by Vicki Tharp
“Hello?” she said. “Somebody out there?”
“Shhh shhh,” came the reply.
Sidney couldn’t tell where the voice had come from. Then something poked her in the hip. She stifled a squeak of surprise as she jumped up. Down by the ledge she was sitting on, there was a gap between the rock and one of the logs. The gap had been packed with dirt, but dirt trickled down as the stick poked, poked, poked through.
For the first time since they’d been taken, Sidney felt a glimmer of hope. She got down on her knees and dug at the dirt with her fingers until there was an opening roughly four by seven inches. A petite, dirty hand came through.
“Pepita?”
“Shhh,” came the voice.
Sidney grabbed the hand and held on tight for a few seconds. The hand was warm and heavily calloused for such a young hand. Then the hand disappeared. She almost called out, but she wouldn’t risk anyone knowing Pepita was at the back wall. She didn’t want to think about what they would do to the little girl if she were caught.
Then the hand reappeared, and brought something with it. Sidney reached down and removed the object from the hand. It was soft and warm and mouthwatering. She held it up to the light and counted four tortillas. She looked out the slits in the back wall, but Pepita was gone.
Settling back on the rock, Sidney brushed off her jeans and laid the tortillas across her thigh. The first one she didn’t even taste, she was so hungry. The second she ripped into tiny strips to savor the flavor and make it last. Corn tortillas, she decided. When finished, she laid Bryan’s share over the jug of water.
Looked like she had made a friend. If Pepita could sneak them food, could she get them a knife?
A gun?
CHAPTER TWELVE
Boomer was led up the trail, by Tweedle Dee and Tweedle Dumb, the names he’d given two of El Jefe’s goons. One was about his size and build and could be formidable if it turned out he knew how to fight. The other, about five inches shorter, with muscles that had gone to flab and one of those tight potbellies that made him look like he was about to give birth to a basketball.
The going was steep and slick from the rain. There was a flat spot farther ahead with a bunch of dark green canvas tents that made him think of little boys and fathers, and swapping lies around a campfire.
But these men around him…they were no Boy Scouts.
To his right, not far off trail, two other men were laughing it up about something, when the shorter of the two pulled a good, long swallow from a silver flask. The sun glinted off the metal, catching Boomer’s eye.
Not a flask. His flask.
With the custom band of skull and crossbones around the middle. It was one of a kind. Mac had given it to him.
He shook off Dee and Dumb, who merely had a hand above each elbow, and stormed over to the lying, stealing sack of shit.
Okay, so the lying part was more of an assumption, but the stealing was a fact.
Boomer bumped the thief with his chest and had the satisfaction of watching the man stumble.
The man came at Boomer, but Dee and Dumb had their paws on Boomer again and pulled him away. “That’s my fucking flask.”
The man chuckled, his dark eyes cold with merriment as he stepped close to Boomer and looked up at him. “No, compadre. Es mi—”
Boomer head butted the guy, dropping him as surely as if Boomer had shot him between the eyes. He regretted it the moment his head made contact. His own head swam and his vision doubled for a few seconds. That blow to the back of his head had really rattled his brain.
Dee and Dumb shoved Boomer up the trail into one of the tents, but Dee had a shit-eating grin on his face.
With their hands clamped firmly on his shoulders, they manhandled him into a folding camp chair, the kind baseball moms and dads hauled to all their kids’ games. El Jefe hadn’t made it back yet. At least he assumed that was who they were waiting on.
“You know, you could just let me go. Save yourselves some heartache, a few broken bones or death.”
Dee slapped him upside the head. “No, English.”
“Like hell,” Boomer said, but he didn’t push it. “Don’t say I didn’t warn you.”
Dee grunted. That was all the recognition his warning was going to get.
El Jefe parted the tent flaps and Dee wrenched Boomer to his feet. The boss stepped inside, his hand resting on Boomer’s Glock neatly holstered on the man’s right thigh.
Boomer’s eyes flicked up to the boss man and couldn’t miss the smirk on the man’s face. “I need to take a piss.”
“It can wait.”
“No,” Boomer said with cold certainty. “It can’t. If you prefer, I can piss my pants in your tent—” He would have raised his hands, as if to say “your funeral,” metaphorically speaking, but his hands were tied behind his back so that wasn’t going to happen.
El Jefe waved his hands at Dee. Boomer guessed that was the signal for the men to take him somewhere other than the tent to relieve himself.
“My hands?”
“So you can escape?”
“So I can piss. Unless one of your fine gentlemen here wants to hold my dick for me. I’m not into the guy-on-guy thing, but if that’s what gets their rocks off…” Boomer shrugged.
El Jefe ordered his hands cut free. Dee and Dumb marched him out to the nearest tree at gunpoint. The way both men had their fingers tight on the trigger, Boomer didn’t dare put one boot out of place, and he hoped like hell neither one of them had allergies, because he was one sneeze away from a bullet burying into the back of his brain.
When Boomer returned, El Jefe was seated in a folding chair facing the one Boomer had been in before. Boomer retook his seat and worked his sore shoulders with his hands. His arms and hands burned and tingled as blood returned to his extremities. Dumb made a move to retie his hands, but El Jefe waved him off.
“Behave,” El Jefe ordered. The “or else” was implied as Dee and Dumb flanked their boss, pistols in hand, but lowered.
If Boomer had been in top form, he’d have a good chance of rushing and disarming one and shooting the other before El Jefe could get out of his chair. Might as well make a wish and sprinkle it with fairy dust for all the good that would do. He was about as far from his peak performance capability as he was when he’d wheeled himself out of the VA hospital post-amputation.
He glanced down at his right hand resting on his thigh. The numbness had gone away, but the shaking had returned and someone had relieved him of the last of his pain pills back in the cave.
“Where is the woman?” Boomer tried to make it sound impersonal, play down the fact that she had somehow come to mean more to him than anyone had in a very long time.
“Your girlfriend is safe. For now.”
“She’s a colleague.”
El Jefe shrugged. “If you say so.”
They stared at each other across the few feet of tent. If El Jefe thought a staring contest would intimidate him, the man obviously hadn’t had his ass handed to him in a cave high in the Wyoming mountains. Boomer could stare all day. Better than getting the shit beat out of him any day.
In the corners, some packs were piled. No opulent desk, or even a folding table. Nothing that screamed “camp headquarters.” Just the two folding chairs and a cot. Considering how far they’d packed everything in, he gave them props for having a pseudo roof over their heads.
El Jefe said, “The package.”
“Yeah, about that…” Boomer’s words dripped with an apology as fake as the toothy smile on the other man’s face. “I want to talk to the boss.”
“I am the boss.”
“And I’m Michael Jordan.” Boomer grinned. It was the kind of grin that always made Mac ask what he was up to.
He stood, and the pistols leaped up, one centered on his chest, the other between his eyes. “
Easy, boys.”
It looked like Dee had some sort of professional gun training. Dumb held his gun sideways, his stance all wrong. He looked like a wannabe gangster. All he needed was a teardrop tattoo below his eye.
Boomer held his hands up, then slowly folded his hands behind his back to signal he was done talking and ready to be tied back up. “Ready” was too strong a word. “Resigned” fit better. The muscles and tendons in his shoulders bitched and complained, and he steeled his expression to keep a grimace from screwing up his face. Dumb got to work with a new length of paracord. If the cord was the real deal, he’d need a blade to get out of it.
Before the men could lead him away, Boomer said, “If El Verdugo wants the package, then you have him come to me.”
El Jefe’s eyes narrowed, but otherwise his features remained unchanged. Even so, it was enough to tell Boomer his assumption about El Verdugo’s involvement was correct. Dumb finished tying his hands and they immediately started to go numb again, his pulse thrumming in his fingertips. The kid was much better with the cord than a gun. Maybe he tied up little kids and tortured them for fun.
“El Verdugo is not close by.” El Jefe didn’t insult Boomer’s intelligence by feigning ignorance.
“I can wait. Seems I’m all tied up for now anyway.”
“Or I could beat it out of you. Save us all a lot of trouble.”
It must have been the pain that had short-circuited his brain, because he couldn’t stop the words from falling from his mouth. “I’d like to see you try.”
As El Jefe stepped toward him, Dee and Dumb tightened their grip on his arms, and he knew one thing for certain—when the last of the Vicodin wore off, he was going to hurt like hell.
* * * *
Camp was quiet. Cue Ball whittled on a stick as he sat on the stump across from the shed, but other than that, there had been little traffic pass by―except for Pepita who, from what Sidney could tell, was the camp’s mascot, who fetched this and that for whoever called for her. From Sidney’s limited viewpoint, Pepita was the hardest working person in the camp. Vital and invisible.
Whose kid was she? Did she belong to one of the men or women in the camp? Was she an orphan?
Was she here against her will?
The hair on the back of her neck stood up. A coldness settled in her chest. The girl wasn’t tied up or stuffed into a shed, but a child that age didn’t need to be locked up. Not when their other option was facing the wilderness alone.
Cue Ball jumped up and shuffled toward the shed doors. Sidney couldn’t see anything out the front so she shifted to the view out the side. The largest gap was down low and she got on her hands and knees to see out. Luckily she was already on the ground when she caught sight of Bryan, because her stomach dropped like a skydiver in free fall, but without the thrill or the excitement, only a dread that made her limbs shake and gnawed at her marrow.
Down the hill, two men carried Bryan. One man had him under the arms, the other walked ahead of them, his hands looped around Bryan’s knees. It was a slow, painful journey. Then one of Bryan’s legs fell free, the other man lost his grip, and Bryan crashed to the ground.
While the men regathered their grip and hefted their cargo again, Bryan did nothing. He didn’t move or cry out in pain. Was he even alive?
Sidney lurched to her feet, her heart vibrating in her chest. Tears flowed down her face but she stubbornly swiped them away. Bryan wouldn’t want her crying over him, he would want her to think, to do something.
What could she do? She couldn’t overpower them. Not without some sort of weapon. Her mind flashed back to Pepita. As dangerous as it was for the girl to help them, Pepita could be their chance to escape.
The doors opened and they tossed Bryan in like a sack of horse feed. Bryan landed at her feet and before she could say anything, they slammed and locked the doors.
She dropped to her knees and gently patted his cheek. “Bryan. Bryan, can you hear me?” Pat, pat, pat. “Bryan!”
She put her head to his chest. Beneath her ear, his heart beat and his breath was raspy, but steady. She was afraid to move him, but she placed his head in her lap, wetted his T-shirt, and carefully mopped away the dirt and grime. All the swelling and bruising on his face was what he’d left with, which didn’t account for his present condition. She worked her way over his body, starting at his legs and working her way up. When she ran her fingers over his lower abdomen, she got a strangled “fuuuck.”
“Where does it hurt?” When he didn’t answer immediately she said, “Bryan.”
He waved his hand, as if he wanted her to come closer. She crawled to his head and pressed her lips to his cheek. “Tell me where it hurts.”
“Ev…” His eyes fluttered, then rolled closed.
She patted his cheek until he opened them again and he said, “Every-fucking-where.”
* * * *
Boomer lay there on the rocks and dirt in what looked like a shed for an hour. Two maybe. Long enough that he wasn’t floating in and out of consciousness anymore.
“So now what?” Sidney asked.
He didn’t have an answer. Not that his head was empty―his brain hurt too much to be empty. But he didn’t have any brilliant ideas either.
As it was, the way his neurons were scrambled, he’d thought he’d done well to come up with the idea to demand to see El Verdugo to buy them some time. If they were lucky, El Verdugo was closer than El Jefe let on. In a few days, without alcohol or his pills, he wasn’t going to be much good to himself, much less Sidney. Fat lot of good it would do them if he was medically incapacitated.
“Run. If we can. Or we wait on El Verdugo and try like hell to negotiate our way out of this mess. Or…”
“Or what?”
“Or wait for rescue.” If Mac was looking, the chances of her finding them…well, frankly there probably wasn’t a computer that could calculate numbers that tiny.
“What are the chances of that?”
He didn’t want to lie. “Remote.”
“Fan-freaking-tastic.”
Sidney sat, absently brushing her hand against the ground until it hit something. “Oh my god, I forgot to give this to you.”
She brushed whatever it was off on the leg of her jeans and handed him a floppy, circular shaped object. “Tortillas. Sorry about the dirt.”
His stomach rumbled. He didn’t give a rat’s ass about dirt. There were two. He rolled the two tortillas up together and went at it like a hot dog. They were cold and stale, gritty and delicious.
As he swallowed the last bite he said, “Where did you get these?”
“There was this girl that brought the water and the ‘baño.’” Sidney made air quotes with her hands. “She came back later and found a hole in the wall and handed them through. Her name’s Pepita. You should have seen—”
“Why didn’t you tell me?” His words came out angry, accusatory even. “Sorry.”
She stared at him and pursed her lips, then calmly said, “I’m telling you now.”
“This Pepita. Do you think she’d help us?”
“I don’t know. She’s a kid. What if they caught her? What if they hurt her because she was trying to help? I don’t know if I could live with that.”
“Better than not living at all.” The words were a mistake, he knew that even as they passed his fat lip.
“Pretty cold, considering we’re talking about a little girl’s life.”
He dropped his head against the logs a little too hard and pain radiated around his skull. “I didn’t mean that the way it came out.”
Her face was partially lit by one of the shafts of light coming through the roof, and even though the sun had started to fade, he saw her eyes narrow. “How did you mean it?”
He sighed. No way to win this. The truth was…the truth... He looked at her then, really looked at her, this f
ierce, strong, amazing woman who was more worried about a kid she didn’t know getting hurt than her very own life.
The truth was…he loved her.
His chest constricted, making it even more impossible to breathe than the cracked ribs did.
With his inability to focus, he didn’t understand what his feelings for Sidney meant. He shifted his thoughts back to the kid. He would rather die himself than hurt an innocent kid, that wasn’t a question for him either, but if he must choose between the kid and Sidney…well, he’d have to pray he would never have to make that decision.
“I mean…” He struggled to his feet, sucking in a tight breath as he slowly, painstakingly, lowered himself onto the ground beside her and twined his hand with hers. “I’m going to get you out of this, somehow, someway.”
She opened her mouth and he knew she was going to argue.
He brought his lips down to hers, ignoring the ribs and the lip and the eye and the head, and sunk himself into the kiss.
Before he lost himself completely, he broke the kiss. “One way or the other.”
* * * *
Sidney and Bryan woke later that night to the sound of the padlock being unlocked. Sidney had fallen asleep sitting up, her head on Bryan’s shoulder. Scrambling to her feet, she wiped the slobber from her lips and helped Bryan up.
As the doors opened, Bryan stepped protectively in front of her. More instinct than plan, she surmised.
One of the men who had carried Bryan down, Tweedle Dee, Bryan had called him, tossed him a blanket and Pepita scurried in and handed Sidney a plate of food before running out. The doors slammed and the lock clicked and Sidney and Bryan were left standing there in the darkness.
“What? No pillow, no mint?” Bryan hollered.
No water.
Someone chuckled, but she didn’t know who, or if it was even Bryan they were laughing at.
The night wasn’t that cold; a sweatshirt and a fire would have kept them warm enough, if they’d had access to either. As it was, she suspected their clothes and the rest of their gear were being passed around or stockpiled.