“We have horses,” I told her, tempted to put my hand on her leg, but not willing to risk public rejection. “Evelyn takes care of them and she will take care of us.”
Evelyn Aguilar was the mother of one of our narcos who was captured and tortured last year, probably by the Zetas. After he was found, I made a vow to keep his mother safe and employed. Evelyn lived by herself out here, looking after the ranch and the horses, and filling in as a housekeeper and cook whenever the ranch was being used. So far, I’d only come out here once and just for a few days, but her debt to me was deep, and she had waited on me hand and foot.
Luisa seemed to remember that she despised me, so her look became hard and she turned away, as if she was too stubborn to let herself get excited. I’d known she was that stubborn but I hoped later on when I told her she could go riding that the look would come back into her eyes again.
The chopper landed in a cloud of dust and was quickly approached by Borrero and Morales, two members of my security team and the top sicarios who carried out the kidnapping of Evaristo. Aside from Diego, they were the best of the best. It’s too bad that federale had to die during the event, but I knew that hadn’t been their fault. They were far too smart for that.
Borrero, tall and lanky with a skinny moustache and a penchant for wearing red, shook my hand as I got out of the helicopter. “You got here quicker than we expected.”
“Is that bad?” I asked as I walked away from the whirling sand. I nodded at Morales who was standing with his arms folded and he nodded back. If Borrero was red, Morales was black. He’d grown up in the desert and then later spent his formative years as a chief instructor for the military training camps that took place out in places like this. His skin was dark and weather-beaten, and he always wore a black cowboy hat and leather boots. Like Diego, he had a sordid past I didn’t care to know much about and was the kind of man you wanted — needed — on your side.
“Not bad,” Borrero said, following me. “Sanchez is still unconscious though.”
“I’m sure I’ll find a way to wake him up.” I looked over my shoulder to make sure Luisa was all right. Esteban had her hand and was helping her out of the helicopter, her hair flying around her like a black cape as the rotors slowed. “Where is he?”
“In the tunnel,” Morales said as he fished a cigarette out of his front pocket. “Thought it would be a more agreeable place for him to wake up. Especially for whatever you have planned.”
All fincas have at least one escape route. This ranch had a tunnel leading out from behind the hot water tank in the basement that went all the way behind the mountain and into the wash. The other end opened up by a crop of prickly pear on the riverbank and under a camo net, shielded by nopales and tarbush. There was a black, bulletproof truck, tank full and ready to go the distance.
Remembering my manners, I stopped and waited for Luisa and the rest before approaching the house. There, on the long wraparound porch out front, was Evelyn, waving at us like an old frontier wife. Her greying hair was pulled back in braids and she wore a long peasant dress.
“Welcome,” she said, clapping her hands together. She had to be excited that she had company for once. Living out here must be lonely, though the solitude was one of the reasons I liked it so much. Having an entourage around you twenty-four seven was exhausting and I wondered if I could ever truly be on my own without someone watching me, whether for my own protection or otherwise.
“You must be Luisa,” she said to Luisa as she came forward, holding out her hand in politeness. Evelyn pulled her into a tight hug, and I had to chuckle at that. Evelyn was round and fluffy, like a stuffed pancake, and about sixty-four, though she looked much older. Nothing aged you as much as grief. Even now I was seeing more silver hairs at my temples and a line between my brows that hadn’t been there before.
“The place looks great,” I said to Evelyn respectfully. “I can tell we are in good hands.”
She beamed at that, ever grateful to me, and then to my relief she took Luisa and started giving her a tour of the sprawling ranch house. Luisa didn’t need to be a part of what would happen next.
After they’d gone, I looked to Borrero and Morales. “Show me to the federale.” I glanced at Esteban and said, “You should get yourself settled.”
He raised a brow but didn’t say anything to that. Esteban wasn’t new to the interrogation process, but still, I felt better not having him there.
I followed Borerro and Morales, with Diego behind me as always, down the hall and stairs to the basement. It was clean, dark, and cool down here, with a metal chair in the middle of the room and rope coiled underneath it. Two other chairs were stacked in the corner beside a sink and a storage chest. There was an arsenal of depravity in that chest; I had spent a full day here last time picking out the best means of torture and filling it up just so.
The closet that contained the hot water tank looked like any other, complete with a mop and bucket — crucial for washing away the blood — and you could barely fit inside it. But Borrero squeezed past the heater and pushed at the bricks on the wall behind it. A hidden door opened with a groan, the grating sound of bricks grinding against each other, and soon he disappeared.
We followed him — Diego grunting because his stomach could barely squeeze past the heater — and then we were in a long, dirt tunnel that stretched straight out for a few yards before curling around to the left. Faint lights lined the ceiling, and in the middle of the tunnel was Evaristo, hands and feet bound, tied with a metal leash to a chair. He had a ball-gag in his mouth, and his head was slumped over, his eyes closed.
In person he looked a lot younger than I had thought. Maybe everyone looked a bit younger when they had their eyes closed. Innocent, almost, though I knew the boy-man couldn’t be where he was with the federales and still maintain his innocence. They might have been fighting on the other side, but they were still capable of being as twisted and immoral as the cartels were. At least we had a code of conduct. They pretended they had one and called it justice.
Beside Evaristo on the ground were two buckets of water and a large metal toolbox. I wondered what my sicarios had selected for me and what they’d already used themselves.
As Diego closed the brick wall behind us, I went over to Evaristo and looked him over closely. One of his eyes and the corresponding cheekbone was black and blue, and there was a trail of dried blood beneath his nose. His dark hair was matted down, maybe with sweat, maybe with blood. Other than that though, he didn’t look half bad.
“He got a little frisky when we first took him,” Morales explained. “I roughed him up a bit, knocked him out.”
“He’s been out ever since?”
He shook his head and puffed on his cigarette, the smoke wafting down the tunnel, trying to find fresh air. “He came to but we put him back under. The more disoriented he is, the better. It’s been a few hours though since we last gave him a hit, so I’m sure you can wake him and get him talking.”
I was sure about the first part but not the second.
Before I did anything to wake him, I crouched down and inspected the tool box. At the top was a small battery pack and rod. It was the typical narco route for interrogations, but it was a staple because it worked so damn well.
I picked it up then nodded at Borrero and the bucket.
“Wake him.”
Borrero came over and tipped the water over Evaristo’s head. He immediately jerked in his seat, blue eyes wide and crazed, the gag sucked into his mouth as he inhaled hard. Now he looked older. This was good. I didn’t like the idea of having to torture a boy, even though I would do it to get what I needed.
As Evaristo jerked against the metal leash and fought against the bonds, I stooped over in front of him and looked him in the eye.
“Welcome,” I said to him. “I think you know who I am. And I know who you are. And we’re going to play a little game, you and I. I think you’re very good at playing games, aren’t you federale?”
Water streamed down Evaristo’s face. His eyes widened at first then narrowed as he seemed to recognize who I was. Of course he recognized me. I was their number one target, and it had just been his rotten luck that he was dispatched to go after the Tijuana cartel instead. Too much pressure from the DEAs in California. They wanted the drugs to stop appearing in their backyards but hadn’t quite figured out that all the drugs came from somewhere.
“Ah, you do know me,” I said, reaching out to brush his hair off his forehead. He flinched at my touch, as he should, and I was briefly, uncomfortably, reminded of Luisa. I swallowed that down and kept my focus on him. “So, the question is, how long do you want to play this game? You can make it really easy for yourself. You can talk right away and I won’t even have to use this.” I lifted the battery pack. He didn’t seem affected in the slightest, which was admirable considering he knew what it could do. “I also give you my word, and you should know my word is good. If you give me what I want, I will let you go. I won’t drive you up to the PFM building in Mexico City, but I will let you walk out of here alive. You understand?”
Evaristo didn’t nod but I could see in his eyes that he did understand. And he didn’t like it. He was already prepared to put up a front and he had no idea what I was going to ask of him.
“We’re not interested in your organization,” I told him. “We’re interested in your information. I want everything you have on Angel Hernandez. I know you know where he is, but you haven’t been given the bureaucratic authority to capture him yet. What a pain in the ass bureaucracy is, am I right? They couldn’t even save your own sorry little ass. You wanted Hernandez and you got me instead.” I put one hand on the ball gag and the other held the battery in view. “Are you ready to talk?”
He gave me nothing. I pulled down the gag and he gulped in air.
“Well?” I prodded.
When he caught his breath, his eyes sliced into mine. “Fuck you,” he said, spittle flying.
I raised my brow. “They’ve trained you well.” I sighed and straightened up, looking down at the battery pack. “I think I’ll keep you ungagged. Screaming gets me off.” I shot him a smile. “And you will scream. They can’t train that out of you.”
I looked over my shoulder at my security team. “Any of you bothered by screaming?” I asked them, knowing they didn’t mind it at all. Morales grinned eerily.
Within minutes, Borrero and Morales stripped Evaristo naked, threw more water on him, and I had attached the picana prod to the battery pack. Diego held the pack, in charge of the voltage, and I waved the prod at Evaristo’s neck. It was a good, sensitive place to start. “Let’s see what you’ve got.”
What Evaristo had was a huge capacity for pain and screaming. Can’t say it didn’t turn me on.
CHAPTER SEVEN
Luisa
“This is where you will be staying with Mr. Bernal,” the kindly Evelyn Aguilar told me, opening a door to a very spacious master bedroom that seemed to take up the whole end of the house. I stepped in gingerly and looked at the rustic furniture and terracotta tile floors. It was simple, yet I knew that the furniture only looked shabby and probably had cost a fortune. The view was of the south and the crooked mountains rising from the desert floor. The windows were small and deep-set into the adobe walls, so the view was partially obscured. I knew it was that way for our protection, from intruders and from the desert sun.
I gave Evelyn a small smile. “It’s lovely. But I’m afraid I require a room of my own.”
Thankfully she just nodded and said, “Oh yes, come with me,” and didn’t question why I wouldn’t be sleeping with my husband. Perhaps this was normal to her. Perhaps when Javier had stayed here before, he hadn’t quite been alone.
My stomach clenched at the thought. Even though I had known about his callous infidelity before I confronted him, the fact that he fessed up to it so easily, and without any remorse, continued to make me sick. He knew he’d hurt me and he just didn’t care.
Or perhaps he did. After all, he decided to allow me on the trip to the ranch in the end. But it had been Esteban who told me that this morning, not him, and I was starting to think it had been Esteban’s idea as well.
I couldn’t pretend that I hadn’t noticed his roving eyes on me, either. Just this morning as I sat outside on the front bench and sipped my coffee, wearing just a camisole and shorts, he couldn’t keep his eyes off me as he told me the news. Same with on the helicopter. Esteban had been ballsy to do it in front of my husband as well. Not that I felt bad about it — Javier deserved that and then some — but it made me a little uneasy about being around Esteban now. He’d been my closest companion over these last horrible months, but the sexually charged looks threatened to push our relationship in another direction.
It scared me. It also made my heart flip and my thighs clench, just a little bit. Enough that I noticed. Enough that I liked it. And that scared me even more. I wasn’t in the right frame of mind to handle any sort of temptation like that.
I wasn’t really in the right frame of mind to handle anything. And now I was in the middle of Mexico, in a hot, unyielding desert, wondering if it had been the right decision to come here, even though it’s what I had wanted. I had felt trapped and isolated at home, but at least it was still my home. This place was a stranger to me and I felt like I was at its mercy.
“Here we go,” Evelyn said, pushing open another door further down one of the halls. It was much smaller, but it had an en suite bathroom, and the heavily locked French door looked like it opened to the wraparound porch. I could already see myself having my morning coffee here and watching the horses run in the distance. At least there was that.
“Thank you, it’s perfect,” I said and her face lit right up. Minutes later she returned with my bags — I didn’t know how to pack light but she was surprisingly strong — and I shut the door behind her, collapsing onto the bed. The mattress was on the firm side but I found myself drifting off within minutes.
I’m not sure how long I was out but the screaming woke me up. I knew it had been coming — I’d learned to accept the screams as progress — but they still rattled me. I lay there, breathing hard, having a hard time seeing the progress in any of this. I felt like I was just spinning my wheels.
And the screaming didn’t stop, no matter how long I tried to wait it out. I’d been filled in by Esteban about the man in the tunnel, federale agent Evaristo Sanchez, and I still thought the risk we were taking was too great. I didn’t take any pleasure in this, because whatever horrible things Javier and his men were doing to the young agent, I knew that it would be used against us one day.
Finally, I’d had enough. I couldn’t fall asleep, and my heart would not stop racing. I got up, slipping on a pair of suede, low-heeled boots and hat, and headed out into the hallway. I passed by the spacious kitchen with white-washed walls and exposed wood beams on the ceiling.
Evelyn was busy chopping vegetables and cheerfully humming a corrida tune to herself. I told her I was going for a walk, and she warned me to be careful about rattlesnakes. I merely pointed at my boots. The desert hills around San Jose del Cabo where I grew up were equally as dangerous and I knew how to handle myself.
The moment I stepped outside, the thick air blanketing me like an open oven, and the screams began to fade. I headed straight over to the peeling wood fence that housed the horses. The fence seemed to go on forever, dipping over a low hill and fading off into the distance.
I leaned against it, careful not to get splinters on my arms, and a breeze swept off the hills, hot but smelling of hay. A dapple grey horse grazed on tufts of dry grass, its tail swishing. I smiled despite myself. For a moment, I imagined what it would be like to hop on its back and get the hell out of here. Just me and the horse and the desert, no fear, no constraints. Just freedom.
I knew I wouldn’t get far. If I didn’t succumb to the relentless heat and the fact that my cell phone didn’t work out here and I had no idea where I was going, Javie
r and his men would find me in minutes.
Unless he didn’t, I told myself, and before I knew what I was doing, I was stepping through the fence. Unless he couldn’t care less where you went. Don’t be so naïve.
I picked up some hay that was gathered near a shanty at the gate and headed across the paddock, hoping I wouldn’t scare the horse. There were other horses here, spread out in small herds, maybe twenty in total, but this horse was the closest. And alone.
“You and me both,” I said under my breath as I quietly approached him.
He kept his eye on me as I came close, but only raised his head at the last minute. I held out the hay, perhaps too fast, and the horse took off, spooked.
I sighed as I watched him gallop away until he disappeared over the hill. I looked behind me at the house and clenched the hay in my hand. I had nothing better to do.
I set off after the horse, determined to win over something in my life. I went over the hill and saw the land gently slope toward a dried up riverbed where mesquite and acacia grew. The horse had paused down there, grazing on yellow flowers that grew in the sparse shade.
I headed after it, watching my feet carefully as my boots navigated the loose rocks and hard sand. Scorpions scuttled away from my shadow.
It was cool down by the wash, even with the water all dried up. The horse had his head up, watching me, but I thought I saw some kind of understanding in his large dark eyes. I decided to stay put, holding the hay at my side.
“It’s okay, boy,” I told him softly. “I won’t hurt you.”
The horse watched me then slowly resumed chewing before it lowered its head again and went back to plucking the flowers off the shrub, its lips nipping them delicately.
I didn’t know how long I stood there for, just watching the gorgeous animal. If I couldn’t hop on his back and ride off into the sunset to start a new life, maybe I could convince Javier to bring him back home with us. We had the barn that had the pigs back on our compound, and we could easily use one of the stalls for him.