Chapter Indigo #3
“Just starting to come around,” Roth said.
He had a bathroom towel pressed against his head wound.
“He’s probably got a mild concussion. I’d like to see the footage of the strike to decide how bad it could be.
” He knew that calling an ambulance or any local authorities was not something they wanted to do unless they had no other choice.
More than likely, Moreno would be fine as he was already coming to.
“Footage?” Christy echoed.
“Lambchop and Lah-lee should be on scene in a matter of minutes,” Yvette broadcast.
“MP, can you take her to your room?” Garcia called over to her. “We need to start asking questions, which means we need to separate them.”
“Yes,” Briana said, standing up. “Christy, I need you to come with me.”
“I’m not leaving Raph,” she said.
“Yes, you are,” Briana said. “But don’t worry; my colleague will look after him.
We’ll get the two of you reunited as soon as we can.
” She pulled on Christy’s arm, prompting her to stand.
When the young woman didn’t, Briana said, “Please. I don’t want to have to escort you at gunpoint.
We’re the same as your dad, served in similar units.
As I said, Christy, we’re the good guys and we need your help.
There’s a lot of innocent people in danger right now because of Ruiz, people we can help. ”
A disturbed expression passed over Christy’s face. She nodded and stood.
“Thank you,” Briana said.
She led the young woman from the room, her hand holding Christy’s arm.
Briana was vigilant for any signs she’d run or try to alert someone to the fact that she really wasn’t going voluntarily.
But she didn’t. Briana got a cold bottle of water from the mini-fridge and handed it to Christy after she was seated at the dining table.
Then Briana got one for herself and sat across from her.
“Our team has been surveilling Ruiz for the last two days. We saw your dinner with him last night and had one of our people close enough to hear most of your dinner conversation too. Did you know Ruiz is on Interpol’s Red List?”
“If that means there are several countries he’s wanted in, yes,” Christy answered. “Raphael is trying to locate his niece. She disappeared a few weeks ago, and he believes Ruiz trafficked her. That’s why I agreed to help. She’s only fifteen years old.”
Briana’s heart thumped in her chest. “Stopping people like Ruiz is what we do. We’re also pretty good at getting info out of people. If he knows where she is, we’ll make him tell us.”
“I hope you’re right,” Christy said.
“Where’s your dad?” Briana asked.
Christy looked confused by the question. “He’s following other leads.”
“Here in Cancun?” Briana asked.
Christy looked away. “I’m not sure where. He stopped answering my calls and texts a few days ago.” She didn’t have to say out loud how worried about him she was. The expression on her face said it for her.
Briana switched her comms to transmit and relayed the conversation to everyone on the team. She even sent the most recent picture of Walter Dyer that Christy had on her phone. His one notable feature was a diagonal scar across his forehead.
Lambchop and Laura Lee arrived moments after Briana and Christy had gone. “Where do you need us, Mac?”
“We need to split up and interview these three,” he said, motioning to Ruiz and the two women.
“And him,” Lambchop said, nodding to Moreno.
“We’re one room short on this side of the resort,” Mac said. “MP already took Christy to her room.”
“Then we do those three individually and hold them together before and after,” Lambchop said. “Who do you want to talk to first?”
“Lady number one,” Mac said, pointing to the woman in the red bra and panties. He grabbed the robe from the closet and draped it over her shoulders after Lambchop pulled her to her feet. “We’ll interrogate in my room.”
“Don’t tell them anything,” Ruiz warned.
“Where’s that tape?” Garcia asked.
Mac tossed it to him, and he taped Ruiz’s mouth.
Then he put a piece over the other woman’s mouth too.
Mac thrust his weapon into the woman’s stomach, under the robe, as he and Lambchop escorted her to his room next door.
Once inside, Mac dragged one of the dining chairs over and placed it in front of the bed.
They made the woman sit in the chair and then the two men sat in front of her.
“You aren’t who we want,” Mac said. “You can walk out of here if you answer our questions.”
She shook her head. “He’ll kill me.”
“Ruiz? Or someone else?”
“Ruiz.”
“Does he know about the camera in your bag?” Mac asked.
Even Yvette could see she looked panicked at that question. No, he didn’t know.
“Who are you recording him for?” Mac pressed. “We can protect you. Get you out of whatever you're in.”
She shook her head. “There’s no getting out.”
“You’d be surprised what we can get people out of,” Lambchop said. “What’s your name?”
“Chyna,” she said.
“Let’s have the name your mother gave you,” Lambchop said gently. “You need to trust someone. It might as well be us.”
She thought it over for several long moments. “Mariella,” she finally said.
“Mariella, do you want out?” Lambchop asked.
She nodded.
“I want you to believe we can get you out. Do they have anyone they’re threatening to hurt if you don’t do what they say?” Lambchop asked.
“Not anymore. My mother died. They were threatening her life if I didn’t cooperate, but now, I have nowhere to go, no way to get there, and they’ll kill me if I leave and they find me.”
“That’s not going to happen. But we need your help,” Mac said.
“You’ll help me if I help you,” she said suspiciously.
“Yes. There’s a lot of little towns in America with no cartels, no gangs. We can set you up in one legally. You’ll be safe,” Lambchop said. “But yes, we need your help.”
“Ruiz has a lot of powerful contacts, provides people to just about anyone who wants them, buys them from anyone supplying them. Everyone is making a lot of money off his operation,” she said. “He ships them all over the world. I’ve seen them. Men, women, children. And I’ve seen their graves.”
Mac nodded. He had too. “Who sent you here?”
“Ruiz always requests us when he’s in town.”
“Please,” Mac said. “We want to stop Ruiz.”
She went on to tell them everything, what cartel owned her and the other woman who she knew as Charity, but she knew that was no more her real name than Chyna was hers.
She told them what she knew about Ruiz’s operation and the locations of several of his stash houses in the Cancun area, including a boat at the marina he used to smuggle people.
She’d been on it once, six months earlier when Ruiz had sent for her and Charity.
There were six young girls, all under twelve years old, on the boat being held.
Ruiz told her he couldn’t touch them as he’d like as their buyers were paying good money for virgins.
He’d been exceptionally deviant that night, pent up frustration for not being able to rape the little girls.
Yvette had heard sick shit while in Ops before, and this was right up there with the worst of it. “Do you know any of his regular channels for trafficking people?”
“I don’t know exactly where they go after they leave Cancun, and I know he ships them through other locations. Not all of them come through here.”
“How long do his victims remain in his hands before they are sold?” Mac asked.
“It varies,” she answered.
“If a girl was taken, say two weeks ago in Colombia by him, could she possibly be here in Cancun still, waiting to be shipped?” Mac asked.
She frowned. “Unlikely, unless she was a special order, but generally, someone from Colombia wouldn’t be any more special than a girl from Mexico.”
Briana frowned upon hearing that through comms. It sounded doubtful that Raphael Moreno’s niece would be rescued before she was sold and delivered. Her heart ached for that poor girl and what had probably already happened to her.
Yvette documented everything Mariella told them. Then, Mac and Lambchop returned her to Ruiz’s room and left her hands bound and gagged her as well. Mac and Crash brought Moreno to Mac’s room next. They sat him in the same chair.
“We’ve already gotten Christy Dyer’s statement. If yours matches, you’ll be reunited with her. If not, you’re both in trouble,” Mac said.
Moreno spilled it all, giving more details, but mirroring what Christy had told Briana. His niece’s name was Bella Sanguino. Her father was also a government official in Bogota. Moreno had first enlisted Christy’s father, who was an old friend, for help.
As far as Moreno knew, Walt Dyer was still in Colombia chasing down leads.
Dyer already identified a high-level cartel thug who’d been the one to grab her, to pressure her father to call off the authorities who were getting too close to the cartel’s operations, which he did.
Not intending to release her, Bella had already been sold to Ruiz the day after he’d snatched her.
It was then that Moreno approached Christy for help as well, after Walt Dyer had tracked down Ruiz to this resort.
“So, Dyer believed him that he’d sold Bella to Ruiz?” Mac asked.
“By that point in the interrogation, the man was no longer lying. Yes, Dyer believed him.”
“Does Walter Dyer know you’re here with his daughter?” Mac asked.
“Yes, of course.”
Mac showed him a picture of the American man who’d visited Ruiz earlier that day. “Is this Walter Dyer?”
“No. I have no idea who that man is,” Moreno said.
“Someone who visited Ruiz by the pool today, and by the sounds of it, Ruiz owes him a lot of money that he’s promised he’ll pay tomorrow.”
“That’s why he tried to grab Christy tonight, I’d guess. A pretty American girl will bring a big payday with the right people.”
“And that’s why you brought her, isn’t it?” Yvette said accusingly.
“Yeah, I had to have something to offer him to get a meeting with him.”
Yvette’s gut tightened. She wondered if Christy knew she was being used by Moreno as bait. “Well, he took the bait, literally, she nearly got raped and you damn-near got killed in the process.”
“I would never have put her in that kind of danger,” Moreno said. “Ruiz must be under a lot of financial pressure. He doesn’t have a reputation for killing his suppliers and shirking what he owes. He wouldn’t have lived this long if he did.”
“I’m so glad to hear that he’s normally honorable,” Yvette said.