“I thought cars didn’t travel this road. Maybe we should have paid Jorge to take us down to the coast,” I said.
“Too late now. I think we’re almost there. You were right about the mist. Either that or I just pissed into the wind.”
We hiked back up to the road. A cloud of dust remained in the wake of the car that had passed. We fanned our hands in front of our faces and walked through it.
I held out my arm. A coating of dust from the long day’s journey covered every inch of me. “I don’t know when I’ve ever had this much dirt on my skin. Can’t wait to get in the water.”
An incline in the road brought us to the top of a small ridge and below was an awesome blue shoreline complete with swaying palm trees and fishing boats.
“Damn,” I sighed. “I thought we’d never get here.”
“I guess we’ll have to avoid that little town on our way back through. Something tells me our pictures are already hanging on the street posts with ‘wanted dead or alive’ scribbled beneath.”
“You’re probably right, but I’m not sure that sonavabitch would bother with the alive part.” I stretched out my fingers. “That jerk’s face was made of stone.”
“What if we only made it worse for the girl?” Barrett asked.
“Yeah, I thought about that too. What a shitty situation for her. No place to go and stuck with that man.” Immediately my thoughts went back to my parents. My mom wasn’t stuck with my dad. There were plenty of places for her to go, but she’d stayed with him. None of it had ever made sense to me.
Barrett’s pace picked up.”Hey, I see the fork in the road. We’re almost there.”
We jogged down the road toward the promise of surf and steaks and beer and water.
The first hut looked like it had been built from mud and palm fronds. There were two fishing rods leaning up against the back screen door. Inside, a man was sleeping in a hammock.
We continued along the stretch of road that split the beach huts from the sand.
“That’s got to be it.” Barrett pointed toward a house with a rainbow of surfboards leaning up against the wall. A nice truck sat in front of the place, the only car for miles. “Pete must have rented a truck.”
We reached the house, and two guys were outside talking to a large man with a beer belly that nearly hid the gun belt around his hips. They all turned to look at us.
My stomach clenched into a sharp knot. I stopped. “Shit.”
One of the young guys slipped around the gruff, older man and walked toward us. Worry had starched his tanned face nearly white.
“Hey, Pete,” Barrett said hesitantly, “what’s going on?”
Pete looked back at the man who was staring at us like a lion watching antelope.
“That’s Rico. He sort of runs the town that you just passed through. He claims that you guys assaulted one of the townsfolk.”
“I did,” I said quickly. “Barrett never laid a finger on the guy. The asshole punched a girl in the face.”
Pete’s face dropped. “That’s not going to matter to Rico.”
A whistle split the air. The truck door opened. A man stumbled out holding a bloody cloth against his face. It was the man I’d hit. He stared at us and then said something to Rico.
Pete turned back to us. “That’s Rico’s son.”
“Fucking hell. You’ve got to tell Rico that Barrett had nothing to do with this.”
“I will.”
“That’s bullshit,” Barrett said, “you’re not taking the heat for this alone.”
“Look, Rett, if this guy arrests me, which from the looks of it I’m either heading to jail or an informal execution, I need you to be on the outside to get me free.”
Rico walked toward us with his hand hovering over his gun as if he was sure we would run.
Pete leaned closer. “Look, this character was never really appointed sheriff. He’s a rich egomaniac who has enough artillery that no one in town questions his self-appointed authority. He’ll just want money and the satisfaction that he arrested another evil tourist. But he’s got a couple of cronies that work for him, one in particular, who is fucking nuts. He’s a huge, monstrous looking guy with more heroine than blood in his veins. Just like a rabid dog, don’t look him in the eye.”
Rico reached us. Dark, mean eyes stared out from a plump, leathery face.
Pete seemed uncomfortable in the man’s presence, but I had to clench my jaw and keep my temper.
Rico said something in a harsh, gritty tone and Pete nodded. Pete pointed at Barrett and spoke in fluent Spanish to the man. Rico looked at Barrett and seemed to be considering what Pete had told him.
I stuck out my wrists. “Just me for your shady little police operation.”
It seemed that Rico’s English was as nonexistent as my Spanish. He motioned for both of us to follow him to the truck.
I glanced at Pete. “Did you tell him that Barrett had nothing to do with it?”
Pete swallowed hard. “I did, but Rico makes his own rules.”
Rico lifted his hand and motioned for me to turn around with a fat, stubby finger. I faced the side of his truck. He smacked the edge of the bed, and I braced my hands on it. With a sharp kick, his boot hit my ankles, and I spread my legs out to be searched.
His son sneered at me with a fat lip as he handed his dad some handcuffs. “You actually look better now,” I mumbled to myself.
Rico yanked my hands hard behind my back and cuffed me. Then he repeated the process with Barrett.
Barrett looked back over his shoulder. “Pete, get my bag. My phone’s inside. Call my brother, Jimmy. Let him know what’s happened.”
“I will. And I’m really sorry this worked out so badly. It’ll take good money, but I’m sure you won’t be in for long. He just likes to strut his power, and, unfortunately, you picked the wrong girl to defend.”
“I didn’t know there was a right one.” I scowled over at Rico’s son who seemed more than satisfied with his dose of revenge. “You fucking weasel.”
The guy pretended to lunge at me, but it freaked him out when his sudden move didn’t make me flinch.
“Yeah, you look like the kind of dick who would only hit a guy who was handcuffed.”
“Dray,” Pete said in a chilling tone, “they understand more than you realize. Remember what I told you over there. Keep quiet and you should be out as soon as your brother gets here with the money.”
Rico opened the back door of the truck and waved us to get inside.
“Wait,” Barrett said. “Pete, do you have some water bottles? We’re about to die of thirst, and something tells me his prison isn’t going to be providing us with any comforts of home.”
Pete said something to Rico. He nodded. Barrett’s friend ran inside and came out with four water bottles. Barrett sighed with relief. Pete was nice enough to open the bottles and hold them for us to drink. We thanked him and then slid into the backseat of the truck. The black seats were burning hot.
“Why the hell does this place make me so thirsty?” Barrett asked catching his breath from having downed two bottles without stopping. “I think it’s psychological because I know I can’t drink the water unless it’s from a bottle.”
“I think it’s the heat, the long day of travel and the fact that you left your lunch in a bush. And this latest turn of events probably hasn’t helped. Fuck man, it figures that I would nail the guy’s kid. I’m really sorry that you got caught up in this, Rett.”
“Hey, I was right behind you. I would have helped you pound him, but that jab of yours is deadly. Glad I’ve never been on the receiving end of it.”
Rico and his son climbed into the front seat. One reeked of tobacco and one smelled like beer. Rico backed up the truck and made a u-turn onto the road.
“Can’t believe we’re going back up this road already.” Rico’s deep set eyes watched me in the rearview mirror.
Barrett shook his head. “Jimmy is going to kill me.”
“He??
?s going to kill both of us.” The vicious look Rico gave me in the mirror made me shudder. “That is if there is anything left of either of us to kill.” The gravity of our situation seemed to grow heavier and darker with each mile. All I could think was, what if they decided to just pull over and shoot us both in the head. Hopefully, Rico cared more about the money than getting revenge for his potato-faced kid.
The scenery blurred into one long smear of dried brush and dirt. “I guess this was why the guy with the golf cart looked so shocked that we weren’t staying in Mazatlan. He knew we were going to attract trouble.”
“I was sure this whole trip would be a blast. Never saw this coming, at all.” Barrett stared sadly out the window. “Weren’t we supposed to be read some rights or something?”
“I have a feeling that our idea of rights is completely different from Rico’s idea.” With my arms handcuffed behind me, it was hard to sit comfortably and I shifted to the side. “You probably would have been better off coming down here without me,” I said. “Bad luck and I have a kinship that can never be broken.”
“Hey, I’m part of that same kinship.”
Rico and his son were very quiet as we drove toward whatever little slice of hell he was taking us to. A sick feeling grew in my chest. Everyone had warned us that we shouldn’t take this trip, but Barrett and I had been too stubborn to listen. At the time, I’d needed to just get away and do something to forget all the bad that had happened. For a brief, delusional second, I’d convinced myself things were getting better. Now, all I could think was that I wished Barrett and I were home, sitting on the deck of Lucy eating greasy take-out and drinking cold beers.
***
Without a word spoken between any of us, Rico and another man, who looked thrilled to have something to do at his desk, wrote out some paperwork and took our thumbprints. Otherwise, there was nothing about the booking process that seemed even remotely like a real arrest. The entire situation was surreal, and not being able to communicate with our jailors made the whole thing feel that much more hopeless. For all we knew, they were booking us for murder and planning our execution, wild west style. Only we never got to have the fun of being outlaws.
Barrett had sunk into a really dark mood, unusual for him, no matter what the circumstance. And this was a bad one.
Rico’s partner ushered us into a dark, brick lined cell that had two thin cots jutting out from the walls. The overwhelming smell of urine assured us that Rico filled his dingy cell often. But the smug look on his fat face made it clear that we were the best haul he’d had in a long while.
The man from behind the desk, an old guy with one arm that hung rather uselessly at his side, locked us in and then left. The door to the office shut. The only light was a trickle of dying sunlight coming through a barred window high up in the wall. I was feeling relieved that they hadn’t just taken us out into a field and shot us. It would have been easy enough for them to do without ever being heard or seen. The buzzards would have taken care of our remains long before anyone would find us. I could only think that if they’d gotten to us before we got to Pete’s then that scary scenario might just have played out. But people knew where we were now. Rico was going to be bound by some type of expected lawful behavior . . . hopefully.
Barrett combed his hair back with his fingers and walked over to the cot. Even in the dim light I could see the look of disgust on his face as he stared down at the stained mattress. “This is a fucking hell hole.”
I walked over and sat down against the back wall of the cell. The surface of the bricks felt slick and cold as I leaned back.
Barrett joined me.
“I wonder if Pete got a hold of Clutch yet,” I said.
“We don’t even know what this guy wants. What if he just keeps us here until we rot?”
“Cheery thought. We’ve got to wait until they tell us something. Hopefully, we won’t be here too long.” I looked around. “Although, one hour seems like too long.”
Barrett leaned back and closed his eyes. “Just wanted to do a little surfing. What a fucking mess.”
Even with the rank odor and an uncertain future looming over us, we both managed to doze off. It had been a long damn day, and when things went really wrong, sometimes sleep was the only refuge.
Chapter 22
Dray
The office door opened and an unsteady yellow light turned on in the corridor that ran along the front of the cell. We both put our forearms over our eyes to adjust to the sudden flood of light. The cell was dark and cold. The silhouette of the man standing outside the bars rivaled Clutch in height but instead of muscle there were rolls of fat. Even though his eyes were buried deep in his meaty face, they looked red and slightly crossed. There was nothing about him that looked particularly human.
Pete’s words of warning came back to me. “It’s that crazy guy that your friend warned us about,” I whispered to Barrett. “Keep your face down.”
I heard keys jangle and then the door opened. It was rare for me to feel fear. It was another emotion I’d learned to block while growing up, but as his giant feet shuffled across the cement floor, I could hear a pulse in my ears. Barrett sat silent and frozen next to me.
The beast placed a metal plate and two mugs at our feet. We hadn’t looked at him, but his putrid breath floated over our heads as he stared down at us. Then he turned and shuffled out. I released the breath I’d been holding. He clanged shut the door and turned around to watch us.
“Maybe he’s waiting for us to eat.” Barrett stared down at the floor as he spoke.
I reached forward and grabbed the plate. Two slices of bread were swimming in some type of gravy that smelled just a little better than the mattresses on the bed. I pressed my hand against my mouth to stop from puking. “I can’t do it.” I handed the plate to Barrett.
“Ahh, what the hell is that?” He put the plate down and pushed it away.
The man’s gigantic shadow loomed over the cell. His heavy breathing seemed to vibrate the iron bars. Against Pete’s advice, we both looked up at him.
He stared down at Barrett and his nostrils flared. His tongue flicked out of his mouth and across his thick, protruding bottom lip before disappearing again.
“Dray,” Barrett’s voice wavered, “why the hell is that mother fucker looking at me like I’m wearing fudge sauce and whipped cream?”
Just when I thought all the worst scenarios had already gone through my head, another really bad one surfaced.
“Shit, Dray, what if Jimmy doesn’t find us?” The worst shape I’d ever seen Barrett in was when he’d come home strung out after losing his position on a crab fishing boat. He’d been a mess, but I’d never heard him sound this bad.
“Rett, I’m not going to let anything happen to you, do you hear me? This guy is all fat and insanity. I can take him. I will kill him before I let anything happen to you.”
Barrett’s face dropped and he wrapped his arms around himself. “I’ve got your back too, Dray. I promise.”
***
We’d decided to take turns sleeping. The temperature outside had dropped with a sudden thunderstorm, and a harsh wind blew cold rain in through the small window. Voices and light coming from the office let us know that we weren’t alone. The cots in the cell were so disgusting even the two brown mice that had crawled through a crack in the bricks to eat our untouched food seemed to skitter a wide circle around them. So, we sat against the cold, hard wall and took turns dozing off.
I sat there in the dark listening to Barrett’s restless breathing and thought about his question. What if Clutch wasn’t able to get us out of this shithole? What a lousy fucking place to die. No matter what went down, I would go out fighting, but their guns made my fists seem pretty worthless.
I had no concept of time but this day had gone on for what seemed like much longer than the usual twenty four hours. The wind had stopped howling, and the flashes of lightning had moved on. The conversation in the office grew louder and decidedl
y more drunk. I could make out three distinct voices. I was sure the thunderous one belonged to the fatheaded, ugly monster who’d brought us the pig’s slop for dinner.
Barrett had leaned back against the wall and managed to find a comfortable enough position to sleep. My eyelids were heavy, but I decided not to wake Barrett for his shift.
The brick felt hard and cold against the back of my head, but my eyes drifted shut immediately. I was half asleep, so it took me a second to sense that the door to the office had swung open. Three figures stumbled into the dark corridor.
I sat forward as the ugly giant wrapped his thick fingers around the bars of the cell. There was just enough light streaming in from the office to show the hideous expression on his face. His snake tongue was out again, and he eyed Barrett like candy.
Barrett still slept soundly. I pushed to my feet and stood in front of him. I moved my foot back and kicked the bottom of his shoe. “Rett, wake up. We’ve got visitors.”
I heard Barrett’s feet scrape the floor as he dragged them underneath him and jumped to his feet. “Sonavabitch,” Barrett said hoarsely.
The giant’s two drunk friends grabbed the bars too and the three men viewed us like animals in a cage. I glanced around for a weapon, but there was nothing. The two cots were chained to the walls and there was a toilet in the corner. We were on our own and they knew it.
It took the drunk giant several tries to get the key in the lock, but he managed. Barrett sucked in a breath. The men stank as if they’d bathed in weed and alcohol, yet they moved with amazing speed. The two smaller guys ran for me. My leg shot out, and the nearest one flew back as my foot slammed his chest. The other one came at me, and I nailed him with my fist. He flopped back like a rag doll.
His massive friend was not pleased that his plans had been ruined. He roared and lumbered toward me like a rabid elephant. He was too tall for me to throw an effective hook or jab, so I swung around and kicked him in the fat gut. It was like kicking an angry hippo. The guy barely flinched, but my hamstring had felt it plenty. He threw his arm back and cocked me on the side of my head with his fist. My head smacked the bricks, and in the seconds that it took me to clear the stars from my head, the other two guys had me pinned against the wall. Barrett threw his arm around the giant’s neck and tried to get him in a choke hold, but the guy was just too big. His boulder-sized fist came at my stomach, and the breath flew out of me. They released my arms. I dropped to my knees.