Lexi pulled back from the tiny opening, her heart thundering like she’d just seen a ghost. In a way, she had.
She had conjured him, as if he were some kind of savior instead of a jerk who’d abandoned his family. Besides, she didn’t need a savior. Her mom was bringing what they wanted. Her mom was crazy-determined to get what she wanted. She wasn’t powerful or dangerous like Lexi’s dad had been, but she could totally handle this. In just a little while, they’d be free again. And if they weren’t, well, Lexi had buttons and half a pencil to save them both. She was such an idiot, believing her father’s crap. Always a choice, he said, always a way. The sense of agency that had animated Lexi’s entire life, and yet here she was, planning to save her and her boyfriend’s life with pocket lint.
She wanted to curl into a ball and sob her eyes out, but she wouldn’t.
Malcolm tapped her shoulder, drawing her eye. “Are you okay?”
She started to sign, then hesitated, gripping her hands together, and he settled his hand on her shoulder, rubbing gentle circles. Shifting a little away from him, propping her back against the cab, she made space to talk. She lifted her hands again though they trembled as she spoke. “I thought I saw my father.”
Malcolm shook his head. “Your father? Here?”
“Crazy, right? I haven’t seen him for years.”
His dark gaze settled on her face, worry edging his eyes. “You never talk about him.” His hands moved stiffly through the words, but she could guess at his meaning.
Her gestures began slow and small, her expressions in miniature. “My father left us.”
Malcolm’s hands lifted, but she stilled him with a look. “When I was young —” small, small, her hand pressing herself back in time, back to a time she thought she had left behind — “I thought he was so” — hands apart, then arms embracing — “so loving, he didn’t want to let go. I can still …” her head tipped back as if resting against his throat, his voice coming through, skin to skin, and her own remembered the vibrations of him. “Smothering, holding too tight, whenever he came home. That was my father, all in — or all gone.” Her hands gathering, her hands expelling. “Then he was home to stay, or so he claimed”. Her face carried belief and dismay. “Maybe he never gave up fighting. Maybe he left the army, but it wouldn’t leave him. He brought the war home, too.”
Her hands moved forward and back, expression stern, her hands like her parents, pushing away, pushing toward. He used to take her to the fireworks, to watch the colors blossom in the sky, a source of the most extraordinary wonder for her. She loved it so much, he’d take leave for July 4th or New Year’s when he could, to put her up on his shoulders, or gave her a piggy-back ride above the crowd, as if she were part of the flowers in the sky. But she noticed as she got a little older, the tension in his shoulders, the way his arms tightened with every burst of light. Sometimes the kids around them would be startled, terrified, suddenly crying, and she recognized their fear although she did not share it. Her father — afraid? She had clamped her small hands over her father’s ears, making him temporarily deaf like her.
“Once we went to a party,” a street festival, really, with food booths smelling of amazing things, jugglers and dancers, musicians whose movements intrigued her, and a steel drum player she could feel through the street. “He suddenly picked up the both of us, me under one arm, and Kyle the other, and just ran with us. It was fun. We ran to an ice cream parlor. He sat us away from the windows, and I could see it wasn’t fun for him. It wasn’t a game, but we had ice cream.” She shrugged, conjuring the attitudes and mingled delight and confusion of her child-self. “Mom showed up and started yelling. Her face like a mask, I couldn’t understand her.” Lexi’s ice cream melted in its bowl on the table and her brother started crying. Sitting next to her father on the bench — their backs to the only solid wall, she now realized — she worked her hand into his. “Somebody set off firecrackers. It also set off his crazy. That’s what Mom said.”
She couldn’t be sure, given the gag that grooved her mouth, and the confined space, that all of her words were getting through, but for now, it was better to talk, even if he didn’t understand it all.
“All in or all gone. The divorce surprised no one.” Her hands broke apart, capturing what had one-time happened in her heart. “No presents, no visits, no calls, no awkward weekends meeting at the park. Mom held out ’til high school, letting us think the best of him, letting us think we might hear from him after all, then we found the papers and we saw the truth.” Her eyes glazed with tears, and then with anger. “He gave up all his rights as a father, shed like a coat when winter’s done.” She took him on, the mantle of parenthood he stripped and left behind. “As if he never wanted us to begin with. I never saw him again, until now.”
“Ouch.” His index fingers reached toward each other and moved in a circle, indicating pain.
Lexi nodded. “I guess he blew up in the courtroom. He used to have these episodes like nightmares.”
“Wow. Veterans get that.” His hands hovered, then he added, “And a lot of cops are also abusers. He got double.”
Lexi waved this off. “I never saw any bruises and he never hurt me or my brother. Sometimes they shouted at each other, and Kyle would come hide out in my room where it was quiet. I couldn’t hear them, but I’d see it begin, the way she stood or looked or gestured. She would, pick at him —” a gesture like a chicken eating — “until he got mad, then they would end up in bed. As if she liked him angry. Parents are so weird.”
“Truth.” The word required him to hold his hand in a certain way, and he winced.
“When he came home on leave, we would jump into his arms, and she …” Lexi hesitated, remembering. “It was like my mom was jealous, of him and us. They blamed each other for my hearing. She got mad because he was away so much, he got mad because she was meant to be home with us, with me, and I still got sick, and the au pair didn’t do anything about it. I don’t know what the point was of all that fighting. Each of them had a job to do.”
Malcolm shrugged one shoulder. “He preserved freedom or fought for justice or that crap.”
Lexi laughed at his phrasing, but the gag caught her amusement. Gently, she adjusted his hands again to the word “freedom,” the way she used to when he was taking the workshop that brought them together. It also gave her a chance to check for swelling or heat in his injury.
Malcolm carefully formed the words again. “Freedom. Justice. Crap.” Just trying to make her smile this time, in spite of his own pain.
“I just wish they weren’t fighting the whole time he was at home, and he wasn’t even around that much. When he finally left the military, I was so excited because I thought he would be with me all the time. He signed on with the police and the next thing, they got a divorce. Like being home is what finally made him leave forever, even though he was back in the States. He wasn’t even in a war zone any more, but he just literally wrote us off.”
His hands started to form one thing, then another, then he just shook his head, and beckoned her close, kissing her lightly, his sympathy gleaming in his eyes. She leaned against him. He wrapped her with one arm, letting his other hand rest. It probably hurt a lot; she shouldn’t let him talk so much — but it felt so good to tell him, to be able to talk to him again. The truck lurched into motion and they clung together against the movement. It rattled hard, shaking off her memories and her good feelings and she tucked herself into his arms, hoping that at least they would go together when they died.
CHAPTER TWENTY
* * *
Lanquin Cemetery lay close to the main road through town, the only road, so far as a tourist would know — half the “roads” in town took the form of stairs or, during the rainy season, waterfalls, not so different from the region’s biggest tourist attraction, a series of grottoes and cascades a dozen kilometers out of town. The American in her fancy, city car, must park on the street, hemmed in by buildings, motorcycles and pedestrians
. The truck carrying Raxha’s cargo wouldn’t be taking that road. Instead, it veered off along a narrow track between clusters of small houses that paralleled the main street. And it would turn around, nose to the exit, just like her father had taught her, to park behind the trees at the northwest corner.
A pair of binoculars slung about her neck, Raxha herself occupied the southwest corner of the cemetery, concealed by the tall tomb of a man her father slew before Raxha was born. Hernan’s own tomb lay not far off, topped with a cross he wouldn’t believe in, pinned down by it as if her mother hoped that his death would somehow reform him, in spite of her conviction that he now lived in Hell. Raxha had been living in Hell since his death. Today marked her return, climbing back from Xibalba, the underworld, toward the bright pinnacle her father vacated.
One of her men trimmed a bush that overhung the gate, making the occasional snip with a pair of shears, looking busy. Another lay on the roof behind her, rifle in hand. No police, no CIA she said, and, so far, she believed the woman complied with the demand. Wherever she got her advice from, she hadn’t resisted the ransom demand to begin with, the way law enforcement would advise. Which meant Dante was right. Raxha could ask for more. Besides, she and Lexi hadn’t finished interviewing Aabo yet, thanks to the intrusive policeman.
The man near the gate alerted and gave a whistle. Raxha tapped her silenced phone to life and sent the cue to Dante, who should have rendezvoused with Juan at the truck, bringing along their Los Zetas observer. When her informant said the Z’s were keeping an eye on her, apparently they meant it. The fact they went through the interview rather than just brazenly show up and demand explanations might be taken two ways: One, they now had some respect for her, and wanted to stay out of her way. Two, she wasn’t worth dealing with and they’d sent a nobody, a wannabe trying to prove himself with a minor assignment. The guy didn’t talk like a nobody, not like Ramon, falling all over himself to participate. No, this Zorro talked like he didn’t care, with the casual danger she recognized as a hallmark of true power. He had no one to impress, which made him all the more impressive.
Between the gateposts, the American woman walked timidly, a parcel clutched to her chest with one hand, her phone in the other. She wore a big, floppy hat with a sun-scarf around her cheeks and neck, trying to hide her famous face, as if she didn’t stand out here for any of a thousand other reasons. Lexi’s father, the police officer, had landed quite a catch.
Raxha tapped on the phone in her hand. >Go to the center, to the black slab.
The woman jumped and glanced at the phone in her hand, then proceeded between the graves to the larger tomb with its graven cross. Like an altar to Hernan Castillo.
>Put down the cup and go back to the pink one.
The woman’s arm shook, but she managed to type back >where is my daughter?
Raxha opened her other conversation. >go
From the shaded north-western corner, a trio of people emerged. Dante, Juan, and between them, Lexi.
“Lexi! Oh, my God.” The woman reeled and burst into tears, the wrist dangling her cellphone pressed to her mouth.
The girl’s blond hair stuck out, she wore borrowed clothes, sleeves and pants cuffed to account for the disparity in height, and now, looking between the girl and her mother, Raxha could see where she’d gotten the petite, but curvy frame, the elegant nose and creamy skin. The stronger jawline must come from the other side. In silhouette, she looked more the Disney princess, while Raxha would resemble the images of deities and queens from Maya tombs. Was this envy? Raxha set it aside.
Lexi’s jaw worked as she swallowed, then Dante prodded her forward.
>place the cup on the black slab and step back, Raxha ordered again.
The woman startled, shaking, and complied, unwrapping a towel from around the cup to reveal it. Squat and mostly rust-colored, it hardly seemed worth a girl’s life, but this was only the beginning. The cup itself had little value, but the end of the trail did. Raxha raised the binoculars and stared at the cup, recognizing something like her own profile. Her father commissioned the piece, maybe it really was meant to look like her or her mother. Or, more likely, like Eleiua.
Retreating a few wobbly steps, the woman kept her eyes on the girl.
“Mom,” Lexi said, her voice harsh from lack of use. Her hands flew, but the woman shook her head.
“I’m doing what they told me. You can see me, right?” She called out to the world at large. “I’m right here — I brought what you wanted.” She held out her hand to Lexi, whose steps hurried.
Dante and Juan stuck by the girl’s side. With words and gestures, Dante indicated she should pick up the cup. She did so, eager to hand it off to the men. Dante pushed back his hat a little. The sign that it looked genuine, that all had gone well. Excellent. Taking the cup from Lexi’s hands, Dante slipped it into a padded satchel, snatching the towel and stuffing it on top for good measure.
“Come on, Lexi — it’s time to go.” The woman’s voice rang out with authority, her hand extended and fingers reaching.
Lexi spoke with her hands, still bracketed by the two men, then she used her voice again, “Malcolm.”
“We’ll deal with that later,” said the woman firmly. She formed a few signs, not as smoothly as Malcolm or the girl.
Lexi jabbed her finger toward the cellphone, speaking again, desperate to get her message across, to get back her boyfriend. And in some ways, that decided the matter. The girl didn’t even want to go. So. Done.
From her own phone, Raxha sent a message to Dante and Juan. The signal drew Juan erect. He grabbed Lexi and swung her across his shoulder, running for the far side, Dante covering his exit. The woman screamed, and, from somewhere near the gate, somebody said, “Shit.”
>I’ll be in touch. Z.
“No! No! You said here, I gave you the cup — you said!” The woman almost flung her phone. Instead, she jabbed out, >you said here, an exchange. Give her back!
Then she ran toward Juan and the others.
Somebody fired, a chip of black marble soaring into the air, and Raxha scowled at the damage to the memorial. Besides, if they killed the woman, there’d be no squeezing her for a higher ransom. On the other hand, blood sacrifice appeased the gods. What better altar on which to spill it than her father’s grave?
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
* * *
Lexi bounced against Juan’s shoulder, her mother’s screaming face left somewhere behind her. Tree branches slapped her backside and tore at her hair, then she was roughly dropped near the tailgate of the truck, tail lights still on, tailpipe puffing warmly. Men grabbed and pushed at her, probably yelling as she fell against the jutting tailgate.
A hand cupped her elbow and drew her back up again, briefly steadying her against his side, then boosting her up to the bed of the truck. Scrambling forward, she sobbed and struggled for breath. Somebody shoved the tailgate up, dumping her further inside. The man who had helped her vaulted the back, along with another, the thump of their landing jolting through her body. The truck slammed into motion and she rocked backward again.
The man next to her caught her arm, then pulled her to sitting, his grip keeping her in place. She grabbed the side of the truck bed, hanging on tight, and yanked herself away from him, across the truck. She didn’t need the help of killers.
Clinging to the rough metal with all her strength, she finally looked up, and found Malcolm staring back at her, his expression bleak and terrified. Like staring into a mirror. What had gone wrong? Her mother did what they wanted, why did they take her back again? She turned away briefly, exaggerating her breathing as she ripped one of the buttons from her shirt. Next turning, she’d be ready. She transferred the button to her other hand and straightened up. No weakness. Whatever the hell had gone wrong, she couldn’t stop that. Look for the next chance. They moved a lot faster this time than they had on the trip to the graveyard where maybe her mom would die. They wouldn’t do that, would they? Just kill her?
Across the way, the man who had touched her flashed a micro-expression, the slightest crinkle of his eyes, and something he probably wasn’t even aware he’d done, something only someone acutely attuned to watching might have noticed. A smile? As if he had noticed her action with the button and found it amusing for some reason. He sat with his back against the truck wall, legs crossed, a holstered pistol at his side, and his hands resting casually on his knees. His clothes looked newer than most of the others, sleeves rolled up past his elbows, his pants and shoes less battered. She’d never seen him before, but the status of his clothing said management. If he were management, why was he riding in the back? Tattoos wrapped his right arm from above the wrist until they disappeared into his shirtsleeve, and peeked out again at his collar.
He was speaking, Spanish, she assumed, and the other guy answered. The new guy gestured a little, not extravagantly, not deliberately either, illuminating whatever they were talking about, then his hands shifted, fist out, thumb up near his chest. He was still talking. His hand moved again, forming a loop, pointer finger erect, then the — was it a gesture or a sign? His hands settled again, the movements more sedate.
Lexi closed her eyes and opened them again. It wasn’t possible. This tattooed, gun-toting stranger in the middle of nowhere — he couldn’t possibly know her name sign. Had she used it with Raxha? Had Malcolm? But she’d never seen this guy around their captors, even if they had used it.
A few feet from the guy, Malcolm shifted, rubbing his ankle, but his eyes cut toward the stranger. She slipped out her foot as if it meant nothing, and tapped Malcolm’s.
“Did you see that?”
He gave a bob of his fist, thumb tucked under. Yes.
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