Destiny Mine (Tormentor Mine #3)(44)
36
Peter
I spend the night in the shed where Esguerra keeps his prisoners, with one ankle chained to the metal ring in the middle of the floor.
“Just a precaution,” Kent explained when the guards locked the chain in place. “Not that we don’t trust you…”
“Right.” The chain is about two meters long, which means I can lie down on the cot the guards dragged into the shed. So all in all, it’s not that bad. I’d obviously rather not be chained, but considering what I just saw Esguerra do to the pediatrician, I’m not complaining.
It’ll take a while to get the woman’s screams out of my mind.
She cracked instantly, pretty much as soon as the Esguerras, accompanied by me and the guards, entered her room. I don’t know what she expected—to win brownie points for her honesty?—but she admitted her guilt right away, profusely apologizing to both Esguerra and his wife, swearing that she meant no real harm, that she didn’t really know them or Lizzie when she took the bribe.
It’s like she thought that once she confessed, all would be forgiven and forgotten, that being fired without a reference was the worst that could happen to her.
Maybe because I watched Esguerra literally fillet the idiot when Nora left to feed the baby, or maybe because I’m so close to my goal, but my sleep is again restless, filled with nightmares. Twice, I dream of finding my son’s body in a pile of corpses, and at least twice more, that body turns out to be Sara’s.
Still, by morning, I’m bleary-eyed but cautiously optimistic. The fact that I’m still alive is encouraging—a sign that Esguerra might stick to his side of the bargain. There are no guarantees, of course, but I suspect Nora has a fair amount of sway with her husband these days—plus, he owes me for the pediatrician.
In any case, I’m not surprised when Esguerra and Kent show up together to unchain me.
“What’s your plan?” Esguerra asks as Kent unlocks the manacle around my ankle. “How are you going to get to him? You realize that the moment you show up without Nora and the baby in tow, he’ll know you double-crossed him. That, or you failed—either way, he won’t be pleased.”
I take a deep breath. Here comes another tricky part. “Yes. I’ve considered that. And that’s why I need to borrow your wife for this part of the operation. She’ll be in no—”
“Absolutely not.” Esguerra’s jaw muscles twitch. “Nora is not stepping a foot off this compound.”
Disappointing but not unexpected. “Okay, then do you think you can find somebody who looks like Nora? At least a little bit?”
Esguerra frowns, and I sense he’s about to say no when Kent says, “There’s no one on the estate, but I can have the guards scour the nearby settlements for a potential candidate. It shouldn’t be that hard to find a dark-haired girl about Nora’s size. Her coloring is not exactly unusual in these parts.”
That’s true. If we needed a body double for Kent’s blond, blue-eyed wife, we’d be in trouble, but Nora is part Mexican, with dark eyes and a tan complexion. “You might want to look for someone really young,” I suggest. “Maybe a schoolgirl of some kind, to match Nora’s build. Like I started to tell you, she won’t be in any danger—I just need Novak to find out that I got off the plane with a woman resembling Nora and her infant in tow. A doll will do for the latter; the girl will just need to keep it wrapped up tight.”
Kent looks at Esguerra, and he nods. “Do it. And if possible, find an infant as well—we don’t want this to fall apart over a doll.”
I open my mouth to refuse, but then I decide against it.
I didn’t lie about the lack of danger to “Nora,” so we might as well use an actual child.
Whatever it takes to bait the trap and end Novak for good.
Eight hours later, I leave the compound on foot, armed with an M16 that I “stole” from a guard, and with a terrified sixteen-year-old and her two-month-old sister in tow. The girls’ family will be well compensated for their acting gig, but the prospect of pretty clothes and tuition money for college is not enough to keep the sixteen-year-old calm.
She’s scared out of her mind, and that’s perfect.
The real Nora would be as well.
Kent’s guards found a teenager who resembles Mrs. Esguerra to an uncanny degree—at least from the back and side. From the front, the girl’s face is rounder, with a thicker nose and smaller, deep-set eyes, so we used makeup to disguise those features.
Thanks to skillfully applied eyeshadow, blush, lipstick, and dark-toned foundation, Nora’s doppelg?nger now sports two black eyes, a split lip, and several yellowish bruises that disguise the childish fullness of her cheeks.
She speaks a little bit of English too, but her accent is thick, so we told her not to talk under any circumstances. “You can either cry or be silent,” Esguerra instructed her, and the girl nodded, chin quivering.
“Sí, se?or. I be silent.”
So far, she’s kept her word. We’ve been trudging through the jungle for over two hours, with her holding her screaming baby sister the entire time, and she hasn’t uttered a single complaint—though there’s much to complain about.
It hasn’t rained today yet, and the humid heat is stifling, the air so thick it feels like a wet blanket on the skin. We had the girl put on one of Nora’s usual outfits—a casual white sundress and a pair of flat sandals—and I can see the painful welts on her feet where she stepped into an ant pile a couple of miles back. We’re both dripping with sweat, and tiny gnats buzz all around us, biting every centimeter of exposed flesh.