“That feels better,” Benavides sniffed as he walked through the garage and opened the passenger door to get into his Audi sedan. “Apologizing — making amends — that’s the first step, right?”
Jacques froze in his tracks, a half step behind the greasy IDTF agent. “I wanna ask you something,” the big Cajun said. “What was it you intended to do to my bride after you drugged her?”
Benavides hung his head. “Look,” he said. “I’m really, really sorry. I swear. I’ll resign from the Task Force.”
Thibodaux shook his head. “Not ’til you help me get my friend back.”
“I just can’t.” Benavides began to blubber again. “I can’t go out to the boat. Mr. Walter gets back tonight.”
“Look at me, cupcake.” Thibodaux snapped his fingers. “You come to my house thinking to drug and do Lord knows what to my wife. Helping me get Garcia back is your only chance to save your worthless ass — and it’s a slim one even then.”
Thibodaux’s cell phone buzzed in his vest pocket. He held up his hand to silence the blubbering IDTF agent. He spoke for a moment before hanging up and returning the phone to his pocket.
“That was my badass Japanese friend.” He smiled. “She’s meeting us in Salisbury. I think you’re gonna really like her. She’s a buck-twenty soaking wet but seventy-five pounds of that is balls…”
The phone rang again almost as soon as he put it away. A wave of relief flooded over Thibodaux as he heard Quinn’s voice on the other end of the line. Quinn filled him in quickly on the trip out of China, a weapon called the Black Dragon, and the need to get to Seattle.
“We won’t be able to get there for another nineteen-plus hours,” Quinn said on the other end of the line. “I could use some eyes and ears ahead of us — and I need the blue go-bag I keep stashed in the hotel.”
“I hear you, l’ami,” Jacques said, “but we’ve kinda got us a little situation here.” He motioned for Joey B to start the car and begin driving. The “I’ll-shoot-you-in-the-ass-if-you-try-anything,” was implied with the glare from his good eye.
“Your signal’s cutting in and out,” Quinn said, his voice crackling with static. “I can barely hear you. Can you get someone to ship me the duffel by Gold Streak if you’re not able to bring it out? I’ve tried to call the others, but I’m not getting through to anyone.”
“I said we’ve got a situation,” Thibodaux said again, louder this time. He filled Quinn in, doing his best to assure him they’d get Ronnie back — though both of them had seen enough friends die to know some rescues went well and others devolved into catastrophic shitstorms of death. He smacked Joey B on the back of the head when he hung up, for no reason but to keep him on his toes.
Chapter 40
Ronnie felt like she’d been in the cage for days. Fear, pain, the glaring white light, and the constant thrum of the boat’s auxiliary engine kept her from getting anything but fragments of nightmare-filled sleep. She busied her mind working through every method of escape she could think of. “Look broken but stay strong,” became her mantra — to make her captors think they had beaten her.
“You can do this, chica,” she sniffed, dragging herself out of the pity party she’d been having and working to channel a healthy dose of inner fury. She lay on her back, studying a tubular steel bar that was suspended from a pulley on the ceiling. Handcuffs were affixed to either end of the bar with strong U bolts. She followed a heavy cable from the center of the bar, over the pulley, then back down to an electric winch on the far bulkhead. A dozen different scenarios and possible uses for the awful thing ran through her mind, but she shoved them away, trying to focus on the immediate situation.
She’d been over every inch of her cage, noting the wire ties and brackets that held the six panels together. When she was a little girl, her father had a small hunting dog he kept in a kennel much like the one where Ronnie found herself now. The dog hated the kennel and eventually, when left to its own devices for long enough, figured out the weak spots in the chain link and gnawed and pulled and tugged until it escaped.
The cameras located at each corner of the room made it difficult to work overtly on any portion of the cage, but Ronnie found that by rocking back and forth and periodically twisting her hair like she’d lost her mind, she could cover her movements and work one of the metal wire door ties back and forth without any of her guards rushing in to check on her escape attempt. She imagined them slouching in front of a bunch of fuzzy monitors while they whiled away the hours surfing porn. The fact that they were working for the IDTF identified them as less than the cream of the crop from any of their respective heritage agencies.
The squeak of the metal hatch sent Ronnie cringing to the back corner of her cage, as far away from the door as she could get. The redheaded GQ and the older one, whom she’d learned was named Gant, stooped to come in and swung the hatch shut behind them. Each carried the cattle prod they used to “soften her up” prior to letting her out to go to the bathroom — which was nothing but a filthy five-gallon bucket next to the V formed by the bow of the boat.
Both men attacked their duties with gusto, laughing and cursing as they applied the metal probes through the wire mesh of her cage. Once she’d writhed and screamed for what seemed like hours, beaten down to their satisfaction, Gant unlocked one side of the gate and dropped in a set of handcuffs.
“Mr. Walter is on his way,” GQ said, giving Ronnie a crackling jolt to the rump as she hustled by on her way to the bucket. “These little shock sticks will be a pleasant memory compared to the shit he does.”
The men leered and giggled like idiots while Ronnie did her business in the bucket. She walked back with her head higher when she was finished, holding the cuffs up for one of them to remove.
“Nope,” Gant said. “Not until you’re back inside.”
Ronnie groaned but complied, bending to climb back in the cage and bracing herself for the swift kick that Gant always gave her. For some reason, he seemed to have it in for her worse than GQ. The younger agent held the cattle prod under his arm and squatted to take off her handcuffs as she held her wrists out through the half open door. Ronnie gave him a sidelong glare and silently whispered, “Watermelon,” once she caught his eye.
It meant nothing. Ronnie’s father had taught her to mouth “watermelon” over and over when she didn’t know the words to a song. Several boys in college had thought she was flirting with them. There was something, they said, about the way her tongue flicked across her teeth when she said it. It worked on GQ as well, because he did a double take and looked like he was having a hard time swallowing when he locked the cage. She guessed he would come back as soon as he got rid of Gant.
Twisting her hair with one hand as soon as the hatch squeaked shut, she used it to form a curtain to block her work on the metal hinge tie from the view of the cameras. She bent it back and forth until her fingers bled.
Thankfully, it took nearly two hours for GQ to return, and by that time, Ronnie had worked the metal enough that she felt sure it would snap if given the right amount of pressure.
He wasted no time, getting straight to the point. “What was it you said to me before?”
“I have to go to the bathroom again,” Ronnie said, tongue to her top teeth as if she was saying “watermelon” again.
“Nice try.” He sneered. “You had your chance. If you need to go, do it in there.”