Torched: A Thriller (6 page)

THIRTEEN

They rose at
dawn.

After a quick
breakfast of coffee, fruit and buttered tortillas, they were moving through the
streets of Cerritos. The last of Benny Hines’s contacts was expecting them.

The body shop
stood at the end of a long alley; the lane serviced the backs of a series of
dilapidated pastel apartment buildings. A few children sat on fruit crates,
studying them with hungry eyes. Chaco handed out coins, earning guarded grins
in exchange.

He whistled
their arrival at the chain-link fence and a half dozen dogs of various shapes
and sizes—all of them mutts—barked up a frenzy, skittering back and forth on
the other side.

After a long
minute, a large man with a prodigious Buddha belly and a panama hat sauntered
out of a little single-wide trailer. He took his time crossing the
garbage-strewn lot.

“Yeah?” he
grunted.

Chaco spoke to
him briefly in Spanish. The man turned to Terri. A thick pink scar lanced down
across his eye (clearly a glass prosthetic) and onto his stubbled cheek.

“Ms. James?”

“Yes, sir. Ben
Hines sent me.”

Buddha belly
grinned. “Ben Hines is good man. Come.”

He shouted at
the dogs and they scampered away from the gate, which he swung open before
locking it behind them. They followed him inside. Two young men sat at a table,
playing cards and drinking coffee. The news was on in the corner of the room.
Neither of them looked up from their game.

“La oficina,” he
said, pointing to a dim room in back.

Chaco led the
way, holding Terri’s hand. Buddha belly (Benny had provided only an address and
a nickname; he called him “Tuna,” and nothing else) sat behind the desk. He opened
a drawer and threw a pair of keys up on the grease-stained blotter.

“Gracias, Senor
Atún. Muchas gracias,” Chaco said.

They bantered in
Spanish for a time, and then Chaco turned to Terri. “He wants $600—U.S.
dollars. That sound right?”

Terri shook her
head. “Benny’s quote was three. What do you think?”

The silence was
interrupted by the sound of a hammer being cocked on a pistol. Chaco and Terri
turned. There, in the doorway, arms crossed over their chests, stood the young
men. They watched the negotiations with boredom in their eyes—seemingly pissed
to have their card game interrupted.

Chaco turned to
Terri, a plea in his eyes. She saw, horrified, that his hand was inching toward
his waistband.

“$600 is fine,
Mr. Tuna,” she blurted. “Thank you for your help.”

His grin
widened, and Chaco’s shoulders relaxed as Terri handed over six crisp bills.
Buddha belly made them disappear and, just as quickly, the two young men were
no longer in the doorway.

“Come. This
way,” Buddha belly said, and then they were back outside. He led them to an
impound yard. There were dozens of cars there, the majority with their innards
strewn about in haphazard piles.

“Works good,”
Buddha belly said, stopping at maroon Chevy Beretta. He kicked a bald tire and
Terri winced. She sincerely doubted the engine would turn over. It was dented
halfway to hell and had a sagging bumper held in place with bungee cords. A
constellation of cracks clouded the passenger side of the windshield. She could
only speculate on how that perfect little indentation had happened, but every
scenario she could conjure included a human body flying over the car’s hood.

She looked at
Chaco.

He took the keys
from Buddha belly. “Gracias, amigo.”

“De nada. Three
days, friend. Three days,
sí
?”

“Yes. Three days,”
Chaco said. He pulled the passenger door open and Terri slid inside. It smelled
like dust and cigarettes.

Chaco tipped
Buddha belly a final salute before climbing behind the wheel and turning the
key. The Beretta coughed a few times before belching a cloud of blue smoke.
Chaco goosed the gas pedal and cleared the muffler before inching it toward the
front gate, where the two young men now waited to secure it behind them.

“Jesus, Benny,”
Chaco muttered of their mutual acquaintance, “how the hell do you know
these
people?”

He tried the
blinkers and the brakes; he tested the acceleration.

“What do you
think?” Terri said.

He shrugged.
“What are our options? It’ll have to do.” He tapped his watch. “We have three
days, and these guys don’t play. This piece of shit isn’t worth a hundred
bucks, but they’ll kill us if we don’t get it back here in that time. Come on.
Let’s go make our pick-up.”

Terri nodded,
suddenly nauseous as her body filled with adrenaline.

It was time.

They cleared
Cerritos quickly before nosing the Beretta onto a dusty country road, the iPad
in her lap guiding them ever closer to their destination.

FOURTEEN

Vivian felt so
much better to have unburdened herself. Rather than hurry the day along, she
and Miguel were content to relax in bed, sipping their coffee. She read from
her Coelho novel while he paged through a catalog of kitchen equipment.

“Thank you,” he
finally said, placing the catalog on the nightstand. He leaned over and hit her
with that smile that melted her a little bit more each time.

“For what?”

“For being
honest with me. It couldn’t have been easy, and I’m glad to have your trust,
Vivian. It means a lot to me.”

She shifted her
weight, draping her thigh over his. “Oh, yeah? Care to show your gratitude
another way?”

His hands played
over her skin, and he kissed her gently. “Shower?”

“Shower.”

They retreated
to the bathroom, perfectly oblivious to the figures converging on the little
bungalow from the depths of the Mexican jungle.

***

“Be confident,
Terri. You’ve got to mean it if you’re going to do it. If you second guess
yourself, you’re done.”

She studied the
kit in her hand. “Okay, okay, okay. I can do this. I can do this.”

A sudden smile
brightened her features. “Hey, can I ask you something?”

“Sure,” he
replied.

“
Chaco
?
What’s that all about?”

“Short for
Chacon. My grandfather’s name. What—you thought I was named after some ice
cream treat back in the States?”

Terri cupped a
hand to her mouth to stifle the laughter. Chaco’s grin was bright for a moment,
but it vanished when the bungalow’s front door snapped open and his target
started toward them.

“Go, Terri!” he
whispered. “Don’t you dare come back outside when you’re finished. Understand?
Let me come to you.”

“Okay. Good
luck, Chaco,” she replied.

He nodded and
was off, a blur in the brush, his gun at his side.

She went the
other way, her pulse spiking as she honed in on the veranda shading the tiny
back stoop. She stole through the palmetto, dashed briefly into the
sunlight—utterly exposed—before sprinting to just beneath the kitchen
windowsill.

She heard
movement inside—the muted thud of cabinets and the clinking of dishes. She
closed her eyes and conjured those persistent images (Sheldon’s casket, her
daughter’s mangled hand), steeled her nerves and silently turned the doorknob
before slipping inside.

***

Chaco watched
the man preparing for his morning’s work. He was tall and lean, but Chaco
thought he matched up fine with him—at least physically. Everything else about
the guy Terri called “Miguel” was a mystery.

He slid his
hands into leather gloves. He had a pair of shovels, a pick-axe and a hoe
beneath his arm, and he carried the tools a quarter mile to the corner of the
plot. He quickly fell into a rhythm with the hoe—chopping at the ground and
stooping periodically to shake the soil from the root clusters of the plants he
cleared away.

Chaco admired
his work ethic. In just fifteen minutes, the man was covered in sweat. He’d
built a sizable pile of brush, and he was making good progress.

But his
admiration wouldn’t help Terri so, huddling low in a crouch, he stepped into
the field, advancing quickly on the man.

One chance.

He slunk to
within a dozen feet.

“Hey!” he said,
and the man started. He dropped the tool as he turned, and Chaco pulled the
trigger.

The dart took
him high in the shoulder, just below the collarbone, and the man gasped.

“What the fuck?
What’d you do to me?” Miguel shrieked, his expression twisted in confusion and
pain. “What the…what the fuck is…
is this
?” His voice climbed an octave.

He pawed at the
dart, already growing sluggish. He took two faltering steps before pitching
forward in the soil. Chaco winced as the tip of the dart snapped off, the body
of the tranquilizer flipping through the air in a strangely graceful arc.

Proceeding with
caution, Chaco flipped Miguel onto his back; he watched as awareness was
replaced with confusion in the man’s dark eyes. Then, even that vanished.

Miguel was out
cold.

Chaco hitched
his elbows beneath the man’s pits. He dragged the former mortgage trader across
the bumpy terrain. Fifteen minutes later, he’d secured Miguel’s wrists and
ankles with plastic zip-ties.

The target (for
that was now how Chaco tried to think of him) slept easily in the back of the
Beretta, snoring occasionally.

Chaco cracked a
window. He checked his watch and jogged for the bungalow. If the plan had
worked, then Vivian was already floating through dreamland herself…

***

Fortune had
smiled on her.

Vivian had her
back turned. She was humming softly to herself when Terri jammed the syringe’s
tip into the meat of her upper shoulder.

Vivian screamed,
a hand flying to her back. She turned, and Terri punched her hard in the nose.
Vivian’s head snapped back, eyes clouded with pain and surprise, and Terri
socked her again. Blood poured from her nose, bubbling down over her lips, and
Vivian’s expression of perfect, horrified surprise was everything Terri had
imagined since she’d managed to get her children off the mountain.

She feasted on
it.

“Terri? Is
that…are you?” Her words were thick, and the nasal twinge almost made Terri
laugh.

“
Goodnight
,
Vivian. Go to sleep now, ‘kay honey?”

“What…how?”
Vivian stumbled against the counter, struggling to keep herself upright.

Too late.

Her clumsy
fingers scrambled for purchase, failed, and she fell hard to the floor. Blood
flowed over her perfect teeth, staining them scarlet, and her mouth opened and
closed while she struggled to speak.

“
Ttttttt
,”
she hissed. “
Wwwwww
…”

Terri knelt, her
forehead nearly touching Vivian’s. “You look
good
, Vivian. Life in
Mexico seems to agree with you. I have to say, I’m impressed.”

Vivian made a
little gasping sound, like a fish struggling for air on the riverbank.

“I’m giving you
a chance, Vivian. A
real
chance—none of that bullshit you pulled on my
family. 

“And you want to
know something? Hey!” She slapped her cheek. “Stay with me, Vivian! Just a
minute longer, then you can have your nap. Guess what?

“I think you can
do it. I’m actually
pulling
for you, girl! When it gets hot out there,
just know that. Okay? Know that I’m pulling for you.”

Vivian’s eyelids
fluttered. Still, even in her state of confusion, she tried to speak—tried to
make sense of what was happening to her.

Her glassy eyes
posed the question, and Terri relished the opportunity to provide an answer.

“
We
have
Miguel,” she calmly stated. She might have been chatting about the previous
night’s reality television show around the water cooler at work. “That’s right,
we have Miguel, and if you ever want to see him again, you’ve got a long road
ahead of you.”

“No,” Vivian
whispered. “No…no…
no
.”

Her eyelids
lazed shut and she fell into a deep, dark void.

Terri stood. She
went to the sink, worked the handle and took a long drink straight from the
spigot. When she was finished, she washed Vivian’s blood from her knuckles and
took a series of deep breaths—trying to clear the adrenaline from her
bloodstream.

When her sense
of control returned, she went to the window. Chaco was jogging toward her,
maybe a quarter mile in the distance.

She watched his
approach, not surprised to find that she was smiling.

“Damn,” she
said, turning back to Vivian’s prone form, “I can’t believe I questioned
whether I would go through with this or not.”

She heard
Chaco’s footsteps out back and the smile became a grin.

Things were
about to get hot.