“They okay?”
I shake my head. “No, they’re not…they were in an accident yesterday, and I’m driving as fast as I can to see them.”
She purses her lips, gives a slight shake of her head. “Oh, ma’am, I’m sorry. Are you all right to drive? Is there anything I can do for you?”
I blow my nose. “Ma’am, you’ve been helpful. Honest. I just need to get going, that’s all. I appreciate you checking in on me. That’s very thoughtful of you.”
She says, “Well, I know you’re probably in a hurry, so travel safe. I’ll say a prayer for you and your family. Nothing more important than family, am I right?”
“You’re one hundred percent right,” I say, wiping my fingers clean, and she gives me a wave, drives off, and it just hits me.
Denise and Tom.
That evil voice inside of me, once more.
You know what always happens to most kidnap victims…they may already be dead.
“Shut up,” I whisper, and I clean the trash off my Wrangler’s hood and get back to my mission.
CHAPTER 41
TOM CORNWALL’S catalog and memory of pain is pretty thin, ranging from a broken collarbone while playing high school football to having a jerk of a medical intern putting in two stitches without benefit of anesthesia to fix a cut finger to a piece of shrapnel that nicked him in the ribs in Syria two years back.
So he sees with horror the steady, hot flame of the hand-held torch that Pelayo Abboud is confidently holding in his right hand, and he thinks, It’ll be over soon, it’ll be over soon, knowing the pain that is coming his way will be the worst he’s ever felt in his life, and with the terror coursing through him as the strong man holds his wrist steady, another voice inside of him says: Be strong for Denise. Be strong for Denise. Don’t traumatize her any more. Be strong for Denise.
Then Pelayo lowers his clenched hand with the torch down and—
A lick of flame from the surface of the sun reaches out and laps his arm.
He screams in absolute and bone-crushing pain.
He’s on the floor, sobbing, crying, holding his left arm, shaking all over, his arm shaking the worst, like an exposed tree limb being hit by a strong breeze. He hears another scream and it’s his daughter, and in a sluggish way he thinks, Little girl, what are you screaming about? I’m the one who’s just been burnt.
There’s an acrid smell in the room, of burnt hair and flesh, and he grits his teeth, howling, still holding his wrist up, and then rolls over and vomits up his last meal, whatever the hell that was. Through a fog he hears voices and he’s being moved around and checked and probed, and his little girl is still screaming, and in the thickness of it all, he wants to shout out, Go away! All of you, go away!
He’s picked up and dropped on the other bed. His vision is gray, and his mouth tastes like old nickels, and his arm, his arm, oh my God, his arm, and a man grabs his hair and tugs him back, and Pelayo says slowly and carefully, “You’ve learned a lesson, my friend. Don’t try to escape again. Don’t try to fight me. Don’t try to resist. Don’t make me repeat this lesson, for if I do, your little girl will be the one receiving it.”
Voices, then he hears the distant click of a door being opened, and then the sound of metal hitting metal as the door is slammed shut. He grits his teeth again as the pain continues to throb along his wrist and forearm and right to the base of his brain, one big throb at a time, like a slow wave of hot lava, moving like it’s controlled by the tides.
“Daddy, Daddy,” Denise says, sobbing, and now the guilt collapses over him and he takes a deep breath, and another, and he rolls over, trying to hide his wrist from his little girl, and in a shaky voice says, “You just stay there, all right? Don’t come over here. Just stay there.”
She sobs again. “Daddy, what can I do? What can I do?”
He closes his eyes. His girl is still one brave cookie, bless her.
The pain grows and grows along his forearm, and he lets out a low, heavy moan.
Tom grits his teeth. “Stay brave, hon. Stay brave. Do that for me…and your mother. All right?”
She sobs for another moment, and says, “Daddy?”
“Yes, hon?” God, the pain, the pain…
“I want Mommy to kill him.”
He almost smiles at the determined voice of his young sweetie.
“Me, too, hon. Me, too.”
CHAPTER 42
SPECIAL AGENT Rosaria Vasquez steps out of her car as she sees the young Army officer, Lieutenant Preston Baker, walk away from his rusted red Nissan Sentra to the front door of the apartment complex he lives in, nearly an hour away from Fort Belvoir. Scanning the sad-looking two-story structure that has its siblings scattered around beyond distant parking lots, she sees the entire story of the place. The house was slapped up in a hurry when Fort Belvoir expanded years ago, meeting minimum building codes and using cheap lumber and materials, and the roof is now peeling shingles, the clapboards are warped and shedding paint, and the front lawns—which should have been maintained over the years by the property owners—are merely trampled-down dirt decorated with swing sets, barbecue stations, and broken toys.
It’s a familiar place, bringing back memories of when she briefly resided in such buildings, as a young ward of the state of Maryland.
She briskly walks forward, wanting to catch up with Lieutenant Baker before he passes through the lobby area. He’s slim and freckle-faced, has short red hair, and is wearing the standard ACUs. She knows why he’s here, so far from base. Better to be on your own off-property than to be known around your station as a “base rat,” one who refuses to leave the base boundaries.
He notices her and Rosaria flashes her badge. “Lieutenant Baker? Special Agent Vasquez, CID. I need a few minutes of your time.”
He just nods and his shoulders sag a bit, like he had always anticipated this happening, a CID agent wanting to talk to him.
“Sure,” he says. “Right this way.”
The inside of his small apartment surprises her, for it’s neat and tidy. The furniture is old and dented, no doubt salvaged from Goodwill or the Salvation Army, but the old carpet looks like it’s been freshly vacuumed, and there’s a small TV and homemade bookshelves, lengths of wood and concrete blocks jammed full of paperback books. Rosaria has spent enough time on previous interviews with male service personnel, wading through ankle-deep piles of trash—porn magazines, empty pizza boxes, crushed takeout containers—that this is a nice change of pace.
She sits across from him, and he answers her initial questions with ease and no sign of the earlier concern. Born in Washington, local schools, community college. One day, on a 9/11 anniversary, he spent hours glued to the television, seeing the old footage of the collapsing towers, the burning Pentagon, and the smoking hole in the ground in Pennsylvania.
So he enlisted and eventually entered the military’s famed language school in Monterey, learned Pashto, and after additional intelligence training, was sent off to Afghanistan.
“I was assigned to be with Captain Cornwall,” he says, his pale, freckled hands holding his Army cover between his knees. “We were at FOB Healy in Kunduz Province…the place was named after a Navy SEAL hero who died a number of years back. You ever been at a forward operating base, ma’am?”