by Toby Neal
Lei shot Joao in the side as he raised the rifle and aimed for Harry.
The recoil of the handgun vibrated through her arms; the sound of the report much louder than she was prepared for. The expended brass flew up and hit her in the forehead, causing her next shot to go wide.
And she’d taken her eyes off Fernando.
The burly bald man hit her like a linebacker, bearing her backward to slam against the wall beside the door. His knife was at her throat, his teeth bared in a fierce grin as he pinned her against the wall.
“I’ve got you now, chica,” he breathed in her face, his breath foul.
Lei writhed beneath his heavy body, panic swamping her in a dark wave. Her vision telescoped. Her weapon dropped from nerveless fingers as he squeezed her wrist in a meaty grip. She twisted in Fernando’s grasp, breathless from the force of the impact.
Lei’s mind flew away to that dark place where it went when things were just too terrible to know. This man wasn’t the first to hold her down and touch her in unspeakable ways.
One moment Fernando was there, crushing her as her vision narrowed to a black dot. The next, Fernando’s head was gone, flying off his shoulders to land on the ground with a wet thump that sounded like a dropped melon.
Lei was bathed in hot, jetting blood as the man’s corpse, not yet knowing it was dead, leaned heavily on her, twitching. She pushed against it, and the body fell away, landing beside its head.
Lei didn’t feel the blood soaking her clothing, spattered across her face. She didn’t feel anything in the place she’d retreated to. But her eyes were strained, and when she blinked, they stung, and she could feel the blood cooling on her face.
“You injured?” Harry asked. The sword she held dripped onto the dirt floor.
“No.” Lei bent and picked the Glock up off the ground. She walked past the bodies to Kelly, squatting beside where her friend lay on a pallet. She pulled Joao’s knife from the scabbard at her waist and cut Kelly’s duct tape bindings. She carefully peeled the sticky silver tape from Kelly’s mouth. “You okay?”
“I am now,” Kelly said. “You look really, really gross.”
Lei laughed, and the sound of her harsh chuckle sucked her back into her body. She stood, trembling with the aftermath, and looked over to see Harry finish off Joao with a matter-of-fact stab to the back as the man crawled toward the fallen rifle.
Lei stumbled a few feet away and upchucked against the wall.
Kona nosed through the door. The dog’s muzzle was streaked with blood and he was limping, but he was clearly the victor of the tussle in front of the building.
Lei wiped her mouth on her blood-speckled shoulder. She had to breathe through another wave of nausea. She looked back at her friend. “Are you sure you’re okay, Kelly?”
Kelly had removed the last of the tape and she tossed off the Mexican blanket and stood up, brushing herself down vigorously, as if to get rid of every dirty thing that had touched her.
“I got groped and I had to give everybody a couple of blowjobs, but Fernando didn’t let them rape me. Said they’d get more money from my parents if I wasn’t damaged. They contacted my folks this afternoon and sent them pictures. I think the money was going to be on its way tomorrow.”
“You got lucky, then.” Harry wiped the long gleaming blade of the sword on Joao’s shirt before sheathing it. “Let’s get out of here and destroy the evidence.”
“How?” Lei gestured to the three fallen bodies.
“We’ll fire the place.” Harry said. “I’ve done this before, so listen up. We need to make sure there’s nothing identifying on these bodies.”
“Wait. There’s a baby,” Kelly said.
Lei and Harry froze, staring at her. “A what?” Harry said.
Just then, a thin wail came from the corner of the room.
Chapter Eight
Lei froze. “That sounds like a baby.”
“It is a baby.” Kelly covered her face with her hands. “Poor thing.”
“Why is it here?” Harry was already heading for the corner of the room, where a crude curtain cut off the area.
“I think—they had another captive and—she died and left that baby. They were pissed about it. From what I could gather, these guys capture women and sell them to whorehouses,” Kelly said. “They were trying to find a buyer for the baby.”
Harry swore and spat on the ground, then slipped behind the curtain. The crying stopped. Apparently, Harry knew how to calm the creature. Lei was thankful; babies terrified her.
She made herself reach into Joao’s pockets, looking for anything identifying. She had to master fear and revulsion and truly experience that this man couldn’t hurt her, that he was done and dead.
Lei found the keys to the men’s truck. A silver cross and a rabbit’s foot dangled off the key ring, giving Lei a twinge for the first time—Joao, whoever he’d been, was dead now because of her. She shook it off, noticing the Mustang’s key among the others.
“Let’s get your car back, Kelly.” She held up the keys.
“And here’s some extra kerosene.” Kelly held up a square gallon container of the piney-smelling accelerant she’d found in the corner. “Should I scatter it around?”
“Hang on a minute.” Harry emerged from behind the curtain. She held an impossibly small, swaddled bundle to her shoulder. “You didn’t tell us the baby was an infant girl.”
“How would I know?” Kelly said crossly. “I never saw it. They’d go back behind the curtain and do stuff to it when it cried.”
“Well, this baby’s only a few weeks old.” Harry carefully lowered the child so they could see a tiny round face, and the tuft of dark hair protruding from her wrappings. “She was wet, so I changed her, that’s why she was crying. We’ll have to take her with us. Fortunately, all the baby’s stuff is back there, too.”
“Oh wow,” Lei breathed. “How are we going to explain a baby?”
“You two won’t have to explain anything,” Harry snapped. “I’ll take care of her for the moment and figure something out. Lei, finish searching the bodies. Kelly, go pack up the baby’s stuff and find a bag or something to put it in, while I get her settled in the car.” Kona rejoined his mistress and they headed for the door.
Lei gulped as she rolled Fernando’s head into position near his shoulders with her toe. The man’s eyes were open, and surprise was frozen on his face forever. “We will have to destroy as much of this building and these bodies as we can.”
“Absolutely.” Kelly had pushed the curtain aside and was thrusting baby stuff into a canvas grocery sack.
Lei removed Fernando’s wallet, emptied money and his ID from it, and dropped it back on his body. She moved on to the next man. “Let’s try to make this look like an accident. It will save hassles later if no one’s looking for a killer.”
“It’s a stretch that anyone’d believe this is an accident,” Kelly said, emerging with the bulging bag. “I’ll go find Harry.”
Lei tossed her the keys. “In case you need to unlock the car.”
Kelly nodded and exited.
Lei put her hands on her hips and looked around the chaotic scene, trying to remember what she’d been studying about forensic investigation. “The bodies need to look natural,” she muttered. “And the cause of death needs to be obvious and plausible.”
She dragged Joao’s body by the heels back to his pallet, covering him with his blanket. “Hopefully it seems like the lamp fell over and started a fire.”
She didn’t want to move Fernando’s body back to his pallet, so she dragged that over near him and positioned his body onto it, then made sure his head was centered above it and covered the whole business with a blanket.
Harry and Kelly reappeared. “The baby’s settled in a box in the back seat of the Mustang, and Kona is keeping an eye on her,” Harry said. She assessed the room with a quick glance. “Good job, Lei. These poor innocent men were victims of a fallen lamp.”
“Just what I w
as thinking,” Lei said.
They staged the room as best they could, and Kelly poured the kerosene she’d found over the wooden table in the center. When they were ready and the bodies positioned, Harry used her shotgun to tip over the lit lamp into the pool of fuel.
The table caught fire with a whump.
Kerosene didn’t have the explosive quality of gasoline, so they had plenty of time to retrieve Kelly’s purse and Lei’s backpack from the corner where the men had thrown them and shut the door of the building. Harry fiddled with the lock on the front door and jammed it. Inside, the fire crackled merrily, flames growing to reach up and touch the tinder-dry ceiling beams.
They were still unfastening the Mustang’s bumper from the winch on the back of the truck when the whole building caught fire.
Grunting with effort, wriggling through the dust, Lei disconnected the steel hook from the undercarriage of the car. She backed out on her belly and stood up. She dusted herself off, but dirt clung to the blood soaking her garments in a sticky paste.
Harry had hauled the dog Kona had killed into the doorway of the burning building, and the animal’s body caught fire with a burnt hair smell. The three women watched the leaping flames consume the remains of the violent scene.
“Do you want to take the truck, too?” Lei brushed vainly at the filth coating her. Kelly, meanwhile, got into the Mustang and turned it on. The powerful engine caught with a roar.
“No. Let’s leave the truck and its keys here. With any luck at all, this looks like these guys were partying and passed out when their kerosene lamp fell over, causing a tragic accident. You two can drop me by the quad and go on your way,” Harry said.
“I don’t know how you’re going to carry a baby on the quad,” Lei said.
“I have the carrying rack on the back. Her box will fit there just fine.” Harry seemed to have taken full control of the infant and didn’t want to let it out of her sight; and that was fine with Lei.
Lei went to the truck’s cab. She wiped Fernando’s keys off with a bit of greasy rag she found in the truck. She wiped down the seats and window jambs too, removing Kelly’s prints. She checked carefully for any evidence, retrieving one of Kelly’s flowered sandals from the truck’s floor. Their crude doctoring of the scene wouldn’t fool any good investigator, but one could hope the cops wouldn’t look too closely at the convenient death of these undesirables.
Lei dropped the keys on the floor of the truck, searching the ground for Kelly’s other sandal. She found it on the way to the burning building.
“We better get going,” Harry called. “This fire’s going to attract some attention, even out here.”
“Coming.” Lei jogged back to the Mustang. Harry sat in the back seat, on one side of the baby’s box; Kona sat on the other side. Lei jumped into the passenger seat in front and buckled her seatbelt. She waggled the sandals. “I found your shoes, Kelly.”
“Good. I don’t like going barefoot.” Kelly hit the gas, spinning the convertible into a tight turn to drive away from the pyre they’d ignited.
Lei hadn’t expected that her first time at a crime scene would be on the wrong side of the law—and it didn’t feel good. She didn’t want to have to carry any more secrets than she already did. She wanted to fight crime legitimately, in the clear light of day, not in darkness with weapons with their serial numbers filed off.
This kind of crime fighting wasn’t her thing—but she couldn’t deny that Harry’s idea had worked. They’d done what they had to do; Kelly was safe now, and so was a tiny, innocent baby.
Kona put his head between the seat and the doorjamb and nuzzled Lei’s hair. He licked blood off her shoulder as the Mustang accelerated on the long, dusty road back to civilization.
Chapter Nine
Lei stretched out on a lounge chair beside the pool, fighting a sense of unreality as Kelly handed her the tanning lotion. “I wish you’d buy a better suit. You have a great figure, but you look like my grandma in that.” Her friend gestured to Lei’s no-nonsense, high-cut tank.
“You’re showing enough for both of us,” Lei said, gesturing to the skimpy white bikini that made the most of Kelly’s curves. Kelly blinked at the sharp comment and dropped the tanning oil onto Lei’s stomach.
Harry, face down on her lounger, looked up. The string of her top was untied, baring her sleek brown back. Her amber-brown eyes were tired. “Be nice, girls.”
Last night they’d reached the boulder where Harry had stashed the quad, and after a discussion involving the filth coating Lei, the money they’d spent on the resort, and the importance of pretending everything was normal, the trio, including dog and baby, had returned to Harry’s RV together and everyone cleaned up as best they could.
“Please come with us to the resort,” Kelly begged Harry. “I know it won’t be a problem to add a room for you. Let me pay. It’s the least I can do to thank you for rescuing me.”
Harry, looking down at her grubby jeans, nodded. “I’ll come for a couple of days, if they’ll take Kona. Would be nice to have a long hot shower and a real bed, and we can figure out what to do about the baby.”
Bringing Kona into the resort had cost a small fortune, but Kelly’s parents, relieved she’d “escaped,” as Kelly put it, were happy to put the whole thing on their gold Mastercard when Kelly got done explaining, leaving out the dead bodies in a burnt building. They’d insisted Lei and Kelly stay in Mexico and drive back to the Bay Area after a few days of relaxation in the hotel. “We came for a vacation and we need one now, more than ever,” Kelly had told her parents, and she got her way as she always did.
The girls had checked into the hotel in Cabo San Lucas the night before. Now, Lei glanced over at Harry. The baby girl was napping in the shade in a respectable portable bassinet they’d picked up, but judging by the circles under her eyes, Harry had lost sleep last night caring for the infant.
“I need a drink.” Lei waved for a waiter. They ordered a round of mojitos. Kelly pulled the brim of her large white sombrero down firmly, blocking Lei from her view.
Lei poured some of the oil into her hand, massaging it onto her legs. It was only twenty-four hours since their raid, but it felt like it had happened a lifetime ago. Still, intrusive images from the night kept flashing in front of her eyes, making this idyllic setting feel like a dream, and she hadn’t slept well either. “I’m sorry, Kelly. I’m . . . having trouble just brushing everything off. Moving on.”
“It’s okay. Me, too,” Kelly said, plucking at the knot of her skimpy bikini. “I feel so weird, like any minute the cops are going to charge in and bust us.”
The drinks arrived just then, and there was a flurry of distraction. Finally, the three sat forward and clinked brightly colored, umbrella-decorated glasses filled with frosty drinks.
“To freedom,” Harry said.
“To escaping,” Kelly said.
“To the sword,” Lei said.
They laughed, nervous giggles with darting glances, but no one was near their spot at the free-form pool, turquoise as a gem in the midday sun. Lei sat back and sipped her mojito, gazing unseeing at the pool.
Her body was sore from the struggles of the night before, with bruises marring her legs, arms and shoulders, and her muscles were stiff from running with the backpack of gear they hadn’t used. Gradually the combination of alcohol, warmth, and a sense of safety relaxed her, and her eyes grew heavy. She set the empty glass down, rolled over, and fell asleep.
Someone was coming. A hand was grabbing her.
Lei started, awakening with a cry.
“Lei. Your shoulders are getting burned. Let’s cool off.” Kelly pulled back from touching Lei, clearly concerned by her jerky overreaction.
Lei sat up and swung her legs to the side. “You said you did something like last night before,” she told Harry. “How do you just move on from it?”
Harry eyed Lei from where she sat on a lounger, holding the infant on her lap with a bottle tilted to the baby’s lips.
“Meditation helps. And working out. Cruz says training the mind is as important as training the body.”
“I don’t really know how to do either.” Lei stood up, tugging her tank suit into place. With her history, she didn’t feel comfortable uncovered—body self-confidence was one more thing Charlie Kwon had stolen from her.
She couldn’t remember most of what her mother’s boyfriend had done to her; it only came in bits and flashes, but that was just as well. She didn’t want to remember; she just wanted to be free of it.
Around the pool area, several college-aged men were sunning, drinking, and shooting pool at a nearby table, obviously here for the same kind of fun they were. Granny suit or not, Kelly wasn’t the only one getting looks. One of the guys raised his drink to her with a smile, and Lei made herself smile back.
“Shake it off,” Lei muttered. “Murder was yesterday. Today we party.” She dove into the pool and drowned her troubled thoughts.
“This is going to make your eyes really pop. They’re such an unusual color.” Harry tipped her face up obediently and let Kelly daub glittery purple shadow on her eyelids.
“Eyes popping doesn’t seem a very good thing,” Harry said drily. “I can get a guy to do that, but it usually involves a chokehold.”
Lei, whisking on mascara, almost stabbed herself in the eye with the wand. “I can imagine that too well.”
“You two need to allow your inner goddesses out to play. You’re way too serious. I tell Lei that all the time. At least you agreed to wear my dress, Lei.”
“What there is of it! I had more coverage in my bathing suit.” Lei looked ruefully down at the sleeveless tube of black stretch material that covered her from breasts to crotch, and not much farther. She wriggled her breasts a little deeper into the dress, but that made the skirt come up higher, cupping her bottom. She wasn’t sure which to let hang out. “I look like a hooker.” Lei viewed herself in the mirror. Her legs were tanned and endless in tall Lucite heels she’d planned to wear with a much more conservative garment.