Supernatural: Coyote's Kiss (22 page)

“Hurry,” she hissed.

It sounded like the cops were through the door and into the empty room next door. Dean didn’t need any more incentive. He jumped.

He hit the packed dirt hard but managed to hold onto the shotgun. Xochi kicked open a door on the ground level and Dean followed her back into the building. He could hear heavy-booted footsteps upstairs and men’s voices. That’s when his phone started to vibrate in his pocket.

Xochi was trying several doors and finding them all key locked. Dean took out his phone and looked at the screen. It was Bobby Singer, calling on the line that he only used in case of dire emergency. Dean took the call.

“It’s not a good time, Bobby,” Dean said.

“Are you crazy?” Xochi said, looking back over her shoulder before starting to kick at one of the locked doors. “Put that away!”

“Dean,” Bobby said, his familiar drawl dropping in and out. “What the hell’s going on down there?”

“Look,” Dean said. “I got a major law enforcement situation here...”

“Yeah,” Bobby said. “Well, I just got a call from your brother’s phone. Some Mexican guy telling me to wire twenty-five grand or they’ll kill Sam.”

Xochi kicked the door one last time and it finally gave. On the other side was a single cop.

He looked about eighteen. Bad skin and a sorry, adolescent excuse for a moustache. He was dressed in black fatigues and a black Kevlar vest with “
POLICIA
” in big yellow letters. He looked like a startled cat, AK47 pointed at his dusty boots.

Xochi dove back, away from the door. Dean dropped the phone and reflexively raised the shotgun, drawing a bead between the kid’s eyes.

“Dean?” Bobby’s tiny voice echoed from the phone on the floor near Dean’s boot. “Dean, you there?”

The kid looked absolutely terrified, nearly cross-eyed staring down the barrel of the big gun. This was their chance to get away, but Dean couldn’t help remembering what he’d said to Sam about ganking innocent humans. He just couldn’t pull the trigger.

Six other officers came barreling down the stairs, pouring in behind the kid and screaming at Dean in Spanish. An older guy with a real, grown-up moustache stepped into the room, ripping the shottie out of Dean’s grip and throwing him against the wall.

Xochi let out what was probably a colorful string of Spanish profanity and dropped the Glock before another officer did the same to her, kicking her legs apart and patting her down with obvious enthusiasm. The nervous kid picked up Dean’s phone, ending Bobby’s call and slipping the phone into a zippered plastic bag. The guy with the thick moustache cuffed Dean and led him out of the building.

Out on the sidewalk, three more officers had wrestled Baby Malo to the ground. One of them had a knee pressed into the small of his back and was cuffing him, while another pressed a handgun to his head.

Dean was unceremoniously stuffed into the back of a dirty-white police cruiser. Officer Moustache didn’t bother to cup the back of Dean’s head to stop him from banging it into the door frame. As tense as he was about his own situation, Dean couldn’t think about anything except Sam. Sam, and Claudia. Where was Claudia during all this? Did the people who had Sam also have Claudia? It had clearly been a serious mistake to bring her with them. Maybe a fatal mistake.

The cops put Baby Malo in the back of the cruiser with Dean.

“No, no, wait a second,” Dean began.

They didn’t wait a second. They just slammed the car door and rapped on the roof to tell the driver to take off. As the cruiser pulled out into traffic, Dean twisted back to see Xochi being led out of the building between two big bruisers.

“Where are they taking Xochi?” Dean asked.

“Jail,” Baby Malo said. “Just like us. Only it’ll probably take her, like, twice as long to get there.”

“What?” Dean tried to look back again, but they’d already turned a corner. “What do you mean by that?”

“I mean those guys will want to spend some time with her before they bring her in. That’s how it is with women prisoners.”

If Dean’s hands weren’t cuffed behind his back, he would have put his head in them. How had this happened?

Dean and Baby Malo stood together in a crowded holding cell inside the Nogales police station. There were probably twenty-five men in the ten-by-ten cage made of flimsy chain-link fencing. Several rattling electric fans did their best to circulate the stale air, but it was still unbearably hot and stank of stale sweat and urine. Outside the cage were three hostile, perspiring guards with automatic rifles—in case anyone got the idea that it might not be that hard to pull the chain-link loose from the connecting poles.

There was a single long metal bench along the left side of the cell, but it seemed to be “reserved” for the small group of tattooed bangers who guarded it like dogs and wouldn’t let anyone else anywhere near it. As soon as they had entered, Dean noticed a strange kind of hierarchy in the cramped space. Those higher up on the food chain were allowed to stand closer to the door, where you could almost catch a whiff of fresh air coming from the distant windows. Those at the other end of the spectrum were forced to hang out beside the long cement trough in the floor that stood in for a urinal, slanting down to a stinking hole in the far corner of the floor. Baby Malo was somewhere in the middle and Dean, by association, was allowed to stand beside him. Dean didn’t even want to think about what would have happened to him if he had been alone.

Dean wished there was room enough to pace. He was feeling anxious, frustrated and impotent. Even though he knew it would be a terrible idea, he was itching for someone to pick a fight with him, just to give him something to do with his hands, and somewhere else to take his head. There was no worse feeling in the world than knowing your friends and family were in danger and not being able to do a damn thing about it. He’d just have to count on Bobby to stay on it until Dean could find a way to get himself out of this mess.

“You know,” Dean said to Baby Malo, just to say something, “I could have happily lived the rest of my life without ever experiencing this particular odor.”

“This here is the high-roller suite,” Baby Malo said. “Wait till they process you and move you into the real cells.”

“This is seriously screwed, is what it is,” Dean said.

“You’re telling me?” Baby Malo said. “This is my third time for weapons.”

“It’s not just that,” Dean said. “I think somebody kidnapped my brother.”

“That’s messed up,” Baby Malo said, heavy eyebrows drawn together in a frown. “Your people better pay.”

“That’s why I’ve got to get the hell out of here,” Dean said.

“What’s your brother look like?” Baby Malo asked.

“Big.” Dean indicated Sam’s approximate height in the air, several inches above his own. “Six-four, 190. Brown hair, kinda longish. He was with a young Mexican-American girl with a bright-red streak in her hair.”

“Six-four?” Baby Malo’s frown deepened. “Doesn’t exactly sound like an easy snatch.”

“Look, I don’t know anything here,” Dean said, frustration closing his throat and making his voice tight. “All I know is what I heard.”

“Okay, listen,” Baby Malo said. “Lemme ask around a little. See if anyone has maybe heard something about it.”

Baby Malo moved through the crowd, talking low out of the corner of his mouth. Dean stood alone, clenching and unclenching his fists. Sam and Xochi were both perfectly capable of taking care of themselves, but he couldn’t stop obsessing over where they were or what was happening to them. And what about Claudia? It made him absolutely crazy to be locked up like this.

Baby Malo worked his way back to Dean, shaking his head.

“Nobody knows nothing,” Baby Malo said. “No word of any big
Norteamericano
getting snatched by any of the usual gangs.”

A gruff male voice called out Dean’s name.

“Winchester?”

Two handsome, stone-faced Mexican guys who could have been twins were waiting on the other side of the door to the cage. Their get-up was remarkable similar to the uniforms of the police and armed guards. Black, military-style combat fatigues, bulletproof vests and black ball caps. The only obvious difference was that the now familiar word
POLICIA
on their caps was followed by the word “
FEDERAL
.”

“
Federales
?” Baby Malo whispered. “You in deep now,
guero
.”

“Take care of yourself,” Dean said. “And thanks.”

“You the one who better take care,” Baby Malo replied.

Dean came forward as the guard unlocked the door. There were some comments from the bangers on the bench, but Dean had no idea what any of it meant. The
federales
cuffed Dean again and led him through the sweltering station, out into the street. He was sizing up his captors and the street around them, seriously considering just making a crazy break for it when he spotted Xochi in the back of a big black SUV. Her head was down, hands obviously cuffed behind her back. He was glad to see her, relieved she was okay, but seeing her made him worry even more about Sam and Claudia.

The twins stuck Dean in the back seat with Xochi and then got into the front. The front and back of the SUV were separated by a heavy wire-gauge screen. There were no handles on the inside of the two back doors.

Dean was appalled to see Xochi sporting a shiny new black eye. Her shirt was torn and soaked with blood.

“Damn,” Dean said. “What did they do to you?”

“Don’t worry,” she said. “Most of this isn’t my blood. Those cops picked the wrong little girl to play with.”

Her voice sounded a little slushy, like she had a mouthful of marbles. He was kind of surprised when she leaned into him like she was about to kiss him on the cheek. But she didn’t kiss him, she whispered in his ear.

“These men are not
federales
,” she said, so softly he could barely hear her over the grumbling of the engine. “They are
Nagual
.”

Dean was too stunned to speak. They’d barely been in Mexico for six hours and things were already going to hell at the speed of light. The traffic along the main drag was horrible, snarled up and inching along so slowly that they were being regularly passed by pedestrians. There was some sort of massive accident up ahead and tempers were flaring hot, people hanging out of their cars and shaking their fists. The stench of exhaust made Dean’s eyes burn, even with all the windows rolled up.

“Where are they taking us?” Dean whispered.

“They are probably planning to take us out into the desert and kill us,” she said. “But don’t worry.”

She did something so peculiar then, that for a minute Dean had no idea how to respond. She bent down and pressed her lips to the palm of one of his cuffed hands. He felt the heat of her breath and a brief flicker of her tongue against his skin that sent chills down his sweaty back. He really didn’t need to add vaguely, pointlessly, horny to the stew of anger and fear and worry already churning in his aching belly. It took him several baffled seconds to realize what she had actually done: She’d spat something into his hand. Something small and metal. A key. A handcuff key.

“Will you marry me?” he whispered, twisting his fingers and working the key into the lock on his cuffs.

She smiled. “Get your cuffs off,” she said. “Then hand me the key and follow my lead, okay?”

He did as she requested, keeping an eye on the twins in the front. They both remained silent, facing forward. When she had freed herself from her own cuffs, she leaned into him again.

“Are you ready?” she asked.

“As I’ll ever be,” he replied.

She sat completely still, eyes wide and watching a battered minivan pull up on the driver’s side of their SUV. The minivan inched ahead of them, just enough so that its dented flank blocked the driver’s side door from opening but not the rear door. Dean already knew how fast Xochi was, but it still amazed him to watch her in action. She kicked out the back window, reached through the hole to open the door from the outside and took off down the busy street in the time it took Dean to suck in a single breath.