Missing Lynx (34 page)

I closed my eyes and sighed. “I’ll go.” As soon as the thought whispered through my mind, I swear a hand patted my shoulder.

That night after I sent my tray back through the chute with Ave Maria, I looked her in the eye and asked the Veil to open to me, to let me go with this woman. Quickly, I felt the tug from my center as I was pulled from this plane. I draped myself over my sleeping shelf and left my body.

We pushed the cart down the corridor together, opening the chutes to collect the trays. At the end of the corridor, we put the trays and empty food buckets on a dumbwaiter and sent them down – I assumed to the kitchen. At the bottom of the stairs, we pulled a key tied to a piece of rope from her skirt pocket and let ourselves into a small room. After washing the filth and sweat from her hands and face, we hung her soiled apron on a hook and sank onto the bench. The cold cinderblock wall felt good against her throbbing head. We closed her eyes and rested – bone-weary, drained and numb.

Warm lips brushed her cheek. “Are you okay, Elicia?” Oh, Ave Maria’s name was really Elicia. My exercise guard crouched in front of us with a worried frown.

“Yes, Franco.” She felt happy to see him; he was her balm. Elicia twisted a slender silver wedding band around her finger, then placed her hand in his. We left the building together.

At an interior check point, they signed a timesheet. We moved to the guardhouse at the gate; I could feel the hard-baked yard through the holes in her shoes. Elicia moved her head, and I was able to see the other prison workers. They all looked exhausted and unhealthy. Alpha sat at his handler’s feet, looking keenly at Elicia. His nose went up in the air, sniffing, making Elicia nervous, and we moved to hide behind her husband. Franco responded by wrapping a protective arm around us.

Once the gate opened, and the workers swarmed free, Elicia and Franco walked hand in hand, silently up the road. We moved south, closer to the bells as they chimed out a fresh hour. A rusty blue pickup truck slowed; we clambered onto the back bed and Franco yelled, “Gracias,” to the driver. Franco and Elicia travelled in silence; Elicia from sheer exhaustion. She didn’t feel sick to me; she felt worried. Worn down by anxiety. The truck pulled up to an unpainted cinderblock cottage, with a metal roof, the edges made lacey with rust. The door and windows opened to the warm evening air.

We slogged through the rickety wooden door, Elicia gave an old woman — her mother, I think — a kiss and moved into the only other room, where a child lay in the middle of a rumpled bed.

“Pablo, Mommy and Daddy are home, my love. How was your day today? Were you in much pain?” A tiny black-haired boy, his eyes huge in his little face, felt heated to our touch. Pablo didn’t answer; he crawled into Elicia’s lap and wept. The feel of Pablo in her arms was tragic. My heart told me that this little boy was dying.

Elicia lifted her legs so that she could cradle Pablo with her whole body. Wrapped together, they fell asleep. When she slept, I returned to my body. I learned nothing about where I was except there was a village to the south. Supplies? Discovery more like. I’d need to stay north when I escaped. So Elicia, Franco, and a very sick Pablo…

Thirty-Five

C
ome morning, I postponed my morning meditations until after yoga, so I could do healing work for Grandma Oatmeal and Elicia. I was rewarded for my efforts when Elicia passed me a bar of soap. I still hadn’t been given a shower, and I had to use toilet paper to take care of my monthly needs. I gratefully used the soap to wash the stickiness and black filth off my skin under the trickle of cold water. This made me feel human again. Almost human. While my fever seemed less of a problem, keeping food down was still a big issue. I don’t remember ever being this physically weak. If the opportunity came for escape, I wasn’t sure I could take it.

When Franco saw me cleaner, he smiled. I walked quietly to the exercise yard, not sure whether my next move was a good idea or not. But I decided what the heck. It couldn’t hurt. With a great deal of theater, I struggled to say “
Bebe…es…enfermos, si
?” Baby is sick, yes?

Franco went rigid. “How do you know this?” he demanded in Spanish.

I molded my expression to portray confusion and shrugged my shoulders. Those seemed like the right reactions to express confronted in a language that wasn’t understood. I made the sign of the cross then I mimed and said in English, “I will pray for your baby.”

Franco grabbed me by both arms. I wasn’t sure if he would shake me or hug me; he did neither. He just looked deeply into my eyes, with grief and pain. He released me saying, “Gracias.” I walked out and turned my face to the sunshine.

Alpha stood in the exercise yard today. He stared hard. I plunked down on a little clump of grass and calmly pet Alpha in my mind’s eye. I asked him about his wounds and sent him some Reiki. Alpha sent pictures of Elicia leaving last night, and I tried to convey that I had sent my thoughts with her. Alpha seemed to understand this. I wasn’t sure how much of this I was making up. Was I really communicating with Alpha? I needed confirmation. I spotted an empty plastic water bottle near the guard’s station and asked him to go get it and return to his spot. Alpha got up a moseyed over to the bottle and brought it back. Laying down he rested his paw on the prize. He checked to see if his handler had noticed and gotten upset. The handler was busy smoking a cigarette and thinking far away thoughts.

When Franco came to collect me, I picked up the bottle that Alpha had abandoned when he went on patrol. Franco saw it in my hand but didn’t take it from me.

Up in my cell I washed it thoroughly with soap and water then filled it full and put on the cap. Very carefully, I set the bottle on the window sill where it would get the most sun. On a cloudless day, ultraviolet light can kill bacteria in just six hours. It wouldn’t make the water pristine but my morale was bolstered by this one small proactive achievement.

I paced the floor of my tiny cell, four steps on the diagonal. I contemplated my experiences behind the Veil. The memory that kept poking at me was of Cammy’s birthday party in Miami. I went through all of it, from when she saw me sitting in the orange chair - until we drove away. What was it that I should notice here? And then it sprung at me. Cammy had felt me with her. She knew how I wore my hair on the night she was attacked. And Cammy identified me the instant she saw me. Wow. I had to sit with that for a minute. I hadn’t recognized this for the important piece of information that it was. When I was in Miami, I was so wrapped up in my head and my emotions that I almost missed vital clues.

Let’s extrapolate this out, Lexi.
Cammy was nowhere near me at the time she was kidnapped, but if Cammy saw me, and knew what I said to her, maybe someone else could. Maybe even someone with developed skills could talk to me. Like Miriam Laugherty. Tonight. Yes, tonight I’d try to contact Miriam.
Oh, awesome, Lexi, can you imagine if this works?
Oh, holy hell. I have to stop talking to myself like I’m another person, or I really would go nutso.

That afternoon, I went behind the Veil and connected with Elicia. I wanted to watch the details of how they left the prison more carefully. I needed to know what was around once she walked out of the gates.

“Elicia,” Franco said as they walked down the road. “Today, I was given a promotion.”

“You were, Franco? That’s wonderful. What will this mean?”

“A little more money, not much more, two hundred lempiras a week. We can maybe pay for the doctor to see Pablo again.”

“And what will he say differently this time, that he hasn’t said each time before? There is nothing he can do. Pablo must have an operation in the city. We will never be able to afford this. All we can do is pray.” She wore her grief and resignation like a second skin.

“I had something unusual happen today.” Franco continued. He seemed to weigh his words carefully.

“Besides the promotion?” Elicia braced herself for bad news.

“Besides the promotion, yes. I went in the cell to take the American woman out to the exercise yard. She is growing thinner already. Can you put more food onto her tray?” Franco paused momentarily to look down at Elicia.

Elicia read deep concern in his black eyes. We pulled her eyebrows together. “I will. Did she ask you for more food?”

We walked on. “She doesn’t speak Spanish. But today she took my arm, and where she touched me, my skin became hot and sparkly. There is something strange about her. Every time I open her cell, it feels like I’m in church. It’s like…” Franco gestured his inability to find the right words.

“I know.” Elicia nodded. “It’s prayerful. This is what I feel when I pass the tray in and out to her. Sometimes I just stand there for a minute, and I gather strength from her. I try to show her that I am grateful — today I passed her some soap.”

“Yes, she smelled much better when I went in. Are they not going to let her shower or have clean clothes?”

“She’s scheduled for the shower at the end of the week. She gets a shower once a month, like the other women. They will give her fresh sheets and wash her clothes then. I just thought how miserable she must feel. I wanted to give her something to help. But you said something odd happened?” We reached out for Franco’s hand and stopped walking so he would turn and look at us.

“We were at the door of the exercise yard when she took my arm, and looked at me as if she was trying to tell me something. She came up with a few words that I could understand. She knows our baby is sick. She is praying for him.” Franco’s eyes were wide and unblinking.

Elicia read this as awe. “How could she possibly know this?” she asked.

“I am curious, too. Have you spoken to her? You could lose your job, Elicia.”

“No, no I haven’t. How could I with no English? When she first came, she held up the cross on her necklace, and she said ‘Catholic.’ The next day, when I opened the chute to give her her tray, the air filled with love and healing. I wanted to give her something in return, so I gave her the rosary that I kept in my pocket. That’s it. Nothing else.”

“She’s a saint,” announced Franco, and they walked along in silence for some time. “No one knows her name. She came in from a different burro not the same man as usual. No one has touched her – she is not beaten like the others. They keep no file on her. I tried to find out why she was brought here. There is no record of her, anywhere. No family contacts are documented.”

“No information on how she ended up here in Honduras?” Elicia asked.

“Nothing. She might be connected with a drug family, or daughter to a wealthy businessman. I think she’s been kidnapped. That’s what I think.”

“Shhh, Franco! Don’t say that out loud. If it’s true, you’ll get us killed.”

“No one’s here to hear us, Elicia. I won’t say anything to anyone else. What do you think about this? Why do you think she’s here with no papers?”

“I think she’s here for the same reason you do. We need to stop talking about it. Tell me about your job. What will you be doing now?”

“I’ll start training tomorrow to drive the delivery trucks to bring supplies up to the prison.”

“I won’t see you any more during the day?”

“No.” And then they were silent.

A passing car picked us up and drove us to the cottage. The old woman held Pablo in her lap, rocking his damp, sleeping body back and forth. We gathered him in Elicia’s arms and carried the little boy back to the bed, where we collapsed and fell asleep.

Wow. Okay. I was in Honduras? Well, that made sense. This was where Maria and Julio would have their connections and influence. When I escaped, I would have to make my way toward the airport. Even if I didn’t know Honduran geography, I figured heading north would get me back to the US. Loved my optimism there.

And what else? Someone besides Franco would be taking me to the exercise yard. Franco would be driving a supply truck. Hmm, that was interesting. They thought that I had been kidnapped. If they helped me, they wouldn’t be helping a prisoner escape; they’d be helping a victim escape. And their baby was ill. He needed help — an operation. I sighed. Poor little guy. They felt the Reiki. Wasn’t that cool? I hoped it was helping. But me a saint? I laughed out loud for this first time since Maria’s attack.

I took a short nap to recover myself. It was much easier to walk behind the Veil with people who were not being physically abused, and drugged. It wasn’t taking me days of sleep to recover myself, like it has before, just hours.

I still wanted to travel to Miriam Laugherty and see if she could communicate with me. Another first. My main concern was that I would walk behind the Veil to find Miriam, and she would be out of her body doing police work. What would that do?

Turns out it didn’t matter. I was wholly unsuccessful. I found Miriam, but she had a strong field of protection around her - no one was getting in. But of course she’d done that. It was the first lesson I learned from Miriam - always protect yourself from other people’s energies.

I laid perfectly still — downcast and exhausted from trying to work with Miriam. I thought I’d landed on such an easy solution, too. I let my fingers trace the shadows that the prison bars cast across my stomach.

“Hi Miriam, it’s me, Lexi. Hey, I need a big favor. Could you tell Striker Rheas, over at Iniquus, that I’m being held captive in a Honduran prison, and I need a little help please?” Yeah, right.

I watched a spider building her web in the corner…
Spyder? What would you do if you were me? Are you alive? Do you know why I’m here?

Thirty-Six

G
athering love and light for my new exercise guard was a complete and total waste of my time. The new guy was drunk; the mean kind of drunk that liked to show off power. Today, he caught me by the arm and slammed me into the wall because I wasn’t moving fast enough for him. I guessed in this man’s life, the only dominion he had was over us prisoners, so he made the most of it – screaming cuss words at me and spitting on me, as if I weren’t disgusting enough already.