Mercy Killing (Affairs of State Book 1) (11 page)

His voice was husky when he next spoke, as if the attraction might be mutual. “Are you sure the little scoundrel didn’t take anything?”

“I don’t think so.” She pulled out a foil-wrapped stick of chewing gum, stared at it for a moment then dropped it back into her purse. “I really don’t know. Nothing seems to be missing.”

“You’re sure? You should file a police report anyway.”

But she was only half listening, her mind preoccupied. Was it possible the thief had never intended to take anything? Because he’d been sent to
leave
something, not steal.

“No harm done,” she said quickly. “Besides, he’s long gone.”

She couldn’t say why but she had a feeling Clay was somehow involved in what had just happened. For that reason alone she didn’t want the police involved. Nor did she want to answer any more questions from this stranger.

“Very well.” His gaze flickered away—a mental gear shift—then back toward her. “As I've said, we met once before, Señora Davis. My name is Sebastian Hidalgo. I don’t know if you remember me from the reception in—”

“—in Washington, yes, at the old embassy.” She smiled and controlled the impulse to shriek in surprise.
Hidalgo!
One of the names on Clay’s list of suspects in his human trafficking case. “Yes, of course I remember you.”

He looked amused. “You seem to make a habit of attracting unsavory individuals.”

And you, apparently, are one of them.
“I think the man you saw at the embassy was just hitting on me,” she lied.

“Ah.” He didn’t look convinced.  

She heard her name being called and turned to see Sheila and Daphne, her shopping companions, running toward her, their expressions worried. The two American women lived on her street and had gone out of their way to make her feel welcome in her new hometown. Sheila—short, blonde, and bouncy even in the calmest of situations—hardly let her feet touch the ground as she raced through the crowded plaza toward her. Daphne’s creamed-coffee complexion looked far paler than earlier in the day.

“My friends must have heard about my adventure. I’ll be fine now.” She stepped away from his supporting hand. “Thank you for your concern.”

Hidalgo frowned as if disappointed that she was dismissing him. “If I can be of service to you or to your husband while you are in Mexico, please call on me. Anyone in the city can tell you how to reach me.”

“Thank you.”

He reached for her hand, lifted it to his lips and kissed her fingertips. In spite of her suspicion, she felt a delicious little shiver ripple up her arm. She sighed in irritation as he turned and walked away. Irritation with herself because it wasn’t like her to be so easily…

So easily what? She didn’t have an answer for her own question. The important thing was that she might have made a valuable connection. True, the introduction had cost her a few bruises, but if the price for an introduction to one of Clay's suspects was a little discomfort, so be it.

“Mercy!” Sheila cried, staring at her face as she came closer.

“Oh! My! God!” Daphne gasped. “What happened to you? Someone in the restaurant said there had been a mugging. We thought, no, couldn’t be Mercy but—Jeezes, look at you. You’re bleeding!”

Sheila grabbed a fistful of tissues from her purse and gently dabbed at Mercy’s scraped cheek. “Who was that man with you?”

“Sebastian Hidalgo. He tried to catch the kid who hit me.”

The two women looked at each other, then at her. Sheila said firmly, “You
don’t
want to have anything to do with that man, sweetie. Hidalgo is as bad as they come.”

“Bad in what way?” she asked, remembering his far-too-young date at the embassy reception. Was her friend implying he was a womanizer?

“In every way there is.” Daphne wrapped her in a fleshy arm and started walking her back toward the
Gran
. “That man has made his money the old-fashioned way—drugs and guns. He’s notorious. Read the local newspapers, you’ll see.”

“Hidalgo is some kind of drug lord or Mexican Mafioso,” Sheila whispered. “There was an exposé on TV a few weeks ago. A South-of-the-Border version of the FBI’s Ten Most Wanted list. The Mexican government can’t get enough evidence against monsters like Hidalgo to arrest them. They’re, like, above the law.”

“Really,” Mercy said.
Well now.
She definitely needed to add another guest to the list for her first party.

12

Less than an hour later, Mercy sat on her bed in the Polanco house, turning the slim foil packet over and over between her fingertips, almost afraid to open it. She never chewed gum. She never bought gum. So what the hell was this doing in her purse?

She had waited to inspect it until after the taxi dropped off the other two women and she was home again, alone in her own bedroom. The bungled theft, she was now convinced, hadn’t been that at all. Nothing was missing from her purse; she’d checked and double checked. The boy must have been paid by someone to slip whatever this was into her purse. Why?

Carefully, she opened one end of the foil wrapper, peered inside and drew out not a piece of chewing gum but a stiff piece of paper. It was folded back and forth on itself seven or eight times, the way she and her friends used to make little paper fans for their dolls, when they were children.

She pressed out the ridges, laying the paper flat on the bedspread beside her.

On the side facing up were hand-printed letters:

JUST RECEIVED FROM EUR-ASIAN CONTACT. COULD HAVE BEEN TAKEN IN PREP FOR RANSOM DEMAND. NO LOCATION YET. SORRY, C.

             
Clay
.

Mercy turned over the accordioned paper. On the reverse side was a faxed photograph. Clay must have been afraid to send it by regular mail or even attached to an email. Was the agent worried Peter, or someone else in the household, might intercept it?

The image was grainy, underexposed, out of focus. Obviously not her mother’s work. But what she could make out of the picture took her breath away.

Mercy’s stomach heaved. The acid-hot burn of bile hit the back of her throat. No doubt in her mind what this image represented.

A woman lay in a fetal position on a sagging metal-frame cot. Wrists and ankles lashed to it. The tethers appeared just loose enough to allow her to roll over while keeping her on the thin mattress. Her hair was matted with something dark.
Blood?
She looked emaciated, unconscious.

Is she even alive?

Downstairs, Mercy heard someone enter the house. The clink of keys, a door latch clicking closed. Footsteps crossed the foyer below. Their sound matched her heart’s frantic beat.

Peter!

But she couldn’t pull herself away from the horror clamped between her sweating, now trembling fingers. There was no doubt in her mind. This
was
Talia! Her mother.

Desperately she searched the murky details of the photograph for any clue to the location. A small cracked white bowl, empty, rested on the bare mattress ticking near Talia’s head. Her left arm curled around the dish, almost protectively. She was wearing thick, baggy sweats, definitely not hers.

The bed. Ropes. Her mother. A bowl. That was all. Not even a wall or window to indicate where in the world she might be.

Mercy choked back an agonized sob. Until this moment she hadn’t wanted to involve Peter any more than she already had by requesting his help through the State Department. After all, he hadn’t exactly moved mountains yet. She still wasn’t convinced he’d taken Talia’s situation seriously.

Snatching up the photo, she ran from her room. Pain radiated through her injured hip. She ignored it as best she could, hobbling down the stairs. She intercepted Peter on his way up.

“Look!” she demanded, thrusting the photograph at him.

He scowled at her from the landing below. “What the hell happened to you? Your face looks like you walked it into a brick wall.”

“Look at
this
, damn it, not me!” She felt tears streaming down her cheeks before she realized she was crying. “Tell me this isn’t my mother.”

With a petulant grimace, he took the photo and made a show of studying it. And then he really did look. Color leaked from his face. “Good Lord.” He flipped over the photo. “Where did you get this? Who is C?”

A huge problem suddenly occurred to her. If Clay was working outside of the system and Peter reported him, the CIA operative might be sidelined by his superiors. Then she’d lose her only source of information about her mother.

She made a decision based purely on instinct. She wouldn’t tell him about Clay. Not yet. “A boy slipped it into my purse, and it doesn’t matter who sent it. You haven’t helped me find my mother. Someone else is at least trying.”

“I’m sorry, sweetheart. I had no idea…” Peter stared at the picture, his face suddenly more green than flesh should ever look. “I must have sounded like an insensitive jerk, putting you off the way I did.”

She wasn’t interested in apologies or excuses. “I applied for a visa, in case she didn’t turn up. But the Ukrainian embassy claims it was lost in the mail or their system.” She narrowed her eyes at her husband as another possibility occurred to her. “Accidentally or intentionally? What do you think, Peter?”

He swallowed, shaking his head. “How would I know? Geesh, Merce.”

“You didn’t make any inquiries, did you? You’re an employee of the goddamn U.S. State Department, and you didn’t even try to find her. Even though I begged you!” She was past furious. The throbbing in her hip did nothing but increase her wrath.

“I…I tried. Come on, give me some credit. Things are complicated and…” He reached for her.

“No!” she shouted. “I don’t want to be comforted. I don’t want to be lied to. I want you to move your diplomatic ass! If you really want to help, then do it. See that the embassy in Kiev finds out what the hell is going on over there.”

“All right, all right.” He looked honestly shaken now. “Things are clearly more serious than I'd believed.” He took the photo from her, ran up the final few stairs to the second floor, and turned toward his office.

She followed him back up the stairs and inside his new man-cave. It was a traditional study done up in dark wooden shelves that rose from floor to ceiling another two walls. Leather volumes filled several rows within easy reach, leaving space on the higher shelves for more books. His diplomas and photographs of himself taken with distinguished men in Washington—a Supreme Court judge, the President, two Baltimore Ravens stars—hung on the only free wall. Tall windows overlooked a garden behind the house.

Peter sat at his desk, laid the photo flat on his blotter. Switching on the green-glass reading lamp he examined it.

“God! This is beyond belief. Was there a ransom note or anything with it?”

“No. Just the message on the back. I’m thinking the picture was taken by someone other than her captors.”

Peter looked up at her standing over him, eyes narrowing to slivers. “How do you know that?”

“I don’t know. I’m guessing. Since there was no note asking for money, maybe someone wants to let her family know what’s happened to her. Maybe somebody’s trying to help her.”

“I guess that makes sense, but—” He scowled.

“But what?”

“Nothing, I was just…it’s unimportant.” He waved off the rest of his thought.

“Now you understand why we need to act. If you can’t get our government or the Ukrainians to take her disappearance seriously, I’m going over there. I’ll find her!”

He was shaking his head even before she finished. “No way. Do you think I’d let you dash off to some godforsaken place where your mother has been brutalized? Where the same thing might happen to you?”

If she’d been steaming before, now she was ablaze. “
Let
me go? That’s my decision, Peter. Not yours.”

He rolled his eyes in exasperation, stood up and stepped around the desk. “Mercy, I worded that poorly. I apologize.” He grabbed her hands. “Of course it’s your decision.”

“Damn right!” She shook him loose.

“But there are people trained to deal with…with whatever this is—a hostage situation or kidnapping for money or anything else. I can make the necessary contacts,” he promised.

“What’s the real reason you don’t want me over there?”

He gave her an offended look. “I don’t want to see you get hurt. What else could it be?”

“I don’t know. I honestly don’t know, Peter.” She stepped away from him, shaking her head, needing space to think, to breathe. Her hands needed something to do. Like throw something. “If you force me to act on my own—”

“Don’t.” His voice turned hard, along with his eyes. “Don’t force my hand. You’ll get more than you bargained for.”

She stared at him.
What the hell does that mean?
“Are you seriously threatening me?”

He groaned and rolled his eyes again.

But she was certain he’d meant his words to intimidate. And he was holding back. He knew something that he wasn’t telling her. Of that she felt sure. “What might that thing I haven’t bargained for be?” she said.