Queen of Humbolt

by Tagan Shepard

  The display showed a five now, but it was swimming in front of her eyes.

  “There’s a police station three blocks to the east.” Marisol’s eyes crossed, so she could barely see the three pop up on the display. “Run out of the lobby and turn right. Don’t stop for anything. Do you hear me?”

  She told her arms to shake Sloane to make sure she was still conscious, but they didn’t respond. She forced her gaze over her shoulder and there were trails in her vision. Sloane’s eyes were closed and her neck limp. Marisol swore as the number two popped up.

  It was the last thing she saw. Everything went black and she never felt her body hit the floor.

  Chapter Four

  Consciousness came and went for Sloane. Her eyelids were too heavy to lift and her ears felt clogged—like she was underwater. Her mind, normally so sharp and keen, couldn’t make sense of anything.

  Her eyes finally opened and she was hovering a foot off the ground, her blurry vision taking in pock-marked concrete, her nose full of gas station smells. Sound filtered into her ears and her mind catalogued it without making sense of the words.

  …the Governor for fuck’s sake…

  I don’t know what we’re supposed to do with her either!

  …wasn’t supposed to be…

  What happened to…

  She must be dead.

  But Sloane wasn’t dead. Was she? This couldn’t be what death felt like. Sharp pain in her ankles and shoulders. Harsh voices like no one she knew. The stink of oil and hot metal. Surely whatever afterlife existed had more to offer than this.

  Sensation blinked out again as Sloane gave in to the weight pressing on her mind. It came back abruptly as her body hit the ground, but this ground was different. The sounds were different. Car horns and tires far away. She forced her eyes open. A face lay inches from her, making her flinch.

  Marisol Soltero. She lay near Sloane, her cheek pressed hard into the dark, pebbly ground. Ever since Sloane had entered the prosecutor’s office, she’d known that she’d make enemies of criminals. It had never occurred to her the lengths some of them would go to get to her. Marisol had been the most dangerous of Sloane’s many targets, but she had also been the only one to slip away. She was the very reason Sloane had abandoned the State’s Attorney’s office in favor of politics. She knew all the legal loopholes that required closing because Marisol had utilized them all.

  Suddenly Marisol’s face was even closer and this time it was ringed by stars poking through the forest of high-rise buildings. Floating above her. For a heartbeat Sloane’s stomach flipped at the familiarity of it, then Marisol sneered, her lips moving with soundless words. Her hands reached for Sloane’s neck. Whatever drug she’d used, it wasn’t enough to keep Sloane from fighting back. Just as fingers wrapped around her throat, she lashed out, her balled fist smashing into Marisol’s eye. Only it wasn’t Marisol’s eye. The face above her had changed—stubble dotted a much wider jaw.

  The man rolled away and Sloane struggled to her feet, stumbling again when her world tilted sickeningly. Hands scrabbled at her shins but her heel connected with something soft that grunted. She fought the urge to close her eyes and forced her feet to move again, propelling her another step. Shouting from far away and close. The world leapt up too quickly and she was on her knees, pain shooting through her. She scrambled forward on hands and knees but something blocked her path.

  Marisol’s body. She was dead but there was no blood. Sloane pushed her palms into the concrete and she was nearly to her feet again when Marisol’s hands reached up and grabbed her. No. Not Marisol’s hands. Marisol was dead. But her body was moving and she was groaning. Different hands like steel bands wrapped around her chest.

  Sloane’s feet came off the ground but she didn’t fall. Her mind started to swim and she heard screaming. Screaming so loud it hurt her ears.

  Shut that bitch up or we’ll get caught!

  I’m trying…

  The voice cut off and Sloane’s arm fell limply at her side. She tried to lift her hands, to fight off Marisol’s men, but she couldn’t move again. Her eyelids started to droop.

  There were sirens all around her. Flashes of light in all colors of the rainbow pricked at her eyelids. She tried to shout again but nothing happened. Her eyelids wouldn’t open.

  The sirens were replaced by voices, mumbling and cursing and she knew that certain syllables—ones she caught more often than others—combined to form her name. Her whole body swayed like she was on the deck of a boat on storm-tossed Lake Michigan. She felt a body beside her again. Marisol? Sloane had been so close to freedom. If only she could’ve taken a few more steps. The world blinked out again.

  The voices were different when she was able to lift her eyelids again. The men she’d heard before and a woman. Marisol? No. Sloane knew her voice well. She’d heard it often enough. The tap on Marisol’s office phone had provided hours of mundane conversation concerning imports and exports. Calls she had known were code for something, but Sloane never found evidence that could convict.

  What the fuck is this? My instructions were clear…

  The cops were there too fast. Look, nothing happened like you said it would.

  We did the best we could.

  And you’re coming with me so you can explain to the boss why…

  She knew she’d recognize the sounds around her if only she could think.

  …kill her and dump her

  There’s no time, you idiot. We have to get in the air. We’re late as it is and the ground crew is already suspicious.

  Sloane could only blink and take in the senseless words.

  …put a bullet in her head and leave her here.

  Great idea. I’m sure no one will care when the Governor of Illinois’ body is found in the boss’s private hangar. Cargo planes with no passengers drop off corpses all the time.

  Those words registered and they set Sloane’s limbs in motion. She tried to push herself to her feet. Marisol’s people were going to kill her. Struggling for what felt like hours, she blinked and realized she hadn’t moved a muscle. Even the blink had been a hard-won battle.

  Just put her in the plane. Let the boss decide what to do.

  A smear of dark moved in front of Sloane’s line of sight. She blinked to clear the image, but her eyelids didn’t reopen. After a moment she forgot that she’d been trying to open them. After another moment she was asleep again, this time so deeply she wouldn’t move or think or remember.

  Chapter Five

  1985

  Marisol tried to play with her bunny, but no matter how she hummed their little song or danced Bunny around on his dingy, tattered feet, she could still hear them yelling. She sat cross-legged on the living room floor, bouncing up and down on the carpet, humming for all her life. They were in the kitchen, yelling across the table. Well, Mommy wasn’t yelling, she was pleading, begging and crying for him to stop yelling. He was yelling, but he was always yelling. Yelling and drinking from the fat square bottle that smelled icky.

  She thought he was probably her daddy. She couldn’t remember if he’d always been around, like Mommy had, or if he was new. It seemed like he was new, but Marisol wasn’t sure. He’d been around as long as she’d had Bunny because Marisol remembered Bunny was new when she wanted to know what was in the square bottle and the man threw Bunny out the window and Marisol cried all night. Somehow she found him in the morning, but he’d been in the dirt by the dumpster and it had rained all night and Bunny wasn’t new anymore after that.

  Just then Mommy yelled really loud and Marisol looked up. The man that might have been her daddy had his hands around Mommy’s neck and she was making a funny noise. Mommy put her hands up to his and her hands looked so little on his massive ones. Marisol covered Bunny’s beady, plastic eyes with her hand until Mommy’s foot stopped tapping against the open refrigerator door, but she kept her eyes wide open. She couldn’t stop staring at how big his hands were.

  Then Mommy was on the floor,
looking across the tile at Marisol but something was wrong. She wasn’t exactly looking at Marisol. She was looking above her, around her, through her. She was looking at everything. She was looking at nothing. Marisol held out her ratty little stuffed rabbit to Mommy, but she wouldn’t take it.

  The man that might have been her daddy sat down at the table and pulled the top off the square bottle. He tipped it to the ceiling, the brown liquid gurgled and sloshed around then all went away. He set the bottle down on the table. After another minute, he looked at Marisol.

  That’s when she got up and ran. Her feet were all full of pins and needles from sitting on the floor so long, but she ran anyway. She didn’t know why at first, but it felt like the right idea to run, so she did. She ran right out the front door and onto the street. She hid from all the grown-up strangers and their questions when they saw her alone with Bunny. She hid from the older kids after they took Bunny, ripped off his ears and set him on fire, laughing as she cried.

  No one came looking for her. No one knew she existed.

  Chapter Six

  Marisol Soltero was a predator and, like any hunter, she awoke fully aware. Her eyes came into focus and she registered unfamiliar surroundings. Marisol never woke in a strange place. She needed to move, to back into a corner and gain a defensible position, but when she tried the hollow scraping of metal on metal burst in her ears. Jerking her limbs, a sharp pain cut into her wrists and ankles.

  She was seated in a metal chair, her hands and feet shackled to it, a strap around her chest pulled so tightly she struggled to take a full breath. The room around her hummed with the throbbing, whining sound of a high-performance engine. The strange weightlessness that came with unexpected movement took over her body. Her mind was still sloshy from the dart and she shook her head to clear it.

  Through the dim light of a flickering bulb overhead she saw a bank of seats, which might explain their stuttering movement. Her focus was drawn to the body draped across it. Governor Sloane lay unmoving across the worn surface, her dress streaked with dirt and an oily smear near her small, bare feet.

  Marisol studied her, willing her chest to move and reveling in the chance to look at her up close for the first time in so many years. Sloane was a small woman, at least six inches shorter than Marisol, though her demeanor made her substantial. She still had the look of one who didn’t have time to work out and didn’t much care. She carried a few extra pounds but showed confidence in her own skin and both the weight and assurance looked good on her. Her long, waving hair was dark auburn. Her form-fitting dress accentuated her soft, feminine curves and the devastating shade of royal blue set off her fiery hair.

  Her pearl solitaire necklace and diamond earrings were still in place, as were her tennis bracelet and rings. Marisol catalogued the information as the floor beneath her bumped and rattled. Letting Sloane keep her jewelry could be a sign that they were going to ransom her. If their kidnappers had removed them it was likely they’d already planned to kill her. Her hands were bound, but the ties were loose—far looser than Marisol’s. Clearly they didn’t see her as a threat and Marisol needed to ensure they continued to think that way.

  No threat. Loosely bound. Jewelry in place. Why was Sloane here? They’d tried to kill her and failed, but brought her along anyway. Marisol had worked with enough unimaginative underlings to guess. The elevator had opened on the lobby to show two unconscious women and none of their cohorts. They had to know the police were on the way. Without the time to go upstairs and figure out what happened, they would have to make a split-second decision. So they’d decided to not make a decision at all. They’d brought Sloane to their bosses to make the final call. The reprieve was just fine with Marisol. She could exploit it.

  Sloane began to waken, groaning and struggling to push herself up. At the same time the low, whining rumble all around her increased in volume. Marisol was thrown back against her seat and the realization hit her so hard she spoke the words aloud.

  “An airplane.”

  She felt the moment the landing gear left the tarmac, the weightlessness of flying momentarily overwhelming her. Reality crashed down at the knowledge they were being taken out of the city, most likely out of the state. It was a risky move, transporting kidnapped individuals across state lines, but they had already proven themselves competent, incapacitating the Queen of Humboldt and separating the Governor of Illinois from her layers of protection.

  When the plane banked, the pull of gravity sent a sharp stab of pain through her temple. She saw a similar wince from Sloane. What had they used to knock them out? Marisol pondered possible long-term effects to distract herself from the pain blossoming across her forehead. The higher they climbed, the more acute the throbbing until she had to grit her teeth against it. Sloane let out a weak cry of pain, pressing her bound palms against her brow and finally sitting up. The plane finished its turn and settled into a straight climb. The pain lessened when the plane leveled out, just a ghost of discomfort lingering as they cruised along.

  Marisol scanned the cabin—she thought she’d heard a noise behind her, but the roar of the engines was too loud to be sure. The bonds holding Marisol to her chair limited her movement. Chains rattled on hollow metal as she tested the limits, but they held fast. Sloane raised her head and looked around, drawing Marisol’s complete attention. Sloane’s eyes landed on her. Marisol smirked and prepared a snide greeting when her eyes bulged with fear.

  “Marisol!”

  It was probably meant to be a scream, but it came out as a sleepy croak. At the same moment Marisol caught a flash of movement in her peripheral vision. A fist exploded into her jaw and she was unconscious before her chin landed on her chest.

  Chapter Seven

  1992

  Rain poured down in icy sheets. The park’s paved pathways rippled with little waves of water like the surface of the nearby river. Even under the cover of the bridge, droplets found their way to Marisol’s skin. They bounced up to soak the fabric of her too-short jeans. They found the cracks in the soles of her Converse High Tops. They hung, quivering and delicate, on the frayed edge of her baseball cap before plopping down onto the knees she hugged to her chest.

  Two nights ago Marisol had lost her jacket in a fight with some older kids, so her flannel button-up was soaked through. She made sure her body didn’t shiver, though. No one would know she was cold and miserable in the autumn thunderstorm. No one would know the thunderclaps made her jump because she only jumped inside. Outside she was tough. Outside, she was no one to be messed with.

  “Hey.”

  Marisol ignored the voice at first. She always ignored adult voices.

  “Hey! Marisol!”

  She recognized the voice at the sound of her name. Looking up, she saw the only face that smiled when it looked at her.

  “Hey, Ruby.”

  “What’re you doing under there, kid?” Ruby shifted the cheap plastic umbrella in her hand and stuck her head farther under the bridge, out of the storm’s noise. “Didn’t I tell you to come to me when you needed help?”

  “Don’t need help.”

  “Course ya don’t.” Ruby laughed as she held out her free hand. “Come on, get your ass movin’.”

  Marisol smiled and took Ruby’s hand. It was warm and soft and wrapped around Marisol’s shoulder while they walked together under the umbrella.

  Ruby was a hooker. They’d met a year ago when Marisol had tried to pick a guy’s pocket outside Tiger Stadium. The guy had nearly broken her wrist when he grabbed her, but Ruby had stepped in, distracting him with her halter top while Marisol had made a run for it. Tracking her down outside a popular burger place, Ruby had paid for lunch.

  She had won Marisol’s trust by not asking where her parents were or why she was living on the street. Ruby had sipped her soda through a straw covered in bright red lipstick and told funny stories about the stray cat living on her fire escape. After that, Marisol had spent a couple days a week hanging out with Ruby. On game day
s they would work together, Ruby distracting drunk idiots while Marisol lifted their wallets.

  Ruby was the most beautiful woman she’d ever seen. She teased her white-blond hair up into a mass of feather-light curls and her skin was soft as a new T-shirt. Marisol was old enough to realize she’d had a puppy-dog crush on Ruby early on, but now she felt more like a big sister. And she’d helped Marisol get really good at picking pockets. Not good enough to have a steady place to stay when the weather was crappy, but Ruby always tracked her down and brought her in out of the rain.

  Times were tough for Ruby at the moment, too. The cops in her old neighborhood had started cracking down on the working girls so she’d moved closer to downtown. Her new place was a room in a rickety old motel she rented by the week, but she said it was safer. She even had a few regulars who had her address and fixed appointments.

  Marisol and Ruby stopped for the new Crystal Pepsi that Ruby loved so much and hot dogs to take back to the room. Marisol could barely keep the saliva in her mouth. Nothing had been going her way recently and she hadn’t eaten in a few days. All her cash had been in the pocket of the Detroit Tigers jacket she’d lost. Ruby kept telling her it’d be easier if she stopped fighting with the other kids and made a few friends, but it was a tough sell to ask Marisol to like anyone.

  “Why don’t you shower before dinner? You smell like a drowned rat.” Ruby tossed her key on the flimsy table in the corner. She turned her thousand-watt smile on Marisol, yanking the dirty cap off her head. “You kinda look like one, too, kid. I dig the haircut though.”

  Marisol blushed and rubbed a hand through the uneven chunks of her hair. She’d cut it herself yesterday at a day shelter she went to sometimes. The bathroom mirror had been cloudy and small, and it was hard to get to the back of her head, but she’d done the best she could and liked having her hair short. It felt better than the tight ponytail she’d always worn.