Mercy Killing (Affairs of State Book 1) (24 page)

So,
Sebastian thought
, they’ve been ordered to stand down. Why?

“Talk to me, Garcia.” He set the man, none too gently, back on his feet.

The detective smoothed down the front of his shirt. “Your daughter witnessed a serious crime. It is standard procedure to interview all—”

“A crime here on the ranch?”

“Not here. On the river road. It seems that one of your trucks left here with unusual cargo.” 

Sebastian was barely able to control the emotions roiling inside him. He admitted nothing, made himself wait for more.

“That truck,” Garcia continued, “was abandoned by its driver, the load left to broil in the sun. We expect it sat undiscovered for six hours, maybe more. Then your daughter and her companion came along and—”

Sebastian was confused. If Garcia considered the cargo unusual, then Maria and Mercy hadn’t found a truckload of dead cattle. And if they’d found the contraband his crew was supposed to ship after his return, why would heat have anything to do with it? 

“I have no knowledge of freight other than my cattle,” Sebastian lied. “You’ll kindly withdraw your men from my property and address all further questions to my attorneys.”

Garcia shook his head and smiled. “It is my theory--” He seemed to like this word, drawing it out into three long syllables: the-o-ry, “--that you might prefer this conversation go no further than what we might say to each other, as
amigos
. We are friends, are we not, Don Sebastian?”

Sebastian frowned at him. He’d been dragged into court on weapons and drug smuggling charges before. A
mordida
, a “little bite” for the arresting cops, another bribe for the judge, and the accusations had been forgotten. Why was Garcia playing coy this time?

“No more games,” Sebastian said. “What did you find in my truck?”

“It wasn't
we
who found anything. As I’ve said, it was your daughter and the American woman, Mrs.—” he took a dirty scrap of paper from his pocket and read from it “—Mercy Davis. They stopped when they saw your truck abandoned and heard cries for help from inside.” 

Sebastian's heart stopped. He stared at the man in disbelief.

Garcia went on. “The two women opened the cargo doors. Your daughter, innocent child—well, can you imagine.” The man looked positively gleeful. “They found approximately—” another consultation with his notes “—forty-five men, women and children, by our count. Half cooked, most of them. Some well done. DOA.”

“Dead? In my truck? But this…this can’t be!” Sebastian stammered. He felt his throat constrict, his mouth go dry. The image Garcia painted bewildered him.
Impossible
!

“Human beings locked in
your
truck like fucking cattle!” Garcia shouted in his face. “No, Señor. Worse than you treat your cattle. No water. No air-conditioning. Left there in the desert to stew!”

Sebastian couldn’t speak. Disgust and outrage set his mind reeling. To deny he’d had any part in this atrocity would fall on deaf ears. But his truck? How?

Garcia’s feigned indignity disappeared. He chuckled and shook his head. “Of course you will say you know nothing of this. These paupers from Honduras, Paraguay, who knows where else—not one of them asked for transportation into America. Kidnap victims, that's what they were. On their way to forced labor in fields and factories, whore houses, or unpaid domestic jobs.”

Sebastian stared blankly across the yard. Could this get any worse?

“One of my vehicles was stolen last week,” Sebastian said, knowing it was a weak defense, and another lie. But he had to buy time to figure out how all of this had come about without his knowledge. Guns or drugs, he could account for. But not this.

“Don Sebastian, please.” Garcia shook a finger at him. “You expect me to believe that? I don’t suppose you reported this so-called vehicle theft.”

Sebastian didn’t answer. He felt light headed, still trying to piece it all together. Nothing made sense, unless… He could come up with only one possible explanation.

“Then you have enough evidence to arrest me?” he said.

“I will have, as soon as my men complete their investigation.” Garcia narrowed his eyes, reminding Sebastian of a lizard, calculating its prey's next move before the creature's sticky tongue lashes out to reel in a meal. “I may have to interrogate the ladies. Again.”

Sebastian had never wanted to kill anyone more than this man at this moment.

Garcia continued with aplomb. “Unless unforeseen complications arise that interfere with the investigation, I expect we’ll require another round of interviews with everyone in your household and employ. But who knows? Perhaps a report of your
stolen
vehicle will resurface at headquarters?”

Sebastian gauged the man’s greed. He should have known from the beginning—money was what Garcia really wanted. Why else keep his men, witnesses to their discussion, at a discreet distance?

“Would the theft report require
assistance
to be found?” Sebastian asked, as calmly as his disgust allowed.

Garcia consulted the gravel underfoot, shifting it with a grating sound beneath the toe of his boot. “Manpower is short since the government budget cuts. I might need to pay for overtime.”

“How much?” Sebastian growled.

30

The world has gone mad!

Mercy stared in disbelief at the newspapers strewn across her bed. The
Mexico City Times
(in English), the Spanish language papers:
Reforma
and
La Jornada,
and the scandalous tabloid
La Prensa.
Not one of them had published an article about Sebastian Hidalgo’s arrest. In fact, his name hadn’t been mentioned at all in connection with the stranded cattle truck.

She found only a brief, generic article referring to the abandoned truck. It was repeated almost verbatim in each publication:
A stranded vehicle was discovered north of Mexico City, in which an unspecified number of passengers were trapped following the truck’s breakdown. Police and medical assistance responded “
rapidamente
.” Those suffering from dehydration were sent on to local hospitals.

And that was it.

She felt like screaming. She felt like taking the gun she'd used to shoot off the lock on the lorry and putting a bullet in the head of that monster, Hidalgo. Apparently, he controlled both the police and the press. He was, just as she’d been warned repeatedly—a dangerous criminal, above the law.

“You belong in prison, you bastard!” She shoved the mountain of newsprint off her bed, sickened by the very thought of him. He’d touched her. He’d kissed her. And she—God help her!—had
liked
it.

Frustrated and furious beyond words, Mercy admitted to herself that he'd won. This time. Again. But she wouldn't forget those poor people, and she wouldn't rest until she saw that man behind bars. But there just wasn't anything else she could do at the moment. Not anything within the law.

She returned to her laptop. Stretching out on her stomach over the bedspread she clicked on the file marked
Talia
and studied the screen. Until she came up with another plan for punishing the cattle baron, she would turn her attention to her mother's situation.

She had organized all of the information she'd passed along to Clay, along with her sources and the correspondence she’d sent to influential politicians--even if she hadn't yet heard from them. Every speck of data she’d gleaned over the past weeks was at her fingertips.

It was still inconceivable to her. Talia, hunted by criminals who—according to everything she read online—made the old
Cosa Nostra
look like a knitting circle. The traditional crime families forbade the sport-killing of law enforcement officers, children, or innocents. Their rules had nothing to do with morality. Such behavior was simply bad for business. It brought out the vigilantes. It sent the FBI into overdrive.

However, members of the Russian mafia tended to be former KGB agents and Soviet military officers. Unemployed thugs now. Rogue veterans of the Afghan War also found employment with the Russian gangs. These were men who tortured, raped and killed because they had been trained to do so,
and they liked it
. For them, there were no rules.

Of course the photo and rumors about them stalking her mother might be nothing more than a sick hoax. She knew how easy it was to manipulate digital photographic images. The woman in the picture might not be Talia at all. Mercy had seen staged photos before. They looked no less real than the one Clay claimed was of her mother.

Mercy moaned and shook her head. What she needed were solid facts from reliable sources.

Focusing on her laptop screen, she again read through all of her accumulated files, including a long list of family contacts that went back decades, a veritable Who’s Who of international power politics.

One of the women who’d been particularly close to her father hadn’t yet gotten back to her. Now a possible reason occurred to Mercy.

Although Carol O’Donnell, CeeDee to her friends, kept a large house in Arlington, Virginia, to be close to the political gear churning on Capitol Hill, she spent half of every year in Texas, her birth state.

Mercy picked up the phone, called CeeDee’s Houston home, spoke with the woman's social secretary. It took considerable persuasion before the man grudgingly supplied her with a cell phone number and told her Mrs. O'Donnell might be reached, “if this is truly an emergency,” at
17
, the trendy oil tycoon’s restaurant, where she was lunching with friends.

“I was wondering when I would hear from you,” a familiar gravelly voice answered after only two rings.

Mercy lifted a brow.
Interesting
. She hadn’t needed to identify herself. “Then you knew my mother was missing?”

CeeDee had been a political mover and shaker for at least twenty years. It was rumored her influence had already made two presidents. And she had her eye on the next one.

“Word gets around, Mercy dear. You’ve been calling in favors on Capitol Hill for weeks now. A good many people are starting to feel nervous, dear. What's this really about?”

“I don’t care who I make nervous,” Mercy snapped. “What can you tell me about my mother's disappearance?”

“Officially? Nothing I'm afraid.”

Mercy heard a chair screech. Background dining room noise faded. She could imagine CeeDee sipping her wine while moving away from the table and her luncheon companions, so that she could speak in privacy.

“And unofficially?”

“It’s not that I’m reluctant to discuss your mother’s disappearance. It’s that I can’t imagine you wanting to hear such things.”

“Of course I do! My mother's life may be at stake.”

“Maybe more than just her life, dear,” CeeDee said, her voice dropping still lower. “The lives of many may be jeopardized if certain information is released in an untimely manner.”

“Stop talking in riddles, please,” Mercy hissed.

The woman on the other end coughed softly, as if buying time to think. “How much has your husband told you?”

“Peter has agreed—” Mercy grimaced. Just saying his name had become painful. She switched the phone to her other ear “—several times he's promised to push along a visa application so that I can get into Ukraine.”

“Has he now?” Mercy imagined a ghost of a smile from her father's old friend.

A spidery chill crept up her spine. Clearly she’d hit the jackpot. CeeDee
knew
something. “I’m guessing,” Mercy said, “that Peter, or someone who has intimidated him, is stalling the application, although I don’t know why. Please, I promise I won't use anything you tell me to hurt you or anyone else. I just have to know what's going on.”

“My dear girl, I know you never would hurt a fly.” Mercy heard her take another contemplative sip. “It's
your
being hurt that concerns me. Your mother, bless her beautiful soul, may be past our help…given the trouble she's apparently gotten herself into.”

Mercy sat up rigid on the bed, her throat constricting. “Tell me.”

A clatter of plates—a passing waiter?—filled the tense pause. Then, “Peter knows where your mother is.”

Mercy nearly fell over. “That's impossible! He would have told me.”

“Perhaps he can't.”

A blaze of heat shot up from Mercy’s chest into her throat and cheeks. Suddenly unable to breathe, feeling disconnected from her surroundings, she fought back an exasperated scream. “What do you mean he
can't
?”

“If your mother has broken a law in a foreign country… If her offense is so serious that acting on her behalf would be political suicide, how could Peter, or anyone else in our government for that matter, go to her aid?”

Rage blurred Mercy’s vision. She clutched the phone, her hand trembling. “My mother is not a criminal! She's a photojournalist. She takes pictures, writes about places. That’s all.” Mercy swallowed back a bitter surge of bile. “For God’s sake, she’s
all
I have!”