24/7 (17 page)

“You’ve been right so far,” one of the Barbies said. “Why stop now?”

“Madam, your check is in the mail.” Richard bowed as deeply as a knight presenting himself to a monarch. “Now let’s move on to El Caracol.”

He led the group back through the cadre of vendors to a round building resting atop a square platform.

“If the building looks like an observatory,” he said, “it should. Its windows and doors are aligned to track Venus’s path as it crosses the sky.”

“How could such a primitive society be so advanced?” Finn wondered aloud.

“Aliens,” Ryan said. “They learned everything they knew from little green men from Mars. Men are from Mars and women are from Venus. Get it?”

Finn got the allusion but didn’t find it quite as amusing as Ryan seemed to.

“Perhaps I should leave the jokes to the professionals.”

“Perhaps.”

They toured a few more ruins, then headed to the exit. The parking lot that had been practically deserted when they arrived was now filled with dozens of buses from various tour groups, resorts, and hotels. Finn looked for the bus labeled SOS Tours. Ryan spotted it first.

“There it is.”

“I wonder what happened to our driver,” Finn said after they boarded the bus and settled into their seats.

Leo, the man who had driven them from Cancún, was in his fifties. The man smoking in front of the bus was a good thirty years younger, though the black baseball cap pulled low over his forehead and the mirrored sunglasses covering his eyes made it difficult to guess his exact age.

“Too much sun, I imagine.” Ryan adjusted the vent over her head so the chilled air could blow directly on her. “A few more minutes in that heat and I might have keeled over, too. Some fires I’ve fought haven’t been as hot as it was today.”

Richard counted heads to make sure each member of the group was present and accounted for. Some had veered off to go shopping instead of following the rest of the group around the grounds, but all had made it back to the bus on time.

“Show of hands.” Richard raised his hand as if he was about to testify in court. “Who wants the air-conditioning lower, who wants it higher, and who thinks it’s just fine as is?”

“Lower,” everyone yelled.

“So much for a show of hands.”

Richard picked up a large cardboard box and walked down the aisle carrying bags of potato chips. Finn opted for ruffled chips instead of plain. Ryan grabbed one of each.

“Where’s Leo?” Finn asked as she opened her small bag of chips.

“He was called away on a family emergency. Our relief driver, Javier, will take us back to the resort. Let’s go home, Javi.”

Javier closed the bus’s doors and slowly pulled out of the crowded parking lot. Ryan’s cell phone chimed as the bus picked up speed.

“It’s probably Jill checking up on me to make sure I’ll be getting back in plenty of time to do the show tonight.”

Ryan wiped her hand on her shorts and dug her phone out of her pocket. The message she opened wasn’t a text but a video. Jill’s face filled the small screen.

“I wanted you to see what you’re missing,” Jill said. “Get a load of this.”

On the screen, Jill’s sunburned face was replaced by shots of two masked wrestlers beating the crap out of each other in an elevated ring set up where the craft table normally rested. Hundreds of cheering women were crowded around the ring. After a few minutes of high-flying action, the camera shifted to focus on two speedboats motoring into the lagoon. Instead of the shirtless resort workers Finn had seen piloting the boats all week, the vehicles were manned by ten men carrying assault rifles. Ten more armed men dressed in camouflage came running in from the beach.

“This is so cool,” Jill said on the video. “These guys are really going all out. They’ve even got the
Federales
in on the act. Now don’t you wish you had stayed?”

Something about the scene didn’t feel right to Finn. The wrestlers were obviously pretending to fight, but the guys with the guns didn’t seem like they were faking their aggression.

“I don’t think this is part of the show, Ryan.”

Ryan’s face was pale beneath her tan.

“Neither do I.”

They watched as a wrestler wearing a jaguar mask stood on the ring ropes and motioned for one of the newcomers to toss him a rifle. When he caught it and shot a volley of bullets into the air, the audience’s cheers turned into screams. Some women rose from their seats and tried to run, but the men aimed their guns at them and ordered them to remain where they were.

The man in the jaguar mask peered at the panicked crowd as he slowly circled the square ring. “Which one of you is Finn Chamberlain?”

Ryan gasped when the screen went black.

“What was that about?” she asked, her face ashen. “Was it real? Why were those men looking for you?”

Finn’s heart hammered in her chest. She didn’t know who the men were. She didn’t know why they were looking for her. And, most of all, she didn’t know how they knew her name. She had always sought to fade into the background. Now she was being thrust in the spotlight. And she had no idea why.

“I’m—I’m nobody.” She forced the words out as her mouth, throat, and tongue fought against her. “I’m just—I’m just a travel writer from San Francisco.”

“Then what’s all this about? How did those men know your name?”

“I—I—” Finn closed her eyes and ran through her rituals as she tried to control her stutter. She took several deep breaths and concentrated on slowing her speech. “I wish I knew,” she finally managed to say. “Call Jill and see if she can tell us more. Before we go running off half-cocked, we need to know if what we saw was real.”

“Good idea.” Ryan hit speed dial. “If this is a prank, I’ll kill her.” She put the phone to her ear, then frowned and shook her head. “Straight to voice mail.”

“Try again.”

Ryan hit redial, then shook her head again. “Same thing. You don’t think she’s—”

“Don’t go there,” Finn said, even though she already had.

“What are we supposed to do?”

“I don’t know. I’m just as lost as you are, if not more so.” She forced herself to think clearly, even though fear was clouding her thoughts. “Send me the video.”

“What are you going to do, upload it to YouTube or something and hope it goes viral?”

“No, I’m going to forward it to someone who might be able to help us. Her name’s Luisa Moreno. She’s a Federal Police officer in Mexico City.”

“How well do you know her?”

Finn had asked herself the same question a few days ago. Then, she had hoped the answer would ease her mind. Now it might save her life.

“Well enough.”

“That was just a show, right?” Ryan’s hands shook as she punched in Finn’s cell number. “Just part of a show?”

“I hope so.”

Finn desperately wanted to say yes, but she didn’t dare. She kept her voice low and her face impassive to keep from alarming her fellow passengers—or Javier, who seemed to be using the rearview mirror to keep tabs on her instead of the trailing traffic. She surreptitiously eyed her phone as she waited for Ryan’s text message to arrive.

“We’re sitting right next to each other,” she said, trying not to panic as the minutes crawled by and no notification for an incoming message appeared on her phone. “Why is it taking so long?”

“It’s a pretty big file. Maybe it’s taking a while to load. Give it a little while longer.”

Finn loosed a sigh of relief when her phone finally chirped. She checked the message to make sure it was from Ryan instead of someone else, then pressed
Forward
and keyed in Luisa’s cell phone number.

Four days ago, Luisa had told her there was nothing to worry about. She needed that same reassurance now.

“Come on, super cop,” she said as she hit
Send
. “Tell me what I need to hear.”

❖

No cell phones or outside weapons were allowed inside Santa Martha Jail, so Luisa stashed her cell phone and gun in the glove compartment of her car. She flinched after she slammed the compartment’s door shut. Her left arm hurt from top to bottom. Her shoulder ached from the tetanus shot the EMT had given her, and her forearm throbbed where Gilberto Ruiz had slashed her.

You’re going to die today, bitch
, Ruiz had said before he was carted off to jail for processing.
You and everyone you love.

She didn’t know whether to take his threat seriously, but the risk of ignoring it was one she wasn’t willing to take. On her way to Santa Martha Jail, she had called her family in Dallas to make sure they were safe. She hadn’t told them what was going on because she didn’t want them to worry if there was no reason to. Ruiz was apparently acting under orders, but whose? She couldn’t tell her family they could be at risk until she knew where the danger was coming from.

Her mother had said she felt better just hearing Luisa’s voice. Luisa felt better knowing her family was out of the narcos’ reach. Allegedly. Drugs crossed the border every day and managed to go undetected. A hit man could easily follow the same route if his boss’s pockets—and thirst for revenge—were deep enough to fund the effort.

The Federal Police didn’t have jurisdiction north of the border, but Luisa had a few friends on the Dallas police force who said they would keep their eyes peeled for any signs of danger.

But who would protect her? She was out here on her own with no one to watch her back. No matter. She had a job to do.

She scanned the visitors’ parking lot. Seeing no one who seemed to be lying in wait for her, she got out of her car and headed inside the jail, where she signed the visitors’ log and showed her badge to the officer behind the desk.

“Luisa Moreno from the Federal Police. I’m here to meet with Salvador Perez.”

The log was divided into three columns: Date, Visitor’s Name, and Prisoner’s Name. She scanned the list of names to see if Salvador Perez’s name was listed and who might have come to see him. Fortunately or unfortunately—she couldn’t decide which—her search came up empty.

The officer came around the desk and patted her down, then waved her on.

“We’ve set you up in interview room number three,” he said. “It’s the second door on your right. Go in and have a seat. The guards will bring the prisoner in shortly.”

On her previous visit to the jail, Luisa had attempted to speak with Salvador Perez over the phone through a thick pane of glass. Surrounded by nearly a dozen other prisoners having conversations with their lawyers and loved ones, Perez hadn’t had much to offer other than advice on the myriad ways she could go fuck herself.

The surroundings for their second meeting had changed. The circumstances had as well. Would Perez continue to keep the secrets of an organization that wanted them both dead, or had the brutal murders of his family managed to convince him to share what he knew?

She placed her notebook and a small tape recorder on the table and waited for Perez to arrive. She pressed
record
when the door opened. Perez came into the room with a guard holding on to each arm. Shackles around his ankles forced him to shuffle rather than walk. The handcuffs around his wrists were secured to a thick chain wrapped around his waist, preventing him from raising his arms more than a few inches. The guards forced him into a metal chair and secured him in place by cuffing his hands to a metal bar bolted to the table and his feet to a thick ring secured to the floor.

“You’re crazy if you think I’m going to talk to you,” Perez said. “Talking to you is what got my whole family killed.”

“I didn’t get a chance to speak with the members of your family, Salvador. They were dead before I made it to Agua Dulce. Are you going to tell me who killed them, or should I wait for Gilberto Ruiz to take you out, too?”

Perez’s left eye twitched. Luisa had expected the mention of Ruiz’s name to elicit a reaction, though she hadn’t expected one quite so visceral.

“We arrested him this morning after he gave me this.” Luisa indicated the bandage around her arm. “If you ask the guards nicely, maybe the two of you can be cell mates after he’s processed.”

“You can’t do that. Ruiz is a stone cold killer. I’m just a…”

Perez’s voice trailed off. The guilty expression on his face was almost comical. If Luisa had caught him doing something other than indirectly admitting to having ties to the Jaguars’ organization, she might have laughed.

“You’re just a what? A wannabe? A little boy pretending to be a big man? After you spend a few hours with Gilberto Ruiz, we’ll see if you’re ready for the big time.”

Luisa slammed her notebook shut and rose from the table. Perez lunged toward her but, thanks to being cuffed in place, he didn’t get far.

“Wait.”

He stretched his hands as far as he could, pleading for her not to go.

Luisa resumed her seat.

“Do you have something you want to say to me?”

“I’m dead if I help you, and I’m dead if I stay in here.”

Perez balled his hands into fists. He looked like an animal caught in a trap. So desperate to escape he would gnaw off his own extremities if it meant he could find freedom.

“Then tell me who I’m looking for. Who’s the leader of the Jaguars? What does he look like? Where does he live?”

“I only know what I need to know. I take orders from a guy who takes them from someone else. Even the guy they fear the most isn’t the one in charge. He’s just taking orders like everybody else.”

“Names, Salvador. Give me names.” Luisa spread the photos of the four unidentified men on the table. “Who are they?” She tapped one of the photos with her finger. “This one has the same ink across his stomach that you do. Did you know him, or do you simply want to be him when you grow up? A nameless corpse with no one left to mourn him.”

He laughed bitterly. “Thanks to you, I already am.”

Luisa fought down a wave of guilt.

“Your family’s deaths are on your head, not mine, Salvador. They died because someone wanted to intimidate you into keeping his identity safe. What are you hoping to receive in return, a hefty payment for your loyalty? You’re more likely to get shanked in the shower or, if you’re lucky enough to make it out of here, shot execution-style in a back alley the second you hit the street.”