by Janey Mack
Moon-Face slid into the front passenger seat, while Scarecrow, after completing AJ’s pat-down, pushed the two of them into the middle seats of the SUV.
From his tight T-shirt and jeans, I could tell the teen wasn’t carrying. His tennis shoes with low athletic socks further diminished the chance he had a blade.
I turned in my seat and he flinched.
Aww. Did I scare you, sport?
Out the rear window, the Silverado circled around and drove off in the direction from which it had come. The Tahoes U-turned to their original routes, too. I watched from the rearview as we left Chac on his knees in the scrub, with no shoes, no water, and the merciless afternoon sun overhead.
Chapter 35
Moon-Face handed back black bandannas. “Put on.”
AJ and I tied our own blindfolds.
The driver drove in fits, starting and stopping for random amounts of time. We turned often. Three hundred sixty degrees at least twice counterclockwise, and as many as five times clockwise, before I lost count.
Hank’s Law Number Ten: Keep your mouth shut.
The pointless urge to kick and scream strained at the seams. I focused on how desperately thirsty I was. My mouth was so dry, I would have done just about anything for a drink of water: lapped it up out of a sandy puddle, licked it off of a cactus.
The men were civil, pleasant almost. Chatting with AJ about Federación Mexicana de Fútbol Asociación and their favorite telenovelas.
It gave our abduction an ethereal feel—that for these men, it was just a job. We were a package to be picked up and taken somewhere else, and they would go home and not give us another thought.
After an hour of boredom on a bed of pins and needles, I succumbed to the luxury of a little rationalization.
AJ was important. Carlos Grieco’s nephew was worth a lot. They knew I was American. They could ransom me. Especially when they found out how much I was worth.
Moon-Face said something to either the man sitting next to AJ or the teen.
Ears straining, I heard the sound of plastic on plastic, and felt the man in the middle’s arm as he handed something back to the teen.
I heard the instantly recognizable snap of a plastic lid cracking open from its seal.
The teen touched my arm and I jerked. He put a cold plastic bottle in my hand, slick with condensation. “Agua.”
As badly as I wanted it, I hesitated. What if it’s drugged?
Feck it.
I hope it is.
The water was so cold and so good, tears pricked my eyes. I could feel the icy wave all the way down the back of my throat.
Hank’s chiseled face swam in front of mine. “People that make it, believe it.” I could feel his hands on my shoulders, cement-gray eyes boring into mine. “Stay positive, proactive, and know you are going to make it.”
Moon-Face asked if we were okay with him turning on the radio. AJ said yes. We’d been in the car for an hour and a half at the bare minimum.
I shivered in the air-conditioned car.
Hank’s Law Number Six: Do not fear fear.
I gripped the water bottle tighter, forcing myself not to double-check the locator badge at my hip.
Fear makes you nervous, and nervous people make mistakes.
Moon-Face said something. AJ translated. “You can take the blindfold off, Maisie.”
The dark was replaced by sky deepened to a twilight purple. I saw AJ’s face and almost wished I hadn’t removed the blindfold. He looked worse than sick.
He looked defeated.
We drove on, night falling with an inky blackness as mariachi music played at a comfortable volume.
“Do you come from a large family, Señorita?” asked Moon-Face.
“Yes,” I said, chest going tight.
Nice try, Moon-Pie, you’re not gonna take me there.
I cleared my throat. “Five older brothers.”
Hank’s Law Number Nineteen: Show no mercy. Ask for none.
“No wonder you are . . . tranquilo,” he said. “You understand the tears of women are worth less than sweat.”
Gee, thanks, Attila the philosopher.
“She’s my wife,” AJ said.
Moon-Face chuckled. “This is not so.”
“Same difference.” AJ shook his head. “She’s going to be.”
“No,” the man said. “She wears the ring of Stannislav Renko. You think we do not know this, El Cid?”
AJ turned his face away and stared out into the night.
Feck times a million.
“Are we close?” AJ asked.
Moon-Face turned in his seat. “Why do you ask this ?”
“I know where you’re taking us,” AJ said calmly.
“This is not my choice for you, you understand,” he said.
AJ nodded. “You will allow me the respect of a stop before we arrive?”
“Yes, El Cid.” Moon-Face nodded. “That, I can do.” We drove on another mile or so before he told the driver to pull over.
We all got out.
Moon-Face and Thug each held a gun. The driver and the teen walked off a short distance, stretching.
“Maisie,” AJ said. “Take a piss.”
“What?”
“Trust me. This will be your last chance for a while.”
“El Cid,” Moon-Face warned.
AJ walked a short distance into the scrub. “Stop.”
I could hear AJ unzip his jeans and the flat sound of him peeing into the dirt. He finished, zipped up, and came back. “Go.”
“I can’t,” I said.
“She doesn’t understand,” AJ said.
Moon-Face waved his gun at me. “Go to the back of the car. Do not run. If you make us run, you will be sorry.”
His voice was so matter-of-fact, I almost had to go. I went to the back of the Tahoe.
There’s a reason I hate camping. This pretty much sums it up.
“¡Deprisa!” Moon-Face said.
Fingers numb, I fumbled with the button on my jeans and yanked my pants down. The locater disc flipped out of my underpants and into the desert night.
Dammit dammit dammit.
I felt around with my fingers in the dirt. Nothing.
“Hurry,” Moon-Face said.
“I’m trying.” I squatted.
Just relax.
I went a horrifyingly large amount. Followed by the ignominy of the drip.
Oh god, I hope I didn’t just short out the locater.
I pulled my jeans up and got back into the Tahoe, telling myself that if we were close enough to pee, Lee’d find us, no sweat.
In less than a quarter mile, the faint lights of a squat building appeared on the horizon.
* * *
We pulled up next to the other Tahoe in front of the squat stucco building. Two other cars were parked up close to the entry.
A group of men leaned against the Tahoe, passing a bottle around. It was apparent they’d been waiting for a goodly amount of time.
Moon-Face pivoted in his seat. “There is a chance she will not be on the list,” he said to AJ.
“She’ll be on it,” AJ said bleakly.
“This you do not know, El Cid. I give you my word I will return her to the city if she is not.”
“Gracias.” AJ forced the word out.
I knew from both of their faces the whole exchange was a charade, for my benefit.
What was coming was going to be unpleasant.
Scarecrow drew his gun. Together, he and Moon-Face escorted AJ and me into the building.
We entered a nasty little reception area, with two splintery wooden chairs, a desk, and a foul smell. A portable transistor radio, the kind my grandpa kept in the garage as a joke, hung from a nail in the corner, blaring at an ear-shattering volume. It wasn’t quite tuned correctly. Another pulsing set of voices was audible in the undercurrent.
AJ gave an imperceptible shake of his head and muttered, “Fucking conjunto norteño. Typical.”
Moon
-Face crossed the room to a solid metal door and beat his fist on it.
I considered trying to get the jump on him. Scarecrow caught my eye and shook his head.
It’s never a good feeling, going up against someone who knows their shit.
A man with the slick sheen of a fatted leopard seal and wide mustache edged from behind the steel door into the room and locked it behind him. He wore a khaki uniform without any identification tags.
“El Cid Rodriguez,” Scarecrow shouted over the music.
Fatted Seal opened the desk drawer and removed a makeshift clipboard made from a piece of particleboard and a clothespin securing a handwritten list on cheap notebook paper. He cycled through the pages, found AJ’s name on the last one, and drew a line through it. He swung the clipboard, and all the pages fell back into place.
“Maisie Renko,” Moon-Face yelled.
Fatted Seal went through the notebook sheets again slowly, this time glancing at me and licking his finger each time, leaving a dirty smear on the bottom of each page.
There, on the last page, was my name. Beneath AJ’s.
He drew a line through it, then waddled to the steel door and hit it with his fist four times.
Fatted Seal went back to the desk and swapped out the clipboard for an ancient receipt book. He wrote El Cid Rodriguez on one and Maisie Renko on another, then spun the pad around on the desk for Scarecrow and Moon-Face to initial.
Two metallic clangs sounded on the metal door. Then two more.
Fatted Seal lumbered over and unlocked the door, letting two guards with nightsticks in khaki uniforms into the room before locking it again.
Fatted Seal reached into the desk drawer and brought out two pairs of steel, police-issue handcuffs. He threw one to each guard.
They came for AJ and me. Cuffed us, hands behind our backs.
Once AJ and I were cuffed, Fatted Seal tore off the top copies and handed them to our kidnappers, who left us without a backward glance.
My guard stepped up with the keys secured to his belt.
And opened the door to hell.
They shoved us forward into the dank stench of death and blood and raw sewage and fear. The noise was horrific—wailing and shouting. We were in an old jail. Three cells were jammed full of people.
There must have been twelve to a cell, built to hold one, maybe two people. Some stood, pressed up against the bars, while others sat with their knees drawn up, arms over their heads, crying, rocking back and forth.
The floor in front of us was slick with urine, the condemned prisoners choosing to piss outside of their cells.
The guards marched us through to where a fourth cell had obviously been, but it no longer had any bars. A thick support post rose out of the floor into the ceiling.
My guard took me in first. He pointed at the ground and the post until I understood I was to sit up against it. My hands cuffed behind my back allowed me the slight dignity of having my back to the prisoners. Ahead of me was another heavy iron door, this one barricaded from the cell side with a heavy wood beam across it.
I didn’t want to know what was behind it.
AJ sat on the opposite side of the post, facing the cells and the door we’d come in, his hands cuffed above mine.
“Maisie? Everything’s gonna be okay,” AJ said, as much to himself as to me. “This is SOP for Mexico. Shit like this happens all the time. Carlos will pay a fat ransom, and then they’ll let us go.”
“Yeah,” I said, trying to put a positive spin on it. “I mean, we’re Americans, for chrissakes.”
“Exactly.”
Except I’m pretty sure they don’t hold you hostage in a kill house.
Chapter 36
AJ said something in Spanish to the prisoners. Several voices answered at once. He asked another question.
The prisoner rattled on, “La bestia que llora . . .”
“Oh my God.” My lungs collapsed. Unable to suck any air in or out, I wheezed, “The Weeping Beast? We’re in a goddamn kill house with The Weeping Beast?”
“I’m sorry, Maisie. I’m so fucking sorry.”
“It’s not your fault,” I whispered. “But why didn’t we try to make a run for it?”
“We didn’t have a chance. They were courteous as long as we remained compliant. I didn’t feel like being rifle-raped before getting dumped here,” he said glumly.
Awfully chivalrous of you to put it that way, champ.
“They wouldn’t have used a rifle on me, would they?” I asked.
He ignored the question. “You did good. Keeping your mouth shut kept you safe.”
“What about Chac?”I said, unwilling to share my rapidly dwindling hope that Lee would track us down. “Is there any way he can get help?”
“Nah. He’s useless.” AJ gave a bitter laugh. “One of the reasons why I never made him a Five-seveN.”
Against my back, AJ’s hands had turned to ice. “At first I thought . . . I thought it was a kidnap,” he said softly.
I leaned forward, twisting my neck to try to get a look at him.
People in the next cell mashed their sweat-stained, tear-streaked, grimy faces against the bars to get a look at us. They were filthy, and smelled of fear and defeat.
I’m sure we looked no better.
* * *
Hank’s Law Number Fourteen: A good plan violently executed immediately is better than a perfect plan executed later.
Start from the beginning. What had Lennon’s report said?
I’d skimmed it. The brutality had been too stomach-turning to memorize. Except I had.
Slow, mentally damaged, cocaine addict, Santeria follower. The magic rabbit would appear when I needed it.
Hank’s Law Number Thirteen: Anyone can endure expected pain.
I wasn’t sure exactly how that applied to being tortured to death, one thing that definitely wasn’t on my bucket list.
AJ’s wrists had gone slack; the full weight of his arms rested on mine.
He was giving up.
Like hell.
Not on my watch, sweet pea.
“AJ.” I grabbed the tail of his shirt and tugged. “Can you get the barrette out of my hair?”
“What?”
“There’s a clip, a barrette underneath my ponytail. Can you reach it?”
He leaned forward, grunting, his shackled wrists sliding up the post. Chilly fingers fumbled against my bra strap before sliding up between my shoulder blades.
I scooched my butt forward and thrust my hip to the side. My ponytail landed neatly in his hands.
“It’s a snap clip,” I said. “Press it in the middle and it’ll snap open.”
His fingers found the barrette and tugged it free, strands of my hair coming with it. “Now what?”
“Get it into my hands.”
He managed to get on his knees and move until we were shoulder to shoulder. He pressed his mouth to my forehead and murmured, “We have an audience that will sell our souls for the momentary dream of freedom.”
“Surely, Carlos Grieco will come for us,” I said loudly. His hands covered mine and he dropped the clip into my palm.
“Yes.” He moved back to where he had started, hiding my hands from view.
I craned my neck to look back over my shoulder at our audience. Whether it was the mention of Carlos or my naïveté that we would be rescued, the other prisoners had lost interest.
You don’t grow up in a cop family with five older brothers and not experience the joy of hazing. I’d been handcuffed, cable-tied, and duct-taped so often that Da had finally taken pity on me, and taught me several rudimentary escape moves.
And I’d used every one. Multiple times.
I worked the teardrop-shaped snap clip between my fingers, bending it back and forth until the bottom broke off, leaving me with the two thin metal pieces joined at the hinge. I slipped the bottom into AJ’s back pocket, then felt the broken ends. There’s always one smoother than the other. “I got this, AJ. Start thinking a
bout what we’re going to need to do to get outta here.”
“On it.”
Hank’s Law Number Twelve: Improvise, adapt, and overcome.
The wailing from the cells was painful to listen to. Throbbing and pulsing behind my eyes.
Can’t you people just shut the feck up so I can think?
A metallic sound rang out.
AJ tipped his head back against mine. “Guard’s coming.”
I palmed the piece of the clip and glanced over my shoulder.
Both guards were coming, actually. Banging their nightsticks against the rails. Laughing, jabbing them through the bars, the prisoners ducking and shirking but taking hits with no room to evade.
“Mighty El Cid, ha!” The first guard kicked AJ’s feet. “You won’t last the night.”
The second guard put his knee on my back, forcing my head down, then bent and unlocked AJ’s right cuff. AJ swung his arms around and threw himself at the first guard, catching him around the legs, knocking him to the floor.
The second guard got off of me and landed two shots with the nightstick.
“No!” shouted the guard on the ground. “La bestia likes them unhurt.”
Everyone stopped then. Even the prisoners went momentarily silent.
The two guards raised AJ to his feet and hauled him past me. The first guard jerked AJ’s cuffs high up his back, while the second, grunting, lifted off the wood barricade, setting it to one side, before he opened the door.
AJ looked back at me over his shoulder, his velvet brown eyes sick and empty as they both shoved him through the opening. The door swung slowly shut, and the prisoners started shouting again.
I got the piece of clip between my fingers and went to work.
Handcuffs work on a ratchet-and-pawl mechanism. A spring engages the teeth of the hinged arm. I wedged my flat little piece of barrette into the space between the arm and the mouth of the cuff, squeezed the cuff one notch tighter, engaging the shim and voilà.
The cuff sprung open. I felt the metallic click more than heard it as the yowling continued.
I puffed my cheeks out in relief and went to work on the second cuff.
Within twenty seconds my other hand was free.