Torched: A Thriller (9 page)

Vivian shook her
head. “I can’t. I have to help someone, and my time is short.”

“You are driven.
I can see that,” the young man said, his eyes exploring her figure. She was
covered in a thin sheen of sweat, her cheeks flushed from the run. “I don’t
understand the circumstances of the game you are playing, Vivian, but your odds
are not good, it seems.”

She nodded. “I
understand. But I have to try. I can’t…I can’t give up. Someone is counting on
me.”

A large man with
a dark goatee and a straw cowboy hat stepped forward and muttered a stream of
Spanish at the young leader. Vivian understood a few of the terms, but the word
“ransom” went right over her head.

The young man
silenced his subordinate by simply raising his right hand. “Maybe we can
improve those odds. Can you ride a dirt bike?”

“Probably. I
mean, I can learn.”

“Good. I
promised myself that, if you survived that nasty pack of alligators, I would
not harm you. Now that I see you in person, it’s very clear to me that you need
some help. Come, let me show you how it works.”

She followed him
to the large man’s bike. He grumbled beneath his breath, but he stepped aside
when the young man locked eyes with him. He explained the bike’s controls
before mounting the bike and pulling her onto the seat behind him. Her hands
beneath his, he illustrated the brake and the throttle, then let her try it on
her own.

“It’s a fast
bike. It’ll take you where you need to go, but be careful, Vivian. You survived
those alligators, but there are other monsters out there on the road. Some of
them carry the badge of the
polícia
.
Cuidado
.”

His smile was
kind as he handed her his bandana.

“I don’t
understand,” Vivian said. “The people that brought me here—they said you were
dangerous.”

He shrugged.
“They were telling the truth. I am dangerous. But I made a promise, and you did
your part. You made it across the canal. I’ll chalk it up as my good deed for
the day.”

“What’s your
name?” Vivian said.

“Call me
Solomon. That’s what they call me in the States.”

“You’re from the
U.S.?”

“Earned a degree
in accounting at UNM. Go Lobos.” His grin was disarming, and Vivian returned
it.

“Thanks for the
help, Solomon. It means a lot to me. Should I…should I contact you when I’m
finished with the bike?”

He laughed. “Uh,
no! In fact, it’s probably best that you never find your way back here at all.

“Just pay it
forward. Lord knows somebody out there could use a decent bike like that. Good
luck, Vivian. I hope you make your deadline.”

He climbed
aboard his bike. The brute that had proposed her captivity climbed on behind
another of the soldiers. They laughed at him, and his face flushed, and then
they were gone, racing north in a cloud of dust.

She watched
their departure before firing the bike up and piloting it in a shaky line for a
tenuous half mile.

Within thirty
minutes, she had it up to forty-five miles an hour, and she was flying toward
her destination, the sweat already dry on her brow.

SEVENTEEN

“It appears that
your little vixen received some much-needed help out there on the narcotics
ranch, Mikey. We’ll have to pick up the pace if we’re going to get everything
accomplished.”

“What are you
talking about?” Miguel said. His voice was weak, and he was sweating profusely.
His face was a sallow yellow, his tongue swollen in his parched mouth.

Chaco had
dragged their captive outside, directly beneath the early-afternoon sun. It was
just shy of 100 degrees, and he and Terri sipped ice water from lawn chairs in
the shade of the dilapidated warehouse Terri had selected for their test of
wills.

Terri put her
drink down. She walked over to show Miguel the iPad. “See? That little dot
there is your honeybunch. She’s making good time—covered almost half the distance
since just this morning. At this rate, she’ll be here in a few hours.”

“Terri,” he
panted. His pained eyes darted from hers to her water. “Can I have a drink?
Please? I’m dying here.”

She studied him
for a long moment before collecting her drink. Chaco watched her, the curiosity
plain in his features. It was clear that he, too, had an investment in her
behavior, and Terri felt just a little self-conscious around him.

She went to
Miguel and tilted his head back. She trickled an ounce of water onto his mouth.
Most of it splashed off of his lips and teeth before trickling down his cheeks,
and he cried out in anguish. “Please, Terri!
More
!”

She spat on him,
the saliva sticking in his stubble. She took a long drink of water, then turned
the glass upside down. The stream hit the ground, beaded for a moment and sunk
down into the dust. Miguel’s chest hitched; he turned to Chaco, appealing for
mercy. Chaco just looked away.

Terri plucked
the shears from her pocket. She slipped the blades beneath the hem of Miguel’s
shorts and began to cut. When she had created a seam, she tore the loose ends,
exposing his pale thighs to the sun.

“Terri? Look,
Terri, I have money! I can give it to you. And…and I can do it in a way that
can’t be traced, I swear. It’s just a transfer of the account numbers, and you
can…”

“I don’t want
your blood money, Michael Hill. Now, if you wanted to give it back to the
families who were decimated by your actions, then that’s another story. But
don’t offer it to me, because I don’t want it.”

“I was wondering
when he’d offer you the cash, Terri. They always do,” Chaco added.

Miguel winced as
Terri pulled something from her duffle bag. “Okay. Okay, that’s fine. I can
give it back. Terri, what is that? Is that...?”

She opened the
cap and drizzled a streamer of golden honey down onto his thigh. She squeezed
the little plastic bear and it glooped down onto his calves, pooling atop his
socks.

Terri noticed.
“Oops. Can’t have that. Silly me.” She unlaced his boots and pulled his socks
off. She covered the tops of his feet with honey, then began a slow, backward
walk.

“What are
you…Jesus, Terri! No! What
the fuck
is this? You’re insane, woman! Ah,
damn it, don’t
do this
!”

“Chaco, could
you hit the toggle on the iPad please? This is good stuff. I don’t want to
waste it.”

“Sure enough,”
he said, flipping the switch.

Terri paused for
dramatic effect. “See this little hill here, Mikey? We call it the home colony.
Jeez, they look agitated today!” She dumped honey down the center of an
enormous fire ant pit. A cloud of the creatures burst from the hole, scrambling
over each other in their efforts to free themselves of the viscous liquid.

Terri retraced
her path back to Miguel with still more honey, then paused where he squirmed in
his seat. She unscrewed the cap, depositing the remainder of the bottle’s
contents directly on his crotch.

Miguel unleashed
a guttural moan.

“You get that,
Vivian? Wow, Mikey! Things just got pretty sticky on our end.”

Vivian had
pulled over when she noticed the feed. “What’d you do to him, Terri? What’s
happening over there?”

Chaco held the
iPad ten inches from the pit, making the already sizable ants look like
creatures from some ‘50s sci-fi flick. “Oh, they’re pissed off, Vivian!” he
said. “You’d better shake a leg if you want Miguel to keep his. These little
beauties pack a potent bite.”

“
Christ
!”
Vivian cursed. She’d pulled to the side of a dirt farming road that serviced a
series of pepper fields. “What does this accomplish, Terri? This
is…you’re—you’re sadistic!”

Terri snatched
the iPad. “Well, I had to get creative. I agree that this isn’t quite as
dramatic as wolves. I’ll grant you
that
, but what were our options?”

Silence spun out
between them while Terri processed Vivian’s confused expression. She shook her
head in disgust.

“Do you have
any
idea
what we put in the ground, Vivian? Do you have any clue about the lies
I had to tell my children—about the full-sized casket that we used to hide the
truth of what the authorities found of Sheldon’s remains?”

Vivian
smoldered, connecting the dots. She’d read the newspaper reports, but they had
always been tightlipped on the cause of Sheldon’s death. She had always just
assumed it had been hypothermia. “That’s how he died? Wolves?”

Terri’s face
filled the screen, her nostrils pulsing with anger. “We could have buried him
in a grocery bag,” she said. “A fucking
grocery bag
!”

Miguel’s
simpering cries became agitated. He loosed a genuinely terrified screech as the
first of the insects congregated about his feet. A scout scampered over his
toes, and he shook his leg in revulsion.

Terri wheeled,
showing Vivian the pulsing column of insects now stretching thirty yards
between Miguel and the frenzied pit. Vivian bit her lip to keep from crying
out.

It didn’t
matter. Miguel was crying plenty loud for the both of them.

“Better hurry,
Vivian, or there won’t even be enough for a garbage bag by the time you make it
down here.”

The feed
vanished, abruptly terminating Miguel’s screams, and Vivian tucked the iPad
back into the front of her shorts. She thumbed the ignition, throttled up and
buzzed down the dirt road.

The heat was
insufferable; it just seemed to be getting hotter, but that didn’t matter.
Miguel’s time was short, and she had to move quickly.

She was so
focused on the road in front of her that she didn’t notice the truck that was
coming hard, flanking her from the west.

It made it to
the intersection first and skidded to a stop, blocking her path.

Two men emerged
from the truck, one with a rifle in his hand. They started toward her on foot.

“Shit,” Vivian
muttered. She spun the throttle and the brake, sliding to an awkward stop
before walking the bike around in a half circle and goosing the gas. She surged
forward, engine screaming like hornets on the warpath.

Maybe she could
outrun them.

She heard
gunshots but, though she tensed for impact, she wasn’t hit. She spared a glance
over her shoulder and saw the men clamoring into the back of the truck before
the driver nosed the vehicle down the road.

They were coming
for her.

Vivian put her
head down. Gripping the bike with her knees, biceps flexed, she topped the
speedometer off.

She covered most
of a mile before chancing another glance behind her.

Damn, she was
slipping away! The truck had fallen far behind her.

She throttled
down to a less lethal pace, should she dump the bike, and that’s when she
noticed the engine’s sputtering. It coughed and hiccupped, shedding horsepower
and speed by the second.

“Shit!” she
screamed. She’d run the damned thing out of gas, and the reality of her
predicament left her feeling cold and naked—utterly exposed.

She was
puttering along at ten miles an hour when the pickup pulled even.

An old man with
two golden teeth leered at her from the passenger window. Three faces wore
predatory grins in the back of the truck.

“Leave me
alone!” she screamed. She fumbled in her waistband for the water key, yanked it
free and flailed hard at the grinning man, striking the truck with an impotent
clang.

His grin
vanished, replaced with viper-quick anger. He shouted at her in Spanish before
jabbing at her with the door.

Vivian dodged
and the bike left the road. It dipped into a dusty irrigation ditch and popped
up on the other side. Like a trick rider at a motocross show, she somehow
stayed on the bike. It shot down a long row of tomato plants, the leaves
tearing at her face and arms while she fought to keep control of the
handlebars.

But it was too
late. The front wheel wobbled back and forth, and she hit a plant and lost
control, the bike pitching hard to her left. She tumbled, head over feet,
across the surface of the soft soil, losing the water key and the iPad along
the way.

She came to a
stop on her stomach, tasting dirt and blood in her mouth. There was a searing
pain in her knee. “Owww!” she cried, gathering herself into a sitting position
as the truck skidded to a halt fifty yards in the distance. “
Owwww
!”

It was pathetic,
that tiny cry, and Vivian understood in her heart that things were about to get
very bad out there.

The men piled
out of the truck. She heard doors slamming, turned and saw figures walking
toward her.

That was enough.
Injured or not, she stood and began limping away from them. The iPad, its
screen now a fractured spider web, chirped in the distance.

“Vivian?” Terri
called, her voice distorted through the damaged speaker. “Vivian, what
was
that
? I head something! What was that sound?”

“Fuck,” Vivian
muttered. She scooped it up and hobbled away from the men in the truck as fast
as she was able. “Ow. Ow. Ow.”

But they were
coming, and it was no use. They caught up to her, fanning out to surround her.

“Leave me
alone!” Vivian shouted when the first man clamped a hand on her shoulder. “Let
me go!”

“Vivian! Vivian,
what’s happening! Who’s there?” Terri shouted. “Describe what you’re seeing!”

The man squawked
at the iPad in Spanish. A young man—hardly more than a teen, she thought—darted
forward and plucked it from her filthy hands. “Qué es esto?”

“Listen, you
need to let that woman go!” Terri shouted. “Do you understand me? She has
business elsewhere. We will
pay you
for your troubles if you’ll just…”
Terri’s voice vanished as the man switched the iPad off.

“
Gringa
,”
the driver said. He was tall and lean, with a trim moustache and a
sweat-stained San Diego Padres baseball cap. “Why? Why you in
Mexico
?”

Vivian sighed.
Christ. If it weren’t for bad luck, she wouldn’t have any at all. “That woman
took my boyfriend hostage!” she screamed, hoping they’d find her utterly
pathetic and just let her be. “He’s…he’s in terrible trouble. You have to
understand. Muy malo, por favor! Please! I need
help
!”

The old man
chuckled, and Vivian watched the others as they watched him—waiting for a cue
on how to proceed. While the driver was the physical threat, it was clear the
farmhands took their lead from the old man.

The old man
stretched a wrinkled palm toward her and she flinched as his finger brushed her
temple. He showed her the back of his hand—the crimson swatch of blood there.

Vivian bit her
lip hard, keeping the tears at bay. Her knee was swelling by the second, and
she was bleeding from a dozen abrasions. The sun beat down, pummeling her with
its intensity. Insects thrummed amongst the rows of withered tomato bushes.

Was this place
hell? Wasn’t it just yesterday that she thought it might be paradise?

Her lip quivered
as the driver stepped toward her. He reached out with the rifle and used its
barrel as a prod. “Go,” he said, nudging her toward the truck.

“Por favor!
N-n-necesito…” she began.

“Silencio! Go!”
he snarled, jabbing at her with the gun.

She turned and
limped toward the truck, her mind racing. This was the place, wasn’t it?

Before they’d
had Katie, she and Ryan had gone to the movies a couple of times a month. They
loved thrillers—devouring anything with a suspenseful plot or a little bit of
action. Once, while walking out to the car after another Denzel Washington
flick, she’d remarked to her husband that she’d rather go down swinging than
marching placidly to the slaughter.

“Might as well
give it the old college try, eh sweetie?” Ryan had laughed.

“You bet your
ass, Jake!” she’d replied, parroting a line from the movie.

And here it was.
She shuffled forward, a strange little smile on her lips.