Jeanne Stein - Haunted

“Who are you working for?” she asks, twisting her head to watch as I secure the knots. “Are you with Santiago? Has he hired you to kill us?”

For the first time, her voice shakes a bit, her eyes grow big. She is afraid.

I jam the last piece of towel into her mouth. “No. Tomás spoke the truth when he told Ramon we were here to help. All of us. It’s too bad your husband didn’t believe it.”

I give the strip of towel a tug to make sure it is tight across her mouth. I don’t want her calling out to her daughter as soon as I’m gone. I bend down so we are eye level. “I will tell you this. If any harm comes to any of my friends because of Ramon, you may be the one wearing ropa de luto .”

She believes me. The panic in her eyes confirms it.

She struggles to speak through the gag but nothing comes through but garbled sounds.

This time, I make it out the door. I wish I could think of a way of disabling the keypad. Keep Maria and Gabriella locked inside. A quick examination of the lock doesn’t yield any simple or obvious ways to do it. So I resort to another simple and obvious way—I punch a fist through the mechanism. I suppose there might be a failsafe somewhere inside, but Maria won’t be able to get to it until she’s untied. And if Gabriella is a typical teen, it may be hours before she gets up and finds her mother.

So now I’m off. Up the stairway, out through the cabin. It’s quiet and dark in the clearing. No breeze, a sprinkling of stars overhead, a crescent moon. I let vampire surface, listen for sounds of the men moving through the brush. I sniff the air. Thanks to Maria’s puttering, they have a sixty-minute lead, but I know the direction they’ll be traveling.

The ground I run over is rock strewn and covered with low brush. I startle small creatures—rats, snakes, rabbits—in my path. Insects scurry or fly away. From just out of sight, a bigger predator hunts, taking off after the vermin I send scampering in his direction.

Say thank you, vampire growls.

In ten minutes, I pick up the scent. Max, first, the most familiar, then Culebra and Ramon. They move with purpose, not as quietly as I, and it’s not hard to catch up.

I slow down, the human Anna pushes a reluctant vampire back into vigilance mode. It’s my turn to take up the pursuit.

The men move steadily eastward. I recall bits of their conversation from earlier. Santiago is living on the outskirts of a village far from Reynosa. He has bought and paid for the village, supplying the residents with money and food in exchange for their silence and cooperation. Anyone suspected of not cooperating has already been disposed of.

He is planning to run his business from this remote location until the heat dies down. The latest round of violence has spilled across the border. The murder of an American tourist caught in the cross fire between narco factions raised the ire of both the Federales and U.S. cops. Ground and air patrols have increased, suspected drug houses closed down, the usual avenues open to money laundering unavailable because of closer government scrutiny.

Ramon said this is why Santiago wants him dead. The boy he killed was the son of a government official who facilitated the exchange of dirty money for clean. He oversaw the chains of casas de cambios , money exchange houses, moving billions of narco dollars through the system. The man now refuses to reopen the channels until he gets his revenge. Until Rójan’s killer is dead.

If Max, Culebra and Ramon continue at this rate, it will take them well past daybreak to reach the village. They’ll have to camp somewhere on the route to wait for the cover of darkness to get close. I can reach the village much faster.

I send a message to Culebra. I’m here.

I thought I’d hear from you sooner.

Ran into a little trouble with Maria. She tried to keep me at the cave.

Why would she do that? Culebra’s tone indicates surprise.

Ramon, I answer simply. You should tell Max that Ramon doesn’t trust him. He should be on his guard.

Culebra’s surprise turns into concern. Why would he distrust the one man who can get his family to safety?

Don’t know. Didn’t stick around to ask. Listen, I’m going on ahead to take a look around the village. See if I can pick out where Santiago is hiding.

We won’t make it before sunrise, Culebra says, echoing my thoughts, impatient that he has to stay behind. We’ll have to take cover on the trail.

I’ll come back as soon as I can.

Culebra closes our mental communication conduit. What lingers after is the definite trace of bitterness that he can’t shape-shift and come with me. There’s just a touch of jealousy there, too.

Makes me smile.

THE VILLAGE IS MORE PRIMITIVE THAN I IMAGINED. It’s like something from the nineteenth century. A well stands in the middle of a courtyard from which four dirt roads radiate outward like the points of a compass. There are no more than a dozen houses—shacks really—scattered off the roads. Simple wooden structures each with a patchwork garden in front and chickens pecking in pens on the sides. The only vehicles I see are two ancient trucks with wooden beds parked side by side near the one brick structure in town. A church—a tiny church with a steepled roof and bell tower.

Good cover for a drug kingpin used to living in luxury. It’s unlikely the cops on either side of the border would think to search for him in a place like this.

Still, I can’t imagine Santiago living like a peasant in one of those shacks. There must be more to this village.

Or one of those simple structures has an underground mansion like Ramon’s underground cave. Money makes all things possible. Big money works miracles.

I keep to the shadows, out of sight of prying eyes. The presence of a stranger, especially a gringa , would certainly attract attention. So I circle the village in a wide arc, keeping to the trees and whatever scrub brush I can use for cover.

It’s fast approaching dawn. The village is still asleep, no stirrings at all from any of the houses. There are several more shacks separated from the cluster around the courtyard. They look no different from the others. No big black Escalades parked in front, no AK-47 gun-toting toadies standing guard, nothing that shouts major narco kingpin in residence here.

Well, this scouting trip has been a bust.

And I have to wait until nightfall for Culebra.

I hunker down in a cluster of bushes, hoping the green leafy ground cover under my ass isn’t poison oak or ivy. Vampire or no, an itch is an itch. I burrow in like a fox until I’m sure no casual passerby can spot me. I have a semi-clear view to the center of the village and a better view of the shacks on the outskirts.

Nothing to do now but wait.

And think.

Is Ramon really launching this preemptive strike to protect his family from Santiago’s wrath? Or is it something else? How much does Maria know about the death of Rójan? About Ramon’s part in it? She seems to take his word as law. Gabriella is far less accepting. She hasn’t romanticized her father the way Maria has. Still, they are blood. It would be a mistake to look on her as an ally.

I wonder if Maria would have shot me to keep me at the cave simply because Ramon told her to. I’m glad I told Culebra to keep an eye on Ramon and to protect Max. I can’t shake the feeling that Culebra is more a pawn in this game than a partner. And I believed Maria when she said Max was expendable. What she and Ramon don’t realize is that Max and Culebra are a formidable pair. More than a match for Ramon now that they have been warned.