No Refuge

by Richard Bard

  This is no video game.

  I wasn’t sure what to say next, and my hesitation must have been interpreted as weakness, because another text appeared on my screen.

  Driver: the price is now 100K, or never see ur kids again

  The man pocketed the phone and opened his door. He waved the pistol. “The first of you who tries anything will be the first to die.” He got out and walked around the front of the van, and I was so scared I felt an urge to pee. My thumbs trembled as I composed another message, tabbing through open browser windows to collect what I needed. I suspected I’d have only one last chance to turn this around, so I dug deep to create a threat that couldn’t be ignored, wincing at some of the images I attached. The man reached for the handle of the sliding door just as I tapped send and shoved the phone between my shaking legs.

  The door was half open when the driver’s phone chimed. The man pointed the pistol at Deondre as he used his free hand to pull the phone out of his pocket. His face turned white when he read the message. I held my breath. The driver’s thumb swiped upward several times, and as he scrolled through the images I’d sent, he slowly lowered the pistol. Finally, he sucked in a deep breath, closed the van door, returned to his seat, and started the engine.

  Nobody spoke a word on the fifteen-minute drive to our hotel, and after dropping us off at the curb, the man drove away without looking back.

  After the van disappeared around the corner, Simon spoke first. “Jeeze Louise, Alex. What the heck did you text him?”

  “Oh, just the address of the school his two daughters go to.”

  Simon said, “Whoa, that’s cold.”

  “And righteous,” Deondre added. He seemed to be studying me.

  “That’s all you sent?” Strawberry asked.

  “Uh, yeah.” I wasn’t a very good liar, and I could tell by the way Ellie looked at me that she suspected there was more to the story. But I wasn’t about to tell her, or any of them. Not only because I wanted to spare their feelings, but because I was ashamed. It was one thing to send pictures of the man’s daughters from their Facebook pages, the address of their school, and their class schedules. But adding the darknet link of one of Bogota’s better known criminal gangs who had a reputation for torturing and dismembering their victims was an entirely different kind of evil. The images on the site were sickening.

  “Whatever,” Deondre said. He patted my back. “You did good.”

  “Come on,” Simon said. He led the way up the steps toward a set of brass-framed glass doors, where a well-dressed doorman with a top hat waited.

  As Strawberry and Deondre started after Simon, Ellie nudged me and whispered, “I saw what you sent, and it was perfect.” Relief washed over me. She smiled, took my hand, and we followed the others into the lobby.

  It was spectacular, with marble floors, vaulted ceilings, and walls adorned with fancy artwork. The lounge area featured plush sofas, chairs, and coffee tables, where several people sat enjoying beverages and conversation. It was very upscale, and from the way Simon and Strawberry had picked up their pace, I suspected they couldn’t wait to get upstairs to check out the rooms.

  We were five steps from the front desk when Simon stopped so suddenly that Deondre nearly bumped into him. “Wait,” he said with a wide smile. He flipped his backpack to one side, removed his tablet, and powered it up. “Can you even believe this place? We’ve got to get a picture!” He powered up the tablet.

  Deondre glared at him. “Are you kidding me right now?”

  Strawberry said, “Deondre’s right, Simon. This isn’t the—”

  The tablet emitted a string of chimes. Ellie gasped, the others edged closer, and Simon handed the tablet to me.

  “Let’s check it out,” I said, hurrying toward the lounge.

  We took seats around a small coffee table and the tablet chimed again. “We’re getting hits,” I said. Everyone leaned closer and I could feel their excitement. We’d had the tablet powered on for most of the trip, including during the flight when we’d been able to plug it in. But despite the fact I’d linked in every camera I could find in and around Bogota, we hadn’t had a single hit on Jazz’s—or I should say Ellie’s—image. We’d had to turn off the tablet when we landed and hadn’t turned it back on until now.

  The dashboard indicated thirty-seven hits so far. When I clicked on the first one, though, my hopes faded. It was Ellie’s face that had been captured, taken from within the international airport terminal shortly after we exited the plane. The rest of us were in the image as well.

  “Awww,” Simon said.

  Ellie sucked a breath through clenched teeth, and I felt her frustration. I clicked on the next image, and the one after that, and so on, and it was like watching a rerun of our walk through the airport. I clicked faster and faster, and when I risked a glance at Ellie, her eyes were full of suffering.

  “Wait!” Strawberry said.

  “Yeah,” Deondre said. “Go back.”

  I must’ve missed something when I looked away. After my third click backward, I saw it, too. It was Jazz. She appeared to be running down a narrow street.

  Ellie clutched her chest with both hands. “Thank you, Lord,” she whispered.

  I checked the image source. “This picture was taken forty minutes ago by an ATM camera at the other end of town.”

  “Can you access the actual video rather than just the snapshot?” Strawberry asked.

  “Sure,” I said. I unzipped my backpack to retrieve the Spider.

  Deondre placed both palms on the coffee table as if to brace himself. He stared at the image, stunned. “It actually worked.”

  “Of course it worked,” Simon said, smacking me on the shoulder. “Alex is a genius.”

  Ellie placed a hand on one of Deondre’s. “You didn’t think Alex’s program would find Jazz?”

  Deondre shook his head. “Not for one second.”

  “Then why did you come?” Strawberry asked.

  His brows scrunched together. He looked at Ellie, whose hand still rested on his. As I lowered the headset onto my scalp, I saw his face flush beneath his dark skin. He looked away, slipped his hand from beneath hers, and sat back in his chair. “Better than dying all alone back in Billy’s Home.”

  There was more to it than that, but I suspected the rest would remain unsaid.

  Ellie gave him a gentle smile. “The point is you’re here. And I’m grateful.”

  Deondre’s lips tightened into a straight line, and he nodded.

  “So now what?” Simon asked.

  “Watch,” I said. My thoughts drilled past the bank’s firewalls to access the ATM’s cameras. I used the time code on the image to find the video, wound it back to thirty seconds before the shot was taken, and played it. Everyone huddled close.

  At first we saw nothing but two boys standing outside a small convenience store across the street. A motorcyclist drove past in one direction, and a car in the other. Then Jazz ran from left to right across the screen, her head snapping back to look over her shoulder. She exited the frame a second later.

  “Go back,” Ellie pleaded. “Can you slow it down?”

  I rolled the video back to the point when Jazz first appeared, then forwarded it frame by frame. Jazz’s face was filled with fear, but otherwise she appeared uninjured. When her slow-motion image vanished from view, Ellie said, “Where is she? We have to go there. Now!”

  I opened a separate window for a satellite map of the city, and highlighted both Jazz’s and our current locations.

  Deondre pointed at the screen. “That’s not far from where that freak threatened to drop us off.”

  My skin tightened at the reminder.

  “It’s too far to walk,” Strawberry said.

  Simon said, “We need to rent a car, or get a taxi. If we’re lucky we can find her in less than—”

  “Hold on,” I said. I’d left the ATM video moving in slow motion, and two men in suits were running across the screen, one of them pointing fo
rward. They looked furious.

  “No, no, no,” Ellie said. “It’s them!” Her chest hitched, and Strawberry moved to comfort her.

  “Them who?” Deondre asked.

  Ellie couldn’t answer. Her eyes filled with tears, and when one of the men’s jackets swept open to reveal a badge clipped to his belt, I knew why. “The federal police,” I said.

  “Oh, no,” Simon said.

  “The bastards,” Deondre added.

  I sped the video forward, and then back again several times, piecing together what had happened, stopping to zoom and capture key images, including the faces of the two officers. I was moving so fast that windows and snapshots blurred on the screen. Then I moved on to other sites to set up a few things as a strategy took shape in my mind. When I was finished, I hesitated before uploading one of the key snapshots I’d taken. I knew it wouldn’t be easy for Ellie to see, but she deserved to know what we were up against. They all did. I made the entry and the image filled the screen.

  “The suckers got her,” Deondre said.

  It was a black car, driving in the direction Ellie had run from. She was in the backseat with one of the men, but her face was clearly visible through the window. As were the faces of the two men who’d grabbed her.

  “Are they the same guys who visited you in the hospital?” Strawberry asked. “The cops you told me about?”

  Ellie choked back a sob. “Y-yes.”

  “Oh, that’s great,” Simon said. “What are we going to do now?”

  Everyone looked at me, and for a moment I imagined how my dad must have felt in so many similar circumstances. I suspected he’d put together a great speech to inspire courage in his friends. But those words didn’t come to me.

  “Don’t worry. I have a plan,” I lied.

  Chapter 20

  READING ABOUT THE DANGERS of this city was one thing. Heading into one of its worst areas was another. It scared me, but it didn’t stop me any more than it had stopped the others. I guess when you know your days are numbered, the boundaries you’ve held for most of your life don’t matter anymore. Of course, that didn’t mean my nerves weren’t on edge, especially when I knew everyone was depending on me. Yes, I had a supercharged brain, and I’d acquired an aging disease that my mom thought was already making me look older, but I was still only eight years old.

  To Simon’s disappointment, we’d left the fancy hotel, even though I’d prepaid for a full week’s stay. We’d crowded into a taxi at the stand outside, figuring it was a safe spot to catch a ride. The car was clean. More importantly, the driver was friendly. An hour later, after stopping at a crowded shopping mall that sold just about anything you could imagine, he dropped us off in one of the older districts of the city.

  “Not very upscale,” Simon said as the taxi drove away.

  Rows of three- and four-story buildings stretched down both sides of the street, each one connected to its neighbor, the individual properties distinguished by a variety of pastel colors that framed the windows and adorned the brick and stone surfaces. It was an older neighborhood containing both residential and commercial structures, where roll-up doors were as common as wooden front doors with decorative accents. Most of the lower windows had bars over them, but there were also well-tended flowers trailing from some of the upper balconies. Families lived here and worked here, and I wondered what life was like for them, especially after nightfall.

  Strawberry looped her thumbs under her backpack straps to adjust its position. Like the rest of our packs, hers bulged with stuff we’d purchased earlier. “It doesn’t look so scary to me,” she said, surveying the neighborhood. An old man rode past on a bicycle. He waved at a woman walking along the opposite sidewalk carrying shopping bags, not far from where a couple of boys kicked a soccer ball back and forth.

  Ellie stood beside me. She’d insisted on holding my hand from the moment we got out of the taxi, and from her tight grip I sensed she was plenty scared. She wore dark sunglasses, and had one of Strawberry’s scarves wrapped around her head.

  “Maybe not scary while the sun’s up,” Deondre said. “But remember what that driver told us? Thirty murders in Bogota every week, and most of them occur in this area.”

  I shivered. It would be dark soon and we needed to get off the street. “This way.” I led Ellie and the others past a dimly lit garage that housed a number of motorcycles in various states of repair, and a few used ones that appeared to be for sale. An old man in grimy overalls knelt next to one of the cycles, holding a wrench. He cast a disapproving look as we walked past, as if he knew we shouldn’t be in this neighborhood.

  The building where I believed Jazz was being held was around the next corner. It was an old residence of some sort. We planned to do some surveillance from a building across the street, which had an entrance on the road we were now on.

  Ellie pointed at an orange three-story building that wrapped around the upcoming corner. “Is that it?”

  “Yes,” I said, seeing the sign on the brick wall beside the green door. It had a childlike drawing of a cottage with a pine tree next to it. The international symbol for a youth hostel.

  “That artwork is lit,” Simon said, using the slang word for awesome. He pointed at the colorful mural painted along the first story of the hostel’s curving wall. It was a modern depiction of Colombian youth in a mountain village. It was intricate and beautiful. Unfortunately, parts of it were blemished by graffiti, but Simon seemed to see past that as he ran his hand along the imagery, getting lost in the detail as he neared the intersection.

  Deondre grabbed his arm and pulled him back. “Who do think you are, Salvador Dalí? Don’t be an idiot. Remember, if we step past the corner they could see us.”

  “Oh, yeah,” Simon said sheepishly. “Sorry.”

  I’d discovered the target building had two exterior cameras, and we couldn’t afford to have our images captured, especially Ellie.

  At least not yet.

  Simon stopped short. “Hey, wait a minute,” he said, looking at Deondre. “You know who Salvador Dalí is? One of the most famous surrealist painters ever born?”

  Deondre flushed. “Whatever.” He pushed open the hostel door, causing a small bell to jingle. The rest of us followed. The tiny lobby, if you could call it that, consisted of a check-in counter on one side, and three loaner bicycles on the other. The five of us barely fit in the space between. The walls were weathered and the place had a damp smell, but the tile floor looked freshly mopped and there was no dust on the counter.

  A short woman wearing an apron waddled down the hallway. “Hello, hello,” she said in a singsong voice that made me smile. She had silver hair, crooked teeth, and deeply etched laugh lines. She stepped behind the counter. “You called, sí?”

  “Yes, ma’am,” Deondre said. I’d not heard that respectful tone from him before, and it was nice to see him embrace his role.

  “Good, good. I have rooms ready. I am Magdalena. But all kids call me Momma Magda.” Her accent was thick, and the way she grinned after each sentence made me think she was proud of her ability to speak English. Ellie and Strawberry were smiling, too.

  “Also, dinner. Soon, sí?” Magda said.

  Simon was nodding before she finished speaking. “Yes!” he said with a grin.

  “Okay. All good. Forty-five thousand each room. Two rooms. Yes?”

  “Um, yes,” Deondre said. “Third floor facing west?”

  “Sí, sí, like spoke on phone. No problemo. Breakfast free, dinner extra. Ten thousand.” She pointed at each of us as she head counted and then held up five fingers. “Cinco, five, sí?” She sucked her lower lip deep into her mouth as she grinned and waited for an answer.

  This time even Deondre couldn’t resist smiling back. “Perfect,” he said with a chuckle. “Yes, we’d like to include dinner.”

  “Now, card for deposit?”

  “How about cash?” Deondre said. He pulled out his wallet and counted out 420,000 pesos. That was enough for three ni
ghts, breakfast and dinner included. It seemed like a ton of money, but it was only a hundred and forty dollars.

  Magda beamed. “Oh, sí, yes. Cash good.” She stuffed the bills in her apron pocket, then turned around and retrieved two keys from the cubbies mounted on the wall. “I show you.” She shuffled down the hallway, her large bottom swaying. We followed.

  “And then dinner, right?” Simon asked.

  ***

  “Can’t you smell that?” Simon asked. The five of us had used the common bathroom to clean up, and were now gathered in the room assigned to us three boys. The room was small but clean, with two bunk beds, closet, and a dresser. Simon opened the hallway door and the enticing aroma of Momma Magda’s dinner drifted in.

  “Whoa,” Deondre said, tilting his nose upward. “I didn’t realize how hungry I was.” He moved toward the door. “Let’s go.”

  “Go ahead,” I said. “I need a couple minutes.” I was sitting at a small desk at the window. Strawberry stood beside me, watching as I donned my Spider and woke up the tablet. Ellie was at the window, peeking through a slit in the curtains at the three-story building across the street.

  “We’ll wait with Alex,” Strawberry said. “Get us a good table.”

  “Better hurry,” Simon said. “Or there won’t be anything left!” He and Deondre left, closing the door behind them.

  “A car just pulled up,” Ellie said.

  Strawberry reached out to pull the curtain back, but I grabbed her arm. “Turn off the lights first,” I said as I dimmed the screen on the tablet.

  “Duh,” Strawberry said, shaking her head as if to scold herself. She quick-stepped to the door and flicked off the overhead light. With the room darkened, Ellie pulled open the curtain. The three of us watched as the driver and passenger doors of a dark-colored Mercedes opened and two men exited.