Sinclair Justice (Texas Rangers #2)(72)
Emm read over his shoulder and saw that he was, indeed, making copious notes that would aid in his story. Nothing incriminating; more of the history of Arturo Cervantes and how he did, indeed, support not just an army of men but their families. He’d put more than one poor boy through private school and into university.
The morning waned into afternoon as Curt’s pad grew full. A waiter brought tea and scones and finger sandwiches. Emm would have laughed at the pretension if she hadn’t been so tense. She was too nervous to be hungry, but she forced herself to eat, not knowing when she’d get the opportunity again. The clock struck five p.m. as Cervantes obviously grew restless. Curt thanked him and then led Emm forward. Emm heard something about “casa” and more that sounded like her credentials.
Cervantes’s intense stare fixed on her. Emm’s skin crawled at the way he looked her up and down. She saw the appetite in his eyes, and it had nothing to do with food. But she only accepted the camera they finally returned to her after a direct order from Cervantes. Then he swept his arm before them, and Emm realized the great man intended to give her the grand tour himself. She gave a pleading look to Curt and he moved to follow them, but Cervantes made a staying move with his hand and two guards blocked Curt. Ruefully, he sat back down in his chair, shrugging at her slightly.
She knew that look—your idea. Good luck...
Emm’s heart skipped a beat, but she had little choice, given everything that was at stake. She followed as he showed her around the ground floor, her shoulder purse wrapped securely over her shoulder. She found herself oohing and aahing at the huge house, which looked like something from the Mexican version of House Beautiful. She saw several flower arrangements, drooping a bit now, that looked like a style Yancy favored, but that was hardly conclusive. In the kitchen, however, she saw a recipe for tres leches flan that someone had pinned to a board on the refrigerator. While Emm stalled, pretending to focus the camera on the long granite kitchen counter, in reality she was reading the handwritten notes through the lens. Someone had quadrupled the recipe and calculated the new ingredients by hand. Her heart pounded against her ribs, for she recognized that untidy scrawl. Yancy’s handwriting was horrid and this looked exactly the same, with the backward slanted ls and ts. Still, it wasn’t definitive.
But when Cervantes led her upstairs, he bypassed his room, allowing her to look into the second one very close to his. She peeked inside, seeing the feminine decor and the makeup vanity. She lifted the camera, rhapsodizing in her schoolgirl Spanish that the room was lovely. She pointed—could she see inside? He hesitated but let her in. Attached was a bathroom and Emm said, “Ba?o?” and made an embarrassed face. He eyed her carefully, shrugged, and gave her a regal nod of acceptance.
She went inside and did actually use the facility, but when she turned on the water to disguise the noise, she did a quick search of the medicine cabinet above. Nothing distinctive except . . . She pulled the pill bottle out. It had Cervantes’s name on it, but then she read the name of the medication.
Effluenatasis. Yancy’s new hemophilia drug, rare in Mexico City, rare even in the US, it was so new . . . Proof as definitive as she could want.
Torn between relief and fear, she was putting the bottle back when the door opened gently behind her. Arturo Cervantes watched her close the medicine cabinet. He said in broken but distinguishable English, “Sí, I thought so. She no here.” He smiled, his grin bright and toothy in the vanity lights.
Glad somehow that the charade was over, Emm took the card she’d saved in her pocket and offered it to him. He glanced down, obviously unsurprised at the name. She offered her hand as the overture to what she knew would be very tense, and very critical, negotiations. Not just Yancy and Jennifer were in danger now. So was she . . . “Mercy Magdalena . . . Rothschild. Yancy’s hermana. Mucho gusto.”
Back in town, Yancy shook off her horror at where she was and what it meant and plunged inside the next open door. To her relief, there were clothes hanging inside. Slutty clothes, but she was used to that. She didn’t risk pulling on underwear, but the tight fake leather skirt and tank top were better than a blanket. Even the stiletto shoes fit, but she needed to be light on her feet, so she kicked them off and looked for something easier to walk in. There was nothing. With every move the handcuffs rattled, and she knew that no matter how she tried to disguise them, they’d give her away.
She sat down, pulling at the one still latched around her wrist. Her skin was slick with blood. She bit her lip as the wound opened further. But she kept twisting her wrist from side to side, pulling . . . pulling . . . and finally her thin wrist slipped free. She wanted to toss the cuff across the room but instead wrapped it in a pillow case from the bed and shoved it as far beneath the bed on the dirty carpet as she could reach.
She rummaged through the rest of the room and to her delight found a black lace mantilla. In a Catholic country, even prostitutes went to Mass; they had plenty of reason to cover their heads, too. She pulled it down over her face and anchored it to her blouse with a couple of pins to keep it in place. She blinked, her eyes adjusting, but finally she could see through the heavy lace well enough to brave the corridor again.
She despaired as she tried more doors, certain she was already past the room where Jennifer had lain screaming, but then she heard the elevator ping and ducked inside the last empty room. She cracked the door and watched two Mexicans dressed like gang members pass. One carried a small automatic pistol, and they eyed both ends of the corridor warily, as if they didn’t want anyone to see what they did next. The other used a key to open one of the locked doors across the hall. A rustling of what sounded like sheets, and then the taller one exited with a bundle of sheets over his shoulder. As he passed, Yancy saw long blonde hair swinging limply almost to the floor.