive. Stupid bitch.” Diego’s voice was barely a whisper.

  Shoving her hair from her eyes, she looked up at him. Blood had dribbled from both his nostrils in dual rivers that ran over his lips and down his chin. She liked that she’d done that to him. “Why?” Her voice was a brittle croak.

  “Because you worth more alive than dead.”

  His statement rolled around her murky brain, and it was a couple of moments before she realized what he meant. He was planning to use her for ransom. The idea was ludicrous. Not a single person would pay money to save her. She burst out laughing, and it hurt both the injury to her face and her burning lungs.

  “You think this funny.”

  “You’re an idiot if you think someone will pay ransom money for me.”

  He squatted down at the edge of the pool. “Who said anything about ransom?”

  She frowned. “What are you talking about then?”

  “Your real father coming to Cuba. He wants to see you for himself.”

  “Who’re you talking about?”

  Diego cocked his head, then a creepy grin split across his bloodstained lips. “Do you not know your daddy?”

  Charlene didn’t answer, and by the conniving look on Diego’s face, she wasn’t sure she wanted to know. She swallowed back the foul taste in her mouth and fought the urge to throw up again.

  “Your father, he Noah Montgomery. Heard of him?”

  The only Noah Montgomery she knew was the lawyer for the Hollywood elite, the man who made a habit of appearing in headline news. It obviously wasn’t him, so she shook her head.

  Diego huffed. “Well, that funny, ’cause he forgot you existed until thirty minute ago. You will meet him soon.” Diego pulled back from the edge of the pool and began to walk away.

  “Wait!” Charlene coughed up more water and gasped for breath. “Do you mean the Hollywood lawyer?”

  “Si. That him.”

  “But that’s… that’s not possible.”

  “Oh, but it is. He your father. He rape your mother, and the happy couple make you.”

  Charlene’s heart lurched.

  Diego stepped onto the stairs.

  “Stop. Please. It doesn’t make sense.” She pulled herself higher out of the water. “Why does Noah want to save me?”

  Diego burst out laughing. “Oh, he no want to save you. He want to kill you his self this time.”

  Chapter 21

  Marshall had spent the entire day searching for the bar supervisor from the dance club. But with just her first name of Kamila and her description matching nearly every other waitress in Havana, he’d have more luck finding an escaped convict. It seemed everyone knew a Kamila, and the number of doors he’d knocked on was heading into the dozens.

  Each ticking second put Charlene closer to body-bag material, and the thought of a zipper gliding up over her gorgeous unblinking eyes had his gut churning and his hands squeezing the throttle harder.

  The onset of daybreak didn’t change a thing, and Marshall turned his attention to the workers setting up their shops. Despite how tired they all looked, smiles still lit up their faces when they thought a potential customer walked through their doors.

  During the day, he’d filled up the motorcycle twice and stopped only once for food and a piss. It was late in the day, when his energy was taking a nosedive and his frustrations were doing the opposite, that he hit pay dirt. By pure chance, he’d found Kamila walking toward the center of town. It helped that she was dressed in her white cowgirl uniform. Marshall didn’t usually believe in luck, but he’d take this one.

  “What did Charlene do?” He asked Kamila once he’d established that she was indeed the supervisor who’d worked behind the bar.

  “She took a picture off the wall?”

  “What picture?”

  “It was photo of one of our dancers. Pueblo García, but he disappeared many year ago.” She told him the mystery behind Pueblo, and Marshall assumed it was the man who’d pretended to be Charlene’s father. “What’d Charlene do then? Where’d she go?”

  Kamila shifted on her feet, obviously nervous.

  “It’s okay, you’re not in trouble. But Charlene may be. I just need to find her.”

  Kamila looked to the ground. “She go in taxi to see Diego Álvarez.”

  “Diego Álvarez!” The name stung like a ten-foot wasp. “Why?”

  “Pueblo was boyfriend to Diego’s sister. Charlene wanted to talk to him.”

  “Shit! Where? Where is Diego, Kamila?”

  “He at Airshee factory.”

  Marshall frowned and cocked his head. “Where?”

  “Airshee factory. Chocolate.”

  The answer hit him like a sonic boom. “Hershey! Hershey factory?”

  “Si. Si.”

  “Shit! Gracias.” He pulled his wallet and handed fifty Cuban pesos to Kamila, and that had her smiling. Marshall adjusted his ass on the rock-hard seat, kick-started the Ural, and shot between a Chevy Bel Air and a Ford Skyliner. Both cars had to be at least fifty years old and were in better condition than his five-year-old Dodge RAM back home. The motorcycle farted at the ancient cars, lurching Marshall into the cruising traffic, and he raced through the middle of old-town Havana heading toward the setting sun.

  On any other day, he’d appreciate the golden glow shimmering off the water. Not today. Not when a young woman’s life was in imminent danger.

  His brain was a raging torrent of unanswered questions. Is she still alive? Could she be related to Diego? Why did she go alone? That last one was answered easily; she didn’t have anyone. But the fact that she went anyway highlighted both her bravery and her desperation. Together the two attributes created the perfect storm. Charlene had nothing to lose, and that made her dangerous. It was the implication of her potential relationship to Diego that was freaking him out.

  Marshal had never met Diego Álvarez, but he knew enough about him to know this shit had just gotten real. Diego was the leader of the notorious crime gang Sangre Por la Libertad. Blood for Freedom. Although the only freedom that was guaranteed was some poor sucker’s death. Sangre Por la Li
bertad specialized in prostitution, and a woman like Charlene would be a prize catch. After seeing her determination beneath the bow of Miss B Hayve, he could picture her fighting like hell. But this gang fought dirty. She wouldn’t stand a chance against the likes of Diego and his band of hired thugs.

  His heart invaded his throat as he shot around a gravel corner without tapping the brakes. He only just managed to keep the beast on the road, yet he didn’t slow down.

  Despite the hellhole Charlene had fallen into, the good news was that Diego would want to keep her alive. With her beauty and stunning physique, she’d start a bidding frenzy. No… Diego wouldn’t kill her, not yet anyway. And that glimmer of hope put a rocket up Marshall’s ass like he’d never experienced before.

  He’d heard of the Hershey factory—not so much about the history of it, but because Mr. Hershey had built the one and only electric train service in Cuba. Apparently, it was a tourist attraction. Although why anyone would want to take a jarring, sweaty ride along tracks covered in weeds and grazing cows was beyond him. Fortunately for Marshall, those tracks were going to lead him directly to Diego’s hideout and, hopefully, Charlene.

  The good news was that Marshall had an easy route to follow. The bad news was it was going to be a damn rough forty miles to get there, as long as the damn motorbike didn’t shatter into a million pieces in the meantime.

  Marshall headed straight for the rail intersection near Casablanca that he’d driven over a dozen times. From there, he manhandled the motorcycle along the roads that ran parallel to the rail track. When the roads ran out, he shot along the track itself.

  Darkness swooped in with a vengeance, and the bike’s only headlamp was about as useful as a candle. Dodging from the potholed road to the decrepit train track was just as dangerous as the track itself. In the end, he opted to stay on the tracks. Most of the sleepers had worn down in the past century, but the shit between the ancient wooden slabs was both dangerous and unpredictable. Every bone in his body rattled with the shuddering ride, and his arms and fingers ached like hell. He had to clamp his jaw to stop his teeth from jamming together when he hit something he couldn’t see.

  It’d be a damn miracle if the sidecar was still attached by the time he got there.

  The last gasp of Havana’s eclectic residences ended abruptly, making the blackness around him as thick as molasses and the endless miles of nothing a new kind of hell. But Marshall was a man on a mission. He’d been on bone-jarring treks before. The ones in Iraq were the worst… fucking sweltering desert sand, pockmarked with rubble and land mines, all the while being shot at by men who’d had guns shoved into their hands when they were kids. He had to tell himself that this was child’s play compared to that.

  He hadn’t seen a single human for a half hour or so, but that was to be expected. Outside the bustle of Cuba’s major cities, people spent their nights indoors with their families. There’d be no trains running either. The last hurricane that’d ripped through the area had messed up a couple of the overhead lines. He only knew that because Tajo, Aleyna’s younger brother, used to catch the train to the port of Matanzas occasionally for work.

  Every five or so miles, he shot past a train station that was barely a shack beside the tracks. Most had a name dangling from the roof by a couple of chains, but many had no identifying marks at all. He hoped like hell Hershey station was marked or he’d shoot right on past it. Marshall had to dodge his share of animals along the way too…chickens, goats, dogs, and the occasional cow dotted the tracks. One cow wouldn’t budge until Marshall got off the Ural and smacked the bovine on its ass.

  When the Hershey station finally materialized out of nowhere, Marshall’s body just about went into meltdown. He lurched the motorbike off the track and aimed for the twin smoke stacks just visible against the star-studded backdrop.

  A few lights speckled the town in the distance, but they were few and far between. It was the faint light emanating from within the Hershey factory’s derelict walls that got Marshall’s attention. He aimed the motorbike toward the brick wall that marked the entrance to the factory and killed the engine.

  Every bone and muscle in his body continued to vibrate, even once he’d dragged his body upright. His knees just about buckled beneath him, and Marshall paused at the arched entrance with his hands on his thighs until the quivering settled. A flock of birds burst from what was left of the building on the right-hand side, and once they disappeared into the night sky, the ticking of the motorbike engine was the only other sound.

  Once he’d decided he was the only human around, Marshall headed in.

  Hugging the side wall of a building that looked to have suffered from a severe seismic rattling, Marshall crunched over broken paving stones and brittle weeds, heading toward the structure at the back of the central courtyard. It was the only building with any form of illumination, which came from somewhere within the building’s crumbling walls.

  Three jeeps that looked to have been stolen from a bad war movie were parked out front. Marshall eased in behind the closest one and peeked inside. Any hope of finding a weapon was short-lived. The jeep barely had seats. A gas can caught his eye, and an idea of making a firebomb flashed into his mind and out again. While setting the bastards ablaze was appealing, he’d risk endangering Charlene too.

  One touch of the hood confirmed the engine was still warm—it hadn’t been parked long. Hopefully that meant the gang was still there, and more to the point, that Charlene was too.

  He paused at the lead car, listening. At first, he heard nothing. But then his ears picked up the faint beat of music. Stepping toward a set of crippled double doors, he peered into the entrance but was treated to nothing but blackness. A shout from his left had him jumping back and darting for the first jeep.

  His heart thumped in his chest as he waited for whoever owned the voice to come barreling out of the doorway. Seconds ticked along, but nothing happened. A woman’s scream reverberated right through him. It had to be Charlene. The agony in her cry cut shreds in his flesh. Yet it was a good sign. She was alive. More shouts came from somewhere inside, but these weren’t from Charlene, and they weren’t shouts of terror; these were spiked with excitement. And they were growing louder by the second. The light source was intensifying too.

  They were on the move. And that meant Marshall had to get the fuck out of there.

  He dashed to the corner of the courtyard. But the intersection between the two derelict buildings was a bullshit hiding spot, so Marshall made a snap decision and raced as fast as his already tortured legs could take him toward the building he’d walked past.

  His only hope was that the members of the rowdy mob were too focused on whatever they were planning to notice him sprinting up the courtyard. Three feet from the doorway, the boom of automatic weapons went off behind him. He dove through the entrance, hitting the broken concrete on his knees, and rolled to one side.

  The shots continued, as did the shouts, and it was a couple of thumping heartbeats before he realized they weren’t shooting at him. He crawled over glass and crap toward what was left of a window and eased up on his knees. What he saw had his heart firing.

  Two of the jeeps now had their headlights on, aimed at the double doorway. Three men emerged at once, all in army fatigues, all with ancient-looking Kalashnikovs shooting at the heavens. Charlene surfaced next, and his heart squeezed at the sight of her. Bruising and blood covered half her face, and she was limping. But that might’ve been because she only had one shoe. She was wedged between two men, both of whom were shorter than her, and she was wrestling against them despite her arms being locked up behind her.

  “Let go of me!” she screamed and tried to yank herself free.

  But they shoved her forward, pushing her toward the car parked between the other two.

  When Diego stepped from the building, Marshall’s pleasure revved up at the mess that was the Cuban’s nose.
Marshall had no doubt that Charlene had done it. He smiled at that.

  Charlene released a shill cry, doubled over forward, and with a move that surprised the shit out of both Marshall and the two men who had hold of her, she used her bare foot to whack both of them in the head. Free now, she kicked the first man in the nuts and the second in the face, and both men howled in obvious agony.

  Charlene took off, hitting a stride that should’ve been impossible with only one shoe, and Marshall was torn between yelling at her to run and telling her to stop. She wouldn’t get away, not when they had the advantage of weapons and vehicles. Especially not with her arms still tied behind her and the uneven pavement.

  She tumbled forward, landing on her knees and face. Her scream raked shivers over his spine. It must’ve hurt like hell, yet Charlene rolled to her feet and took off again. But now barefoot, she was slower this time, her gait uneven, and his heart thundered as he watched them narrow in on her.

  If Marshall had had a gun, he would’ve picked them off one by one. But he didn’t. All he could do was watch the hell unfold and wait for his opportunity. He was still banking on the fact that they needed to keep her alive. She was worth nothing dead. He hoped.

  Just as they were about to launch at her, she turned on them. Some kind of sixth sense had her ducking away and kicking out at the same time. He watched with a mix of pride and apprehension, yet at the same time he wondered where the hell she got her courage. She managed to get two of them down, and each of them was rewarded with a kick in the nuts. The third guy got lucky. He tackled her to the ground, and Marshall’s gut crumbled as he watched the fight fade out of her.

  In the space of about three minutes, Charlene had managed to fight four men, three of whom were now walking like their balls were the size of melons. In addition, Diego’s right eye looked to be swollen shut.

  Picking these guys off was going to be easy. Marshall just needed the right opportunity. Patience was an asset that was hard learned, but it’d saved him more times than he could count.