A hit.

I get a hit.

And then I get a hand on my shoulder.

“Amy, what a surprise!”

CHAPTER 11

PELAYO ABBOUD is standing outside the thick metal door when his trusted lieutenant, Casper Khourery, arrives holding an ice-cold sixteen-ounce bottle of Coca-Cola, a white straw sticking out of the top. Pelayo nods in gratitude and gestures to the door, and Casper—a bulky man in his early thirties with perfect white teeth, light-brown skin, close-cropped curly black hair, and a carefully trimmed mustache—unlocks the door, stepping back. Casper is wearing a fine gray suit, a Savile Row knockoff, with a crisp white shirt, blue necktie, and red kerchief sticking out of the jacket pocket, which Pelayo thinks is a bit too much, but he’s a gracious boss and will allow Casper that one fashion statement.

The door swings open and Pelayo walks in. The young girl is hunched up against the wall on her bed, coloring something in a book, and her father is drying his hands at the corner sink. Pelayo is pleased that the girl is using the coloring book, which he earlier supplied. Something to keep the little brat occupied so her father can focus on the trouble they are in. The father turns, and Pelayo sees the man is struggling to keep his emotions under guard, but Pelayo is no fool. The man before him wants to kill him and would try in this very instant, save that the little girl is here and Casper is standing in the doorway.

Pelayo nods to the other bed. “May I sit?”

“Do I have a choice?” comes the reply.

“No,” Pelayo says, sitting down on the edge. “Still, I always try to keep as much courtesy in the air as I can.” He takes a sip of the cold Coke, relishes the sharp, sugary bite. He holds the bottle up and says, “My apologies. Would you and Denise like one?”

“No,” the man says.

“You didn’t ask her.”

“I didn’t have to.”

Pelayo shrugs. “Your loss. This bottle comes from Coca-Cola FEMSA, which produces it in Mexico. There, they use the traditional cane sugar, unlike the corn fructose sugar used in the States. The experts say there is no difference in taste, but the experts, once again, are wrong.”

He takes another taste and says, “And I must apologize for something else.”

“The kidnapping?” the man asks. He’s tall, with muscular shoulders and arms that show he likes to work out, but with a pudgy middle and sides that show he spends a lot of time sitting in front of a desk. He has on blue jeans, no shoes, black socks, and a wrinkled pink polo shirt. Pelayo thinks of himself as a global man with global tastes, but really, a man wearing pink?

“That’s a harsh word, a harsh phrase,” Pelayo says. “Let’s just call it an unfortunate turn of events, a matter of business, that’s all. Hopefully, in two days or so, all will be settled and you will be rejoined with your wife, Captain Amy Travis Cornwall, 297th Military Intelligence Battalion, Military Intelligence Corps, Fort Belvoir, Virginia, recently home after an eight-month deployment to Afghanistan.”