The ride was endless. The thick, muffling darkness left her with no sense of time. Despite the terror that threatened at the edges of her mind, she dozed, dreaming of faceless men speaking harsh words she could not understand. Strange creatures menaced as well, a thousand giant bees and a giant black panther with the mane of a lion.
When the back of the truck finally did open, sunlight filtered through the boxes, turning her prison a dusty, dusky brown. Voices alerted her to the presence of multiple men. The light became stronger as they lifted out the boxes until she was completely uncovered.
The truck was backed up to a rundown motel. From her position inside, she could see the “No Vacancy” sign bolted to the roof of the long building and count a dozen rooms.
“Get her out,” said a blond man.
Juan and another man climbed in and lifted her crate. They handed it off to two others, who carried it inside one of the rooms. It was accomplished quickly, but not furtively: they didn’t care who saw them. They dropped her inside the room on the floor next to one of the two double beds covered with dingy, worn polyester coverlets and slammed the door on the way out.
Dust motes floated through the light coming through the yellowed curtains, and the room smelled not just musty but moldy. No vacancy my ass. No one had stayed in this room for a long, long time. She examined the cage, but nothing appeared loose. All the bars were carefully soldered or welded together at the corners, and no rust weakened the individual joints. Experimentally, she crouched in the crate and pressed her back against the top, then attempted to straighten her knees, but the bars at the top dug into her spine and refused to give. The bars weren’t particularly thick. How strong could they be? She pressed harder.
Voices outside attracted her attention, and she sat back down. If she’d had any success in weakening her cage, she couldn’t afford to have them find out what she was up to. She slumped into the corner of the cage and tried to appear exhausted and harmless. It wasn’t as hard as she would have liked.
The door opened and the blond man entered, speaking in Spanish on his cell phone. His eyes flicked over her several times, and he switched to English.
“Yes, she is. And she smells. I will have her ready for you when you get here.” He stuffed the phone in his pocket.
“Where is the data drive?”
Screw you. She didn’t answer.
“Shall I search you myself?”
Eric had said they could pretend to have it. He’d also said they would assume she’d sent it on the plane.
“It’s safely in the States already. You’ll never get it.”
“Don’t be so certain. But we do not need it yet. Velasquez is coming, and he has a job for you. I am going to let you out so you can shower. If you try to escape, you will be punished. Do you understand?”
“Yes.” A job? That did not sound promising.
He opened the door and called Juan inside. Juan brought the cattle prod in with him and pressed it against her arm as the blond removed the padlock. Only when the gate was open and the blond had stepped away did he withdraw the prod to release her. She crawled forward and out, maintaining a defeated posture and leaning heavily on the crate as she stood.
“Juan is going to make sure you don’t run off while you get cleaned up. Clean clothes will be provided, so just give him your old ones.” He left and Juan gestured toward the bathroom and followed her inside.
“Take your clothes off and hand them to me,” he said. Jane plucked at the bottom of the shirt, watching his face for any reaction, but saw nothing. It should have comforted her, but it didn’t. She remembered Juan’s chart. He’d never killed anyone. He should have been a prime candidate for her to talk out of playing along with Velasquez, but if they’d destroyed all his emotions, even desire, he might be too far gone for her to reach. Sympathy, empathy—those would be early casualties.
“Move it,” he ordered, tossing the cattle prod from hand to hand.
She leaned in and turned on the shower. The water came out lukewarm and showed no sign of heating up no matter how hard she cranked the handle. Okay, time to get this over with. She stepped into the shower and, behind the curtain, stripped out of her top and pants and handed the sopping bundle out to Juan. Her bra and panties, she kept. Through the translucent curtain, she saw Juan searching the bundle, presumably for the thumb drive. Good luck with that.
As much as she wanted to exit the shower as filthy and smelly as she entered it just to spite Velasquez, she’d face whatever he had planned for her a lot better without the constant crawling sensation on her skin. Her captors had not supplied shampoo, so after loosing her hair from its braid, she scrubbed her head with the sliver of soap in the soap dish.
Gross. Sharing soap with faceless strangers, yet another small cruelty for which Velasquez would pay. Some people might not mind, but she rubbed and rinsed what was left of the bar until it all but disappeared before using it on herself.
“Time to get out,” Juan said. He’d left the bathroom briefly with her wet clothes, and she’d had a moment of privacy, but then he’d returned.
“You leave the bathroom, I’ll get out.”
“You shy or something? Garcia said to be sure you don’t get away.”
“How am I going to escape? There’s not even a window.” She thought about his file. “You wouldn’t want your sister drying herself off in front of a strange man, would you?”
“I have clothes for you.”
“Well, lay them on the vanity and leave. I’m not going anywhere.”
He grunted and through the curtain she saw him lay a small pile on the vanity before he left. “You have two minutes.”
The moment he was gone she hopped out and scrubbed the water off her skin. On the vanity she found a pair of scrubs and a loose-fitting, thin cotton tank top. No bra. No panties. No damned socks. She carefully hung the underwear she’d washed out in the shower on the knob. She’d put them on again when they were dry. She leaned on the vanity and faced herself in the spotty, cracked mirror.
“You look like shit, girl.” But if Velasquez hoped to grind her down, the shower—however suboptimal—had been a tactical error. Cleanliness might not be next to godliness, but it certainly improved her outlook.
A banging on the door interrupted her self-examination.
“Get out here.” Velasquez.
She sucked in a long breath and let it out slowly before opening the door.
Velasquez stood just outside the bathroom door, a glower creasing his dark features. “It is time for you to get to work.”
“I am not working for you anymore. You have no hold over me.”
“No?” He looked her up and down, and she straightened her spine.
“No.” He could kill her. But death was preferable, at this point, to creating more broken souls like poor, lost Alvaro and the conscienceless Juan.
“Your choice, of course. But I thought you doctors were compelled to save lives.”
“There’s no vow, no amount of inducement that would compel me to save your life.”
He laughed.
“I would not trust you to. But I am not the one in need of a doctor, and at the moment you are the only one nearby.” He stepped back, and against her own advice she followed, glancing toward the beds when he waved in that direction. And then the world shrank down to a tiny, almost lifeless body lying bundled in a quilt on one of them. She ignored Velasquez and hurried to the child’s side. His bright blond hair was matted with dried sweat, and he lay so perfectly still that if his cheeks had not been ruddy with fever she might have thought he was already dead.
“What the hell?” She settled next to him on the bed and put a hand to his forehead, then almost snatched it back from the heat. He couldn’t have been more than six or seven, and he hovered on the very edge of life.
“I can’t fix this. He needs a hospi
tal. IV fluids, antibiotics . . . What’s the matter with him?”
“If we knew that, we would not ask you. And he will not be going to the hospital.”
“What’s his name?”
Velasquez didn’t answer.
“What’s his name? I need to be able to talk to him, to reach him. And I can’t do that without knowing his name.”
“Fritz.”
Oh, cripes. Here was a complication she hadn’t even considered. “Please tell me he speaks English.”
“He does.”
“Okay.” Her brain whirled. Yes, she had a degree, but she’d never practiced medicine. Any halfway-decent mother would probably be better in this situation than she was. Start with the basics. “We need to get his fever down. And I need something with electrolytes. Pedialyte, Gatorade, anything is better than nothing at this point. You said you can get IV fluids, which is great, but I don’t have a lot of experience inserting IVs and this kid is severely dehydrated, which will make finding a vein damned near impossible.”
“He wouldn’t stop crying.” This from another man she hadn’t even noticed.
“And whose fault is that?” Was that her? Really? Who knew she had it in her? “His old sweat has baked on to his body, and even with his fever he’s completely dry. He’s going to die if we don’t get some fluids in him.”
Juan handed her a bottle of cool water.
“This is fine for mopping his skin, but how the hell do you expect to get it inside him? Osmosis? I need an IV. And water isn’t good enough.” She thought back to her training. “Fill the bathtub with tepid water. If you stick your hand in, you shouldn’t feel anything—it should be the same temperature as your skin. A cooling bath will help a little, but I can’t keep this boy alive without antibiotics.”
“Medication is on the way, along with the IVs,” said Velasquez. He waved the stranger to the door. “Get her the Pedialyte.”
Juan stepped into the bathroom to run the bath, and Jane found herself alone with Velasquez.
“Who is he? The kid?” Why hadn’t Velasquez wanted her to know his name? Was he important? Being held for ransom?
“This does not concern you. All you need to know is that you must keep him alive, or suffer the consequences.”
“Right. So if he lives, I live?”
“There are things worse than death. Only a foolish, privileged girl would believe otherwise.”
And that was true, she supposed. But if the old saw about “a fate worse than death” was true, so was the one that went “where there’s life, there’s hope.” And she had hope. Eric and his friends were out there somewhere. All she had to do was keep herself alive. And this child. She had to keep this child alive, too. Because, dammit, for all the evil she’d inadvertently been part of, she was going to do some good.
“Give me a washcloth. And a clean one,” she ordered, without even realizing the only person to hear her was Velasquez himself. He didn’t move. “You want this kid to live? Get me a fucking washcloth!”
He got her a washcloth, and she poured the bottle of water over it, then pressed it to the child’s lips.
“Come on, Fritz. Have a little water. Move your mouth for me, sweetheart.” She squeezed the cloth so water dripped on his cracked lips. “Wake up just a tiny bit, Fritzie; it doesn’t have to be much. Just a little.” The drops rolled to the corners of his lips. She squeezed some more over his eyes and thought she saw them twitch a tiny bit, but his body didn’t stir. She brushed the hair away from his forehead and kept up a steady stream of crooned, senseless chatter, using his name along with a host of endearments.
“The bath is ready.” Juan’s eyes lingered on the child as she lifted him. Maybe there was hope for the guy after all, but for the moment she couldn’t worry about it. Especially with Velasquez looking on. She tugged away the quilt and stripped the boy’s clothes off, then carried him into the bathroom. She carefully lowered him into the water. When his whole body submerged, she reached for a washcloth. But there were none handy and she couldn’t let him go or he would drown. She turned to ask for help and found Juan ready with a cloth.
Velasquez had stayed in the bedroom, so as she used the cloth to gather water and drip it over the boy’s head, she addressed Juan in low tones.
“How did you know I would need that?”
He shrugged. His file hadn’t mentioned a wife or children—none of the men Bryan had allowed into the program had family ties like that—but Fritz had shaken him, had broken through his conditioning; she was certain of it.
“Do you have younger brothers or sisters?”
“I am not here to talk to you. I am to assist you.” But his eyes didn’t leave the boy.
“Well, I am very grateful. Seriously. Fritz here needs all the help he can get. So if you have experience with small children and fevers, I’d appreciate hearing about it, because I don’t. I’m a scientist, a researcher, not a practicing physician and certainly not a pediatrician.”
He frowned and remained silent for a long moment before allowing himself to speak. “My brother had many fevers when he was small like this. My mother did just as you do now. But . . .”
“But?”
He looked away from Fritz. “We had no money for medicines.”
And his brother had died. He didn’t have to say the words, and the fact that he couldn’t gave her a tiny shred more hope. “I’m so sorry.”
She heard a knock at the outside door and quiet voices. Then Velasquez called out that the medicine had arrived. With Juan’s help, she lifted Fritz from the tub and dried him off. The terrible stillness had been replaced by a violent quaking that brought tears to her eyes. She held him close to her body as she carried him out to the bedroom and then wrapped him once again in the quilt.
“What have you got?”
“Children’s amoxicillin.” The driver who’d brought her to the motel held out a small bottle. At least he’d gotten a liquid, but she still had no idea how she’d get it into the child.
“Dámelo.” Juan held out his hand to the other man, who passed him the bottle.
Upon closer inspection Jane saw that the nondescript brown bottle had a dropper built into the lid but no instructions on how much or how often she should give it to a child Fritz’s weight and age. Sorry, kid. She sat on the bed and cuddled his swaddled body close to her own, holding him upright so she could attempt to force the liquid down his throat. But she couldn’t hold him and get his mouth open at the same time. Juan leaned over and pried Fritz’s jaw open. Mentally crossing her fingers, Jane filled the dropper all the way to the top and slipped it between Fritz’s lips.
For a moment, the boy choked, his frail body convulsing, but then he swallowed. His eyelids fluttered, and Jane thought he might wake. She held her breath, but he settled quietly again in her arms.
• • •
NASH WORKED HIS usual magic, and within hours, Eric and the rest of the crew were boarding a private jet at Brownsville’s small airport. A rental SUV waited at the airport where they landed, and they were at Miguel’s apartment by noon. The key was exactly where Miguel had promised, and they let themselves into the first apartment and then headed directly for the secret entrance to the second. The dining-table armory had been refilled—efficiency at its finest—and even included a few grenades. Despite the violence inherent in his line of work, Eric usually tried to minimize loss of life. But people who bought and sold women and children needed to be eradicated. Even if they could be captured, it was likely none would serve time—a man who could afford to buy a woman at auction simply had too much money for the system to combat.
He’d carried his own knives because they were flying private and not landing in a major airport, where their luggage and persons would be checked carefully, but even small airstrips frowned on transporting long guns internationally, and he’d given Jane his Glock. So he selected
an HK45, while Marco, Mac, and Travis sorted through the rest of the gear.
“How much firepower are we going to need here?” Mac asked. “This is well outside my usual area of expertise.” Mac mostly took the kind of assignments Eric couldn’t stand—personal security for the rich and famous. Despite a rather egregious scar that ran diagonally across one cheek, the guy looked totally at home in a tux.
“Whatever you can carry that won’t impede your ability to move would be my suggestion,” said Travis. “Go military rather than law enforcement.” Travis and Mac had served together before Mac went on to become a member of the Atlanta Police Department.
Mac grunted acknowledgement and sighted down the length of a Glock G41 before setting it aside and gathering a couple of loaded magazines. Marco, as usual, went straight for the rifles, nodding in satisfaction when he found his favorite HK417 in the lot. He already carried two pistols of his own, one beneath his shoulder and one at his back.
Eric’s phone rang and he moved away from the group to pick it up.
“It’s on,” said Miguel.
“Where and when?”
“The salon is a warehouse building outside Tlaxcala. No street name. I’ll send GPS coordinates to your phone. It will take you a couple of hours to get there. The auction begins at four tomorrow afternoon.”
“Tomorrow afternoon?”
“Yes. They added her to the one that was already scheduled. This has several advantages for Velasquez: those invited are people the Hijos have done business with in the past, and there will be no unusual activity to alert anyone who may be watching. Everything will proceed as normal.”
“But you have no idea where she is now. Where they’ll hold her before the auction. What will happen to her between now and tomorrow afternoon.”
“I’m afraid not.”
“Okay.” Eric rubbed the front of his forehead with two fingers, trying to push away the headache forming there.
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