The Sacrifice

by Peg Brantley

  CHAPTER FIFTY-TWO

  Mex rubbed his head. He was tired. He worried that he’d be unable to pull this off, even with the help of Darius and Cade. “We know there are at least five adults involved. We need the element of surprise or we’ll never be able to separate Dia from them.”

  “Can we get any help from the locals?” Darius asked. Cade inspected her Glock for the second time since she’d arrived. “Not without probable cause. And even if we did have time to convince them, with Claudette here any time they have their hands full. The new system in place post-Katrina is pretty intense. They’re doing advance preparation and prepositioning now with tons of other agencies.”

  Mex focused. “The storm will help us. We’ll park where I parked earlier and walk in. We’ll get them. They won’t be expecting anyone with a hurricane on the way. Get your weather gear. Let’s get on the road.”

  Ten minutes later the three rescuers were in the rented SUV and on the highway to Slidell and Honey Island Swamp. Traffic was crazy backed up going the other way. Mex hoped they didn’t run into any roadblocks headed their direction.

  Silent, they made their way quickly to the stilt house. Mex had been in this situation many times before. People focused on their own private protocols before going into a dangerous situation. He couldn’t know exactly where others went with their thoughts in times like these but he suspected they were much like his.

  He pictured the house, its doors and windows, their approach. He considered the occupants and played out different possible scenarios in his mind, mentally rehearsing the responses he would make that were by now automatic. Still, by thinking about these things he stayed focused.

  Slidell came and went, rain sheeting the windshield and completely obliterating objects in the rearview mirror. Mex was forced to slow his speed, thankful no cars were headed in their direction. His concentration now was on keeping the Navigator from heading off the road into who the hell knew what.

  When they arrived at Pearl River the community was like a ghost town. Windows were either boarded up or shuttered and the electricity was off. Mex was glad he and Darius had been here earlier because they never would have been able to find their way now.

  * * * Pearl River reminded Cade of so many places in her childhood. Wonderful days spent chasing bull frogs and naming anhingas, big birds Maman called water turkeys. The hurricanes they’d ridden out in her family’s storm shelter. Her family…

  Her thoughts moved to the little shack Delphine had made her home—her place to practice spells and rituals. Cade had watched her sister’s luminous eyes grow more vacant as the weeks and months went by. Cade didn’t know how to help her. All she could do was bring her groceries, clean the place up and try to convince Delphine she had people who loved her. Make sure Delphine knew she had options.

  I wasn’t able to help her, Cade thought. She’d sworn the day she found her sister she’d figure out a way to help others. Deprogramming had been her lifeline. Her cult. Her ritual.

  Dia would need her and she was ready. Cade couldn’t, wouldn’t consider the possibility they might lose the child.

  * * * Darius closed his eyes and wondered what he’d gotten himself in to. He’d never been one to avoid conflict in the past but neither had he sought it out. He called people who did that confrontation junkies, fools and idiots. And worse. Yet here he was, heading out into a gulfstyle, major hurricane for a house in some strange swamp where people practiced a religion that involved human sacrifices.

  And for what? A friggin’ story. Okay, more than that. A book.

  And yeah, there was something more. He was doing this for a man he considered one of his best friends. His wife had understood that before he did. When he and Pamela talked about his returning to New Orleans, she told him she could give a rat’s ass about his book. It was the fact that his friend needed him that made her believe she and the kids would be safe until his return.

  CHAPTER FIFTY-THREE

  Mex didn’t bother pulling off the road to park. He figured there probably

  wouldn’t be much traffic tonight. “Okay, there’s no use in trying to get a lock on the subjects in the dark. Darius, you and Cade take the front entrance. I’m at the back.” He checked his weapon and his extra magazines, hoping he wouldn’t need them.

  Cade handed out rain gear. “We’ll give you thirty seconds to make it around to the back. Then Darius and I will storm the front.”

  They’d talked about all of this earlier, but Mex knew it would help calm everyone’s nerves to go through it one last time. Darius and Cade bantered back and forth another moment, then paused. “We good?” Mex asked.

  The other two answered in unison, “We’re good.”

  They pulled on their rain gear and moved out. A combination of weather and mission urged them to move quickly down the access road to the stilt house.

  Mex pushed gallons of water from his face as it fell and for a moment he flashed on the drought in Colorado and other western states. If this was God’s sense of humor, he wasn’t amused.

  Darius and Cade were making their approach to the front entrance while he hustled around to the back, working hard to control his accelerated breathing and trying to keep a kind of mental countdown so they’d enter the house as one unit. He slipped twice and noticed the water was rapidly rising.

  They were here. They were ready. They had the element of surprise.

  He rounded the back of the darkened house. The electricity was off all over the area so the darkness didn’t surprise him. Still, he peered through shuttered windows looking for any sign of light—candle or lantern. He didn’t see anything.

  In Colorado, he knew that most of their wildlife would take shelter in a blizzard. He could only hope that the same premise held true for a hurricane in Louisiana. He did not have the energy to deal with alligators and bad guys at the same time.

  He made it to the steps leading to the raised deck. Ascending quickly because the noise was lost in the sound of the rain and wind, he faced the back door expecting it to open at any minute. When it didn’t he figured his team was pushing through in the front of the house and he didn’t want them facing any danger without him.

  Mex drew back and raised his right leg. With one fierce kick at the latch the door swung open and he was in the kitchen, searching it closely for any hidden danger. He could hear Darius and Cade in the front of the house doing the same thing.

  It didn’t take long to figure out they were the only ones there.

  Shit.

  “Darius, I hope to hell you brought your laptop and that we have some friggin’ connection out here.”

  “What do you need me to do?” Darius was already moving back out the door. “It’s in the Navigator.”

  “Let’s go,” Mex said. “There’s nothing here.”

  Mex made a point to touch Cade on her shoulder. “We’re good. We’ll get there. Don’t give up on me now.”

  Back in the SUV, Mex told Darius what he wanted. “We need to know if there is any property near here under the same ownership. And we need to know it now.”

  Darius opened his laptop and they waited while he booted it up. “Sorry, Mex. There’s no internet signal I can tap into.”

  Mex wanted to hit something. “What I want are real estate records. Didn’t you search for those earlier? Get something from Van Buren? Did you save any of them?”

  Darius’s fingers flew over the keys. “I did. But I don’t know if I have what you —”

  “Anything. What else do you have?” Mex pushed up in his seat.

  “The same family who owns the stilt house recently commissioned a crypt at Harrison Cemetery in Slidell. It was completed three months ago.” Darius looked up to see what Mex had to say.

  “A crypt? A fucking crypt?”

  Cade, engaged for the first time since they’d arrived back at the SUV, looked at them both. “It’s perfect, assuming it’s a fairly big one. New crypts must be built to be hurricane resistant. If it can fit the n
ecessary people into it, they have a combination shelter and ceremonial space.”

  Mex dialed Vega and bent near the GPS keyboard. “What’s the address?” Mex almost shouted the question.

  As Darius gave the address on Daney Street, Mex left it on Vega’s voicemail. If something happened to them, at least Vega would know where to look.

  It took him three tries to input the information into the GPS due to the intermittent, scattered signal from the satellite, but he got it entered. He trusted that the signal would hold well enough. This had to be easier to find than some bit of swamp.

  At least he hoped so.

  * * *

  Dia didn’t think too much of this whole crypt thing. First of all there wasn’t a bathroom. She didn’t need one now, but later? And she could figure that the smells were gonna get tight. A whole lot tighter than gym class. She didn’t like that idea any more than she liked not having a bathroom.

  They’d walked in about ten minutes ago and as far as she could tell, the two important guests hadn’t done squat to make the space livable through the hurricane. Instead they’d only worked on setting up ceremonial stuff in the far corner of the space. Dia kept looking around for any sign of a dead body. Any of that and she was out of here, hurricane or no hurricane.

  She decided to think of the crypt as a really big doll house. There was room to play but she wouldn’t want to live in a doll house.

  “We should begin the ceremony now,” the Diviner said. “I can prepare the initial offerings to the orisha so we can commence.”

  In spite of her feelings about the drawbacks of the crypt as their shelter, Dia was intrigued. She sat cross-legged in the corner where the Diviner had set down her supplies. “Can I watch?”

  The woman glanced in her direction. “Fine. But don’t ask any questions.”

  Dia wondered how she was supposed to learn anything without asking questions but decided she didn’t trust the answers this woman might give her anyway. She thought maybe she’d like to go sit by Pilar instead.

  CHAPTER FIFTY-FOUR

  Mex followed the GPS directions. Heaven help them if the graveyard rivaled the size of the ones in New Orleans. They might never find the crypt.

  Assuming that’s where they’d gone.

  Damn. This whole thing was falling apart, as was much of the area around them. The rain, to his surprise, had intensified, and the winds were driving it sideways.

  Cade pointed. “There! Turn there!”

  Mex pulled into Harrison

  Cemetery. The deed for the crypt was relatively new so he drove toward the back. “Look for vehicles. If they’re here, there’s at least one car that will be parked close.”

  They spotted the crypt at the same time. A big one. Probably the biggest in the whole damn place.

  Unconcerned about anyone hearing their arrival through the storm, Mex pulled the SUV up close to the structure in a way that prevented the parked passenger car a quick escape.

  Darius pushed forward on his seat. “How do we do this? All of us at once, or do we split up?”

  This was one scenario they hadn’t discussed. Mex looked at them both. “I think we split up. I’ll go in first. Pretend to be someone caught in the storm, looking for shelter. If there’s going to be a response, it’ll happen fast. You count off ten seconds then follow.”

  Cade shook her head. “We’re more likely to be successful if the three of us go in well armed and in charge.”

  Mex started to mount an argument when headlights threw the interior of the SUV into shades of silver. All three would-be rescuers stopped speaking and watched the car approach.

  Torrents of rain made it

  impossible to see who was in the car and Mex pulled his weapon onto the seat beside him. Cade and Darius did the same. The noise level inside the SUV was outrageous between the lashing wind and driving rain.

  They waited while the beams from the now stopped vehicle, directly in front of their SUV, picked them out and made them perfect targets. Any sign of a door or window opening and all hell would break loose.

  They waited.

  Damn. They needed to get inside that crypt, not dance around with

  whoever this was.

  The car’s headlights went dark, taking away the immediate danger. Mex, Cade and Darius instinctively shifted their positions just in case.

  The interior light came on. Mex could make out two figures. Slowly both the driver and passenger doors opened, and two people came to stand in front of the car, bent into the wind, clearly making themselves targets.

  Mex found the switch, turned the headlights on, and watched as the newcomers were bathed in light.

  What the hell?

  Mex couldn’t believe what he was seeing. He blinked. This didn’t make any sense at all. It couldn’t be.

  Even as he struggled to

  understand, his hands were on the door handle and he was outside and rushing toward the woman, tears lost to the rain.

  “Sedona!”

  His sister fell into his arms. She was thinner but alive. He walked her back to the SUV. The man she was with followed.

  Darius stood at the side, his door open for the pair. Within a short time, four very wet people were gasping, two of them crying.

  Cade turned to Darius and said, “Open my duffle, Darius. There are some towels on top.”

  Darius did a double-take. “You packed towels?”

  “I figured they might come in handy.”

  She then got Mex’s attention, her expression demanding an explanation.

  “Cade LeBlanc, meet my sister, Sedona.” Mex kept his arm protectively around the sister he thought he might have lost. He brought her even closer as he spoke.

  Cade’s eyes opened wide and she looked between brother and sister. “I see the resemblance.”

  Mex clenched and unclenched his hands. His muscles quivered. He needed something to hit. Preferably the man sitting in the third row of the SUV. “And that is Vicente fucking Vega whose family has used me and mine one more time.”

  “This is what’s been underneath the surface, isn’t it Mex? What’s been bothering you?” Darius asked.

  Mex nodded.

  Vicente Vega crossed his arms and shook his head. “You don’t know what you’re talking about, Anderson.”

  Mex twisted in his seat, rising on his knees. “You son-of-a-bitch! How dare you—”

  “I bring you your sister and this is the thanks I get? Who’s the real son-ofa-bitch here?”

  “How do I know you didn’t instruct your asshole son to take my sister and threaten her life? If it weren’t for your daughter I’d dump you out right here and leave you to the ghosts. I saw the family films, Vega. You don’t deserve Dia.”

  Cade put her fingers to her mouth and whistled. “Speaking of Dia, you boys can take this outside later. Right now we need to get in that crypt and save a little girl.” She looked pointedly at Vicente Vega. “Your little girl.”

  Cade took control. “You two remain here.” She looked at Vega and Sedona. “It’s a small space and things could get complicated. You being here complicates everything more and jeopardizes a good outcome. Do you get me?”

  Vicente Vega gave a quick nod, but his face had gone from olive to ruddy. His nostrils flared.

  Mex couldn’t stop. “Why the hell I agreed to find the daughter of the man whose cartel was responsible for the annihilation of my family I will never know. Your family has screwed with mine for the last time, Vega.”

  Cade grabbed his arm. “Mex. We need to go now. We’ll do it your way. You go and Darius and I will follow in ten seconds.”

  Mex put his hand on the door handle. “You don’t understand family, Vega. Yours is fucked and so are you.”

  Vicente Vega exploded. “Family? Understand family? You have never understood Sedona. If you’re looking for someone to blame beyond yourself for the deaths of your family, you don’t need to look any farther than the backseat. Look at your fucking sister.”

>   Cade almost pushed him out the door. “Now!”

  CHAPTER FIFTY-FIVE

  Focus. He’d deal with Vega and Sedona later. Right now a little girl was in danger. Focus, Mex. Fucking focus. He thought about the young girl whose entire life was ahead of her. It didn’t matter who her father was.

  He barely felt the rain, but the wind took his breath away. This was a bad storm and it was growing stronger. He bent into it and forged his way to the door of the crypt. He reached a hand up and pounded hard. Pounded hard again. A third time.

  Mex couldn’t hear a thing, but the car parked outside evidenced occupants. Shit. What if it was just an offering of some kind and they’d wasted all this time not considering other options.

  There weren’t any other options. About to pound again, the door creaked open. Mex could see a surly face.

  “Hey, saw your car. Was hoping there might be someone here. Can I come in?”

  “This is not a good time.”

  “Please. I need to get out of this storm so I can have some quiet to make a phone call.”

  Mex shoved his way in, and seriously hoped Darius and Cade wouldn’t take the full ten seconds. He looked around. They’d opened the door for a reason. “Were you expecting someone?” He needed to be ready.

  “Another family member, but probably not in this storm.” A woman dressed in island clothing spoke. “But they could be here at any time. You should make your phone call and leave.”

  His entrance had caused several candles to blow out, but there must have been hundreds. He quickly noted the adults and stored the information, but he really wanted to see Dia. When he didn’t locate her right away, his heart began to pound. Were they wrong? Was this just some kind of weird orgy?

  Finally, one of the men moved to the side and he saw her. She looked so lost and lonely. Her hands were bound. Shit. It was about to happen. They’d readied her for sacrifice. Only she looked so calm. Why wasn’t she

  screaming her bloody guts out?

  Because she thought this was just a special initiation ceremony.