Sinclair Justice (Texas Rangers #2)(71)

Finally, Cervantes seemed satisfied. He waved them into chairs, but his four guards took stances on each side of him and behind Curt and Emm. Only then did Cervantes allow Curt to pull out a pad and make a few notes. Emm waited her turn, content to let the clock tick, as Curt conducted an apparent interview. From what she could see, Cervantes did not seem to even know Curt, so maybe she’d been too hard on her former friend.

As Emm half-listened, she couldn’t help wondering if Abby and Ross had gotten her SOS. If they hadn’t, well, she’d cleaned out her savings account and had plenty of Yankee greenbacks to barter for information and transportation. But for now, the ball was in Curt’s court. She was glad to see that Cervantes seemed more relaxed. He gestured with his hands while he described in rapid Spanish what sounded like a traumatic boyhood, but Emm couldn’t keep up. She began looking around the study, already cataloguing the locations of windows and another door she could see far down the hallway.

All in all, it was going pretty well so far.

At least they hadn’t been shot.

At least Cervantes seemed to buy their ruse.

Or he didn’t and was toying with them while he debated whether to cut their hearts out . . .





Deeper inside Mexico City, Yancy had yanked so hard at the handcuffs that her wrist had finally started bleeding. After Arturo had given her the new prescription, she’d only had time for a few doses of her meds before they took her, and now Arturo was so angry with her that he obviously didn’t care if she lived or died. He hadn’t alerted the Chechens to her illness, or sent the meds along. So she’d been without them, what was it, almost three days?

The wound had been trickling for over an hour, but it also made her wrist slick. Yancy barely paid it any mind because the continued silence down the corridor tormented her. She’d tried calling to Jennifer, but that had only resulted in a vicious blow from one of the Chechen thugs. She’d seen neither the tall, thin, younger Chechen nor the smaller, stout, older one for over twenty-four hours now, and she assumed that was a bad sign.

They were probably arranging transport for them. Or worse . . .

With little else she could do, Yancy began screaming, kicking at the iron bedstead. “I want to see my daughter!” She screamed a good fifteen minutes, until she was almost hoarse, before she got a reaction.

The same thug came back in, using his machine gun butt to slam her in the stomach. Yancy curled up in a ball. She cried out, cradling her stomach with her free arm. A bruise began to bloom. He ran a hand over the tattoo on her spine, but when she shrank away and someone called for him, he reluctantly went back out, tossing a harsh command on the way out.

She didn’t speak Russian but got the message: Shut up or die, bitch.

Yancy was winded and hurting, but if she gave up, Jennifer would die. She raised herself against the bedstead and slammed her back against it, jolting it against the wall. The old iron headboard was rusted, and for the first time Yancy realized it wasn’t stable because the frame bowed under the force.

Experimentally, she slammed against it again. It made a terrible racket, but so far the thug hadn’t come back in. The metal bed slat she was latched to bent slightly at the bottom, where rust had eaten at the weld. With renewed vigor, she shifted her weight against it again and again until, with a groan that didn’t make too much noise, the slat separated from the headboard. It would have gouged her, but she was expecting it and dodged aside in time.

She slipped the handcuff off the unattached slat and was free.

She stood so fast that the room swam. She was nauseated from the punch, sore everywhere, including between her legs, but she had one thought—get to Jennifer. She ripped the thin blanket off the bed and wrapped it, togalike, around her nudity. She was bleeding, bruised, and smelly, but at the moment she didn’t care. She’d get one chance at this . . . She slipped to the door and listened. Somewhere, classical music lilted down the hall, but other than that, she heard no signs of life. Glad they hadn’t bothered to lock the door, she eased into the corridor.

She realized she was in an abandoned hotel when she saw all the numbered room doors and the exit sign above a stairwell. As she moved in the general direction in which she’d heard Jennifer screaming, she passed the stairway and tried the door. It was locked; no surprise. The only way out appeared to be the elevator, which was obviously guarded in the lobby.

She listened at each door but heard only silence. From one she heard moans that raised the hairs on her neck, for they sounded sexual in nature. She obviously wasn’t the only sex slave here. Instinct screamed at her to run, but she’d never leave without her daughter. Most doors were locked, but one finally yielded, and when she opened it, she saw enough to know exactly where she was. Messy, stained sheets, tawdry underwear flung on the floor, a see-through robe on a hook. A big box of condoms, mostly empty.

She was in a brothel. And a very low-end brothel at that . . . They didn’t intend to move her. They’d already sold her. She was too old, and too much trouble, so they’d cut their losses.

If she didn’t find Jennifer, and fast, she’d only leave this place in a body bag and Jennifer, still young and valuable, would disappear forever.





CHAPTER 14

On the hills outside the City, inside the compound’s luxurious study, Emm Rothschild watched the lively way Arturo Cervantes, Mexico’s oldest and most ruthless drug lord, conveyed his story. He’d been wary at first of answering questions in any depth, but Curt, as a seasoned, nationally known reporter, had interviewed princes and popes. Adding a wary drug lord to the list wasn’t much of a challenge.