CHAPTER 2 #2
What else could she do? Slam the trunk shut and stay inside?
Natalie climbed out, the rod in her right hand, ready to strike, a hot breeze catching her hair, the midday heat cool compared to the sweltering environment of the trunk.
Her feet touched gravel, and she found herself standing on trembling legs in the center of an old, abandoned town.
To her right stood what was left of a mission-style church, a satellite dish perched on its bell tower.
To her left sat a small adobe brick shed with no windows.
Rows of adobe brick houses fanned out around them, their walls crumbling into dust, unpaved roads reclaimed by scrub and cactus. Beyond was nothing but open desert.
Her stomach fell, a chill sliding up her spine.
There was no one here to help her, nowhere to run.
She looked to the oldest man, the one with the tattoo, thinking he might be the leader of the bunch, only to find him raking her with his gaze.
They were all staring at her now, their astonishment turned to something much darker.
They spoke to one another, stared at her breasts, made little telltale thrusts with their pelvises, grinning and laughing.
Natalie took an involuntary step backward, the car’s bumper stopping her short.
They came closer, one of them reaching out to feel her hair.
Don’t let them see how afraid you are, girl.
She raised her chin a notch. “M-me llamo Natalie Benoit. Soy periodista. Mi periódico Denver Independent le pagará—”
The blow took her by surprise, knocking her to the ground, the rod flying from her hand.
“?Puta estúpida!” The one with the bloody nose glared down at her, then tossed his gun aside and reached down with bloodstained fingers to unzip his fly.
The man with the skeleton tattoo shouted something at him, gave him a shove, and the two of them began to argue, their words coming too fast for Natalie to understand anything.
Ra-ta-ta-ta-ta-tat!
The sudden burst of automatic gunfire made Natalie jump.
From the direction of the old church came a man’s voice, shouting at the others. Looking startled and almost afraid, her captors quit arguing, and the one with the tattoo reached down and jerked Natalie to her feet.
In the church doorway stood a man with an assault rifle perched on his bicep.
Tall and rangy, he had a jagged scar that ran beneath his jawline on the right, as if someone had tried to slit his throat but had missed, the right side of his mouth drooping.
He looked at her through cold, brown eyes, then tossed a pair of handcuffs to the one with the tattoo, motioning with a jerk of his head toward the adobe shed.
Words poured out of her. “Please let me go! I don’t know who you are or what you want, but my newspaper will pay ransom to get me back alive. Please call them! Mi periódico pagará dinero para mí—mucho dinero.”
But no one was listening to her.
In a heartbeat, her wrists were cuffed, and she was being shoved and dragged across the courtyard toward the shed. One of them opened the door, and the man with the skeleton tattoo shoved her inside.
It was a jail—or they’d turned it into a jail. Three cells that might once have been horse stalls lined the back wall. The stone floor was covered with mouse droppings, spiders clinging to webs along the edges of the low ceiling. Then something ran across the floor in front of her.
A scorpion.
Her empty stomach lurched.
One of the men opened the first cell—a dark, windowless space, no bigger than the walk-in closet in her bedroom at home and hemmed in along the front by thick iron bars.
Hush now! Have a good death, a peaceful death.
“Please don’t put me in there! Please don’t!” Her heart pounded, panic buzzing in her brain. And as they closed the door behind her and left her in the pitch-black, she heard herself scream. “No!”
IT WAS THE sound of her first strangled scream that had woken him. It had been the feral scream of a woman trying to survive. Then a moment later she’d spoken, her voice soft, young, feminine, her accent unmistakably New Orleans.
Natalie Benoit was her name, and she was what the Zetas hated most after honest cops and soldiers—a journalist.
Zach had found himself sitting upright, straining to hear while Zetas whose voices he didn’t recognize—newcomers—joked about raping her, clearly enjoying the rush of having her at their mercy, their laughter colored by lust. Rather than crying or begging for her life, she’d tried to bargain her way out of the situation.
Either she had a lot of guts, or she hadn’t understood a word they’d said.
Given how poorly she spoke Spanish, he was willing to bet it was the latter.
Then one of the bastards had struck her—hard from the sound of it—and two of the men had begun to argue.
“?La putita me rompió la nariz!” The little whore broke my nose!
Zach had found that remarkable. Good for her.
“?Deja tu verga en los pantalones o te corto los cojones! El Jefe la quiere para si mismo—sin violación.” Leave your prick in your pants, or I’ll cut off your balls! The chief wants her for himself—untouched.
The words had hit Zach square in the chest.
If Cárdenas wanted her as his personal sex slave, she was as good as dead.
A burst of AK fire had ended the fight.
I don’t know who you are or what you want, but my newspaper will pay ransom to get me back alive. Please call them! Mi periódico pagará dinero para mí—mucho dinero.
Her naiveté had been painful to hear. Clearly, it hadn’t yet dawned on her that life as she knew it was over.
But the men had long since quit listening to her.
Instead, they’d talked casually about what they hoped Cárdenas would do to her, bile rising into Zach’s throat at each graphic and brutal description.
Cárdenas had a reputation for abusing women.
Zach had heard that he sacrificed women to La Santa Muerte—that macabre cult saint of Narcotraficantes, Holy Death—as a way of giving thanks for his success in the cartel wars.
To think that Zach had been this close to taking him, to ending his reign of terror . . .
Gisella should be in that cell now, not Natalie, whoever she was.
Please don’t put me in there! Please don’t!
She’d become almost hysterical the moment they’d brought her in here, her scream when they’d closed the door and walked away laced with primal terror. And for good reason. This filthy, dark place was probably beyond her worst nightmares.
Now she was in the cell next to his, separated from him by a wall of adobe brick. From the sound of it, she was about to hyperventilate, her breathing shallow and rapid, each exhale a whimper. He thought he could just make out the words of a prayer.
Sorry, angel, God seems to have taken the week off.
Then he realized she wasn’t praying. She was reciting a nursery rhyme.
“To market, to market, to buy . . . to buy a fat pig.” Her voice was unsteady, and she was clearly having trouble remembering the words. “H-home again, home again . . . I want to go home again . . . jiggety-jig.”
The sweetness of it hit Zach hard. He hung his head, the hopelessness of her situation tearing at him.
She might not be here if you’d done your job.
Men like him were supposed to stop bastards like Cárdenas and his Zetas from hurting people. But rather than putting Cárdenas away, Zach was going to have a front-row seat while Cárdenas raped and tortured this girl to death.
Son of a bitch! Damn it!
Zach didn’t realize he was trying to break free of the manacles again until his hands were wet, water from broken blisters mixing with sticky, warm blood.
Who are you fooling, man? You can’t save her. You can’t even save yourself.
No, he couldn’t. But he could reach out to her, let her know she wasn’t alone.
He swallowed, then sucked in as deep a breath as he could, wincing at the pain in his ribs. “Natalie? Can you hear me? My name is . . . Zach.”