Mercy Killing (Affairs of State Book 1) (22 page)

Mercy grabbed Maria, turning the child’s face away from the sight of people on their hands and knees, retching, gasping for air. Women and children mostly, a few men—all desperately overcome by heat, exhaustion, dehydration.

A woman nearby groaned. “
Gracias, gracias
.”

Suddenly there was a change in the direction of the people river. Several of the survivors still able to function pulled themselves up off the ground and scrambled back into the truck. Having gulped down a few precious breaths of fresh air they now rushed inside again.
To look for family members and friends?
                           

Mercy released Maria. “I have to help.” Tears flooded the back of her throat. She choked on them but rasped out an order. “Go back to the car.
Now
! Wait for me there.”

“No!” Maria cried. “No, I have to help too.”

Mercy squeezed her eyes shut.
Sebastian, you bastard, you’ve brought this on yourself. You’ll pay in more ways than you know.

“All right. Go and open the car’s trunk. Find the two jersey cans of water.” A necessity for driving across the desert. “Bring them and the bag of paper cups. Leave me the phone.”

The police dispatcher sounded half asleep when he asked if she still needed a police officer, and what about an ambulance?

“We need five or six ambulances, at least,” she shouted into the phone, then explained why.

The man on the other end perked up. “
Signora
, stay on the line please.”

“I can’t,” she wheezed, swiping at her tears. Every pore in her body felt as if it was weeping. “I have to help them.”

She handed the phone to a woman sitting on the side of the road, looking dazed but at least semi-conscious of what was going on around her. “Talk to him,” Mercy instructed her. If asked, she would be able to give a better accounting of exactly what had happened to her and the others.

While Maria poured out life-giving water as fast as she could, Mercy leaped up into the truck and began helping people unable to drag themselves out of the steel coffin. She lost count of how many times she plunged into the hellhole, fighting back the bile that rose into her throat at the stench, tripping over another limp body, praying the next one would have a pulse.

27

Not until the arrival of the first two ambulances and the
Policia Federal de Caminos
, the traffic police who reigned over areas beyond Mexico City lines, was Mercy able to walk around and count heads. Thirty-eight people. They had been crammed into the cattle truck and left to roast.
Unimaginable!

And yet, she knew the real total was higher. She’d glimpsed a handful of the younger, stronger survivors hobbling off across the desert and into the night. Probably they were as terrified of the police as they were of their captors. None of the locals she’d come into contact with seemed to trust the law.

“You’re safe now.
No peligroso
. It will be all right. We’ll take care of you. Here, drink some water.
Agua dulce
. Rest.” Walking among them, she kept up a steady flow of reassurances. Did any of them understand? What did extreme heat exposure do to the brain?

The faces she saw could have come from anywhere. Most looked Latino, but whether from Central or South America, or somewhere else entirely, she had no idea. She understood now. This was the face of modern slavery—a living nightmare. These people were considered objects, property, disposable.
But why,
she wondered,
were they left here like this?

Was this punishment for those who refused to cooperate with their captors? Was this intended as a lesson to others, still in captivity, laboring on illegal farms or as servants in private homes, that they had best adapt to the system and not make trouble?

Eventually, a pair of sinister looking police officers in plain clothes swaggered from their cars, announcing they were from the
Policia Judicial Federal
. They dismissed the lowly country police. Even the other cops seemed wary of them. The victims stared at the newcomers, clearly petrified. 

Mercy was past fearing anyone. But she felt so physically and emotionally drained, she could barely answer the long list of questions from a man who introduced himself as Detective Alfonso Garcia and sounded annoyed that he’d been called away from his evening at home.

Her head splitting, gut clenching, Mercy told him all she knew while using the last of her water to sluice blood and other body fluids from her hands. Back in D.C., the EMT’s would have worn gloves, protective masks, full Hazmat suits. She felt like bathing in a vat of antiseptic solution. A wave of guilt struck her down for the thought. How could she worry about herself after what these people had gone through?

The police didn’t need her to tell them the truck was from
Rancho Hidalgo
. It was one of the first things, Garcia’s partner pointed out to him. They nodded at each other and shrugged, as if unsurprised.

A few victims not hauled off to the morgue or the hospital were whisked away in a police van. “For questioning,” the partner told her.

Garcia got on his cell phone and called in reinforcements to scour the brush for runaways and witnesses. Physically and emotionally overcome by the tragedy, Mercy sat at the edge of a ditch alongside the road and wept.

A thin arm closed around her shoulders: Maria.

Mercy looked up at her. “Thank you for helping. I’m so sorry you had to see this,” she whispered.

Maria, the unpredictable woman-child, gazed back at her through aged eyes. The child was gone. With an agonized whimper, she collapsed into Mercy’s arms.

By the time Detective Garcia allowed Mercy and Maria to leave, the new day’s first pale lavender light was inching up over the Eastern horizon. The convertible, its top down again—Mercy couldn’t get enough fresh air into her lungs—traced the riverbed, speeding toward the hacienda. She drove, fingers clenched around the steering wheel, visions of suffering playing over and over in her head. A spent Maria slept beside her in the passenger seat.

Before leaving the scene on the highway, Mercy had called ahead to the ranch. Manuela, the housekeeper, was frantic with worry, having discovered her young mistress missing when she took supper up to her room. Mercy told her that Maria was safe and unhurt, but they had been detained by the police as witnesses to an accident. She gave no further details. She promised to have Maria home as soon as possible.

Two issues, equally critical, battled the nightmare of the past hours for her attention. First, she must see that Maria was safe. Then she needed to get away from
Rancho Hidalgo
as fast as possible.

As soon as she was back in the city, she would contact Lucius Clay. Last night’s nightmare, documented by police reports, surely would provide enough evidence of Sebastian Hidalgo’s guilt. Clay's task force could then act. Make arrests, locate holding cells and free the kidnapped.

But there was, she realized, a dangerous downside to all of this. She had been a witness to the cattle baron's deplorable crimes. To say that this put her in a vulnerable position was an understatement. A man like Hidalgo—who had no problem with enslaving innocents, who had killed before—wouldn't hesitate to kill again if it meant saving his own skin and protecting the wealth he'd accumulated by his illicit trade. Weren't witnesses to crimes routinely murdered in countries like this, to keep cases from going to trial?

The hacienda’s gates swung open ahead of her. Mercy drove through, not stopping the car until she was in front of the main house. Manuela, accompanied by two maids, rushed down the steps. One of the women lifted the still half-asleep Maria out of the car and bore her off.

Manuela faced Mercy, fists like clubs propped on her sturdy hips, her expression stormy. “You should never have took her,
Señora
. You should not!”

“
Lo siento
,” Mercy apologized. “I just wanted to give her an afternoon away from—”

“I have call Don Sebastian. He is very upset.
Mucho, mucho enfadado
!”

Mercy said nothing. The fact that a servant was berating her employer's houseguest told her all she needed to know about her status here. She was no longer welcome. No longer protected by Sebastian’s hospitality.

When they haul his ass off to a filthy, windowless cell,
she thought with satisfaction,
he can be as angry as he likes.
But that depended upon her getting away from this place before one of his thugs stopped her.

Mercy brushed past the housekeeper, aiming for the front door.

Manuela bustled up the path and after her. “You are leaving now,
si
?
El jefe
, he say you go today.”

“Yes, I’m leaving,” Mercy said.

Manuela shot a look at two men standing across the yard. Mercy recognized them. She’d heard Sebastian call them by name. His giant of a right-hand man, Carlos, who had accompanied him to her party. The other, his ranch foreman, Luis. The pair conversed, heads close together, Carlos stooping to the shorter man.

Mercy ducked inside the house before they could approach her.
Get out…run …get out!
a voice inside her screamed.

If she moved quickly, maybe she could leave before the staff learned the details of what had happened on the road. Maybe no one had gotten word that Sebastian was about to be arrested. Because of
her
.

Mercy bolted up the stairs in twos. Ran down the hall, into the bedroom. Jammed clothes into overnight bag, art stuff into its cases. She didn’t take time to wash up or change out of the stinking, blood-stained dress that dragged from her shoulders. Had Manuela noticed it? How could she not have?

If Sebastian’s men had time to figure out that one of their trucks was now in the hands of the authorities, that his cartel was about to be broken wide open and she was the star witness to his crimes, she’d never make it back to the city alive.

Easel tucked under one arm, her bags weighting down her arms, Mercy clattered down the stairs and out the front door. She tossed everything into the car's trunk. Not until she’d run around to the driver’s door did she see the hulking figure squeezed behind the convertible’s steering wheel.

Carlos looked up at her. “I will return your car to the garage for you,
Señora
.” 

A fresh wave of terror jolted her. “That-um-that won’t be necessary.” She steadied her voice before speaking again. “I’m driving back to the city, Carlos. My husband just called and is waiting for me.” A lie, but she was getting better at deception. She hoped.

“Don Sebastian will be disappointed.”

“I don’t think so. He expected me to leave last night.”  Ordered is more like it.

Carlos’ meaty fingers kneaded her steering wheel. She sensed the damage those enormous fists might be capable of, slamming into flesh, rupturing delicate internal organs. One blow was likely all it would take.

“You will not be welcome here again,” he said in a voice so low she almost couldn’t make out the words.

“I’m sure that’s up to your boss.”

“
El jefe
, he is not a forgiving man. You have broken his trust.” Carlos turned eyes the color of rusty water up at her. She shivered at the violence in them. She’d known men like him. Men who worked for the military or a government. He was a one-man dog, loyal only to his master—the rest of humanity be damned.

Abruptly, the bodyguard thrust open her car door forcing her to jump back and out of the way. He shot to his feet, towering over her. Mercy tensed, prepared to sprint for cover should he move even an inch closer.

Carlos tossed her a black look, turned and skulked away, leaving her hyperventilating. She couldn’t move for a full ten seconds. Then she dove for the driver’s seat.

He hadn't taken the keys, thank God. They still dangled in the ignition. There was enough gas in the tank. She cranked the engine, floored the accelerator. Raced the car through the courtyard, tires grinding, spewing grit in a malevolent cloud behind her.

Past the stables.

Past the ranch hands’ bunkhouses.

Amazed to find the gate still open.

Astounded, but infinitely grateful when, two hours later, after gunning the engine clear across the desert, her heart still stomping out a fandango in her chest, she finally passed into Mexico City.

28

Mercy awoke with a start and peered at the bedside clock:
11:50 a.m
. On reaching her house in Polanco, she’d showered, discarded ruined clothes then threw herself into bed. She’d never felt more exhausted.

Now, although she’d slept just over two hours, the nap had cleared her head just enough to make thinking a real possibility. She pushed herself up and off the bed. Having stumbled upon an entire truckload of people—whether they'd paid for the privilege of being so cruelly treated with the hope of getting into the U.S., or they were innocent victims didn’t matter—she felt compelled to make sure justice was done.