Torched: A Thriller (7 page)

FIFTEEN

Vivian woke with
a start. A creeping sense of dread, of her space being invaded by low-slung
creatures—by things that meant her harm—dominated her senses and she pushed
herself into a sitting position, the palms of her hands damp in the sweat
pooling on the concrete beneath her.

Her head spun as
she struggled in the blinding sunshine to digest her surroundings.

She had come to
on a cracked cement slab. A pair of crumbling brick walls formed an L-shaped
joint behind her, the remnants of an old wooden shelf piled at the base of one.
There were a few rusted paint cans and some piled plaster or drywall in the
corner.

An old house
? More likely a
shed.

Whatever it had
once been, it was now surrounded by water.

She stood on
shaky legs and put a hand to her eyes to block the sunlight. An expanse of
slow-moving water contained the crumbling ruins on every side.

She picked up
movement from the corner of her eye. Something swirled in the water, a
graceful, languid movement, and she watched in horror as a little trail of
bubbles cut a seam down the canal’s surface. Two minutes later, the reptile’s
head surfaced.

It blinked a
golden eye—cold and indifferent—and watched her from afar.

“Jesus,” she
hissed. She knew the creature well. She’d actually
enjoyed
watching
gators in the canal behind their house in Cape Coral. The little ones used to
snap at dragonflies when they were feeling frisky.

There was
another swirl, now off to her right. This one had three inches between its
nostrils.

Christ, they
were big!

The island was
tiny and sparsely vegetated. She couldn’t imagine the place had ever been a
home, but
somebody
had used it. She supposed it had been an outbuilding
of some sort. She was in the process of finding something with which to arm
herself—a stick, a shovel,
something
—when a piercing howl cut through
the humid stillness.

She recognized
the voice immediately.

“Mike? Mike,
where are you?”

He screamed
again, the sound chilling her to the bone, and that’s when Vivian noticed the
iPad.

One eye on the
behemoths in the canal, she went over to it and picked it up.

Miguel had been strapped
into a metal folding chair. He was stripped to the waist, his torso covered in
what looked, through the slightly blurred camera lens, like legions of angry
welts. They covered his torso and shoulders, and there were a few on his neck
and cheeks.

There was a
sudden flicker on the screen and he loosed another terrible cry.

“Just waking him
up,” Terri said, her tone cheerful. Her face filled the screen, and Vivian’s
stomach lurched. Her knees weakened, she was so frightened by the expression on
the woman’s face.

Terri James
looked insane.

Her face
disappeared as she moved the camera. There was a dizzying moment of vertigo,
and then Vivian saw it. It took her a moment to make sense of what she was
seeing.

It was coated
with blood, and a tiny strip of torn skin dangled from the tip.

It was the
chunky portion of an extension cord—the receiving end of the adapter. Vivian
couldn’t hold it together any longer. She sobbed, and then the camera was
moving again.

Terri returned
it to its previous position, the lens trained again on Miguel, and she stepped
into the frame, twirling the cord like a calf roper going through warm-ups.

Miguel’s chin
dangled over his chest, his sweaty hair shrouding his features. In an eruption
of rage, Terri swung the cord across his chest and he strained against the
bonds.

Vivian saw the
tendons in his neck bulging as he panted the pain away.

“Hey! Hey, Mike!
You still with us?” Terri said.

He peered up at
Terri, his eyes filled with hatred; it improved Vivian’s spirits, seeing him
like that. She couldn’t explain it, other than the fact that his expression
showed some spirit—some toughness.

“Gooood! That’s
a
good boy
. Here, Mike. Say hello to your little honeypot.”

Vivian brought
the lens close to his face, and Miguel squinted into the screen.

“Mike! Mike, I
love you honey, I’m so sorry, I don’t know how they found us, I don’t…!”

He shook his
head.

“He can’t hear
you,” Terri said, her face filling the screen. “You remember
that
little
trick, Vivian? It’s a good one! You pulled it on me, remember? Said I could
type something out to my children. Said I had a few characters. Remember?”

Vivian nodded,
tears streaming down her face.

“Then go ahead,
bitch. You get five characters. I think you know the drill.”

Vivian worked
the keypad:
luvuM

His smile was
small (more like a pained grimace), but it gave her strength.

“What do you
want from us, Terri?” Vivian said. The words echoed in Terri’s earpiece.

“Good question!
Hmmm. I guess I want to feel better, Vivian. And I want you to know that you
didn’t get away with it. I want you to understand what you did to my family
that day on the mountain.

“And I want you
to pay. You pathetic fucking bitch, I want you to
pay
. You went after my
entire family, when you should have gone after my husband. You were angry about
the things he did to your daughter, am I right?”

“Terri, I…”

“Am I right?”

“Yes, but…but
Jesus, Terri, he took my daughter! He just…he just hit her and he left her
there in the street and he
ran
! He ran like the fucking coward that he
was, and my daughter
bled to death
there in the street! Can’t you see?
Don’t you
understand
what Sheldon did to us?”

Terri’s response
was quiet, her voice measured. “That’s right, Vivian. He ran. And so what did
you do? What did you do after you put my children through hell?”

Vivian’s breath
caught in her chest. She stared into the webcam.

“What did
you
do, Vivian?”

“I ran,” she
whispered.

“What’s that?
Say it louder, so your little fuckbuddy can hear it too!”

“I ran!” Vivian
said. She choked on a sob. “I ran.”

“That’s right.
You ran. And now you’ll get a chance to run a little more. That is, if you’re a
decent swimmer. I guess that’s step one.”

“Where am I,
Terri? What
is
this place?”

“Did you know
that the American Alligator’s territory has virtually exploded in just the last
two decades?” Terri replied, ignoring the question. “We both remember how
plentiful they were in Cape Coral, but they’re turning up all over the place
now, girl! And I’m not talking about that random critter that was captured up
in Montana, or the ones they found in Maryland.

“Nope, I’m
talking about gators putting down roots in Oklahoma. In fact, biologists have
discovered a rather large population living in the Rio Grande. That’s right,
honey—they’re pushing into Mexico.”

Vivian’s eyes
flashed to the canal. A ten footer on the opposite bank slid into the water,
quick as a shot and silent as a heartbeat.

“That’s right,
Vivian. You’re actually very near the border. I guess that’s going to be your
second decision. Do you come after ol’ Mikey the fuckbuddy here, or should you
just go on home? Hell, maybe you can turn yourself in. Start paying that debt
to society.”

“What do you
want?” Vivian repeated, her voice cooling. She recognized certain things in
Terri’s voice, because they had once been there in her own. She recognized the
madness, as well as the determination.

She needed her
wits if she would ever see Miguel again.

“Actually, I
think it’s what
you
want, darling. Step one is getting off that island.
That iPad, I’m sure, is very familiar to you. It’s not the same machine you
left for Sheldon and me on the mountain, but the differences are merely
superficial.

“You know the
drill: that computer is your lifeline. It’s your GPS. It’s your route back here
to Miguel. I have remote access, and I’m listening to your every movement,
girl. Here’s our location.”

The video feed
vanished, replaced by a Google map. In the bottom of the screen, Vivian noticed
the distance: 98.4 miles.

“It’s not
perfect, I’ll admit. But that little island there was too perfect to pass up.
The big man used to store chemicals for treating his swimming pools out there,
but he found a different use for the place. By the way, you should be honored.
You woke up on the property of one
very
famous outlaw. Those gators
belong to him. They’re a…well, a business expense, I guess you could call it. I
imagine they’re pretty hungry, too.

“He keeps ‘em
that way intentionally.”

Vivian frowned
and Terri caught it, her grin widening.

“So your first
task is getting off that island. You want to see Mikey here again, then you’ll
head south. But, if you’ve had a change of heart and you decide that Mexico
just isn’t your thing, nobody will think unkindly of you if you just head
home.”

“If I do, what
happens to Miguel?”

Terri rotated
the camera; she zoomed in on a dark-skinned man. He sat in a chair, reading a
book. His bored eyes darted briefly to the camera before returning to the page.

There was a
pistol balanced on his knee.

“Then he’ll have
a chance to parlay with Sheldon in the afterlife. They can trade notes on the
crazy women in their life. Fair’s fair, Vivian.”

The camera
tracked back onto Miguel. His eyes flashed with defiance, and he spat on the
concrete. “Just go home, Vivian!” he screamed. “Leave! These people are sick!
They’re sick, and…”

The man with the
pistol suddenly decked Miguel with the butt of the gun. Vivian heard the blow—
THWACK
!
Miguel was knocked cold, his head canted forward on his chest.

The man walked
across the room, eased himself back into his seat and picked up the thread of
his story. Violence, it seemed, came easy to him.

“How long do I
have?” Vivian said.

Terri smiled.
“Ahh, the crucial question. See this?” She held an object up to the camera.

Vivian nodded,
her stomach running through another set of acrobatics. Adrenaline dumped into
her veins.

She knew just
where this was heading.

“At 6:04 p.m.
this evening, the sun will hang in the sky at a location directly over latitude
22.4, longitude -100.3. At this time of year, and in this precise location, the
potency of the UVB rays will be just about as powerful as they get all year
long. In other words, things could get pretty uncomfortable for ol’ Mikey
here.”

Terri had
displayed a horrible object; it was a large glass lens, similar to a magnifying
glass. The contraption had an aluminum reflection screen behind it, and a
housing that held it secure in a tripod.

“You tried to
leave my children outside in the freezing cold, Vivian. My husband
died
out there, alone and injured. If you,” she fumed, her eyes shining with rage,
“want anything more than a charred cinder back of your precious fuckbuddy, then
you’ll find a way to get your pretty little ass back down to Cerritos.”

“How, Terri?
How? I left you a vehicle. How do I get there?”

“A vehicle?”
Terri smirked. “A fucking
vehicle
? You left us in the middle of the
Rocky Mountains with an antique snowmobile and a couple pair of sweatpants!
You’re in
Mexico
, Vivian. There are people all around you. And I mean
that literally. You’re standing on a very influential drug dealer’s property.

“Hey, there’s an
idea! Maybe you can ask
him
for help.”

“Who? Where am
I? I need a clue—
something
, Terri. Whose property is this? Please!”

“He’s a relative
of Shorty Guzman. Sinaloa family. I’ll leave it at that. The man is bad news,
as they say. Those gators? Consider them employees. They help the Guzmans take
care of the evidence.”

Vivian swiped a
tear away. She had no idea what Terri was talking about, but she knew it was
related to the drug trade. There was danger near the border, and it seemed that
she was right square in the middle of it.

“Give me some
credit, Vivian. Fair is fair. You have almost nine hours before things get
uncomfortable for Miguel. That’s what you gave us, almost to the minute.”

“Terri,
please…is there any way we can work this out? Any other way?”

Terri’s shook
her head. “Look, even if I wanted to help you out, we can’t cash in any more
favors. We can’t step foot on that property again, and neither will the
authorities. You can be sure of that. But hey—if you get out of there, you
might just make it. The hardest part is always that first step, Vivian.”