That was before the prison term.
And then I began to feel a little guilty because I knew he was just worried about the consequences should this thing go south. It could be bad for all of us, not just me, and it was selfish of me to only see it through tunnel vision.
“Look, I know he’s taking a real chance giving me this job. But Alejandro’s information has been straight on from the word go. We’ve got this.”
Akker nodded, his gaze falling on the doctor. “There will be a car waiting at the airport. She’s been given a sedative to keep her out until you can get her settled.” He pulled a card out of his back pocket. “Call this number if you have an issue, otherwise no phone, no Internet. Got it?”
“Yes, sir,” I said with a little salute. “I’ll do the best I can.”
Akker clearly didn’t like my little faux show of respect. He watched me through narrowed eyes as I sipped my coffee, finally turning and settling in his seat, mumbling something as he pulled his cell phone from his pocket and began scrolling through some app or something.
I didn’t get cell phones. I didn’t understand the importance of them before I went to jail and I really didn’t understand everyone’s reliance on them now that I was out. Hell, even when I was inside, the guards were always staring at those little screens, talking about Twitter and Instagram and all these things that seemed to be the blood of life to them. Why did I care that the president—whom I didn’t vote for, by the way, nor would I have if I’d been allowed—tweeted something unintelligent and rude every five seconds? What was wrong with people communicating face to face? It’d worked for hundreds of years.
I sipped my coffee and stared out the window, watching the clouds thin as we hurtled through the sky toward our destination. The alarm most definitely had to have gone up at the clinic by now. I wondered what they were telling the cops, what the cops were thinking. I wondered if Miguel had gone over and told them that his new mechanic had disappeared about the same time the young, American doctor had gone missing. I doubted it. Miguel and Alejandro were close despite their difference of opinion when it came to the law. Miguel would keep his mouth shut.
We were in the clear for the moment, but I wasn’t naïve enough to believe we would remain that way. Trouble was going to come looking for us, but I was confident that we were ready. This was going to go like clockwork.
I hoped.
Chapter 9
Scott
My hands were shaking. I’d never been so fucking nervous in all my life!
“Where is she?” I looked up, watched the stupid cops milling around like they were on a coffee break instead of taking a missing person’s report. “Where the fuck is my sister?”
Taylor laid a hand on my arm. “They don’t understand you. They’ll just think you’re a crazy American or something.”
“Americano?”
Taylor gestured toward the speaker like that one word underscored everything she’d just said.
I shook my head, pulling away from her touch to stand. “We have to go to the American Consulate.”
“It’s in Jalisco! That’s hours from here!”
“I don’t care. We need help finding her.”
“We don’t even know she’s missing. She might have gone back to the condo. TJ is still looking.”
I shook my head. “It’s not like Valerie to skip out on work, especially when she knows there’s a lot of people counting on her.” I walked toward the door, slamming against the low gate that separated the reception area from the rest of the big room.
“Senor?” the cop who’d been pretending to help us called after me. “¿No querías mi ayuda?”
“Fuck you!”
“Scott!”
Taylor ran to catch up to me. “Don’t you think it would be better to get the cops to help us first? If she was taken, it happened here! They might be able to find her faster than the American Consulate!”
“But these people don’t give a shit about an American doctor.” I jerked my arm, pulling my sleeve from her reaching fingers. “If we have any chance of finding Valerie, it’ll be with them.”
“Tell me again what happened out there.”
I grunted, angry with her for interfering, angry with myself for being so impatient with her.
“I told her that the other doctor wasn’t coming as quickly as we’d been hoping. She got upset, said she needed another few minutes. I went inside, left her on that damn little porch—why did I leave her all alone? I should never have done that! I know enough about these poor countries to know better than to leave a pretty woman alone!”
“When did you realize she was gone?”
“When you told me twenty minutes later that you couldn’t find her.” I paused on the front steps of the police station, looking out at the rain-drenched world. “It’s not like Valerie to leave without telling anyone, especially with a dozen patients waiting out in the rain to see her. She would never have done that.”
“Maybe she needed something for a patient.”
“And maybe some gang member saw a pretty woman standing alone and decided to take off with her!” I dropped into a crouch, buried my face in my hands. “This is all my fault! She wouldn’t have been here if not for me!”
“She’s going to be okay,” Taylor said, running a hand over my back as she crouched beside me. “Valerie’s a smart girl.”
“Jake will never forgive me if I don’t bring her back safe.”
Taylor didn’t have much to say to that. She just rubbed my back, feeling the tension that bunched up my muscles. I don’t know how long we sat there—a while, I think—we might have sat there a while longer if TJ hadn’t arrived, running through the puddles toward us.
“She wasn’t at the condo!”
I groaned. “It’s been three hours. Chances are good she’s not even in Oaxaca anymore.”
TJ nodded, his face pale, a definite green darkening the flesh around his mouth. Taylor stood, pulling away from me as she hid a sob in the sleeve of her thin blouse.
“Our best chance of getting help for her is going to the American Consulate in Guadalajara. We can probably get there by tomorrow afternoon.”
“What about the cops?” TJ asked.
“They aren’t going to be much help. They don’t even know how to find a donut shop!” I gestured with my thumb over my shoulder. “The guy kept asking for my identification, for my passport, like I was the one missing. He didn’t seem to understand what I was trying to report.”
“We could try again!” Taylor cried, tears making her voice more high-pitched and annoying than it normally was.
I stood up. “I’m going to Jalisco. You can come with me, or you can stay here. I don’t give a flying fuck!”
I walked off, only vaguely aware of the two of them following after a moment’s hesitation. Neither had much to say as I started the rented SUV and turned it toward the main road.
“We’ll find her,” I said. “We’ll find her.”
Chapter 10
Valerie
The first thing I became aware of was the smell. Old wood. Mildew. Neglect.
The second thing I became aware of was the hardness of the object under my body. Not my bed, not anyone’s bed, I hoped. Too hard.
The third thing I became aware of was the heavy weight on my left leg.
“Where am I?” I mumbled, surprised at how hoarse and broken my voice was. “What’s happened?”
“Sit up a little. You need some water.”
The voice was distinctly male. Deep. Rich. I let strong hands pull me into a semi-sitting position, felt the cool edge of the glass against my lips. I sipped, choked, coughed up what little liquid I’d managed to get into my closing throat. A hand ran along the length of my spine, patting softly to help get the fluid out. I sat back, eyes closed, working hard at filling my lungs with nothing but air for a moment.
“Where am I?” I asked again when I could take a breath without feeling as though my throat was going to clo
se.
“Somewhere safe.”
I opened my eyes, slowly, lost in darkness for a moment. The room—it must be a room because I could sense walls—was lost in shadows, shapes gradually coming into view. A window, darkened somehow, a low dresser, a chair. And a man, his face so lost in the shadows that I couldn’t see features, couldn’t see anything identifiable.
“What happened?”
“You were in an accident.”
That didn’t feel right. My body was sore in places, but not the kind of sore that would come with some sort of accident.
“You’ve broken your ankle, but you escaped serious injury.”
The heaviness on my leg. I pulled myself up a little, looked down. Sure enough, a heavy fiberglass cast was wrapped around my foot and up along the ankle to the bottom edge of my knee. I lay back down, feeling a little breathless, not sure what had caused it but wondering what kind of medication they’d given me.
“This isn’t a hospital.”
“No.”
I closed my eyes and took a deep breath. I felt a strange heaviness, an exhaustion that didn’t feel normal. Drugged. I felt drugged.
The smell of chloroform suddenly filled my memory, that sweetness that I’d found so fascinating in medical school. The feel of a man’s arm around my shoulder, holding me still even when I started to fight, even when I launched a backward thrust into his celiac plexus.
I shook my head, my heart beginning to pound in my chest.
“There wasn’t an accident. I remember! I remember a man grabbing me, pulling me against him and spraying my face with chloroform!”
Hands pressed against my shoulders, keeping me from sitting up.
“You were in an accident,” that male voice said, warm and calm. “You hit your head and broke your ankle.”
“No. Someone restrained me. Someone did this to me.”
“You’re confused. You hit your head on the steering wheel.”
I shook my head, memories rushing through my mind: standing outside the clinic, the rain falling, the feel of moisture on my hands. Scott’s voice in my ear, the feel of his arms around me.
“You were driving. I heard the crash and brought you here.”
“That’s not right. I don’t remember that.”
“It’s what happened.”
“Then why aren’t I in a hospital? Why isn’t my brother here, my friends?”
“There was a storm. The roads are a mess; the power’s out. You’ll have to wait till tomorrow, maybe even longer. It takes a while for the roads out here to dry out.”
“My leg has a cast on it.”
“It’s not really a cast. Just a temporary fix until a doctor can do something better.”
I sat up, twisted around until my back was against the wall, dragging my heavy leg as I did. Sure enough, when I got to looking at it now, I realized the red material I’d mistaken for fiberglass was actually some sort of cloth wrapped in so many layers around my leg that it felt almost like a cast. But it was awkward, not really as stiff as it should be, not providing any of the support a proper cast might do.
“Where are we?”
“My property, outside of Pochutla.”
I pressed my fingers into my hair, breaking it free of the bun I’d put it in just that morning. He leaned forward, reaching a hand out to catch the large hair clip I’d used to hold the bun in place. When he did, I caught sight of a tattoo on the web between his thumb and index finger. Five dots—four forming a square, one caught in the middle.
It was a prison tat.
When he sat back this time, playing with the clip between his hands, I found myself staring hard at his face, trying to make sense of the features in the dim light. “I know you,” I said softly, remembering a man with prison tattoos on his body. “You’re a mechanic at the shop across from the GME clinic.”
He glanced up at me. “What’s a GME?”
I shook my head. That part wasn’t important. I ran my hands over my body, looking for the phone I last remembered sliding into a back pocket of my jeans. But I wasn’t wearing my jeans. I was in a dress I didn’t recognize, a blousy thing with buttons down the front that didn’t even reach my knees. I jerked it hard over my legs, thought I heard something tear, fear and frustration beginning to grow in overwhelming quantities.
“Where’s my phone? My clothes?”
“Your clothes were soaked. We had to get you clean clothes before you froze to death.”
“You changed my clothes?”
He stood up, strolling over to the low dresser across the room like he had strange women in his home every day of the week. He was a tall man, taller than I’d guesstimated when I’d seen him standing in the doorway of that auto shop. He opened a top drawer to pull out a blouse and jeans that I instantly recognized as my own.
“I had them washed and dried.”
“How long have I been here?”
“Since yesterday afternoon.”
I shook my head, raising my hands to press them against my skull. I couldn’t wrap my mind around what was happening here. I had to stop to think, had to figure it all out a step at a time.
I remembered Scott. I remembered standing on that narrow little porch, remembered him telling me the replacement doctor wasn’t coming. I remembered him going back inside and the thoughts I’d had at that moment while I was alone, remembered thinking I wasn’t going to have any fun sitting on a nice beach somewhere. Then the arm came around my shoulders, and I thought it was Scott, but now I was pretty sure it wasn’t.
The chloroform. I remembered that.
That was as far as my memory could take me. But there was this sluggish feeling, this sense that I’d been drugged. Was that just the memory of the chloroform, or was that real? I ran my hands through my hair, over my face, up and down the length of my arms, the tops of my thighs. There were no bruises, no sore spots, nothing that would indicate I’d been in an accident. Just the makeshift cast on my leg.
I ran my hand along the top of the red material, wondering what it was, wondering how he’d known what to do. I touched my ankle, tried to squeeze and feel for injuries, but the material was wrapped so thick that I could squeeze all day and never convince anyone there was an actual limb under there. Then I ran my hands over the rest of my body, searching for other injuries, soreness that might explain what had happened to me.
“Where are the bruises?”
“What?”
The man put the clothes back where they’d been, turning to face me. “Where are the bruises?” I asked him, watching warily as he came back to the chair.
“What bruises?”
“If I were really in an accident, wouldn’t there be bruises?”
“I’m sure they will show up soon.”
“I don’t even feel sore.”
“Lucky you. It was quite a mess, you know. The car is totaled.”
“I wouldn’t know. I never saw it!”
He leaned forward, resting his elbows on his knees as he studied me. “You’re confused,” he repeated. “I would be, too, if I’d been in such an accident. But you’ll feel better after a bit more rest.”
“I want to see the car. I want to call my family, my friends. I want to go to a hospital.”
“You can’t. I told you; the roads are washed out.”
“I want to see the car, then.”
“It’s a mile from here.”
“How did you hear the accident, then?”
“The screech of metal on metal can travel quite a ways.” He stood up again. “It’s getting late. I need some sleep.”
“I need a phone. I need to call my family.”
“There’s no service out here. Even if there were, the storms have taken out most of the cell phone towers. This isn’t like the States, sweetheart. We don’t have a team of repair people just sitting around waiting for something like this to happen. Mexico does things on their own terms, at their own speed.”
“You really expect me to just sit here an
d wait for the roads to dry out? If you’re telling the truth, my family and friends don’t even know where I am! They must be panicked!”
“I’m sure they are—a pretty girl like you… you must have tons of people who care what happens to you.” He said it a little wistfully, almost as if he didn’t believe anyone would care if he disappeared. “But there’s nothing we can do about it until the roads are passable. Hell, you think I’m happy about it?” He gestured toward the window that I could now see had been painted black to keep the light out. “Can’t get to work in this, and if I can’t get to work, I can’t make money to keep food on the damn table!”
“I’m sorry,” I said, my head spinning. “I just… I don’t even know who you are.”
“Oliver,” he said, coming back over to what I had just realized was an air mattress on the floor, reaching out his hand to me.
“Valerie.”
“Nice to meet you, Valerie.”He gestured to a wooden crate beside the mattress that had been turned on end. “Drink some of that water when you can. You don’t want to get dehydrated.”
“I know. I’m a doctor.”
He lowered his head in a gesture of something like acknowledgment. “I wasn’t sure. I only saw you over there once, and I heard there were a bunch of volunteers, but only one doc. I’m sure if that’s true, they really are missing you right now.”
“I hope they are.”
“Someone will put two and two together and come looking for you.”
“I hope so.”
“At worst, we’re stuck together for a day or two. Not so bad. I’m a decent cook.”
I smiled, unable to resist that bit of charm. “I hope so because I can’t boil water.”
He chuckled softly. “You can save a life, but you can’t make a pot of macaroni. How ironic.” He turned back to the door. “Try to rest. I’ll come back and check on you in a while.”
A dozen questions popped into my head as I watched him disappear through the door. How did he come to be here in Mexico? Did he not have any neighbors? What did my car hit? What car was I driving?
I couldn’t remember getting behind the wheel from the moment I set foot in Mexico. Scott did all the driving because he knew where he was going, knew the roads because he’d been here weeks ago when they first scouted the location and purchased the building. Why would I drive? I didn’t even like driving in Houston.
Caballo Security Box Set Page 5