Wrecked (Josie Gray Mysteries #3)(9)

“It doesn’t sound like him. I can’t believe he wouldn’t at least call.”

Dell continued eating.

After several minutes she said, “You suppose I should run by his office? Make sure something isn’t wrong?”

“Maybe the pencil pusher and the secretary are together,” he said. He turned his head to face her, then apparently realized how his comment had sounded. “On business. Maybe they had work to do. Had to work over.”

Josie ate the rest of her dinner in silence, worried about Dillon, as well as the plausibility of Dell’s remark. She tried to focus her thoughts elsewhere as she packed up the cooler after dinner. “You splitting all this wood tomorrow?” she asked.

“Need to let it dry first. I’ll stack it outside the barn.”

She nodded.

“This old man’s going home to bed. You worked me too hard. Do yourself a favor. Go drive by his house and his office. You won’t sleep tonight if you don’t.”

They packed the equipment onto the end of the wagon and Dell drove his tractor back to the barn. Josie and Chester walked the half mile back home in the dark. She checked her phone again for a message, trying to decide if she was being an overbearing mother hen, a jealous girlfriend, or just plain irresponsible for not dropping everything to check on Dillon. By the time she reached her house a variety of scenarios had played out in her mind, but the one she kept coming back to was a scene in Dillon’s home. Josie would walk down the dimly lit hallway to his bedroom, where soft voices and laughter would filter toward her. Josie would push the door open and find Dillon and Christina. It made her physically ill to even imagine. When she finally reached her house she fed Chester a bone and went to bed, disgusted that she was unable to bear the risk of putting her insecurities to the test.

*

Dillon’s head pounded. Sweat stung his eyes and the wound on his forehead. The van had stopped for at least an hour, maybe two, but the men had sat in the van in silence. Finally, the engine had started and the van began moving again. After another five to ten minutes the van slowed again to a crawl and began inching its way over rough rocks and small boulders. When he pressed his ear against the metal floor of the van, he could make out the sound of rushing water. They moved slowly forward, bouncing heavily, and he soon heard the rhythmic sound of slatted boards that Dillon assumed was a makeshift bridge. Once the van was over the bridge it stopped again. He closed his eyes and felt every bit of hope drain from his body. He was certain they had just illegally crossed the Rio Grande and entered Mexico, where he would be taken to a stash house and held for ransom.

As the van continued over rough, bumpy terrain, he tried to force the hysteria from his thoughts. An acquaintance of his, a businessman in Houston, had been kidnapped and held for six months, and then released after a million-dollar ransom had been negotiated, his family and friends extorted for everything they had. The government and police intervention had been ineffective: a rare case in this region, but certainly not isolated. The photograph in the paper had shown a man severely dehydrated and suffering from malnutrition. Dillon fought to force the vision from his mind.

The van eased onto a paved road, stopping shortly after. The side door slid open and a man yelled in English with a heavy Spanish accent, “Get up. On your knees!”

Dillon rolled to his side and struggled to push off with his shoulder into an upright position without the use of his hands, which were bound behind his back. As he turned, he felt the phone slip from his breast pocket and drop, then slide across the metal floor. One of the men hollered something in Spanish. Dillon heard the palm-slap of someone catching it just outside the van. His last link to the outside world now lost.

With no chance to think, he felt hands grab his upper arms and pull him out of the van and into the night. He was then dragged forward, forced to walk through gravel for a hundred feet.

The group stopped and a man shouted, “Hold this.” He felt the hard steel of guns on either side of him jabbing into his ribs, then a piece of paper pushed against his chest, his hands forced to hold it up. He saw several flashes of bright light.

The man who spoke English pulled open the pillowcase gathered around Dillon’s neck so that he could see out the bottom. “See this?” Dillon looked down to see the barrel of a gun pointed directly at his heart, the beam of a flashlight shining on the barrel. “I’m going to take your blinder off your head. If you look up, try to see who we are, or where you are? You die. Understand?”

Dillon nodded.

The man turned Dillon and walked him several feet forward. “Keep your head down. I take the pillowcase off, you step down the ladder. Get to the bottom, keep your head down until we get the case back on. Nod your head if you understand.”

He did as he was told. The man pushed down Dillon’s head, then took the bag off. He felt a moment of panic as a beam of light from one of several flashlights shone on the surrounding men’s blue jeans and cowboy boots. Keeping his head down as instructed, he saw a rope ladder that led into a dark concrete hole. Dillon assumed it was an old cistern, used to hold water during the rainy season.

The man forced the blade of a knife between Dillon’s wrists and sawed back and forth several times until the rope broke and his hands were freed.

“Do not look up when you reach the bottom.”

Keeping his chin to his chest, Dillon walked toward the ladder and turned his body to step over the edge. Damp with sweat, his hands slid down the rope. With each step down the swaying ladder he imagined plummeting to the floor from a bullet through his head.