The sound of Luke’s voice lulls me to sleep. My breathing slows. And just before I drift into darkness, I feel his hand sweep a piece of hair off my face and gently tuck it behind my ear. My body, my mind let go and I fade into black.
TWENTY-FIVE
“There it is. El Jefe Café,” I say, pulling at Luke’s arm. “Follow my lead. We have no Black Angel ID. Just the codes. We need to look like we’ve been here before and know what we’re doing. Got it?”
“Got it,” Luke replies with a confident nod.
I scan the café and spot Eduardo. His dark hair is longer than his picture, the ends brushing against his shoulders every time he moves. Dressed in dirty jeans and a plaid shirt, Eduardo is pretending to read a newspaper but his eyes search every passenger. He needs more training. A real Black Angel would never look so obvious.
“Eduardo,” I say as I reach his table. His brown eyes look up at me, his thick eyebrows arching with surprise. The code, my mind screams before he could question me. “392043.”
“You’re both younger than I thought you’d be,” Eduardo says, putting his coffee-stained newspaper down on the cheap ceramic table.
“¿El Martillo sabe que estamos veniendo?” I ask. Does the Hammer know we’re coming? I stare down at the cracked linoleum floor as we make our way out of the airport and to a waiting black Jeep.
“No tiene ninguna idea. Están seguro. Por ahora,” Eduardo says, pausing and dropping his voice on the last two words. You’re safe. For now. The way he says it with that heavy pause in between sentences means we won’t be safe for long.
The Jeep bumps down a two-lane dirt road, the sound of the tires hitting the uneven mounds of dirt and rocks filling the silent car. As my shoulder slams into the side of the door, I long for the smoother, paved roads of Quito, four hours behind us. Eduardo is doing his best to keep the Jeep steady while Luke and I study the layout of Torres’s house and grounds on our tablet.
I catch the transparent ghost of my reflection in the glass. My eyes look bloodshot and my skin is an oily gray. I only slept two hours on the plane. But I’m thankful for even just a couple hours of rest. At least then I was able to push away the panic and bury the image of my parents bound and gagged somewhere. But I woke up sweating, terror inflaming every muscle. They’re gone. They’re gone, I remembered, my heart straining under the shifting weight of so many unknowns. Where are they? What has Torres done to them? Are they even still alive?
Luke tried to calm me down and lull me back to sleep. I closed my eyes and lay back down on his lap. I pretended to be asleep. But really, I just spent those hours trying to swallow the screams creeping up my throat.
My training kicked in the moment we touched down in Quito. I’m quiet again, focused. My muscles are tight and my jaw is clenched. I try to relax, but I can’t. It’s physically impossible. I just want the moment to come. The moment where I see Mom’s face and hear Dad’s voice. When we’re all on a plane back to the United States and this nightmare is over.
“Hey,” Luke says, careful not to use my name in front of Eduardo. We don’t know if he knows the names of the DC agents he was supposed to pick up, but we’re not interested in tipping him off this far into the journey. I turn to see him rummaging through his backpack on the ground. He pulls out a packet of cheese and crackers. “How about some food?”
“I’m not really hungry,” I say and turn away, looking back out the window.
“You need energy,” Luke replies, pushing the package toward me. I reluctantly take it and rip open the cellophane. I bite down on the crackers. Luke’s still looking at me. “You doing okay?”
“I’m fine,” I answer without looking at him. I brush a crumb off my sweatshirt and shove another cracker in my mouth. I’m not lying. I am fine. If you consider numb fine. All those years of psychological training that my parents drilled into my head are working. If I actually let myself feel anything, I’d be having a daymare or panic attack right about now. I don’t have that luxury. For once, I welcome the feeling of being half dead.
As we bounce over a big bump, my muscles tense and I grab the bottom of my seat with both hands. The mountains of Quito are long gone and the huts are getting closer together, so we must be getting closer to San Lorenzo. A group of seagulls stands in the middle of the road and scatters as the Jeep passes. The ocean is near.
These lightly traveled two-lane roads we’ve been using to stay under the radar are known for robberies. I drag my fingers along the leather seat and feel the pistol resting between us. An Ecuadorian robber would be dead before he could even comprehend just who he was dealing with.
“Do you feel like you have the floor plan down?” I ask quietly. “Because once you get inside the beds of those trucks, you’ll be lying down in total darkness.”
“I’ve got it,” Luke says, looking back at the tablet. He taps the screen, zooming in on the exterior grounds.
“Good,” I say. Eduardo’s extra tablet is already at my side. My mother is convinced I have a photographic memory, and I’m beginning to think she’s right. It took me a matter of minutes to get the layout of the entire property down, but I studied and studied the floor plans, just to be sure.
“We’re almost there,” Eduardo says, turning onto a paved road. The houses on this road are becoming bigger. Two donkeys stand together in an empty lot. We pass a cemetery with white gravestones and colorful flowers. A man walks down the street, his skin a shade darker than mine, a fishing pole over his right shoulder and a bucket in his left hand. Children kick a soccer ball just down the street. Eduardo takes another left. A green-covered mountain juts out in front of us and beyond that is the sea.
A man stands in front of an industrial building, dressed in a dirty flannel shirt and mud-covered jeans. I wait for the Jeep to pass him, but our speed slows. The man gives Eduardo a little wave and lifts up a large metal door. We pull the Jeep into a dark and empty warehouse.
“Un minuto,” Eduardo says, pulling our bags out of the back of the Jeep.
Eduardo and the other man load our bags, along with extra weapons the team in Colombia is expecting, into a rickety, dented farm truck. I step behind the Jeep to change into my gear. I strip down to my bra and underwear and throw on the Black Angel uniform. Black pants, a black tank top, black shoes, black socks, black, black, black. The black will help us hide in the shadows once darkness falls in Tumaco.
“¿Estás listo?” I ask, pulling my bag over my shoulder and walking toward Eduardo. The closer I get to him, the more it smells. What the hell is that? I look down and see a shovel and what looks like mulch. The stench gets stronger and as I get closer I see it’s not mulch. It’s manure.
“What are you doing with that pile of manure?” I ask, pulling my dark hair into a low ponytail. I grab the red rubber band around my wrist and loop my hair through it one, two, three times.
“Putting it on top of you,” Eduardo answers casually in English, his accent heavy. I’m supposed to have done this before so I force myself to recover from the shock of all that … well … shit … on my head. “Once inside, we’ll put the boards back down. But we have to stop the guards from inspecting the truck at the border. They will not want to stick their hands in horse manure. They’ll let us through.”
“That’s right. Genius.”
“We ready?” Luke appears at my side, dressed in dark jeans and a black shirt, a black sweatshirt wrapped around his waist. His military training must have kicked in the moment he bought two tickets to Quito to even have the foresight to shove dark clothing into a bag. It’s not Black Angels gear but it will do.
“Let’s load up,” Eduardo says, shoving two loaded Glock 9s into our hands. “One weapon each. There’s not room down there for more than that.”
“Go ahead,” Luke says, placing a hand on the small of my back. I hand my bag to Eduardo and jump up into the bed of the truck, my pistol at my side. I lie down, the cold metal soaking into my warm, exposed skin. Luke jumps up and lies down beside me.
“¿Bien?” Eduardo asks, a long board in his hand. We both nod. “Here goes.”
Eduardo puts the first board over my face. Then another and another and another. The boards are only a few inches away from my nose. Tiny, enclosed spaces and I are not friends. I’m totally claustrophobic but through my training, I’ve had to learn how to deal with it. I close my eyes, breathe in through my nose and out through my mouth as the final board locks into place and the rush of panic subsides.
Thump. Thump. I open my eyes as pile after pile of manure is thrown onto the bed. The small slivers of light between each board disappear.
“Eduardo, not near our faces, please,” I holler through the boards as Eduardo buries us alive.
“I got it,” Eduardo’s hollow voice answers from the other side. Thump. Thump. The trickle of light near our faces remains, but the rest of the truck is covered, the slivers of light almost entirely gone.
“¿Listo?” the second man in the warehouse yells. I hear the metal garage door roll up.
“Vamos,” Eduardo answers. I hear his footsteps on the concrete floor circle the truck. The cab creaks as he climbs inside. The engine starts and the truck jumps as he pulls out of the warehouse and down the bumpy streets of San Lorenzo.
I stare straight ahead at the remaining splinter of light inches from my eyes. I wish I could see the blue sky, the clouds, the mountains, the sea.
“You okay?” Luke asks. I hear his feet shifting at the bottom of the truck, banging against the metal.
“I’m okay, are you?” I ask.
“Yeah.”
We fall silent. I listen to the sound of the tires on the road. The bump of the rocks, the sputtering engine and squeaky cab. I try to concentrate on the little things around me. But my parents keep creeping into my mind. I picture them tied up, scared. I wonder if they’re being tortured. The thought of those animals hurting them makes my bones ache. I wonder if Torres’s plan is to kill them or just use them as bait to lure us there. Lure me there. I picture my mother’s face, her green eyes defiant, her body strong. She won’t break down. I may not know everything about her, I don’t know her fears or the secrets she carries in the corners of her soul, but this, I know. She’ll go kicking and screaming, not sobbing and begging.
“Reagan?” Luke speaks. His head is turned toward me and I can feel his warm breath on my cheek.
“Yes?”
“Are you scared?” Luke asks in a small voice, somewhere next to me in the darkness. I let the question soak into my skin.
“No,” I say after a beat. “Not for me. But I’m scared for them.”
Just saying those words out loud triggers the panic I’ve been suppressing to rise up my chest. I swallow it hard, trapping it in my throat. I won’t allow myself to be afraid.
“I just want to bring them home,” I whisper. He doesn’t say anything, but I know he hears me. I feel his hand run along the bed of the truck and reach for me in the darkness. I open my palm to him and take his hand in mine. He squeezes my hand three times. I squeeze three times back. And we ride just like that, our fingers laced together, in total darkness and silence, all the way across the Colombian border.
TWENTY-SIX
“You guys are almost out,” Eduardo’s hollow voice calls to us below the boards of the beaten-up truck. A shovel scrapes above me as he scoops up manure and dumps it over the side.
“God, it’s hot in here,” Luke says. I cannot see him, but I hear him tapping against the boards. “And smelly.”
“You’d better get down on your knees and kiss that manure when we get out of here,” I say, my voice scratchy from not speaking. “Without it, they would have found us for sure.”
“First of all, that’s gross,” Luke says, the volume of his voice changing. He has turned his head toward mine. “Second of all, what do you mean?”
“They wanted to search the truck when we got to the border,” I say and drum my fingertips along the bed of the truck, the metal beat bouncing around the hollowed space.
“Your Spanish must be fluent, right?” he asks.
“Of course,” I answer.
“How many languages do you speak?”
“Seven. Well, eight if you count English.”
“Whoa. I speak like two and a half counting English. The half is Spanish so I didn’t really understand what they were saying.”
“Just glad we got through,” I say, drumming my fingers faster on the steel bed, its metallic ting a perfect anxious soundtrack.
I couldn’t hear everything they were saying, but I could hear key words like busca, which means “search.” Caja means “bed.” At one point I heard a deep voice say “retira las tablas.” Retrieve the boards. That’s when I couldn’t breathe. I squeezed Luke’s hand so hard. He clearly didn’t feel the fear in my grip because he answered me with a few short squeezes. “Retira las tablas,” they said again. I don’t even want to think about what they would have done if they found us hiding below. Arrested us? Maybe killed us? I will never look at manure the same way. I want to hug it right now. Eduardo too. He was right. As soon as they saw the manure in the bed of the truck, they were no longer interested in searching beneath the boards. They let us through.
Bump. Bump. Eduardo’s feet walk over the boards. The truck creaks as he jumps off the back and then, light. I squint and shield my eyes as the light hits my face for the first time in hours.
“Get ready to get screamed at,” I say to Luke, the knot compressing in my stomach.
Eduardo removes the boards one by one, throwing them in a pile on the floor. Each board lands with a crack louder than the one before. I open my eyes wider and see we’re inside another warehouse. The late afternoon sun shines through dust-covered windows near the ceiling. Even through its layer of filth, I’m grateful to see the orange glow.
“You guys are free,” Eduardo says, removing the last of the boards. I push my hands against the metal bed and lift myself up. I push out my chest and lean my body to the right, then the left, working out the tiny knots that have formed in my lower spine.
“What. The. Fuck?” Sam’s voice pierces the air. I turn around to see Sam standing near a second beat-up truck, her mouth open, her hands pressed tightly to her hips.
“Hi, Sam,” I say, swinging my legs around toward the back of the truck. I let my feet dangle for a second before sliding my body onto the cement floor. My limbs are heavy and tight.
“Reagan … and Luke! You too? Seriously, what the FUCK?” She’s now screaming, the word fuck bouncing off the warehouse walls and wrapping itself around my already-constricted chest. She points her finger at my face, waving it with a fury I’ve never seen from her before. “You’re supposed to be at Langley right now. What the hell are you doing here? Have you completely lost your fucking mind?”
“Sam, calm down for one second,” I say, putting my hand up in the air.
“Calm down? Don’t ask me to fucking calm down,” Sam says, her normally pale cheeks streaked crimson. “Do you have any idea how many Black Angel Directives you’ve broken? Let alone just throwing your training and good old-fashioned common sense to the wind? I can’t even begin to piece together how the two of you got down here, but you stole DC’s truck. They are waiting on that truck.”
“Not anymore,” a tall man with dark, sun-kissed skin, a black beard, and a long black braided ponytail says as he hangs up the satellite phone. “Finally got a hold of the DC team. Their plane had to make an emergency landing in Costa Rica. There’s no way they’re going to make it down here.”
Sam puts her hands on the top of her head and blows air in and out of her body. I look back at the stranger. His body is terrifyingly strong, but his eyes, chocolate brown with flecks of gold, are warm. On either side of his thick lips are deep, half-circle creases that make him look like he’s smiling even when he’s not. He walks toward me.
“You’re Elizabeth’s daughter,” he says, his accent slightly less thick than Eduardo’s. I nod and he smiles.
“I can tell.”
“You can?” I ask. “People say we look nothing alike.”
“It’s not your face,” he says and takes a step closer to me. “It’s the way you move. Graceful. Like her.”
For the first time in the last twenty-four hours, I smile. No one’s ever called me graceful or compared me to my mother like that. It’s something I’ve always admired about her. Funny to describe someone who kicks people in the face for a living as graceful, but she is. She sort of just floats. Even the way she fights, her Krav Maga moves are fluid and beautiful. They can do so much harm but look like they take no effort at all. She’s sneaky like that and underestimating her strength has gotten people killed.
“I’m Lazaro,” he says, taking my hand in his, gripping it hard. “But your parents just call me Laz.”
“You know them well?” I ask, trying to place any mention of his name. I’ve definitely heard it before.
“Very well,” he says, placing his second hand on top of mine. “I’ve always wanted to meet you. Heard so much about you. From your parents. From CORE. It’s an honor.”
“Yeah, we’ll see how much of an honor it is when Thomas finds out about this,” Sam says then turns to Eduardo, who is unpacking our bags from the truck. “Eduardo, what is wrong with you? How could you transport these two?”
“It’s not his fault,” I interject and walk closer to Sam. I can feel her burning blood from several feet away. “I knew the codes. I knew the plan. He thought we were the DC team.”
Sam turns slowly to me, her hands now balled into fists, her blue eyes dark and narrowed. “Why did you do this? Do you know how much trouble you’re going to get in? How much trouble you’re going to get me in? Let alone the fact that this is just about the most dangerous city in the world you can be in right now.”
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