Chapter 11 #3
Looking up, Smiley saw that Blink was holding his cell.
He had the phone on speaker, so he and Cookie could hear his conversation, which Smiley appreciated.
He would’ve probably done or said something he’d regret later if Blink had tried to keep any scrap of information from him.
Even if what they heard was bad news, he needed to know.
“Hey, I’m Ryleigh,” a woman said on the other end of the line.
“Where’s Tex? I called his number,” Blink repeated.
“And I answered. It’s not a hard thing to do—at least not for me—you know, reroute phone calls from one number to another.”
“I don’t care if you’re the President of the United States or the Queen of England. I need to talk to Tex. Now,” Blink said in a harsh voice.
Any other time, Smiley would’ve been impressed. Blink wasn’t the kind of man who was terribly assertive. He let others be the bad guy, while he backed them up.
“He’s not available. You know how long it takes to search CCTV cameras in a city the size of Riverton? This isn’t like the TV shows, where it happens in the blink of an eye.”
“We found the trackers the women were wearing.”
“At the EZ On-and-Off Truck Stop east of Riverton. I know.”
“You fucking know? Why weren’t we told?! We’re wasting time and resources looking all over the fucking city, and you know?” Blink asked in an outraged tone.
“The trackers had been disabled, but there was one, a ring, that wasn’t quite destroyed.
It had a very faint signal. It took me a while to track it and by then, the women were long gone.
I was still going to call to tell you the location but…
you’re there now. And I figured you’d rather know where they are, not where they aren’t.
So I’ve been busy trying to follow the truck that was parked where the three of you are now standing,” the woman, Ryleigh, said.
“By scrolling through hours and hours of freaking security video.”
Looking around, Smiley didn’t see any cameras, but that obviously meant nothing. If Ryleigh knew there were three of them, she was obviously watching them right now.
“And?” Blink bit out.
“And it was a Perry Fried Chicken truck. It went east, which is a shame, because once it left the city limits it became much harder to track. But I know it went east on I-8, then headed south on State Route 94 toward Tecate.”
“Where is it now? Can we intercept before it crosses into Mexico?”
“Too late. I hacked into the cameras at the border crossing, and after a short wait in line, it went through without any issues over an hour ago.”
Smiley swore viciously.
“I don’t know for sure, but if Castillo really is headed for Ecuador, it’s unlikely he’d drive all the way there. He’d put his cargo on a ship. Probably in Ensenada.”
Smiley was still pissed. That they’d missed the women and they were no longer in the US.
He also wanted to know where the hell Tex was.
He’d been extremely pissed when he’d learned the task force failed and the women had been taken.
Why hadn’t his ass been in front of his computer, doing all he could to rescue them before they crossed into Mexico?
Or working with the Mexican authorities to intercept this fucking Perry truck and rescue the women?
He had too many questions and no answers.
“Look, I made the best call I could under the circumstances. Yes, I could’ve contacted you sooner about the trackers, but the women were already gone, and I thought my time was better used finding the truck.
I’ll be in touch when I have more intel, like if they’re definitely going to Ensenada, what sort of vessel they’re transferred to, and if I can capture any video clips of the women.
But until then…you’re going to have to trust that I know what I’m doing, and there’s no way I’m going to let this asshole get away with this. ”
The steel in her tone went a long way toward making Smiley feel better. He still wasn’t happy, far from it, but the fact that this Ryleigh person was stressed and pissed off on their behalf actually helped.
“In the meantime, get back to the base. Your commander is already working to get approval to send a team to Ensenada to intercept that truck.”
“What? Why didn’t you start with that?” Cookie barked in disgust.
“I should’ve,” Ryleigh said simply. “But you had questions.”
Blink handed his phone to Cookie and hurried back toward the truck without a word, but Smiley felt rooted to the spot.
This was the last place he knew for sure Bree had been.
For some reason, he didn’t want to leave.
It was ridiculous, she wasn’t there any longer, but his brain was screaming that he needed to stay right there in case she returned.
Again, that wasn’t happening, she was already in Mexico, but he couldn’t help but wish for the impossible.
“Go to the base, Smiley,” Ryleigh ordered, reminding him that she was watching them, even now. “And the last thing anyone needs is you guys getting into an accident. Fiona and Bree are gonna want to see their men, so Blink, you better fucking drive safely.”
“Yes, ma’am,” Blink said, as he knelt on the ground. He’d returned with a reusable bag from the truck, one of the ones Smiley used when he went to the grocery store. He began to gather the women’s clothes and jewelry.
“Hang up, Cookie,” Ryleigh said in a gentler tone. “I’m on this, and I’ll be in touch.”
He did as ordered, and held Blink’s phone out to him. He took it, and held his other hand up toward Cookie. “Here.”
Cookie closed his eyes as he wrapped his fingers around his wife’s jewelry.
“Smiley,” Blink said, getting his attention.
Turning, he saw Blink holding the necklace Bree had been wearing.
This felt…wrong. Permanent, somehow.
Clenching his teeth together so hard it felt as if they’d break, Smiley took the necklace and slipped it into his pocket.
He’d hold on to the necklace until he could give it back to Bree in person.
The tracker might not work anymore, but she loved the piece of jewelry.
And when he found her, and got her home, he’d fix it. Or have Tex fix it.
Smiley was sure that Castillo wasn’t going to kill Bree or the other women. He had plans for them. He and his friends would just have to make sure he didn’t get a chance to finalize those plans.
Castillo had signed his death warrant by taking the women. He was a dead man walking. Smiley might not know how this would ultimately play out, but Castillo’s death was one outcome that was guaran-fucking-teed.
The smell of chicken shit was making Bree nauseous. And the air blowing through the back of the truck they were in, swirling the chicken feathers and dander in the air, along with the stench, was enough to make it hard to breathe.
Not to mention the skimpy piece of cloth they’d each been given to wear wasn’t nearly enough to keep them warm.
The red light on the ceiling above allowed them to see, but it was also seriously messing with Bree’s eyesight.
The shadows seemed to be moving all around them and it was impossible to focus.
She sat in the corner of her cage with her head leaning against the side closest to Fiona, feeling as if she was hovering on the ceiling, watching what was happening from above.
Fiona and Julie were…well, they were amazing.
They had every right to be hysterical, to have shut down completely because they were experiencing the same thing they had years ago.
Who got kidnapped twice in one lifetime?
By someone from the same organization? By people who wanted to use and abuse their bodies simply because they were women?
Fiona and Julie, that’s who.
But they weren’t crying, bemoaning their fate. They were angry. And doing their best to bend the bars of their cages.
What was Bree doing? Sitting there feeling sorry for herself.
She was hungry, and thirsty, and she had to pee earlier in the corner of her cage, which was humiliating and demoralizing.
And to top things off, that pee hadn’t stayed in the damn corner, no—the motion of the truck helped the liquid make its way to where she was sitting.
So now the bottom of her skimpy slip was soaked in her own urine, and she was also sitting in it.
“Bree! Talk to us,” Fiona ordered in a bossy tone Bree hadn’t heard from her before. Not that she’d spent a lot of time with the older woman, but she’d seemed pretty even-keeled and not like one to boss people around.
“About what?” Bree asked a little belligerently. “You want to talk about the weather or something?”
“Don’t,” Julie warned.
“Don’t what?” Bree asked.
“Be a bitch. Trust me, it’ll eat at you later. I know from experience. The first time I was taken, I was the biggest bitch in the world. And I still regret it all these years later.”
“We’ve all forgiven you,” Fiona said in a gentler tone.
“I know. And you’ll never know how much that means to me. But it doesn’t change anything that I did. I’ll never forget how horrible I was. How I begged Cookie to leave you behind in that hut.”
Bree looked over at the woman. “You did?” She hadn’t heard that part of the story.
“I did,” Julie confirmed. “And I complained during every single step we took as we escaped. Whined about the food Cookie brought for us, about how Fiona coped with everything that happened to her by counting backward, and a million other things.”
Bree couldn’t imagine Julie doing any of that. The woman she knew wasn’t cruel.