by Misty Evans
Nelson stopped and went back to her. His arm brushed against hers has he shined the light along the bottom of the cage. “Isn’t that what you were thinking?”
He felt her shiver. “Actually,” she said, “I was hoping they were stored in a safe like any other valuable.”
Possibly, but the missiles were too big to put in a safe.
Something that resembled a white log moved on the enclosure’s floor. Sophie took a sudden step back, knocking into his elbow. The flashlight beam jerked right and landed on the giant snake’s head.
The python was a rare albino with a couple of very pale yellow spots on its back. One beady red eye stared straight at them.
“Gah,” Sophie said, shaking her head and letting loose a jittery laugh. She tapped on the glass and pointed at the snake. “You, my friend, would make a beautiful handbag and matching shoes.”
“Taunting a snake we may have to get cozy with, is probably not a great idea.”
“God, I hope there’s a safe.”
A safe would be nice, tidy, and far less dangerous.
Nelson hadn’t been looking for missiles when Morales had given him the official tour, but he also hadn’t noticed anything resembling a safe. “Alright. Let’s sweep the building and see what we find.”
What they found was a wall of smaller snakes in glass terrariums, and a supply room filled with cleaning products and various equipment to handle and move the snakes. Sophie uncovered what looked like a spare tank and found it contained rats.
“Eww.” She made gagging noises. “Nothing like a diet of rats and body parts.”
Dropping the cover back over the glass terrarium, she avoided the rest.
Leaning against the wall in one corner was a large, black terrarium base. Next to it was a tall cabinet with a lock. Sophie motioned Nelson over and it took him about five seconds to pick the lock.
Inside, the shelves looked like a serial killer’s wet dream. A pile of plastic sheeting, a chainsaw, a short handled axe, and a tray of what looked like surgical tools.
“I overheard Chavez once,” Sophie said. “He was talking about his top five favorite torture sessions. His number one favorite involved cutting off a man’s fingers and toes one by one and feeding them to one of the snakes in order to get the man to talk. The man was either extremely resilient or extremely stupid and refused, even after they had taken off all of his digits, his ears, and one of his hands at the wrist. He was bleeding out and still wouldn’t talk. Then Chavez got smart and threatened to cut off his penis. The guy spilled everything he knew and then some.”
Nelson gave a mental shudder. “You don’t mess with a man’s dick.”
“He still ended up food for Goliath.” She closed the doors and relocked the cabinet. “God only knows how many men have fed that python. Where’s the interrogation room?”
Nelson led her out of the supply room and around the corner. There were no windows inside this room, so he flipped on the lights.
Dingy beige walls, a chair, chains and ropes for tying men up. Old blood stains hopscotched across the concrete floor. Along the back wall there was a dip in the floor, a trough that led to a grate. Nelson assumed that underneath that grate was where the fishies lived.
The wall to their right was the backside of the anaconda’s enclosure. It was entirely sealed off but for a sliding door in the glass about head high where rats and body parts could be dropped inside.
Seeing the light, and perhaps anticipating a late-night snack, the anaconda appeared, slithering up out of some vines to watch them. Sophie stood for a moment, eyeing the green twenty-foot snake and his enclosure. She took out her own penlight and headed for the door. “I want to do another sweep of the front.”
Nelson followed, this time peeling off to the left and checking for any hidden doors or storage possibilities he might have missed while she went right. After a half hour of searching every nook and cranny, and tapping on every wall and floor, he’d found nothing. No safes, no hidden compartments, no false doors.
Back in the main area, he found Sophie crouched in front of the python’s enclosure, running her hands along the black, plastic base. “The cages can’t sit directly on the floor. I examined that base in the supply room and it has a heater and some type of ventilation fan. Got me to thinking. Maybe that one wasn’t functioning properly or…”
She ran her hands along the side of the plastic, stopping when her fingers found what she was looking for. Nelson heard a distinctive click. “Maybe Rodrigo or his snake caretaker had a different one designed for under this cage in order to make room for a safe.”
Another click. She gave a tug and the end of the black plastic casing popped off. “If Rodrigo needed to make a quick getaway and wanted those ledgers, he wouldn’t want to fend off a giant snake to do so. What if he hid them under the enclosure?”
The terrarium bases were long and deep enough to fit a dozen men inside. Definitely big enough to hide SAMs as well. Why hadn’t he thought of that?
Jogging to the other end, Nelson set his flashlight to shine on the base and ran his hands along the edges until he found one clip, then another. Popping them off, he helped Sophie ease the long cover away from the wall.
Sophie shined her light along the inside and they both sat for a moment studying what they’d found.
Three fans and a base heater lined the underside of the enclosure as suspected, but Sophie’s beam swept over and then came back to stop on something else. Something as black as the dark underbelly of the terrarium.
“What is that?” she said.
Not missiles. “A suitcase?”
Above them, the python made its way to the glass. As lightning split the sky outside, a ray of light tripped across the enclosure. The snake stared down at Sophie, his long tongue slithering out and smacking into the glass.
Sophie flipped him off.
“It has drawers.” She inched her knees closer to the cavernous space under Goliath and reached toward the black, soft-sided suitcase. She removed it, brushed some dirt off the top and found a zipper on one end. Unzipping it, she slipped off the fabric to reveal what looked like a toolbox with a set of five drawers. A clasp with a lock hung on the front of the drawers.
She snapped her fingers at him. “Do your thing.”
He slid in next to her, and she ran her hands along the narrow fronts of the drawers as he worked his magic on the lock.
“I know what this is.”
The lock sprang free and he flipped the clasp up and out of the way. “What?”
“Not ledgers or weapons,” she said, grabbing one of the drawer’s handles and opening it. “But something that makes a lot more sense.”
As her penlight beam swept over the contents, Nelson had no idea what she was talking about.
Sophie stared at the tray of odd-sized rocks, disappointment flooding her system. This was not at all what she was looking for.
Nelson leaned forward. “He’s keeping a bunch of rocks in a locked case under the snake’s cage? Shouldn’t the rocks go inside the cage?”
They did indeed look like the exact rocks inside Goliath’s cage.
But these rocks were far more valuable.
“They’re uncut gemstones.” She ran her fingers over the rough stones. “They don’t look like much in this state, but once they are cut and polished, they could be worth hundreds of thousands of dollars. Much like the ones Rodrigo has displayed in his study.”
Nelson whistled low. “Why is he hiding them here?”
Good question. She pulled out another tray, found the same thing and closed it again. “As a backup in case the house was raided or burned down? Most anyone who found them would be like you and think they were just rocks.”
A tug and Nelson dragged the black carrier out from under the terrarium. He hefted it with one hand and set it down. “Easy to carry off in an emergency.”
Something had fallen over when Nelson pulled out the carrier. A sweep of the interior with her penlight and
Sophie saw a backpack lying on the dirty concrete. “Or he could dump them in that backpack and take off. He trained to be a gemologist in Amsterdam. He could cut and sell those stones anywhere, anytime, and fund a new life for him and Lexie.”
“And leave his precious snakes behind?”
“A six hundred pound python is hard to carry when you’re on the run.”
Across the way, the anaconda was now watching them too, wound around a tree limb, his upper half hanging down and swinging slightly. “Touché.”
Before she knew it, Nelson was belly crawling under the cage. “What are you doing?”
His flashlight bounced off the sides as he went deeper. “Looking for missiles.”
The built-in cage had to be at least seven feet deep. Sophie watched as Nelson’s legs and feet slowly disappeared into the dark cavern. Above him, Goliath continued to stare at her and stick out his tongue.
Ignoring the snake—she would have nightmares for years after this—she focused on following Nelson’s flashlight beam. “You really think they could get missiles into that space?”
The upper half of his body was hidden behind the fans. “They could have buried them.”
“You don’t see anything else unusual in there, do you?”
“Just a massive cobweb and a couple of spiders that I’m pretty sure are both venomous.”
Spiders! Another of her favorites. Along with cartel leaders, Mexico was full of them. “Please come out. I can’t afford for you to get bit by a venomous spider and ruin my entire op.”
As Nelson inched his way back toward her, Sophie opened the bottom drawer of the carrier. Her pulse leapt in her throat. “Nels? I found something.”
A deep thud sounded from the enclosure, making her jump. The stupid snake was banging its head against the glass.
“Stop it,” she yelled, completely sick of the thing. Sticking out her tongue at him, she barely kept herself from slapping the glass. “I’m not your goddamn next meal, you freak.”
Nelson emerged, brushing dirt from his shoulders and chest. “What is it?”
Sophie shined her penlight on the last open drawer. A set of three worn, leather-bound journals were tightly tucked into it. The ledgers.
Angelique.
Pulse leaping again, this time with joy, she threw her arms around Nelson’s neck. “We found them. We found her.”
Chapter Seventeen
Nelson didn’t want to dash Sophie’s hopes, but they hadn’t actually found anyone yet. He hugged her back, then hated himself for saying what had to be said. “You’re sure those are the ledgers?”
She released him and picked up one of the leather books. “Yes! These are the ones.” She grabbed the other two, hugging all three to her chest. “Let’s get out of here.”
“What’s that?” he pointed to something under the last book she’d picked up.
Her fingers deftly reached in and scooped it up. She held it up for him to see, turning it over. “An old 3.5 hard disk like they used to use in the nineties.”
“Let me see it.”
Rain fell, coating the window near the door. Handing the disk off to him, she held onto the ledgers as she grabbed the backpack and dumped them inside.
Nelson ran his fingers over the hard square of plastic. On the label, there was no name or list of files it contained, only a sticker of the solemn face of the Virgin Mary. Was she a good luck charm to keep whatever files were on the disk safe?
His search for missiles had been a bust, but maybe Sophie had just found something more interesting. He pocketed the outdated disk. “Help me put the cover back on.”
Together, they returned the carrier of gemstones to its hiding place and secured the plastic case back on the base of the terrarium. Nelson made a quick scan, double-checking that everything had been returned to normal. Then, they snuck out the door.
They were drenched in a matter of seconds as they made their way to the guest house, sticking to the shadows like before, and avoiding the compound’s patrols and cameras.
Inside the apartment, Sophie was nearly giddy. She dumped the backpack on a chair, wet strands of hair hanging around her face where they’d broken free of her ponytail. Her pants were soaked and had adhered even closer to her shapely curves. She shucked off her wet sweatshirt, and as she did so, the shirt underneath also rose, giving Nelson a view of her smooth, tanned skin, and the briefest glance of her lacy, black bra.
God help him.
He was standing there in his own puddle, eyeballing the generous outline of her breasts through the thin, wet material of her shirt, when she caught his gaze and sent him a scathing glance as she flicked water from her fingertips. “Could you grab some towels, please? I don’t want to get the ledgers wet.”
Towels. Right. He jerked his gaze away and went to the bathroom for towels.
Coming back, he tossed one to her. She dried herself quickly, then removed her ponytail and wound her hair in the towel. With deft fingers, she unzipped the backpack, removed the ledgers, and headed for the kitchen table.
Nelson toweled off, relieved they finally had what Sophie wanted, but frustrated he had no clue where the damn missiles were stored. He’d have to break into the house and scan it tomorrow. Maybe even check the staff house.
The missiles, Chica Bonita, keeping Sophie safe. His jobs were piling up fast.
Removing the disk from his pocket, he realized there was no way to see what was on it. Sophie didn’t have a personal laptop, and even if she did, it would take a vintage 1980s computer to read one.
A loud, “Goddamn!” rang out from the kitchen interrupting his thoughts. It was followed by a sharp smack, like the sound of a book hitting the wall.
He tossed the disk on the coffee table and hustled to the kitchen. When he saw Sophie, his stomach sank to his knees. She was sitting at the table with her head in her hands, a look of total defeat in her slumped shoulders. One of the ledgers lay open on the floor near the doorway.
Yep, she’d thrown it against the wall.
“Tell me those aren’t the wrong ledgers.”
She shook her head without looking up at him. “They’re the correct ones.”
If those were the right ones…oh, hell. Had she discovered something bad about Angelique? Something even worse than being sold into slavery? “What is it?”
“I can’t read them.”
“Come again?”
“I can’t read the damn ledgers.”
He bent down and lifted the book from the floor. “Why not?”
She raised her head and he saw tears streaming down her face. “Because, after all this, all these months and years of searching for her, she’s right here and I can’t…I can’t understand them.”
“But you know Spanish.”
“They’re not just in Spanish.”
She pointed at the book in his hands and Nelson glanced down at the lines of handwriting.
His brain couldn’t make sense of them, even though he knew a good deal of Spanish too. What was written on the page looked like his mother’s native tongue, but the sentences were a gobbly-gook of mixed up words. “What is this?”
“They’re in code, Nelson.” Her eyes were disheartened. “A code we can’t begin to cipher.”
Code? Shit.
“Sophie.” He started to move toward her.
She waved him off with one hand as she dashed at the tears on her cheeks with the other. “Don’t. I know what you’re going to say and I don’t want to hear it. This was my chance to find Angelique, to find some kind of trail. I have to turn these ledgers in as evidence now without knowing what they say. The Bureau will decode them, and eventually I’ll find out if she’s mentioned, but it could take months, maybe longer.”
She took the ledger back and closed it, gently caressing the leather cover. Her voice dropped a notch. “All this time, I thought I was finally going to find out what happened to her. I would finally have a lead or at least some closure. But no. The Morales cartel has outfoxed
me yet again.”
The pain in her voice was too much for him. He went to her anyway, bending down next to her and rubbing her back. “It’s a setback, I won’t argue that, but it’s not the end. We’ll find her, one way or the other.”
“We?” She chuckled without humor. “There is no we, Nelson. I told you that before. You crashed my operation, yes, and although it pains me to admit it, you’ve been very helpful and useful. But when this is over, you’ll go back to the taskforce and I’ll go back to the Bureau. Once more, it will be up to me, and only me, to find out what happened to my little sister.”
He had to do something. Had to convince her that she wasn’t alone in this. He moved his hand to the back of her neck and massaged the tight knots there. “I’m not giving up on finding her. Whether it’s tomorrow, or the next day, or next year, I will help you find Angelique, and if possible, bring her home.”
Sophie’s dark eyes slowly shifted to his. Tears once more filled them, but a spark of hope glistened there as well. “Why? Why would you do that after the way I’ve treated you?”
Her vulnerability was so rare, so raw, he had to glance away for a second and recover. Clearing his throat, he shot her one of his famous heart-melting grins—the one most women melted over—and tugged her braid. “We’re partners now, remember?”
The spark of hope dimmed. “Partners, right. Like the last time.”
“You weren’t my partner then, Sophie. You sabotaged my operation to save your own.”
“Which totally backfired on me and I ended up as empty handed as you when Ciro Morales caught on that I was undercover inside his human trafficking organization and shut it down. Oh yeah, and then after he went lights on with Chica Bonita, you left me.”
Left her? “You lied to me, seduced me, and then told me to get the hell out when I tried to help you pick up the Chica Bonita trail again.”
She sighed as if too tired to fight. “I was afraid, okay?”
“Afraid? Of what?”
A long, heavy pause weighted the silence. When she finally spoke, it was a soft whisper. “You.”