Dark horse, p.26
Dark Horse, page 26
They stood in the circular driveway just past the portico, the morning light blinding on the quartz stone, everyone lined up as if seeing off newlyweds.
Montesco, Reymundo and Anjelina, both sicarios, and a host of Montesco’s strongmen, armed and awaiting instructions. Three dark SUVs idled before them, freshly cleaned, spotless windows, chauffeurs ready to go.
In the gardens around them, Evan could hear rats scuttling. Shade fell across the makeshift jail of the chicken coop, the women inside barely visible. Just body parts glimpsed in stray bands of sunlight and the occasional flash of eyes—humans chopped to pieces by light and darkness. The tree trimmer sat in the nearest cell, head lowered, the dim outline of a statue. The brass-plated skeleton key glinted in the sunlight, tauntingly out of reach, winking at the captives. The swans floated on the man-made river beside the driveway, oblivious to human suffering.
Montesco opened the rear door of the middle vehicle for Evan, but Evan shook his head. “I can drive myself. If there’s an ambush, I want to be behind the wheel.”
Darling Boy started forward, boots crunching rocks. “Jefe, why would you trust this gabacho? He could drive off with her and we’d never see her again.”
“Why would he do that?” Montesco said.
“Who knows what Aragón Urrea would pay for her return?”
“Not as much as I can pay.” Montesco stared at Darling Boy and Evan in turn. “Remember that.” He snapped his fingers and called out, “Raudel!”
The chauffeur emerged and tossed the keys to hit El Moreno’s raised hand. Montesco dropped them into Evan’s palm but then seized Evan’s fist, squeezing it firmly around the keys so metal pinched skin. “Bring her back to me.”
“Of course, Jefe.”
“Watch her closely. She is precious cargo. At least Romeo here thinks so.” El Moreno grabbed his son’s shoulder and jogged it roughly. Back to Evan. “My men will flank you on the drive. They’ll be with you every step of the way.”
“I understand.” Evan leaned in, lowered his voice. “Watch your back while I’m gone.”
Montesco’s eye twitched, a first sign of paranoia yielding to stress. “Darling Boy will help me flush out the snake.” Despite his quiet voice, a vein popped in his throat; he was feeling the strain. “Until then I will keep an eye on everyone.”
That was good. The more Darling Boy put the screws to Montesco’s men to find the mole, the more it would undermine Montesco’s confidence and his men’s faith in him.
As Montesco started to turn, Evan gently grasped his arm. “Can I have my gun back?”
Montesco grinned. “Not yet, Caballo Oscuro.”
Only once he headed back to the house did Reymundo step forward and embrace Anjelina. “First ultrasound.”
She nodded into his shoulder. “I can’t believe I’ll see our baby.”
“I’m sorry I can’t go with you,” he whispered into her hair, his words just loud enough for Evan to register. His voice trembled, and there were tears in his eyes. “But I know you’ll do great. Be strong. Te amo.”
“Te amo.”
Evan held open the passenger door for Anjelina, and she climbed in. As he shut it and turned, Darling Boy was standing right there.
“I don’t know what play you’re running, gaba,” he hissed through wrecked teeth, “but I will figure it out.”
Evan sidestepped him and walked to the driver’s door. Jovencito was waiting there, whistling. It was like a sicario partner swap.
Jovencito’s smile was dazzling, as bright as the gleaming quartz. “I will be in the front car. This is my number in case we hit any … turbulence.” He turned a shitty Kyocera flip phone over, showed Evan the digits printed on a label adhered to the back. “Follow my lead and we will have no problems.”
Evan jerked his chin down in a nod. Darling Boy had retreated to the mansion, offering a final glare from the front door before disappearing.
“I’m not threatened by you like he is,” Jovencito said. “Why should I be? I’m younger, stronger, better-looking. Haven’t lost a step. So. You and I are good. As long as you remember I’m the best, we will be okay.”
Affable tone, joking twinkle in his eye. He was playing an alpha game, but he wanted Evan’s approval, too.
“I remember when I was a young bull like you,” Evan said. “I wouldn’t want to fight me at that age either.”
Jovencito said, “Then let us hope we never have to.”
Walking to the lead car, he twirled a cattle-roundup finger over his head. “Let’s go, Nacho.”
As Nacho followed Jovencito dutifully to the front vehicle, Evan climbed into the middle SUV. Anjelina started to say something, but he sliced a hand low over the console to quiet her until he got up the white-noise generating app on his RoamZone. He set it in the cup holder, clenched the wheel, stared at Jovencito’s SUV ahead, the rear vehicle in his side mirror.
He summoned the Third Commandment, Master your surroundings, and scanned the area with hyperfocus. A few storm drains were visible down the long driveway, rusty and weather-beaten save for one in the garden, which looked newly installed and well maintained. Curious.
A moment later they rolled forward, guards shoving open the front gate. They passed beneath the giant wooden archway, two of the three carved monkeys peering down at them.
Limestone formations flashed by on either side, and then they were out onto the dirt road carved through towering walls of rock. He studied the power lines, noted the conditions of additional storm drains and sewer grates, gauged the topography and distance between turns, and plugged them all into the internal map he’d been building since he’d first arrived.
They popped out into the low valley, dunes rolling past like waves of sand, wind sending grit skittering across the windshield. The truck thrummed along the ragged asphalt, the buildings of Guaridón visible in the distance, ugly rectangular slabs thrusting up like a row of tombstones.
Anjelina had remained silent, curled into herself, her face aimed out the window so all he could make out was one smooth cheek.
The sight of her triggered a memory of a similar ride decades ago. Twelve-year-old Evan in the passenger seat of Jack Johns’s dark sedan, his first trip out of the Baltimore projects. He’d been no more than a scrawny kid, dried blood crusted on his neck, wrists raw from handcuffs, the somber mood thick enough to choke on. And yet there had been trust there somehow, even before Jack had pulled out his white handkerchief and offered it for Evan to blot his bloodied cheek.
“I saw what El Moreno tried to do to that poor man yesterday,” she said. “The tree-trimmer guy. My Lord.” She crossed herself. “What will happen to him?”
Evan pictured the man balled up in terror, quivering against the lion’s roars. “I have two weeks to figure that out.”
“What happens in two weeks?”
“The chicken coop gets emptied. The women sent to Vegas. The tree trimmer fed to the lion.”
The words seemed to move straight through her, those soulful brown eyes holding something deeper than hurt, something like trauma incarnate. She blinked a few times, reining herself back in, and then blew out a breath. “Reymundo and I were allowed to see each other for a few minutes this morning,” she said. “I told him about you. I told him you were good.”
“‘Good’ is an overstatement,” Evan said. Then added, sharply, “Can he be trusted?”
She looked at him and coughed out a laugh. “Clearly I think he can be trusted. I trusted him with my whole life.”
“Your judgment hasn’t exactly been exemplary.”
She turned away again, light playing across her face. “You’re all like that. Ready to criticize. Waiting to tell me every little thing I got wrong.”
“You think this is a little thing?”
She clenched her hand and pressed it to her mouth. After a moment Evan noticed her shoulders shake almost imperceptibly. “You’re right,” she said. “Sorry. I’m sorry.”
“You apologize too much.”
She appraised him over her shoulder. “That’s what my father tells me.”
“He’s complicated,” Evan said. “But he’s right about some things.”
The tires hammered over a pothole, causing them to bounce in their soft leather seats. The air conditioner blew cool and steady in their faces. Sealed inside a bubble of luxury, they moved through the wretched outskirts of the city. A dead body lay in a dirt lot, two dogs yanking at the pant leg. It felt like they were manning a submersible, moving through deep waters, scanning an underworld vista from a scientific remove.
Anjelina cupped her hand on the window, fingernails pressed to the glass. “It’s easy for me to think how awful it is to be me. That I’m the only one who could possibly feel this way.” She took a breath greedily, as if oxygen were hard to find. “I mean, I’m the daughter of a sorta cartel leader who’s also a wonderful father who’s also cut people’s throats—or had them cut—who’s also the most decent man I know, and here I am with all this money and power and really none at all, feeling like I’m so different. But maybe that’s how everybody feels. Maybe that’s why we’re all so lonely.”
Another breath, the words strangled, like she was forcing them out.
“And the way I look, it’s like this curse I’m supposed to pretend is a blessing. I walk in a room and every set of eyes moves to me. And they all want something from me. It’s, like, envy or lust or jealousy. They want to see me naked, they want to see me demeaned, they want to see me fill some role for them. Everyone I’ve ever met except…”
“Reymundo.”
A quick jerk of a nod. “Have you ever really been seen? I don’t mean the way we act every day. I mean like someone really gets you. The real part of you?”
Evan gripped the wheel, didn’t answer. The direction in which the conversation was headed was out of his comfort zone, into an overgrown tangle of softer emotions he could not afford now or ever. You fit in, sure, but that’s different from belonging. He thought of Mia’s bare shoulders, the warmth of her body curled into his, way in the distant past before seizures and neurosurgeons and tyrant rulers with lions primed for the taste of human flesh.
Anjelina seemed to take his silence as an answer. “Imagine what you’d be willing to do,” she said. “To have that. To be with the one person who ever really saw you.”
He debated turning on the radio just to shut her up but then remembered that this mission existed in that space between two and three dimensions, that in order to save her and be true to Aragón and Belicia he might have to forge into that overgrown tangle, make room to endure it long enough to see a way out.
“And I know,” Anjelina added quickly. “Boo-hoo, poor little rich girl. And yes, it would be worse if I were crippled or sick or begging for cigarette butts in Calcutta. But I hate it. I hate what I look like.” Her gaze lifted to the small mirror in the visor, and she glared at her flawless face with tangible loathing. “Everyone thinks I have all this value because of who I am—”
“Who are you?”
She glanced at him, confused and rattled, and once again her beauty struck Evan like a revelation. It was unsettling, preternatural, a curse just as she’d said, testing her and everyone around her all the time.
“How many conversations have you had about me?” she asked.
“Since you were busy getting fake-kidnapped and being held hostage? Quite a few.”
“Okay. Fine. Those women in that chicken coop. How many conversations are being had about them? Or are they just lost like all those girls in Ciudad Juárez because they’re not Aragón Urrea’s daughter. And I mean…”
“What?”
“Would you be fighting so hard to save me if I weren’t his daughter?”
“Yes.”
“Fine. If I had Down syndrome?”
“Yes.”
“If I were … I don’t know, ugly? Would you really help me if I didn’t look this way?”
“Yes.”
“Well, great,” she said. “That makes one of you.”
“Two,” Evan said. “That makes two of us. If what you said about Reymundo is true.”
She was silent for a long time, and when she spoke, her voice was even throatier than normal. “It is.”
“Then don’t forget that. What he’s risking for you. It’s not just you now.”
She nodded, tears spilling, and her hands moved to the swell of her belly.
The lead SUV threw on its signal and banked right into the hospital’s drop-off area. Evan pulled to the curb, sandwiched between the two SUVs filled with the Dark Man’s acolytes.
“And to be fair,” he said, “the tree trimmer did look a bit like you.”
She halted with her hand on the door handle, looking back at him with a surprised expression on her face.
Then she smiled.
A sad smile that quickly faded.
“I’ve never done this before,” she said.
Evan waited.
“Will … will you stay with me? In there?”
Evan hesitated. Found his answer. “Yes.”
She reached for his hand. Her skin was cool, impossibly soft, the skin of a child. Evan looked away, uncomfortable.
She squeezed his hand once, took a sharp inhale, and climbed out.
41
A Little Pressure
A fussy man with a comb-over, the chief of staff met them in the lobby, shaking hands and offering praise for Raúl Montesco that sounded strained. They filed past the ER—Evan, Anjelina, Jovencito, and three armed men—bulling their way through the other departments. Doctors, nurses, and patients parted like the Red Sea. The remaining six henchmen waited back with the SUVs, an early alarm system for would-be attackers. Without his gun Evan felt naked, and he clocked the passing surroundings for makeshift weapons—metal tray, syringe, clipboard.
The chief of staff apologized for the state of the hospital. “Lack of funds have made things difficult,” he said in Spanish. “We’ve had to make do with what we have, but we cleaned up our biggest room—one of the surgical suites—and made sure it has everything needed for an ob-gyn examination of this importance.”
In the lead, Jovencito said nothing, his forearm ushering his jacket aside to show off the polished chrome Desert Eagle .44 at his waist.
Anjelina quickly stepped in to thank the doctor. “I’m sorry for any inconvenience.”
He waved her off. “No inconvenience at all. And this”—a gesture to a white-coated woman, handsome and strong of jaw—“is our finest obstetrician.”
He grinned. She did not. She didn’t look a day over thirty, and yet she wore a skunk streak of white in her thick black hair. The name tag on her scrubs read DR. ORTEGA.
She said, “Put your guns away.”
The men hesitated a moment and then complied, Nacho obeying last. Jovencito stepped forward to Ortega. “The protocol for this visit will be—”
Dr. Ortega extended a flat hand, placed her knuckles on the side of Jovencito’s arm, and pressed him aside, clearing her sight line to Anjelina and Evan.
“Are you the father?” Ortega asked.
“What?” Evan said. “No. No, no, no.”
Ortega cast a gaze past her alarmed chief of staff to Jovencito and the other henchmen. “All you men will wait outside.”
The chief of staff grinned nervously at Jovencito. “Of course, we’re not giving any orders here—”
“That’s fine,” Jovencito said, as if Ortega’s demand were something he needed to approve.
Ortega extended a hand to Anjelina. “I’m Maya,” she said as they shook. “Let’s get you taken care of.”
She started to lead Anjelina away, but Anjelina turned back to Evan, “Wait. Can he come with me?”
Jovencito said, “Absolutely not.”
Anjelina blanched, shoulders folding inward. She lifted her gaze to find Evan’s, a split second of eye contact. He tried to convey something to her without words. Sure enough she straightened back up, squared her shoulders, looked to the doctor.
“I want him with me,” she said, switching from Spanish.
“Then he will be with you,” Ortega replied in perfect English.
She reached past Jovencito, gripped Evan’s arm, and steered her charges through the thick metal door into the surgical suite.
As Anjelina changed into a hospital gown, Evan turned his back. Ortega set her up on a padded table with a sheet of paper pulled over it. Stirrups were attached but lowered to the sides.
After a quick initial checkup, Ortega said, “You wait here. I need to search out an ultrasound cart. We had a slew of gunshot wounds roll into emergency an hour ago, so they pulled all our imaging gear to place central venous catheters and look for bleeding.”
She vanished behind the heavy door, which sealed with an airtight thud.
The suite was cold, all sharp edges and surgical gear, a perfect rectangle.
Anjelina shivered beneath her gown. “I’m cold.”
Evan realized he was standing five feet away, told himself to move forward, and made his legs work. At her side now, staring down.
Hair pulled back in a ponytail, not a trace of makeup—she looked exceedingly young, not a day older than fourteen. For an instant Evan felt the weight of the awesome responsibility on his shoulders. This child and her child, two lives in his hands.
She took a shaky breath. “For so long…” She trailed off.
Evan waited.
“I feel like I’ve been stuck in my head and can’t come out. You know? I can’t make what it feels like inside match the outside world. It’s like … you ’member osmosis? From bio?”
“Sure.”
“It’s like that. This constant pressure. And now I’ve just made a mess of everything. And I don’t know how to clean it up. I don’t even feel strong enough to find out about this baby I’m responsible for. All alone here, in this room, without Reymundo. And then I go back there to those armed men. To that place. It’s all … it’s all so much.”
She was trembling, on the verge of coming apart.
Evan said, “Bend your knees, put the soles of your feet on the table, and let your knees knock gently together.”
