Torched: A Thriller Read online

  “Terri,” he panted. His pained eyes darted from hers to her water. “Can I have a drink? Please? I’m dying here.”

  She studied him for a long moment before collecting her drink. Chaco watched her, the curiosity plain in his features. It was clear that he, too, had an investment in her behavior, and Terri felt just a little self-conscious around him.

  She went to Miguel and tilted his head back. She trickled an ounce of water onto his mouth. Most of it splashed off of his lips and teeth before trickling down his cheeks, and he cried out in anguish. “Please, Terri! More!”

  She spat on him, the saliva sticking in his stubble. She took a long drink of water, then turned the glass upside down. The stream hit the ground, beaded for a moment and sunk down into the dust. Miguel’s chest hitched; he turned to Chaco, appealing for mercy. Chaco just looked away.

  Terri plucked the shears from her pocket. She slipped the blades beneath the hem of Miguel’s shorts and began to cut. When she had created a seam, she tore the loose ends, exposing his pale thighs to the sun.

  “Terri? Look, Terri, I have money! I can give it to you. And…and I can do it in a way that can’t be traced, I swear. It’s just a transfer of the account numbers, and you can…”

  “I don’t want your blood money, Michael Hill. Now, if you wanted to give it back to the families who were decimated by your actions, then that’s another story. But don’t offer it to me, because I don’t want it.”

  “I was wondering when he’d offer you the cash, Terri. They always do,” Chaco added.

  Miguel winced as Terri pulled something from her duffle bag. “Okay. Okay, that’s fine. I can give it back. Terri, what is that? Is that...?”

  She opened the cap and drizzled a streamer of golden honey down onto his thigh. She squeezed the little plastic bear and it glooped down onto his calves, pooling atop his socks.

  Terri noticed. “Oops. Can’t have that. Silly me.” She unlaced his boots and pulled his socks off. She covered the tops of his feet with honey, then began a slow, backward walk.

  “What are you…Jesus, Terri! No! What the fuck is this? You’re insane, woman! Ah, damn it, don’t do this!”

  “Chaco, could you hit the toggle on the iPad please? This is good stuff. I don’t want to waste it.”

  “Sure enough,” he said, flipping the switch.

  Terri paused for dramatic effect. “See this little hill here, Mikey? We call it the home colony. Jeez, they look agitated today!” She dumped honey down the center of an enormous fire ant pit. A cloud of the creatures burst from the hole, scrambling over each other in their efforts to free themselves of the viscous liquid.

  Terri retraced her path back to Miguel with still more honey, then paused where he squirmed in his seat. She unscrewed the cap, depositing the remainder of the bottle’s contents directly on his crotch.

  Miguel unleashed a guttural moan.

  “You get that, Vivian? Wow, Mikey! Things just got pretty sticky on our end.”

  Vivian had pulled over when she noticed the feed. “What’d you do to him, Terri? What’s happening over there?”

  Chaco held the iPad ten inches from the pit, making the already sizable ants look like creatures from some ‘50s sci-fi flick. “Oh, they’re pissed off, Vivian!” he said. “You’d better shake a leg if you want Miguel to keep his. These little beauties pack a potent bite.”

  “Christ!” Vivian cursed. She’d pulled to the side of a dirt farming road that serviced a series of pepper fields. “What does this accomplish, Terri? This is…you’re—you’re sadistic!”

  Terri snatched the iPad. “Well, I had to get creative. I agree that this isn’t quite as dramatic as wolves. I’ll grant you that, but what were our options?”

  Silence spun out between them while Terri processed Vivian’s confused expression. She shook her head in disgust.

  “Do you have any idea what we put in the ground, Vivian? Do you have any clue about the lies I had to tell my children—about the full-sized casket that we used to hide the truth of what the authorities found of Sheldon’s remains?”

  Vivian smoldered, connecting the dots. She’d read the newspaper reports, but they had always been tightlipped on the cause of Sheldon’s death. She had always just assumed it had been hypothermia. “That’s how he died? Wolves?”

  Terri’s face filled the screen, her nostrils pulsing with anger. “We could have buried him in a grocery bag,” she said. “A fucking grocery bag!”

  Miguel’s simpering cries became agitated. He loosed a genuinely terrified screech as the first of the insects congregated about his feet. A scout scampered over his toes, and he shook his leg in revulsion.

  Terri wheeled, showing Vivian the pulsing column of insects now stretching thirty yards between Miguel and the frenzied pit. Vivian bit her lip to keep from crying out.

  It didn’t matter. Miguel was crying plenty loud for the both of them.

  “Better hurry, Vivian, or there won’t even be enough for a garbage bag by the time you make it down here.”

  The feed vanished, abruptly terminating Miguel’s screams, and Vivian tucked the iPad back into the front of her shorts. She thumbed the ignition, throttled up and buzzed down the dirt road.

  The heat was insufferable; it just seemed to be getting hotter, but that didn’t matter. Miguel’s time was short, and she had to move quickly.

  She was so focused on the road in front of her that she didn’t notice the truck that was coming hard, flanking her from the west.

  It made it to the intersection first and skidded to a stop, blocking her path.

  Two men emerged from the truck, one with a rifle in his hand. They started toward her on foot.

  “Shit,” Vivian muttered. She spun the throttle and the brake, sliding to an awkward stop before walking the bike around in a half circle and goosing the gas. She surged forward, engine screaming like hornets on the warpath.

  Maybe she could outrun them.

  She heard gunshots but, though she tensed for impact, she wasn’t hit. She spared a glance over her shoulder and saw the men clamoring into the back of the truck before the driver nosed the vehicle down the road.

  They were coming for her.

  Vivian put her head down. Gripping the bike with her knees, biceps flexed, she topped the speedometer off.

  She covered most of a mile before chancing another glance behind her.

  Damn, she was slipping away! The truck had fallen far behind her.

  She throttled down to a less lethal pace, should she dump the bike, and that’s when she noticed the engine’s sputtering. It coughed and hiccupped, shedding horsepower and speed by the second.

  “Shit!” she screamed. She’d run the damned thing out of gas, and the reality of her predicament left her feeling cold and naked—utterly exposed.

  She was puttering along at ten miles an hour when the pickup pulled even.

  An old man with two golden teeth leered at her from the passenger window. Three faces wore predatory grins in the back of the truck.

  “Leave me alone!” she screamed. She fumbled in her waistband for the water key, yanked it free and flailed hard at the grinning man, striking the truck with an impotent clang.

  His grin vanished, replaced with viper-quick anger. He shouted at her in Spanish before jabbing at her with the door.

  Vivian dodged and the bike left the road. It dipped into a dusty irrigation ditch and popped up on the other side. Like a trick rider at a motocross show, she somehow stayed on the bike. It shot down a long row of tomato plants, the leaves tearing at her face and arms while she fought to keep control of the handlebars.

  But it was too late. The front wheel wobbled back and forth, and she hit a plant and lost control, the bike pitching hard to her left. She tumbled, head over feet, across the surface of the soft soil, losing the water key and the iPad along the way.

  She came to a stop on her stomach, tasting dirt and blood in her mouth. There was a searing pain in her knee. “Owww!” she cried,
gathering herself into a sitting position as the truck skidded to a halt fifty yards in the distance. “Owwww!”

  It was pathetic, that tiny cry, and Vivian understood in her heart that things were about to get very bad out there.

  The men piled out of the truck. She heard doors slamming, turned and saw figures walking toward her.

  That was enough. Injured or not, she stood and began limping away from them. The iPad, its screen now a fractured spider web, chirped in the distance.

  “Vivian?” Terri called, her voice distorted through the damaged speaker. “Vivian, what was that? I head something! What was that sound?”

  “Fuck,” Vivian muttered. She scooped it up and hobbled away from the men in the truck as fast as she was able. “Ow. Ow. Ow.”

  But they were coming, and it was no use. They caught up to her, fanning out to surround her.

  “Leave me alone!” Vivian shouted when the first man clamped a hand on her shoulder. “Let me go!”

  “Vivian! Vivian, what’s happening! Who’s there?” Terri shouted. “Describe what you’re seeing!”

  The man squawked at the iPad in Spanish. A young man—hardly more than a teen, she thought—darted forward and plucked it from her filthy hands. “Qué es esto?”

  “Listen, you need to let that woman go!” Terri shouted. “Do you understand me? She has business elsewhere. We will pay you for your troubles if you’ll just…” Terri’s voice vanished as the man switched the iPad off.

  “Gringa,” the driver said. He was tall and lean, with a trim moustache and a sweat-stained San Diego Padres baseball cap. “Why? Why you in Mexico?”

  Vivian sighed. Christ. If it weren’t for bad luck, she wouldn’t have any at all. “That woman took my boyfriend hostage!” she screamed, hoping they’d find her utterly pathetic and just let her be. “He’s…he’s in terrible trouble. You have to understand. Muy malo, por favor! Please! I need help!”

  The old man chuckled, and Vivian watched the others as they watched him—waiting for a cue on how to proceed. While the driver was the physical threat, it was clear the farmhands took their lead from the old man.

  The old man stretched a wrinkled palm toward her and she flinched as his finger brushed her temple. He showed her the back of his hand—the crimson swatch of blood there.

  Vivian bit her lip hard, keeping the tears at bay. Her knee was swelling by the second, and she was bleeding from a dozen abrasions. The sun beat down, pummeling her with its intensity. Insects thrummed amongst the rows of withered tomato bushes.

  Was this place hell? Wasn’t it just yesterday that she thought it might be paradise?

  Her lip quivered as the driver stepped toward her. He reached out with the rifle and used its barrel as a prod. “Go,” he said, nudging her toward the truck.

  “Por favor! N-n-necesito…” she began.

  “Silencio! Go!” he snarled, jabbing at her with the gun.

  She turned and limped toward the truck, her mind racing. This was the place, wasn’t it?

  Before they’d had Katie, she and Ryan had gone to the movies a couple of times a month. They loved thrillers—devouring anything with a suspenseful plot or a little bit of action. Once, while walking out to the car after another Denzel Washington flick, she’d remarked to her husband that she’d rather go down swinging than marching placidly to the slaughter.

  “Might as well give it the old college try, eh sweetie?” Ryan had laughed.

  “You bet your ass, Jake!” she’d replied, parroting a line from the movie.

  And here it was. She shuffled forward, a strange little smile on her lips.

  Here it freaking was, her moment of personal clarity, and it all actually made sense. If this was it for her—if her destiny had included being taken hostage in a Mexican tomato field all along—then it was time to rail hard against that future.

  What was there to lose?

  She heard the farmhands behind her, scuffling through the dust, talking quickly in their native tongue. They were relaxed. What threat was a hobbled, 110-pound woman to them?

  She limped toward the truck, selling the wounded animal routine even as she waited for her opportunity. The rifle barrel brushed her back from time to time, hovering loosely above her right kidney.

  The pickup was close. Twenty-five yards.

  Somebody made a joke and her captors erupted in laughter. Vivian spun to the right, swiveling her hips even as she jabbed the barrel of the rifle away from her with her left hand. The driver yipped his surprise and the rifle belched an errant shot.

  Smoke obscured his features for an instant, and Vivian stepped forward and punched him hard in the throat. She felt his larynx buckle—like crunching a Styrofoam cup—and he dropped the rifle, his hands clamped to his throat. He keeled over on his side, tongue lolling as he struggled for air.

  Vivian snatched up the rifle and leveled it at the stunned quartet. The old man, who had tried to hit her with the car door, studied her with flat, dark eyes. His lips twisted in a snarl and he pointed to the driver choking to death on the ground.

  “Mi hijo,” he pleaded. “Por favor, mi hijo!”

  Vivian took a step back, steadied herself and pulled the trigger. The shot cleared the old man’s head by a foot, and he and the others hit the ground, screaming in fear.

  “The next one won’t go high!” she shrieked. “Keys! Give me the damned keys to the truck!”

  The young one scrambled over to the driver, who had stopped struggling. He was making a strange whistling sound, his eyes unfocused. The kid rooted around in his pockets until he found the keys. Shouting in Spanish, palms raised, he tossed them at her feet.

  Vivian stooped to pick them up, the rifle steady on the men, before scuttling backward toward the truck.

  The last thing she saw before climbing up into the passenger side of the truck was the old man cradling his son there in the dirt. She put the rifle on the seat, slid over and fired the truck up. Instead of backing up she floored it, screaming down the road until she found a spot to turn around.

  “Gas, Vivian. Jesus, girl—think!”

  She sighed with relief when she saw there was more than half a tank. Her eyes darted to the rearview, where she saw the scab of a nasty cut forming near her hairline. Dried blood tracked down the left side of her face, branching over her cheek like the tributaries of the Rio Grande. When she passed her would-be captors, they were now standing in the field, watching her exit.

  All but one, that is. The old man, arms at his side, did not look up. His eyes were instead fixed on his son (Mi hijo!), who lay unmoving in the soil.

  “Fucking assholes,” Vivian said, pressing harder on the gas pedal. She blinked back the tears, then slammed the palm of her hand against the steering wheel.

  Perhaps she’d killed the driver. In fact, she thought she probably had. Her blow had caught him flush in the Adam’s apple, a lucky shot to be sure.

  She turned her eyes to the rifle, then onto the seat, where the iPad lay silent—broken and impotent.

  She said a quick prayer and then took a deep breath, trying to clear her conscious. If she’d killed him, she would come to terms with it another day. For now, though, she had more pressing matters.

  She also had more advantages than she’d ever thought possible, just an hour before. She had a truck and a gun, though she had no idea how many bullets were left in the rifle. She had a plausible excuse for keeping the iPad switched off, which gave her the element of surprise—at least for as long as she could remember her route.

  And she had time to get to Miguel.

  The truck was no great prize, but it moved along at sixty miles an hour without any problems.

  She pushed forward, ignoring the knee injury and the sting of the road rash as she surged into a destiny of her own creation.

  EIGHTEEN

  Miguel had never felt so utterly devoid of hope. Even when he’d left the firm, amidst all of those emotions of anger and doubt, he’d always maintained a sense of conf
idence that the future would be better.

  Now, looking down at his mangled legs, he felt nothing of the sort. The one called Chaco had rubbed a numbing agent over his thighs and calves, but it hadn’t been enough. There were enough toxins in his flesh and bloodstream that his entire body had become a cinder. Sweat tracked down his temples. He could feel it trickling down his ribcage.

  His heart strained in his chest as his system struggled with the ant bites. The insects had covered his lower body, and he couldn’t bear the sight of his legs. They didn’t even seem like they belonged to him. Instead, it looked like somebody had stuffed a pair of tanned sausage casings with dozens of golf balls. Enormous welts pocked the landscape of his body, weeping blood and puss in equal amounts.

  Chaco had used a whisk broom to brush the ants off when the screaming had become unbearable, but it was too late. Miguel couldn’t picture a future in which he would ever walk again.

  “We had to stop it, Terri. Look—he might still die anyway. You’re taking this…” Chaco said, and Miguel turned to study his captors. They stood in the shade, Chaco using his hands to underscore his points while Terri stared at the ground, her arms crossed over her chest in defiance.

  “Terri?” he called. His voice cracked. “Water? Please.”

  “Water?” she parroted. “You want some water, Mike? Okay! Okay, we can do that…”

  She left Chaco standing there, an expression of pure frustration on his face, and marched over to a rusted spigot attached near the crumbling warehouse. She pumped the handle until a gusher of water spurted out, then stooped to pick up a discarded paint can. She slapped it a few times to clear the surface dirt and spiders nesting inside, then filled it with water.

  “Here you go, Mikey. Drink up. And don’t you dare tell Vivian I never did anything for you.”

  Miguel swallowed thickly.

  “What? Not good enough for you?”

  The water was tinged orange with rust. Dirt, paint flakes and the shriveled exoskeleton of a scorpion floated on top.

  “Fine. I’ll just toss it out…”

  “No! Please! Please, Terri. Please—I…I’d like some water.”