by Glen Robins
He smiled as he stood up and congratulated himself on the fact that he still had it. Nothing like being admired by a beautiful girl at the beginning of a beautiful summer day. With an extra spring in his step, Rob rounded the hood of the car and fumbled in his pocket for the key to the Cooks’ mailbox, still thinking about those eyes. It was like that girl was trying to cast a spell on him or something. And that smile. There was something behind it, almost like recognition. As he opened the mailbox and dug out a small stack of catalogs, an assortment of special-offer letters and postcards, and a few bills, something caught in his mind, like a pebble in his shoe. Why did that girl look at him like that? Was she scoping him out for some reason?
The fact that she had an exotic Asian face should have given him pause, taking into account recent events. He chastised himself for profiling. Just because she was Asian should not make him think that she had anything to do with Emily and Sarah’s kidnappers. There were hundreds of thousands of Asian residents in Orange County and he’d never ever had any sort of prejudice against them. In fact, many of his friends were Asian.
These conflicting thoughts bounced around as he closed the mailbox and locked it. Rob began to walk back toward the open door of his car, shaking his head and having an internal discussion about the evils of racial profiling and judging when he heard the deep thrum of the motorcycle’s engine growing steadily louder again. It was getting closer. As it did, his heart beat a little faster and his nerves began to dance under his skin. The top few pieces of mail slid off the stack as he picked up the pace, trying to get in the car and leave as fast as he could. As he stooped to pick up the dropped mail, the motorcycle rounded the corner, coming back the way it had gone. This time it slowly took a left-hand turn onto the short access road to the gate, and approached him at a cautious speed. Rob stood quickly and lunged toward the car door, a sense of dread spreading inside. The girl looked at him again with those sumptuous brown eyes, but this time she was aiming.
****
Puerto Lempira, Honduras
June 17, 6:28 a.m. Local Time; 5:28 a.m. Pacific Time
The sun, bright and orange and glaring, sat in its fullness on top of the eastern horizon, promising to provide scorching heat through a cloudless sky. Collin and the pilot had eaten, showered, and packed the necessities. Seeing that the hut was running low on provisions, the pilot suggested they only take a small amount of food and water with them on the plane.
All available fuel had been poured into the plane’s tanks. All lines, flaps, gauges, and cables had been checked and double-checked. As he walked around the plane, the pilot rattled off facts and figures that he must have thought Collin wanted or needed before they took to the air again. “This is a Cessna Turbo 206 equipped with floats, as I’m sure you noticed. Its three-hundred-ten-horsepower is plenty for what we need. Cruising speed of about one hundred eighty-nine miles per hour and a range of five hundred fifty-nine nautical miles, with full fuel tanks that can carry ninety-two gallons. That means we can stay in the air for about three and a half hours. I’ve poured forty-five gallons of fuel into her tanks, bringing us to just over fifty-eight gallons total. With some luck, that’ll be enough to get us to Belize City.”
Collin noticed the tight expression on the pilot’s face as he said this. “You’re not sure we can make it there?”
“I’m pretty sure, given current conditions,” said the pilot as he continued to move around the tail, checking things as he spoke. He was waist deep in the lagoon, pushing his way through the water as he moved up the opposite side of the plane.
“Isn’t there a place we can stop before that to fuel up?” Collin asked, ducking below the wing to keep visual contact.
“We’re going to fly past an island called Coxen Hole,” said the pilot as he studied the rear flaps on the port wing. “Stopping there will slow us down, so I’d rather not. But, in a pinch, we’ll do it if we have to. Does that make you feel better?”
“It’s better than just hoping we’ll make it,” said Collin, with raised eyebrows.
Before he could ask another question, Collin’s phone rang in his pocket. It was Lukas, of course. “Collin, please tell me you have your passports with you.”
“Uh . . .” Collin stammered. “I think I do, but let me check.” He walked to the back door of the plane, where his two bags were stashed, and pulled one of them out. Walking up the beach to dry sand, Collin dropped to one knee and unzipped the computer bag that contained all of his personal items, including the stack of false passports Lukas had provided him. The dozen passports, the cheap burner phone he had bought in Chicago, and a few stacks of cash were stuffed into a thick rubber sea bag to keep them dry. “Yeah, they’re all right here and seem to be fine. Why?”
“Well, how do you think you’re going to get into Mexico?”
“I hadn’t even stopped to think about it,” said Collin and he shuffled through the stack. “Which one shall I use?”
“Use one you haven’t used before. Haven’t you got a Mexican one?”
“Yeah. Ricardo Montez.”
There was some key tapping on the other end of the line. “Let’s just run a check on that one and make sure it’s clear.” Some more tapping and clicking in the background. “Yep, go ahead and use it.”
Collin stood up quickly and felt the weight of something in the pocket of his cargo shorts bump against his leg. His hand moved quickly to the bulky object, suddenly remembering what it was. “Oh, Lukas. I almost forgot to tell you. I grabbed the dude’s cell phone. You know, the guy in the boat with me.” Collin’s words faded as he recalled what had happened. The man who had beaten on him for three days and threatened Emily and his mom had died as the boat was sinking. Died because Collin held him under the water in a vice grip between his knees and squeezed him until he stopped struggling. The satellite phone in Collin’s pocket was the same phone his captor had used to call Pho Nam Penh.
“Don’t use my real name. Remember that. Either call me ‘Billy Bob,’ like everyone else on the team or ‘sir.’”
“Sir?” said Collin.
Lukas laughed out loud. “Yeah, that’s what I expected you to say. Anyway, you were talking about the main dude, the leader?”
“Yeah. The guy I told you about. The guy I killed.”
“How did you forget to tell me you had the guy’s phone?”
This stopped Collin cold. He shook his head, baffled. “Um, if you remember, it’s been a pretty crazy twenty-four hours. As I recall, we were both more worried about me getting the laptop out of the sunken ship and avoiding being killed in the process.”
“How’d you get it?” asked Lukas, ignoring Collin’s defensive rebuttal.
Collin recalled the scene. The boat had overturned and he and “Stinky,” as he called the guy after throwing up on him, were locked in mortal combat underwater. It was kill or be killed and Collin won, a dubious victory that would likely haunt him for years. Collin had gone back to the wreckage before it sunk all the way to the bottom to rescue his laptop. That’s when he saw Stinky’s bloated body and decided to retrieve the satellite phone, figuring it would come in handy. “I pulled it out of his pocket.”
“Were you planning to use it to call for help?”
Collin paused, confused by the question, and he tried to remember exactly what he was thinking at the time. “I don’t know. I just thought it might come in handy. The more I think about it, Lukas, the more I think this could be a boon. I mean, can’t we use it to find Penh?”
“Yes, yes it can,” said Lukas with an audible snap of his fingers. “That’s brilliant, actually. We know he’s got a tracker on your laptop. Now we might be able to track him if he uses the same phone he used to call that satellite phone.” There was a momentary pause. When he spoke again, his cadence was slower, more thoughtful. “But we don’t want to alert him until we’re ready. I’ll let you know when and where and how we’re going to do that. Not now. Not at the beach house. Right now, you’ve got to get on that
plane and get yourself to Mexico City. Penh will likely be arriving there in a day or two.”
“You’re the boss,” said Collin, putting the phone back in his pocket. “You want me in Mexico City, then it’s off to Mexico City for me.” He zipped up the bag and looked around for the pilot who was sitting in the plane with his headphones on.
Without a word, the pilot signaled to Collin that it was time to climb in and start their dangerous, 1,055-mile journey to Mexico City.
****
Scripps Cancer Research Patient Clinic, La Jolla, California
June 17, 5:28 a.m. Local Time
A nurse fussed about, checking the readouts from both Emily’s and Sarah’s monitors. Dr. Emily Burns, an emerging research scientist at the Scripps Cancer Research Center next door, working in the field of enhanced enzyme therapy for cancer, woke with a start and let out an anxious gasp. The hairs on the back of Emily’s neck had raised. Even while sleeping, her heightened awareness of her surroundings caused every synapse to fire through her agitated nervous system, protecting her from people who lurked nearby. The startled nurse realized what she had done and apologized profusely for sneaking up on her. “I’m so, so sorry. I didn’t mean to wake you. I know you need your rest.”
Emily gulped in a lungful of air and tried to hold it, hoping to steady herself. But it escaped in a frantic burst. That was followed by another gulp and another burst, which resembled sobbing, but without the tears. These nerves—it seemed like they would never return to normal. Finally, she managed to hold her breath for a hurried three count, then exhale on a five count. “I know. It’s not you, it’s just . . .” Emily’s voice trailed off because she didn’t really want to go into it. Not now.
“I understand how guarded and anxious you must feel. I think I would be the same way,” said the nurse. She tried her best to carry on as usual. “I’ll just take down your vitals and let you get your rest.” With an extended index finger that shook slightly, she poked the screen of the tablet computer nestled in the crook of her arm. She was one of three nurses who had been attending Emily and Sarah since they arrived almost two days earlier. She was the youngest and nicest of the three. Her kindness and attention to the emotional, as well as physical, pains of her two patients had been as soothing as any medications the doctors prescribed.
“No, it’s OK. You don’t have to rush out of here.” Emily bore the scars, both internal and external, from the kidnapping at the hands of Pho Nam Penh’s men. An arcing gash on her cheek and another on her chest bore witness to the savagery of her abductors. The plastic surgeon had done an amazing job to minimize the scarring. But the emotional wounds ran much deeper and would not heal as well or as quickly as the knife’s trail.
Emily had never been assaulted. Violence and terror were things that happened on TV and in the movies, not in La Jolla, California, and not to a research scientist with a PhD from Harvard who spent the majority of her waking hours in a laboratory or hunched over her computer keyboard in her cozy temperature-controlled office.
Particularly devastating and humiliating and horrifying was how close she came to being raped, on camera even, while tied to a table by those brutish demons. Their faces, their voices, and their smells lingered behind every thought, in every movement of every person she saw, and in the very ether around her. Emily tried but couldn’t seem to escape the scenes she had been part of. The young guy with the pierced eyebrow and spiky hair holding the knife against her face, then slicing downward, the cold sensation of the blade followed by the warmth of her own blood trickling down her cheek. Her stomach twisted as images ran through her head yet again: of the older man with the tattoos on his neck tying her to the table and filming and video conferencing his boss and Collin while the younger one strutted like a peacock and flicked his tongue.
She shuddered as she recalled the younger man’s sweaty palms against the skin of her legs as he held her and cut away her silk dress slacks and his hot, smelly breath against her neck as he did his best to seduce her with his animalistic rituals. The shame. The dehumanizing. The denigration.
For someone used to being in control of her situation—at least as much as anyone can be—being constricted, confined, degraded, and treated like a piece of meat was the worst type of torment. Replaying in her mind the way the leering young Asian man touched her, spoke to her, and stared at her made her skin crawl and her stomach tighten every time. Problem was, she couldn’t stop remembering. It was like the video in her head was stuck on a loop that just kept repeating incessantly with no “stop” button to push nor power cord to yank. Thinking of something else, though, was nearly impossible. Try as she might to change her thought pattern, the images, the feelings, the terror of it all could not be erased, nor could a new reel be played in its stead. The dark, sinister eyes moving all across her body were far worse than the rats that had swarmed her and Sarah in the dingy, stifling warehouse where Penh’s monsters had held them captive. Her life, she felt, had been irreversibly altered; her psyche irreparably damaged. How could she move on with any sense of confidence or security if she couldn’t stop reliving the awful, all-consuming experiences of the recent past?
It must have shown in her eyes, for the young, kind nurse gazed at her countenance and moved closer. She placed a reassuring hand on Emily’s forearm as she spoke. “We have a doctor coming in later this morning to talk with you.” The nurse paused, then added, “He specializes in helping people who have survived traumatic experiences like the one you’ve been through.” When Emily didn’t respond, she continued as if reading Emily’s skepticism. “He’s very good at what he does. I’m sure it will help you.”
After a moment of trying to absorb this information, Emily asked, “When do you think we’ll be discharged?”
“That’s up to the doctors. Dr. Rogers, the one I was just referring to, will have to sign off on your well-being as well as the attending physicians.”
“I see.”
“You seem concerned. Is there something wrong?”
“It’s just that I’ve never needed a psychologist before. I don’t know what to expect.”
“It’s nothing to worry about. You’ve been through something that you never imagined you would have to go through. You’re struggling to make sense of it. It’s natural to be confused, to feel unglued, you know. It will help to talk it through with someone. I’m sure Dr. Rogers can help you start making sense of it and develop a strategy for dealing with it.”
“I guess you’re right. It’s just so overwhelming that I doubt anyone can understand it, let alone help me understand it.”
“If anyone can help you, it’s Dr. Rogers. He’s the best in San Diego.”
Three feet to Emily’s right, Sarah Cook, Collin’s mother, who had recruited Emily in the hunt for her son two months earlier, began to stir. Being a cancer patient in an experimental treatment program at Scripps, thanks to Emily persuading her colleagues there to allow her in, Sarah had paid a steep physical price during her twenty-four-hour ordeal. Her treatments prior to the abduction had wiped out her energy and the lack of food, water, and proper rest during her captivity had set her back significantly. The stress she experienced was a complicating factor as well. Emily’s doctor colleagues expressed their concerns to Emily when she petitioned them to allow Sarah into the program. They worried about how her age and overall health profile would play with all the other variables in this treatment regimen. Emily wondered if all the stress and strain of the kidnapping, combined with the emotional aspects, would disrupt Sarah’s progress and make her too weak to recover, thus giving the cancer the perch it needed to take over.
Emily’s ordinarily brilliant, organized, scientific mind was spinning and warbling, unable to process information, unable to move forward. She had to put an end to the dizzying kaleidoscope of painful and disturbing images so she could help Sarah. Be strong for Sarah, she told herself.
Emily’s gaze rested on Sarah, taking in the matted hair, the bruised cheek, the tube
s, monitors, and machines hooked up to her. Worries about her dear friend now blended into the mixture and, for the first time in years, Emily began to sob, openly weeping in front of someone she hardly knew. This had never happened before. Tears were a sign of weakness and she never showed weakness. Never. She grabbed both cheeks with her hands, trying to steady herself, but the tears and the blurring scenes kept flowing.
The kindly nurse squeezed her arm again and said, “I’ll see if Dr. Rogers can come by sooner rather than later. Seems you need to talk.”
Chapter Four
Huntington Beach, California
June 17, 5:29 a.m. Pacific Time
Rob Howell saw the pretty Asian girl taking aim, but never saw the dart coming. He only felt it in his thigh. A sharp, powerful jolt that knocked him backward into the door jamb of the car. His leg went instantly numb and he crumpled to the ground, his fingers fumbling to find the source of pain. Whatever was in the dart was strong enough to take effect before he could process what was happening. All he knew was that a warmth was spreading through his body, starting at the spot just a hand span above his knee in the soft, fleshy part of his inner thigh. The numbing agent coursed quickly through his veins, shutting down his nervous system, and rendering him, at first, too uncoordinated to pull the dart out of his leg, then too heavy to move his limbs.