Lexi stared into the camera, holding up Dante’s cell phone with an image of the day’s Google Doodle and top headlines, in Spanish. Dante grinned at her, that crazy-scary leer, maybe trying to get her to smile back. Honestly, when he looked like that, she wanted to pull back and put her heel through his teeth. His hunger wasn’t sexual, it was something darker, and altogether more dangerous. It took a lot of cajoling, but Malcolm finally revealed the threat they’d made against him, the one that set his pulse to jumping. When Dante’s lips peeled back from those teeth, Lexi believed he’d do it, too.
Taking back Lexi’s phone, apparently satisfied, Raxha clicked send, and gave a nod. Dante snatched back his own device. He said something that made Malcolm stiffen even more. “What?” Lexi asked. Her fingers felt thick and uncooperative. Not like she’d been sleeping anyway, when the door suddenly slammed open and Malcolm told her what their captors wanted. Get the cup back, and go home and the nightmare would be over, wouldn’t it?
Malcolm sighed, then brought up his hands, hesitating. He made the sign for the devil, their name-sign for Dante. Again, Malcolm’s graceful hands hesitated, then he told the rest. “Dante has a cat —” a stroke of whiskers from Malcolm’s cheek — “a big, big cat.” Malcolm’s vocabulary failed him, and he spelled out, “Jaguar.” And he didn’t mean the car.
Rising from the bed, she moved to hug him, but Dante shoved him along the corridor, back to wherever they were holding him. Raxha stood in the doorway, arms folded, regarding Lexi. Straightening her back, Lexi met that dark stare. Like almost everyone, Raxha was taller than Lexi, but not by much, with long, dark hair bound away from her face, and a penetrating stare, a forbidding presence even without an automatic rifle slung over her shoulder. And yet … the woman studied her, tried to speak clearly, spoke too loud. She wanted to be understood. To be heard.
Raxha’s unfamiliar face and accent made it even harder to lip read from her, but any effort at bridging the gap might give her reason to keep them alive and unharmed. And another chance at gathering information. “May I have a drink?” Lexi signed, an easy enough thing to communicate.
A tilt of the head, and a glance down the corridor, then Raxha jerked her chin as if pulling Lexi out of the room. The place smelled like horses and hay, a barnyard nearby, if not at the back of the cinder block wall opposite. She followed Raxha down the hall, so tired, she was trembling. Lexi stuffed her hands under her armpits and kept moving. Three doors on this side of the hall, evenly spaced, as if they opened to more rooms like hers, some kind of worker’s dorm, she suspected. The room had a bunk bed, a single chair, nothing else. Maybe one of the others had Malcolm inside? Bits of hay on the floor, and dark soil, or maybe horse manure, tracked in, overlaying pale boot prints. Sharp right turn, and the wall to outside expanded into a kitchen/dorm-style dining room with a few long tables and benches, all deserted. Screens at the far side held back the night. Raxha snapped on a light, a long fluorescent hanging from the ceiling. Instantly, bugs swarmed to the light, small clouds of darkness, and larger, slower things. Something enormous, winged and horrifying crept in from the rafter and Lexi hunched away.
Oblivious to all of this, or maybe used to it, Raxha crossed the room to an open shelf stacked with plastic cups. She shook off another insect and filled the cup from a tap, then turned about, holding it out. Lexi edged toward her, skirting the area directly beneath the lamp with its unholy denizens. Glancing up, Raxha grinned. She pulled a pistol from a hip holster and fired toward the ceiling. The giant creeping insect fell, twitching onto the table below. A small hole pierced the corrugated roofing. Raxha replaced the gun.
She held out the glass, wiggling it to get Lexi’s attention. Lexi hurried over. Better to keep an eye on the most dangerous thing in the room, and it only had two legs. Across the roof beam, years of people carved a series of names, some of them marked with numbers, and a few preceded by the letter “Z.” Raxha tapped one of them, “Hernan, Z68,” then she indicated herself. Lexi cocked her head.
“This is my, uh,” Raxha began, indicating a sense of ownership that first made Lexi think it was her name. The woman muttered a few words, half-turned away, and looked back. “Father?
Lexi smiled vaguely. What would her own father say of this situation? Did he have experience with hostage negotiations? Maybe from the outside, but not the inside. Still … She took a swallow of water — warm and tasting of metal. Setting it down, she pointed to the signature of Raxha’s father, and signed, “My father is gone.” A sign to her head, fingers high, then a sharp movement of both hands together, as if he’d been stolen from her instead of just leaving.
Frowning slightly, Raxha flicked back her long hair, then repeated the first sign, also pointing toward the name. “Father?”
Lexi gave a big grin and thumbs up. She drank a little more of her water.
“What is —” Raxha tried to repeat the other sign.
Lexi did it again more slowly, then she held up a finger, and finished her glass of water. She pointed inside it, shook it upside down, looked in as if in search of something, then set it down again, signing, “Water gone.”
“Ah! Father … —” a few words hard to make out, empty, missing? — “no father?” She pointed to herself. “Also mine. My father —” she made the sign again at her forehead, not quite right, but Lexi knew what she meant to say. Then Raxha pointed to the giant bug she’d shot earlier. Put the two ideas together, and Lexi interpreted, “My father, dead.”
Had Raxha killed her own father? Had her father been shot? The spotlight of this crazy foreign film she found herself in shone into Lexi’s eyes — but this one didn’t come with subtitles so she could follow along, and no helpful friend came with her to help her sort out the plot. All she knew was, she came on scene as a victim, and she didn’t intend to leave that way. The hostage was more likely to survive if her captors liked her.
She put on a sad face, and signed, “I’m sorry about your father.” Also, reinforcing Raxha’s first word of ASL.
Raxha waved a hand at Lexi and their surroundings, and Lexi struggled to fill in her meaning. The place belonged to her father? That made sense, and Raxha added movements, acting in a private play. Something like, This is for him. He taught? wanted? made? Raxha ie down, to not be shot. She spoke again, but frowning sharply, Spanish again, or some other language, maybe working through what she wanted to say. “So that I …” she reached up and closed her hand over the name as if she could take it, then thumped her fist against her chest. Suddenly she turned, and Lexi startled, turning as well. Through the floorboards, a slight vibration announced someone else’s approach, and Raxha called out. Dante appeared around the corner, carrying a folded magazine, he grinned at Lexi in a way that reminded her of Malcolm’s words about the jaguar. Going over to stand by his — lover? Employer? From their body language, Lexi guessed both, he was intimate and subordinate, in spite of carrying the bigger firepower.
They spoke in Spanish, and Dante flipped open the magazine, holding it up before Raxha. Both of them looked at the cover, then at Lexi, and Raxha’s dark eyes flared a little, her lips quirking with interest. Even before Raxha turned the cover toward her, Lexi’s stomach clenched and she knew what she’d see: Her mother’s famous face, staring with intensity, as if, even on the cover of a Spanish-language media rag, Pamela Dionne cared about her viewer. As if her private peril scene had cartoon effects, Lexi could almost see the dollar signs that fanned the hunger in her captors’ eyes.
CHAPTER NINE
* * *
Grant occupied the shadowy corner opposite where he said he’d be. Old habit. Bad habit? Hard to say. When the limousine — not a stretcher, but still pretty ostentatious — purred around the corner to idle at the curb, he strolled over, startling the driver and the backseat passenger both. He slid onto the leather seat, placing his duffel bag between his feet.
“Pamela Dionne? Grant Casey.” He held out his hand.
Flawless make-up, perfectly arched b
rows, an impeccable outfit even at this hour, on this mission. She was beautiful, no doubt about that, the kind of classic stunner that would still turn heads. Not his, but he could see the appeal, visually, anyhow. The ex was about as different from Gooney’s current partner as a woman could get. Maybe on purpose?
Tossing back her mane of golden hair like the model she used to be, Pam regarded him for a moment, and finally shook his hand. “Pleased to meet you, Mr. Casey.”
“Likewise. Got your bags packed?”
“In the trunk. Is that all you’re bringing?” She pointed toward the nondescript duffel at his feet.
“I prefer to travel light. Most of what I need, I can get locally.” Weapons from the underground, bribes from the cash he’d told her to pack. Chalk it up to the expense budget.
The driver pulled out into traffic, and Grant cut him a glance. “How private is this matter?”
Pam reached up and pushed a button, raising the privacy shield between the passenger compartment and the front seat. “Exceedingly. I can’t afford to have this reach the scandal sheets, especially if anyone jumps to the conclusions that you suggested last night. I can’t have that publicity, and Lexi’s captors can’t hear of it in their newsfeed.”
“Right. Let me handle her friends.” Grant unbuttoned his sleeves and rolled them back, revealing his forearms, ink and all. Already Pam’s eyes traced the tattoos that started above his right wrist. He unbuttoned the top two buttons at his collar as well, then fluffed up his hair from his earlier shower and flicked it back again. Sunglasses out of the bag.
“What on earth are you doing?”
“You don’t want to reveal the truth; I’m preparing for alternate forms of persuasion.”
“All we need to do is ask for her things and head for the airport.”
“With all due respect, Ms. Dionne, this thing is a little bigger and more complicated than you’d like to imagine. I’m not getting off that plane blind. You didn’t hire me because you thought it was simple.”
A little sound like a growl emerged from those painted lips. “Nor did I hire you to hang around with her friends like some — Look. They’re just teenagers. They don’t need to know, and if they knew any more about it than I do, they’d’ve called me themselves, right?”
“The texts, signed ’Z.’ You’re sure Lexi hasn’t been involved with drugs at all, none of her friends?”
She glared. “I have repeatedly told you —”
He put his hand to forestall her fury. “The letter Z is a prestige designation for a group called Los Zetas, ever heard of them?” When she shook her head, he continued, “They’re a drug cartel originally out of Mexico, and now controlling parts of the pipeline all the way from here to Columbia because their private militia took on the Gulf Cartel, Juarez, and Sinaloa to name a few. There was a major feud a few years back and they lost some traction, but they’re not gone yet.” He touched her shoulder, drawing her eyes to his, maintaining the connection between them. “Los Zetas have a reputation for extreme violence. Most of their members are former special operators, military police, cops so crooked they stand out even in South America.” Extreme: like chopping people’s heads off, and painting messages using their blood and their dismembered limbs.
Cosmetics — and maybe cosmetic surgery — made it hard to judge her facial tone, and her features looked sculpted, less mobile than they should be, but the corners of her eyes tightened, her lips compressing. “You knew this, and you didn’t tell me?”
One shake of the head. “Found out last night. Part of my research.” Drug cartels were not his usual beat, at least, not outside the poppy fields of Afghanistan. “It’s not too late to bring in the CIA and the State Department.”
“How can I?” Her voice hinted at her strain. “They told me not to — these killers you say have my daughter. Are you sure it’s them? Why would a group like that care about this stupid pot we’re looking for?”
His hand tipped. “It could be the kidnappers just want to intimidate you into doing what they want, that they think you’ll find the Z connection and get scared.”
“And are you? We have a contract, Mr. Casey, I expect you will do your utmost to honor it.”
Was he? Any kind of hostage situation could be explosive, whether they were dealing with amateurs or with Los Zetas. “I’m hardly risk-averse, Ms. Dionne, or I couldn’t do what I do.” Didn’t mean he loved the idea of literally putting his head on the line.
He’d sent a notification to his team about the private contract, both letting them know he’d be unavailable for the next three days or so — and putting them on notice in case they didn’t hear from him. The good news/bad news was, if this thing went south, it would go fast. He and the target might walk out of the meet with relative ease, or they’d both wind up creating some unwanted publicity for the famous Pamela. One way or the other, he might never have to face Gooney. Just how manipulative was this woman? Maybe she hired help not because she couldn’t make the exchange herself, but because she wanted someone to blame if her daughter died. Someone, conveniently, whom her so-called violent ex-husband already hated. What the hell was he getting himself into?
The car pulled up in front of a Provencal-style mansion set back on its meager lawn and hemmed in by similar places, with more square footage inside than out. A pair of lions guarded the door, each with one paw raised to hold a lantern. The stone lion tattoo at the back of his neck tingled a little as if in recognition, or maybe dismayed by its domesticated American brethren. Time for a change of attitude. Grant set aside his practical concerns for now. He had a job to do: succeed, and it wouldn’t matter if Pam was setting him up, if Gooney got angry: nothing mattered but getting the target back alive. Time to make sure he didn’t give any hint of that to her friends.
The driver parked and let them out, Grant signaling Pam to stay a little behind. He rang the doorbell, and, after a moment, a ring lit up on the automated device mounted alongside. “We accept no solicitation. Please state your name and purpose.”
So positively medieval for a pre-recorded message that Grant almost laughed. He pulled on his persona, ten years younger, forty percent less confident, at least seventy-five percent harmless. “Hi, there, so sorry to bother you. I’m here with Pamela Dionne, Lexi’s mom. We’d really like to talk to Kaitlyn if that’s okay?”
“Please wait,” the tinny voice replied.
Footsteps and mutters from beyond the door, then it pulled slowly back, and a young woman with sleep-tousled hair peered out at them. Her eyes flared wider as she looked him over, then her glance flicked to Pam. “Hi, Ms. Dionne. Lexi’s not here?” Her gaze returned to Grant, and she straightened a little, tucking her hair behind her ear.
Smiling, Grant stepped up, but just one foot, leaning in. “She’s still in Guatemala, I know. That’s why we’re here, Kaitlyn.” He plucked off his sunglasses and tucked one stem through the v at the front of his shirt. “She sent a text that you have her suitcase?”
Kaitlyn nibbled on her lip, nodding. Another young woman appeared beside her, darker skin, shorter hair. Denise. She tapped Kaitlyn’s shoulder and formed a few careful signs to her.
“They need Lexi’s bag. Lexi hasn’t come home yet.”
Denise rolled her eyes extravagantly, and made as if to swoon. With a sway, Kaitlyn bumped her friend and pointed to Pam.
Sighing, Denise straightened and made a few more signs. One hand groped around in a pocket of her pajama pants, then she tucked a hearing aid into her ear and turned it on. In a carefully modulated voice, she said, “Do you know when she’s coming?”
“We’re going to the airport to work that out.” As he calculated what to say next, the third friend, Shari, appeared, lugging a bag that presumably belonged to Lexi, for she thrust it out the door.
“Thank you, Shari,” Pam called. Striding up the steps, she turned on her smile and took the bag into her arms. “I think we’re done here?”
She turned away, striding back toward
the car. The driver popped out to open the door, and tried to take the bag, but Pam placed it inside, aiming a pointed stare at Grant.
He flicked her a wave, and muttered, “She’s a little pissed that Lexi missed the flight.”
Shari giggled, and Kaitlyn said, “She’d be even more pissed —”
Denise grabbed her arm and gave it a shake, then made a sharp sign over her lips.
Folding his arms, Grant cocked his head. “She’s with him, isn’t she. Dang.”
“You know about Malcolm?” Kaitlyn leaned further out the door, closer to him.
“Shut up,” said Denise, using her speech this time.
Pointing at Grant, Kaitlyn said, “He already knows.”
“I’m new on the staff,” Grant explained. “So far, it feels like this big minefield, know what I mean?”
Kaitlyn bobbed her head. “Oh, yeah. Especially where Malcolm is concerned.”
“I don’t know if we should be talking about this,” Shari said. She stuffed her hands into the pockets of a fuzzy onesie. “Even if he does know about Malcolm.”
Kaitlyn wore a t-shirt with a big cacao pod on the front, and the legend “From Maya Country to the Mass Pike!”
Shifting a half-step toward the side, Grant lifted his chin toward the car. “If we really wanted to piss off Ms. Dionne, we’d let on that’s the whole reason you guys went to Guatemala — but I’m not planning to say anything, are you?”
“She was just supposed to kiss him goodbye. That was it,” Shari grumbled. “Oh my God, I was so mad when she didn’t board the plane. I’m still pissed off myself.”
“Hope you guys at least got some good chocolate out of it.”
Denise formed a few signs, and the others laughed. “Absolutely delicious!” Kaitlyn agreed, then Denise’s final gesture aimed at Grant, and Kaitlyn flushed.
Chuckling, hands up, Grant retreated. “Hey, whoa, there.”
“Oh my God, I can’t believe you said that!” Kaitlyn punched Denise’s arm. “I am so going to —”
The Maya Bust Page 4