froze.
Haden would have never left the gate open if he’d gone out of town and if he was home, he would have been even more careful about checking it.
She looked over her shoulder in both directions, then glided inside the walled enclosure, her steps muted. No moon lit the sky but there was enough ambient light to make out the bushes and plants in pots around a central fountain. Edging around the perimeter, she headed for a door set between two of the windows.
The taste of fear filled her dry mouth and suddenly she realized her knife was in her hand. She didn’t remember pulling the weapon from her boot but her fingers were wrapped around it so she must have. When she reached the door, she used the tip of the blade to press against the wood and swing it open. The slab of heavy mahogany complied with a soft creak.
She wished it had stayed shut.
The room before her had been destroyed. There were holes in the stucco where things had been thrown and most of the furniture was upside down. A brown couch lay on its side, its ripped cushions scattered from one end of the room to the other. Two small chairs had been pushed over, too, their arms sticking uselessly into the air. The coffee table was the same way, but it only had three legs. One had been broken off with a savagery that made her swallow, a jagged piece of wood sticking out from the frame like a broken bone. The leg that had been ripped off lay near the shattered television set. The tip had been dipped in something brown and sticky. Her eyes backtracked the trail leading up to it. The line was long and ropy. On the wall where it began was a smeared handprint.
She stepped inside the room, avoiding a stain on the tile floor at the threshold to close the door behind her. Standing quietly, she listened to the flies buzz nearby, then she moved down the hallway on her left in a quick but silent stride. Within minutes, she knew the house was empty.
She returned to the den and surveyed the destruction again. Whatever had happened here had happened several days before, but the echoes of violence left behind could still be felt. Suppressing a shudder, Meredith tried to concentrate but it was almost impossible. Death had been here.
The heavy silence was broken with the incongruent sound of a baby crying. Meredith blinked twice, then realized the noise was coming from next door. She glanced at the house in time to see a light come on behind a open window on the second floor. Had they seen anything? Had they heard anything? The outline of a small lamp wavered behind a filmy curtain. It threw enough illumination over the stucco fence that when she turned back to the den, some of the details she’d missed before came into clearer view.
The first thing she noticed was the wall behind the front door. The pale yellow paint was marked with the scuff of a shoe. It looked as if someone had stood there and rested a boot against the stucco. She imagined the scene—the door slowly opening, the person behind makes the first strike, the beating ensues. Who had been waiting? Who had walked inside?
She picked her way through the debris to the other side of the room. Along with everything else, there were five cigarette butts scattered in the mess, all of them Payasos, the local Guatemalan brand. Kneeling down she stilled. Haden didn’t smoke. Acting on instinct, she lifted them one by one with the end of her knife and, ripping a page from a nearby book, wrapped the cigarettes up in the paper before dropping the packet into her pocket. She didn’t know what the cigarettes might tell her later, but information was information and years of training wouldn’t let her ignore it.
She studied the bookshelves. They had obviously been bumped during the struggle, books and photos tumbling out of their shelves to the floor beneath. Something silver glinted in the light but before she could tell what it was, the room went dark again. The baby had gone silent, she realized, and the neighbor had doused his lamp.
Stepping closer, she bent down anyway and dug through the debris with the edge of her knife. She had to push aside a heavy candle and then move a travel book on Machu Picchu, but she finally reached the thing that had caught her attention.
It was a picture frame, she realized. And it held a photograph of her.
RETURNING TO THE SAFE HOUSE, Meredith called Cipriano Barrisito immediately. The need to rush was long past—the blood had been shed days ago—but she couldn’t hold back her sense of urgency.
He answered as before, right on the third ring. “Did everything go as you wanted?”
“Not exactly,” she said. “My friend may have a bigger problem than I first thought. I need you to go to his barrio and ask some questions.”
“Dígame.”
She gave him the address of Haden’s neighbor then said, “Send someone over there right now. They have a young child and they probably don’t sleep too soundly. I want to know if they heard any…noise at the house next door.” She took a sip of the drink she’d poured for herself before grabbing the phone. “It would have happened over the last two days, maybe three.”
Barrisito hesitated. “What would this unusual sound have been?”
“Just ask them. When you find out, call me back.”
She was on her second drink when the phone rang, its strident sound making her jerk so hard, a splash of tomato juice and vodka spilled from her glass onto her blouse. The stain reminded her of the ones she’d seen in Haden’s house.
“Night before last, they heard a car on the street behind them,” Barrisito confirmed. “Then men talking loudly.”
“How many?”
“At least two, maybe three. They weren’t sure.”
“Did they recognize anyone?”
“No.”
“What happened?”
“A fight, but they ignored it,” he said. “This is Guatemala. You don’t stick your nose where it doesn’t belong. It might get chopped off.”
“How long did it last?”
“Not long.” He paused. “When it was over, they said one man left the house and walked away. They saw no one else after that and they’ve seen no one since.” He spoke quietly. “If your friend was somehow taken to the place my cousin told you about, I would leave this alone.”
“I don’t think that’s him,” she said quietly, the feeling she’d had at Haden’s returning. Death had been in there. She’d felt it. “Rosario said only one gringo was there. I doubt that it’s Haden. It may be Brad Prescott, though.”
“Whoever he is, leave him be. Fidel Menchez controls everything in that part of the country. Everything between Guatemala and Mexico. And he’s not a pleasant man.”
She tried to focus. “Tell me more.”
“There’s nothing more to tell. For a small fee, he will guarantee safe passage for the other men’s couriers who must pass through his area but if you do not pay, you end up in his prison.”
“Is there no way out?”
“I’ve heard of bribes helping, but the price, it is too high for most.”
“How big is this place? Are there that many couriers going back and forth?”
“He has other ‘prisoners’ as well. For his friends—his paying friends—Menchez will help out with someone who needs to be ‘disappeared.’ They go in, they don’t come out.”
“Why not just kill them?”
“Killing would be easier,” Barrisito conceded, “but you have to remember where you are. This is Guatemala. Everything can be used as a bargaining chip. One never knows when a trade can be made. Why waste the bullet?”
Meredith’s mind spun as he talked, her plan coalescing quickly, the seed for it having already been planted the minute the hooker had mentioned her friend’s visit to the prison.
“You’re loca,” he said after Meredith explained what she wanted to do. “These people