Missing Lynx (31 page)

Our truck slowly rolled through the middle of a huge forest with nothing, absolutely nothing, but trees. Suddenly, a break exposed cleared land and a prison. A third world hell hole. The menacing razor wire...Oh, I definitely didn’t want the car to turn in there.

The prison was composed of three large rectangular buildings, three stories high, made of cinder block. There were guard towers at each corner of the compound and a large open space making a dash for the chain-link fence and freedom pretty much a suicide run. We slowed and the driver steered through the front gate, passed through a check point, and drove to a large gray building, where I was unloaded and dragged inside.

I wasn’t trying to be uncooperative, though maybe I was being a little histrionic. I thought weak, sweet, and innocent was the way to go. I wanted their guard down, literally. 

The interior looked economy model. Industrial green paint, old metal furniture bolted to the floor, dust. I scanned for anything that would tell me where I was – even just the country.

The intake officers shifted quickly from sheer boredom to elation. Here was a new show to entertain them. They jeered at me, calling me names, making lewd suggestions. I looked confusedly at them, and then at the guards holding me up. “English, please?” I asked with my scared, little girl voice. I can’t say I was acting any more.

A unformed man stepped forward. His fat gray mustache twitched. “I speak English.”

“Where am I? Why was I brought here? Can I call home? Or a lawyer?”

Gray Mustache translated back to the men, and I focused on my blank look while they laughed. Gray Mustache told me to take off all of my clothes. I did as I was told, as best I could, swaying on rubbery legs and trying not to collapse.

I unzipped my hoodie and laid it on the desk. One of the guards pulled it over and searched it. The phone. The phone. I looked for options as I tugged off my cross trainers and socks, and then came my T-shirt. As I pulled the shirt over my head, I got my cell phone out of my bra and slipped it into Gray Mustache’s pocket – standing in the middle of the room, all eyes on me, I couldn’t find any other options. And this was a dangerous one, but I took it.

I pulled off my jeans and saw blood caked on my knees from when Gater tried to stop me—to save me—had I only listened. I unclasped my bra and let it fall; Gray Mustache stopped me from taking off my panties. The other men were disappointed and yelled at him. They wanted the whole show.

Gray Mustache fixed his eyes on my torso, where Psychopath Wilson etched my souvenir scars. He lifted my right arm and traced the line of the knife wound that ran from under my arm to over my hip. He turned me into the light to look closer at the red spider web of scars that crisscrossed my torso and hadn’t yet faded. He brushed my hair back from my forehead to see the three inch scar along my hair line, still pink and new.

“Someone hurt you badly,” he said in a fatherly voice. I couldn’t tell if this was an interrogation tactic, or if he was being genuine. Maybe a bit of both.

“Yes, sir,” I said, lowering my lashes.

“How did this happen?”

“There was this crazy man who thought that I needed to suffer.”

“And did you need to suffer?” He crossed his arms and scowled at me.

“I thought I already was suffering.”

“Why do you say this? You look like a nice girl.”

Why did I say this? Hell, I didn’t know
.
Words bubbled from my mouth; for a moment the connection between brain and tongue seemed to be severed. He picked up the gold cross that Nona Sophia had given me before she moved to New York.

“Are you Catholic?”

“Yes, sir, Catholic.” That seemed the safest thing to say.

“And why were you already suffering?”

“My mom had just died, and then there was a fire in my apartment building — my home burned down with everything in it. Then a crazy man attacked me.” I desperately wanted him to feel pity, that I was victimized, traumatized, maybe he would help me.

Gray Mustache picked up my left hand. “No rings. You are not married?”

“I don’t have a husband, no.”

“Your father, you are living with your father?”

Was this guy trying to determine if I had anyone looking for me? Better let this one play as a great big “no” so they don’t take extra security measures with me. “No, sir, my father died when I was seventeen.”

“And, how old are you now?”

“I’m twenty.”

“Twenty? What do you do for a living?”

Uh-oh. My mind scrambled. What did they know? “I’m a student.”

“Where is this? At a university?”

“Yes, sir.”
Fluffy. Innocent. Watch your facial reactions. Watch your tone.

“And you are studying…”

“I haven’t declared a major yet, sir. I’m still trying to make up my mind. I thought maybe I might like to be a nurse.”

“I see, and you have no job?”

“I sometimes have a little job singing at a neighborhood restaurant.” Damn. I’m going to have to tell them about Iniquus - Gray Mustache probably already knew and was seeing how honest I was. The more harmless and stupid I seemed the better.

“Right now I have a job at a place called Iniquus.” The other men in the room had been mostly ogling me, since they didn’t seem to understand what was being said. I had an arm over my breasts, trying to look as modest and demure as possible. Their attention changed when they heard the word “Iniquus.” Holy hell – they all recognized the name. I was no longer a victim. I was a what? Soldier? Spy?

“What is it you do for Iniquus?” Grey Mustache asked.

“I deliver mail to the offices. I run errands - you know, to the dry cleaners, or to get birthday gifts for the wives. I pour coffee, whatever they need me to do.”

“Iniquus will be looking for you.”

God, I hoped so. But could they get me out of a prison? They’d be in terrible danger. Would I ask them to? Should I hope for this?
I let my face brighten for a minute, and then I let it look crestfallen. “No.”

“And why is this?” Gray Mustache peered closely at me. I could see the plaque on his teeth. His clothes smelled of long unbathed days. I hid my revulsion.

“My boss is out of the country, and I don’t know when he’s expected back…weeks maybe months. No one else really keeps track of me. If I’m not there to fill their coffee cups, they’ll ask some other low level person to do it. No one will notice I’m gone.”

Then I let myself cry silently, tears dripped down my face. Nothing feigned here. I looked around for a tissue. Gray Mustache pulled a hankie from his pocket. My heart caught in my throat for a minute, until I realized my phone was on the other side of his pants.

Gray Mustache pointed at my clothes, laying crumpled on the table. “Get dressed.”

Then he walked me upstairs, down a long hall, to a metal door with a window and a chute. I retrieved my phone from his pocket, repositioning it in my bra, as he took a massive set of keys from his belt and unlocked the door. Gray Mustache gestured me in.

As the door clanged shut behind me. I stood in the middle of a small room. Mouth agape. Eyes wide.

I’m in a cell
. My mind whispered in disbelief. I was
in a cell!
I sagged, my skeleton failing to hold me upright. Holy FucKING HELL! …What?...How the…? But why…? Cell? I tilted my head back and let the banshee-scream rip from my throat.

Thirty-One

I
perched on the edge of the sleeping-shelf, bewildered. My feet barely brushed the floor. My focus scraped from my knotted hands held tightly in my lap to the holes in the knees of my jeans, dark where the cotton absorbed my blood when I fell.
Gater, I’m so sorry — my defiance landed me in
this cell
. Holy crap. My brain still stuttered on the words — reeled with shock.

I couldn’t believe I was alone in this grimy, stark, cement-walled, eight-by-eight box. The smell of decaying flesh filled my nostrils. My gaze flickered across to the puddle stain on the floor by the wall. Blood? My body convulsed at the thought.

I blinked vacantly in the bright light of the sun that shone through an opening on the wall and imagined a Cyclops staring at me. An empty track surrounded the hole. Thick, rusted, unyielding bars created stripes in the sun’s rays that fell across the shelf. No glass, I registered. Right now it let in fresh air and light, but what about nights? Or when it rained?

My focus travelled to the stainless-steel toilet with a tiny sink at the top, and a tin cup hanging from a chain, and I blew out the breath I had trapped in my lungs.

Next to me on the shelf-bed lay a mattress stuffed with straw, folded in half. Beside it, piled haphazardly, I found a set of threadbare sheets, a moth-eaten, musty wool blanket, and a misshapen thing that I guessed would pass as a pillow.

I opened my phone to call home, and I had no bars. No tower? No ping. No triangulation. No one knowing where the hell I was holed up.

I walked to the window and gripped the bars. Standing on my toes, I could see the flat, dirt-and-weeds stretch of the security yard, the fence line, and beyond that the tantalizing tree-tops of freedom. So close…I reached my hand out to the sunlight. Why am I here? What are they going to do with me? I pulled my hand back inside and angled my head to watch a lazy cloud roaming, listless and alone in the blue sky.

I turned my attention to the door, testing the latch to see if it locked behind Gray Mustache. It wouldn’t budge even though I shook the handle and pulled with all my strength and weight. I pounded my fists until they were bruised, screaming bloody murder the whole time, to no avail.

Crouched on my heels, my chest heaving after the tirade, I tried to rebalance both body and mind. “Open Sesame,” I muttered with my head against the cold metal. But unlike Ali Baba, I was all out of magic.

Standing, I peeked out the door’s window, trying to see what was in the corridor. I had a small visual field, and it was empty. It was empty when I came in, too. Bleak, and eerily silent.

I used the bathroom, washed my hands and face, made the bed, and then I was out of things to do. Terror seeped from my gut out through my pores. I could smell the fear on my skin and on my breath.
How do people survive like this?
Sitting on the shelf, I rolled myself into fetal position. For a long time, I couldn’t move. Couldn’t think. I was inanimate, falling asleep crunched up like wadded paper. Like discarded waste.

As I woke and stretched my stiffened limbs, my mind drifted to Master Wang. He was the only person I knew who had been imprisoned. When I was a teen, he told me stories about the time he was held as a political prisoner in China. In an attempt to re-educate him, Master Wang had been put in a box too small for him to straighten his legs, or even sit up straight. The guards would leave him there for as many as twelve days at a time. When they finally dragged Master Wang out, he was crippled for weeks. He spent years in that prison before someone helped him escape.

Years? Holy shit. Will I be here for years?
I don’t think I can do this
.
Yeah right, like you have a choice?
I scoffed. Furious. Volcanic. How did I let myself get into this mess? I paced and kicked at the wall, trying to burn off the rage.

Finally, reason edged around my anger, poking a nervous head out into the fray to whisper, “Castigation is probably the wrong direction.” I plopped down. Okay. I had to be focused and proactive. Taking in a deep breath, I looked around the all but empty cell. My mind remained an unrelenting blank. I had no idea what to do. Prison never came up as part of my training, even on Spyder’s computer programs. I guessed he thought he prepared me better than this, and I should never have ended up in Maria’s clutches. Shame glazed over me. If only I had listened to Striker and my team, and not been so damned hard-headed.

Stop!

How did Master Wang survive? I willed myself to recall his words. Sitting very still, I pushed my mind back in time and place to listen again to his stories. Perhaps he had given me a resource, a roadmap. His tales about imprisonment were rare. He hated remembering, and only offered up his memories as object lessons.

Master Wang told me that he had kept his sanity in two ways. First, he had a schedule of things to do during the day, and second, he varied the schedule so his mind didn’t numb. And he stuck to his program. I could do that.

I also knew that he credited his martial arts training for keeping his mind and body prepared for his escape. “Your mind is your best friend or your worst enemy.” That refrain constituted a ubiquitous part of my daily Kung Fu lessons right along with the kicks and punches. I could see how that would be true. My mind wanted me to be claustrophobic and panicky, but how would that serve me?

Singing filtered under my door. “Ave Maria.” Church bells chimed four o’clock at a distance, barely audible. From the little port-hole in my door, I couldn’t see who was in the hall, but I heard the chutes squeaking open on rusty hinges, swoosh, clanging shut.

A young woman — late teens? Early twenties? — shifted into my view. She moved bird-like on a slight frame. Her raven hair coiled in a tight bun at the nape of her neck. Perspiration dotted her forehead and stained her blouse. She pushed a cart in front of her, picking up a tray from underneath, plopping a spoon from one bucket, a scoop from another.

When she approached my door, I peered at her through the window. Her eyes were obsidian and feverish, too big for her face. The dark circles ringing her eyes made her look haunted — from ill health? No sleep? I wondered if she might be a prisoner, too. She shoved a tray in to me, and I caught her eye. I said “Gracias” with a heavy American accent. She startled and moved quickly to the next door. Squeak. Swoosh. Clang.

Sitting on the shelf, I balanced my tray on my knee. The food looked unhealthy and gray like the cinderblocks that surrounded me. I looked over at the open window, where I found my only source of color, then swirled my spoon in the food. Anxiety and revulsion took my appetite. My stomach hurt badly