Break Me Open (25 page)

"I found it."

Spoke stood a few parking lanes away, waving something above him. I spiked harder even as I ran to him and saw the phone. It looked like wreckage.

This whole scene was a disaster. We'd been no more than a block behind all the way here, but the shopping center was a tactical nightmare. We had to stop to let fat kids and brainless parents on cellphones through, and then all of a sudden the chopper was gone. The GPS signal covered too many possibilities in this area. I thought they'd gone into the mall at first and I'd sent Trig in while we did a couple drive-throughs. Then the signal had died completely. It took me a couple more minutes before I spotted the small road leading behind the mall.

Even as we snaked through, I knew this thing had gone fubar. Whoever had chosen this setup had more than a couple of nuts rattling around in their skull. Sure enough, the bike was still there, but now we were left with nothing but debris.

Spoke handed me the phone. The screen was just a few shards of jagged glass, and the frame itself sat crumpled. Fine marks scratched the edge, and my blood chilled as I made it out as the work of a blade.

Trig and Spoke waited silent before me, like pets who knew their master was feeling vicious. I had to get to Katie. Someone malicious was in play and Katie's security assessment didn't hold true anymore. They wouldn't hurt her, but they would use her and get rid of her. The most basic protocol for illegal operations. No tolerance for risk.

I stood where the car must have been. The smell of diesel lingered. Diesel and the faint smell of tobacco. With Katie's phone in one hand and her belt in another, I shut my eyes and imagined what she must have seen standing here. The whiff of her scent caught me. It was almost like she was with me.

My eyes snapped open. I knew what I would have to do. If I spiked hard and we were lucky, I could track her by smell. We weren't more than a few minutes behind.

But once I started spiking this hard, there was no coming back. To keep off the withdrawals I'd have to keep spiking until it was all over. Once I stopped - it might be my end altogether.

That idea didn't bother me one bit. The only thing that made me hesitate was whether it would be enough.

I searched my mind, the darkness, the black face of the back of the mall so far from the jostle of life on its other end. I saw no other options.

I stalked back to the car and got into the driver seat. Spoke and Trig trailed behind and climbed into the back.

"What's up?" Spoke asked.

I ignored him, clenched the wheel and spiked long and deep. A pulse shot through my system. My vision clarified and the night became jagged edges. A riot of noise erupted on my eardrums, as if I were walking through the mall itself. The wheel under my palms grew pebbled and textured and I could taste the desperation on my lips.

I rolled down the windows and my nose bloomed with a dozen different odors. My brain sifted down quickly to the one I cared about, a whiff of flowers and sweat and her pheromones. I set the car in motion and prowled forward.

"I'm going to need you to be ready," I said. "I'm spiking hard enough to come loose."

Trig tugged his gun from his hips, checked the clip. I could hear all the springs lock into place as he hammered it back home. Spoke grabbed his own.

"We're ready, man. Do you know where we're going?"

"We're going to find my girl."

They set me down in a chair at the dinner table in the corner room of the safe house. The wooden walls were homey and even had broad windows. The room glowed under a small chandelier. I guess that was reason to be a bit optimistic, seeing as I wasn't blindfolded in some concrete basement. But I guess that was because we were out on a ranch in the middle of nowhere and no one could help me anyway. Also, the fact they hadn't hid any of this and had even let me read the sign of the ranch on the way in didn’t spell good things for my long term health.

All that was something to worry over later. My problem now was the spiky haired, yellow-bandana wearing guy sitting across from me and leaning in with a crazy look on his face.

Gyro, they called him, apparently cause no one could manage to knock him down. Well, looking at him now, it looked like his sanity had keeled over long ago

"You know, I been wanting to talk to you for a long time, chica,” he said.

"I'm… here," I said. I vaguely recalled Ghost’s advice to not share anything in an interrogation. Wow, was he right about how hard that actually was.

"Yeah you damn well are, uh? You a fine looking piece of work. None of my guys told me bout that."

"Gyro." The cartel boss stood leaning next to the closed door, looking rather bored. "Rapido.”

That was the real power in the room. The safehouse must be his. A half dozen guys had saluted him as we walked through the house. They wore a different sort of uniform - dark shirts and jeans, with angry looking guns slung on their chest. All cartel men. The blank looks in their gazes chilled me to the bone. They didn't need to scowl and make faces. These were not boys playing tough. They were men who had killed and would do so again as easy as scratching an itch.

"So listen, I know you come to cause trouble for me," Gyro said. "For us. But you have a chance to redeem yourself you know? You can help us out, and maybe, maybe we forget what you try to do here. Maybe we find a place for you to fit in with us."

His tongue flicked across his lips and I couldn't stop the shudder. Better to be in a hole in the ground than be this guy's sex pet.

"I came here to make peace," I said. "That's all I tried to do."

"Yes, and you bring a tracker on you so that the peace will find us, yes?"

We hadn't worked too much on the cover story, and the more I looked at this guy's grinning face, the more unhinged I felt. He wasn't smart, but he didn't get to the top by being gullible.

"That was just for safety," I said.

"Well, ok good," he lilted his head. "You are safe now. And now you can create peace as well. All is good, huh?"

"What do you want?"

"What do I want?" He shook his head, and looked back at his cartel handler. "She wants to know what I want." His eyes returned to me. "What I want is the truth little girl. I want the truth of what you saw."

He pored over my eyes, watching for any flinch. I didn't see any reason to lie. He was after me because he already knew what I saw. "I saw a man killed."

"And who killed this man."

"Ghost."

It still felt like a betrayal. Maybe I shouldn't have shared that. But what difference did it make if Ghost didn't show up? I tried to remember more from his little counter-interrogation teaching attempt, but that led to remembering his warmth, which just made me feel so completely alone now.

"And what happened to this murdered man? Where is he buried?"

"I don't know."

Gyro rolled his eyes. "Now is not the time to start lying, chica."

"I'm not. I didn't see. The Wraiths saw me and took me back to their club as a hostage. The guy took the body somewhere else."

Gyro leaned in. "A hostage? This is interesting. They forced you to join them."

"No- " I started.
Why did this guy have to know everything?
"Yeah, I guess they did."

"And what did they make you do for them?" His mouth hung open like a hungry wolf’s.

"Gyro, que pasa?" Cartel guy said saving me, but then his attention turned on me. "You will tell all this to the federales when we take you back, yes?"

I nodded. I would too. If I somehow found a way away from the cartel, I should probably go take FBI protection after. Everyone would be after me. The enormity of the situation hit me. One way or another, my life in Gilsner was over. And Ghost. Even if Ghost escaped, he'd be a fugitive. No I'd have to find some way to leave him out of my testimony.

The only thing keeping the panic down was the anger rising. How had he let me get into this situation? Ok, I had volunteered. Ok, things go wrong with plans. But this bad?

The cartel guy came over and leaned in on his fists. He was calm and had a nice cologne on, but he was more threatening than all the acting Gyro could put up. "Do not think to escape to the FBI," he said. "If anything happens out of plan, your family will be lost to you."

Finally, having dead parents was working to my favor. But then I thought of Sandy and that brief warmth passed. They could find out about her easy enough.

"Ok," I said. I had nowhere to go.

"Good. Now let's practice what you will tell them."

I looked at the faces before me, one crazy, one deadly.
Ghost
, I thought,
don't make them do this.

Don’t let them hurt me. Don’t let me hurt you.

I lost Katie's scent amidst the fumes of cattle as we came off the highway. No matter. The ranch house was the only building for miles around and there were no other tail -lights on the horizon.

Spoke dropped me and Trig off by the road with a radio. He parked and held his in silence, waiting for my command. A little gate had been erected on the driveway leading up to the house, and I spotted two men with thick bodies and erect forms guarding it. A bit excessive for a simple organic ranch, as the sign announced.

A chain-link fence surrounded the entire ranch. We climbed over it and dropped to the other side. Trig crawled behind me, a silencer screwed on to his pistol. He oozed nervousness. The jaggedness of his motions pulsed the air. He might be good at shooting but that was the last thing we wanted here.

I checked my own grip on the radio and found it wavering slightly. I was already as spiked as I could be. The tremor promised that a crash wasn't far off. None of the numbers were on my side, not even time.

Another chain-link fence had been erected around the ranch house itself. There were motion trigger lights rigged up all along the exterior, ready to shine on the swath of land between that second fence and the walls of the house. That was no man's land. Wide open and no cover.

I crouched along the fence and did a perimeter sweep. There I saw the first weakness. The rooms all had tall windows, some of which were even open. Apparently this place actually was a ranch. If it was an undercover operation, it couldn't be fortified too obviously. I saw tall, rough men sitting in some of the rooms. They had tan skin and Hispanic features but they were no farmhands.

The pieces fit together instantly. I was looking at Cartel foot soldiers. That's who was protecting Gyro.

It was a damn depressing revelation. Luckily, the next window gave me a positive compensation. I saw Gyro's crazy frame hunched over a table and a serious looking man talking next to him. This was the real threat. The cartel leader. They were both addressing one of the chairs. I squinted a bit harder and saw the blonde hair spilling over the top.

Katie.

"That room has everything we need," I said.

"What?" Trig pressed his face up against the metal mesh. "I can't see shit."

"Just trust me on that. We need to get into that room."

"Ok."