“What the hell?” Wallace asks, peering through the windshield.
A round of gunshots blast into the air, staccato and strident. My heart seizes, clamoring against my ribs at the violent sound. Wallace reaches to the back seat and shoves me to the floor.
“Stay down,” he whispers. The flattened panic in his voice is only outdone by the terror. A half-formed scream jams in my throat. A flurry of Spanish words fly past my ears faster than I can process or translate. I force my body as low to the floorboard as possible, keeping my head down.
Paco’s door is yanked open. I hear him begging, a series of por favors and confused pleas. I brace myself for the sound of the shot that could end his life, but it doesn’t come. I bite my lip against a cry. I’m completely blind to what’s happening. My fear has no shape or form—only sound.
To my right, I hear Wallace’s door jerked open too, his body dragged out.
“This one,” a man says in heavily accented English. “He the one.”
“What?” Wallace asks, his voice slightly higher and confused. “No. There’s been a mistake. El error. Vaccuna.”
“Si, si,” the man replies, satisfaction in the words. “Vaccuna. Come. He the one.”
There’s no way I’m hunching down in the back seat like some timid rabbit while God knows who drags off my best friend. I’ve never been more frightened, but I couldn’t live with myself if I didn’t do something. If I didn’t try. I’ve heard of tourists being kidnapped by extremists or mercenaries. This overgrown paradise will swallow any trace of Wallace, and I might never find him. That’s not happening to me again. I can’t lose anyone else that way. I’m working up the nerve to get out and do something, try something, when the back door rips open, and my choice is taken away.
“Ah ha ha,” a man drawls. “What do we have here?”
His voice is so neutral it sounds like he ruthlessly scrubbed anything that could trace its owner from it. When I glance up in centimeters of trepidation, the mask covering the man’s face matches the anonymity of his voice. It’s a mask of Abraham Lincoln, incongruously comical, like a child would wear for trick or treat. He’s heavily muscled, broad and tall, maybe six foot five, with blond hair rioting around his head in a cloud of paradoxically cherubic curls. A Kurt Cobain T-shirt tops his camouflage pants.
“Hi,” he says, his tone infuriatingly calm for a man with a semi-automatic weapon slung over his shoulder. “Care to join the party?”
He orders me out with a curt flick of his head. My teeth grit around a torrent of curses and demands as his flippancy finally roots out the fury buried beneath my fear.
I uncoil from my hiding place behind the front seat and climb out. Several dark-haired men, apparently locals, stand behind him, armed and grim-faced. Paco huddles in the truck bed, his wrists trapped in plastic cuffs. Wallace stands on the barrel side of a gun aimed at his head.
“Who’s this?” another voice asks from just beyond Abe’s shoulder. A man, roughly Abe’s height, maybe a few inches shorter, with hair not quite as blond, curls not quite as cherubic, and an accent firmly from the Midwest, walks toward us, wearing a Richard Nixon mask.
“We don’t know yet,” Abe replies.
“Can I keep her?” Nixon asks, and even behind the slits of his mask I feel his eyes crawling over my body in my fitted T-shirt and jeans.
“We may need to dispose of her, brother,” Abe says, apology in his tone.
Fear weakens my knees and I struggle to stay on my feet. My chest goes so tight, every breath is torture. The threat of his words finds its mark in my racing heart.
Abe grabs my arm and drags me forward. “What a shame that would be. She’s a pretty little thing, but I need the good doctor here, not stowaways. Can’t afford dead weight, even if it is lightweight.”
“Well, let’s see who she is,” Nixon says, grabbing my backpack from the back seat and rummaging through it. He pulls out my passport. “Lennix Moon Hunter. What kind of name is that? What are you? Mexican or some kind of Puerto Rican?”
“Yavapai-Apache,” I answer, trying to keep my voice from trembling. “What do you want with us?”
“Oh, I don’t want anything with you,” Abe assures me, his voice soothing. “I’m probably tossing you off the side of this mountain in few seconds.”
Oh, God. An ear-splitting scream is trapped inside my head, desperate to get out. I’m not sure I could even run. Terror weights my body and nails my feet to the path.
Abe tips his golden head toward Wallace. “He’s the one I want.”
“Me?” Wallace touches his chest. “Wh—I don’t—why? I’m a biochemist administering vaccines. There’s been a mistake.”
“I know who you are,” Abe says, a grin tipping his mask to the side, “but thank you for confirming you’re exactly who I’ve been looking for. You’re gonna make me lots of money, Doctor Murrow.”
“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” Wallace says, his words and eyes frantic. “But Lennix has nothing to do with this. Let her go. She hasn’t seen your face and—”
Abe cuts Wallace’s words short with a backhanded slap. Even in the first morning sun’s heat, coldness emanates from Abe’s arctic blue eyes behind the mask.
“This is my operation, Doctor Murrow,” he says as if he hasn’t just drawn blood from Wallace’s lip. “I’ll tell you what I need from you, and I’ll decide if Lennix Moon Hunter lives or dies.”
He issues a low stream of Spanish commands, and two of the armed men grab Wallace by the arms, then shove him into the covered bed of the truck.
“No!” I surge forward, my fright for Wallace overcoming the fear for myself. Abe blocks me with the butt of his gun under my chin.
“You’re not invited. Yet,” he says, his voice harsh and pleasant. “I need to figure out who you are before I let you in the clubhouse.”
“I’ve seen her before,” Nixon says, studying me, his eyes narrowed in the mask’s slits.
“We don’t know each other,” I say carefully, the butt of the gun digging into my neck. “I’d remember a face like that.”
Abe’s laughter booms through the trees, bouncing off mountains and scurrying birds from their branches.
“Oh, I get it. Because of the mask.” He gestures to his covered face. “Clever little squaw, aren’t you? Lucky for you I like my women feisty and foreign.”
“I’m an American,” I reply, tensing at the insult, “like you.”
The cheeks of his mask drop with his disappearing smile. “You don’t know what I am, who I am, and if you’re a smart bitch, you’ll make sure it stays that way.”
“I got it,” Nixon says, his voice eager. He shifts his weapon on his shoulder. “That political show Beltway. That’s where I saw her. She was talking about her book.”
Abe tilts his head, the blue eyes narrowing with interest and speculation.
“Politics, Ms. Moon?” Abe asks, I’m sure deliberately misnaming me. “The plot does thicken.”