his first real eye contact with Tristan during this exchange. “I did not use you as bait. I left you alone so that if shooting started, the bullets aimed at me would in fact stay away from you. Sometimes Lady Luck gets in the way. You happened to be right where that point man walked.”
“But you waited-”
“-until exactly the moment when I had no choice but to shoot.” Jonathan completed Tristan’s sentence for him. “As for the numbers killed, trust me. I’d be thrilled if all I had to do in my job was to ask for the peaceful return of hostages and then get them. It so rarely happens that way.”
The sound of radio chatter drew Jonathan’s attention to the Sandcat. Someone was asking for a situation report.
“Big Guy!” Jonathan yelled.
“I heard.”
“Let’s drag these bodies off the road and get the hell out of here.”
“What’s happening?” Tristan asked.
Jonathan grabbed a corpse by his shirt collar and started dragging it back toward the vehicle he’d arrived in. “These guys are from the Mexican Military Police,” he explained, a little embarrassed by the strain in his voice caused by the physical effort. “They knew the terrorists who kidnapped you by name, and they were out here specifically looking for the vehicle that we took from the church. In my book, that ties them to the terrorists who took you and your friends.”
Tristan stepped over to help, grabbing the guy’s pant legs and lifting.
“Thank you,” Jonathan said. He was liking this kid. He even liked the flashes of anger. They meant he was working his way out of the poor-me funk and could actually become a helpful player in his own rescue. When Jonathan hefted the body onto the floor of the backseat and went back to grab another, Tristan went with him.
“Anyway,” Jonathan continued. “These guys clearly called in the fact that they had found the vehicle, and they’d clearly been given orders to kill us on-site when they found us. Now, their commanders are calling them back, asking how things went. The smart money says that when there’s no answer, somebody’s going to come looking for them.”
“Plus, what would happen if somebody else just happened to drive past on this road?” Tristan offered.
“Now you’re getting it,” Jonathan said. They lifted a second body and carried him to the Sandcat as well.
“I just don’t understand why all of this is happening.”
“At this point, none of us do,” Jonathan said. “Right now, we’re at that a stage that we used to call ‘adapt and evade.’ ”
“Used to? So you were in the Army or something?”
Jonathan answered with his eyebrows. It never paid to get into details about the past.
Clearing the road of the bodies didn’t take long at all. Clearing it of the blood would be a job for Mother Nature. Jonathan didn’t worry about that. (They called it a rain forest for a reason.) By the time he and Tristan had finished with their third corpse, Boxers was already done and in the process of rummaging through the front seat of the Sandcat.
“Hey, Scorpion,” Big Guy called. “You’ll want to see this.”
Tristan followed. He was becoming a shadow.
“Whatcha got?” Jonathan asked.
Boxers handed him a sheaf of papers. Printouts of pictures. Each of the kids from the school bus, plus airport security pictures of both Jonathan and Boxers. As Jonathan paged through them, he cast a glance toward Tristan. The sadness had returned to his eyes, but he managed it.
“Well, they definitely knew who they were looking for,” Jonathan mused aloud.
“I don’t like this at all,” Boxers said.
“Why?” Tristan asked. “Aren’t the police supposed to be looking for us? I mean we were kidnapped.”
“The police weren’t supposed to know that,” Jonathan explained. “That’s why Big Guy and I were here in the first place. Keeping the police in the dark was a specific element of the ransom demand. Our job was to drop off the ransom and take you home. Now, it turns out that the police were involved from the beginning.”
“Not just the police,” Boxers corrected. “The military police.”
“The chaperones aren’t here,” Tristan said.
Jonathan cocked his head. “Excuse me?”
“The chaperones,” Tristan said. “Their pictures aren’t here. All of us kids, but none of the chaperones.”
“I thought they were all killed,” Boxers said.
“They were,” Jonathan said, catching Tristan’s drift. “But how did the police know that?”
The question stopped Boxers dead. After a beat, he snorted out a laugh. “Yep, it just gets better and better.”
Five minutes later, they were ready to go. With the bodies and the vehicle stripped of weapons, ammo, and any conceivable intel, Jonathan and Boxers made sure that the corpses were all tucked inside. Boxers restarted the engine, turned the wheel just so, and then used a stout stick to lean on the gas.
The Sandcat lurched forward, then slowed to a steady roll downhill. For a second or two, it looked as if it might hit the Pathfinder, but then, in the final few feet, it veered as it should, and rolled off the edge of the road. It crashed through the underbrush, tearing up ferns and bushes. Gaining momentum on the hill, it grazed a tree, then flipped onto its side, beginning a roll that ultimately took it over the edge and down a hundred feet or more into the rocky gorge below.
When it was gone, Jonathan high-fived Boxers and then they turned to see Tristan staring at them, dumbfounded. “You know, they had families,” he said. “I don’t think there’s anything to celebrate.”
“How about the fact that that’s not us?” Boxers said.
Jonathan put a hand on the Big Guy’s arm. “Not now,” he said, and he led the way back to the Pathfinder.
As they started moving again, Boxers pointed out his mirror at the column of black smoke that was beginning to fill the sky from the spot where the Sandcat had crashed. “Yes, siree,” he said. “Better and better.”
Either Harriett hadn’t heard, or she’d chosen to ignore Gail’s warning. Either way, she was dashing toward her own death.
“Harriett!” She yelled it louder this time.
The clacking stopped.
“Come back up! They’ll be waiting for us in the lobby.”
“Waiting for
Gail moved faster down the stairs. Even though she was confident that they would not be followed, she kept her eyes and her weapon trained up the stairs. “They shot at you, too,” she corrected. “Do you know who they are?”
“I don’t know who
Gail stopped at the thirteenth-floor landing. She had to get out of this death trap of a stairwell. “I’m not going to argue with you,” she said. “If you want to have a chance at seeing tomorrow, you need to come with me.”
“Where are you going?”
“Not out the door to the lobby. Now, Harriett. Decide.”
From up here, Gail could just see the top of her head down on the eleventh-floor landing. Harriett’s hands were to her mouth, a posture of stress and indecision. This was taking way too much time, but Gail couldn’t just leave her. If it hadn’t been for Gail, Ms. Roller Derby wouldn’t be in this mess to begin with.
The clacking started again, and Gail was thrilled to see that Harriett was coming back up.
“Faster!” Gail hissed, and she headed down to meet her at the twelfth-floor landing. “What’s in here?” she asked, reaching for the door handle.
“Storage, I think,” Harriett said. “Used to be offices, but they moved everybody out.”
Gail pulled the door open carefully, revealing a large unlit space that looked like it used to be a cubicle farm, but was now home to a maze of boxes and assorted junk. On the far side, a building width away, she saw what she hoped to see: another emergency exit, with a reasonably clear aisle leading to it. As she closed the door behind her, it all went black.
“I can find the light,” Harriett said.
