Chapter Sixteen

When Zalaya stepped through the bedroom door two hours later, the sun was setting and the world outside the window was touched by amber. Minnie sat on the side of the bed, wolfing down food. She lowered the tortilla as he appeared, her heart leaping.

She badly wanted to question him about Blanco’s death. The eye of the camera behind him and the microphone under the bed kept her silent.

He looked irritated. “I told you to be naked and waiting.”

“Then you shouldn’t have sent food,” she said crisply. “Although that wouldn’t have gained you what you wanted either. Shoot me if you want. I’m too starving to care.” She bit into the tortilla, savoring the delicious spices.

“Oh, keep up your strength, by all means,” he returned. He made his way to the bathroom, leaning heavily on the cane. He paused by the head of the bed, opposite her. Then, as quick as a snake, his hand snatched up the chain where it lay on the bed. He hauled on it, dragging her across the bed toward him.

She held in the startled cry that pushed at her lips but was unable to resist the sheer power exerted on the chain. She slithered over the bedcover like a hooked fish.

He looped the chain around the bedpost, forcing her arm up high. “If you think to move me with your pleas of hunger, you’ve misjudged me,” he told her. He put the cane aside and limped around the bed, bringing the extra length of chain with him, keeping it taut so her bound wrist could not slip free.

When he reached the other side of the bed, she scrunched up to the post where her arm was anchored, as far from him as possible. He gave an impatient sound and dug into his pocket. She thought he reached for his gun, but what he pulled out was a switchblade knife. He triggered the blade and climbed across the bed toward her.

All Minnie could see was the knife coming toward her. It looked huge. Her breath jammed in her throat as the knife came to rest against her cheek. Zalaya’s gaze was relentless.

“Lift up your other hand. Reach for the other post,” he said quietly.

The blade was cold against her cheek as she lifted her hand obediently. He looped chain around the wrist and the post, holding it there, before lifting the blade away.

She was bound and helpless again.

Zalaya folded the knife closed with a practiced motion and weighed it in his hand as he considered her. “On second thought,” he murmured and flicked the knife open again. He brought it up toward her throat and she was helpless to prevent her shudder. She drew herself back, away from the blade.

He slipped the tip beneath the button on her dress and the button flew across the bed to patter against the closet.

She looked down at the tufts of thread that remained as the neckline of the dress sagged apart then up at him. “You asshole, you deliberately let me think you were going to cut my throat.” Her voice was thick with a lethal cocktail of anger, fear and relief.

In the waning light his dark gaze lifted to her face. “Learn the lesson well. Do not presume you know me.” He dropped the knife to the next button and it went flying like the first. “The fact is you will never know what I will do next.” The third button, the one that held the dress closed over her breasts, flipped away at the touch of the tip of the knife. “You will never understand me and should not bother to try.” The fourth button flopped onto the bed by her hip and now the dress gaped open. Only gravity held the fine fabric over her breasts and the next button would take care of that. He rested the knife against the button and looked up at her again. “Your only option is to obey me.”

He gripped the hem of the dress, stretching it taut so he could shear the threads beneath the button. The button dropped to the cover, the dress slid aside and revealed her breasts and most of her torso. She waited for him to look up again and spoke as evenly and as clearly as she could. “You and whose army?”

His gaze dropped, his focus turned inward and his face grew still. She saw his chest lift and lower, as if he had given a subtle, hidden sigh. “Not mine,” he whispered. Then he straightened and folded the knife up with the same practiced flick of the wrist, almost like a man shaking himself back to reality.

Minnie stared at him, her heart hurting as it kicked up to yet a higher speed. It was the first time she had seen Zalaya’s mask slip to reveal Duardo beneath. Had she seen doubt in his face? For one tiny moment, it had seemed like he was troubled. Given the challenges he must have faced every day in this role, what had happened to make him doubt in that way?

Serrano? The meeting she had witnessed had troubled her, too.

A heavy pummeling on the door made them both jump. Minnie gasped. Her heart could not stand much more of this. She was beginning to feel sick from the yo-yo of emotions and the surges of adrenaline.

Zalaya flipped the knife open again, staring at her. “Stay still,” he warned, resting the flat of the blade between her breasts. “Stay very still.”

She froze.

“Who dares to bother me?” he shouted in Spanish.

The pummeling stopped. “Forgive me, Colonel. I would not dream...” came the start of a timid reply, before it was drowned by a louder basso bellow.

“Just open the damn door, you imbecile!”

Minnie caught her breath. It sounded like Serrano. The door swept open and Serrano himself strode into the room.

She nearly jumped. Nearly. The cold blade against her chest kept her still.

Serrano stood barely five and a half feet tall, yet his girth was that of a much bigger man. He was staring at Zalaya. As his feet carried him into the center of the room, he registered what Zalaya was doing and blinked.

“They told me your tastes run to these sorts of games.” Serrano’s gaze crawled over Minnie, taking in her exposed breasts, her belly. She wanted to grimace her distaste at such ogling. Challenge. Always challenge, she reminded herself. She lifted her chin to stare Serrano in the eye.

Zalaya swiveled the knife shut with a snap and stood up. He was taller than Serrano by seven inches. “They, whoever they are, were right about me,” he said dryly. “Why interrupt me when you can clearly see I am occupied?”

Serrano cleared his throat and dragged his gaze away from Minnie. Beads of sweat gathered at his temples. Her nudity, her position, the knife at her breast...they had disconcerted Serrano.

She kept her gaze locked on him, her face neutral, knowing the steadiness of her gaze would add to his discomfort.

“Should we go into your office?” Serrano suggested to Zalaya, waving toward her. He kept his gaze on Zalaya.

Zalaya shrugged. “Where we speak is immaterial.”

“How much does she understand?” Serrano asked, lowering his voice.

“That is also irrelevant.”

Serrano shifted on his feet, growing more uncomfortable with each passing second. He cleared his throat again and looked at the ground, refocusing. Then he confronted Zalaya. “I want to see your ruined eye,” he said.

Zalaya crossed his arms, looking as unruffled as usual. He smiled. “Do you hover around car accidents, too?”

Serrano’s face tightened. “I learned today what lies beneath that patch of yours. You said it was a shooting accident, yes?”

Zalaya studied Serrano, taking his time. “A rifle with a faulty barrel backfired,” he said at last, his voice and expression cool.

Serrano nodded. “That’s right. I want to see it.”

“Why would you need this confirmation? You have been satisfied with my work. I have proved my worth. Why does it matter what lies beneath the patch?”

Serrano’s face darkened with building anger. Minnie could see that he had forgotten she was in the room. “Indulge me, Colonel,” he said, his own voice soft. “Call it my little whim.”

Again, Zalaya took his time, assessing Serrano. He moved with great reluctance as he reached up to the leather patch covering his eye and lifted it. Minnie could not see beneath. It was his right eye, the side furthest from her. It seemed that as he lifted the patch he turned his body slightly, so she could not possibly see anything.

Serrano looked for only a second or two then dropped his gaze and took a deep breath.

“Now you understand why I do not share this story with just anyone,” Zalaya said, putting the patch back into place and carefully readjusting the strap.

Serrano nodded and gave a small smile. “Forgive me for doubting,” he said.

“There is nothing to forgive. These are suspicious times.”

“And you are a master at shepherding those suspicions. You were right, I should have let that be enough.” He glanced at Minnie and blinked again, recalling what he had interrupted. “I should...” He waved toward the door. “I should go.”

“Yes.”

Zalaya’s frank answer made Serrano blink again. “Yes, well...” He crossed to the door and opened it. “I wish you a good evening,” he said formally. With the slightest nod of his head, he stepped through and shut the door.

As soon as the door was shut, Zalaya spun to face the head of the bed and let his head hang, the one good eye shut tight. Minnie could see the tendons in his throat working, the chest rising and falling rapidly. He seemed to be trying to marshal his reaction, to ride it out.

The camera. It saw everything and reported it all faithfully. Duardo was hiding his reaction from the camera.

She fought the natural impulse to look up at it and kept her gaze on him. He drew a deeper breath and lifted his head, looking at her. His face dropped back into the hard lines she had grown used to. Silently, he walked to the head of the bed and unsnarled the chains from around the post.

In English he spoke in a low voice, “Go clean yourself.” He rounded the bed, limping badly, dropped the knife to the bed and grabbed his cane. He reached over with his other hand to slide her wrist free from the bedpost. “Shower. Primp. I care not.” He paced to the door, leaning heavily on the cane.

Minnie massaged her wrists, studying the door he closed behind him. Clearly, he did not intend to return soon and she had no objections to obeying his last order. A shower would help wash away the last few minutes and she had always done her best thinking in the bathroom.

She went to climb from the bed and her thigh rolled against something hard. She looked down and saw Zalaya’s folded knife jammed between her leg and the coverlet. He had failed to take it with him.

As if it were yesterday, she heard Duardo’s voice in her mind, the words he had spoken as he pressed a different knife into her hands—If you are in a place where I cannot help you, then you can be certain you are in the worst sort of trouble there is. Your only choice will be to use the knife or die.

Minnie casually rolled over to the edge of the bed, bringing the knife with her, held between the flat of her hand and her thigh. She walked into the bathroom, over to the toilet where the camera could not see her, the chain dragging on the tiles behind her.

Thoughtfully, she lifted the lid on the cistern tank and dropped the knife into the clean water and heard the quiet “clink” as it touched bottom. She replaced the lid carefully, making sure it fit back down the way it had been seated before.

The rest of Duardo’s instructions were emblazoned in her memory. “You use it, you hear me? It does not matter what you do with it. Stab, slice, hack. You keep using it and you get yourself out of trouble if you can. If it comes to it, you use the knife.”

* * * * *

Vistaria lay in the next time zone from Mexico, which meant that the east coast of the United States was four hours ahead. When four a.m. crept closer, Carmen eased her way out of the attic using one of the minor entrances she had been employing for the last three days. It put her at the far north end of the third floor main passageway. At this end, on this level, there were offices for junior personnel with three or four men per room.

In the last three days she had learned that Serrano had taken the big, secondary dining room in the south wing for his own office suite. She had watched him shut down the lights in that office and leave for his bedroom suite across the hall nearly three hours before.

This end of the palace was deserted at this time of night.

As she crept along the passage, watching for the security cameras and sliding beneath or around their range of vision and flitting from shadow to shadow, she spared a thought for Minnie. In three days of peering through ceiling vents, listening and creeping around the corridors at night, she had failed to locate Zalaya’s offices. She knew only that they were on the second floor but had dared not explore that level, for Zalaya had surrounded himself with night owls and dense levels of security.

She eased open the door of the nearest office and slipped inside. Four officers used this room, with a secretary at the front to act as receptionist. She stepped past the secretary’s desk even though a computer sat on it. A secretary would most certainly know more about computers than the officers he served and might notice if anything was out of place or different.

She headed for the biggest desk and the computer sitting on the smaller trolley next to it. The pleated and studded leather chair behind the desk said the most senior officer sat here. She sank onto the leather and ran her hands over the front of the computer tower, feeling her way. She depressed the biggest button she could find and was rewarded by a quiet poofing sound as the monitor warmed up and turned on.

She grabbed the mouse and explored the hard drive quickly. “Knew you’d be too afraid to screw with anything.” Pleased, she flipped over to the Internet browser program and logged into her Facebook account. She called up the private message function.

The chat window opened, showing he was online.

She tapped out her message.

Hola, Ricky. Still popping Red Bull for breakfast?

It seemed like a week passed before the status line showed he was typing.

carmen????? :)

Carmen took a deep breath, feeling the first positive emotion she had felt in weeks. It was hope.

She began typing. Fast.

* * * * *

Soto and the IT engineer, Morales, were too eager. They pulled ahead of Zalaya in their rush to get to the end of the corridor. Only, Zalaya would not be hurried and it forced them to slow down and wait.

At the door they paused and looked at Zalaya, who came up behind them and indicated they could go ahead.

Morales turned the handle and stepped back and Soto, who had the gun, went first. Morales slipped in behind him and turned on the lights.

The room was empty. Soto, his head down as he sighted along the barrel, swiveled the gun as he quartered the room visually, checking each desk and chair. Then he lowered it and looked at Morales with a sour expression. He glanced at Zalaya who had stepped in behind them. “False alarm,” he said, disgusted.

Zalaya nodded. “At four in the morning, I expected little else.”

Morales shook his head. “I’m not wrong. Someone was using the captain’s computer and accessing the Internet.” He moved behind the big desk at the back of the room and pulled out the leather chair.

Soto checked beneath the desk before tapping the blank monitor screen. “It looks like you are wrong, though,” he told Morales. He glanced at Zalaya again. “I apologize for disturbing you at this hour, sir.”

Zalaya nodded and turned toward the door. “Let’s leave, gentlemen.”

“Wait,” Morales said, pulling the chair back farther so he could see. “The CPU is still running.”

Soto frowned. “What the hell does that mean?”

Zalaya came up to the desk. “Turn the screen on,” he said softly.

Morales complied. The screen glowed and images assembled into the familiar front screen of the network, with the password control box front and center.

“The captain just forgot to turn it off when he logged off?” Soto suggested.

Morales shook his head. “There was activity. Internet activity.”

Zalaya pointed to the screen. “The only one who could use this computer is the captain. All the pass codes are keyed to computer chip serial numbers.”

Again, Morales shook his head. “The pass code is just for accessing the proprietary network. Generic programs like Internet browsers aren’t protected.”

Zalaya considered the screen. “General programs would include chat programs, yes?”

Morales smiled. “I can’t see the captain downloading the Snapchat app. Besides, there are network overrides preventing anyone from installing executable files. We did it that way to prevent idiots from accidentally installing spyware and viruses.”

Soto frowned, for the conversation had already moved beyond the extent of his computer knowledge. He wandered around the room, checking the other computers and under the desks.

“Doesn’t Facebook have a chat function?” Zalaya asked. “That doesn’t require installing anything.”

Morales swore softly. “Yes. It does. God, I had forgotten about that.”

“Open it and check the archives,” Zalaya ordered.

Morales manipulated the mouse and clicked his way to the browser cache. “Empty. And...wait...yes, recently purged. At 4:21.”

Zalaya straightened and looked at his watch. “It’s 4:27. The user has a six-minute head start. Soto, take what men you need and quarter this wing of the building. Every floor and behind every door. I will rouse the external patrols.”

“Yes, Colonel.” Soto snapped off a salute and hurried from the room.

“Morales, I would like to see the activity log,” Zalaya said.

“I can pull a print-out off for you,” Morales answered as he shut down the computer properly.

Zalaya moved the cane to his other hand. “Let’s go then.”

“Now?”

“Now,” Zalaya confirmed.

Morales switched off the monitor and threaded his way through the desks, checking over his shoulder as Zalaya followed him.

“Turn the lights off,” Zalaya said.

“Of course, Colonel.”

* * * * *

As the room plunged back into darkness, Carmen closed her eyes and let out a shaky breath.

Well, they were on to her now. They knew she had been in the building. She was just thankful she’d had enough time to cover her tracks on the computer. If they had seen the message itself...

It was bad enough that they knew someone had sent out an illicit communication. They would not stop until they found her now.

Moving slowly, Carmen eased her way out from underneath the secretary’s desk, rolling the office chair out with her. She had few minutes left. She couldn’t stay in the building anymore. Minnie would have to fend for herself.

* * * * *

Minnie woke in the dark and instantly knew two things: it was late—or early, depending on the frame of reference—and she was alone in the bed.

It wasn’t a drowsy waking. She was instantly alert and lay blinking up at the ceiling. Had something woken her? Or had the first unbroken sleep in nearly a week restored her energy with a vengeance?

She looked toward the window to check the light and judge the time.

Duardo was silhouetted there. The first light of the coming dawn streaked across the sky and outlined his still shape at the edge of the window.

“How long have you been there?” Minnie kept her voice low. She didn’t know how sensitive the sound pick-up on the camera or the microphone under the bed was, but the conversation she’d witnessed in Serrano’s office had been clear. They had also been shouting. She kept her voice down and hoped it would be enough.

Duardo didn’t answer. He didn’t move at all.

She slid out of bed and tugged the shirt she wore back into place. She had thrown the remnants of the dress into the garbage can and taken a shirt from Zalaya’s wardrobe. It came down almost to her knees. She’d had to tear open the side seam on one side to get it over the chain. She’d tied the ragged ends together once she had it on.

She moved to stand at the window with him. “They killed General Blanco,” she murmured.

He stirred. “Yes.”

“But they were trying for Nick.”

“Yes.”

“You were right, you know. It won’t do what they intended.”

“Whether I’m right or not hardly seems to matter.”

“What does that mean?”

“I can only control things, contain them, when all the strings are in my hand.”

“You don’t have all the strings?”

Again, the contemplative silence. “Not anymore.” Another heartbeat of silence. “Things are unraveling.”

Minnie watched the red streaks fatten and glow in the sky as the sun drew closer. “It’s going to be a beautiful day,” she observed.

“‘Red in the morning, shepherd’s warning.’ Isn’t that how it goes?”

“I’ve never heard that before.”

He straightened. “It will be anything but a beautiful day.” He turned away from the window. “Be warned,” he murmured. He moved passed her, toward the office door.

“You will not sleep?”

His answer was to open the door and pace heavily to his desk. He leaned over the console and threw all the switches, turning on every bank of screens.

Then he carefully lowered himself into his chair and picked up the phone. “Consígame Soto.”