Emilia’s brow furrowed as the van drew near, and her mouth formed a silent O when it screeched to a stop beside them and the side door slid wide with a clatter. Two men wearing dark leather jackets and jeans leapt out and rushed the girls, who drew back in shock. Rosa screamed as the assailants waved handguns at them, and the nearest slapped the phone from her hand.
Marisol’s eyes widened when the second gunman stuck his pistol in her face and then shifted his aim to Emilia, who stood frozen, purse clutched to her chest. The man eyed her terrified expression, and then his gaze drifted to her yellow top and black pants and his mouth twisted in an ugly grin. He nodded to his partner, and they lunged forward and seized Emilia by the arms. She struggled and cried out as they manhandled her toward the van. Marisol ran after them, swinging her purse like a weapon, her stocky frame moving surprisingly fast. The bag caught one of the men in the back of the head, and he cursed and spun around. Marisol tried to kick him in the balls, but he saw the move coming and sidestepped it. A brutal blow from the pistol to the side of her head sent her sprawling to the ground. Her attacker stood, pistol leveled at Marisol curled in a ball on the sidewalk as his companion forced Emilia into the van.
“You’re lucky tonight,” he snarled, and then made for the door, where Emilia was staring from the interior with a look of horror on her face as the other gunman pressed his weapon against her temple.
The engine revved, and the second attacker jumped into the van. He pulled the door closed, and the vehicle tore off with a screech of rubber, leaving Rosa and Marisol to choke on a cloud of exhaust. Rosa squinted at the back of the van, trying to make out a license number, but there was no plate, only a pair of cracked taillights flickering above a dented bumper. Marisol struggled to her feet and screamed for help. Rosa moved to where her phone lay on the sidewalk and scooped it up, and then swore when she saw the shattered screen.
“Don’t just stand there,” Marisol cried. “We have to do something.”
Panicked tears coursed down Rosa’s face as she held up the broken cell for Marisol to see, and then she joined her in screaming for help, their voices echoing off the ribbon of pavement that stretched endlessly into the gloom.
Chapter 2
El Paso, Texas
A faded sign announcing Whispering Pines, Apartments 4 Rent rattled in the morning breeze before a dilapidated string of low-rent dwellings around a courtyard devoid of anything resembling conifers. A harried-looking young woman emerged from one of the apartments and rushed along the path to the front gate, a battered messenger bag in hand and a purse hanging from her shoulder, auburn hair pulled back in a loose ponytail as she scanned her cell phone screen through heavy black-framed glasses.
“Leah! Hold up. You got a minute?” a scratchy female voice called from the first unit’s open doorway.
Leah paused, her lips pursing in annoyance. “Not really, Aunt Connie. I’m late again.”
Aunt Connie stepped from the doorway, hair in curlers, her face weathered by decades of cigarettes and drugstore bourbon. “Didn’t see you come in last night.”
“I worked late,” Leah said, her tone reasonable.
“You might have called to let me know.”
Leah drew a measured breath. “I was really busy with a story.”
That drew a worried frown. “I was worried about you.”
“We’ve talked about this before. There’s no reason to be. The hours go with the job.”
Aunt Connie’s scowl deepened. “I don’t like not knowing where you are.”
“I appreciate that. But you really don’t have to worry about me.”
Leah’s aunt eyed her baggy cargo pants and hastily chosen top with a raised eyebrow. “I thought that maybe you had a date or something. That would be nice. But then when it got so late…”
Leah groaned inwardly. Not this again.
“Your concern’s appreciated, but–”
“You’re still seeing that nice Bill boy, aren’t you?”
Leah bit back the sharp response that rose in her throat in favor of something more diplomatic. “No, as I explained before, we broke up when I moved to New York.” Leah had brought Bill, a co-worker she had been dating at the time, to a family event four years earlier, and he’d obviously made a lasting impression.
Aunt Connie nodded sadly. “Oh, that’s right. Well, it’s just a shame to see you…spending your life without a family.”
“You’re family, Aunt Connie. And I’m not lonely, really. But what I am is late this morning, so…”
“I know I’m the only family you have here, Leah, and that’s why I worry, girl. It’s just… I don’t want to get in your way, but I’d appreciate the courtesy of a phone call if you’re going to be out half the night. These days you can never be too careful.”
“I know, and as I’ve said before, I’m always careful. And I was at work. Inside. At my desk. Working.” Leah glanced to where her beater car was parked only a few yards away. Only a few of the units had a parking slot, and so she was one of the unlucky ones relegated to battle it out on the street. She did her best to avoid letting her impatience show. “We can talk about this later, but I really need to get moving if I’m still going to have a job at all.”
Before her aunt could respond again, Leah spun on her heel and made for the car. Ever since she’d returned to El Paso three months earlier, she’d been trying to get along with a relative she’d never known very well, and one who seemed compelled to mother Leah as if she were twelve. Leah accepted that she was exchanging some amount of companionship for a more-than-reasonable rent, but she wished she could go about her business without feeling she owed an explanation for her lifestyle, let alone her whereabouts.
Leah’s gray Chevrolet Malibu’s lock resisted her effort to open it, as it did every morning, and she forced herself to calm down and not take it personally. The clunker had been a budget purchase from a questionable used-car lot that extended credit at usurious rates and had been willing to accept a paltry down payment, so what could she expect? That it ran at all was a minor miracle, and she gently worked the key until the lock flipped open, reminding herself to be thankful for what she had.
The thought stopped her.
What she had was a cracker-box apartment, with noisy plumbing and pot residue on the ceilings, that was rock-throwing distance from the border, in a complex inhabited by meth heads and stragglers on their last legs. Her life was in shambles, her career all but at an end, and with no social life to speak of beyond a nosy relative she couldn’t connect with.
Leah tossed her bag and purse onto the passenger seat and slid behind the wheel, sniffing automatically as she did so. The car smelled vaguely like something had died inside after burrowing deep into one of the seats, and the faint odor was another reminder of her current reality versus the one she’d imagined for herself only a few years earlier.
She twisted the ignition and the car rumbled to a stuttering idle. Leah pulled the windshield wiper lever to clear the thin film of Texas dust off the glass so she could see more than hazy outlines. An anemic stream of water spurted forth, and the blades smeared the beige dust into a series of muddy streaks. She sighed as she put the transmission into drive and pulled from the curb, narrowly missing a migrant worker riding a bicycle the wrong way down the one-way street, who saluted her with a middle finger by way of thanks.
Leah stopped at a convenience store for a cup of coffee and stood impatiently in a line that was a microcosm of El Paso charm – a rail-thin man in his thirties with a Stetson, oversized belt buckle, and straight leg jeans who’d never been near a horse in his life; a pair of yard workers cradling jumbo bottles of full tilt Coke and speaking softly to each other in Spanish; a crone shuffling forward in sweat pants and a stained T-shirt to buy a pack of menthol cigarettes; a woman standing by the register with a meth twitch and furtive eyes.
How had Leah wound up back in a place she’d spent her entire life escaping? It was worse than any punishment she could h
ave engineered. She’d aced her exams and won a scholarship to Columbia University, majored in journalism, and come back from New York to spend two years in El Paso plying her trade before her mentor at school had suggested her to the New York Herald as a promising recruit.
The day she’d gotten the call from the Herald had been the best of her life – the beginning of her ascent to a higher level in her chosen profession and her ticket out of El Paso. Her mother had passed away five years earlier, and her father had sold his hardware store shortly thereafter and moved to Argentina to live the good life at the base of the Andes, so there had been nothing to return to – not that she’d ever planned on doing so, after living in the Big Apple for three years, a rising star in a dream job that had exceeded her wildest aspirations.
Leah’s ruminations were cut short when the cowboy bumped her with his elbow as he reached for his wallet, and a sluice of coffee splashed from a slot in the lid and christened her shirt. She gasped at the burn, but he didn’t even notice, too busy buying a fistful of lottery tickets and a pack of Marlboros, unaware he’d just ruined her blouse.
A glance at a mirror mounted on a rack of cheap sunglasses confirmed that the stain would be noticeable, and she frowned at her reflection – hazel eyes artificially small behind thick glasses, a face that her mother had described as cute or pretty, but never beautiful, the cheeks a tad too round for her liking, as were her curves. Leah was always twenty pounds from what she considered her fighting weight, but could never bring herself to push for the final stretch, seeing little point, especially now that she was back living in Purgatory.
As the cowboy sauntered off like a B-movie extra, Leah shuffled forward with her coffee, resisting the urge to check her watch every thirty seconds. She tossed a fistful of coins on the counter, shifting foot to foot as the clerk counted them with agonizing slowness, and then bolted for the exit, the coil of anxiety in her stomach tightening with each passing moment.
The remainder of the drive to the squat two-story building that housed the offices of the El Paso Examiner was the typical morning stop-and-go misery. Other drivers were aggressive for no apparent reason, their tailgating a symptom of a pressure-cooker society. One particularly domineering SUV stuck to her bumper for the final stretch like she’d stolen the driver’s wallet, and she took perverse delight in keeping to the speed limit even though she was beyond late for work now.
She pulled into the Examiner lot to an angry roar of exhaust from the lifted truck and smiled as she found a spot near the building – no point in getting an ulcer over what was already done if the driver was willing to do it for them both.
Leah bustled past the receptionist and took the stairs two at a time while debating stopping at the restroom to do some damage control on the coffee stain – but decided to wait until she’d checked her messages – it had dried in the car’s air conditioning, so there was no hurry.
She was halfway to her desk in the corner of the newsroom when a woman’s voice called out from behind her with a tinkling laugh.
“Mason! Finally decided to grace us with your presence?”
Leah swallowed a knot and stopped, reminding herself to play nice, given that she badly needed the job.
“Good morning, Margaret,” she said, turning with a half-smile in place.
“Got stuck in traffic, I suppose?” her supervisor said as she made her way toward Leah. “I guess you haven’t quite figured out the timing from your new apartment, but…” Her voice trailed off as she stared expectantly at Leah, obviously waiting for an apology.
“Well, I was here until eleven last night,” Leah said innocently. “You wouldn’t know, of course, since you left at five.”
“Well, nobody asked you to stay till all hours. That’s always your choice if you don’t finish your work. But I have an assignment for you, and not being sure if you were coming in today, or when, I was scrambling to find a replacement.”
“An assignment?” Leah asked suspiciously. Assignments from her supervisor were rarely good and inevitably tedious and demeaning.
Margaret did a poor job of trying to hide her dislike for Leah, possibly borne from jealousy when Leah had landed the plum job in NY and left the paper. Now that she was back, Margaret seemed to enjoy subtly reminding Leah of the pecking order by delegating countless menial jobs to her and keeping her busy with stories Leah judged to be nonsense. Either that, or Margaret really did believe her constant exhortations to “find the extraordinary in the ordinary” – something Leah had a difficult time buying into.
That Leah had just broken the first installment in a story that had caused a local sensation and been picked up by the wire services didn’t alter Margaret’s treatment of her; if anything, it made the jealousy worse and Margaret more determined to teach Leah her place.
Margaret’s face broke into a brittle smile. “That’s right. A new strip mall at East 3rd, down by the border. They’re having a grand opening. We want a thousand words on it by the close of business today.”
“A mall opening. Are you serious?” Leah said, her voice flat. “How about I write it now and skip driving over there?”
Margaret’s smile hardened. “No, I want you to go down and talk to some of the shop owners. Get some local color to sprinkle through the piece. How excited they are, that sort of thing. I don’t know how things operate in New York, but here what sells papers is local color. Personal interest. People like to read about themselves and the places they go. You may feel it’s beneath you, but we know our market.”
Leah had two options: she could refuse and go to Ridley Talbert, the editor, to protest being handed an assignment that was a complete waste of her time; or comply, keeping the fragile peace with Margaret but flushing her day and the research she’d hoped to continue on the series she’d started with such a bang.
She opted for the safe route. She could always work late again after the mall event. The Internet never slept, even if she had to occasionally.
“Sure…you’re right, of course. Let me check my messages, clear my desk, and I’m all over it, Margaret.”
Margaret’s eyes swept over Leah’s ensemble. “You might consider wearing clean clothes to work so you’re presentable.”
Leah looked down at the coffee stain. “Some jerk spilled on me at the store on the way in. I can always go back home to change if you think it’s important.”
Margaret didn’t take the bait. “No, no, there wouldn’t be time now. Just try to get the worst of the coffee out of it and head to the mall.”
“Do you want me to take photos?”
Margaret shook her head. “We’ll use some of the stock ones they sent us.” She gave Leah a final look that managed to convey annoyance and superiority in a single glance, and then turned on her heel, leaving Leah almost trembling with anger.
Leah was used to the woman’s arrogance, but that didn’t help with her frustration over the incessant undermining, which sometimes bordered on sabotage ever since her big story had broken and Talbert had commended Leah on a job well done. Leah should have expected it – she’d known Margaret for years and was more than aware that she despised her own situation, working as an associate editor for a third-string rag in a dusty backwater with no future. She had the personality of a weasel and, like most petty bureaucrats, took out her feelings of inadequacy on her staff, particularly someone like Leah who had dared to achieve something she never would.
Leah plopped down in a worn swivel chair behind a cheap metal desk and eyed her computer screen as her system booted up. The PC was older than her degree and took forever to do even the simplest of tasks. She’d been spoiled at the Herald, where everyone had state-of-the-art equipment, and she’d gotten used to the fastest systems money could buy. Here at the Examiner, everything associated with the business was a relic, from the phone system to the furniture, which was to be expected, as circulation revenues had shrunk in the wake of the Internet. Talbert had been a cheapskate even when times had been relatively good, and
now that they were lean and headed worse, she was grateful that the Examiner still supplied toilet paper and meager air conditioning for its underpaid staff.
Leah’s eyes were drawn to her telephone and its blinking message light. She lifted the handset to her ear and entered her passcode, and the system informed her that she had one new voicemail. A male Hispanic voice, heavily accented and gravelly, spoke slowly, as though unsure of how to proceed.
“Miss Mason? Leah Mason? This…my name is León Sánchez. Congratulations on your article about the killings of the factory workers in Ciudad Juárez. It attracted my attention, and I wanted to call…and…here is my number. I would like to meet with you as soon as possible. I can’t say much on the telephone, but it will be worth your while to talk.”
Leah groped amidst the clutter on her desk, found a pen, and scrawled the Juárez phone number on a scrap of paper before the message stopped with a beep. She rewound it and listened to it again, and then depressed a button to check the time stamp. Only twenty minutes ago.
Leah had written a four-thousand-word think piece on the infamous Juárez murders of the nineties, when hundreds of young female workers had disappeared, later turning up in mass graves. A number of perps had been prosecuted after an almost decade-long investigation, but even after a series of convictions, some believed the entire proceedings had been a cover-up. She’d penned an exposé that highlighted the fact that the disappearances had never really stopped until two years after the convictions and, more ominously, had recently started again, with six women gone missing over the past four months – the latest only a few days before. The end of the piece had speculated that the killers might have never been apprehended, and promised follow-ups that would pursue the cases until the truth was revealed.
The article had been sufficiently lurid to catch the imagination on a slow national news day, and her words had gone viral after several papers on the coasts picked it up, making her a minor sensation for the second time in her life.
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