by Marc Cameron
“I have Ellie lined up to babysit.” Marie’s honeyed voice purred from the dash speaker.
“That’s good. . . .” Pollard watched in the rearview mirror as the white Explorer fell into the flow of traffic two cars back. “Really good,” he mumbled.
“You don’t even know what I’m talking about, do you?”
Marie’s teasing yanked him pack to reality.
“Sorry, honey,” he confessed, an eye still watching the Explorer. “I really don’t.”
“Wow,” Marie laughed. She had to be used to him after thirteen years. “For a genius professor you’d forget your shoes if you didn’t stub your toes all the time.” Marie’s family sprang from Bremerton, Washington, and her easygoing Pacific Northwest demeanor came through even when she was miffed. “You know you have to guess now, right?”
Pollard tapped the wheel, thinking. The white SUV stayed glued to his bumper as he another corner.
“Listen,” he said, biting his bottom lip. “You’re going to think I’m crazy, but someone might be following me.”
“Oh no, you don’t, Mr. Matthew,” his wife chided. “You’re not getting off that easy—”
“Seriously,” Pollard said, fighting to keep calm.
He took another right.
The Explorer followed.
“You’re a bona fide genius,” Marie said. “Lose them and get your butt home. Simon is getting on my last nerve and we have tickets—”
“I’m serious, sweetheart.” The white SUV maneuvered around the only remaining car on the road and moved up just inches behind the Prius.
“Maybe they just happen to be going the same direction.” Marie’s voice held a frightened edge.
“Maybe,” Pollard said, but his churning gut told him otherwise. His past was hunting him down. “I’m not far away, but I’ll make a block before I come home and see what happens. If I can’t lose them I’m going to call the police.”
Sweat beaded on his upper lip, hidden by his dark beard. He turned right again, a block before his street.
The SUV stayed on his tail, unwavering. He could make out the faces of the two earlier visitors to his classroom. The blond man wore a ball cap and sunglasses and leaned forward from the backseat. The woman sat in the passenger seat; her eyes still sneered with boredom. The driver was a smallish Hispanic man with a craggy face he’d never seen before.
Pollard swallowed hard. “Take Simon to the bedroom,” he said, feeling sick. “Lock the door and get my shotgun out of the closet—”
Nothing but dead air crackled over the speakers.
“Marie,” Pollard shouted at the silence. “Marie! Are you still—”
“Matthew? You sound absolutely flummoxed.” The voice was cold and soulless. “You have a beautiful wife, such an innocent child. Come home so you can formally introduce us.”
Pollard’s retched, his throat seared with acid dread.
He shoved the gas pedal to the floor and whipped the wheel sharply left, spinning the little Prius in the narrow residential street. Metal shrieked and groaned as the front fender careened off the tailgating SUV’s driver’s door, then slid down the side. He caught the glint of a cruel grin on the woman’s face as he sped past toward his wife and son.
CHAPTER 11
Pollard burst through the front door.
“Marie!”
A male voice answered him from the around the corner in the parlor where Marie kept her piano. “We’re all here, my friend,” it said. “Please, come join us.”
Pollard froze at the doorway when he saw the dark man with a thin mustache lounging on the love seat. His legs were crossed and a glowing cigar hung from his fingers. Marie sat in a matching chair to his right. She was tall and slender with short caramel-blond hair pulled back with a red polka-dot band. Her normally wide smile had fallen away and her lips parted in shock. Her chest shook with uncontrolled sobs as she clutched their squirming baby in her arms as if he was a life buoy.
A thuggish man with a crooked nose and broad shoulders crowded in between the back of the chair and the wall, towering over her, arms folded across a chest. A sparse beard did little to hide the burn scars on his lips and chin. The glint in his eye said brute intimidation was a favorite pastime.
The front door slammed as the man and woman from the SUV came in behind Pollard. He shot a glance over his shoulder and saw that a third man, the Hispanic driver, limped badly. His heart sank. Five to one were impossible odds.
“Matt . . .” Marie looked up when he came in the room. “Who are these people?”
Simon, just under a year old and teething, sucked on a peeled carrot. He was just beginning to take a few steps and stood on Marie’s knee, holding the edge of her chair.
Pollard’s face twitched with rage. “What are you doing in my house?”
The man on the love seat looked back and forth from Matthew to Marie. At length, he turned his body to face Marie, leaning forward with his elbows on his knees.
She coughed as the cloud of smoke from his cigar enveloped her.
“You must forgive me, my dear. I’ve been hopping from Africa to New York then Spokane. . . . I must confess the last several hours have been a blur.” The man yawned, blinking as if he was about to fall asleep. He shot a glance up at Pollard, batting his eyelashes. “I am shocked your husband has not mentioned me. We were . . . Matthew, would you have called us friends?”
“Hardly.”
“Pity.” The man gave an exhausted sigh. “I would have called us friends. My name is Valentine Zamora. The man behind you is my associate, Julian Monagas. We had the good fortune to work with your husband some years ago.”
“You know these people?” Marie turned toward Pollard, eyes pleading to understand.
Zamora stood, reaching for the baby.
Marie screamed, but Monagas yanked her back by her hair.
Pollard roared, bolting to protect his family no matter the odds. Something heavy caught him across the back of the head, driving him to his knees. He pushed himself up with one arm, holding his head with the other, waiting for the waves of nausea to pass.
Zamora stood beside the love seat, an anxious Simon pressed to his chest. His actions were soft and gentle, but his face and words made it clear he had dispensed with all other niceties.
“I find myself in need of your expertise, Matthew,” he said, looking up at Marie. “Did you know your dear husband is a nuclear genius?”
Tears streamed down her face, but she didn’t move.
“It doesn’t matter.” Zamora shrugged. “There is often much we do not know about our loved ones. Pack a bag. You are coming with us.”
“My family?”
Zamora cocked his head to one side. “Do as I say and they will be fine.”
“I’m not leaving them.”
Zamora flicked his fingers, and Pollard heard the men behind him step away.
“There’s only one reason you’d need me, Valentine,” Pollard said. “I’m not going to help you blow anything up.”
“Oh, Matthew,” Zamora said, giving a weary sigh. “Let me see.... How shall I explain myself?” He bounced Simon to keep him calm, but looked down at Marie with a leering eye. “Some men prefer to see their women in a flimsy negligee, the delicate lace of underthings hiding just enough to enhance the mystery of the feminine form.” He glanced up at the dark woman who stood in the doorway behind Pollard. “Lourdes, darling, how do I like my women?”
“Naked.” She chuckled.
“Precisely,” Zamora said. “I despise mystery. I want to have all the goods exposed and on the table, so to speak.” He craned forward with narrowed eyes, staring at Marie but speaking to Pollard. “So let me be plain. You will help me do anything I ask or I will quite literally rip this lovely boy into tiny pieces.”
Marie choked on a sob.
“I know you, Valentine.” Pollard set his quivering jaw. Inside, his bowels churned. “My family has seen your face. No matter what I do, they’re as good as dead
once we leave.”
“Tsk, tsk,” Zamora said, stroking Simon’s sandy curls. “You have serious trust issues, my friend.”
Pollard wracked his brain, searching for any alternative to what he was about to say. Tears poured in earnest from his eyes as he looked back and forth from his precious little boy to a baffled Marie. He ground his teeth until he thought they might shatter.
“Bullshit!” he sniffed, his voice harsh and cold. “You hate loose ends the way you hate mystery. You’re forgetting, I’ve seen what you do with witnesses.”
The Venezuelan’s lips turned white under his pencil-thin mustache. He rocked the baby back and forth. “You can’t be certain. It’s not worth—”
Pollard rose to his full height, fists clenched at his side. His shoulders shook with rage.
“Kill us all now!” Pollard demanded through clenched teeth. “We are all already dead, and I know it.”
Zamora’s flat-nosed thug, Monagas, gave a startled jerk, yanking Marie’s head back by her hair. Marie’s eyes bulged like they would pop out of her head.
Pollard could feel the three from the SUV loom closer behind him, but he didn’t care.
Zamora took a measured breath, clutching the baby close to smell his hair. At length, he dropped the burning cigar on the carpet and drew a black pistol from under his jacket. Finger on the trigger, he pressed it gently to Simon’s cheek, and then looked at Marie with a sickening smile.
“You see? No mystery here, my darling. You should speak to your husband. His attitude is about to make your child very dead.” The words dripped from his mouth like poison. “He seems to have lost his way.”
Marie’s lips moved, but she was too terrified to speak. Unable to turn her head because Monagas still had a fist around her hair, her eyes shot frantically between her husband and her little boy. She blinked bloodshot eyes at a heartbroken Pollard.
“Matt?” she pleaded.
He met her gaze, begging for her trust as he struggled to quiet his quaking legs. Marie’s was a world of playgroups and Pampered Chef parties. She knew little of his past and could not fathom such brutality. A brutality he thought he’d left behind, dead and buried.
He locked eyes with Zamora. His words spilled out in ragged, panting breaths.
“You’re an intelligent man, Valentine. Do you believe killing my son would force me to comply? You have me cornered. That makes me more dangerous than you could ever imagine.”
Someone attempted to grab his arm from behind— and got an elbow to the nose for his trouble. Pollard heard the snick of a pistol cocking near his head, but he didn’t bother to turn around.
Simon batted at the barrel of Zamora’s pistol with chubby hands, cooing, oblivious to the danger.
“Move the gun away from my son or shoot me now,” Pollard whispered, surprised at the sudden calm that washed over him. “Otherwise, I’m going to beat you to death.”
The room seemed to freeze as Zamora considered the situation. Grinning like a madman, he pointed the pistol at Pollard, his chest heaving with the first signs of real emotion.
Pollard met his stare with stony resolve. “It was a grave mistake to take away my hope.”
Zamora’s face twitched and then erupted into laughter. He shoved the pistol behind his back and pushed the baby toward Pollard.
“Take him,” he said, suddenly sounding fatigued. “I must admit, I forgot how well you play this game. I will leave some people to keep your wife company. You may speak to her daily via the Internet.” He raised a dark brow and flicked his hand toward the front door. “Provided you do your part and cooperate. Forget packing a bag. We’ll purchase what you need en route.”
Pollard’s shoulders slumped. He gave an almost imperceptible nod.
“Matt! You’re not actually going with him?” Marie gasped. “What is happening?”
Zamora nodded toward Monagas, who instantly released her hair.
Pollard handed her the baby and took them both in his arms.
“Apurate!” Zamora snapped his fingers. “As lovely as this scene is, my dear Matthew, you have a plane to catch. Say your quaint good-byes and let us be on our way.”
Marie’s shoulders quaked as Pollard held her to him, breathing in the smell of her and his child.
“You can’t help him hurt anyone,” she whispered, her voice soft against his neck.
“I won’t let it come to that,” Pollard lied. There was nothing he would not do to save his family.
“I mean it, Matt,” she hissed, regaining the iron will that had drawn him to her in the first place. “No matter what happens to us.”
Pollard kissed her long and hard, their tears mixing against moist cheeks. He held her shoulders firmly as he pulled away, looking directly into her eyes. He knew he’d probably never see her again.
“Trust me. Like you said, I’m a genius.”
Every word stuck in his throat. He’d brought this misery on his family. Valentine Zamora was evil, the exemplification of what he wanted his students to write about—but Pollard knew he had no one to blame but himself.
CHAPTER 12
Valentine Zamora stood on the Pollards’ front porch beside a pouting Lourdes. A wind chime made of colorful shards of pottery clanged softly over their heads. Together, they watched Monagas load the professor into the backseat of the white SUV. There was no need to tie him. He was restrained enough by his emotions. The fool would do exactly what he was asked now that his beloved family was in jeopardy. Love complicated things that way.
Jorge’s leg had been injured when Pollard had hit the SUV with his Prius, and he iced it while he waited inside with an inconsolable Marie and her baby.
Lourdes stomped her foot. She had a certain smell about her when she was angry. Though not unpleasant, it reminded Zamora of burning sugar. “You grow tired of me?” she snapped. “That is why you toss me to the side like a piece of garbage!”
He gave her shoulders a squeeze and looked down into the black depths of her gaze. When he was a young boy, Valentine’s Iranian-born mother would often warn him of Cheshm-Zakhm—the evil eye. The phrase literally meant to strike a blow with one’s eye.
Two years before, when Zamora had first met Lourdes Lopez, his mother’s warning was the first thing that had come to his mind.
He’d been at a bar near Bullhead City, Nevada, to discuss the need for certain firearms and explosives with a group of methamphetamine dealers looking to expand their territory. The bar—located well outside town—was a confusing rabbit warren of separate rooms and gaudy stages where all sorts of illicit behavior, labeled “special events” by the establishment, took place. Raucous laughter, cheers, and even screams sometimes wafted into the main barroom at each opened door. Assorted pieces of underwear, apparently donated by patrons in moments of abandon, had been nailed to every inch of the clapboard walls. The entire place stunk of sweat and stale urine. Zamora found it exhilarating.
While waiting for his contact, a series of muffled cheers drew Zamora toward a side room through the shadows behind the main bar. The whistling and applause grew louder as he approached. A deadly glare combined with a folded fifty-dollar bill got him past the fat baldy with a flashlight guarding the door.
The intense beam of a spotlight hit him full in the face as soon as the fat guy pulled open the door. As Zamora’s eyes adjusted from the darkness of the outer barroom, the stark image of a woman filled his vision. She faced him dead-on, wearing only faded blue jeans and a pushup bra of white lace that contrasted beautifully with the rich bronze and pink of her flushed skin. The muscles of her face twitched as he joined the chanting crowd in the packed room. Blue-black hair was cut short in a Cleopatra style with bangs straight across severely painted brows and eyes as sharp as straight razors. She trapped his gaze the moment he looked at her as surely as if her stare had been made up of steel jaws. Full lips, tinted with metallic green makeup, clenched tight in intense concentration. Her entire body quivered; her face ran with beads of sweat.
Straining less than ten feet from the door, she leaned forward, groping the air for him with long, tan arms. The tendons in her neck were drawn into tight cords.
“Take me,” she hissed through clenched teeth. Blood-red nails beckoned him closer. “Grab my hands, quickly!”
Entranced, Zamora had stepped to her. The strength in her hands still haunted him. She’d grabbed the lapels of his shirt, digging her nails into his chest. There was a smell . . . no, a taste of burnt sugar as she leaned in, straining to try and kiss him with trembling lips.
A frenzied cheer erupted from the mob of onlookers ringing the edges of the room.
It was only then, startled from his trance by all the yelling, that Zamora had even noticed the other woman. A blonde, she was similarly dressed in jeans and a bra but facing the opposite direction. Two shining steel hooks pierced floral tattoos over her shoulder blades, pulling the skin away from a gaunt body. Lines of blood ran from each set of wounds and down the naked flesh of her back. A length of sturdy chain connected her to an identical set of hooks piercing the back of the dark woman, the woman who now clutched his hands.
“Be still!” the dark woman gasped.
Helpless to do anything but obey, Zamora had frozen in place. Inch by agonizing inch, the dark woman had pulled herself toward him, using his weight as an anchor to pull the blonde toward a red line drawn in the middle of the tile floor.
The tattooed woman screamed as one of the hooks ripped through her flesh. She pedaled backward to keep the other hook from tearing, crossing the line and thereby conceding the contest.
And thus, with two stainless-steel hooks and a length of chain hanging from the smooth flesh of her back, Lourdes Lopez had fallen into Valentine’s arms. He had good enough looks—and, more important, enough money—that he was accustomed to taller, more refined women with the look of swimsuit models, but this creature with smallish breasts, powerful thighs, and a heavy brow had left the bar with him that night and followed him faithfully everywhere. Every day when he’d looked at her over the ensuing years, he had been struck by the darkness of her eyes.