Sean Black - The Devil's bounty

And if she was wrong about that she could be wrong about the Americans. As her boss had told them when he had returned from his management training across the border, ‘There is no such thing as a problem. There is only an opportunity in disguise.’

Every time the door opened, Julia flinched. She couldn’t help it. It was the sound. The groan it made as it shifted on its hinges. She knew it would stay with her for a very long time — if she lived.

The older man was standing over her, legs apart, chest stuck out.

‘Julia,’ he said. He was Mexican and his words held the accent but his English was good.

She opened her eyes and looked up at him. ‘Yes?’

‘I am going to take off these handcuffs now, okay? You can go to the bathroom, take a shower, clean yourself up. But I want you to know that if you try to run there is nowhere for you to go. There is no way you can escape until I decide to let you go. Do you understand me, Julia?’

As he said that, she felt like she might cry. Her throat tightened and tears gathered in her eyes. It was the thought of home, of being free from this nightmare. She fought it. She didn’t want him to see her break down. She hadn’t broken down when it was happening. She had taken her mind somewhere else and it had worked. She had been aware of what they were doing but she hadn’t felt present. ‘I understand,’ she said.

‘That’s good, Julia. Because if you behave and do what we say then maybe you’ll be able to go home. But first we have to get you cleaned up.’

He knelt down and freed her arms and legs. She noticed that he was very deliberate about where he placed himself when he clicked each shackle. He stayed out of range of a kick or a punch. Her ankles and wrists were bruised and swollen. She had lost all feeling in her feet hours before. She wiggled her fingers and rubbed the sensation back into her feet and calves.

‘That’s okay, take your time. There’s no rush,’ he said.

Eventually, she felt she could stand. Putting her palms on the floor, she started to lever herself to her feet.

‘Here,’ he said. ‘Let me help you.’

He put his hands under her armpits and lifted her. She recoiled a little at his touch, but as soon as she was standing, he let her go.

‘Will you be okay on the stairs?’ he asked her. So polite. So solicitous. The situation was so surreal that part of her expected to wake in her room in the resort.

As she took the stairs he stayed behind her. His presence seemed reassuring rather than threatening. At the top, the door was wedged open. She began to walk along a corridor. Halfway down, he tapped her elbow. She half turned. He held out a pair of sunglasses. ‘If you have been in the dark too long, the sun can hurt your eyes,’ he said.

She took them from him and put them on. The corridor darkened but not by much. He directed her through a door into another corridor. They passed a large room, the door open, sunlight blazing through a window. He was right: she would have been blinded without the sunglasses. She felt a breeze, then heard something that brought a lump to her throat. Outside a bird was chirping, running up and down a warbling set of scales. She realized that while she had been in that room she had heard nothing from outside. No birds. No footsteps. Nothing. It must have been soundproofed.

Past a bedroom there was another door. He darted ahead of her and opened it into a large, tiled bathroom. ‘There is a lock on the inside,’ he said, ‘so you can have some privacy. But please remember what I said. There is no escape unless you follow my orders.’

She walked past him and into the bathroom. There was a tub and a separate shower, a washbasin and toilet, even a bidet. The tiles were green, yellow and red. The door closed behind her. Without thinking she walked back to it and turned the key. She had gone from one locked room to another, but this time she had secured the door herself.

As she ran a bath, she sat on the toilet and thought about what the man had said. If she did as they said and didn’t try to escape, she might be released. He had sounded so sincere when he had said it. She hadn’t thought to question him.

Walking into the small resort hotel, Rafaela had to steel herself for what lay ahead. For those who never knew the fate of a loved one, hope obstructed healing. As the days passed, hope itself became twisted and cancerous, an emotion that turned in on itself. Rafaela had seen it more times than she cared to remember. It was a cliche, but not knowing what had happened to someone you loved was the worst part of an abduction. With human remains came certainty. And certainty gave grief a starting point. That wasn’t to say that someone who lost a child was ever free of the pain, they weren’t, but knowledge of what had happened during a loved one’s final hours was almost always preferable to what the imagination conjured.

Of course, Julia’s family were only at the beginning of the road. Hope was there, and hope was real. They still had that glimmer of light in the darkness. It was Rafaela’s job to convince them that the best way of keeping it burning was to do as she asked. And she was about to ask them to do the one thing that went against every single parental instinct. For now the best thing they could do was nothing. No press. No public plea. No drawing attention to their plight. All it would do was make Julia’s survival less likely — assuming she was still alive.

Julia’s parents and a young man from the US consulate were sitting outside in the sun as the hotel staff scuttled around their table, trading anxious glances. It wasn’t just that a guest at the resort had gone missing — presumed abducted: it was akin to having wealthy relatives visit, when their worst suspicions about how you lived were confirmed and your dirtiest secrets were laid bare before them.

Julia’s father was a tall, lean man in his fifties with a shock of white hair and frameless glasses. The girl’s mother was, Rafaela guessed, a few years younger, with long, strawberry-blonde hair pulled back into a ponytail. She was clutching a picture of her daughter, taken only a few days before, the backdrop of the hotel’s pool visible from where they sat. Julia was standing next to her father, one hand raised to shield her eyes. She looked tanned, happy and relaxed. Her smile, a little forced, a little over-sincere, suggested a young woman who was mature enough to understand her parents’ need to cling to her as she began to carve out a life apart from them.

Rafaela began by asking the father to take her through the period before his daughter had gone missing. She didn’t interrupt him. He was already frustrated at having to tread again over old ground. He wanted his daughter back.

She made notes as he talked. The young man from the consulate tapped his fingers on the table. A glance from the mother stopped him as the father concluded his story, his voice cracking as he told of the last time he had seen Julia.

Rafaela cleared her throat and thanked him for his patience. Her next job was to offer some reassurance. ‘I already have at least a dozen officers making enquiries. I want you and the US government to know how seriously we’re taking this. That’s the first thing.’

The mother leaned forward. ‘So you think something’s happened to her?’

This was where things got difficult. Rafaela didn’t think, she knew, but sharing that information wasn’t going to help them.

Straightening in her seat, Rafaela made sure she met the woman’s gaze. ‘I don’t know anything for certain other than that your daughter is missing.’

The father stiffened. ‘I don’t believe you.’

The young consular official intervened: ‘I think for now we have to-’