Blake Crouch - Snowbound

Javier looked at the photograph. “That was some time ago.”

“Five years. My daughter misses her mother.”

“I first saw her coming out of a clinic in Sonoyta. That’s all I remember. And that it was raining and the sky full of lightning on the night I took her.”

“How was she?”

“Afraid,” Javier said. “They all are. I try to calm them. They’re drugged for most of the trip, but not mistreated, if that’s what you’re asking. Not by me at least. You don’t pay what I am paid for damaged product.”

Will swung. There was a pop. Javier fell back into the door and spit out a tooth.

“Easy, Will,” Kalyn said.

Javier licked the blood from a cut on his bottom lip, smiling, his eyes shining, and for a moment Will was convinced the man was mad.

“Did that feel good?” he asked. “I imagine it did.”

“Is Jonathan the man who’s buying these women?” Kalyn asked.

“I would think not. Like me, he’s just a well-paid mule.”

“Then who? Where are they being taken?”

“Maybe to Mexico. Maybe they’re shipped on boats to other parts of the world. Thailand. Eastern Europe. I am a blind appendage in the operation, and intentionally so.”

Will looked at Kalyn, his right hand throbbing.

“Javier,” she said, “that was the wrong answer.” She opened the door, stepped out of the car, opened Javier’s door. “Get out.”

Javier didn’t move.

Will leaned over, pushed him out of the seat. Javier fell onto the pavement. Will got out, walked around the hood, finished dragging him the rest of the way out of the car.

Kalyn said to Will, “If you want to wait in the car, I’ll understand.”

“I’m with you now.”

“Then drag him onto the trail. I don’t want blood on the pavement.”

Will grabbed Javier under his armpits and lifted him. The man was heavy, solid muscle. Twenty feet took almost a minute. Will finally collapsed in the dirt, sweating, out of breath.

The sky was now a dark, rich navy, with just a shrinking bar of red in the west, the saguaros silhouetted against it. Will surveyed the parking lot, the road. The only lights, a collection of them, emanated from the park’s campground, a mile away.

Kalyn said, “Roll onto your back.” Javier rolled, looked up at her, the right side of his face swollen, his jaw broken. “What would you do if you were me?” she asked.

“We would be in a warehouse in Tempe. Acid would be involved. There is also this thing I do with a soldering iron and a powerful magnet.”

“I only have this gun.” She aimed it at his crotch.

“One moment,” he said, though his voice completely lacked fear. “If you do that, I will be in no shape to make the phone call.”

“What call?”

“As it so happens, I received word from Jonathan a month ago. I am still in the searching phase.”

“You haven’t found anyone?”

He shook his head.

“Sit him up, Will.” Will propped Javier against the toppled trunk of a dead saguaro. Kalyn took out Javier’s BlackBerry, turned it on, found the address book. “This him?” she asked. “Jonathan?”

“Yes.”

“What would you text him?”

“I wouldn’t. He lives behind a steering wheel. We speak.”

She squatted down beside him. “When he’s on the line, you tell him you already have a woman, and that you’re ready to meet.”

“In return?”

“You keep your penis a little while longer. Do this right, I leave you here. Maybe you see your family again.”

The Superstitions were now just a black wall in the backdrop.

“Here, hold it to his ear, hit ‘Talk’ when I say.” Kalyn handed the Black-Berry to Will and aimed the Glock between Javier’s legs. “Transparence is key, Javier. If you launch into Spanish, if you say things to Jonathan that don’t make sense, that sound suspect, I will pull the trigger. Clear?”

“Yes. You are handling this all very well.”

“Do it, Will.” Will pressed the button, held the BlackBerry to Javier’s ear. They waited; then came the static sound of the ring. On the third, someone answered—the voice husky and low over the speakerphone. Will could hear the voice on the other end, but he couldn’t make out the words.

“It’s Jav. I have someone. . . . No, I have them already. . . . They’re with me right now. . . . Yes, I can do that. . . . Okay. . . . No, that’s plenty of time. . . . All right, I’ll see you then.”

Javier nodded. Will broke the connection.

“That was it?” Kalyn asked.

“That was it. So. I tell you the information and you both walk away?”

“That was the deal,” Kalyn said.

“And my family stays unharmed?”

“In twelve hours, I call the police, tell them where they are.”

“The exchange is in two days,” Javier said.

“Where?”

“Interstate Eighty-four, exit fifty-six, twelve miles outside of Boise, Idaho.”

“What’s there?”

“An abandoned drive-in movie theater.”

“And you’re supposed to meet Jonathan there?”

“Monday night. Eleven o’clock.”

“What’s he look like?”

“Long red hair, bushy beard, weighs over three hundred pounds. Smells terrible.”

Something rustled a ways off in the underbrush.

“Look at me,” Kalyn said. “You’ve been responsible for the deaths of more than a few people. Am I right?”

“Yes.”

“Ever looked one of their loved ones in the eye? Accounted for what you’d done?”

“I don’t believe so. This situation has been unique in many ways.”

“I want to know if you feel remorse.”

“It is not personal what I do. I did not take your sister because I desired to do her harm.”

“No, you took her for money. But you did cause—”

“Let’s not pretend I am in any way like you. You ask about remorse. You would like me to say that I deeply regret harming your sister, his wife. I can say these things, but they would be untrue. I would know it. You would know it. My line of work does not allow for remorse. Tell me what you were. I’m guessing DEA.”

The whites of his eyes stood out in the growing darkness.

“FBI.”

“You’re very good, Kalyn. I would have enjoyed killing you.”

“How many of you are there?”

“How many what?”

“Alphas.”

He chuckled. “Not as many as people think. Some who believe they are Alphas are not.”

“How many?”

“Fifty-seven at the moment.”

“Any gringos in the bunch?”

“Just two.”

“Come with me, Will.”

He followed Kalyn back to the car, stars now visible.

“You believe him?” Will asked, leaning against the hood. It was the first time since arriving in Phoenix five hours ago that he wasn’t overwhelmed by heat.

“Yeah, actually. I’m going after Jonathan.”

“The trucker?”

“You be up for that?”

“I don’t know. What about Javier? You comfortable just leaving him here?”

“No.”

“Well, what’s the alternative? Take him with . . .” Will felt something tighten in the small of his back. “No. No way.”

“I dug a hole three days ago. About fifty yards out.”

“Kalyn—”

“Alphas aren’t the kind of people you walk away from. You understand what I’m saying? They’d use every resource tracking us down. Kill friends, family to get to us.”

Will shook his head. “Not in cold blood, Kalyn.”

“You can wait here, Will, for all I care. I’ll take—”

“No. Not like—”

“Oh fuck.”

Will didn’t even see the draw, just a blur of movement, then Kalyn standing with her feet shoulder width apart, a two-handed grip and the Glock out in front of her, sweeping back and forth, aimed into all that darkness.