Badlands Read online

  “I can give you as many names as…as you like,” Eli grinds out. “That doesn’t mean any of them will have this girl of yours. If she’s been gone for three weeks, she’s in…the fucking wind. No one will be able to find her now.”

  This is obviously the very last thing Cade wants to hear. Even when we were younger, Cade was broad and strong. Now he’s built like a fucking Sherman tank. I wince as he punches Eli in the ribs, hard enough that the overweight guy pinned to the table wheezes out the contents of his lungs, turning redder and redder.

  “Fuck!”

  “Do I need to tell you again?”

  “No, no, no. Shit. If you want skin traders, there’s Mendez’s group in Phoenix. There’s Proctor and his boys over in Texas. And…and…you could always try Richter in Oregon. He’s normally drugs and guns, but his outfit’s been expanding recently. Seems…seems that there’s more money flowing in for them. Could be that they’re dipping their toes, too.”

  Cade and Jamie exchange glances. Neither of them look particularly impressed. “Why would any of those guys go to Alabama to kidnap women?” Jamie asks.

  Eli makes a strangled, grunting sound. “Alabama? No one would bother there. If this woman was taken from Alabama then it’s more likely she was taken across the border.”

  Folding his arms across his chest, Jamie frowns at Cade. “What do you mean, ‘across the border?’ You mean into Mexico?”

  “Not Mexico. Colombia. There’s a crazy bitch down there. A woman, head of a cartel. She fucking skins people for fun. She’s not right in the head. I heard she sometimes sends crews up into the lower states to snatch people. Usually it’s wealthy politicians, but her guys take women too if they think they’re pretty enough. If they think they’ll get a decent return on them.”

  The words ‘wealthy politician’ almost echo around the room. Jamie’s father is most definitely a wealthy politician. One of the wealthiest, most powerful politicians in America, in fact. If this woman, whoever she is, sent up a gang of guys to try and kidnap Louis for ransom, only to have their plans foiled by the sheer number of people at the property that night, they might well have taken a beautiful blonde woman instead, to temper the sting of losing out on their original target.

  “Colombia,” Cade says, letting go of Eli. He steps back, shoulders sagging. “How the fuck are we going to find her if she’s been taken to Colombia? She could have been sold on and moved anywhere in the world from there.”

  “Maria Rosa is a patient woman,” Eli says. “Fucking out of her mind crazy, but patient. She doesn’t sell on her people. She keeps them, looks after them. It’s not in her interests to sell on commodities, at least until she knows their true value, anyway.”

  “You seem to know a lot about her,” Jamie says.

  Eli shoves away from his desk, chest heaving, rage filling his eyes as he looks at the three of us. “I had the misfortune to cross paths with her in Vegas. She stays at the MGM Grand more often than not when she’s in country. I was hired to follow a guy by one of the MCs in Los Angeles. The guy met with Maria Rosa and ended up losing the skin off his back. Safe to say I didn’t hang around to find out why.”

  Jamie looks to me, as though wanting some sort of confirmation that maybe Eli’s telling the truth. Eli’s never had occasion to lie to me before. I doubt he would lie to Jamie and Cade, especially after being on the receiving end of Cade’s temper. The risk of the deception backfiring would be deterrent enough. I give Jamie the nod—yeah, it’s probably true—and then both he and Cade pull back, attack dogs called off.

  They exit the office without even sparing a glance for the stunned guy they’re leaving behind. Eli shoots me a disgusted look. “Don’t expect to be doing business with me again, Michael. I don’t want to see you around here again. I don’t care who sends you.”

  I slowly pace up to his desk, taking my leather gloves from my pocket and sliding my hands inside them slowly, first my left and then my right. “I can’t think of how, but you seem to be a little confused about who’s higher on the food chain here, Eli. Let me refresh your memory.” I slam my fist into his face, sending him reeling back into his chair. The thing seesaws, groaning under his weight. “You’re small fry, Eli,” I tell him. “And I am a motherfucking Great White. I’ll come back as and when I please, and you’d better be smiling when I do. Otherwise I might just decide to stay a while. Better for you if I’m in and out of here as quickly as possible in future.”

  Eli clasps both hands over his busted nose, making a pained growling sound, bleeding profusely down his shirt. “Jesus, man, okay! I’m sorry! Please, just leave.”

  “It would be my pleasure.”

  FOUR

  Jamie and Cade don’t stick around. They’re already making plans to head off to Colombia by the time they’re starting their engines up again. Jamie shakes my hand, worry creeping across his face. We speak in hushed tones while Cade makes a phone call to let their hacker friend know what’s going on.

  “You think you’re gonna find her down there?” I ask.

  “I have no idea. I hope so. Neither of us are going to start living until we lay eyes on her again.” He fixes me in an unwavering gaze, cold blue eyes locked on mine. “You should be careful working up here, Michael. You know that, right?”

  “I’m always careful.”

  “Good.” He nods, eyes narrowing slightly. “I don’t know anything about this guy you’re working for. What’s his deal? I’m assuming he’s the kind of trouble you should be avoiding at all costs.”

  “Maybe. He’s not someone to be fucked with. He also has morals, though. He thinks before he acts, unlike the guy he works for. I said it before and I’ll say it again: Charlie Holsan’s not going to be any help to you. I can’t tell Zeth I went there today or he’ll knock my front teeth out.”

  Jamie looks unimpressed. “You have any problems with this Zeth guy, you give me a call, okay?”

  “What he doesn’t know can’t hurt him, right?”

  Cade hangs up his phone and slides it back into his pocket, joining us. “It’s done. Tickets are organized. We leave tomorrow morning. Gotta get our asses down to LAX for sun up, though.”

  “We’d better get moving, then,” Jamie says. He throws his arms around me and pulls me into a hug that nearly squeezes the air out of my lungs entirely.

  “Be careful. Take care of yourself,” I tell him. “I’m not entirely sure you know what you’re getting yourself into. You have to be clean certifiable or a rebellious son of a bitch to get mixed up with these guys, and I’m hoping you’re just feeling like a rebel right now.”

  Jamie grins, laughing softly under his breath. “If that’s who I have to become then so be it. Though, I’d rather be a rebel than a crazy bastard any day of the week.”

  ******

  The smell of gasoline has so many associated memories for me. I spent a summer pumping gas in Alabama when I was a teenager. That was the summer I lost my virginity to Janice White in the back of her father’s Ford pick up. And then, eight years later, I got a job working as a driver for a syndicate just south of Boston and I was doused head to toe in lighter fluid during a bank robbery gone bad. I shot my attacker straight through the heart and that, as they say, was that, but I had chemical blisters all over my arms for weeks.

  As a result, in my head, whenever I smell gasoline these days I’m either getting my dick sucked or I’m about to go up in flames.

  Not today, though. My head’s completely empty as I toss the match into the car I’ve been driving the past three weeks. I never keep a car too long—normally three or four months at most—but this particular vehicle has outlived its usefulness a little early. Charlie’s guys will be on the look out for a car with the same plates, which means they’ll be on the look out for me, and I can’t afford that.

  I mourn a little as I watch the Chrysler go up in flames, eaten by smoke and the hungry teeth of the fire. It was a damn good car. Such a fucking waste. In the distance, the sun is setting o
ver the city below me and at my back the world is growing darker by the second. It will take me a good two hours to walk from the secluded, forested area where I decided to dump the car back to the outskirts of the city. However, better a long walk than the police finding the burning vehicle too soon and putting out the blaze. Maybe lifting a print or two from inside. That would be a dire situation indeed. Besides, there’s no one out here to see the act. No one out here to see the smoke. No one out here to call emergency services and screw up my meticulously laid plans.

  I watch for a while, making sure the fire’s well established, hungry and capable of destroying everything in its path, and then I turn my back on it and start walking. If I called Zeth, he would come get me, but he’d also want to know why I was out in the fucking boonies, blowing up a perfectly good car. I feel bad about deceiving him, but it can’t be helped. And anyway, a long walk is just what I need to clear my head. I’m fourteen miles away from Zeth’s city apartment, still winding my way down narrow mountain roads, when I get a text from the man himself.

  Taking Lacey to the Warehouse. Got a job to do. Can you stay with her? She freaks out on her own.

  Perfect. That adds an extra seven miles onto my trip. Won’t matter when I make it back to suburbia, though. I can ‘borrow’ a car I surveyed earlier and be over there by nine at latest. I text Zee back an ETA, and then I keep on walking. I get another text from Sara asking why I ran out of there so early this morning, but I don’t reply.

  I don’t have time. I never see cars up here, ever—precisely why I chose the spot—and yet the low rumble of an engine is approaching behind me. It would be easy enough to slip into the shadows and become invisible, and no doubt that’s exactly what I should do, but then I change my mind. I’m no longer dressed in Cameron’s old sweats, back in my suit and jacket, and I’m looking like a respectable human being again. No reason why someone wouldn’t stop and pick me up at the side of the road in the dark. Aside from the fact that I’m half black, of course.

  Still.

  As the car sweeps around the bend, coming down from the pass I’ve just left behind, I stand where I’m sure to be seen and stick my thumb out. Fucker better not hit me. Whoever’s driving isn’t traveling very fast, but they don’t appear to be slowing down, either. I think they’re going to fly right past me but at the last second the car screeches to a halt and comes to a complete stop a couple of feet away. The car reverses, and then I can see shadowy movement inside the wood-paneled, ancient beater, and a guy in his late fifties is leaning over to manually wind down the window on the other side of the car. He pushes his glasses up his nose as he squints out at me into the dark.

  “Nearly didn’t see you there, friend. What on earth are you doing out here, stranded in the wilds?” He has a wholesome, clean-cut look to him that makes me think he might be a salesman of some kind. But perhaps not. There’s a small, zipped up leather case on the seat next to him—the kind you’d recognize anywhere if you grew up in a state like Alabama, surrounded by church going folk who carry their scriptures around with them everywhere they go. He’s not a salesman. He’s just Christian.

  “Car broke down back there.” I wave my cell phone at him, hoping the damn thing doesn’t light up at the wrong moment. “And of course my battery decided to die, and that was my night ruined. I was supposed to be meeting my girlfriend for dinner.” I give him a rueful smile with just enough tired frustration mixed in to make my story believable. He gives me an aww shucks look and frowns at me some more.

  “That’s a real shame. Where do you need to be?”

  “Anywhere in the city is good with me. I can catch a cab once I find myself back in civilization.”

  “Well, I’m headed to work at St. Peter’s of Mercy. I can drop you there if you like?”

  “That would be amazing. Thank you.”

  The guy opens the door for me, and I get in. Holding his hand out for me to shake, he says, “My name’s Al. Pleased to meet you.”

  “Likewise. You live out here, Al?”

  He shakes his head, putting the car into gear and moving off. “No, no. Far too secluded for me. My daughter loves the peace and quiet, though. I was just taking a look at her guttering. She just bought a new place up here. It’s great, but like I said…far too far out of town for me.”

  He spends the next forty minutes telling me about his daughters—his eldest, the one on the mountain who’s training to be a doctor, the same as him, and his youngest, still in high school and thinking about becoming a psychologist. The way he talks about his kids is almost comical. So fucking proud. My folks were present when I was growing up, but as a mixed race child they were always pushing me so hard to succeed, to be good, to be better, as though the color of my skin was a disability I had to work extra hard to compensate for. Al’s children seem to be well on their way to greatness, but it sounds as though their father would be singing their praises no matter what they decided to do with their lives.

  He drops me off at the hospital and gives me his phone number ‘in case I’m ever stuck again’ and I’m hit with a bout of remorse. Not something I experience all that often. I’ve beaten people black and blue. I’ve pulled out people’s fingernails. I’ve strongly encouraged men to betray employers and their own families, by any and all means necessary, and I’ve barely given it a second thought. And then this guy comes along, doesn’t know me from Adam, and gives me a ride with no thought of compensation or suspicion, and, well…it kind of puts things into perspective. I deal with the scum of the earth on a daily basis. It’s easy to forget that not everyone out there is like that.

  “Take care of yourself,” he tells me.

  “You, too, Al. You shouldn’t pick people up on the side of the road, y’know? It’s not safe.” Oh, the irony.

  He gives me a sad smile and nods, hefting a large brown leather bag from the back seat of his car. “I know. But that’s all the more reason for me to stop for the good ones, right?” He heads off in the direction of the hospital’s entrance, whistling something bright and cheerful. Just before he disappears inside the hospital, Al stops and calls to me across the parking lot.

  “God bless you, Michael. It was wonderful to meet you. Good night!”

  I’ve decided against grand theft auto tonight.

  I’ll take a taxi instead.

  FIVE

  The heavy, steel sliding door of Zeth’s warehouse is chained shut when I get there. That means Zeth’s out. I have a key to the padlock, of course, so I let myself in and I instantly think the place has been turned over.

  His glass coffee table is shattered. The books that are normally stacked neatly on a set of three shelves on the other side of the open living space are strewn all over the floor, pages torn out and shredded like goddamn confetti. Mounted on the wall, a seriously sharp and very serrated hunting knife is protruding from the shattered screen of Zeth’s television—the television he just bought. I doubt the guy’s ever turned it on, but still…he is gonna be fucking pissed.

  I pull my gun out of its holster underneath my suit jacket and proceed to tread lightly into the warehouse, small cubes of glass crunching under foot from the coffee table, my mind racing a mile a minute. Where’s the girl? Is she okay? After everything that’s gone down with Jamie and Cade today, I’m immediately wondering if she’s still going to be here or if she’s been fucking kidnapped. I haven’t really had time to assess whether Zeth would be angry if Lacey weren’t around, haven’t been able to gauge if he sees having her here as a blessing or a curse yet, but I know for a fact he’d be raging if someone fucking took her.

  “Lacey?” I call out as I move from the living area toward the kitchen, where I find all the cupboard doors open, one of them hanging by one hinge, and pots and pans discarded everywhere all over the floor. “Lacey!”

  Nothing.

  Could this have something to do with today? Could Charlie’s cameras have picked up a clear image of me? Does he already know I work for Zeth? Did he come here to co
nfront of Zeth and decide to kidnap Lacey instead? The Chrysler’s windows were tinted, and Zee’s always held his cards very close to his chest so it’s very unlikely. Still, unlikely isn’t impossible.

  Shit.

  In the narrow hallway that leads to the bathroom and the bedrooms, I can hear the muted rush of running water. The lights are on in all of the bedrooms, and all the doors are ajar. The bathroom door is closed, however.

  “Lacey?” I’m ready to blow the brains out of whoever is lurking behind the bathroom door, getting ready to kick the damn thing down first if I need to, but when I try the handle it opens easily and there are no dangerous intruders ready to pounce on the other side. There is only Lacey, curled into a tiny ball on the tiles next to the overflowing bathtub, clutching Zeth’s brutally sharp straight razor in her hand.

  Suddenly, I remember what Zeth said in his text: she freaks out on her own. So. She trashed the place all by herself. With huge, round eyes, the tiny blonde girl shrinks back, knuckles turning white as she grips the razor closer to her chest. She swallows hard, eyes locked on my gun.

  “Hey, Lace,” I say softly. “What’s going on?” I take my finger off the trigger and slowly holster the weapon, trying not to make any sudden movements. I survey the scene for blood but there isn’t any. Only an inch of water on the floor and a drenched, very frightened woman, panting, struggling for breath. She jumps when I take a step toward her.

  “It’s okay, Lace. Really, it’s okay. What’s going on, huh?” I carefully inch toward her, holding my hands out so she can see I’m not carrying anything that I might use to hurt her. If anything, I’m the one who should be worried now, by the look on her face and the way she’s clinging onto that blade for dear life. I’m cautious as I lower myself down to sit next to her in the pooling water. As soon as I’m beside her she bursts into tears.