“Take the stairs to your left,” Teresa instructed.
The flagstone steps led down to a short corridor that ended in a carved wooden door. I stopped and waited while she punched a wall keypad. When the electronic lock clicked open, she gestured me into a self-contained suite.
If not for that keypad, I might have mistaken this for an elegant guest suite. A flat-screen TV hung on one wall. On the other was an antique mirror flanked by exquisite pierced-tin lanterns. No phone anywhere in sight, though.
My initial impression had been right, I saw as I glanced around. The house was carved out of the mesa. This suite was obviously below ground level. The only natural light came from a single row of glass blocks set high in the wall. Too high to reach without something tall and heavy to stand on. And way too narrow to wiggle through.
The hum I’d heard earlier sounded closer, as though it emanated from just outside the glass blocks. “There are clothes in the closet, fresh towels in the bath,” Teresa informed me. “I’ll come for you when it’s time for lunch.”
The door thudded shut. The lock clicked into place a second later.
I stood where I was, trying to decide my next move. Gut instinct told me the room was bugged. Probably with both audio and video. No way I was giving Mendoza’s boys a peep show by stripping down to shower and/or change clothes. Nor was I the least inclined to shed my ABUs and boots. I’ve complained about both often enough but at that moment I derived considerable consolation from the fact that my uniform represented the full might of the United States’ military establishment.
Too bad I didn’t have some means of signaling that establishment to call in an air strike or artillery barrage. But my purse was nowhere in sight and a check of my various pockets confirmed they’d been emptied. Even the twenty I routinely tucked in a leg pocket for emergencies was gone.
With nothing else to do, I went into the bathroom to soap my bloody wrist, wash my face, and rake a hand through my hair. Then I sat down on the edge of the bed to wait.
I waited for several hours. Mendoza obviously keeps Continental hours. The kind I used to keep when I hustled drinks at the casino. Breakfast at nine or ten. A light lunch before heading to work at four. Dinner either snatched during a midnight break or with friends after I got off.
Considerably different from my present regimen. Meal hours at officer training school were such a shock to my system I barely ate for the first three days. Now I’ve become so conditioned to the dawn/noon/early evening routine that my stomach starts making nasty noises if I miss any of the designated times.
It started talking to me as I sat there on the bed, reminding me it had missed its dawn feeding. Which made me think of the French crullers and lemon-filled I’d tossed aside in my frantic attempt to hit the right panic button. Which in turn made me wonder if anyone had seen the scuffle in the parking lot.
And what happened to my key ring with the FBI’s handy-dandy little tracking device? Had I dropped it beside my car? Or had Pipe Guy picked it up and pocketed it? If so, Paul Donati and company might’ve tracked him down and beat my present location out of him. Maybe they were already winging their way to the high mesa.
Hope leaped so hard and fast into my throat I almost choked on it. Just as quickly, I gulped it back down. For all I knew, the key ring had flown out of my hand with the donuts and got left behind in the parking lot. In that case Paul—and Mitch and my team—would know I’d gone missing but wouldn’t know why or where. I couldn’t base my plan of attack on unknowns.
That, of course, begged the question of what I could base it on. At this point I was clueless. All I could do was ignore the increasingly obnoxious noises emanating from my midsection and wait.
Since I don’t wear a watch and rely on my cell phone to check the time, I estimated it was a good two hours before Slut Shoes returned.
Teresa. Her name was Teresa. I’d better remember that if I was going to worm information out of her.
“So, Teresa,” I let drop as we went up the stairs, “it doesn’t scare you to climb into a small plane and zoom in for a landing on top of a big rock?”
No response.
“It sure caught my attention. Taking off over those sheer cliffs has to be even scarier.”
Still no reply. So much for my unsubtle attempt to verify how ordinary mortals got off this rock. But I was sure there had to be a road cut into the mesa. No plane small enough to land atop it could airlift in that three-ton Hummer. And what came up, I thought grimly as Teresa gestured me through an archway, could go down.
I received visual confirmation of that when we stepped through the sliding glass doors to a flagstone patio. The sun still beat down, but a soft wind stirred the leaves of the twisted mesquite shading the patio and kept the afternoon heat at bay.
The temperature didn’t interest me as much as the view from the patio. It was set high enough for a clear view beyond the encircling wall. The road that trailed toward the edge of the mesa was hardly more than a dirt track, but it had to lead somewhere! And there, parked beside an adobe garage about fifty yards from the main house, was the Hummer.
My mind clicked like a camera shutter, fixing every detail in my mind before I switched my attention to the buffet set out on the patio. Dome-topped serving dishes displayed raw oysters on the half shell, bright pink shrimp nested on ice, and some greenish, slug-like things I wanted no part of. The heavyset female adding a bowl of ceviche to the table eyed me curiously before disappearing through the door to what I assumed was the kitchen.
Took me a moment to locate Mendoza. He was seated in the shade of the mesquite at a table set with colorful linen, perusing some kind of legal document. In his open-necked silk shirt and pleated pants he looked as relaxed and comfortable as I was tight and wary.
He glanced up at our approach and hiked a brow. “I see you decided not to change into something cooler.”
“I prefer my uniform.”
Especially if I had to make a quick escape.
“As you wish,” Mendoza said with a shrug. “Please, have a seat.”
I took a chair on the other side of the table. I wanted to keep this guy in full view. Teresa started to pull out the chair next to him, but Mendoza stopped her by handing her the document.
“Take this into the office, my pet. I’ll join you there after lunch and finish going through it.”
The casual dismissal sent a tinge of red into her cheeks, but she accepted the document and left without a word.
Her boss-slash-lover didn’t give her a second look. Playing the gracious host, he extracted a bottle from the ice bucket on the table.
“Would you care for wine with lunch, Lieutenant? This is a very good chenin blanc from the Valle de Guadalupe that you might . . .”
“No.”
“Very well.” Unperturbed, he resettled the bottle. “Shall we dine first, then talk?”
“Let’s talk now,” I said, ignoring the instant shriek of protest from my stomach. “Why am I here, Mendoza?”
His eyes narrowed. My palms got a little clammy as I recalled his previous order to address him with respect, but I refused to tack on a “mister” or “señor.”
“You don’t take instruction well, do you, Lieutenant?”
Despite the chalky taste of fear in my mouth, I worked up a sardonic smile. “Funny, that’s what my boss always says.”
The ice in Mendoza’s eyes gave way to a look of surprise, followed by a slight gleam of appreciation.
“You’re not very wise, but you have courage. I see now why Mitchell has taken such an interest in you.”
My last desperate hope this didn’t involve some scheme to get at Mitch died. Mendoza’s next comment pounded the nails into its coffin.
“That interest has provided me the means to an end I’ve waited a long time to achieve.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” I lied.
“Surely Special Agent Mitchell has told you that he caused me great inconvenience
some years ago? I had to spend considerable money and effort to rectify the situation. Now it’s time to balance the sheet.”
I couldn’t believe this guy! He might have been talking about a stock deal gone bad. Yet I knew damned well he’d made millions trading in every form of human misery.
Mitch had come face-to-face with one facet of Mendoza’s operation when he’d intercepted a truckload of human cargo destined for a brothel in Houston. They were just kids, he’d told me grimly. Some not more than eight or ten years old. Scared to death and crying for their mamas. Merchandise in a well-organized and obscenely profitable human smuggling ring.
A father himself, Mitch had been sickened by what he saw and volunteered to work with a friend in Mexico as part of a cross-border task force. Took them months, but they finally tracked the ring to Mendoza. They’d hauled him in and testified at his trial in Mexico City, but bribes and jury intimidation got the man off. The youngest son of Mitch’s counterpart disappeared a month later. Although the police could never tie the abduction to Mendoza, Mitch knew it was done out of revenge, pure and simple.
At that point his already disintegrating marriage had come apart at the seams. Railing at him for putting his job ahead of his family, his wife had insisted he set up a safe haven for her and their daughter as far from El Paso as they could get.
Mendoza hadn’t found them. Now, apparently, he’d decided he didn’t have to.
“I don’t see what your problems with Mitch have to do with me,” I said with a carelessness I was far from feeling. “He and I are friends, but . . .”
“Please, Lieutenant. Don’t play the fool. I know very well you’re more than friends. I sent someone to watch you shortly after your name and photograph were splashed all over the news last week.”
“Why? Was that slime, Victor Duarte, one of your pals?”
“Duarte?” He showed his teeth in shark’s smile. “On the contrary. Duarte did that job for one of my rivals. The killings severely disrupted my midwestern operation. If you hadn’t eliminated Duarte, I would have.”
“So why did you have me watched?”
“The device the media said you were testing intrigued me. I saw some interesting potential applications for it.”
Well, damn! I’d tossed that possibility at Paul Donati as a wild guess but I hadn’t really given it much credence. Mendoza just made a believer out of me.
“I had Teresa go online to research both you and the device,” he continued. “She found a number of articles about you written prior to the Duarte incident. You appear to attract trouble, Lieutenant.”
I didn’t bother to tell him he was quoting my boss again. Nor did I care for the lethal satisfaction that slid into his voice.
“Imagine my surprise—and delight—when one of those articles linked you to Jeff Mitchell and a case he’d worked. I decided to send a man to check you out and knew I’d hit the jackpot when he saw Mitchell arrive at your place very early last Saturday morning.”
I sensed it was helpless at this point, but I still tried to put a spike in whatever Mendoza had planned.
“Then your goon saw me drive him home to change a little later. After which I took him to the airport. Mitch needed a ride, that’s all.”
“Really? Well, we’ll soon see.”
With another snarky smile, he picked up a small, serrated knife. The kind with sharp prongs on the tip that you can use to pry open oysters. When he shoved back his chair and started for me, I jumped up.
“What . . . ?” I wet my lips and backed away, my heart hammering. “What the hell do you think you’re going to do with that?”
“Cut off a small piece of you to send Agent Mitchell.”
CHAPTER TWELVE
THIS was, hands down, my worst nightmare! I’d stumbled into some desperate situations before but I’d never had someone like Rafael Mendoza come at me with an oyster knife.
I lunged back and would have tripped over my chair if he hadn’t leaped forward and caught my wildly windmilling arm.
“Be careful!”
Careful, hell! With my feet under me again, I balled my other fist and rammed the heel at his nose. He jerked to the side, narrowly dodging the blow. Since he still had my arm in an iron grip, he jerked me with him.
“Be still, you stupid puta! You’ll hurt yourself.”
“Or you will.”
Snarling, I yanked at my arm like a cougar with its foreleg caught in a trap. Mendoza muttered a vicious oath and released it.
“I’m not going to cut you.”
I wasn’t taking his word for that. Panting, I put the chair between us.
“That’s not what you said a minute ago.”
I was calculating the odds I could snatch up the chair and smash it down on his head when he curled his lip.
“Cristo! Did you think I intended to send Mitchell a finger or an ear?”
What the heck else was I supposed to think after watching so many Godfather movies and Sopranos reruns? I was extremely relieved to hear Mendoza didn’t subscribe to their modus operandi, but my relief lasted all of two seconds.
“It may come to that,” he said with a sneer. “For now, I want only your tape.”
“My what?”
He gestured impatiently at my chest with the tip of the knife. “The piece with your name.”
I glanced down at the name tape just above my breast pocket.
“It’s sewn on,” I said stupidly.
Well, duh! He could see how it was attached as well as I could. At least now I understood why he’d come at me with a sharp-tipped oyster knife.
“Give me the knife. I’ll cut it off.”
The man was either supremely confident of his own abilities or completely disdainful of mine. Reversing the knife, he held it out by the handle.
I took it and considered stabbing the blade into his throat or eye for all of two seconds. No point attacking the man when he was prepared for it. He’d already proved his reflexes were as good or better than mine.
My hands shook as I slid the short, sharp pick under a corner of the tape. The tailors on post used heavy-duty thread to attach these name tapes. Probably so they wouldn’t catch on a sharp protrusion while the wearer is on patrol or come off after repeated launderings. I popped several stitches and freed one end but couldn’t get a good grip.
Mendoza made impatient noises while I tugged at the tape, then shoved my hand aside and ripped it away from my chest. Stupid, I know, but the act made me feel so violated that my grip on the knife turned my fingers white to the bone.
The look that leaped into Medoza’s eyes stopped me before I brought the knife up in a swift arc. He wanted me to go for him. Wanted the thrill of subduing me. The bastard got off on violence.
Sure enough, I detected both disappointment and mockery on his face as he raised his voice. “Anna Maria!”
The sturdy woman I’d glimpsed earlier hurried from the kitchen. “Si, patron?”
Mendoza handed her the tape and issued rapid-fire orders in Spanish. I understood only a few words but aeroplano suggested Aviator Glasses would soon climb back into his aircraft and wing his way north. I didn’t know how or when the tape would be delivered to Mitch. My stomach cramped when I thought of the message that would accompany it.
“Now we will eat,” Mendoza said when the cook or maid or whatever she was hurried off. “Sit down, Lieutenant.”
I came damned close to telling Mendoza to take his oysters and shove ’em, shells and all. I refrained, however. I couldn’t engineer an escape or make it across miles of desert weak with hunger.
That was my rationale anyway as I filled a plate with shrimp and ceviche and baby asparagus topped with a white sauce so thick and rich it almost wouldn’t dribble from the serving spoon. I added two warm, puffy flour tortillas and a slab of butter before returning to the table.
“You live well here on your mountaintop,” I commented when Mendoza resumed his seat as well.
“Yes, I do.” He poured
himself another glass of wine. “I have homes in Mexico City and Playa del Carmen, but my roots are here in the high desert. I come back as often as possible.”
“Where, exactly, is here?”
“Too far from civilization for you to survive if you try to escape, Lieutenant.”
“Then tell me this. How long do you intend to keep me here?”
His dark eyes met mine across the rim of his glass. “As long as necessary.”
I forced down a forkful of spicy ceviche and decided to forego conversation for the rest of the meal. Mendoza decided otherwise.
“Tell me more about this device you and your team tested. The one that causes such a furor with the media. Does it really convert natural sources to energy?”
I pasted Mendoza’s face on the mental image of a kangaroo rat and smiled. “It does.”
“How close is the military to moving from a prototype to full production?”
Obviously he’d never delved into the procurement cycle for military systems. Research and development alone could take decades, testing various prototypes another five years.
Unless the country was at war, of course. Then the development cycle shortened in direct proportion to the urgency of the need. I had yet to convince Dr. J that Snoopy could fill some of the military’s very urgent needs, but that ranked near the top of my to-do list when I got back.
If I got back.
THAT big, fat “if” hovered front and center in my mind throughout the remainder of a long afternoon confined to the guest suite. I spent a good part of that time stretched out atop the downy comforter on the king-sized bed, my fingers laced behind my head while I contemplated my options. I didn’t see many. Zero, in fact.
Driven to desperation, I finally stabbed the remote and fired up the flat-screen TV. It had to be close to news time. With any luck I would find a local station with a weather forecaster doing his thing in front of a map with towns and cities that might pinpoint my location.
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