by A W Hartoin
Aaron kept dog paddling toward the shore in that slow steady way of his. It probably never occurred to him that the world below his belly was hungry. I started again, less tired and more determined. The box in my mouth made me drool from having it open for so long. I probably looked like I had rabies, but I couldn’t drop it. I’d had my doubts about whether or not the drug dealers would hold up their end of the bargain, but they’d tried in the face of disaster to get the box back. Andrew’s whereabouts were in there and he was counting on us.
It took at least another half hour before my feet touched sand. The party was in full swing at the resort. No one noticed two swimmers coming out of nowhere. We glided into the glow of the resort and I stood up, gasping and clutching the box. I struggled over a small dune and wiped stinging sea water out of my eyes. At that point the guests had noticed us. Every occupant of every table on the wide veranda was staring down. I walked up to the steps and braced myself on the handrail.
A man I took for a manager came down, frowned, and said, “I’m sorry. I can’t admit you. We have a dress code.”
I sucked in a breath. “Call the police.”
“Excuse me?”
“Call the police. There’s been…” I paused. What should I say? I wasn’t sure exactly what happened. “There’s been an accident.”
“What kind of accident?” He was looking at my chest when he asked.
I stuck my face in his. “The kind where people get shot. Call the damn police!”
He jumped back startled and a couple of tourists rushed down the stairs. “Can we help you?” asked the woman, a blond my mother’s age.
“I need a ride,” I said.
Aaron collapsed on the stairs and raised a hand like he was in third grade.
“What?” I asked.
He gurgled something.
“Fine. We need a ride. Do you have a rental by any chance?”
The man stared. “Yes. Why?”
“Have you heard about the kidnapping at La Isla Bonita resort?”
“Of course.” The woman took a towel and wrapped it around my shoulders.
I held up the box. “The victim’s location is in this box. I have to get to him. The ransom exchange was botched. They didn’t get the money.”
“Oh my god.”
“We can’t get involved with that,” said the man and he certainly didn’t resemble any white knight I’d ever known with a beer belly and a sneer of distaste.
“Look. Andrew could be dying. If you ever thought you could be a hero, be one now. You can save him.”
“Fucking A!” yelled a voice beyond the railing of the restaurant. A young man with floppy brown hair and dimples jutted into view and grinned. “Let’s do it!”
I hauled Aaron to his feet and dragged him up the stairs into a restaurant that could’ve been in Manhattan, it was so formal. The young man stood up next to a table chock full of family. Only family can look that disapproving.
“Timmy!” said a woman in starched white. “You’re not going anywhere with this woman.”
“Timothy, Mother, Timothy. I sure as hell am. This vacation is about to get fun and I’m not going to miss it.”
“We’re having fun!” yelled his mother.
“I played canasta today, Mom. I was thinking about setting my hair on fire, just to make sure I was alive.” Timothy snatched car keys off the table, grabbed my hand, and led me away from his shouting parents and grandparents. We ran through the resort with no sand walkways with Aaron huffing along behind us. Timothy found a red Toyota Camry and opened it.
“You’re for real, right?” he asked me.
“I’m for real. Do you have a GPS system?”
“Sure do.”
I got in, soaking the leather seats. Aaron got in the back. “You hungry?”
“No!”
“I’m starving.”
“Of course, you are.” I peeled off the plastic on the square and popped it open. Written in block print was an address, not in Coxen Hole as I expected, but in Milton Bight. I punched in the address and Timothy peeled out, just as his father ran into the parking lot, waving his arms.
“Your parents are going to be pissed,” I said.
“They usually are. I think they like it. Did anyone ever tell you that you look just like Marilyn Monroe?”
“Every day of my life.”
He blushed. “Sorry.”
“Don’t be. A fact’s a fact.”
Timothy increased his speed and broke every traffic law ever invented. I put on my seat belt.
“How come you were at the ransom drop thing?” he asked.
“I’m a nurse.”
And a lot of other things I’d rather not get into.
“What happened?”
“I’m not sure. Another boat showed up and started firing. They tried to ram us and got the kidnappers’ boat.”
“Holy shit. That is cool.”
I grabbed the door handle as Timothy passed a truck on a blind turn. “I’m sure I’ll think so later.”
We sideswiped an old wagon and ran down a clump of six mailboxes.
“Or maybe not. Please slow down,” I said. “It’s important we remain alive long enough to get to Andrew.”
“Is that the victim’s name?”
“Yes!” I screamed as Timothy slammed on the brakes and we did a three-sixty.
“There it is,” he said, driving into a private drive with an oversized gate.
I jumped out and peered through the twisted pink metal spokes. The house was a grand Spanish-style mansion, perched on the edge of the sea. The house was dark, except for the exterior lights around the property. I jiggled the gate and rang the bell. No one answered and I stepped back to view the gate and fence. I’d climbed my share of fences, but that was a big one. And I had on Chuck’s bikini.
I leaned into the car. “No one’s answering. I’m going over.”
“Screw that!” said Timothy with a grin I’d seen on my dad’s face more than once. “Step back.”
“What are you going to do?”
“Hold on, dude!” Timothy hit the gas and rammed the gate. I would’ve screamed, but I was too astonished. He reversed and rammed it again, that time busting through and shooting shards of metal onto the manicured lawn. I ran through the hole and yelled, “Are you crazy?”
“Don’t sweat it. My dad will pay for it.” Timothy got out and surveyed the damage with satisfaction.
“You’re pretty confident,” I said.
“The way only a senator’s son can be. Let’s find Andrew.”
I helped Aaron out of the car. He was all blotchy and stunned. I grinned. “And you thought I was bad.”
“I’m starving,” he said.
We ran down to the house and started banging on doors and looking through windows. None of the shades were drawn and I didn’t see anything suspicious. It looked like the house was a vacation rental and currently empty. Not a bad place to stash a kidnap victim.
Timothy picked up a large river rock. “Let’s break a window.”
I took the rock from him. “Let’s not.” I insisted we circle the house, checking all the windows. Every room was dark and something about that made me think Andrew wasn’t in there.
“Garage,” said Aaron. He was munching on a Snickers bar.
“Where’d you get that?” I asked.
“Pocket.”
“Isn’t it waterlogged?”
“Yep.”
I shook my head. “You are so weird. What were you saying before?”
“Garage.”
And there it was, a separate building fifteen yards from the house and it had an interior light on.
“That’s it!” yelled Timothy and before I could stop him he ran headlong into the door, ramming it with his shoulder. It didn’t break, but Timothy did. He bounced right off and landed on the concrete, writhing in pain.
“You have issues,” I said, standing over him.
“Could be,” he said.
“You have lock picks?” Timothy sat up, rubbing his shoulder.
“I have an interesting family, too.” I walked around the side of the garage and found a window. On my tiptoes, I could see in. The garage was empty, except for a man leaning against a wall. Andrew. I banged on the window, but he didn’t move. I bit my lip and assessed him. He wasn’t tied up or restrained in any way. One of his hands was propped up against a pipe to hold him upright and there was quite a bit of blood on his pale blue polo and the floor. I thought I detected breathing, but I couldn’t be sure.
Aaron came around to stand next to me. “He in there?”
“Yes and he doesn’t look good. Timothy do you have a cellphone on you?” I yelled.
“Yeah.”
“Call the police and give them this address. Tell them we need an ambulance.”
Aaron picked up a big rock. “Now?”
“Now.”
He hurled it through the glass. I got Aaron to donate his shirt and cleaned the rest of the glass out of the frame. He boosted me up and I climbed through, dangling until I managed to find a spot with no glass next to the wall and landed there.
“Andrew,” I said.
He was awake now, but in no way focused. “Who is it?”
I knelt beside him and took his pulse, slow, real slow. “It’s Mercy Watts. Do you remember me?”
“The hot one?”
“Not right now, I assure you. Did they drug you?”
“We should’ve paid those guys,” he said quietly.
“You couldn’t know. The police are coming.” I heard a siren in the distance and relaxed for a second until the thought that it might be Pinto entered my brain. No. He was on the third boat. I was safe as far as he was concerned. I opened the garage door and Aaron and Timothy came in.
“Dude,” said Timothy. “You are fucked up.”
“Yeah,” said Andrew.
I started examining him. He had a blunt force wound to the back of his head and considerable trauma to the face, but nothing on his torso to explain the blood. I checked one arm and then looked at the other, the one holding him up against the pipe. Andrew’s dark skin had concealed it well. His hand was the source of the blood. I went around and touched his grotesquely swollen hand. Something had been done to it, but I couldn’t tell what. Maybe a hammer to break all the bones?
“Andrew, I’m going to move your hand, so I can examine it.”
“No, you can’t.” His voice had weakened.
“I’ll try not to hurt you, but I have to look.”
The sirens got closer and then twelve police trucks pulled into the driveway. The next thing I knew I had fifteen automatic weapons pointed at me. We put our hands up and the cops rushed in.
“I’m Mercy Watts. Call my name in. I’m working with Tabora.”
“We can’t find Tabora,” said the lead officer, not anyone I recognized.
“He was at the ransom drop. Something went wrong. There was another boat there.”
“Ransom drop. What are you talking about?” he asked with his weapon still on me.
“This is Andrew Thatcher, the kidnap victim. We made an exchange for his location tonight.”
He dropped the weapon. “You say Tabora was in on this?”
“Yes, of course he was. He gave us the money to exchange for Andrew,” I said.
“How much money?”
“Twenty thousand dollars worth of lempira,” I said. “Please, I’m a nurse. I need to examine Andrew.”
The lead came forward, his black military boots crunching bits of glass. “Go ahead, but I need to question him.”
The cop asked Andrew how he was taken, who it was, etc…, but Andrew didn’t have any answers. He barely remembered being at The Aviary the night he was taken. The men wore masks and had accents. He couldn’t identify them. I took a closer look at his hand, still braced against the pipe. It was oddly dimpled in the center with a raw wound. Weird.
“Andrew, did they shoot you in the hand?” I looked back and his head had dropped onto his chest.
“What happened?” asked the cop.
“He passed out. Where’s that ambulance?”
“They’re coming. That doesn’t look like a gunshot wound to me.”
I nodded and the hand stayed right where it was on the pipe, even with Andrew out cold. “Shit.” I looked at the back of the pipe. The tip of a screw poked through the metal. “They screwed him to the pipe.”
The cop took a look. “Shit.”
“That’s one way to make sure he didn’t get away,” I said.
Timothy squatted next to me. “Those are some serious freaks. What’ll we do?”
I stood up and looked around the empty garage. “We need a power drill.”
“Gross.”
“We’ve got to unscrew him.”
The lead yelled for his men to find a drill ASAP. The ambulance came screaming into the driveway and the EMTs arrived at the garage with a stretcher. Must’ve been their turn to have it.
I introduced myself, while they assessed Andrew and started cussing.
“Do you have any painkillers with you?” I asked.
“No,” said the younger one.
The older EMT, a man in his fifties, wouldn’t look at me. He had something.
“We don’t care what you’ve got or why you’ve got it. We need to get this man’s hand off this pipe.” I looked at the lead cop. Correct?”
The cop ordered everyone out of the garage and the EMT said, “I have chloroform. It’s illegal, but I keep it for extreme cases.”
“Go get it.”
He went out to the ambulance and came back with a small bottle and a rag. Now I’ve never used chloroform and didn’t even know anyone who had. I’d have to trust the EMT and it wasn’t a comfortable feeling. Andrew was awake again, looking worse by the minute.
“Andrew, we don’t have any regular pain meds, but we have to get your hand off that pipe,” I said as calmly as I could.
“No. No. Don’t touch it.” Andrew began shaking. I couldn’t imagine the pain he was in.
“Listen. We have chloroform. We can knock you out to do it.”
His voice shook. “Okay.”
“Timothy, go see if they came up with a drill, or a screwdriver?”
He ran out and got an ancient electric drill from someone. “They broke into the house and got it.”
I asked for alcohol and the younger EMT, who looked like he really didn’t want to be there, got it and started pouring it all over the drill bit. That’s what we had, one drill bit. He handed it to me and I was ready to do it, but I avoided power tools like herpes.
“How does this thing work?” I asked.
“You’ve got to pull the trigger,” said the older EMT.
I offered it to him and he backed up. Ah, come on. I was surrounded by guys and none of them wanted to use a power tool. What kind of universe was I in?
“Fine,” I said. “How do I unscrew with this thing?”
Andrew groaned. “Oh, god.”
Timothy took the drill from me and did something to a ring near the bit. “I’ll do it.”
“You’ll do it?” I asked. “No, thanks. Someone with medical training should do it.”
“Nope. It was meant to be. My parents think I’m a genius, but the only class I ever got an A in was Shop. Besides, I weigh more than any of you. Sometimes you’ve got to put some weight into it.”
“Okay.” I was queasy. It was bad enough trusting an EMT with illegal chloroform, now I had a senator’s son unscrewing a man’s hand.
“I’m ready,” said Andrew, but he sounded anything but ready. Who could blame him? My bad vacation was nothing compared to his.
“Chloroform him,” I said.
The EMT poured some liquid from the bottle onto a gauze pad and held it to Andrew’s face. He jerked back away from the light sweet smell.
“Just breathe it in,” I said.
Andrew forced himself to breathe and in a few seconds he was incoherent.
“Isn’t that enough?” I asked.
“No. He can still feel pain,” said the EMT.
It seemed like forever before Andrew slumped over, pulling on the hand and the EMT took the gauze away. “Now he feels nothing.”
The younger EMT brought in an oxygen tank and fixed a mask over Andrew’s face.
The older EMT and I gloved up and retracted the tissue around the wound and the younger one sprayed in saline so we could see the screw. It was buried pretty deep in the tissue and was lodged in Andrew’s third metacarpal.
“Go ahead, Timothy. Unscrew him,” I said.
Timothy was right. He was meant to do that job. He stepped right up. The bit fit well enough and Timothy had enough weight to make sure it grabbed and the screw was extracted in twenty seconds.
We got Andrew on the gurney and in the ambulance in some kind of land speed record. The ambulance peeled away, leaving black tire marks on the previously pristine driveway.
“You going?” asked Aaron from a corner in the garage, still chewing on his Snickers bar.
“No,” I said. “There’s nothing I can do that they can’t.”
He put the wrapper in his pocket. “Not true.”
“I agree,” said Timothy. “You just saved that guy’s life and you’re wearing a bikini. Smoking hot by the way. Very James Bond.”
“Thanks, but I’d rather be wearing sweats or pajamas or any kind of clothes really.”
“Let’s go find you some then.”
We started to leave the garage, but the cops held us back, saying they needed to take us in for statements. I handled it well, which is to say I teared up and begged. So they took brief statements and let us go. Timothy drove us to La Isla Bonita with a grin on his face. “You cry to get your way often?”
“Not as much as you’d think,” I said, snuggling up with my still damp towel. I was all relaxed. Andrew was okay and a little crying never hurt anyone. I just wanted to go back to my room, eat a cheeseburger, and pass out like an EMT had chloroformed me. It was not to be. Timothy pulled onto the resort’s drive to find it blocked by every police vehicle that hadn’t been at the resort house.
Chapter 16