Kidnap and Ransom (23 page)

“Why was he called the White Devil?”

“Apparently he did some weird stuff—weird even for this crowd. Chanting, rituals. Set up an altar outside his shanty and slaughtered animals on it. Then he didn’t even eat the animals, which really threw them. They steered clear of him after that. A few of the families even pulled up stakes and moved farther away.”

“Does she know where he might have gone?”

“Nope. Her friend saw him leave out the exit to the north at dawn, running from the cops. I’m guessing that’s when they grabbed you?”

Kelly nodded.

“Well, she says he hasn’t been back since. They’re watching for him now, after what the police found. A few of them are pretty riled up. If he’s smart, he won’t come back.”

“Nice of them to show some concern now,” Kelly grumbled.

“It’s not really surprising, Jones. To be honest, the cops at the station couldn’t get rid of you quick enough. I get the feeling that unless some of the dead kid’s relatives show up, they’ll bury this thing. And she didn’t have any idea who the kid was. Chances are they’ll never ID the body.”

“Jesus,” Kelly said. The fact that a child could die so horribly, without anyone caring enough to initiate even the most basic investigation, was beyond horrifying.

“Life is viewed differently down here, Jones,” Rodriguez explained. “Justice, too. We live a pretty cushy life, all things considered.” As soon as he said it his posture changed. He’d obviously suddenly remembered her injury, but the words were already out.

“Let’s check out where he was living,” Kelly mumbled.

“Yeah, okay.” Rodriguez followed as she wove between the dark tiers. “After that, though, we’re finding a hotel. I’m gonna need a few hours in the shower

“At least you believe me now,” Kelly said after a minute. Rodriguez didn’t respond. “You do believe me, right?”

“I believe you saw someone down here. Maybe it was Stefan, maybe just someone who looks like him. Either way, he sounds like a bad guy.”

“It was Stefan,” she said firmly.

It took a half hour of wandering to locate Stefan’s shanty. They stood silent in the doorway, flashlights playing across the interior. Aside from the removal of the boy’s body and skin, it was exactly as she’d left it that morning. The shack was assembled from scavenged sheets of corrugated metal. The layers of cardboard comprising the floor were dark brown and stiff with blood. A pile of rags in the corner probably functioned as a bed. Kelly repressed a shudder at the sight of the clothesline, still draped from one side of the room to the other like a morbid Christmas garland. Aside from that, the only furniture was a rickety table dead center in the six-by-six-foot space.

“Christ, that’s a lot of blood,” Rodriguez murmured, running his flashlight beam across the muddy trails.

“I can’t believe they didn’t even bring a crime-scene unit out here,” Kelly said. There was no indication that aside from arresting her and removing the boy’s remains, the cops had done any investigating of the shanty itself. No fingerprint powder anywhere, no sign that bloodstained samples were removed. Apparently Rodriguez was right: the boy’s murder would garner no more attention than if he’d been a pigeon that inadvertently struck a window and died.

“What’s all this?” Rodriguez asked, examining the far wall. “Looks like crazy-person wallpaper.”

Kelly played her flashlight across it. She recognized some of the characters. “Runes,” she said. “Remember? That was Stefan’s thing in the other case.”

Rodriguez let out a low whistle. “Huh, maybe it really is him. Hell of a coincidence otherwise.”

“No one seems to understand that I lost my leg, not my mind,” Kelly grumbled.

“Well, let’s not pretend you were a picture of sanity before this.” Kelly raised an eyebrow. He held up his hands defensively. “I’m just saying, you’ve always been extremely driven. That’s why you were so good. You have this ability to focus on a case to the point where you shut everything else out.”

Kelly was going to retort, but the words struck home. He was right. Ever since joining the Bureau, she’d focused more on her solve rate than on her life. Which is why, when the job was gone, she’d discovered there wasn’t much of a life to go back to. “Driven isn’t the same as crazy,” she finally replied.

“It is when it makes you do crazy things. Like chasing a lunatic through a dump in a foreign country.”

“Point taken,” she said. “Of course, that means you’re probably crazy to help me.”

“Don’t remind me.” Rodriguez grinned at her. Tears suddenly smarted behind her eyelids. Kelly blinked them back, surprised. He notic

“I’m fine. Sorry.” Kelly shook her head. “Just tired, I guess.”

“Well, you’ve had a hell of a day. Maybe we should get you to a hospital. They never checked you out after that beating.” He sounded concerned.

“No hospital.” The mere mention induced memories of the constant hum of fluorescent lights and the cloying smell of disinfectant. If she had her way, she’d never set foot in a hospital again.

“You sure?”

Kelly nodded.

“Okay, then. So, getting back to our guy here.” Rodriguez turned his attention to the wall, squinting. “In the campus case he was spelling something with the girls’ bodies, right?”

“VIDAR, using the runic alphabet. It was an old Norse legend, something about a wolf.” A series of photographs flicked through Kelly’s mind. Stefan’s earlier victims had all been young, mostly college students, their bodies positioned strangely, legs bent off-kilter to spell out letters from a runic dictionary. Stefan had believed that some ancient book he’d stolen would provide the key to raising the dead, among other things. Apparently ritual sacrifice was a necessary component to the plan—but she’d managed to stop him before he claimed his final victim. And who knew, maybe he’d been right, she thought. After all, rising from the dead was a feat he’d managed to pull off in the end.

“Jesus!” Rodriguez yelped, leaping to the side.

A rat scampered past and raced out the door. Rodriguez shuddered. “I hate rats. I ever tell you that, Jones? Snakes, spiders, bring ’em on…but rats? I’m thinking it’s time for that shower.”

“One second.” The rat had emerged from the stack of bedding in the corner. Kelly went outside and grabbed a long gearshift that jutted up from one of the stacks. Back inside the shanty she prodded at the bedding, sifting through it. Something solid rested at the bottom. She tried to get a purchase with the stick, but whatever it was refused to budge. Giving up, she dropped to her good knee.

“Oh my God, you’re not going to—” Rodriguez clamped his mouth shut with a pained look as Kelly dug her hand into the center of the pile. After a second of groping around, trying not to picture Stefan sleeping there, waiting to feel another rat’s teeth biting down on her hand, Kelly found it: the hard corner of a book. With a small cry of triumph, she yanked it out.

“I had three heart attacks while you were doing that,” Rodriguez said.

“Shine the light over here.” Kelly held up the book.

“I’m really hoping you have hand sanitizer in that pack. You know how many diseases rats carry?” Rodriguez muttered. He shifted the flashlight beam so that it illuminated the cover.

It wasn’t what Kelly had been expecting. When Stefan vanished, an ancient text had disappeared at the same time. This wasn’t that book. Instead it bore the cheap laminated cover of a self-published novel, with a crudely drawn image of a Norse ship above the words Vikings in Mexico.

“Quality bedtime ,” Rodriguez said.

“I didn’t think Vikings made it anywhere near here.” Kelly flipped through the pages. The margins were covered with scrawled notes, nearly every page was filled.

“That’s because they didn’t,” Rodriguez said. “It’s ridiculous. Probably written by some nut job.”

“Well, another nut job might have believed it,” Kelly noted. She poked through the bedding again, but didn’t come up with anything else.

“Please tell me we’re done here,” Rodriguez said. “A few more minutes and I might never eat again.”

“Take pictures of the walls. I can try to decipher the runes back at the hotel,” Kelly said.

Rodriguez snapped a few shots with his camera. Kelly looked them over: they were clear enough for her to make out the scrawlings.

“So are we good?” Rodriguez asked.

“Yeah. Let’s get out of here.”

Twenty-Six

Jake cursed again as he slipped and slid another ten feet. His face was covered in scratches from where branches had torn at his flesh. Mark’s flashlight bounced along twenty feet ahead of him—Jake hadn’t seen him fall yet. Apparently he’d inherited all the balance.

Nearly the entire Tyr contingent had taken off down the mountain, running full bore. Jake had followed without stopping to think it through. Mark was still fast as hell, he’d give him that. The rest of the group, Decker included, was charging along behind them. He’d managed to stay within a hundred feet of his brother by sheer force of will, but it felt like his lungs were going to burst from his chest. Jake kept waiting to hear gunfire—it was inconceivable that they wouldn’t be heard by this “Sock” character they were pursuing, or worse yet, by another Zetas patrol.

Jake surmised that Sock was the mole who sold out Mark’s mission in the first place. Why the Tyr folks kept him around after discovering that was frankly beyond him. It was funny, when he and Syd established The Longhorn Group, they’d modeled it almost entirely after Tyr, the gold standard of Kidnap & Ransom firms. Now that he’d seen them in action, he was wondering if they wouldn’t have been better off emulating the Keystone Kops.

Up ahead, Mark suddenly skidded to a stop. Jake pulled up short. Someone slammed into his back a second later, sending him sprawling with a grunt. Syd rolled off him.

“Christ, Riley, a little warning next time,” she grumbled, reaching for an AK-47 that had skidded a few feet away.

Jake got back to his feet. He extended a hand to help her up, but she dismissed it with a withering look. Ever since their encounter, she’d been almost nasty to him. Either Syd was just as uncomfortable about what had happened, or she didn’t care for his reaction to it. He wondered what she’d been expecting. Anyway, this wasn’t the time or place to deal with it.

Jake followed her, bent nearly double as they approached Mark. His brother had hunkered down next to an enormous fern. On the other side of it, the moon lit up an enormous man with blond hair sheared close to his head. His hands were in the air. Two Mexicans were brandishing assault rifles at him. The prison camp fence was less than fifty yards away. Jake glanced up to the nearest guard tower and spotted the barrel of a large machine gun.

“Shit,” Mark said with resignation. “He got to them.”

“Maybe not,” Syd said in a low voice. “It sounds like they have no idea who he is.”

Sock was speaking loudly in broken Spanish. Whatever he was saying didn’t seem to be registering. The two guards moved closer, shouting. Sock slowly lowered to his knees. One of the guards stepped forward, then turned his head to say something.

Fast as lightning, Sock grabbed the barrel of the gun and yanked it from the guard’s grasp. The strap still hung from the guy’s shoulder, and he was whipped to the ground. Sock switched his grip on it quickly, jamming the butt against the base of the guy’s throat, pinning him. He yelled something to the other guard, who didn’t seem to know how to react.

“What’s he saying?” Jake asked.

“He’s claiming to be friends with a General Gente. He’s demanding to be taken to see him,” Syd said in a low voice.

“We can’t let that happen.” Mark raised his gun to his shoulder, aiming for the back of the Sock’s head.

“The noise will alert the camp,” Syd warned.

“I know. No avoiding it now, though.”

Jake started to protest, then shut his mouth. If this guy Sock was the reason most of Mark’s team ended up dead, it was his call to make. Still, Jake wasn’t a fan of shooting a man down in cold blood. And alerting the camp to their presence eliminated the element of surprise they were counting on. Of course, if Sock got to this general, that was a wash anyway.

A rustling behind them. Jake jerked his head around. Decker and Brown appeared, also bent low.

Brown took in the situation, including the guard tower. “Hope to God they don’t have thermal sights up there,” he said, focused on the muzzles pointed down at the scene below. “We’ll light them up like a Christmas tree.”

“If they did, we’d already be dead,” Mark murmured in response.

“So what’re you waiting for?” Brown said in a low voice. “Shoot that asshole.”

Mark didn’t respond. His finger moved the trigger back an increment. Jake recognized his brother’s expression: he was girding himself for something he didn’t want to do. He’d seen it countless times growing up. It seemed like no matter what was asked of him, Mark’s instinctive reaction was always to resist. That defiance even applied to minor tasks like mowing the lawn or taking out the trash. It was why his decision to enlist had always puzzled Jake. He couldn’t comprehend his obstinate older brother signing up for a job where he’d spend his life following orders

A quick spurt of machine-gun fire, and suddenly the blond guy’s head was gone. Mark seemed surprised. He glanced down at his weapon, then at Decker.

Decker lowered his gun and shrugged. “Bastard deserved it.”

The guards took a second to recover. Once they did, they sprayed the surrounding jungle with gunfire. More rounds erupted from the tower, tearing the ferns surrounding them to shreds. Jake scrambled back. He must have set branches swaying, because suddenly all the gunfire zeroed in on their location.

“Run!” Syd yelled, already sprinting back up the mountain.

Kelly was flipping through the book when there was a knock at her hotel-room door. She opened it to find Rodriguez standing there, face shiny and red from a good scrubbing.

“Jeez, Jones.” His nose wrinkled. “You decided to skip the shower?”

“I wanted to go through this first, see if it might give us a lead on Stefan.” Kelly self-consciously took a step back.

Rodriguez held out a hand for the book. “Let me take a crack at it. And please, get in the shower. I’m starving, and there’s no way they’ll let us into a decent restaurant with you smelling like that. Or even an indecent open-air one. It’s that bad.”