threatened in order to silence his testimony against Sammy Bell and the Slater syndicate, Marilyn Schuler worked for you, and you worked for Sammy Bell. The smart money says you’re the one who can untie this knot.”
For the longest time, he just sat there, mulling over the story he’d just heard. Gail gave him space. After a minute or so, she saw the shotgun lift out of the crook of his arm, and she went to high alert-but only for an instant. He swung the weapon in a wide arc, the muzzle never in play, and set it down on the coffee table in front of the love seat.
He stood, shoved his hands into his trouser pockets, and turned to look out the front window.
“Life never ceases to surprise me,” he said, his back turned to Gail. “You don’t get into the kind of trouble I’m in and expect to survive all that long. It’s been a good run for me-nine years is about ten years longer than I had a right to. I always figured that when I was finally busted, there’d be a lot more violence.”
He turned to make eye contact, and Gail tried to conjure her most pleasant smile.
“If I tell you this, what happens to the information?”
“We use it to rescue a child.”
Navarro thought for a moment more, then resigned himself to the inevitable.
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
They walked for a long time. Evan guessed it was three hours, but it could just as well have been two or five. The jungle never changed. The heat never cooled. A foul smell filled the air at every step, as if everything around them were rotting in the heat. At first, he’d wished that he had boots like Oscar and the soldiers did, but after walking over and over again through shin-deep water, he bet they wished that they were barefoot like him. He saw a show on History Channel on trench foot, and given the shit they’d had to wade through, his guards would be lucky not to pull their skin off when they removed their socks.
No one spoke during the walk-certainly, no one spoke to him-which was fine with Evan, because he’d promised himself not to say anything to anyone until someone had answers. So he just walked. One foot in front of the other, hoping, even though it was ridiculous, that his footprints might leave a clue for someone to come and rescue him.
No one could find him out here. No one except God, of course, and as he slogged along, he offered up a continuous prayer that maybe He would at least tell Father Dom that he was okay. Father Dom would worry about that sort of thing.
It’s funny how your mind shifts into neutral when there’s nothing to say and nothing to see. It occurred to him that despite the hours spent marching along like this, he had no real memory of any of it. There were no special plants or flowers that stuck out to him-although he knew that he had seen some beautiful ones. It’s as if the sameness just attracted more sameness, and in the end it all translated into nothingness.
He was mentally entrenched in that sameness place when he became aware of a new aroma. He didn’t know where it was coming from, but it was as if something pleasant were struggling to push away the constant fart smell of the jungle. Could it be food?
He told himself that he was just getting hungry, and that he was imagining things; but within a dozen steps or so, he changed his mind. He was definitely smelling food. His stomach rumbled.
Apparently the others smelled it, too, because the whole line picked up its pace. By Evan’s estimation, they’d been doing about one step per second, and now they were doing like twice that. Would they let him eat?
His heart skipped a beat as he had a wild thought: Maybe someone in whatever place was cooking food would help him get away. Was that too much to ask? He didn’t need a big break-a little one would do. Any port in a storm, as Father Dom used to say.
The parade picked up the pace even more as the terrain became steeper. Evan didn’t have to run, exactly, but he had to move quickly to keep from getting run over by the soldiers behind him.
The ground was hard and dry here. The hard-packed dirt felt good against the soles of his feet. And the food smelled fabulous.
Without warning, the jungle gave way to a clearing that was lined with huts that were not dissimilar to the one he woke up in yesterday. That was yesterday, wasn’t it? Maybe two days ago? A week? God, what was happening to him?
Evan didn’t know what he was expecting to see when they entered the village, but it was miles away from the fear he witnessed. Soldiers waved their rifles in the air and shouted words he didn’t understand.
As the villagers scattered, there was no way to count them all, but Evan thought that there had to be forty or fifty of them at least. He noted, too, that they seemed either to be young or old, with few in between. Certainly, there were no young men. In fact, if you discounted the soldiers in their little parade, Evan was the oldest boy in sight. Even without thinking it all the way through, he knew there was no way for that to be good news.
The two soldiers in the front of the line took off at a run, chasing villagers who seemed to be running for their lives. The one who caught Evan’s eye just because he was closest seemed focused on one of the girls in the crowd, and she seemed equally intent on staying away from him. The soldier chased her at a dead sprint. At the last second, just as he was about to catch up, she cut hard to the right and evaded his grasp.
The soldier shouted at her-bitter staccato syllables that could only be cursing. The girl ran faster. The soldier stopped abruptly, stooped, and snatched a baseball-size rock from the ground and hurled it at her. From ten yards away, the rock sailed with no arc and caught the girl in the back of the head, sending her sprawling face-first into the dirt.
She screamed as she fell and clutched her head with both hands.
Evan saw a flash of red through her fingers. All around him, the other villagers had stopped running. Many stood and watched the attack, and Evan couldn’t believe that no one was doing anything to intervene.
The soldier wasn’t running anymore. He walked with long strides up to the girl and shouted at her. When she curled up tighter on the ground, he bent at the waist, grabbed a fistful of hair and pulled. She screamed louder, and he yanked, lifting her to her feet. When she tried to wriggle free, the soldier hit her across her face with an open hand. The blow seemed to stun her, and as she stood there, the soldier ripped open her shirt and yanked it down off her shoulders, exposing her breasts. She made a tired gesture to cover herself up, but when the soldier slapped her hands away, she surrendered the effort.
The soldier bent and kissed a breast, then turned back to face the rest of the soldiers, displaying the girl like a trophy, with one hand draped over her shoulder and the other rubbing his dick through his pants. He gave a thumbs-up sign, then shoved the girl through the door of the nearest hut. Three seconds later, an old woman and a little boy hurried out through the same door.
“A young man has needs that cannot be denied,” Oscar said from very close by.
Evan turned to see him standing at his side. The boy just stared.
“I could have them provide for you, too, if you would like,” Oscar said. He winked.
Evan backed away.
“Don’t wander far,” Oscar said with a smirk. “What the jungle takes it rarely gives back.” Behind him, the girl screamed from inside the hut and then fell suddenly silent after the scream was cut short.
Evan’s head swam with confusion. Where the hell was he? What was going on? Why were all these people just standing around as a girl was being raped? Yeah, he knew that’s what was happening. You don’t live the kind of life he’d lived and not know what a rape looks like when you see it.
The villagers outnumbered them ten-to-one. Why couldn’t they-
A hand landed on his shoulder. Evan jumped as if shot with electricity and whirled to see an old woman very close by, reaching out to touch him. He stepped to the side, the only way to distance himself without stepping closer to Oscar and the soldiers.
The woman smiled, revealing kind eyes and a mouthful of half-missing teeth. “Boy,” she said. She beckoned him with a gnarled old hand. “Wheat boy. Comb.”
She meant no harm, he knew. He recognized the friendliness in her eyes. In fact, she might have been trying to protect him, but it was hard to walk toward someone so…well, ugly.
“You. Wheat boy. Eat?” She pantomimed putting food in her mouth and smiled again.
Food. His awareness of the cooking smell returned, and with it his stomach rumbled. God yes, he’d love some
