Personal Demon

Page 54

 
PAIGE AND I walked into the terminal. I carried two overnight bags; she had her laptop case.
We waded through a throng of friends and relatives greeting arrivals. Twenty feet away, Karl sat reading a newspaper, alone on a bank of chairs. Despite the shouts and crying around him, he never even glanced up.
As we emerged from the crowd, he snapped the paper shut, rose and strode into the terminal…away from us. Paige arched her brows at me. Was Karl simply being cautious? Or did he suspect he’d been followed? After less than a dozen paces, he stopped, wheeled and shot us a “Well, are you coming?” glower. He barely let us catch up, then was off again.
“We should find someplace with a modicum of privacy,” I said. “I know several—”
“Here’s fine.”
He veered into a bar packed with commuters fortifying themselves for the flight—or the drive home. It hardly seemed the place to discuss matters of a supernatural nature, but a crowded public place was more secure than an empty one, where words could carry and neighbors might be bored enough to eavesdrop.
“Where’s Hope?” Paige asked as Karl pulled out her stool, the action seeming more reflex than courtesy.
“After the girl died, Benoit—the gang leader—called her in. He has them hunkered down at the club, planning their next move. No one leaves.”
 
That explained his brusqueness then. He was eager to get this over with so he could return. His haste was warranted. Should Hope push her panic alarm now, it would be a half-hour or more before he could respond.
Karl pulled a manila envelope from his folded newspaper and removed a sheaf of photos. Eight-by-ten shots, all grainy, the resolution poor.
“Hope used her cell phone to take pictures of the originals, then sent them to me,” he explained.
The top photograph was of two young men. Both sat bound to chairs, bowed forward, as if so exhausted that their bindings were all that was holding them upright. The dark-haired one bore an ugly cut across his cheekbone, his cheek coated with a layer of dried blood. The fair-haired young man had a black eye and a swollen lip.
“Jaz and Sonny, I presume?”
He nodded. “The original was left beside the girl’s body.”
“Was any note attached?”
“Three words on the back: more to come.”
That could mean anything from “more information forthcoming” to “more mistreatment of the prisoners”
to “more victims to follow.” Intentionally cryptic, leaving the recipient hoping for the best while imagining the worst.
“And her killer claimed to be delivering a message from my father, not only with the picture, but the young woman’s death? The Cortez Cabal rarely utilizes kidnapping. The outcome is fraught with uncertainty. If it fails, you must kill the victims. If it succeeds, you have living witnesses. If it succeeds and you kill the witnesses, your credibility as a negotiator is irrevocably damaged. To send such a blatant message, and leave evidence of his complicity…” I shook my head. “It’s not—”
“—your father.”
“No, I was going to say it isn’t my father’s style.”
Karl’s fingers drummed against the tabletop. “Same thing. The point is—”
“No, pardon the interruption, but it is not the same thing. If my father wishes to commit a criminal act that may later damage his reputation, he has been known to choose a method that is deliberately out of character.”
When Karl frowned, Paige explained, “So when he’s accused of it, even his enemies will say ‘that’s not Benicio Cortez’s style’…ergo, it couldn’t be Benicio Cortez.”
Most people would be shocked by such duplicity. Karl looked as if he was taking notes.
I said, “You may not wish to raise the possibility to Hope, but it’s very likely these young men are no longer alive. There’s nothing in the photograph to indicate when it was taken. Usually, if proving that a kidnap victim is alive, his captors—”
“Put a newspaper in the picture.”
Karl himself had been involved in a kidnapping—a brutal one of Clayton during his strike against the pack—and as he turned his gaze to watch passersby, I wondered whether there was a touch of discomfiture in his straying attention.
He flipped the photograph behind the stack. Next was a black-and-white security camera shot, showing a man walking down a hall.
When I saw the man’s face, my heart sank. As quick as I was to agree that my father could be involved in this, such assertions were born more of self-preservation than of conviction. Saying my father would never do such a thing was a direct route to humiliation.
“I take it you recognize him?” Karl said.
“Juan Ortega, head of the Cortez Cabal private security division.”
“According to the gang, this is the same man who beat and robbed the kidnapped boys,” Karl said. “He’s the one whose home they were going to break into last night, before the boys disappeared.”
“Could he be moonlighting for someone else?” Paige asked.
“Unlikely. If he was caught, he’d be executed. An employee who is willing to work for an outside interest might be persuaded to sell information to that interest.”
“What if he wanted to leave the Cabal and this was his way to do it?”
“Blackmail? Let me leave or I’ll kill these boys and pin it on you? My father would agree, wait until the danger had passed, then devote all his excess manpower to hunting Ortega, whereupon he’d be tortured as a lesson to others. Ortega would know that.” I pushed the photo back to Karl. “I’m not saying Ortega’s involvement proves my father is behind this, but it lends credence to the theory.”
Karl flipped to the next photo. A tall light-haired man with a scar by his mouth. My heart dipped a little more.
 
“Andrew Mullins,” I said before Karl could ask. “He’s in security too, under Ortega. I don’t know him as well. I’m presuming this is the second gunman?”
Karl nodded.
“Then leave these with me and go back to Hope. I’ll call when I know something.”
 
HOPE: FEAR AND LOATHING
 
 
The room blurred. The gun barrel flashed under the harsh light. I squeezed my eyes shut, but the gun kept rising. The finger moved on the trigger. The gun flared. Bianca’s eyes widened in horror. The bullet—