by Diane Capri
Vigo resisted the urge to curse. One motto he lived by was never let them see you sweat. Never show weakness of any kind. His enemies swarmed like vultures. One whiff of weakness and he’d be the one lying in a shallow grave. Like his father and his brothers.
While Hector and Freddie labored, Vigo turned his attention to the hostage.
Viciously, he jabbed Lawton in the stomach with the shotgun butt. Lawton grunted and bent double. Maybe something ruptured inside his belly. Good. He wouldn’t live long enough to die of such injuries.
While his head was lowered, Vigo reached out and grabbed the canvas bag. He yanked roughly to remove the bag from Lawton’s head, leaving him to stare at the ground.
“Stand up.” He held the shotgun aimed at Lawton’s belly.
Lawton struggled to comply. Slowly, he settled his weight over his feet, staggering to balance with his hands secured behind his back.
“Do you know who I am?” Vigo asked.
He squinted against the bright sunlight behind Vigo. He cleared his throat twice before he could speak. “Should I?”
Enraged by the lie, Vigo raised the butt of the shotgun and gut punched Lawton again, harder this time. He groaned in agony and fell to his knees.
Every federal agent in the country knew who Pinto Vigo was. And this particular agent was being fed inside information from a mole within Vigo’s cartel.
Vigo needed to know the mole’s name. Lawton could reveal the traitor. And he would. His bravado would prove painful as well as futile.
“Get up!” Vigo screamed. Lawton made no effort to stand.
Hector and Freddie had moved the first body and trudged back across the desert for the second one. Vigo used the moment to calm his fury. He waited while they lifted the second body and juggled it toward the rocky resting place.
Vigo stepped closer and repeated the command quietly. “Get. Up.”
Lawton said nothing.
Vigo rested the barrel of the shotgun against Lawton’s head and pushed. “You’re a firearms expert, right? If I shoot you with this shotgun at close range, you already know your head will explode into a million little pieces so small not even the vultures will find them.”
He paused for a couple of seconds, holding the barrel in place. “This is your last chance. Get. Up.”
Lawton cleared his throat, lifted his head, and looked Vigo directly in the eyes. “We both know you’re not going to kill me. Not until you get what you want.”
Vigo’s nostrils flared and his breathing quickened at the insult. He spoke calmly. “Let us both agree. You know who I am. You know how I deal with my enemies. You, Lawton, are placing yourself in that position. Tell me what I want to know.”
Lawton said, “Even if I had whatever information you want, I wouldn’t give it to you.”
The insolence! Blinding rage coursed through Vigo’s body. His finger itched to pull the trigger. Why not? There were other ways to learn what he needed to know. His posture shifted slightly, preparing to shoot.
Which was the opening Lawton had been waiting for. Swiftly, he stepped forward. He used the momentum to turn his body ninety degrees. His right shoulder bumped Vigo’s hand holding the shotgun’s barrel and knocked him off-balance. The barrel lifted upward.
Vigo pulled the trigger. The blast fanned out, slightly to the right and slightly above where Lawton had been standing a split second before.
Lawton’s momentum carried him through. He stumbled against Vigo and knocked him to the ground. Lawton landed on top of Vigo, which left him temporarily winded.
Lawton pushed forward and landed a glancing head butt to Vigo’s chin. The thrust pushed Vigo’s head into the gritty ground.
Vigo was dazed, but still conscious. He yelled. Hector and Freddie came running toward them.
Before Lawton could do more damage, Hector grabbed the shotgun and slammed it into the back of Lawton’s head. Somehow, he managed to stay in place.
Freddie ran up and pushed Lawton off Vigo with a heavy boot.
With his hands still tied behind him, Lawton couldn’t adjust or fight back. He rolled off Vigo and kept rolling toward the van, making an effort to get beneath it and out of reach.
While Vigo scrambled to stand, Hector strode toward Lawton and, from a better angle, bashed his head with the shotgun butt again. Lawton immediately stopped moving.
Vigo rushed to Lawton’s prone body and kicked him repeatedly, screaming in incoherent rage with every blow. He kicked until he was exhausted, breathing hard, and Lawton was a bloody, pulpy mess.
When he’d finished, he stood back to admire his work while he took a few deep breaths to calm his adrenaline rush.
Once he could speak decisively again, he said, “Get him in the van. Take him to the basement. Come back here and bury the two bodies.”
Hector and Freddie lifted their third body, this one not quite dead, and tossed him into the van.
Hector said, “What about the other one? O’Hare?”
“Is he still out?” Vigo dusted the grime off his clothes and slicked his palms over his hair.
“I gave him a big dose. Enough for a few hours.” Freddie said as he climbed into the van and checked O’Hare’s pulse. “Yeah. He slept through the whole thing. Probably won’t remember much of anything when he wakes up. That stuff kills some of the brain cells, you know?”
Damn Lawton.
This should have been easy. Get the name of the mole. Kill Lawton. Bury the body. The end.
Lawton had escalated the situation. Vigo had plans. Operations were in motion. Inventory was on its way. The mole could screw everything up. Vigo had to find him and kill him and he needed to do it before the inventory arrived.
O’Hare was another problem. If the CPA didn’t make it back, Vigo’s home base would become another problem to deal with instead of a viable operations center.
Twenty-seven resident preppers at Glen Haven, three of them kids, had been a solid cover for months. They had jobs. They came and went. It had been easy to hide out there without being discovered.
How could he deal with the twenty-seven do-gooders if he killed O’Hare?
Twenty-seven hostages were feasible, but not easy to control. He’d need more manpower. Which meant putting more of his crew at risk of exposure. Given the war he’d been waging with the other cartels, he couldn’t replace them with more loyal soldiers rapidly enough to handle the new inventory when it arrived.
Twenty-seven dead bodies would be exponentially more problematic. Their various little jobs and side hustles meant tourists and deliveries and pickup services were constantly in and out of Glen Haven. People would get curious and then insistent. More bodies would inevitably follow.
Vigo kicked the dirt in frustration. Then he shrugged. “Take him farther out into the desert. Leave him there. He’ll find his way back. Or they’ll find his body. Either way will buy us some time.”
“Will do,” Hector said as he walked around the front of the van and started up the engine.
Freddie closed the side door and climbed into the passenger seat. They pulled out onto the road, heading away from Glen Haven.
Vigo watched the van until it seemed to disappear off the edge of a flat earth. Then he let out the long stream of profanity he’d been holding back. When he was spent, he walked back to the SUV, fired it up, and drove to the storage facility where he parked it inside, tossed the wallet with the counterfeit ID into the glove box, and closed the garage door.
He walked to the bus stop half a block away. He boarded the bus that dropped him near a parking lot on the outskirts of town where he’d left the old pickup truck and climbed aboard. He started the engine and headed back to Glen Haven, still furious.
CHAPTER SIX
Monday, April 11
6: 30 p.m.
Albuquerque, New Mexico
Mason awakened face down on the side of a dusty road, parched and hurting and alone. No white van. No kidnappers. No Lawton.
He’d never felt so
relieved in his life. He was still breathing. They hadn’t killed him.
His hands were no longer bound behind him and the canvas hood was gone.
He rubbed the deep welts on his wrists to get the circulation going and gave himself a quick pat down. His head pounded like a guy with a hammer had given him a dozen solid whacks. Dried blood crusted on his face from his busted nose. He chewed the cracked mess off his lips and spat the bits on the ground.
He pushed himself up from the gravel and dusted the grime off his ruined business suit. He tested his joints and limbs, which were sore and achy but seemed to be more or less intact and functioning.
He patted his pockets. Whoever had abducted him and dumped him here had left him with his keys and cell phone. His wallet had been returned to the wrong pocket. The credit cards, driver’s license, and the little bit of cash he’d stuck in one of the slots in case of emergency was still there, too. His watch wasn’t expensive, but it hugged his left wrist, same as always.
Which meant he hadn’t been robbed.
Not killed. Not robbed. And left alive.
Why go to all the trouble of abducting him, driving him into the middle of nowhere, and then leaving him here?
But they’d had to know he’d find his way back home eventually. He’d make a report. They’d be found. Arrested. Sent to prison. Or worse, because of Lawton being a federal agent.
The only thing that made sense to Mason’s fuzzy thinking between throbs in his head was that they’d wanted him out of the way for a while, but not forever.
Out of the way of what?
For how long?
And why?
He set the questions aside for now.
He couldn’t think straight. Not with the pounding in his head.
First things first. Stay alive. Get home.
He turned around slowly, a full three-hundred-sixty degrees, to get his bearings. He saw no signs of human habitation in any direction. Flat land covered with sand and scrub and not much else. The road ran to infinity at either end where the pavement seemed to fall off the edge of the earth.
He felt the hot sunburn on his balding head and tender face from the unrelenting desert sun. But now the big yellow orb was low in the sky. It would set soon enough. Which would give him some relief from the heat but would bring total darkness and nocturnal creatures seeking food.
He wasn’t worried about desert predators. Most of them wouldn’t attack humans. He’d be more likely to die of dehydration or heat stroke than untamed animals.
Except for snakes. There were deadly poisonous snakes out here. But he brushed that thought aside. He had no weapons. Nothing he could do about snakes except avoid them. Which he could only do as long as he could see them and his vision was a little blurry.
The wind had kicked up while he’d been unconscious. He’d be glad of his suitcoat in a couple of hours when darkness dropped to early spring temperatures.
Mason grimaced. Sandblasting by desert grit in the dark would not be pleasant, with or without the snakes.
Again, he noticed the road. All roads lead somewhere. Until he knew what exactly was going on, his best bet was to get moving. The road was straight and flat. It would be easier to navigate the road in the dark than the uneven terrain off-road.
He began to walk along the pavement while he figured out what to do next.
His thoughts were slow and foggy and disjointed. His head began to pound with each step. The painful rhythm of it kept him alert and moving.
He pulled his cell phone out of his pocket and woke up the screen. No cell service. Which meant he couldn’t call for help. Nor could he access maps or a compass or anything else that might help pinpoint his location or help others to find him.
The phone’s battery was showing a 56 percent charge. Which was good. At least he could use it for a flashlight when he needed to. Such as to watch for snakes.
He dropped the phone into his pocket and kept moving.
His dress shoes were not made for long distance walking, but they were all he had, so he ignored the heat radiating through the pavement and the blisters forming on his toes.
The sun was on his right and low on the horizon, which meant he was walking south. He began to think about his location. Where was he, exactly?
They had drugged him and dumped him here midafternoon. They couldn’t have driven far from Albuquerque, given the timeframe.
The north edges of the Chihuahuan Desert was a likely distance. He’d been there with Cheryl and her son, Micah, several times. Day trips. Out and back in an afternoon.
Yes, they could have easily dumped him there and then taken Lawton wherever they planned to go, all before sundown. That made sense.
If he was anywhere near the Chihuahuan Desert, then Albuquerque would be to the north.
He thought about it a bit longer and then nodded, concluding he’d guessed correctly. He was pleased with his powers of deduction. His head pounded steadily, as the blood throbbed in his temples, but he could still think clearly enough.
Assuming he was correct, he turned around and retraced his steps, soon passing the spot where he’d awakened, and continued walking northward.
He checked his watch and estimated that sunset would happen in about an hour. He’d walk as far as he could. It was better to walk at night while the desert wasn’t so hot. Along the way, perhaps he’d see a sign or something to indicate where he was.
His shoulders slumped. Not that it mattered where he was. Unless the sign was beside a gas station or a shop of some sort, it would do nothing but satisfy his curiosity. If he was right about the Chihuahuan, there would be no shops, no signs, and few people.
The times he’d explored the area with Cheryl and Micah, they’d joked about being alone out here and how they’d handle it. He remembered that they’d come up with exactly zero great ideas.
He wanted to get back home. He missed them already, and he’d been gone less than one day.
As he walked, he thought about home. It kept him going.
He lived in Glen Haven, an intentional community. Cheryl and Micah lived there, too. What his parents might have called a commune back in their hippie days. While their roots might have been in the hippie communes of the 1960s and ’70s, today’s intentional communities were less about free love and drug culture and more about lifestyle choices.
Glen Haven was a social experiment, Mason supposed. Residents shared their lives as well as the costs of running the place.
He’d never trusted the government to take care of him after he ran away from home at nineteen. He’d bounced around, finally graduated from community college, and eventually found Glen Haven. The community suited him. It felt like home and family after all the years alone. He’d been lucky to find it. Lucky they’d wanted him.
All he had to do now was not screw things up and he’d have a home for life. Cheryl and Micah, too.
At Glen Haven, they didn’t live off the grid, although they could. They were set up to thrive in case of disaster. Given the state of the world, the founders always said, disaster could come at any time. And probably would.
Mason wasn’t sure he agreed that doomsday was upon them, but he liked the option of being independent from government supplied water, electricity, and other so-called services. Those services came with strings and heavy price tags attached. Prices Mason didn’t want to pay.
He liked that all Glen Haven residents were trained in basic survival skills, too. Even the children.
And everyone at Glen Haven contributed to the whole. They held jobs off-site, or they worked in the community’s herbal goods business or, as Mason did, they worked freelance in various jobs like accounting or graphic design.
Which brought his thoughts back to Cheryl. They’d met shortly after Mason moved onto the compound three years ago. They’d come to love each other and they hoped to marry one day. Micah was a bonus. Such a great kid. Mason hoped to have a couple of kids of his own to add to the family eventually.
; He stubbed his toe on a crack in the pavement and fell to his hands and knees. “Ah!” he yelled as he went down. The fall started his head to throbbing again. He was tempted to lie down and take a nap, but he didn’t.
He pushed back on his heels, dusted the grit off his palms, and staggered to his feet. He felt blood trickling down his shins from his knees, but he didn’t stop to look at his wounds. He had to keep going.
He glanced around. There was still no evidence of civilization as far as he could see in any direction. Which didn’t necessarily mean no human lived anywhere near here. Squatters lived in the desert.
“A vehicle could come along. The point of any road is for vehicles to travel, right? Surely this road wouldn’t be here if no one ever used it,” he said reasonably, as if he was trying to make Micah feel less afraid.
Had he lost his mind? Maybe. But talking aloud made him feel better.
He might get lucky, even though he figured he’d already used up his quota of good luck for the year. He shook his head to banish that kind of thinking.
“You’re lucky to be alive. All you need to do is stay that way.”
He kept moving north. If no one came along to offer him a ride, he had a long trek ahead and he’d cover as much ground as possible in the dark. “When you get closer to Albuquerque, the cell service will kick in. You can call someone, if you don’t find a ride before then. You’ll make it back to Glen Haven eventually, one way or another.”
He struggled to remain alert to his surroundings, even as his mind wandered. After an hour’s walking, he stumbled and fell again.
“Pay attention, Mason! What’s wrong with you?” he scolded himself as he pushed himself upright. “Tell me what happened. Talk it through.”
He took a few steps first. Then he said, “I’m a little cloudy on the exact facts.”
He drew a few deep breaths to settle his heart rate. “I remember leaving the Last Chance Saloon with Lawton. Four men in a van abducted us. I didn’t recognize the van or know the men.”
He squeezed his eyes shut briefly. When he opened them again, he said, “I can’t picture them clearly now.”