A King's ransom

“Untie me.”

I unknotted the ropes at his feet, but his hands were in cuffs, which would have to wait.

“There’s two of them,” he said. “Who’s with you?”

“Just the priest and Alex.”

“Who’s this Alex?”

I thought for a second about all the things she’d just said. “Damned if I know.”

We ducked at the explosion of gunfire, but it wasn’t coming our way. They were shooting in the opposite direction at Alex.

“She must be making a move,” I said. “If I attack from this flank, we might take them. Stay here.”

He nearly tripped me in his zeal to keep me down. “What do you think you’re doing?”

I looked him in the eye, hoping that he wouldn’t take it the wrong way. But it was something that I’d wanted to say for fifteen years, since that day on the fishing boat that had driven us apart.

“Acting like my father’s son,” I said.

“You don’t have to do this.”

“If I don’t, neither one of us is getting out alive.”

He didn’t argue, and there wasn’t time for it anyway. Another burst of gunfire erupted on the far side. I glanced up and saw Alex running from the statue of the Blessed Virgin to another monument. She was definitely on the offensive, and she was definitely outgunned.

“This is it,” I said, then sprinted forward, zigzagging from monument to monument.

I moved in short bursts to avoid getting hit, but I didn’t fire a shot, as the exchange was all in Alex’s direction. The noise was deafening, one shot after another without interruption. Alex had come on so strong that both kidnappers had turned their weapons on her. I was just ten meters away, approaching from the side, when Joaquin’s sidekick took a bullet from Alex to the forehead. His head snapped back as he tumbled to the ground, his gun silenced.

Joaquin kept firing his pistol, stopping only briefly to reach for his slain friend’s AK-47.

“Freeze!” I shouted. I had him from behind.

“?Manos arriba!” shouted Alex. She had him from the side.

He raised his arms, still on his knees behind the pile of earth from the half-dug grave.

“Stand up!” I shouted.

He rose as commanded. The pistol was still in his hand.

“Turn around slowly and drop the gun.”

He turned to face me but kept his weapon.

“Drop the gun!”

It was pointed in the air, but he wouldn’t let go.

“Drop it right now, or I’ll shoot!”

“How many men have you killed before, yanqui?” He was clearly mocking me, reminding me that the dead guerrilla at his feet was Alex’s work, not mine.

“You’d be a good start,” I said.

His hand moved in a blur as he fired off what seemed to be a wild shot. I squeezed the trigger again and again, firing off as many shots as possible. His body jerked with each hit as he fell, landing in a heap in the open grave.

I took a half step forward, close enough to confirm that he looked very dead. The body was twisted, the limbs angled in every direction, like a mangled spider. I’d hit him at least three times, twice in the chest and once in the face. I moved closer and checked for a pulse.

“He’s gone,” I said, loud enough for my father to hear.

I turned away from the grisly sight. As I rose, out of the corner of my eye I saw Alex stagger and fall to the ground.

“Alex!”

She didn’t answer. I ran to her, weaving between monuments, jumping over the last one to find her lying on her side between two gravestones. She was shivering as I rolled her onto her back. Blood had soaked through her sweater at the rib cage, just below the heart. Joaquin’s last shot had hit its mark.

“My God, you need an ambulance.”

“Don’t bother. Nobody survives this. I got what I deserved.”

I just shook my head. “So it’s true? You killed Jaime.”

“I never thought it would get this crazy.”

“Damn you. I trusted you. I believed in you.”

A trickle of blood oozed from the corner of her mouth, her voice barely a whisper. “Funny, I thought they’d hold some rich guy for a week or two, get the insurance money, and let him go. That was the deal. Get Joaquin a nice chunk of money, and he’d leave me and my family alone forever.”

“I can’t believe you’d do that.”

“Live in fear for fifteen years. You’d be surprised at what you’ll do.”

“I’d never sell out another human being.”

She grimaced from the pain and took my hand. I pulled back, but she squeezed harder and wouldn’t let me go. “Please don’t hate me.”

I was trembling, still shocked. “I just wish this weren’t true.”

“Then let’s just leave it that I was. . a friend.”

She looked at me and tried to smile, the life draining from those dark, mysterious eyes. She started to say something more, but it passed. Her body went limp in my arms. I held her for a moment, my emotions running the gamut. I lowered her head to the ground, then looked up and saw my father standing over us.

“Was she a friend of yours?” he asked sadly.

The question made me think back to the anonymous note that had led me to Jaime’s door, the way it had been signed, and the way Alex had just used the same words to say good-bye.

“In a weird way, yes. I guess she was ‘A Friend.’ ”

I rose and embraced my father so tightly that our bodies shook. He was sobbing cathartically into my shoulder as I opened my eyes for one last look at Alex, her beautiful face, the sad expression, the troubled life. If she hadn’t told me herself, I would never have believed a word of it.

From her lips it all made perfect, horrible sense.

“Let’s go home,” my father whispered.

“Yes,” I said with a lump in my throat. “Let’s.”

EPILOGUE

There were no empty seats at our Thanksgiving dinner table. Lindsey, my sister, was home for the first time in two years. Grandma was with us, doing as well as could be expected. My mother was smiling again, finally exuding the fabled glow that kicked in around the fifth month of pregnancy. In less than two weeks Dad was already looking better and slowly gaining some needed weight. The mountain of mashed potatoes and dressing on his plate would surely help the cause.

“Do we have any sushi?” asked Lindsey.

“It’s Thanksgiving, dear,” my mother said reprovingly.

She rolled her eyes and put a sliver of turkey on her plate. I just smiled to myself. For all the family had been through, thankfully we hadn’t changed completely.

Naturally, some things would never be the same. My days at Cool Cash were over. That was just as well, since the Miami office surely wouldn’t survive the firestorm anyway. Before his murder, Jaime Ochoa had given a sealed letter to his mother with instructions to hand it over to the state’s attorney if anything untoward should happen to him. It spelled out the entire scheme. Maggie Johans was named prominently in the cover-up, and she’d spent the last two weeks trying to save her own criminal skin by insisting that she’d acted on the advice of Duncan Fitz. From what I’d read in the newspapers, it wouldn’t be long before they both came crashing down, taking a huge