Hostage

Retro stood and looked at the man’s ID card, which was clearly a fake.

“What’s your real name?”

“Don’t worry about it.”

“Did you see another police car stop here earlier today? This morning between seven-thirty and eight?”

The man went into a laughing fit that terminated with a wet gurgling cough.

“I don’t know what time it was,” he said. “But yeah. There was a lady cop out here. It was pretty funny.”

“What happened?”

“I’ll tell you all about it when I get some medicine.”

“I don’t have any medicine to give you,” Retro said. “Tell me now.”

The man started laughing again.

Retro couldn’t stand it anymore. This guy had seen Vaughan being attacked, and now he was treating it like some kind of joke.

Wrong answer.

Retro stepped forward and pressed the toe of his shiny black shoe against the man’s injured knee.

The man screamed. His face turned purple.

“Stop! You’re hurting me!”

“I’m going to hurt you a lot more if you don’t start talking. My friend’s in trouble and I don’t have time for any of your-”

“All right! Just get your foot off my leg and I’ll tell you everything I know.”

Retro took his foot off the man’s leg.

And the man told Retro everything he knew.

12

Vaughan stopped and looked down at the puddle of blood forming beneath her left foot. At first she thought she’d been shot, but then she realized that she must have stepped on one of the stray slivers of porcelain from the broken toilet tank lid. Amped on adrenaline, she hadn’t noticed the pain or the blood until now.

She knew that she couldn’t take the time to stop and tend to her injury. Concussion or no concussion, Sozinho would be coming as soon as he realized she’d left the room. She knew this, but when she tried to take a step forward, a white hot jolt of electric agony shot up through her left leg and terminated at the tip of her scalp. She tried limping along on her heel, but it was no good. Every step felt as though someone was jabbing an ice pick through the bottom of her foot.

She hobbled over to the swimming pool area and sat on the concrete deck, easing herself down as gently as possible without the use of her hands. She rested her left foot on her right thigh and examined the cut. It was about an inch long, running lengthwise along her arch, a little closer to her toes than to her heel.

Running barefoot on the hard surface had driven the porcelain shard deep into the tissue. Vaughan wiped away some of the blood, but she still couldn’t see it. With tears streaming down her face from the excruciating pain, she reached into the wound with her thumb and forefinger and dug the foreign object out. It was long and crescent shaped, like a miniature Samurai sword, and there was a gelatinous chunk of raw meat dangling from one end.

Vaughan turned to the side and retched, allowing herself a few seconds for the nausea to pass, and then she went to work with the sliver of porcelain that had been in her foot, slicing out a patch of the filthy vinyl swimming pool cover to use as a dressing. She cut a section about the size of placemat, folded it into a triangle, wrapped it around her foot and tied it tightly.

Then she heard footsteps.

Sozinho.

“I’m going to kill you,” he shouted from across the courtyard.

He was about a hundred feet away, shambling toward her like some kind of grotesque character from a horror movie. As he got closer, Vaughan could see some of the damage she’d done. There was a meaty flap where the left side of his face used to be. It jiggled with every step. His hair was matted and the front of his shirt was covered with blood.

He aimed the pistol and fired once.

The bullet whistled past Vaughan’s left ear. She got up and started running toward the archway. Her foot didn’t hurt anymore. It was numb now, the makeshift bandage slapping awkwardly against the rough Spanish tiles like a snorkeling flipper. She ran as fast as she could, her lungs on fire, a prizefighter working the speed bag deep in the center of her chest.

Just a few more feet to go.

She made it to the arch, heard the rumble of an engine approaching, turned the corner and trotted toward the highway that ran in front of the motel, shouting and waving her cuffed hands in the air.

It was a man on a motorcycle. He slowed and looked over at Vaughan, shook his head and kept going.

Vaughan screamed and shouted and motioned for him to come back.

“Please! He’s going to kill me!”

The rider eased off the throttle about a quarter of a mile down the road. His brake lights came on, and then he made a U-turn. Maybe he’d heard Vaughan’s frantic plea for help, or maybe he’d seen her uniform and figured she might make trouble for him, or maybe he just decided it was the right thing to do. He sped back toward the motel, pulled into the parking lot, stopped a few feet from where Vaughan was standing and lifted the plastic shield on the front of his helmet.

“What happened to you?” he said.

“There’s no time to explain. Just get me out of here.”

“What are all these signs for?”