by Vicki Tharp
He held her wrist and said, “At the stock pond, if I hadn’t been drinking, if I’d been on my game from the start, those guys never would have caught us in a bad situation. Never would have taken the horses. We never would have been searching for them and…”
“And what, Bryan?”
His brain must have fritzed out for a time.
“And they sure as hell wouldn’t have gotten the advantage back at the cave.”
“Finished? Because if you hadn’t noticed, we are up crap creek without even a log raft or a push stick, much less a canoe or paddle. There isn’t any time for blame or what-ifs or what-could-have-beens. All that matters is here and now.”
Matters.
Of all that she’d said, he didn’t know why his brain had focused on that one word. The day before he…it was the day before, right? Hell, he couldn’t keep track, but when he’d told her she mattered, it was a lie.
“I lied,” he said as he reached for her hand and stroked his thumb across her wrist.
She shook her head as if she could shake the words around until she understood. “How so?” If she was mad at his confession, she didn’t show it.
“When I told you the other day that you mattered.”
She schooled her expression. “You saying I don’t?”
He brought her hand to his lips, kissed her knuckles one by one. When he looked in her eyes, he expected to see censure, avarice, and a general frustration considering their situation, but all that he saw was that she was right there with him in that moment without prejudice. Just looking at him with an openness, an earnestness he didn’t deserve. That was one of the many things he loved about her. Her ability to live in the present.
“What I’m saying, or trying to say, is that I love you.” He didn’t stutter or stumble or hem and haw. “I wanted you to know that.”
She didn’t balk at the declaration like she had when he’d told her she mattered. She also didn’t say anything back, but she didn’t have to. He knew she cared, but he didn’t pretend to think she loved him back or that she could or would ever get there. It didn’t matter. That wasn’t why he’d told her.
When she still didn’t say anything, he said, “The time and place are probably inappropriate—”
She shut him up with a kiss so light it didn’t even make his lip hurt, but she didn’t take it any further. “Any time, any place, is always appropriate to find out somebody loves you.” She smiled, but he wouldn’t call it a joyous one. “Thank you for telling me.”
If she were a smart woman, she would throw it back in his face, but she didn’t, and for some reason that gave him hope. Hope that he hadn’t had in a very long time. A reason to want to get better. A reason to get back to the ranch.
A real reason to live.
“Come on,” she said, “Let’s get you dressed and rewrap those ribs.”
She helped him up and over to the corner, where he could prop himself against the wall with one hand and take care of business. He coughed and grabbed his ribs. The high concentration of ammonia in his urine singed the hairs in his nostrils and scorched his lungs. He needed to choke more water down before he became too dehydrated.
With an arm under his shoulder, she helped him back to the far side and got him dressed, including the ACE bandage on his stump. When he stood on his leg again, it almost felt close to normal. Either that or everything else hurt so damn much that his body didn’t bother registering the pain in his stump.
As much as he knew he needed to stay away from alcohol and drugs, there was this beast building inside him that craved them both with a gnawing, slashing need that struck a fear in him that burned with the inferno of Mordor. The good thing about their situation was he had no access to either. No way to fall back on using.
He stood with one hand on the wall so she could wrap his ribs. His quads shook with the effort to stand up for so long. Getting weaker by the minute, doubts crept back into that silent, simplistic part of his prehistoric brain that would find relief with that bullet.
Boom. Done. Over.
But it was the gut-twisting, heart-demolishing horror of letting Sidney down that kept him from reaching for the gun.
* * * *
A day and half later, things had gone from dismal to whatever it was that was ten hellish layers below that.
El Verdugo still hadn’t arrived, for good or bad. Bryan was going downhill fast, like a novice snow skier on the double diamond slope after losing two poles and one ski. His descent was completely out of her control—chaotic, dangerous, deadly.
She could hardly get him up except to relieve himself, which wasn’t often because he wasn’t drinking much, and most of what she could get him to swallow was immediately rejected by his stomach—do not pass go, do not collect two hundred dollars.
His color paled, his cheeks hollowed, and his skin seemed a size too large.
As time passed, the deep bruising worked to the surface. His abdomen and ribs were the worst, his torso sporting a rainbow of blacks and blues, purples and yellows. The swelling around his right eye had gone down, but that made it easier to see the hemorrhage in the white of his eye.
And there ended all the things that were good.
Mentally, he sank further from reality. How much of it was the withdrawal versus the beatings versus the dehydration and lack of calories was anyone’s guess. He slept more, but it was fitful. He thrashed about and verbalized. Some of what he’d said must have been from his time in Iraq. Other times, no doubt, about his ex-wife, reliving the fights, the heartache, like his soul had been filleted and left open for the vultures to pick over. Every bad moment he’d ever had in his life was on display in all its Technicolor glory and gore. The most frightening of all were the hallucinations, as if his mind had turned to the twenty-four/seven horror channel.
All she wanted to do was crawl up into one of the corners and disappear.
It humbled her, hearing fragments of his life knowing he’d lived them. If nothing else, it helped explain his drinking and the drugs in a way no words ever could. Hell, at that point, she was looking for a stiff drink herself.
Then he’d miraculously have a short period of deep sleep, sometimes followed by a brief period where he’d open his eyes and he’d be lucid, like a schizophrenic who’d finally gotten his medications right.
He slept quietly now, as comfortable as a man could in a shed on the side of a hill where it seemed he had two legs and an arm in the grave.
She sat beside him, her knees to her chest, the Glock in her hand, and she rhythmically pressed the magazine release, then punched it back home, then released it again and clicked it back home. The gun was both a blessing and a curse. She popped out the magazine and thumbed the spare round.
She rolled it beneath her thumb and the brass warmed to her touch, debating the wisdom of telling Bryan that earlier that afternoon, after she’d given Pepita all the rounds they couldn’t use and had showed her what worked with their gun, Pepita had snuck by and surreptitiously dumped another 9mm round through the hole.
A spare.
Or her salvation.
An extra round might change Bryan’s plan, switch his strategy, if he were capable of rational thought. In her mind, one bullet didn’t change anything except in one way:
It gave her an out.
As much as she wanted to cry, she almost had to laugh. Less than two months ago, her biggest worry was putting gas in her tank and hay in Eli’s belly. Now, essentially alone, she sat contemplating a promise she should never have made, while mentally writing a pros and cons list for a murder-suicide.
Mercy killing and suicide. Practical Sidney tried to put a more positive spin on it, but when your thoughts sank to that level, it was like putting lipstick on a semantic pig.
With two bullets, she tried to come up with another scenario that had them both surviving, but nothin
g in her head panned out beyond a miracle of them being found and rescued. If she kept her promise to Bryan, she could put the extra bullet in El Jefe’s or El Verdugo’s head. If she reneged, she could get both El Jefe and El Verdugo, if all the stars were aligned and the patron saint of ammo graced her with a speed and accuracy she didn’t possess.
Would killing one or both of the men in charge mean that their remaining men were now free to do with her what they wanted? From some of the looks she’d gotten from a few of the guards, having them off the leash wasn’t anything she wished to live through, if she lived through it.
Which brought her back to the stark reality of one bullet for him and one bullet for her.
Funny how that was starting to seem like the best option.
“What’re you thinking?” Bryan’s words lacked vibrancy, like an old red T-shirt that had been washed a thousand times.
He reached a hand up and brushed a thumb over the wrinkles on her forehead. She rested her chin on her knee and decided then and there that she’d keep the second bullet a secret. She knew that having her make that promise wasn’t easy for him to ask, but she’d witnessed the peace settle on his features when she’d acquiesced.
Yet, if he knew what she was contemplating, she didn’t think he’d give her the same grace she’d allowed him.
“A little bit of everything,” was the answer that was closest to the truth. “How are you feeling?”
“Never better.”
She smiled at the obvious lie, but the smile came slowly and only because she knew that’s what he wanted her to do. His lips moved in return, but it looked more like a grimace.
Slipping the gun back into her boot, she reached for the jug of water and said, “Do you think you can hold any water down?”
When he didn’t answer, she turned her attention back to him. He was staring right at her.
“Bryan?”
Again nothing. Then his stare went vacant and his eyes rolled into the back of his head and every muscle in his body went rigid and he seized. The convulsion started with his legs, then rushed up his body until his back arched, his teeth slammed together, and his lips stretched back into a dark caricature of a grin.
Adrenaline zipped through her arteries, capillaries, and veins, until her entire system vibrated, shaking all rational thought from her head. She jumped up and rushed the door, pounding it with her fists and yelling for help until the pads of her palms went numb and her voice went hoarse.
Behind her, she heard hollow thumps, and she turned in horror as the seizure intensified, racked his body, and slammed his head against the ground again and again.
She dove to his side, cradling his head in her lap. He foamed at the mouth like a rabid dog, and somewhere in the back of her mind she remembered that seizures could cause someone to vomit and aspirate it into their lungs. She struggled to protect his head while at the same time shove him onto his side to protect his airway if necessary.
By the time she heard the clump of heavy boots approaching, his flailing had eased to the occasional tremor. The seizure probably lasted a minute, but it was the longest, most terrifying sixty seconds of her life.
Bryan groaned as the key worked in the padlock, and Sidney laid his head down and swiped the saliva from his mouth with the corner of the blanket. When the doors opened, she launched over the threshold, planting her palms in the center of El Jefe’s chest and shoving with all her might and fury.
Unprepared for the assault, he stumbled back a couple of steps. Vaguely, she became aware of a group of men closing in on her, but that didn’t stop her attack.
“You son of a bitch!” She swung a wild punch that El Jefe side stepped with apparently little effort, and she stumbled.
El Jefe grabbed her wrists but she dug her heels into the ground and tried to bowl him over like one of those really big, beefy, Sherman tank-type football players, until her arms were grabbed and yanked back.
Pain exploded in her shoulder joints, dropping her to her knees and stealing her breath so she couldn’t even call out. She sagged, and what little strength and energy she had abandoned her, her chest heaving as she fought for every molecule of available oxygen. This high up in the mountains it was as if they were all having to share them. There certainly wasn’t enough oxygen to go around.
“Finished?” El Jefe said inanely, as if they’d been sitting around the coffee table and she’d filled in the last square of the New York Times crossword puzzle.
“He needs a hospital.”
“No.” There was no thought behind his answer. No consideration, just a quick, automatic response.
Sidney wanted to go for this throat and wipe the imperious expression off his face, but with a guard on each arm, that wasn’t about to happen.
Then in the distance came the faint growl of a heavy engine, the resonating whump, whump, whump of rotor blades as they whipped the thin atmosphere. Then a helicopter came over the ridge. Low and slow, as if they were looking for something or someone.
The relentless tightness in her chest eased, her heart weightless, like it had lost fifty pounds.
For the first time in days, she allowed a spec of hope to flourish. Someone was searching for them!
“Down here! Help us!” she called out, even as engine noise and concussion from the rotors beat back her words. She struggled against the hold the men had on her, kicked at shins and higher. If she could break free long enough to run into a clearing she might be spotted, but both men had a powerful grip on her arms and held her far enough away that the jabs from her boots were ineffective.
As the helicopter flew overhead, El Jefe remained unconcerned. She saw the tail rudder for a flash through the dense foliage. To anyone looking for them from above, she’d be invisible.
She shot a look at El Jefe, and he raised a single brow at her as if to say “are you done yet?”
“They fly over once or twice a week. They haven’t found us yet, they won’t find you.”
She didn’t reply.
Bryan shouted something from the shed. El Jefe jerked his head toward it and the men released her arms so she could go to him. She didn’t even bother to make a run for the clearing; she knew as well as they did that her chance at rescue was long gone.
It took a moment for her eyes to readjust to the low light in the shed. Bryan lay where she’d left him. He thrashed, talking mumbo jumbo that she couldn’t quite make out.
“What’s he saying?”
Sidney waved her hand at Bryan and let it drop to her thigh in frustration. “I don’t know. He’s delirious. He’s sick. He needs a doctor, a hospital. I told you that.”
Bryan mumbled something else, then clearly said, “the package,” then made a sweeping motion with his fist as if punching someone in slow motion, then said, “Get the fuck off me.”
“What was that about the package?” El Jefe said.
“I don’t know. He’s out of his head and not making any sense.”
“What else has he said?”
“Anything and everything. If you’re so interested in what he has to say, then you sit your ass in here hour after hour and see for yourself.”
El Jefe stepped up to her and grabbed her lower jaw in a tight grip, every finger mashing her skin against bone.
She looked him in the eye and her heart rate spiked. She was certain he would hear it. In his brown eyes, she didn’t see a dark, evil soul, or the picture of the devil himself. No, what she saw crystalized her blood while at the same time cold sweat dripped from her brow—she saw an ordinary man willing to do whatever was necessary to get what he wanted. He wasn’t misguided, insane, or out of his mind.
He was cold and calculating and wholly determined.
“You have a smart mouth on you,” he said as he leaned in close.
She saw it coming, but it was so fast, so unexpected, she couldn’t reac
t quickly enough to stop him from kissing her. When he tried to force his tongue past her lips, she bit back the rising bile, her disgust, and his invading tongue.
He screeched and pulled away, but not before she tasted blood. The guards rushed her again but he waved them off. His eyes boiled with anger, but also what she could describe as begrudging respect. With his eyes never leaving hers, he worked his jaw, spat blood onto the ground, then gave his men a long list of orders.
One of the men left and she heard him repeating the orders to someone else. Then he was back and the two men each grabbed one end of Bryan and lifted.
Bryan cried out in agony, but he was still not entirely conscious of what was going on around him.
“Put him down!”
El Jefe didn’t bother to answer as the men carried Bryan. When Cue Ball and another man she hadn’t seen before arrived, El Jefe said in English, “Bring her.”
When they went to put their hands on her, she jerked free. “Don’t touch me.”
Cue Ball’s forehead glistened with sweat. It wasn’t hot out, but it seemed any kind of physical activity required effort. He looked to his boss, who looked at her and said, “Don’t do anything stupid.”
He waited while she preceded him out the door. El Jefe and her two guards followed behind as she trudged up the hill after Bryan. They were taken to a tent, the kind Sidney pictured the Boy Scouts from the fifties or sixties had used, with the tall poles in the middle and the sides triangulating down to the ground. Over the top was some camouflage netting she’d seen in the movies to make structures more difficult to spot. No wonder the people flying overhead hadn’t seen anything.
The men dumped Bryan on the ground. He groaned and rolled onto his back, which seemed to be the only position he could lay in and find any relief. His face and chest had slicked with sweat and she couldn’t tell if it was from pain at being moved or if his fever had returned.
“I need water and a cloth to bathe him,” she said to El Jefe, as if she were the one in charge.
He waited long enough until there was no uncertainty as to who was calling the shots, then said something to the Cue Ball that she assumed were orders telling him to get what she needed.