Lourdes and her two cronies had loaded them up in the backseat of a cramped four-door pickup that reeked of stale fish sticks and tobacco. None of the neighbors on their quiet street noticed a sobbing Marie and her little boy being trundled off to who knew where. She’d taken a rape prevention course with her women’s group at church the year before and the words of her instructor came back with the brilliant clarity of a bolt of liquid lighting. If you are assaulted and find yourself being forced to go to a second location, fight with all you have because that second crime scene will almost always be a murder scene.
Marie couldn’t fight. She wasn’t even sure where they were. She remembered headlights playing off a dense pine forest and drifted snow when they turned off the blacktop of Highway 95 at some point after they left Moscow. But terrified with worry over Simon, her brain had lost all sense of time and distance.
The two men hardly spoke to her at all. The one they called Jorge walked with a bad limp and swore under his breath at every step. He was in his forties, and had a sizable belly, which made the limp worse. Though he was injured, the other two seemed content to let him do the lion’s share of the work. He unloaded the truck. He brought in wood. Now, Marie could just make out his right shoulder around the corner of the far wall, where he hobbled around in the kitchen making pancakes.
A large television in the dining area flickered with the news. Marie didn’t know if he even thought about it, but Jorge kept the volume down, allowing Simon to get a little more sleep. He got cranky without a nap and she was terrified of what Lourdes would do if he launched into one of his crying fits.
Pete, the second man, slouched in a sagging recliner and killed zombies on his smartphone. Not far into his twenties, he wore his Carhartt ball cap turned sideways like some sort of farm-boy rapper. A tiny blond soul patch bristled under his bottom lip.
Jorge leaned around the wall. He’d used the tail of his checkered flannel shirt as a towel and it was covered in flour. “You think the kid will eat some pancakes?”
“How’d I know?” Pete muttered, entranced in the gore of his iPhone. “I look like a baby to you?”
“A little bit.” Jorge smirked.
Ignoring him, Pete leered at Marie, licking his lips. Before he could say anything Lourdes skulked in from the back room. Marie could feel the heaviness of her presence before she even rounded the corner.
“The worm will eat what we feed it or it will starve,” she said. “It makes no difference to me.” She carried a laptop computer with the screen half closed. Stooping down beside the mattress, she shoved it in front of Marie.
“Tell him you and the worm still live and breathe, Marie Pollard,” she said, flipping up the screen.
Marie found it hard to breathe when she saw Matt’s face. The image was jerky and pixilated from the connection, but it was Matt. He was pale and his beard already bristled like it needed trimming.
“Are you all right?” His eyes sagged with guilt.
“Yes.” Marie nodded, blinking back tears.
“Simon,” he said. “Can I see Simon?”
She turned the computer toward the baby. “He’s sleeping.”
“You’re not hurt?”
“We’re fine,” she said, whispering in spite of herself. “I don’t understand, Matt. Who are these people?”
“I’ll explain everything when this is over,” he said.
Lourdes grabbed the computer and slammed it shut. “That’s enough,” she said. “He knows you are alive.”
It felt to Marie as if the evil woman had just torn away her heart. She pressed her head against the wall, eyes clenched tight as Lourdes leaned in close enough she could smell the odor of her heavy powder makeup.
“Do not get your hopes up, Marie Pollard. You will never understand. Before this is over, I will find out if your little worm tastes better boiled or fried… ”
On the mattress beside Marie’s leg, Simon threw his head back and began to wail.
CHAPTER 19
“So,” Thibodaux said, craning his head to look at Garcia in the backseat. “They teachin’ you about surveillance at CIA school?” He sat behind the wheel across from Jericho, who looked through a set of binoculars. Both stared at the door to the eastern-most room on the bottom floor of the Green Flamingo Motel. Just a few yards beyond the end of the building the parking lot melded into the dark pine forest. The only streetlight in the lot was burned out and what little light there was leaked from the tattered blinds of the rooms themselves, making the lot and the motel itself the perfect place for someone who wanted anonymity.
“They do indeed,” Garcia said. Thankfully, she’d already wriggled into a pair of jeans and a dark T-shirt, but Quinn could still smell the faint jasmine odor of her skin wafting up behind him. “But role-playing is never like the real thing.”
“My uncle was a deputy sheriff in Terrebonne Parish,” Jacques said in the darkness. “He used to tell me stakeouts were nothin’ more than two people sittin’ in a stinking car with the collective urge to pee. I think he was right ’cause I’m feeling the need right now.”
“Well, you better use your Dr Pepper bottle,” Quinn said, his voice muffled against the binoculars. “I got movement at the room.”
Quinn watched as the Yemeni man they knew as Farris Ushan stepped out of the gaudy green door at the end of the rundown motel.
“What’s he doing?” Garcia put both hands on the back of Quinn’s seat.
Quinn passed the binoculars back to Garcia, his hand already on the door.
“He’s dragging a girl out of the trunk.”
Quinn was out of the truck and moving the moment Ushan shut the door to his room. Thibodaux trotted alongside him while Garcia held back a few steps acting as a rear guard.
“We’re in the U.S. of A now, Chair Force, and we got no warrant,” the big Cajun said, crouching as he ran. “Just checkin’, but are we gonna knock and announce?”
Quinn looked him in the eye. “What do you think?”
The beautiful thing about cheap motels was that most of their doors were routinely subjected to the boots, rams, or threshold spreaders of the local police. A sideways pull on the handle allowed Quinn to push this one open with hardly more than a shove. A little gentle persuasion tore the flimsy privacy chain out of the wall.
The Yemeni stood at the far side of the bed, towering over a bound Cathy with a leather belt in his hands. His head snapped up at the intrusion.
“Wha—?”
Quinn never stopped as he shouldered his way past the chain and bounded up on the bed to step over the cowering girl. He caught Ushan across a big ear with a brutal slap. Snatching the belt, he looped it quickly around the Yemeni’s neck and pulled it tight.
Garcia appeared at the open door, tiny Kahr pistol in her hand. Thibodaux, who scanned for other threats in the room, motioned for her to take the girl to the corner.
The Yemeni’s eyes bulged. The veins on his neck swelled red under the leather belt as if they might burst. When his head lolled, Quinn shoved him face forward onto the bed, patting him down for weapons.
He moaned when Quinn flipped him over.
“Where is your friend?” In reality Quinn knew of no one else, but it didn’t hurt to make the stunned Yemeni believe he did.
“Zamora gave me the girl.” Ushan shook his head, blinking. “I wanted her for myself, so I came here alone.”
“Where is the bomb?”
“Who are you?”
“The bomb, Farris.” Quinn drew back as if to strike him with the belt.