Liberty At Last (The Liberty Series)

by James, Leigh

  I sat up and looked at her. She was beautiful, of course. And she had those eyes.

  His eyes.

  I had to make myself stop thinking about how I’d gotten here. I had to concentrate on how I was getting out of here.

  Catherine was annoying me more than usual lately, which was saying something since I was no longer her human ashtray. I saw her more frequently each day. She would come into my cell and pace, her armed guard standing by. She now almost exclusively brought me my so-called meals.

  “Why are you here again?” I asked, groggily, as she paced in the middle of the room. She certainly looked as if she were going somewhere exciting; today her hair was pulled back into a tight ponytail and she was wearing silk wide-legged pants and a white linen tank top. The top was formfitting, showing off the sinewy muscles she’d inherited from her father. She wore intricately braided gold sandals and a gold watch so enormous that it was probably visible from space.

  Everything about her was irritating me, right down to her glossy red toenail polish, but the worst was her eyes. Those eyes that were so much like John’s. They taunted me.

  She stood there, contemplating me. “I’m here because I still haven’t figured out which one of them sent you. I guess I want to know,” she said finally. It sounded as if her curiosity had gotten the better of her.

  I sat up a little, wincing at the pain I felt everywhere. I also felt dizzy and oddly cold all of a sudden, like I had a fever.

  “Can I please have some clean water? And some bread? And a book?” I asked. “Then I’ll tell you.”

  She looked at me and nodded, going to the door. “Guardia,” she commanded. I heard her rattle off some directions in Spanish that I couldn’t follow.

  She started pacing again and I tried to calm my fears. There were a lot of them. Fear of telling her the whole truth and putting the people I loved in danger. I worried she wouldn’t be happy to know her parents still cared about her. That they wept for her. It seemed to me that she was here now by choice. I was afraid Angel had twisted her so that she hated John and Eva now, or that she was so far gone she just didn’t care anymore. If either of these were true, it would mean that I was only a nuisance. She would find out what she wanted from me, and then she’d throw me away.

  I didn’t think about what that could mean. I couldn’t face it. The idea of what John would go through if I never got to tell him. Tell him that I loved him. Tell him that even if Catherine was not exactly okay, she’d at least moved on.

  Tell him goodbye.

  I shuddered, shaking off the thoughts, as the guard came back with a tray. There was a glass of clear, cold water, a large hunk of bread, two pats of butter wrapped in gold foil and a beaten-up paperback. Catherine tossed the book to me. I immediately recognized the cover. It had a scary-ass cat on it. Not only had I read it and had nightmares about it, but I’d watched the cheesy but somehow still terrifying movie with Sasha, years ago.

  “Pet Cemetery?” I asked, more incredulously than I meant to. I flipped through the pages. “In Spanish?”

  “What?” she asked, blank-faced. It seemed pretty clear that cartel life had sucked any sense of humor, or irony, right out of her. I wonder what she was like before all this. I wonder if I’ll ever know.

  “Um...thanks,” I said. At least now I had something to look at, even if I couldn’t understand it.

  I took a large gulp of water. It hurt my throat going down, and I felt like I was going to immediately throw it back up again — but I made myself ride out the wave of nausea. Next I opened the butter and stared at it for a moment. It’d been a long time since I’d had any. I looked up and Catherine was staring at me.

  “Do you have to watch?” I asked. I didn’t want an audience right now. She turned her back to me and pretended to look out the window.

  Sheesh, I thought, she needs some other kind of hobby, other than getting dressed up to come into my cell and watch me. Although that beats getting dressed up to come into my cell and burn me.

  When I was sure she wasn’t looking I licked the butter; it was like licking heaven. I opened the other packet and crammed both of them inside the bread. I wanted to shove the whole thing into my mouth, but I made myself slow down and take small bites, punctuated with sips of water. My stomach, void of solid food for so long, roiled violently, its overwhelming desire for nourishment struggling against all the angry acid raging around inside it.

  I put my hand over my poor midsection, willing it to settle down, fighting the nausea. I took a deep breath.

  “Catherine,” I said, when the waves had passed and I felt a little better. “Neither of your parents sent me. I came on my own. Your father doesn’t know I’m here. Your mother gave me money to help pay for my trip, but she thought I was crazy to come down here. They both think you’re dead.”

  “How are they?” she asked. Again, her voice was oddly flat, lacking any trace of the happiness or relief that I’d hoped for.

  “They’re fine,” I said, trying to sound noncommittal. I didn’t know what to expect from her. I wanted to tread lightly.

  “Your mom seems nice. She’s still in California with Joe.” Actually, your mother was a lot prettier than I hoped she’d be. I was hoping for an aging hippie with long grey hair and no makeup; instead she was a total fox, tall, blonde, perfectly waxed eyebrows, and she smelled like some delicious essential oil. Her house was outside of Los Angeles in an exclusive neighborhood, sunny and enormous, with Spanish tiles and a view of the beach. But she had the sad eyes of a mother who’d lost her only child. It was totally heartbreaking to meet her. Her sadness echoed John’s, but it was a mother’s sadness, laced with guilt.

  “And John?” she asked, taking me from my reverie.

  “Your dad?” I was taken aback that she’d used his first name. “He’s good. He misses you, though. He talks about you a lot.” A fresh wave of chills rolled through me when I told her this, and a mixture of longing, sadness and desire flooded me. My desire for him, to protect him; and the knowledge of his desire for his daughter to be alive, to be okay. Which she clearly was not.

  “How do you know him?” she asked, and I finally heard some curiosity creep into her voice.

  I felt myself start to blush and I tried to get a handle on it before it spread. “I was involved in a case he was working on,” I said. Please, let’s just leave it at that.

  “What sort of case? Intelligence?” she asked.

  “No,” I said. “He’s not in the military anymore. My father was looking for me. He hired John to track me down. He runs a private business now. He said he couldn’t stay in the Navy after what happened to you. He looked for you for a long time…and then I guess he just couldn’t go back.”

  She’d been staring straight ahead, listening, but now she turned and looked at me like I had two heads. “My father left the Navy? That’s his whole life,” she said.

  “Not anymore,” I said. Missing you and seeking an outlet for revenge is his whole life now. I tried to put it in a good light. “He helps his clients find people they’ve lost, like me. For other clients, he goes after people who’ve hurt them and can’t be prosecuted through the normal channels.”

  “He’s in private business? You mean, like a detective?” she asked, clearly confused.

  “Sort of,” I said. “But more like a vigilante…bounty hunter…who has a lot of ex-military guys working for him,” I said, as gently as I could. No matter how I felt about her, I wanted her to respect her father, to understand that he was doing something to honor her. I wanted her to want him back in her life.

  “So he sent you?” she asked, skeptically resizing me.

  I could only imagine what I looked like at this point. I’d probably lost fifteen pounds and hadn’t washed my hair since I’d been captured. I shuddered.

  “I told you: he doesn’t know I’m here,” I said.

  “If my mother didn’t send you, and my father didn’t send you, and I don’t know you—then why did you come down
here? Matamoros is notoriously dangerous — you had to know that. All of this, for me?”

  For once, some emotion finally showed on her perfect face: anger.

  “Why? Why would you risk your life?” she demanded.

  Now it was my turn to look at my feet. How could I say it? How could I tell her that the only man I’d ever loved desperately needed her back? And because I loved him, and I wanted him, I needed her too. All of this seemed quite selfish at the moment. She was alive and healthy. She appeared to be here willingly, so she likely could’ve come back if she’d wanted to. But she hadn’t. She hadn’t but I still needed her.

  Ugh. I didn’t want to need her. I wanted to smack her.

  “I asked you why. Now answer me,” she said. “Otherwise, you know what’s going to happen.”

  Great. I was going to get barbecued again if I didn’t think of something fast.

  “I love your father,” I said, looking up from my feet, into her eyes. The truth was all I had. “He helped me deal with something horrible from my past. He misses you so much, and he feels guilty about what happened. I wanted to find out what happened to you so I could help him.”

  “You came down here to find me because you love my father,” she said.

  “Yes. Because I love him. And he misses you so much.”

  We stared at each other for a moment.

  “Well, maybe you can understand how I feel,” she said. “Because I want to be left alone. I have a life here, with someone that I love. Angel brought me back from the dead. He saved me from horrible people who were doing horrible things to me. He found me and saved me when my father and everyone else couldn’t. I’m not leaving him. Not ever. So don’t think you can come down here on some little crusade and drag me back to my father, just so you two can have some stupid happily ever after moment,” she spit at me. “Good luck with that.”

  She had a look of disgust on her face. “Do you even have any idea how old my father is?” she asked.

  “Older,” I mumbled.

  “Older?” she asked, raising her voice. “He’s old. Old as dirt. That’s disgusting. You’re younger than me — you could be my little sister.”

  We looked at each other again. Ew.

  But even that disturbing thought wasn’t enough to stop my anger. “Loving your father is disgusting?” I asked, raising my voice right back at her. “You’re boyfriend is a kidnapper and a murderer, and you think it’s gross that I’m dating your dad?”

  “You just shut your mouth,” she said fiercely, and I was afraid of her again. “Don’t you talk about Angel. You have no idea who he is. No fucking clue. So shut up.”

  She started out of my cell and then turned back. “You know, you’ve just made everything worse. For everyone,” she said.” You should’ve just left us alone.” Then she stalked out, leaving me alone and more lost than ever.

  “I still haven’t decided what I’m going to do with you,” she said later that evening. At least it seemed like she’d calmed down. She’d brought me some more bread and another clean glass of water. I accepted them warily, hoping they were a good sign that she wasn’t going to shoot me or make a cartel sex slave, at least not tonight.

  “What are your options?” I asked. I was being forward, but I had little to lose at this point.

  “Angel wants you killed,” she said, matter of factly. I winced. “You’re obviously a security threat. We can’t have you running back to America to tell my parents and the rest of the world where our compound is.”

  “But I won’t,” I said. “I promise. I’ll even tell your father you’re dead, if that’s what you want.” I looked at her for a beat. “Is that what you want?”

  She sighed and looked almost imperceptibly to her right, to where the guard was standing. She couldn’t speak freely.

  That gave me a small spark of hope. At least there was something she didn’t want them to hear.

  “I left all that behind,” she said. “That whole other life. I’m not the same person anymore.

  “I was kidnapped when I came down here for spring break. It was a group of guys who worked in organized crime. Their job was to find tourist girls and drug them. So we could be sold. And that’s exactly what they did,” she said, shrugging. “They drugged us. They beat us. They made us have sex with them in exchange for food. And they were preparing to send us out to whorehouses where we’d be drugged and beaten and forced to have sex with whoever paid. Not that we were being paid, of course.”

  I looked away then, but I could still feel her eyes on me. “Those guys had some deal with Angel that went bad. There was fighting at their headquarters. A lot of people got shot, including most of the girls I was with, because they were stupid and they tried to run. But I waited. I wanted to live — to get out of there one way or another. When they found me alive, they asked Angel what he wanted to do with me. He picked me up and carried me out of there. He was my savior. He told me later that as soon as he saw me, he knew. He knew I was meant for him. Something good rising up from the ashes.

  “Later, when I was stronger, we went back. We went back when they thought they were safe. I have to admit, I enjoyed that,” she said, and laughed.

  I paused, trying to take in everything that she’d said to me.

  “It doesn’t mean you have to be dead to your family,” I said. “No matter what you’ve done.”

  She looked at me and scoffed. “You think I’m ashamed of what I did? I wish I could have shot all of them,” she said, “not just a few. Trust me. I’d do it again in a heart beat.”

  She sat for a minute while I let this sink in.

  “Angel says it’s my choice,” she said.

  “What?” I asked.

  “What to do with you. He trusts me with the decision,” she said.

  “Awesome,” I said, and she snorted.

  “I’m gonna have to sleep on it,” she said, clicking out of my cell, guard in tow.

  “Awesome,” I whispered to myself, knowing that sleep was probably a long way off for me.

  Later I was on the cot, staring at the scary cat on the cover of Stephen King’s book, contemplating my fate. John believed that everything happened for a reason, and I was starting to actually think he might be right: I’m going to die down here because I’m a fucking idiot, I thought. There’s a good reason for you. My inner voice grunted her agreement.

  I must have drifted off to sleep, but it was troubled, fitful. I was dreaming there was shouting, and I heard running in the halls, and machine gun fire. Lots and lots of machine gun fire. I lurched awake, to the darkness of my cell, and then I realized it was real. There was running in the halls and yelling and shooting out in the yard.

  I sat still, frozen in fear, wondering what was going to happen.

  Then, out of the corner of my eye, I saw movement in my cell. I turned and saw something flutter from the window to the floor. I’d wondered, when I first got here, why there was no glass on my window. Aren’t they worried about me screaming for help? I’d thought.

  Then it had become clear to me: Nope, they weren’t worried about it. Not at all. I could scream as much as I liked, as much as some of the poor souls in the neighboring cells did. It didn’t matter. The kids didn’t stop their games, the dogs didn’t stop barking. We were surrounded by miles and miles of cartel-controlled land and they were used to it. No one who heard cared. No one was coming.

  Except there was someone — or a whole lot of people — out there now.

  I looked over at the floor. A small piece of white paper had landed there.

  I grabbed it with shaking hands and unfolded it.

  FROM THE DESK OF JOHN CARTER QUINN

  LOOK UP

  I felt my heart seize. I looked up to the window. All I could make out in the darkness was part of a boot. That was it.

  I felt like all of the air had been sucked out of me. I couldn’t breathe — but I was pretty sure I liked that boot. In fact, I loved it.

  John? I wanted to scream his
name, to call for him, beg for him to come in here and get me out. My voice wouldn’t come. Thank god, because the guard outside my door would’ve come in and shot us both before I ever had the chance to look at his beautiful face again. Tears streamed down my cheeks as I clutched the note to my chest. He came. He was here. He still loved me and he was going to rescue me.

  But there was a whole lot of shooting going on out there. Please let him be okay.

  All of a sudden something banged into my cell door. I wrenched my eyes away from the window. I watched, not understanding, as the guard outside my door slid down towards the ground and crumpled to the floor.

  The door opened and a hulking six-foot-five man dressed in camouflage gear entered. He had a ski mask over his face and an enormous handgun with a silencer on it. He surveyed the room with the gun ready, ignoring me, looking in every dark corner.

  I just gaped up at him, opening and closing my mouth like a fish.

  “Liberty,” he said. I recognized the voice. I quickly looked up at my window and I could still see the outline of the boot. My visitor pulled up the mask and I could see, finally: Matthew.

  “Oh my god, Matthew,” I said, and fell to my knees. I was so happy to see him it made me collapse.

  “Come on, Lib, we gotta get out of here — fast. John and the other guys are up there, waiting for us. We gotta move,” he said, urgently, coming over and pulling me up by the armpits. I swayed when I got up to my feet. “Stay with me, girl. It’s okay. I got you.” He clamped his arms around me, protectively. He started pulling me towards the door, out of the cell. At first, I was so relieved that I couldn’t think about anything else besides getting out of there, up to the outside world, up to John. John.

  But then I remembered. I remembered the reason why I’d gotten into all this trouble in the first place. I shook my head against Matthew’s chest.