“Just over four weeks, I think.”
“Four weeks?” Javier groaned. “Is that all it’s been? I haven’t seen the sun since I’ve been here, and they only come down to bring us food or to take one of us away.”
“Do you know where they took the others?”
“I don’t know where. But everyone else I came here with is gone. Do you know?”
A frantic, high-pitched voice called out, “They are cannibals! These people eat human flesh!”
That comment got the others wailing and arguing with each other and pounding on the cell doors. The racket continued for several long minutes. Or maybe longer; Elina had no way to keep track of time anymore. She tried to calm them down but to no avail. She finally gave up, sank against the door, and put her head in her hands.
Despair turned her to memories of her father. His strong arms and gentle eyes. And his simple faith. As a girl she would always grow so nervous before a test at school, and he would pull her close to his side.
“Why are you so anxious, Little Bean? Do you think God has gotten so busy that He’s forgotten about you?” he would whisper to her. “He knew you before you were even born.”
Her father had immigrated to Los Angeles as a young man, newly married. He had worked hard to give his wife and children a better life, putting himself through night school to get a job repairing and maintaining commercial HVAC systems. In doing so, he had taught Elina and her younger brother, Paulo, the value of an education. He showed them the example of his genuine faith in God. He gave them the stern but loving discipline that only a father can give. He taught Elina what she should look for in a husband someday by the way he treated her mother. And in the same way he taught Paulo how he should treat his future wife. That a man should be willing to sacrifice everything for his family. And that such a man could be strong and wise and loving at the same time.
How she missed him now, and her memories only made her heart ache all the more as she longed to hear his voice again. She had been thirteen when he was killed. And in many ways his murder had been the catalyst for her joining the police department. It was a senseless, violent murder by some useless thug who killed him for the fifty dollars in his wallet. Fifty dollars. That had been the value of her father’s life.
She recalled the anger that had burned inside her heart. A spark that grew out of her sorrow but soon hardened and coalesced into a steady, smoldering rage against the young black man who had pulled the trigger. A murderous punk with no job, no father, and a drug-addled mother, he’d turned to violence as a way to make himself into a man.
But her anger didn’t stop there. It soon burned against all the young black men she encountered. Every one of them she saw, everywhere in the city. None of them seemed to have fathers to teach them how to be real men. How to act responsibly and do an honest day’s work. They were all arrogant, misogynistic, lazy, and stupid. And violent.
So she had joined the police force to put them in jail, where they belonged.
Vale had been more accurate about her than he had probably realized. Some people the world was just better off without. Or so she’d believed.
Miguel’s voice drew her out of her thoughts. He sounded weak and obviously terrified. “It makes sense, you know?”
“What?” Elina stood and looked through the opening in her door. “What does?”
“Why they choose us. Whatever’s going on here, it makes sense why they choose us.”
“What are you talking about?”
“Think about it. We don’t have any real identification. No driver’s licenses or Social Security numbers. And most of us have no families here, at least none who would ever report us missing. We’re the perfect victims. No one cares what happens to us. No one will ever come looking for us.”
Chapter 19
Elina heard footsteps approaching. Multiple footsteps that echoed through the tunnels. The voices of the other prisoners began wailing, pleading for mercy in Spanish. A few seconds later the footsteps approached Elina’s door and a shadow appeared at her window.
A light blinked on and flooded the tiny room.
Elina winced and shielded her eyes. She could tell it was just a flashlight, but the brightness was still painful.
“Now we can do this the easy way,” came Carson’s distinct voice, “or we can do it the fun way.”
“What are you talking about?”
“Just do what I say,” Carson said. “Turn around, face the wall, and lie down on your stomach with your hands behind you. And don’t move.”
While Elina’s initial impulse was defiance, she decided it would be more prudent, given her situation, to comply with the orders. They were pretty standard directions to get a suspect safely handcuffed. Besides, if they had wanted to shoot her, they could have done that through the window bars. She turned and lay down as Carson had directed.
A moment later Elina could hear them unlocking the door and a dull creak as it moaned open. Carson spoke again; this time she could tell he was inside the room.
“Keep your hands behind your back where I can see them.”
Elina felt cold steel bite down around her wrists and click. Then a pair of hands hoisted her to her feet. They turned her around, and Elina could see there was another man accompanying Carson. He stood in the doorway holding the light, and all she could tell was that he was very tall and burly.
Carson pulled her roughly out of her cell and shoved her along in front of him, up the dark passage the way they had come. Elina could hear the other captives cursing and issuing warnings, but Carson ignored them for what they were. Impotent threats.
“Where are we going?” Elina said.
Carson poked her in the back. “Just walk.”
At length they arrived at the supply closet entrance and marched through it back into the basement of Vale’s house. They walked down the corridor and stopped at one of the doors. Here, Carson pulled out his set of keys, unlocked the door, and shoved Elina through.
The room looked like an armory, with gun racks and ammo cabinets lining three of the walls. Whoever these people were, they were well armed. In the center of the room was a wooden chair with some kind of strap system rigged up, obviously to restrain whoever happened to be sitting in the chair.
Elina knew what was coming.
Carson pushed her toward the chair as his partner, the big man, took her by her bound wrists and spun her around. He was enormous—at least six foot nine, Elina guessed—with a shaved head and a thick black goatee on his jaw. She remembered him from the road. He’d been one of the guys in the pickup truck. She struggled against his force, but the man was just too overpowering. He sat her down like a rag doll and draped her arms over the backrest while Carson proceeded to strap her feet and legs to the chair’s restraints. Lastly they pulled her jacket down over her shoulders and Carson tore open her shirt halfway to her waist.
At that point two other men entered the room. Elina recognized the tall man with reddish hair and a beefy mustache as the driver of the pickup truck, the guy who’d nearly shot her with her own gun. The second man she hadn’t seen before. He was small and clean-shaven with short brown hair parted to the side, and he carried a leather satchel. These two didn’t say anything but stood off along the perimeter of the room with the big man while Carson paced in front of Elina. He carried something that looked like a nightstick but which Elina recognized immediately as a stun baton.
“So you’re a police officer, eh?”
Elina blinked, taken aback by the question. “Um, yeah… I thought we had estab—”
She felt a sharp jolt and sting on her cheek as Carson backhanded her again. Elina swooned for a moment, gathering her wits. She could feel her lip swelling and her cheek throbbing.
“What?” she said. “I’m answering your question!”
Carson chortled. “I know. That was for spying on Mr. Vale.” He held up the baton.
