by Susan Ward
I never warned Krystal. I knew better in my gut, and worse, we stayed here when I knew we shouldn’t. The pieces lock in my head in gruesome clarity of exactly what kind of people could do this.
Alberto Ramos and his cartel.
This wasn’t a random murder.
Carving up Milo Bassard is a message.
A gruesome message.
Oh God, what have they done to Krystal?
Where is my wife?
Brayden takes out his cell, racing through the room as he snaps pictures, before sending them and placing a call to Jared. “Did you get the photos? I don’t know what the fuck is happening here. We haven’t found Krystal yet. What do you want us to do? Continue to hole up until you guys get here or do you want me to contact the Feds?”
“Don’t call the authorities. Call no one. Touch nothing,” Jared says over the speakerphone. “Stay put. We’ll be there in four hours. Keep everyone out of the apartment.”
My eyes lock on an object.
“Brayden, there’s a phone sticking out of his mouth.”
“Don’t touch it,” Graham Carson yells from the cell speaker.
“Leave it there, Jake,” Brayden orders. “Everything stays how it is until the team gets here.”
He turns his back on me, staring down at the floor, tugging on his hair as he speaks rapidly to Jared in a soft voice I can’t hear.
I’m frozen and shaking.
Dread and fear are like a cyclone inside me.
Worse than any feeling I’ve ever known.
That cellphone.
Shoved between his teeth.
The answer to what happened to Krystal is in that phone.
I know it.
I don’t want to look.
I can’t stop myself. Whatever Alberto Ramos has done to her is my fault. I need to know if she’s alive, no matter what they’ve left on that phone. I can’t wait until the team gets here. I can’t take the uncertainty a second longer.
Swallowing down the bile in my throat, I ease down in front of Milo’s body, wrap my hand in my shirttail and lift the phone out of Milo’s mouth.
A burner cell.
Covering my finger, I swipe it.
One text unread highlighted on the icon.
I open the message.
Pictures.
The bed at the hotel.
The ropes.
My wife.
Men with masks.
Swipe. More.
Swipe. Another picture.
Swipe.
I shut my lids to blot out the images, but everything in me shatters anyway. Oh baby, forgive me…
Chapter Forty-Five
“Krystal”
White wall, white wall, dirty floor, metal fence. Where am I? How many days has it been? How do you count days if you can’t see the sun rise and set? One, two, three, four. Jacob counted days in jail to keep his sanity when he served two months for what he did for Janie. Five, six, seven, eight…
How did he count days?
Is there sunlight in jail?
There’s no sunlight in nightmares.
A gentle hand runs my brow. She speaking Spanish. I understand her. I stare at the wall, expression blank. Is it better to let her know I understand her or to continue pretending I don’t?
The women are kind. At least, I think they are. We’re all in the same dark place. Sleeping on floors. Buckets for bathrooms. Food not fit for a dog. Water from a faucet on the wall. They whisper to me in comforting tones. Tell me not to eat the food. It’s laced with something to keep us quiet and sleep. My stomach is so empty it’s painful. But I don’t eat, even when they bring something different than for the rest of the girls and try to force me to.
When I stopped eating, the world came back into focus. My mind turned on, though that’s not a good thing. It makes it real, being here and the sounds I hear around my frozen body.
The men come, but they don’t take me. I hear them raping the other girls, but after that one night at the hotel, no one has touched me.
Maybe they think I’m crazy.
I don’t speak or look or make eye contact.
I’m impassive to everything I see and hear.
Not so different than my auditions.
Commanding all parts of me: the mental, the physical, and the emotional. Revealing nothing. Absorbing the pain. Fighting through it all. Only no pleasure. There is no pleasure here. A different kind of nexus. The nexus between fear, pain, and survival.
A boot taps my back.
When I don’t respond, fingers lock in my hair, jerking my face upward. “Bonita, what did the guards of your father’s house call you? They gave you a name. What was it?”
Spanish.
I see him without looking straight at him. One of the men who raped me with Alberto Ramos in Manhattan.
Why is he asking me that?
Is it better to answer or better to lie still as though I don’t understand him?
I stare at the wall.
Five, six, seven, eight.
He jerks my hair again.
Inside my head I scream.
My body stays lifeless.
He starts to curse, and then releases me as I drop back onto the filthy mattress.
Footsteps.
Leaving.
Gate opening and lock snapping.
One, two, three, four…
Silence.
The woman beside me moves close. Lightly she brushes the hair from my face. “He will be back. Answer him. It is good to understand them when it helps you. Maybe it means they are talking to your people, arranging the ransom. Maybe the question means your family wants to know if you are still living. They will not pay if they think you are dead. Answer him. It will get you home, chica.”
Chica—it makes me think of Lourdes and home.
My gaze moves around the room.
The two other women on the far side.
Will Alberto let me go home?
What if I answer and they kill me?
Flashing images of the things done to me rise in my head. I bury my face in the pillow. It doesn’t matter anymore if they kill me.
I count the walls in my head.
Footsteps.
Hands jerk me from the floor and I am turned to face Alberto Ramos. “I know you understand, Ángel. I know you are not loco either.” His fingers run the line of my cheek, down my jaw, and brush my neck. It takes everything I have not to flinch. “These other girls, they have no one. This is their life now. But you can get out of here, Krystal. Your father will pay for you. But he will not pay if you don’t answer me. What is the name the security company at your father’s house gave to you? The code name the men used for you?”
The name.
I say it in my head.
No sound comes from my lips.
Why am I silent?
I don’t care if they kill me.
I just want this to end.
“Diva…” My voice falters in my parched throat. “They call me Diva Two. All of them except my husband.”
I’m thrown back to my place on the floor.
Chapter Forty-Six
“Jacob”
Five days. In a fog, I wander through the situation room. It’s like the command center in a war zone. Men—no, mercenaries—handpicked from Jared’s eclectic employee list, on standby with their fucking high-powered weapons. Piles of intel. Maps. Charts. Documents marked classified thanks to Graham’s contacts at the CIA, FBI, DEA, and NSA. Everything every agency has on the Ramos Cartel. Satellite images, digital everything.
This is state-of-the-art go-to-war shit.
As good, if not better, than the military, since I’m pretty sure I’m in a place that doesn’t exist according to the government.
Why can’t they find her?
Why hasn’t Alberto Ramos made any demands yet?
They left that fucking phone in Milo’s
mouth so we’d find it and they’d have a direct line to contact us.
It makes no sense that they haven’t used it, and my thoughts are an unending stream of heart-ripping fears.
Did they kill her?
Is that why there’s silence?
My eyes burn.
Crud, I’m crying again.
I swipe at the streams on my face.
Get it together, Jake.
Crying isn’t going to help her, and you’ve been pretty fucking useless thus far.
I’ve been a useless piece of shit since I got that call from Brayden on Tuesday asking me if Krystal was home at the loft.
All those insane thoughts about my wife after the hotel. What the fuck’s wrong with me?
Then getting in Brayden’s way as he tried to take charge of shit when we found Milo Bassard dead. Going off like a misfired missile on Jared when the men finally got to New York, when I’m the one to blame for Krystal being missing.
If I hadn’t married her, I’d have still been only her bodyguard and would’ve told her everything I suspected about NBBC. She’d be home safe now if I hadn’t fucked up because I love her. I didn’t want to hurt her.
Every thirty minutes there’s a situation update and never any news. My gaze locks on the cluster huddled over the conference table: Jared, Graham, Alan, Jamal, Dillon, and the skirt from the CIA, Jena Garret.
She’s the first official spook I’ve ever met. A close personal friend of Graham Carson. She’s off the books to be here, wherever the hell here is. Probably a black-ops compound, off the books as well. On the border outside El Paso. That’s all they told me in the plane here, and didn’t follow up with details of why we hotfooted it here from Manhattan.
I stay on the far side of the room, but my gaze is locked on the table. Jena is gesturing, finger moving in a line, then tapping. Heated discussion with Graham. Angry shake of her head. The look on Dillon’s face is not good. Jena runs her finger and taps the map again.
Have they found Krystal?
Is that what this is?
Not asking; don’t want the ravaging disappointment again. I feel a heavy pressure of eyes. Alan. He’s on his cell, talking quickly to someone. Impassive face. Controlled demeanor. Iron. I now know where Krystal gets her internal strength. But I don’t know how he doesn’t break in this circumstance.
He’s watching me like he wants me to come over. I can’t do it. It’s hard enough looking at Alan, knowing he must blame me for this, though he’ll never say it. He’s that kind of man.
There is such a thing as hell on earth.
I’m living it.
There’s a sound and the once-loud room goes silent.
My heart stops and my body covers in sweat.
The cell phone on the table, hooked up to all the high-tech shit, is ringing and vibrating.
The burner from Milo Bassard’s mouth.
A suspended pause of all action, then everyone starts moving at once. Alan is escorted to the table with Jared and Graham at his sides, rapidly talking. Jena Garret is at the computer across from them.
In the room is near noiseless sound that is deafening.
“Are you ready to do this, Alan?” Graham asks grimly. “No matter what happens, stay with the plan. They’re going to try to fuck with you, get in your head. Don’t let them. Don’t react. Say only what Jena tells you to say. What she types on the screen. Nothing else. We know where Krystal is. But we need more time.”
My eyes flare wide.
They know where she is?
I can’t breathe.
Five days.
Jesus Christ, why didn’t they tell me they located her?
The phone rings and Graham is counting down.
I clutch my hair with my hands until the pain nearly blocks out the fucking phone ringing. It’s like depth charges exploding in my body.
Each ring.
Percussive shock.
Ring.
Goddamn it, answer it.
Alan hits the icon, then speaker, and sits back.
“Yes.”
One word.
No emotion.
“It’s a pleasure to finally talk to you, Alan Manzone,” the digitally altered voice pours from the speakers in the room. “On the phone. A better way than how we communicated before.”
“Fuck you.”
“Interesting reply. You are an interesting man. Not the least of which, four days and I haven’t received your wire. Surely sixty-three million dollars is not an issue for a man like you? Perhaps I was not clear. Twenty-four hours or we kill her. The clock starts now.”
My blood thuds in my veins and is a hum in my ears.
I’m hyperventilating.
There was a ransom demand?
Why didn’t they tell me?
And why didn’t Alan send the money?
“I want proof of life before I do anything,” Alan says coldly.
“We can send you another video,” Alberto mocks as he laughs.
Video? What fucking video?
“Fuck you. That’s proof of nothing except you’re a bastard. Ask my daughter what my security team nicknamed her. Then we talk about an exchange.”
Jared runs his hand across his neck.
Alan hits the button on the phone.
Click.
Everything inside me erupts. I shoot across the room to Jared. “What the fuck are you people doing? You hung up. There was a ransom demand. Why haven’t you paid it?”
Jared looks up from his conversation. “Because we’re not paying it,” he says, annoyed.
“Why the hell not? She’s my wife.” I stare at Alan in disbelief. “You hung up the phone for sixty-three million dollars? That’s nothing to you. She’s your daughter.”
Alan’s face hardens into stone.
“Stand down, Jake. Stay out of it,” Graham Carson orders, his massive hands seizing my shoulders. “There’s a lot going on. A lot of moving parts right now. You stay the fuck out of what we’re doing. Yes, we got a ransom demand. Yes, we didn’t tell you. And yes, we didn’t pay it. There’s no way in hell we’re letting him wire transfer anything. The longer he doesn’t pay, the longer she lives, Jake. That’s how this works.”
Lives?
“What are you saying?”
“Jake, this isn’t a kidnapping,” Dillon says. “It never was. That’s not what’s happening here.”
“Sixty-three million dollars is what Milo Bassard skimmed from Alberto Ramos’s money-laundering enterprise,” Jena Garret explains. “The Ramos Cartel has generated over a billion dollars drug trafficking across the board. They have schools, restaurants, major holdings in Chicago, LA, and New York. NBBC was part of their money-laundering apparatus. And Milo Bassard didn’t borrow money from Alberto Ramos and fail to pay it back. They don’t cut off your head for that. He stole from the cartel, and in their book anyone involved with NBBC is guilty. Even Krystal. This isn’t about money. This is not a kidnapping for ransom. Alan is worth billions. This is about Alberto Ramos’s pride and making an example out of your wife so that no one steals from the cartel again. If Alan pays, they kill Krystal. A quick death instead of a slow death. That’s what paying the ransom buys Alan.”
Oh God, no. My knees feel like they can no longer hold me and I lean on the desk to keep me upright.
Graham Carson puts an arm around me. “We didn’t relocate across the border from Juarez for a hostage exchange. We’re going in and getting Krystal.”
I rake my fingers through my hair. “Why didn’t you tell me? You’ve known about this for days. Why keep me in the dark?”
Dillon’s jaw tightens. “Like you said, she’s your wife. We thought it better to keep you out of the loop if we couldn’t find her. But we know where they’re holding her. In and out of Juarez like ghosts tomorrow thanks to Jena. We’re not waiting any longer. In the morning, we’re going in and rescuing Krystal. We rescue Krystal or none of us come out
. Did you want to know that before you had to, Jake?”
No—I lower my gaze.
“Brayden, take him out of here,” Graham suggests softly. “Take him outside. Anywhere but in here. We’ve got a long night and longer day ahead of us.”
“Come on, Jake,” Brayden says.
Silently we walk out of the command center, down the concrete halls, and out into the red and gray evening sky over El Paso.
For a while, we walk quietly along the fence line. The colors of dawn and sunset are brilliant here. Intense and different than California or anywhere I’ve been. Vivid, like a digital creation rather than something nature did. Nope, doesn’t look real. But then nothing has seemed real since we landed here.
Brayden stops at a metal ladder on the side of a building. “Have you been up here?”
I shake my head. “Haven’t been outdoors in four days.”
His mouth tightens as he nods. He starts climbing up the ladder and I follow him.
The rooftop has been turned into a makeshift lounge. Chairs. Tables. Sparse. Dusty.
Brayden sinks down in a chair and groans as he rubs his eyes before taking two beers from a cheap ice chest. The cap popping makes me jump.
He holds out the bottle to me. “Sit down. Drink. Do anything but think. There’ll be time enough to think after tomorrow. We’re all going to do a lot of that after tomorrow. Right now, don’t think.”
I take the beer and settle in the chair beside him. The sky above Juarez is filled with red lights, like a fireworks show only it’s bullets.
“Have you been to Juarez?”
“No.” Brayden laughs, something other than humor. “But it doesn’t look so different than some of the places we were deployed. Search, rescue, and kill with Graham Carson. He’s the best. Cakewalk. Just another story we’re going to someday tell our children.”
Cakewalk.
I start to shake my head and stop myself. He’s trying to be light. It’s not working.
“I’m sorry, man. About the shit I said. Back in New York. To you. About my wife. Fuck, I’m sorry about all of it.”
He pats me. “I don’t even remember it. You take care of you, buddy. That’s what Krystal would want me to tell you to do.”