I put the phone in my lap, keep on driving.

I say to the man next to me, “I’m sorry I’m doing this to you. Very, very sorry.”

He doesn’t say a word.

No matter, I think.

One way or another, he’s valuable to me, the key to get Tom and Denise freed, and if he wants to stay quiet, fine. In fact, more than fine. It’s perfect. I don’t need to hear him begging or pleading to be let go as I take him to the man who wants him.

I look at my iPhone.

The signal is getting stronger.

Good.

I pull over and dial that number from memory.

In less than three seconds, it’s answered, and I recognize the voice. “Yes?”

“Got him,” I say.

There’s an all-knowing chuckle from the phone.

“I know.”

CHAPTER 56

ANTONIO GARCIA belches in satisfaction and looks at the nice porn movie he’s watching on his Galaxy with the bigger screen he got last year, with his belly full of two Big Macs and a large order of french fries. He’s parked in the lot of the new McDonald’s, and he wishes he had come here earlier. The frozen foods back at their place…ugh.

He sips on a big cup of orange Fanta and wonders if he should go back in for something else to top off his meal, perhaps one of those grilled chicken sandwiches.

Chicken.

No, he really should get back to the house, before Pepe decides it would be the Christian thing to tell their jefe that he has violated orders and has left the place. The earlier Pepe would have never squealed like that, but the new Pepe…who knows. Once a man starts believing in the gods, anything can happen.

He sucks in the Fanta and finishes it, tosses the empty cardboard cup in the rear. Coming through the border crossing a week ago was so easy, even when the Border Patrol took them aside for a detailed search. Of course, the look of them made the norteamericanos suspicious—he, Pepe, and Ramon, looking the way they did, escorting a man who was so well-dressed and polite he looked like a retired television star.

The truck was pulled apart, two bitch dogs sniffed around and poked, and nothing was found. Nothing. Not a seed, not a trace of powder, not a single 9mm round.

So they were sent on their way, and when they arrived in this little crap hole in Texas, they found that weapons, DVDs, and food had been stocked up in that little house.

He peeks down at the screen of his Galaxy phone and sighs. A sweet movie. It is about a busty housewife wearing a skimpy bikini who invites three bulky men into her home to clean the pool. Oh, yeah, a lot of cleaning was going on, but none of it involved chemicals or skimmers. The four of them had started poolside nice and gentle, and now they were in the wide living room of the house, and the housewife was being tossed around like a doll with flexible limbs.