Whitewater (Rachel Hatch Book 6)

by L T Ryan

  His father wanted to take the family to a section of the river that was calm. His uncle, being one to live a bit more on the edge, and also the person driving, had opted for a bend in the river called The Devil's Hand because of the twisted shape of the enormous boulder jutting out from the riverbank.

  The entire way to the river Ayala's uncle went on and on about The Devil's Hand. He said the boulder pinched the river tight. The following bend created a brief, intense section of rapids. His uncle thought it would be a great family photo.

  He tested the camera, using Ayala as his first subject. The first of two photos taken that day was now tucked away in a shoebox buried in his bedroom closet. He'd thought about throwing it away, but each time he held it in his hand, he couldn't bring himself to do it.

  After his uncle tested the camera and was satisfied he understood its function, he called the family together. He placed them between the enormous Devil's Knuckle and a smaller, but still quite large boulder on the other side. The gap between was littered with rocks of all shapes and sizes but was wide enough for Ayala, his parents, his new aunt-by-marriage, and his uncle, who'd managed to figure out how to set a timer on the camera and actually be in the picture himself.

  Ayala remembered, as a young boy seeing his uncle dashing toward them along the slippery rocks, how truly amazing the technology was that allowed this moment to occur. The second picture taken that day did not capture Ayala's happy family in a neat row bookended by enormous boulders on each side. His father had whispered in his ear, telling him how much the boulders looked like the ones he envisioned in the childhood story, the one with the troll. Ayala also remembered the pained expression streaking across his father's face as he spoke the words. He had apologized later in life, and thankfully before his passing, to his father for not seeing what his father saw that day. His answer had been simply stated. We see what we need to see, when we need to see it. Ayala’s apology and his father’s forgiveness washed away the guilt of it, his father's voice still resonating its calming tones even these many years later.

  What had been captured by the second photograph had, in fact, been the opposite of what the five family members had envisioned on the bank of the raging Rio Grande. Ayala's uncle lost his footing on a wet rock while sprinting to beat the ten-seconds he had to close the distance between the camera and the assembled group.

  Traction-less loafers and wet rocks proved a deadly combination. His uncle's right foot shot out behind him just as he neared his family. Out of an instinctual counter move, Ayala's uncle shot out his left arm. Ayala's mother, who was beside him and holding his hand, took the unintentional left hook delivered by his uncle.

  To this day, he wakes sometimes to the sensation of his mother's hand in his. He cherishes those fleeting moments because of the moment that created it.

  Ayala's mother fell back, striking her head on a knot of stone protruding out of the giant boulder. She fell into the river. Ayala remembers the splash and rush that followed. Because he too was swallowed up into the tempestuous whitewater. His mother's grip had brought him on a similar path, but being much shorter, he missed the jutting rock that had rendered his mother unconscious.

  He rode atop her lifeless body for a moment before the churn of the water upended him and separated him from his mother. He held onto her hand, but the grip of her fingers faded until they were no more. Unable to keep hold, his mother slipped away. Ayala never saw her again except for when they’d buried her after finding her body twenty-seven miles downriver from the small town of San Antonio del Bravo.

  The violent water swallowed him only to spit him back out a second later. The air turned to cold froth and Ayala choked it down. Without knowing which way was up or down, and with a lungful of water, Miguel Ayala, boy of ten, had resigned himself to his impending death. As darkness edged its way into his periphery and as the Rio Grande roared, Ayala felt a tugging. It was distant at first. Becoming clearer as he broke the surface of the water again, but this time to the panicked eyes of his father who had jumped in to save him.

  His father, a kind, thoughtful man became a man of action that day. He jumped in fully clothed to save them. He later told Ayala that he had tried to save his mother too. But she was too far downriver and was bleeding badly from the head. The water damaged his father's watch, grinding its gears to a halt the moment he jumped in. His father never got it fixed and chose to wear it every day as a reminder of what happened.

  Ayala now wore that watch. Ayala found his uncle's old camera many years later and with it discovered the second photograph taken that day. And to this day, he kept it tucked inside his left breast pocket, believing the brightness of his gaudy Hawaiian shirts helped brighten the dark memory of the photo.

  He wanted to share these things with Hatch and hoped someday to have that opportunity. But first, he had to survive the next few minutes. The crashing wave of her exhale receded, followed by a word of encouragement. "You can do this, Miguel." The rest was up to him.

  He got to the door, another access pad with a red light just above the height of the doorknob and off to the right.

  "Same as before," Hatch said in his ear. And same as before, the key card granted him access. He hesitated. Hatch's voice sounded in his ear. "You can do this, Miguel. Remember when you entered that house of a known drug dealer with members of the Mexican Special Forces? You faced fear then, and you can face it now."

  Ayala took Hatch's words in stride as he stepped inside. Ahead of him, three steps led up to a landing where two armed security personnel stood, wearing dark black uniforms. They both had guns but kept them holstered on their waists. Each bore a tired expression.

  One of the men, the lankier of the two, lazily balanced his chin on his fist in a thinker's pose. But instead of thinking, he looked more like a man trying to find a way to sleep standing up.

  The squat hairy man next to him popped his knuckles while he passed an eye over Ayala. This man didn't look at Ayala in the manner of a professional, instead acting more like a school yard bully. He wondered if they spent their day intimidating all the workers like that. Ayala thought the answer to that question might make a good piece of journalism. He put a mental pushpin in his idea board, wishing he could pull his notepad from his fanny pack stowed in the Nissan and jot it down.

  The one not trying to sleep gave Ayala a quick eye, but only for a moment before turning back to his partner and attempting to engage the man in whatever conversation Ayala's entrance had interrupted.

  Past the man, Ayala stopped. He slowly turned his body with his hands on his hips like he was Superman overlooking a crowd of adoring fans. There was a crowd, but they weren't adoring fans. They were employees dressed like him moving about the floor of the orange juice bottling plant. Ayala's slow turn gave Hatch the needed surveillance information to make her best guess of where he needed to go next, which he heard through his earpiece a moment later.

  "To the left, there's a door with that restricted access symbol over it. You see it? The yellow and black one."

  He turned to the door, acknowledging he saw it without speaking. Hatch got the message because she continued a moment later.

  "That's going to be our best guess now, and we'll go from there. I don't see a lot of activity by that door, so when you approach it, do so confidently, in a manner that won't draw any suspicion."

  Ayala moved across the floor, doing his best to look as though he belonged, nobody in the cluster of workers on the main floor noticed or cared. Ten feet from the door, a security guard was dressed in similar colored overalls with a badge attached to his chest that looked like it was taken from a child's costume. He was not armed like the other two at the door. And unlike the two men in black, he did harbor ill will in his eyes. In fact, he gave a nod and slight tip of his hard hat in Ayala's direction, who did likewise in return. The two moved on at an equal pace, but in different directions.

  "Excellent," he received Hatch's compliment as he got to the access door.


  The red light went to green.

  Ayala opened the door and slipped inside as the passing guard disappeared with its closing. Ayala faced a long, narrow hallway, several doors on both sides, and waited for instructions on what to do next.

  Twenty-Eight

  Angela sat in her dank cell, absorbing the world around her that was ticking by in a timeless fashion as she waited in anticipation of the next time the door opened. The bucket of cold water was now filled with her grime, or at least what she could get off with the dish sponge they'd given her to wash with. The sponge, once yellow, was now smudged a dark brown and set next to the bucket.

  Angela had been given specific instructions from Pencil. The bucket and sponge had to be in the corner visible to the door when it first opened. He said they would open the door a crack and if it was not, they would not come in until it was placed in its proper place. Angela didn't want them in the cell, and so did not listen to the instructions.

  An hour, or what felt like an hour, had passed since the thin sliver of light cut a path into the dark and Pencil's beady eye poked about, and when he didn't see the bucket and sponge, he shut and locked the door. Before his and Bigfoot's clamoring footsteps faded completely, she heard him yell back to her in English, "You just added an hour. Next time we come back, the bucket better be in the corner or your time will add up to a day. Not sure you're gonna last that long."

  Angela knew there was no point in testing the veracity of the lanky captor's threat. So far, he'd proven to be holding strong on the one-hour thing. She thought about trying to figure out a way to attach her new clothes to her old clothes and knot the makeshift rope to the handle of the water pail. Angela had spent much of the time since the door last closed imagining if the rope-bucket-weapon would even work. After running several scenarios through her mind, none in the past hour seemed viable. The game was over. Her last-ditch hope of escape rested in a bucket and a heap of clothes piled in the corner in sight of the door.

  She reluctantly accepted that this would be, as Bigfoot put it, the last stop on a long and winding road through this hellish nightmare. She kicked herself for ever listening to the woman at the bar, the woman with the long, jet-black hair who'd convinced her she was special. The same woman who would, after making promises of fame and fortune, walk Angela to the SUV where her kidnappers waited.

  The hallway had been quiet since they’d left. Angela remained tucked into a ball, her shins held tight with her arms. With arms wrapped, she began rocking. The hard, foul-smelling floor of the cell waged a continuous battle against the scent of citrus emanating from beyond the door. Angela edged closer to the clean smell but kept a few feet between her and the door.

  Facing the coming darkness, she worked to call forth her brightest memory. She had been stubborn, even at nine. Angela had taken a strange vow of silence made in a written decree to her parents in which she stated that from that point forward, she would only communicate through written word, and never speak again. She was young and full of childlike curiosity, and after watching The Little Mermaid, decided to try to understand what life could be like without a voice.

  Angela’s maintained her stubbornness for three months. Those were three very long months for her parents, she remembered. Looking back now, it saddened her to think she lost out on three months of speaking with two people she loved more than anything else in the world. What she wouldn't give to have that time back now, knowing deep down, it was likely her parents would never hear her voice again.

  But she didn't recall the memory to reflect on the negative, but instead on the moment she cherished as her all-time favorite. It was that drawing. Angela wished to see it one more time.

  Her mother was in the kitchen making dinner while a young Angela was drawing in the living room, using the early evening's sunlight to warm her as the first snowflakes of winter began to fall.

  She loved to draw on those days, she still did in fact, but it wasn't the memory of the drawing or the setting that made her happy. The reason Angela chose this memory to be her last before she gave herself completely away to despair was that while drawing, her father had been watching, unbeknownst to her. And being the loving, caring man that he was, and still is, wanted to communicate so badly with his daughter who had taken mute.

  He crawled up alongside her, choosing not to speak, choosing not to write words, and picked up a piece of scrap paper. In a moment of artistic inspiration, her father, a man who had never drawn a thing before or after, picked up a brown crayon. The minutes of doodling quickly revealed why she had never seen him draw before.

  The image was of a gas pump. The pump handle waved and the pump itself had circles for eyes. It looked more like a triple decker upside-down ice cream cone that had been in the sun for about a week, than anything resembling the image her father had drawn. It was the fact that, knowing he couldn't draw, he did, and he did it for the sole purpose of reconnecting with his batty, awkward, nine-year-old-daughter, who'd gone adrift.

  The sight of that pathetic brown cartoon gas pump forced a laugh so deep and hearty from Angela, the sound of it had surprised her. Something broke loose in that laugh. Whatever darkness made her go mute, the sensation of the rumbled giggle obliterated its hold on her. And she silently wished it could work its magic one last time and take her away from this awful place.

  Angela closed her eyes. When she woke, her surroundings had not changed. The leaky pipe above pelted out its metronomic beat on the cold concrete floor stained with dirt and excrement. Air that smelled like oranges floated in, accompanied by the whir and clang of the machines outside the door.

  In the cold dark space, Angela let the memory of her father's love warm her. The cold immediately returned with the sound of a door closing from the hallway and the rapidly approaching footsteps that followed. Footsteps that did not belong to either Pencil or Bigfoot.

  These were hurried, purposeful steps, and they came to an abrupt halt in front of her door. The shadow of the man behind it swallowed up the light.

  Angela convulsed in fear as she prepared for the door of the last stop to open for the last time.

  Twenty-Nine

  Ayala fought to control his breathing as he stood outside the door. Hatch identified it when he had entered the hallway. She was looking for a room that was separated from other rooms, somewhere where they could keep people and keep them away from others. When Ayala nearly gagged on the smell upon approaching it, Hatch knew she had been right. Her only worry now was that either Angela wasn't in there, or never was.

  "Why do you think any one of these keys you took from that guy's belt are going to work on this door?" Ayala asked in a hushed whisper.

  Hatch had not scolded him once for speaking inside the hallway. She told him it was permitted only in a whisper. And used only when absolutely necessary.

  Ayala's question was unnecessary but he was glad when she decided to answer it instead of admonishing him for breaking radio silence to ask it. Ayala was nervous. He assumed Hatch could see his tremors from the camera nestled in his pocket as she watched him from the phone in her hand. She needed to keep him calm. Best way to do that was to keep him talking.

  "Your ID badge says manager, right?"

  Ayala recalled when he'd tried to lighten the mood and compensate for the nerves rocking his system by making a joke about being promoted. It had given them both a little chuckle, and the release had helped him in those final moments before he left Hatch.

  Ayala began rifling through the keyset looking for one that would match the keyhole in the door. He felt like he'd been standing in the hallway jingling keys for way too long. A key floated by the eye of the camera as Ayala unsuccessfully tried it in the door’s lock. He exchanged the key for another, taking the new one in his fingers and leaving only two more.

  Hatch continued to speak. "My guess is that if you can find a key that fits and opens that door, it might shed some light on how complicit the Solarus Juice Company is in their knowledge of the girls kept
in their facility. If I'm wrong, the keys won't work, which means the cartel may be using the space as a front without the knowledge of its employees.

  “But I'm counting on the other, a much darker probability, that the girls they run through here, some of them at least…"

  Hatch presumed Ayala was about to tell her the odds had just slimmed a little further, but just as he started retracting the key, it caught and the door unlocked.

  The hallway's dim light captured the pale features of the red-headed girl Hatch had shown him a picture of. She looked nothing like the girl in the photo. Angela was smeared with dirt around the edges of her hair like a charcoal drawing left out in the rain, though her clothes, a blue t-shirt and worn jeans, were clean and looked out of place amid the filth. It made sense when he saw the soiled heap near a pile of human waste.

  He expected to see relief in the girl's face, instead it was twisted into a snarl and had been since the moment Ayala entered. Hatch watched the image of Angela edging herself back in a strange three-legged crab walk on account of the bindings on her wrist. She moved toward the back wall and pressed herself firmly against it.

  "We have to move quickly, please," Ayala said in a hushed whisper. "Let me cut those bindings off."

  The girl was crumpled awkwardly now against the back wall with her bound hands. She was having great difficulty righting herself.

  Ayala edged forward and pulled out a knife. "Listen, I'm here to help." He tried to get close to the rope, but Angela squirmed. She was terrified, and rightfully so, but Ayala knew he needed to get her under control so that he could free her hands. He looked at the blue uniform he was wearing and down to the knife in his hand. Then Ayala remembered what Hatch said about the key. If the managers had access to the room, they're also a part. And Ayala couldn't fathom the trauma this girl had faced by seeing him wearing the exact same uniform he now wore. Angela thought he was one of them.