Mercy Killing (Affairs of State Book 1) (29 page)

“How dare you send your freaks after me!” Maria screamed as soon as Carlos set her feet on the floor. “I hate you!” She stomped her foot to emphasize her fury. Then turned and aimed a kick at Carlos’ shin, which he sidestepped.

Her dark eyes, so like her mother’s, blazed accusingly at Sebastian. He died a little inside. Yet, he knew he couldn’t back down. Not now. Not with so much at stake.

He expected her to race up the stairs and into her room to sulk. She surprised him. Maria charged straight at him, ramming her tiny body full-force into his chest.

“I will
never
call you Papa again. You beast! You murderer!” She beat at his chest, stomach, face with her fists, tears streaming down her cheeks.

Carlos edged forward. Sebastian shook his head.

The day he needed protection from his own daughter would mark the end of his life. She alone he would never fight. He braced his feet on the marble tiles and suffered her punishment.

“I know you don't understand,
niña
.” Instead of pushing her away, Sebastian reached his long arms around her, locking her in his embrace, as much to spare his own body as to comfort her.

“No!” she screamed at him. “No, no, no! My friend, where have they taken her? Where is Mercy?” Tears soaked through his shirtfront.

“She was warned,” he said sternly. “She was told not to see you again. Forget her.”

“But it’s
my
fault!” Maria sobbed. “She only agreed to meet me when I begged her. I would have run anyway. I will still run. I hate you!”

“I know,” he said.

He had, of course, known almost immediately of his daughter’s conversation with Mercy. The phone bugs were to guarantee the loyalty of his household staff and ranch hands. No leaks, not a whisper of the truth to the outside world. At all costs, he must protect the mission. But the surveillance also had allowed him to hear his daughter's plan to meet Mercy in the city.

Exhausted by her struggles, Maria finally stopped fighting him. She whimpered, “You must not hurt her. Please let her go. Papa, please.”

“Mrs. Davis has decided her own fate,” he said. “There is nothing you can do for her now.”

If it weren’t for the cobwebby, bug-gut speckled ventilator fan whirring at the roof peak of the tiny shed where they'd imprisoned her, Mercy was certain she would have suffocated within an hour. No windows let in air or light. A single dusty bulb dangled from a frayed wire, casting a jaundiced glow over tools, steel barrels, unmarked crates. The place stank of dry rot, small dead things, and machine oil.  

Outside she could hear the wind blasting grit against the corrugated tin walls. Inside, nothing stirred, and it was hot as Hades in August. To calm herself, she tucked her knees to her chest, closed her eyes and pretended she was on a white beach, petal-soft sand blowing gently against her cabana’s striped awning. The fantasy worked for all of thirty seconds.

Then the reality of her situation struck full force. He was going to kill her. Either by his own hand, or he’d send someone else to do it. Or maybe he’d just let her rot. Here in this shed, in the desert, without food or water, in this heat—she wouldn’t last long. It was no different than being trapped in his cattle van except she’d die without others to share her last moments of suffering. She’d die alone.

Mercy gasped at the thought. Which made her ribs zing with pain. Probably the result of Fredo falling on her, the men heaving her into the truck bed. If one or two ribs hadn't broken, they most certainly were cracked. She looked around in the dark. Where exactly was she? Obviously imprisoned somewhere well away from the city and beyond the hacienda's walls. Somewhere she couldn't be heard or easily found. She’d been aware of the moment when the truck separated from the car carrying Maria, once they were outside the city limits. She'd already checked the walls of her prison and its single door. They'd locked her in, of course. The odds of escape seemed grimly low.

Exhausted, she lay down on the dirt floor to think. She hoped to God whatever scorpions, spiders, or snakes had found shelter here wouldn’t mind her sharing.

Mercy woke up with a start.

She couldn’t tell how long she’d slept. Before her sweaty nap, she’d been terrified to the point of paralysis. The sense of helplessness overwhelming. Now, despite the dull ache radiating across her chest, her head felt clear. Aside from just not wanting to be dead, she couldn’t let Sebastian kill her because then he’d continue getting away with his horrendous crimes. On a more personal level…she had to survive if she was ever to see her mother again.

It struck her as ironic that, on opposite sides of the world, mother and daughter were fighting separate battles for personal freedom.

“God, how I miss you, Mom,” Mercy whispered. Her lips felt puffy and tasted of scabby blood. Her own. “Hang in there, wherever you are. If you can, so can I.” She swallowed over a fist- the lump in her throat, then got down to business.

Clamping an arm around her ribs for support, she braced herself into a sitting position. Her eyes had already adjusted to the dim light. She took inventory of the contents of her cell. Barbed wire for mending fences, crates of nails, metal barrels that might contain fuel oil to run ranch equipment. Pre-cut lumber for fence posts, an assortment of tools including shovels and picks.

She used her fingers to pry open an unmarked crate. Splinters gouged beneath her fingernails. She bit back a cry of pain then plucked out the little sharp wood spears before turning her attention back to the crate's contents. Sticks of dynamite. Not that she’d ever seen actual dynamite before now, but this is what it looked like in TV shows. For clearing stumps or unwanted boulders on the property?

How much would it take to blast off the door or blow a hole in a wall? Even if she had the means to ignite it, chances were she’d detonate herself along with the shed.

Maybe there was still a chance someone would come to her rescue. Surely a customer or waiter at the café would have called the police by now.
But the police are corrupt,
she thought with a sinking heart.

On the other hand, someone might have contacted the U.S. Embassy, as she'd begged them to do. But how would they know where to start looking for her?
Damn!
She should have shouted out Sebastian’s name, not Peter’s. At least then they would know where to start their search and who was to blame. And if no one reported the incident at all? How long would it be before Peter realized she was missing? Would he even care?

Why kid yourself?
She thought. She couldn’t count on help reaching her before Sebastian’s men reappeared to finish her off. If she was meant to survive, they surely would have left food and water. At least water.

Mercy wasn’t sure how long she sat there, immobile, a claustrophobic sense of doom closing in around her, dragging down her already deflated spirit. She assumed it must be night by now. Maybe even close to dawn of the next day? She couldn’t tell from the weak light filtering beneath the shed’s door. Could be moonlight. Could be just an overcast day.

Finally, she roused herself to take one more look around. Not for a means of escape but for a weapon. If they didn't leave her death to nature and they came through that door, she wanted to be ready for them. She would arm herself. She'd make sure that killing her wouldn’t be easy.

Her body still hurt all over, but mostly her ribs. Whenever she took a full breath, they protested. But she had recovered some of her strength with the few hours’ sleep. She managed to stand herself up. Thinking she'd experiment with possible weapons, Mercy hefted a fence post. She immediately dropped it on the dirt floor. The wood was far too heavy and cumbersome to swing with any power. One of the sturdy metal shovels might be useful in cracking open a head. But if two or more men came for her…what then?

Her gaze returned to the barbed wire. A tempting idea came to her.
A garrote.
She could imagine the vicious little spikes along the wire biting into the throat of an attacker, giving her extra purchase over a man bigger and stronger than she. There would be blood. Maybe lots of it. That thought momentarily put her off, but there was no getting around the ugliness of violently attacking another human being. She must act decisively or she would die. Simple as that.

Taking care to avoid the vicious looking barbs as she gripped the roll of wire, Mercy searched for and found one end. Cautiously, she unwrapped a four-foot length.

How to cut the heavy-gauge wire? She found no wire cutters among the jumble of equipment. She sat down on the hard-packed earth, the wire spooled out in front of her, and picked out a section equidistant between two barbs.

Gripping the wire firmly with both hands, she began to bend it one way then the other. Back and forth, back and forth, stressing the metal, feeling it slowly weaken at the point between her fingers.

Finally, it snapped in two, leaving a silvery, jagged end. She felt a tiny thrill of satisfaction.

Next task—find a way to protect her hands and provide a secure grip. She concentrated on the mechanics of building her killing tool. Whoever came for her would snuff out her life without remorse. Might even relish the job—raping and torturing her before it was over. She wouldn’t let them. She would fight, and fight, and fight . . .

Mercy wondered if this was how soldiers felt
. Kill or be killed. Survive
.

After a few more minutes of searching for materials with which to create grips for her garrote, she gave up and looked down at the clothing she wore. The white cotton of her blouse was too delicate for the job, but the tight weave and substantial weight of her hand-sewn muslin skirt might work. She ripped off the bottom tier, a nine-inch deep purple ruffle, yards and yards long once she’d pulled out gathering threads.

Working quickly she tied strips of the muslin around the wire ends, anchoring them over one of the barbs to keep her fabric handles from sliding off.

Finished at last, Mercy propped a sack of grass seed on top of an oil barrel. She stood as straight as she was able, ignoring the tenderness in her ribs, and approached her target stealthily. Crossing her arms at the wrists, she created a wide loop in the wire. She dropped it over the imaginary head and yanked her hands apart. The loop snapped closed, wire cutting deep into the burlap. Seed spilled onto the dirt at her feet.

She practiced, repeating her attack at different target heights, from a variety of angles, until her hands stopped shaking and she could judge with accuracy each toss of the loop. No wasted motion. No hesitation to warn her enemy.

At last, her energy depleted, she sat down on a crate, her back pressed against the shed wall at the hinge side of the door. She waited.

36

“Now we go?” Carlos asked when Sebastian stepped out onto the veranda.

Carlos and Fredo had sat all night on the porch of the main house, with too-obvious impatience, while Sebastian struggled with his decision. He knew what they expected him to do with Mercy Davis.

It chilled him, how casually the men around him took orders. To them, physical intimidation, even murder, was a task requiring no more soul searching than mending a fence.

“You’re going nowhere,” Sebastian said, descending the steps into the yard as morning’s first rosy light rimmed the eastern mountains. He approached Hermanito, saddled and waiting for him. “I’ll take care of her myself.”

Carlos shadowed him. “That’s what you have us for, boss.”

“You and Fredo, stay here. Keep an eye on Luis.”

“Why Luis?” Fredo asked, and Carlos shot him a warning elbow jab.

Sebastian strapped the Winchester behind his saddle, packed two canteens of water, ammo, and other supplies into the saddle bags, and mounted up. “I’ll explain when I return. I want a report on everything Luis does. Don’t let him out of your sight.”

He had done a lot of thinking about that tragic night when the truckload of people had been stranded on the roadside. One thing he was absolutely sure of—he, Sebastian, hadn’t ordered that shipment. And few men on his ranch could have arranged to get hold of one of his trucks without his knowing about it. Luis, his manager, was one of those few.

The other question was, why? Why use one of
his
trucks then intentionally abandon it where it was sure to be found by the police? That too he’d figured out. Because a competing smuggler, one involved in the slave trade, rather than weapons or drugs, had decided to put Sebastian Hidalgo out of business and turn suspicion away from his own involvement in human trafficking. It was a strategy that had almost worked. Would have worked if the investigating detective hadn’t been as crooked as a mesquite bush. There actually were many honest cops in Mexico, just not this one.

As Sebastian rode he turned his thoughts away from the slavery syndicate’s plot against him—and the very real possibility that a traitor lurked on his payroll. He concentrated on the terrain. It was a good half-hour on horseback from the hacienda to the work shed where he’d ordered his men to leave Mercy. He could have driven one of the trucks and gotten there faster, but he needed time to think. And build the courage to resolve Mercy Davis’s meddling, once and for all.