Chapter 7
Vonn
Fences and barbed wire surround a compound deep in the New Mexico desert.
It’s near seven, and with the day mostly gone, I spy the occasional light from the small cabins on the other side of the fence.
“This is it,” I say.
Makhi’s stare heats the left side of my face. I’m in the driver’s seat while he’s in the passenger seat. Nash is in the back.
“And you know that how?” Makhi doesn’t even try to hide his disbelief.
I tuck the binoculars I brought for this expedition into the glove compartment, unbuckle my seatbelt, and open my door. “Just do. I’m going to scout.”
“You can’t just—”
I climb out and slam the door shut, but even through the metal, I hear Makhi’s curse.
The soft squeak of another door opening has me throwing a scowl over my shoulder before I’ve taken three steps toward the fence. “What are you doing?”
Makhi slams the door shut and rounds the front of the hood. “Coming with you.”
“I told you—”
“You didn’t tell me shit,” he cuts in, eyes sliding past me and toward the fence. “Are we just scouting, or can we grab someone and get them to tell us where Byrdie is?”
Her name sounds strange on his lips.
Guilt almost has me rubbing a hand over my heart. I promised Byrdie I would keep her name secret. That I wouldn’t tell a soul. I broke my promise.
“Having second thoughts?” Nash asks quietly, approaching and stopping on my right.
“Not about this.” I turn around and continue toward the fence.
After studying it for a beat, I grab the top and pull myself over it, dropping lightly on the other side.
I hear Makhi quietly curse, and the fence rattle. I shake my head at his failure to get over the top. He loves nothing more than to mock me for going into the army, but it taught me skills I wouldn’t have otherwise.
After tucking myself behind a rock as footsteps approach, I wait in the late afternoon darkness as, on the other side of the fence, Nash and Makhi fall silent.
The guards were the reason I’m positive this was the right place.
A compound with men carrying rifles and wearing khaki combat-style clothes walking the perimeter of the fence had set off alarms. The one woman we’d seen had been wearing a long blue dress and had her hair braided and wound around her head.
This place had practically screamed cult.
My eyes rest on one of the fence perimeter guards as he continues his stroll past me, visibly bored as he yawns into his hand.
He has a walkie-talkie stuffed in the straps of a black belt, wears khaki combat-style gear, and has a beard that no military would ever accept.
After waiting to make sure no other guards are close by, I keep low as I creep toward him.
He never sees me coming.
One uppercut to the jaw is all it takes to drop him.
I catch him, fling him over my shoulder, and retrace my steps to the part of the fence I climbed over.
Makhi is muttering curses as he struggles to get over the fence when I whisper, “Look out.”
And I fling the man over.
A loud curse aimed squarely at me follows a pained grunt, and I think I know who my guy just landed on. Grinning, I re-climb the fence and find a furious Makhi shoving the man off him with Nash’s help as he gets to his feet.
“You did that on purpose,” Makhi accuses.
I don’t waste time denying it.
“I said, look out.” Bending, I pick the man up, hiding my smirk from Makhi.
“Was grabbing him like that a good idea?” Nash asks me quietly, glancing toward the fence. “They could punish Byrdie if they notice him missing.”
“We have no choice,” I say, picking the man up to carry him back to my truck that we parked several minutes away.
I kept the headlights off so no one in the compound would see us coming.
“We need answers, and charging in there guns blazing when we don’t even know if Byrdie is even here isn’t a good idea. ”
“That and we don’t have guns to blaze,” Makhi says, opening the back door so I can stuff the unconscious man inside.
“We could have gotten them.” I left the army, but I didn’t leave my family behind. They’re always there for me, at the end of a phone, and I’m always there for them. “Let’s get him somewhere quiet and get those answers, shall we?” I ask once we’re all back in the truck.
I feel Nash watching me, though he doesn’t ask how I intend to get those answers.
Makhi doesn’t ask because he likely knows.
Thirty minutes down the road from the compound, in a quiet, abandoned-looking public bathroom, it takes three hard slaps across the man’s face to wake him.
He comes up fighting.
I sit on his chest, wrench his right arm up, and hold his wrist.
Nash and Makhi are behind me, quietly watching.
The man blinks up at me, looks around, and starts to panic.
I meet his gaze steadily. “We’re looking for a woman who was taken from us. Her name is Byrdie.”
Byrdie gave us a fake name because she was on the run. She wouldn’t have needed to use a fake name when she was with the people she ran from. I spot the recognition of that name in the man’s eyes before he tries to hide it.
“I don’t know who that—”
I bend his right index finger until it snaps. Then I wait for him to stop screaming.
Nearly a minute later, with tears streaming down his face and breathing hard, the man stares up at me, having failed at throwing me off him.
I stare back calmly. “You have ten fingers and ten toes. Once I’ve finished with those, I’ll take the pliers from the toolbox in the back of my truck and start pulling teeth. Who took Byrdie and why?”
I keep my voice quiet, and I don’t look away. This is a side of me I never wanted to show Byrdie. I told her the army had taught me to protect, to save and to rescue. I wasn’t lying about that. It also taught me how easy it was to kill.
When the man doesn’t respond, I move to break his middle finger.
“Wait, wait, wait,” he bursts out, panicked. “Who are you?”
“Who I am isn’t important; what you took is. Byrdie. Start talking.”
After a long searching look, he must realize I intend to do what I said I would and licks his lips. “She’s Jeremiah’s wife.”
“His—”
“Not now,” I cut Makhi off, and I don’t take my eyes off the man.
Makhi shuts up.
“His wife,” I say to the man I have pinned. “Keep talking.”
His eyes dart over my shoulder, and he continues, “She ran after she lost their baby.”
More trauma that I should have seen coming. Byrdie said she didn’t have a choice about marrying Jeremiah. Something tells me she didn’t have a choice about the baby either. Having it or maybe even losing it, from the bruises she had on her when she came to work as a maid for Nash.
“How?” I demand.
He lifts his right shoulder in a half-shrug. “People were saying she wasn’t eating enough. God wanted Jeremiah to punish her. She ran after.”
If I didn’t desperately need answers from this jackass, I’d have snapped his neck for that alone.
“How did he punish her?” Nash steps forward to ask before I can warn him to step back. This guy has seen my face. There’s no need to expose all of us.
“More prayer.” The man swallows nervously as he looks up at me.
“What else?”
He doesn’t respond, so I glance at his hand. A pointed reminder of what will happen if he continues not to talk.
He starts talking. “The sweatbox. It’s—”
“I know what it is,” I interrupt, voice hard.
A box with no light. Nothing but isolation and darkness. More torture of a person who's suffered enough.
If I let myself dwell on that now, I will break this man’s neck and we lose all possibility of finding Byrdie.
“Why did he want her back?” I ask instead.
“She’s his wife.” His expression says that’s reason enough for them to drive over six hours across state lines to drag back a woman who ran.
“So you brought her back?” Makhi asks.
The man’s eyes flick over my left shoulder, where his voice came from. I doubt he sees much since his eyes soon return to me.
“Jeremiah tried to get her to repent after the sweatbox. She wouldn’t.”
“How long was she in the sweatbox for?” I ask.
He shrugs. “I wasn’t around for that. I think they put her in it when they brought her back. It wasn’t me,” he adds in a rush.
I’m not sure I believe him, but he’s talking, so I drop it for now.
“Then?” I prompt.
He gulps.
I get ready to prompt him again after his far too long pause.
He must remember he has his fingers, toes, and teeth at stake if he doesn’t talk, when he blurts out, “He shaved her hair.”
Rage flares up inside me at the thought of someone shaving Byrdie. Hair is just hair. It grows back. But it’s another form of torture. It’s taking a piece of someone's identity, dehumanizing them and treating them like an animal.
You shave sheep. You don’t shave people.
“And?” I grate out, sensing more is coming.
His eyes are wide with fear. I smell the acrid stench of his sweat, and it’s fear-laced too. Whatever he tells me now, he’s afraid I’m going to kill him for it.
“And!” I order.
“We drove her out into the desert, and we left her there,” he says in a rush.
“To die.” My voice is colder than I’ve heard it before.
The man’s eyes are full of terror.
He nods.
“Where and when?” I demand, sounding barely human.
If I don’t keep my mind focused on Byrdie and getting her back, I’ll put my hands around his throat, squeeze, and won’t stop until his eyes have glazed over.
“A couple of hours east.”
“Did she have anything? Food? Water? Blanket?”
He doesn’t respond.
“Nothing.” I’m almost shaking with the need to kill this guy.
I wrestle the urge away and stand up, keeping a tight grip on his arm. “Get up. You’re coming with us, and you’re going to show us exactly where you left her.”
Frowning, he scrambles to his feet. “She could have wandered away.”
Makhi’s eyes glitter with rage, and Nash has a grip on his arm, as if to keep Makhi away from the guy. “Then you had better hope she didn’t wander far, or it’ll be your body someone finds.”
The man sits in the backseat beside Makhi as we drive out into the desert.