by Tia Siren
"Do you want more?"
I could already feel the grease causing a tiny bit of heartburn and hoped that I wouldn't disgrace myself on this first date by burping like Casey. When we were younger, we'd get into burping contests. I was a little too old for that kind of thing now, but I used to be able to burp with the best of them.
"No thanks," I told him. I settled back in my chair and looked at the restaurant. It was still packed, although the people in the chairs near the entrance had either been seated or gone somewhere else. Strange. Out of the corner of my eye, I could see people going down a staircase.
"Is there extra seating downstairs?" I asked. "I didn't think that there would be since we're on the ground floor?"
"Downstairs?" Luis asked. "I don't think so. I don't really know."
But there was a frown on his face, as if he didn't like this line of questioning. I felt cold all of a sudden, even though the spice in my pollo con arroz should've warmed me up.
"I need to go to the bathroom." It was definitely time to hail a taxi in this sketchy part of town and text Casey. Luis probably wouldn't be happy about being ditched and he knew where I lived, but I was sure that policemen were held to a higher standard of conduct than your average Joe. I went to the back hallway and went into the women's restroom, which was behind a curtain. It wasn't fancy, but I got the job done. I looked into the mirror which had dark flecks on it and tried not to think about how filthy this place was. I saw that my lipstick had disappeared when I was eating. I sighed and reapplied it. I took a peek out of the door. There was a guy going into the kitchen with an empty tray. After that, the coast was clear. I went to the delivery door and pulled it open. I slipped into the alley without looking back into the restaurant.
A hard hand closed around my throat. I was being strangled to death. I kicked, my feet dangling in the air, but I was pressed against a hard brick wall and had a few seconds to live. As I struggled to pull his hands away from my throat, I was running out of air. In a few moments, I'd run out of the ability to even struggle.
I saw a tiny flash of light reflected on a small piece of metal. Someone jabbed a needle into my attacker's neck. It was fast-acting, so my attacker slumped on the dirty, wet ground of the alley in seconds. I gasped for air, filing my lungs with much-needed air. I knew that I'd have bruises on my neck tomorrow. On my knees on the wet ground, I looked up at the shadowy figure of my savior.
"Thank you for saving me," I said, still breathless.
"Who said I was saving you?" Luis asked as he jabbed a needle into my neck. My eyes closed almost instantly.
10
Headboard
When my eyes opened again, it was still dark. I was on my back. I tried to sit up, but I realized that my hands were tied to a headboard. It felt very solid.
A tendril of fear snaked through my heart. Before I started hyperventilating, I tried to look around me and see if I could see anything.
No dice. It was too dark to see, so I used my ears. Beyond the soft, steady drip of a leaky faucet, I couldn't hear anything. If Luis had kidnapped both me and my attacker, we weren't being held in the same room. Who knew that running out on a date could get you handcuffed to a headboard?
I settled back and tried to go back to sleep. I couldn't do much in this position besides worry. But the sensory deprivation inside of the dark room made my mind skitter in a thousand directions. What was going on? Who was the man who'd tried to strangle me? Why had Luis kidnapped me?
It wasn't as if your average citizen ever ran into these sorts of things. I sighed. My clothes were still wet, which meant that it hadn't been that long since the shadowy man picked me up. I had an itch on my right shoulder blade that I couldn't touch. I writhed against the bed, trying to scratch it. I sighed as I pushed against the edge of a bedspring which touched exactly the right place.
"Touching yourself?" I heard a voice inquire silkily. I jumped as much as I could in the bed. The door cracked open. "You're a restless sleeper."
It was Luis, still shrouded in darkness. With light at his back, I couldn't see much of his face. From this angle, I saw that he had cauliflower ears, which meant that he'd grown up doing some kind of contact sport like wrestling.
"I can't exactly do that if my hands are cuffed to the bed, now, can I?"
"Point," he said. I could hear the smile in his voice.
"Why on earth have you kidnapped me?" I asked, trying to sound much braver than I was.
"You saw someone somewhere that you shouldn't have." He sighed a little. "And I'm afraid that we're going to have to keep you here until things settle down."
"I have a life, you know." I stopped pulling against my restraints. "I don't have time for this."
"You're going to have to make time. We'll make sure that nobody goes looking for you."
I told Casey where I was, but he wouldn't check his phone until tomorrow morning at the earliest. Even then, he could assume that I'd just stayed with Luis. He wouldn't be far off the mark. It's just that the handcuffs weren't exactly part of a kinky game. I squeezed my eyes shut. My parents were dead and my sister worked on a cruise ship. She was constantly out of Internet range and we weren't close to begin with, so it'd be several months before she even checked in. I cursed my antisocial ways. I was at the mercy of a crazy man.
"You drugged me." I shook my head. "Why?"
"Why were you poking your nose where you shouldn't?"
"What are you talking about?"
"You went to our delivery area."
"Our?" I looked at him. "Are you a cop?"
"Sometimes," he said. "It's a recent thing."
Things clicked into place in my head. The word JEFE inscribed on his table. The way that it was empty when every other table was full. The way that nobody looked us in the small restaurant.
"You're a drug lord."
"I prefer narco-trafficker," he said. "It translates better."
I could hear my heart pounding in my ears as I yanked at the handcuffs another time. "Oh my gosh, are you going to sell me or something?"
"No," he said. "Calm down." He sighed. "You're just a bystander. If I could induce amnesia of the past few weeks, I would. And you'd go back to your ordinary life." He rubbed his eyes. "But you've already seen too much. You know too much."
"I don't know anything." I compared myself to Jon Snow. "I just want to go home, please."
"You don't have an address. You have your mail sent to a PO Box that is overflowing."
"True," I said.
"Once in a while, like now, you stay with a gay man who has a one-bedroom apartment."
"Also true."
"And he's on a date right now."
"How would you..." I trailed off. "You set it up."
"Of course," he said.
"Is this connected to the theft of my truck?" Because until he'd stabbed two people in the neck with a needle, his cover had been intact.
"What do you think you saw?"
"A man fought me. I tried to strangle him. He got away."
"Yes," Luis said.
My mind was racing as I tried to put the pieces together. "So you're saying that when my truck was stolen, I saw more than you wanted me to see?"
"Yes."
I blinked. "But all I did was wake up, fail to get my truck, and get stranded on the side of the road in the middle of nowhere. I pissed off Casey by interrupting his gaming time and immediately went to the police station the next morning."
"I've only been there for two months," Luis said. "And I had to join up under my real name because of the stringent background checks. They call all of your childhood friends to make sure that it's okay for you to be there."
"Challenging," I said. "I guess that must've been annoying."
"I can uncuff you from the headboard, but before I do, I'm going to chain your legs." He changed the subject so deftly that I couldn't even keep up. He grabbed my ankles and brought them towards the floor. He was kneeling in front of me now. He must have had insane n
ight vision, because to me this room was pitch dark. I could feel something cold settling around my ankles. I inhaled. I could smell corn.
"I brought you a couple tacos." He uncuffed my hands and I slid my body so that I was in a sitting position. My feet might still be bound, but having my hands free improved my mood. Now that he'd told me he had tacos, I could smell meat. My mouth watered. He went towards the door and flicked a switch. He had set the plate of tacos on a small table near the door.
I was in a nice bedroom. The curtains were brocade and the table he'd used was marble. The headboard I'd been chained to, and might be chained to again, was intricate.
"This is a pretty bedroom." I watched eagerly as the food landed in my lap. I began to eat it with my hands. It tasted awesome. There was a napkin on the underside of the plate, and I used it when I was done to get the last of the juice off of me.
"Can I have something to drink?"
"Mango juice," he said. He pulled out a box from his pocket. "But before I give it to you, I want you to tell me what happened when your truck was stolen."
"You have access to the report. You were there the entire time." I shook my head. "Hell, you probably know more about what happened than I do."
"Tell me," Luis insisted. "Or you won't get juice."
The saltiness of the tacos was sitting on my tongue. He drove a hard bargain. "Sure. I was sleeping."
"You were sleeping in your truck? No fixed address. Right."
"Yeah. I was wrapped in a black blanket and he didn't see me. So he hotwired my car and just started driving. I woke up when my car started moving. I tried to strangle him. He almost came out of the car to fight me, but he just drove off instead. I called Casey."
"Did you see his face?"
"I was focused on a lot of other stuff. Tell me what's going on."
Luis shook his head. "Nothing that you need to know." He gave me the juice box after poking the straw through the hole. It was a strangely caring gesture from someone who'd just chained my ankles together. "I'll try to get you out of here as soon as I can."
"I have a life!" I protested.
"Nothing urgent," he said. "We'll wrap things up here and you'll be free to go."
"What are you doing here? Is there a reason that a narco-trafficker infiltrated the police?"
"Maybe," Luis said, wincing. "You should stop asking questions."
Maybe I'd shut up, but that wouldn't stop me from thinking about why exactly he kidnapped me. "You said that I knew too much anyway."
"There's a territory war going on," Luis said. "That's what you've witnessed, both when your truck was stolen and behind my restaurant."
"Your restaurant?"
"We have to feed people, you know. And my men don't have time to cook."
"There were families in there," I protested. "Did you feed them, too?"
Luis nodded. "I take my responsibilities seriously."
"Responsibilities!" I cried in an incredulous tone. "You're a lawbreaker!"
"Nonetheless, I'm the reason why those families are in this country. And I have a duty to feed them."
I shook my head. "I don't understand your sense of honor when you sell people drugs."
"I only sell what they want." Luis shrugged. "You have to understand that without any demand, there wouldn't be any supply. I'm giving people what they want." I frowned at him. He regarded me with a small smile on his face. "You don't know what it's like back home. Being here in Texas is the best possible thing that they can do for themselves and their families. We cook for a large group and the children are never hungry. It's not like home."
"You mean that you don't feel at home in Texas?"
"No, just that there are more opportunities here. The fathers might be with me, but the kids have an opportunity to go to school here, maybe go to college, and establish themselves with more options than they would if their parents stayed back home. The money is good, but the hope is better." He winked at me, a weirdly light-hearted gesture considering that I was sitting here and conversing with him as if we were just social acquaintances instead of captor and prisoner. He plucked the empty juice box from my hand and took the plate away. "I hope you have a good rest. I'll send in one of my girls in a minute. I should let you know that she doesn't speak English or Spanish. She only speaks Nahuatl."
I ground my teeth. I didn't speak Nahuatl. And now I knew he was going to take care of me but not give me a chance to escape. The door barely closed when a small girl came in. She must have been waiting outside for the right signal and looked like she was maybe 19. She was dressed in a gray t-shirt and jeans. She very slowly brought me to the corner, where there was a toilet with a cover on it. She flipped it up and motioned for me to sit down before turning around. I did my business and wiped myself. I flushed. There was a bottle of hand sanitizer next to the toilet, and I cleaned my hands. When I put my clothes back in place, I cleared my throat. She turned around and gripped my elbow to lead me back to the bed. Very simply, she handcuffed me back to the bed and then undid the restraints on my ankles. She took them away with her before closing the door and leaving me in the dark.
A stab of panic filled me, turning my heart to ice. Were they going to leave me here to rot? I just didn't know what they wanted to do to me. I'd been caught in something that was crazy. I thought I was on the edge by living in my car, but I'd clearly stumbled into something that was far beyond what I could handle. I might be cuffed to the bed, but I wasn't helpless.
I turned everything that Luis had told me over in my head. He had told me that I'd gotten caught up in a turf war. I knew that he'd kidnapped me, but all things considered, he was a pretty gentle captor. I wouldn't get those kind of tacos in jail. I got the impression that the girl would be back later, considering that I was cuffed to the headboard.
I had to think. There had to be a way out of here. I just had to convince Luis that I wasn't a threat. He feared exposure and maybe that I'd work some outside force again. I thought harder about the fact that they'd gone through the process of getting him into the police force. Surely that meant something. It was more than just a turf war, which could be fought with weapons. Why would he need to be a police officer? He specialized in the vice squad.
He was killing his competition under the guise of being a police officer. He was eliminating the competition legally. They were all armed. Maybe he had to go through a lot of paperwork, but he had been shooting them. He was establishing his own territory. I wondered if he'd get more of his own men into positions of power in the local police force or if he'd been planting them there all along. I thought of the way that he'd walked through that police station, as if he were the king of the jungle. He had more power there than the chief, and that was saying a lot.
If I didn't want this entire area to be controlled by Luis, I had to get out and warn someone. I wasn't against eliminating drugs on the street, but he wasn't doing that. He was just clearing the way for himself. And I didn't want him to take over this city. I yanked my hands forward and felt the tiniest bit of give. My heart almost stopped in that moment. I thought that the headboard might be made out of metal, but it might just be painted wood. It was clearly not some cheap plywood, but if I could pull my hands free I could make a run for it.
I needed a plan of where to go when I got out of here. I couldn't go straight to the local police. I suspected that Luis had men in places to take care of anything that cropped up. That meant that I had to hit people on the federal level. Did the FBI deal with drugs or was that only the DEA? I didn't even know how to contact the DEA, so I resolved to find a safe place and contact the FBI from there. I couldn't go to Casey's house. Luis probably had men there. If he didn't have them there now, he'd have them there in the future when he'd realized that I escaped. I couldn't go to my mom's house for the same reason.
Mr. Raymond. There was an adorable old man who proposed to me at least once a week when he tottered by my truck. He said that a young girl like me shouldn't be sleeping outdoors on her o
wn. I knew where his house was, because he'd given me his card the first time that he'd proposed. He thought that I was in trouble, that I was hiding from someone by living in my truck. The reality was that I was hiding from adult responsibilities. I experienced my first drop of doubt. Luis really did take care of his own people. Wasn't it better for the city to be controlled by someone with a heart?
I squashed that little tendril of doubt without an ounce of mercy. Could I live with myself if I let a drug lord run unchecked? I knew that I couldn't.
I pulled harder against the wood. My wrists hurt. I couldn't see them, but I knew I'd have redness now and ugly bruises later. But I kept throwing my whole weight into pulling as quietly as I could. I heard a sound, and then my hands were sailing free.
My heart was beating so fast that I could hear it. I thought that the girl who had helped me earlier might be waiting outside. But I also knew that I had to move as quickly as I could. If I waited for someone to come back into the room, I'd be caught. I was at a disadvantage with my handcuffs. I walked straight to the door. It was locked. At least I had a knob on my side.
I needed to think. How could I get through? My hands were cuffed together. I thought back to an episode of some cop show. The lady cop had pulled underwire out of her bra, but I also thought that she could actually see when she did that. It was dark in here, but I didn't have a lot of options or time. I didn't even know how to pick handcuffs, but I guessed that I was going to have to learn now.
I loosened my clothing enough for me to start tearing my underwire out. I was uncomfortably contorted, but there was no way that I could have actually gotten my bra off with my hands cuffed together. I tore at the horribly sturdy fabric until finally I could grip a piece of wire. I breathed a sigh of relief as I pushed the end of it into the little keyhole of my cuffs.
Nothing.
I had no idea what I was doing. I pushed it into the lock on the door and heard something thunk. I didn't know why, but I turned the doorknob experimentally and prayed that nobody had heard the sound. As I pushed it open, I could see that the hallway outside was dark as well. Wherever I was being held wasn't heavily populated. I couldn't hear any sounds from the other rooms in the hallway. My hands were cuffed, but I could get out. I snuck towards an outside window and pushed it open. I climbed up with my hands aching and blessed the little bit of gymnastics I'd done as a kid. I was old and fat now, but I knew how to scramble up on something taller than my head. With some soundless cursing, I made it through the window.