The rain finally lets up as I get away from the crowd of rescuers, onlookers, EMS, and law enforcement, and with wet and muddy boots, I get back into the Wrangler.

The thought comes to me, like a sweet taste of wine, that I’ve rescued a family.

I check my watch.

I have thirty minutes to call the kidnapper with the word that I’ve fulfilled his demands.

And I’m an hour away from Three Rivers.

I’ve saved this family.

And killed my own.

CHAPTER 45

WITH HIS trusted associate Casper Khourery at his side, Pelayo Abboud unlocks the basement door and strolls in to check on his guests. Coming in behind Casper is the woman doctor from Afghanistan, named Bahara. Even in this heat, the woman insists on wearing a loose black robe nearly covering her plump body, and a distant, human part of Pelayo admires such piousness.

The inside of the room stinks—from fear, burnt tissue, and a foul scent from the area of the chemical toilet. The little girl cries out as they come in, and the poor man backpedals his way across the bed, until his back is up against the cement wall, his eyes wide, holding up his injured arm in an awkward position.

“Please,” Pelayo says. “Let the doctor examine you.”

Tom’s face is red and his eyes are swollen from all the weeping and sobbing, and even though Pelayo can sense the fear in the broken man, Tom does as he’s told and gingerly presents the burnt arm to the doctor.

She sits across from Tom on the girl’s bed, whispers to the girl, and little Denise turns her head and looks to the wall. Tom groans a couple of times as the doctor goes through her large black valise and begins to work on Tom’s arm. It looks like a raw, bloody business, and Pelayo—who fondly recalls killing a school bully back in Veracruz by shoving a mechanical pencil in the teen boy’s right ear, said pencil having been gifted to him on his twelfth birthday by his grandfather—doesn’t flinch.

Eventually a gauze bandage is loosely wrapped around the burnt arm, and Bahara gets up, rearranging her black robe. She steps away and whispers to Pelayo, “I…this is not what I agreed to do. This is evil work.”

Pelayo shrugs. “Then you may leave, if you wish.”

The Afghan doctor’s eyes widen. “For real?”

“Certainly,” Pelayo says. “But you cannot fly or drive. So if you can determine a way of walking back to your cursed country, go. If not, stay quiet, woman, and do your job.”

Tom Cornwall sees the doctor scurry out, and he can feel the fear and terror spread inside of him, like a splotch of oil slowly spreading across a blank pavement. With the woman in the room, there was a bit of reassurance that nothing bad would happen to him and Denise, but now, it’s his kidnapper and the other well-dressed man who is his deputy.

Pelayo Abboud sighs, sniffs, and says something in Spanish to the other man, and he leaves as well.