Chapter Seventy-Seven
Nathan
I was frustrated with myself for losing track of time. It wasn’t Bree’s fault that the small, bare room caused her to panic. She had been near inconsolable after they shut the door. I forgot everything else and knelt on the floor to comfort her.
It was a relief when Bree finally stood up and brushed herself off. “Knock on the door,” she said. “I have to go to the bathroom.”
I knocked and yelled but the guards didn’t open the door. Finally I heard one of them tell me something about a bucket. There was nothing else in the room and then I remembered the ragged blanket in the corner.
I pulled it away and showed Bree. “There’s a bucket.”
For a second it looked as if the flood of tears would start over. Then Bree primly spread out the blanket and told me to hold it up. She even laughed a little when she looked up and saw my eyes screwed shut in order to give her privacy.
It wasn’t until we’d settled back down on the floor, Bree tight in my arms, that I realized I had not kept track of the time. Soon I wasn’t sure if we’d been in the room for hours or if it was approaching a full day.
Panic didn’t set in until Bree stopped talking. For a while we were able to keep quiet small talk going, just in order to feel normal. We joked about motel rooms. We wished for the best of our favorite foods. We even argued over our favorite fairy tales.
“There is no way that Cinderella is better than Red Riding Hood,” I argued. “She doesn’t do anything for herself and she runs away.”
“Red Riding Hood is totally oblivious,” Bree said. “She has no idea she’s stuck in a room with a wolf.”
That was the last thing Bree said. She sat shivering in my arms and stopped responding to my questions.
“Bree, I’m so sorry. I’ll get you out of this, I promise,” I whispered against her hair.
She nodded but it was hard to tell if it was a response or a shudder. Bree’s body shivered despite the warm temperature in the room and that’s when I knew she was truly terrified.
And nothing I said could lessen her fears. I had no idea what the cartel had in store for us. They didn’t take betrayal lightly and I couldn’t imagine a scenario in which we could convince Adrian Juarez to let us go.
“Wait!” My realization made me sit up and Bree startled upright. “I heard the guard answer my question through the door.”
I hauled Bree to her feet and rushed over to the door. Pressing my ear hard against the surface, I could make out two intermittent voices. They snubbed each other’s favorite football teams and then a long silence would follow.
It was the same for an hour, maybe more. Bree huddled on the floor by my feet while I stayed pressed to the door until my ear was raw.
Then the shift change came.
I moved along closer to where the guards were standing. The new men were briefing the others on what had been decided.
“Bree. Bree.” I nudged her with my foot. “Stand up. I need your help.”
Bree looked up at me as if waking from a long sleep. “What?”
“I can’t hear what the guards are saying and I think it’s about us,” I said. I held out a hand.
Bree took it and hauled herself up to standing. She shoved me aside and pressed her ear to the door. I smiled in relief. Just the idea that I needed help was enough to revive Bree.
“They’re saying something about a bunker.” Bree shifted and pressed her ear to the door again. “Mexico City. The bunker is in Mexico City. One of the guards has two sisters there that he hopes he won’t have to see. The other one wants to see his sisters. Now they’re calling each other names.”
I laughed. “Yeah, more of that stuff. We need some entertainment.”
The bunker in Mexico City was interesting but it was hardly information we could use. I was just happy that Bree was once again bright-eyed and active.
“No, wait. He just said it. One guard said ‘we have to be ready to move the Americans.’ He’s just happy he doesn’t have to guard us there. There’s apparently no cell reception or WiFi in the bunker.” Bree turned to me, a worried creased deepening in the middle of her forehead.
“Moving us is risky for them. It’s good news for us,” I said.
Bree shushed me and listened at the door again. “He’s complaining about how far underground the bunker.”
Bree’s voice caught and I knew what she was thinking. The bunker was sounding more like a grave.
“This is our opportunity,” I said. “I’ll make sure we never get to that bunker.”
“Wait. Shh!” Bree shifted again and pressed her ear hard to the door. “Armored car? Why would they be talking about an armored car?”
I balled my hands into fists and gave the opposite wall a hard punch. “It’s all my fault. They saw how fast I got us out of the restraints in the van, so they don’t want to take any chances. They’re going to transport us in an armored car not to keep us safe but to keep us contained.”
I cocked back to punch the wall again but Bree clutched my arm. “Wait. This is our opportunity! The armored car. It’s not here. They keep talking about it coming to meet them somewhere in the desert. He hopes they’re on time because the van doesn’t have air conditioning.”
I stepped back from the wall and paced around the small room. “So, if we’ve heard them right they are planning to drive us out in the van, meet an armored car, and transfer us.”
Bree nodded, the color draining from her face. “And they are going to take us to Mexico City in the armored car and put us in some underground bunker that even the guards hate.”
She sank to the floor and leaned back against the door. Her eyes took on the faraway glaze that I had worried over for hours.
“Bree, please. Hang on. I’m working on a plan for us to escape during the transfer,” I said.
“And go where? We’ll be surrounded by armed men in the middle of the desert. Unless you can make a helicopter magically appear, we aren’t going anywhere but to the bunker.” Bree shivered and drew her knees up to her chest.
I paced around the room. “There’ll be a way to distract the guards. Maybe get them to open fire on each other accidentally. Our best bet will be to go for the armored car. I’ll take care of the driver and we’ve got ourselves a vehicle.”
“I don’t want to hear any more gunfire.” Bree’s voice was hollow. She shook her head in the negative and then couldn’t seem to stop.
I knelt down in front of her. “Bree, you have to believe I’ll come up with something. I’ll figure out a way to get us out of here.”
She didn’t say anything. Bree hunched her shoulders and pulled her knees in tighter.
Then I realized my mistake. I took both of Bree’s hands and kissed her knuckles. The only thing that revived her before was action, and now I expected her to just sit back while I came up with an impossible plan. If I wanted Bree to remain calm and alert, I needed to ask for her input.
“How can we start a fight amongst the guards?” I asked her. “Think. You have to help me. How can we get them into an argument.”
Bree blinked and brightened up. “They’ve already been arguing about football. Tell them you overheard the other trashing their team.”
I smiled, relieved to see the light back in her eyes. “If we can get them riled up enough, it’ll be the perfect distraction. We get into the armored car, lock the doors, and then hijack it.”
Bree and I hammered out the details and a half dozen different scenarios. Every time she started to flag and the worried, pale look took over her face, I’d ask her to run over the plan with me again.
We really did work better together and I was counting on that to get us out of the cartel’s clutches.