So, I wait.
Maria is walking around the living area. It sounds as if she’s straightening up, glasses clinking, papers rustling.
Come on, Maria. You can do all that tomorrow morning. Go to bed.
But she doesn’t.
In another minute, the smell of coffee drifts back.
Shit. She’s making coffee. What’s she planning to do? Hold a vigil until her man gets back?
Finally she goes into her bedroom and closes the door. Now’s my chance. I exit my room and tiptoe past her door, heading for the living room. Then I’m through the living area and ready to work the code to open the door to the staircase. Hopefully they haven’t changed it after my unexpected and stupid appearance yesterday.
Suddenly, I hear her bedroom door open once again and footsteps approach.
My fingers fly over the keypad. I’ve just hit Enter when I hear another sound. The door slides open, but I hardly notice. At my back, the unmistakable ratchet of a pump-action shotgun being primed to fire freezes me to the spot.
“Turn around. Slowly.”
I do. I don’t intend to see what a shotgun would do to me or to find out how long it takes me to recover from such a wound.
Maria has the gun leveled at my torso.
“What are you doing, Maria?”
“Ramon said you might try to follow. He was right. He wants you to stay here.”
“But I came to help. How can I help if I’m here?”
Maria sniffs. “You are a woman. How could you help? You would only be a distraction. What is to be done is men’s work.”
“And you know what is to be done?”
“I know enough. Ramon is wise in these ways. He and Tomás will do what is necessary.”
“And Max.”
Another disdainful sniff. “Ramon knows what Max is. Un policía contra narcótraficant. He is alive only because he is Tomás’s friend. He will stay alive only as long as he is useful. If you and he are indeed lovers, I think you will soon be wearing ropa de luto.”
I don’t recognize the expression. “What does that mean?”
“Mourning clothes,” she says.
An icy finger touches the back of my neck. I have to get out of here. Maria is still gripping the trigger of the shotgun. I need to get it away from her without waking Gabriella. If she’s like her mother, she’s likely to come out guns blazing at the sound of a shotgun blast.
“Can I sit down?” I ask. “That shotgun scares me.”
She jabs in the direction of the couch. I back toward it, keeping Maria in my line of sight. I’m hoping she wants to secure the door and sure enough, she half turns to the keyboard, trying to keep the shotgun level on me at the same time she works the code.
I don’t give her a chance to do, either. I’m on her in less than a heartbeat, wrenching the gun from her and pushing her down onto the floor. I put a finger to her lips. “No noise. Wouldn’t want to wake your daughter.”
She glares at me. “Puta.”
That again. “How do you communicate with Ramon?”
She looks like she’s not going to answer so I tickle her chin with the barrel of the shotgun. “I said I didn’t want to wake your daughter. I didn’t say I wouldn’t.”
Harsh, maybe. But it works. “Cell phone.”
“Where is it?”
She clamps her jaws tight but her eyes betray her. They flicker toward the table. I grab her arm, yank her to her feet and pull her with me. The cell phone is on the counter separating the kitchen from the dining area. I drop it to the floor, crush it with my heel and toss it onto the counter.
“Does Gabriella have a phone?”
She shakes her head. “No. Cell phones are a danger to us—too easy to trace. We have only the one. She is not allowed.”
Knowing Gabriella, knowing teenagers, I suspect she might have a phone her folks don’t know about. Like the iPod. But there’s nothing I can do about that. I push Maria down into one of the chairs and look around for something to tie her up with. I don’t see anything promising. In the kitchen area there are some towels hanging from a wooden spool. I grab up two, tear them into strips and bind her hands and feet.
“Who are you working for?” she asks, twisting her head to watch as I secure the knots. “Are you with Santiago? Has he hired you to kill us?”
For the first time, her voice shakes a bit, her eyes grow big. She is afraid.
I jam the last piece of towel into her mouth. “No. Tomás spoke the truth when he told Ramon we were here to help. All of us. It’s too bad your husband didn’t believe it.”
I give the strip of towel a tug to make sure it is tight across her mouth. I don’t want her calling out to her daughter as soon as I’m gone. I bend down so we are eye level. “I will tell you this. If any harm comes to any of my friends because of Ramon, you may be the one wearing ropa de luto.”
She believes me. The panic in her eyes confirms it.
She struggles to speak through the gag but nothing comes through but garbled sounds.
This time, I make it out the door. I wish I could think of a way of disabling the keypad. Keep Maria and Gabriella locked inside. A quick examination of the lock doesn’t yield any simple or obvious ways to do it. So I resort to another simple and obvious way—I punch a fist through the mechanism. I suppose there might be a failsafe somewhere inside, but Maria won’t be able to get to it until she’s untied. And if Gabriella is a typical teen, it may be hours before she gets up and finds her mother.
So now I’m off. Up the stairway, out through the cabin. It’s quiet and dark in the clearing. No breeze, a sprinkling of stars overhead, a crescent moon. I let vampire surface, listen for sounds of the men moving through the brush. I sniff the air. Thanks to Maria’s puttering, they have a sixty-minute lead, but I know the direction they’ll be traveling.
The ground I run over is rock strewn and covered with low brush. I startle small creatures—rats, snakes, rabbits—in my path. Insects scurry or fly away. From just out of sight, a bigger predator hunts, taking off after the vermin I send scampering in his direction.
Say thank you, vampire growls.
In ten minutes, I pick up the scent. Max, first, the most familiar, then Culebra and Ramon. They move with purpose, not as quietly as I, and it’s not hard to catch up.
I slow down, the human Anna pushes a reluctant vampire back into vigilance mode. It’s my turn to take up the pursuit.
The men move steadily eastward. I recall bits of their conversation from earlier. Santiago is living on the outskirts of a village far from Reynosa. He has bought and paid for the village, supplying the residents with money and food in exchange for their silence and cooperation. Anyone suspected of not cooperating has already been disposed of.
He is planning to run his business from this remote location until the heat dies down. The latest round of violence has spilled across the border. The murder of an American tourist caught in the cross fire between narco factions raised the ire of both the Federales and U.S. cops. Ground and air patrols have increased, suspected drug houses closed down, the usual avenues open to money laundering unavailable because of closer government scrutiny.
Ramon said this is why Santiago wants him dead. The boy he killed was the son of a government official who facilitated the exchange of dirty money for clean. He oversaw the chains of casas de cambios, money exchange houses, moving billions of narco dollars through the system. The man now refuses to reopen the channels until he gets his revenge. Until Rójan’s killer is dead.
If Max, Culebra and Ramon continue at this rate, it will take them well past daybreak to reach the village. They’ll have to camp somewhere on the route to wait for the cover of darkness to get close. I can reach the village much faster.
I send a message to Culebra. I’m here.
I thought I’d hear from you sooner.
Ran into a little trouble with Maria. She tried to keep me at the cave.
Why would she do that? Culebra’s tone indicate
s surprise.
Ramon, I answer simply. You should tell Max that Ramon doesn’t trust him. He should be on his guard.
Culebra’s surprise turns into concern. Why would he distrust the one man who can get his family to safety?
Don’t know. Didn’t stick around to ask. Listen, I’m going on ahead to take a look around the village. See if I can pick out where Santiago is hiding.
We won’t make it before sunrise, Culebra says, echoing my thoughts, impatient that he has to stay behind. We’ll have to take cover on the trail.
I’ll come back as soon as I can.
Culebra closes our mental communication conduit. What lingers after is the definite trace of bitterness that he can’t shape-shift and come with me. There’s just a touch of jealousy there, too.
Makes me smile.
CHAPTER 26
THE VILLAGE IS MORE PRIMITIVE THAN I IMAGINED. It’s like something from the nineteenth century. A well stands in the middle of a courtyard from which four dirt roads radiate outward like the points of a compass. There are no more than a dozen houses—shacks really—scattered off the roads. Simple wooden structures each with a patchwork garden in front and chickens pecking in pens on the sides. The only vehicles I see are two ancient trucks with wooden beds parked side by side near the one brick structure in town. A church—a tiny church with a steepled roof and bell tower.
Good cover for a drug kingpin used to living in luxury. It’s unlikely the cops on either side of the border would think to search for him in a place like this.
Still, I can’t imagine Santiago living like a peasant in one of those shacks. There must be more to this village.
Or one of those simple structures has an underground mansion like Ramon’s underground cave. Money makes all things possible. Big money works miracles.
I keep to the shadows, out of sight of prying eyes. The presence of a stranger, especially a gringa, would certainly attract attention. So I circle the village in a wide arc, keeping to the trees and whatever scrub brush I can use for cover.
It’s fast approaching dawn. The village is still asleep, no stirrings at all from any of the houses. There are several more shacks separated from the cluster around the courtyard. They look no different from the others. No big black Escalades parked in front, no AK-47 gun-toting toadies standing guard, nothing that shouts major narco kingpin in residence here.
Well, this scouting trip has been a bust.
And I have to wait until nightfall for Culebra.
I hunker down in a cluster of bushes, hoping the green leafy ground cover under my ass isn’t poison oak or ivy. Vampire or no, an itch is an itch. I burrow in like a fox until I’m sure no casual passerby can spot me. I have a semi-clear view to the center of the village and a better view of the shacks on the outskirts.
Nothing to do now but wait.
And think.
Is Ramon really launching this preemptive strike to protect his family from Santiago’s wrath? Or is it something else? How much does Maria know about the death of Rójan? About Ramon’s part in it? She seems to take his word as law. Gabriella is far less accepting. She hasn’t romanticized her father the way Maria has. Still, they are blood. It would be a mistake to look on her as an ally.
I wonder if Maria would have shot me to keep me at the cave simply because Ramon told her to. I’m glad I told Culebra to keep an eye on Ramon and to protect Max. I can’t shake the feeling that Culebra is more a pawn in this game than a partner. And I believed Maria when she said Max was expendable. What she and Ramon don’t realize is that Max and Culebra are a formidable pair. More than a match for Ramon now that they have been warned.
The far-off sound of a motor snaps me to attention. It’s full light out now. A plume of dust rises from the eastern radial of the roads stretching from the well. The timbre and decibel level of the engine marks it as a big vehicle—a truck, maybe. I lean forward to get a better look.
And pull back immediately. From my left, from one of the shacks closest to my hiding place, a man sticks his head out a window. He watches the truck approach and when it has reached the center of the village and come to a stop by the well, he leans back inside and yells.
“Las muchachas. Ahora.”
The door opens. A man steps out first, an AK-47 strapped bandolier style across his chest by a loose cord. He’s barrel-chested and squat, hair secured by a handkerchief tied around his head. He wears sweatpants and a T-shirt straining over a big belly. He’s barefoot.
The toadie I’ve been looking for?
He has a cigarette in his hand and he waves it in a come-along motion. He stands beside the door and barks something sharp.
As if propelled from behind, three young women stumble out. They blink at the light and clutch at blankets thrown over their shoulders. They are barefoot and dirty, hair unkempt, faces smudged. None of them could be older than sixteen. They cower together, eyes on the toadie. He gets behind them and uses the stock of the rifle still tied across his chest to move them forward.
“Muévan, putas,” he says.
They remain close, moving as one, trying to keep as far away from the guard as they dare. He keeps prodding them toward the well and the waiting truck.
The arrival of the truck has awakened a few of the inhabitants and curious faces poke from windows and doors. As soon as they see who is behind the wheel, see who is approaching from the shack with the girls, they disappear back inside like wisps of smoke.
The driver’s door opens and a man who could be the toadie’s twin—overweight, dirty T-shirt, jeans hung so low I can’t imagine what’s holding them up—jumps to the ground. They embrace, patting each other on the back, mumbling something in Spanish too rapidly for me to catch. Then they go to the back of the panel truck and the driver opens the rear doors.
“¿Cuatro este vez, huh?”
“Al jefe le crece el apetito por las chicas. Esta aburrido,” the toadie replies with a laugh.
I understand the boss is bored but he wants four this time? Four what?
In a moment, I know. The driver yells something through the open doors and four girls appear from inside. Roughly, the driver drags one after the other to the ground and shoves them toward the waiting toadie. The girls are all dressed in simple dresses, sandals on their feet. They are thin, young, younger even than the three standing in the front of the truck, and big-eyed with fear.
The toadie steps up to each, and in turn, lifts a chin, cups a breast, runs a hand up between legs and pinches. The startled girls yelp and pull back. The toadie grins and spits out his cigarette.
“El Jefe estará contento,” he says. He jabs a thumb toward the front of the truck where the other three girls wait, their faces drawn with uncertainty. “La basura está lista para hechar afuera.”
The garbage is ready to be taken out. My guts churn as the two pigs laugh. Another round of backslapping and jokes aimed at the “education” the new girls are about to receive and then the guard moves the new arrivals back toward the shack.
The driver watches a moment, then he snaps at the three to come to the back of the truck. He lifts each one into the back, a hand snaking under the blanket of the first, pulling it down to expose the breasts of the second and finally ripping the blanket completely off the third. He bends that one back against the bumper, grinding himself into her until she cries for him to stop. He laughs and turns her around, using a hand under her ass to propel her roughly into the truck. “Más adelante, chica,” he says, slamming the door.
CHAPTER 27
I CAN’T WRAP MY HEAD AROUND WHAT I JUST WITNESSED. The new girls can’t be more than twelve or thirteen. Are they being fed like takeout to someone in that shack and then thrown out like garbage when he’s ready for the next course?
Is that someone Santiago?
This is the person Culebra swore allegiance to? That Ramon works for?
As soon as the truck with the girls departs, a van pulls into the village and stops in front of the church. This time,
the villagers begin drifting outside. My rage extends to them, too, the ones who withdrew quickly when they saw what was happening.
Or does this happen every week? Every day? Are they afraid for their own wives and daughters? Is that why they raise no objection?
I remember what Ramon said. The village has been bought and paid for.
I now have a decision to make. Do I go after the truck? I could free the girls, see they make it to safety. Kill the driver.
Then what?
There is most likely someone waiting for the truck to return. I could make the driver talk and tell me where and when.
I peek out. The bell in the steeple begins to ring. The villagers move toward the open church door, including the toadie, who shuts and locks the door to the shack where he brought the girls. Three men are hauling bags from the back of the van and bringing them into the church.
I can’t remember. Is it Sunday? Are the villagers going to mass? They actually have a priest in this devil’s playground? Where was the priest when the girls were being abused by the toadie and his buddy?
The bags being unloaded are too big and heavy-looking to hold communion wafers. Should I move closer?
I look toward the shack where the girls were taken. The door remains closed. It’s quiet inside. I’m torn between attempting to get a look inside the church and rescuing those girls. Part of me wants to burst in, haul the girls out before the pig gets his hands on them. But the saner, logical part of me says there’s another reason I’m here.
The village courtyard is deserted. The church bell has stopped ringing. Whatever was being delivered, is now inside the church. Everyone in the village seems to be inside, too. The van stands open and empty. I can do more good in the long run if I go after the truck that took the girls and get the driver to tell me what’s going on.
If I’m going to get away, it will have to be now.
I slip out of my hiding place, pulling brush tamped down back into place. I keep an eye out for any strays, but everyone seems to have marched like good little ants into the church. I only have to scurry a little deeper into the brush before I can safely pick up speed. I run parallel to the road, watching for the truck.
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