Shiver (15 page)

“Anyone finds us through that phone and I’ll kill you myself before the Zetas can do the job,” Sanders threatened as Danny flipped the phone open. Making his thumb and forefinger into a pseudo gun, Sanders glanced around to point it at Danny. “Like this:
boom,
shot to the head.”

Danny ignored him.

“Mm-hmm,” Danny said into the phone, his voice a little higher pitched than normal. He didn’t want to give away immediately that it wasn’t Sam who was answering, just in case whoever it was had no interest in talking to him or anyone who wasn’t Sam.

“Mom?” The voice on the other end was soft and quavery, kind of. A kid’s voice. Jesus, it had to be Sam’s kid. Whispering.
Danny sat up straighter, and to hell with the pain. “Mom, where are you? Some men are here.”

Danny racked his brain. It was a piss-poor time for it to be shrouded in layers of fog, but there was nothing to do but . . .

“Mom?” The kid’s voice was even smaller. And definitely scared. “They broke in the kitchen door. They’re in there with Mrs. Menifee. They’re hurting her. What should I do?”

Danny’s blood ran cold.

“Tyler.” The kid’s name popped into his head just like that. It was like he could hear Sam’s voice saying it. “Shh. You want to be real quiet. Don’t let them see or hear you.”

“Who are you? Where’s Mom?”

“I’m a friend of your mom’s, okay? She isn’t here right now.” He hoped, no, he prayed, that she wasn’t there, either. But he knew as well as he knew the sun would rise in the morning that she’d been heading home for her kid. Had she made it? Was she there, too, somewhere?

The possibility scared the bejesus out of him.

There was a sniffle. The sound made Danny’s stomach twist.

“Are you Carl?” the kid asked.

“Shh,” Danny warned again. He had no idea who Carl was, but he wasn’t going to claim to be him. The name
Rick
stuck in his throat. Anyway, to give him that much information would be to put the kid in more danger than he was in already. He sure as hell couldn’t tell the truth, either. “I’m Trey.” A nickname bestowed on him at Texas A&M, where he had been the sixth
man on the Aggies basketball team whose specialty had been three-point shots.

“Are you a stranger?” The kid sounded wary. Danny supposed Sam had drummed the “stranger danger” bit into his head. Danny was familiar with it from his own nephews. Important information, but definitely not helpful now.

“No. I’m a friend of your mom’s, remember?”

“I don’t know if . . .”

A woman’s scream in the background interrupted, sending the hair on Danny’s nape shooting upright. His heart leaped.
Sam?
was his immediate, gut-wrenching reaction. But he didn’t say it. Not to her kid. Anyway, it couldn’t be her, or the kid would be having a cow. It had to be that Mrs. Menifee the kid had been talking about.

“No! Please,
please,
I don’t . . .” The woman’s voice was shrill with terror. The rest of her plea degenerated into unintelligible syllables. Listening, Danny gritted his teeth, consumed with his own helplessness. He knew what was happening. They were trying to force his—or maybe Sam’s—whereabouts out of her.

“They’re hitting Mrs. Menifee,” the kid whispered, his stranger-danger problem clearly having been overridden by events. “With their fists. They shouldn’t do that.” He sounded angry now as well as scared. “Mrs. Menifee is nice.” Danny found that his hand was clenched so hard around the phone that he had to consciously ease his grip or risk breaking the plastic. “I need my mom to come home. I need her right now.”

That was the last thing any of them needed, but Danny
didn’t tell the kid that even as he prayed that Sam stayed far, far away.

“Don’t let them see you,” Danny warned.

The kid didn’t answer.

“Tyler—”

“Mrs. Menifee’s crying.” It was the merest breath of sound. “They’re tying her up in a chair now. One of them’s got a big knife.”

Telling the kid to hang up and call 911 sprang to the tip of his tongue, only to be instantly dismissed. For the kid’s sake, he absolutely needed to keep the phone connection going. He said, “Whatever you do, don’t hit the end-call button. You hear?”

“Uh-huh.” The kid’s barely there voice had a catch in it. Danny thought he might be holding back a sob.

“We’re coming to get you, Tyler. Where are you? Do you know the address?”

“It’s 237 C-Clark Street.” Danny could hear a kind of slithering noise that he couldn’t identify.

He asked, “Tyler, what are you doing?”

“Hiding under the bed.”

“Good plan.” Danny’s pulse hammered. The kid was obviously frightened out of his gourd. Danny could almost feel the icy pulse of his terror through the phone. He was only four years old. For how long would he be able to keep quiet and out of sight? “Okay, 237 Clark Street. I got it. Hold on. Stay real quiet.”

Danny covered the mouthpiece and looked at Groves, who was frowning as he listened in. Danny could no longer hear the
woman in the background, which wasn’t a good thing for many reasons.

“Groves. Get on the fucking radio and tell whoever’s on the other end to call 911,” Danny said. “Tell them to send the cops to 237 Clark Street. Do it right now.” The harsh growl of his voice was a testament to how much the idea of a little boy falling into the hands of the Zetas terrified him.

“What the fuck?” Through the rearview mirror, Sanders looked at Danny like he’d just grown a second head.

“The woman in the truck. This is her kid on the phone. The Zetas are there where the kid is, looking for me. Trying to torture information out of another woman. The kid’s there, too, scared out of his mind.” At the expression on Groves’s face, Danny barked at him, “Goddamnit, man, do it.” He would have snatched the radio out of Groves’s hand and done it himself except he had a damaged finger on one hand and Sam’s phone in the other, quite apart from the fact that in his present condition he was almost certain to lose the fight that such an action would start. Just managing not to shout, he looked at Sanders again. “We need to head for 237 Clark Street. Fast.”

Sanders said, “Hey, Marco? Guess what? You don’t give the orders here.”

“So give the fucking orders.”

Sanders’s face tightened. He glanced into the rearview mirror. “Groves. Tell Morrison to call 911. You got the address?” Groves nodded. “And tell ’em to haul ass.”

“Okay, 237 Clark,” Groves repeated, pressing a button on the radio. “I’m on it.”

“Trey. Are you still there?” Tyler whispered.

Danny uncovered the mouthpiece. “Yeah, Tyler, I’m still here. We’re on our way. How many men are there?”

“Two. Or maybe three. I can’t tell.”

“Okay. Just stay cool.”

While he had been talking, Danny had been eyeing their progress on the portable GPS that was stuck to the dashboard by some sort of suction device. He covered the mouthpiece again. “Abramowitz, type in 237 Clark Street. Let’s see where it is.”

Abramowitz, who was tall, thin, bald as an egg, and currently extremely nervous looking, hesitated, glancing at Sanders, who to Danny’s relief gave a curt nod of permission. Even as Abramowitz started to key in the address, another agonized
“Please . . .”
followed by unintelligible syllables and a soul-shattering scream shivered through the phone. When the scream was abruptly cut off, Danny realized that he was sweating. They’d gagged her, he figured. That was how they operated: give the victim a chance to spill the information they wanted, then if the victim wasn’t forthcoming gag and torture her some more before removing the gag and giving her another chance to talk. They’d never been known to leave a torture victim alive, either. How long did Cindy Menifee have? How long before she gave up the kid? Answer to both: the way the cartel worked, not long.

“They put something in her mouth,” Tyler said. “They’re hurting her.”

“Wait a minute.” Danny uncovered the mouthpiece. “How are you seeing all this? I thought you were under the bed.”

“I got out to look.”

Jesus Christ, the kid was scaring the life out of him. “You get back under the bed, right now, and stay out of sight,” he ordered, using the tone he would have used to an errant nephew. At the thought that if the kid was somewhere where he could see what was going down, he could also be seen, Danny felt his heart rate hit turbocharge. Covering the mouthpiece, he said urgently to Sanders, “We’re going to need more than street cops on this. Get somebody else on another radio, call somebody higher up the food chain. Get SWAT over there, maybe even the FBI. ASAP.”

“We don’t have another radio. Anyway, 911’s the best I can do.” Sanders’s shrug brought a string of curses to the tip of Danny’s tongue. He swallowed them as counterproductive. “Can’t let anyone know we’re involved here. Too much at stake.”

“Trey, are you almost here?” Tyler’s frightened question riveted Danny’s attention again before he could do more than shoot Sanders a lethal look. On the GPS, the route calculator snaked an arrow south, then east. “They cut Mrs. Menifee’s arm. With their knife. There’s blood everywhere. Tears are coming down her face.”

Tyler sounded like he might have tears coming down his face, too. Danny’s gut clenched.

“Are you back under the bed?” he asked fiercely.

A few soft footsteps followed by a slithering sound gave him his answer.

“I am now.”

“
Stay there.
” Beside him, Groves was telling whoever was on
the other end of the radio to call 911. God in heaven, glaciers moved faster than these guys.

“We’ll be there real soon,” he said to Tyler, trying to sound as calm and steady as he didn’t feel. “We’re coming just as fast as we can.” Covering up the mouthpiece again, he looked at Sanders. “We’re going to 237 Clark.
Now.
”

“No can do,” Sanders replied. They were nearing the expressway interchange. Danny could tell that by the giant streetlights that he could see clustered together maybe a block to the west. Once they were on that, there was no turning back: they would be on a one-way ride over the mighty Mississippi. “Not our mission. You know that.”

Danny shot him a look that promised death as soon as he could deliver it. “You listen to me, you son of a bitch. I told her everything. The woman in the truck. Veith and the Zetas get their hands on her, she’ll sing like a bird, I guarantee it. Where the safe houses are. Who I’m fingering. The whole deal.”

Beside him, Groves was still talking to whoever was on the radio, patiently walking them through the situation. According to the arrow on the GPS, the Taurus was only about five miles from 237 Clark.

Sanders’s expression turned ugly. “You’re lying.”

“You want to take the chance? That I didn’t tell her
something
? Hell, man, they’re torturing a woman as we speak. Somebody doesn’t stop them, they’re going to kill a four-year-old kid. While we drive away, listening on the
goddamned phone.
” By the end, it was a barely muted roar. He pointed at the GPS. “We’re five miles away.
Go.
”

“Trey?”

Danny took a deep breath and uncovered the mouthpiece. “I’m here, Tyler. We’re coming to get you. Sit tight.” He slid his palm over the mouthpiece again. Fear for the kid—and his mother—made him so antsy he could feel nerves jumping under his skin. Under other conditions, he would have shot the asshole driving if he’d had to and commandeered the car. “She heard me talking to you on the phone, Sanders. She knows your name. She was sitting right beside me when I called you. Think about it: you know it’s true.”

“Fuck.” Sanders’s face reddened as anger infused it. The look he sent Danny was as murderous as Danny felt. At that moment they reached the next intersection, where the GPS arrow pointed left. Looking like he was ready to explode, Sanders cut the wheel sharply and went left on what felt like two wheels.

Thank you, God.

“I’m scared,” Tyler whispered.

Danny knew the feeling; he was scared, too. “I know you are. Nothing bad’s going to happen to you, I promise. We’ll be there real soon.” Cold sweat slid down his spine as he prayed he could deliver on that promise.

“This is a mistake,” Sanders said. “I fucking know it.”

“They’re going to kill a kid,” Danny shot back, his palm over the mouthpiece again.

All of a sudden Mrs. Menifee screamed like an animal being slaughtered. Even through the phone, the sound was so loud and shrill and full of pain and terror that it filled the car. When the
scream cut off, abruptly like it was deliberately stopped, Danny found that he was holding his breath.

“You hear that?” he asked Sanders fiercely. Even as the other man’s jaw set, Danny heard Tyler whimpering.
Please God let them not find the kid.
He didn’t have to see it to know that whatever had just gone down had been real bad. Uncovering the mouthpiece, Danny spoke as calmly as possible into the phone. “Tyler. You need to stay real quiet, remember? Is there any way you can get out of the house without them seeing you? You’d have to be real sure they couldn’t see you before you tried it, though.”