A King's ransom

“Run, Stacy! Run!” Matthew turned to escape, but just as he did, a huge hand grasped his ankle. “Let me go! Let me go!”

“?Silencio!”

Matthew was suddenly shaken from his memories. The voice in Spanish had come from somewhere above his dark, covered hole, a place beyond the misery of his childhood. He’d been unaware of his own shouting, though it had obviously been loud enough for the guards to hear.

The leaves rattled overhead. Someone was opening the roof. Matthew prepared himself for the sudden burst of light, but even on a cloudy day the brightness was too much for eyes that lived in darkness. He couldn’t look up.

“Lunch,” the man said.

The familiar voice surprised him. It wasn’t a guard, he knew, since none but Joaquin spoke English. Slowly he looked up toward the hole in the roof, and his eyes began to focus. “Emilio?” he said.

“Yeah,” he said, then made a face. “Man, it stinks in here.”

Matthew was still woozy. “What-what are you doing here?”

“Bringing you lunch.”

“Are you crazy? They’ll shoot you.”

“No. I’m a trusty now.”

“Huh?”

He handed down a tin plate with two cold sausages. Just the sight of processed meat had Matthew on the verge of relapse.

“Joaquin trusts me now, so he gives me little tasks.”

His head was pounding, his belly racked with cramps. It was all so confusing. “Why?”

“He just does.”

Matthew slowly rose to his knees, looked Emilio in the eye as best he could from his hole. His thoughts were jumbled from fever, but he struggled to string the truth together. “You ratted on Jan, didn’t you?”

“What?”

“Jan and I talked, just before Nisho’s husband was killed. He accused you of telling Joaquin that he was planning an escape. I told him he was crazy. But it wasn’t paranoia, was it? You told.”

Emilio checked over his shoulder, as if to see whether any of the guards were close enough to overhear. “Of course I told,” he said softly.

“I can’t believe you did that.”

“I had to. That Swede is trouble. That first day we left the FARC camp, Joaquin warned us what would happen if you tried to escape. If you failed, Joaquin would kill me, the daddy. If you succeeded, he’d kill Rosa, the mommy.”

“He made those rules to keep me from escaping.”

“Not just you. He had the same rules for Jan. And then the idiot came to me, asking me to escape with him. He expected me to leave Rosa behind for Joaquin to execute. Wouldn’t you have snitched?”

Matthew tried to focus, but in his weakened, sick condition, things were starting to spin. Murders, false accusers, snitches. This was Pitcairn Island.

“If Joaquin trusts you,” said Matthew, “then get me out of here. You know I didn’t kill Nisho’s husband.”

“Just because Joaquin lets me bring you lunch doesn’t mean I can sit down and negotiate with him.”

“Try,” he said, his voice breaking. “Somebody has to get me out of this hole. I’m going crazy in here.”

“Hang in there, okay? I don’t think you’ll be in much longer. He let Jan out yesterday.”

“Him?” Matthew said, nearly losing it. “Why him? Why am I getting the worse punishment?”

“Maybe Joaquin thinks your spirit is stronger. He wants to break it.”

A wave of nausea hit him, chipping away at his will to endure. “If he’s going to kill me, tell him to just do it. Please, I don’t want to go through this hell and end up dead anyway.”

“You can’t give up, Matthew. I don’t think he’ll kill you, even if he thinks you killed Nisho’s husband.”

“How do you know?”

“The guards tell me that the Japanese guy wasn’t such a big loss, at least from Joaquin’s point of view. He thinks Nisho’s family will pay as much for her release as they would have paid for both of them. It’s not like buying two cars with a price tag for each of them. These kidnappers just come up with a big number that they think the family can pay. Joaquin’s not going to lower his price just because it’s only Nisho’s life on the line and not Nisho and her husband.”

“So I guess he’s glad her husband is gone.”

“I wouldn’t say ‘glad.’ ”

“I would. Have you seen the way he looks at Nisho? He’s more than happy to have her husband out of the way.”

“I haven’t really noticed.”

“Then take notice. I don’t care if you are a trusty, Emilio. I know you’re a decent man. If somebody doesn’t stand up to these guards, they’re going to have their way with Nisho, then Rosa, then Nisho again, and again, and again. I can’t do anything from in here, so it’s up to you. Don’t let it happen, you hear me?”

Their eyes locked. Matthew was stone-faced, unflinching.

“I’ll see what I can do.”

Emilio pulled away. Matthew just watched as the leaves and fronds returned to their place on the roof overhead, and his hole returned to darkness.

40

Guillermo canceled on me. I didn’t get a specific reason, just a message at my hotel that he couldn’t take me out for the Flor de Cana rum and additional rounds of truth-telling that he’d promised. Somehow I wasn’t surprised.

I ate dinner in my room, alone, then called my mother to let her know that I hadn’t been eaten by cannibals, thrown into a raging volcano as a human sacrifice, or otherwise victimized in any of the horrible ways that she’d imagined were commonplace in Central America.

I didn’t tell her about Guillermo and Lindsey.

By nine o’clock I was bored out of my mind. I went to the balcony and checked out the street life three stories below. Pretty dead, except for the usual sights. Teams of kids in the intersection were still selling junk and begging for cordobas. I was pretty sure they were the same kids I’d seen almost eight hours ago. The boy with one leg I definitely remembered. Ditto for the girl with the baby face who already had two babies of her own, one in each arm. Farther up the street the strip club with the big red lips painted on the door seemed to be hopping. Groups of men would walk in drunk, get all steamed up, and then come out, one at a time, to cut a ten-dollar deal with one or more of the thirteen-year-old girls who walked the street in their fishnet stockings and five-inch heels.

What in the hell were my father and sister doing here?

I went back inside. I was feeling lonely, a little depressed, and definitely confused. I picked up the telephone and started to dial Alex’s number. I hung up on impulse and called Jenna instead.

“Hey, it’s Nick. You got a minute?”

“Um-okay.”

I suddenly realized it was Saturday night, almost 11:00 P.M. in Miami, and that she might be with someone. “I can call back.”

“No, it’s okay. It’s my fault for answering. Now you know I’m one of those lonely girls who sit at home Saturday nights watching reruns on Lifetime.”

Shame on me, but that made me feel good.

I talked a little about the legal case against the insurance company, but only as a pretext for having called her. She steered the conversation toward what she’d done all day, I brought it back to the amazing things I’d seen