Weight shifted and doors opened, followed by low talking. Then she heard the rattle, clank and shuffle as they began unloading the car and carrying items away. Tilly was overwhelmed with a sense of finality.
What’s going to happen? What’re they going to do to me?
Footsteps approached. A key was inserted in the trunk and it opened to the night and something moved swiftly toward her, leaving her no time to react as her head was swallowed by a sack.
Hands lifted her from the trunk, her feet found the ground. Dirt, sand and small stones bumped under her sneakers. She sensed the still air of a vast, remote place before she was escorted like a blind person to another location.
They had not gone far when they stopped.
“Step up,” one of the creeps said.
Tilly raised her foot, feeling a step, then she found a smooth floor as they entered a structure. She was overwhelmed by the smell. It took her back to a school trip to ghost towns near Casa Grande. The decaying buildings were filled with birds’ nests. The walls were layered with “sun-cooked bird shit,” as Dylan Fuller had called it.
Now as they moved along, Tilly listened for anyone else who might be inside, anyone who could help her.
She heard nothing but creaking, dripping and the echoes of her own shuffling as they entered another area. Here Tilly sensed a dim light through the bottom of her hood as it was pulled from her head.
Standing there, she took stock of the room. It was as large as her classroom but illuminated by a naked bulb hanging like a noose from a pipe and wired to a car battery. The light created ominous shadows, for the room was abandoned, neglected. Paint peeled in sheets as if the walls were diseased. Tiles had fallen from the ceiling. At one end she saw a series of huge pipes horseshoed from the floor for about three feet before bending back into the floor like upside-down U’s as high as Tilly’s waist.
A mattress was pushed near one of the big upside-down U’s.
Tilly saw a chain.
Handcuffs.
The creep Alfredo nudged her closer. He wrapped the chain around one of the pipes, looped one handcuff around the chain, clamped the other on Tilly’s wrist, then snapped it shut on her.
The steel click destroyed the speck of hope she’d nurtured by loosening the tape.
Alfredo said nothing and removed her gag.
Before he left, he nudged the toe of his boot against a plastic bag. Tilly saw bottled water, potato chips, pastries, an apple and what looked like a sandwich.
Standing there, awaiting her fate, she felt the onset of tears but forced herself not to cry.
She could hear her captors in the next area, their low voices echoing as they talked quickly in Spanish with each other. She heard the digital chirp of a keypad and guessed one was making a call on a cell phone.
This was it.
Tilly sensed that whatever they were going to do to her, they would do it here.
She was so scared.
As she prayed, she looked to her left through the room’s only window well. It had no glass or frame. It was a low-set, large square opening to the vast night. On the horizon, Tilly saw a few small lights, twinkling like a distant shore, and wondered what they were connected to.
A house? With people living a normal life and children happy and safe in their beds, while she was imprisoned here waiting for whatever was to come.
Did anyone know she was here?
Was anyone rushing to save her?
Why was this happening? Why?
Furious, she yanked against her handcuff, rattling her chain against the pipe, causing a loud clanking of metal rings against metal.
Tilly looked at the pipe, at its upside-down U shape. It was about as big in circumference as a soda can, with a bigger circular collar at each end. In the middle it had several rings, each about three inches wide, that slid along the main pipe like bracelets.
Tilly focused on them.
One bracelet was out of alignment.
It seemed slanted.
Did she do that by jerking the chain?
Tilly slid the bracelets away from the slanted one. Then she slid the slanted one to reveal a clear two-inch gap in the pipe. A section had been removed, but the bracelet ring had covered the gap.
Alfredo never checked! The stupid creeps missed this!
Tilly’s heart raced.
Would the chain fit? She looked around-no one was near. Quietly and carefully she slid the chain through the gap.
Yes! Oh my God! Oh my God!
Then with the utmost care she threaded the chain from her handcuff. She let out her breath slowly. All that was fastened to her now was the one handcuff on her wrist. Its open mate dangled from it and she held it to keep it from clinking.
She walked softly to the edge of the room, peered around the entrance carefully and saw a large warehouse area where her captors were at a table eating, surrounded by their luggage and equipment.
In the opposite direction, she saw a darkened hallway.
She moved slowly down the hallway until she came to another open doorway and night air.
And just like that she was outside under the stars.
Free.
In an instant she searched for her bearings, for any sign of civilization or help in the vast darkness surrounding her. She scanned every direction until she found the small lights blinking in the distance.
There!
Tilly ran toward them as fast as she could.
Blood pounding in her ears, her heart nearly bursting, she wanted to cry and scream at the same time as she ran for her life.
58
Lago de Rosas, Mexico
T he phone in the priest’s rectory was an old wall-mounted touch-tone.
Father Francisco Ortero was folding his laundered shirts when it rang. He went to the kitchen and answered it.
“Is this Ortero, the priest who hears confessions in Lago de Rosas?”
The young male voice was familiar.
“Si,” Ortero said.
“This is the sicario you promised to help.”
Several icy seconds of silence passed.
“I told you I would be calling, Father. You remember our discussion?”
“Yes.” Ortero adjusted his grip on the handset.
“And my proposal?”
“Yes.”
“I am about to finish my last job.”
“Don’t go through with it. Surrender, I beg you.”
“Listen to me. You made a promise in the confessional to help me.”
“You must stop.”
“Have you arranged for a journalist you trust to tell my story?”
Ortero thought of all the funerals of the innocents murdered by narcotraficantes that he had officiated; how the bloodshed had challenged his faith.
How much suffering does God allow?
“Father? Have you arranged for a journalist you trust to tell my story?”
“Yes.”
“Good. Take note of this information.”
The sicario gave the priest the time and the location near Phoenix, Arizona, where the journalist was to meet him tomorrow, confirming what the priest had suspected.
“Please, surrender. Police everywhere are looking for you and the others. Your faces are on all the news channels. Surrender!”
“It does not matter now. I am nearly finished.”
“Please, I beg you, no more killing. Surrender now and atone.”
“This is how it must happen. This is how it will happen.”
The priest was disgusted with himself. He was aiding a sicario. He squeezed the handset as revulsion and fear coiled within him. What he was doing was akin to the devil’s bidding.
“I am considering sending police,” Ortero said.
“You would break the seal of the confessional?”
“What if it did not matter? What if I stopped being a priest to stop the killing?”
“If you send police, I will kill the girl before their eyes in the most memorable way you could ever imagine.”
“I beg you to surrender.”
“The girl’s life is in your hands, priest. Your betrayal would result in her death. I have killed nearly two hundred people. Do you think I would hesitate to kill her? Do you want to gamble her life with an executioner of my stature?”