Breaking Point (38 page)

Cárdenas had filled out by then, no longer a skinny teenager. Tall with a heavy mustache, he seemed to like posing in his uniform, gun in hand. There were more than a dozen photographs of him standing with U.S. military and intelligence personnel, a broad smile on his face, his hair cut in a mullet, aviator-style Ray-Bans covering his eyes.

You think you’re so cool, don’t you, Cárdenas?

Even the sight of him sickened Natalie.

The concept behind AMINTAC was to help democratic governments keep the peace and counter organized crime. But keeping the peace was apparently not what Cárdenas had had in mind.

Not long after he’d returned to Mexico, DEA memos showed that some agents had begun to suspect the Zetas of selling the drugs they confiscated from cartels, using weapons and tactical training provided by the United States to carve out their own drug empire, slaughtering cartel members—and anyone else who got in their way. And then things had really gotten ugly.

U.S. agents began to suspect Cárdenas of playing a role in the disappearance of young women around Ciudad Juárez. Hundreds of girls and women had been found dead in and around the city, all of them victims of sexual violence, all of them battered, their bodies brutalized. Some had been as young as fourteen. None had been older than thirty.

Such terrible suffering. So young to die.

Natalie couldn’t bring herself to look closely at the photographs. She’d seen some of them the day before she’d been kidnapped—horrific images of young women lying naked and dead in the desert.

That could have been me.

She forced her emotions aside, read through several reports about Cárdenas that focused mostly on the organization of the Zetas and their drug operation. But some of the reports indicated that Cárdenas was a suspect in at least some of the femicides. Then he’d ordered the death of an American on U.S. soil, a former business associate who’d become an informant for the DEA. Zeta snipers had shot the informant through the window of his El Paso home, killing him in front of his wife and children.

That’s when the U.S. Marshal Service had taken over.

Natalie had no trouble distinguishing Zach’s reports from the others. His neat handwriting. His sharp, declarative sentences. His ability to separate facts from conjecture and organize both.

That’s when she found it—the report on the sixteen-year-old girl tourists had found lying more dead than alive in the desert.

As soon as she realized what she was reading, Natalie tried to turn the page. She didn’t want to know what it said. And yet she couldn’t stop herself.

It was perhaps the most chilling report she’d ever read, the young victim describing her ordeal in detail. How she’d been kidnapped and stuffed in a trunk on her way home from working late at one of the
maquiladoras
. How Cárdenas had brutally raped and beaten her over a period of days, until she’d wanted to die. How he’d brought her into a little chapel and had raped her for hours in front of an altar dedicated to La Santa Muerte. How he’d strangled her, calling her beautiful, his face inches from hers as she slowly lapsed into unconsciousness.

Oh, God! That’s what he would have done to me.

And then it was too much.

Natalie stood, pushed past Zach, who was still on the phone, and raced to the nearest bathroom, where she threw up her lunch, her body shaking, her blood gone cold, an image of the Zeta with the tattoo on his arm fixed in her mind.

Él te sacrificará a la Santa Muerte
.

He will sacrifice you to La Santa Muerte.

Trembling, she flushed the toilet, got unsteadily to her feet, and rinsed out her mouth, splashing water over her face, still feeling nauseated.

“Natalie?” Zach’s voice came from beside her. “Are you okay?”

She nodded, reached for a towel, and turned to find him watching her, a concerned frown on his face. “I’m . . . I’m fine.”

“The hell you are! You’re white as a sheet.” He touched his wrist to her forehead, apparently feeling for fever.

“I’m not sick. I was reading the dossier and . . .” Tears blurred her vision. “Oh, Zach, what he did to that sixteen-year-old, what he did to all those girls. It’s beyond horrific. It’s what he would have done to me, isn’t it?”

The answer was on Zach’s face, in his unflinching gaze. He drew her into his arms and held her. “That can’t have been easy to read.”

Natalie sank into the shelter of Zach’s embrace. “You knew. When we were locked up, you knew exactly what he had planned for me. You told me the truth.”

I imagine he’ll rape you repeatedly over a period of days or maybe even weeks and then sell you or kill you.

There was no way Natalie could have understood what he’d meant. The reality that young girl had survived was so much worse than anything Natalie’s imagination could have conjured, even locked in the dark of that arachnid-infested cell.

“Shhh. Try not to think about that now.” He stroked her hair, the warmth of his body chasing the ice from her blood. It was the first time he’d held her since he’d drawn the line between them, and she wanted it to last forever. But it didn’t.

All too soon he released her and stepped back. “Are you sure you don’t want to go rest for a while?”

Natalie swallowed her disappointment, wiped the tears from her cheeks. “No, thank you. I’ll be fine. And thanks.”

He stepped aside, let her walk past him and out of the bathroom. “That was Rowan on the phone. She sent some DUSMs to see whether the company that helped the soccer coach move had his new address. Turns out they never met him. They were paid in cash—an envelope of bills left in the apartment. And they didn’t move his shit into a new home. They delivered it to the Goodwill—every bit of clothing, every dish and spoon, every piece of furniture.”

Natalie willed her mind to focus on what Zach had just told her. “Was he in such a hurry to leave town that he left everything behind?”

Zach opened his mouth to speak, but was interrupted by his cell phone. He drew it out of his pocket. “Hey, Darcangelo. What’s up?”

Natalie watched as Zach’s expression changed first to astonishment and then anger.

“You are fucking kidding me! I’m on my way.” He hung up, shoved the phone in his pocket, and strode toward the living room.

She hurried after him. “What’s wrong?”

“Your friend Joaquin took it upon himself to track down Quintana on his own, but Quintana spotted him.”

The blood rushed from her head. “Is Joaquin—”

“He’s fine—or he will be until I get ahold of him.”

What had Joaquin been thinking? Was he trying to get himself killed?

“Quintana got away?”

“No. They got him. I don’t know the details.” Zach turned into the kitchen, grabbed his keys from the counter, and shoved a belt badge over the waistband of his jeans just above his left hip.

Natalie’s fear for Joaquin gave way to a surge of relief. They’d caught Quintana. Maybe this was over. Maybe this was the end.

Oh, thank God!

Only when Zach walked to the front door did it dawn on her that he was leaving.

“Where are you going?”

“Denver PD. They’ve put him in isolation at the city jail. I’m going to lead the interrogation.”

“But I’ll be—”

“You’re safest here. Don’t leave the loft for any reason. You can call me using your new cell phone if you need me. Otherwise, you know the rules—no phone calls except on the encrypted cell and no e-mail that isn’t sent through the encrypted address. I’ll be back as soon as I can.”

She stood there, watching as he opened the door and stepped into the hallway.

He turned back toward her. “This is the biggest break we’ve gotten so far. Quintana is Cárdenas’s right-hand man, his nephew. If I can get him to talk . . .”

Natalie nodded. “Go.”

Then the door closed, and she was alone.

 

JOAQUIN SAT IN the hallway, still a bit stunned, his jaw aching where that bastard Quintana had punched him.

“I want him in full restraints in Interrogation Room One.” Darcangelo told Denver Police Chief Irving—the man who, until Darcangelo had been deputized, had been his boss. “No trips to the bathroom, no water, no phone calls—nothing until McBride gets here and approves it.”

“Your wish is our command.” Irving turned to the officer next to him, every year of his three decades as a cop showing in the lines on his face and the heavy bags beneath his eyes. “Do what the deputy marshal says, Sergeant Wu.”

Wu nodded, a suppressed grin on his face. “I’m on it.”

Darcangelo clapped Irving on the shoulder, the two men offering a sharp visual contrast—one young and athletic with long dark hair held back in a ponytail, the other middle-aged with a belly that protruded over his belt, his gray hair buzzed into a crew cut. “Irving, I’m going to put in a good word for you. You’ve been very cooperative.”

Even though it hurt, Joaquin couldn’t help but laugh.

Darcangelo turned on him, jabbed a finger in his face. “I don’t want to hear a thing from you, Ramirez. I’m still not sure whether I should arrest you, kick your ass myself, or buy you a drink.”

“Maybe all three.” Hunter appeared with an ice pack in his hand and McBride at his side. He tossed the ice pack to Joaquin. “I still think you should see a doc.”

“I’ll be fine.” Joaquin pressed the ice to his jaw.

He probably deserved to get his ass kicked. He definitely deserved to get arrested. How
stupid
could he be, letting the sunlight catch his lens like that? If the cops hadn’t gotten there in time . . .

McBride stopped in front of him, looked him over. “You’re damned lucky to be alive. I’m just glad I didn’t have to tell Natalie you’d gotten yourself killed. Later, you and I are going to have a very serious conversation.”

Then McBride turned to the other men. “Now, where is the son of a bitch?”

Darcangelo turned and walked down the hallway, McBride and Hunter following him, their voices trailing back. “Are you sure you’re up for this, bro? This asshole tortured you for six days and tried to kill Natalie. If it’s too personal—”

“Worry about him, not me.”

“You’re not going to hit him, are you?” That was Hunter, the tone of his voice suggesting that perhaps McBride
should
hit Quintana.

“That would be illegal, wouldn’t it? No, I’m not going to hit him. I’m going to kick the living shit out of him.”

Irving looked at Joaquin, shook his head, the weariness in his eyes brightened by just a hint of amusement. “Christ.”

 

WHILE DARCANGELO AND Hunter watched from the other side of the one-way mirror, Zach entered the interrogation room and found Quintana staring upward as if counting ceiling tiles, looking bored. “
¿Te acuerdas de mí?
”
Do you remember me?

Quintana met his gaze, smiled. “We miss you—my little stinger and I.”

Ignoring the taunt, Zach crossed the small room, dragged Quintana to his feet, and drove his fist into Quintana’s gut hard enough to bend the bastard double and knock the breath from his lungs. Then he grabbed Quintana by the hair, jerking his head up, forcing Quintana to meet his gaze. “If anything happens to Señorita Benoit, I will make you watch while I feed your balls to my dogs.”

Never mind that he had no dogs.

Quintana struggled to breathe, his lips twisting in a painful grimace that became a grin. “Like I made you watch . . . when I played with her perfect tits?”

Pulse thrumming, Zach willed himself to step back, knowing he was a heartbeat away from losing control and killing a man in his custody. He turned himself to stone, let himself go cold. “We have so much to talk about—like the explosives you planted in Señorita Benoit’s car.”

“I have nothing to say to you, except this.” Quintana fixed him with his gaze. “In the end you will fail. Your enemy follows no rules, while you are bound by many.”

It was going to be a long night.

 

NATALIE CLICKED ON yet another private school’s website. This one—a boarding school outside of Colorado Springs—had an endowment of a little more than a million dollars, with almost twice the number of students that attended Whitcomb Academy. She jotted down a few notes about it, then sat back on the sofa and stretched, her neck and shoulders stiff from so many hours at the computer.

The forensic accountant had contacted the paper today with the results of her analysis. Although she’d found nothing wrong with anyone’s tax records, she’d been surprised by the amount of money in Whitcomb Academy’s endowment, as well as the rate at which the fund had grown. She’d taken it upon herself to look up schools similar to Whitcomb across the country and hadn’t been able to find one that boasted a seven-hundred-forty-five-million-dollar endowment. She’d sent her findings to Natalie via e-mail.

It’s no smoking gun, to be sure. In fact, it might be nothing. But I thought I’d mention it anyway.

Natalie had spent the evening reading the report and doing her own search of private boarding schools. She’d gotten the same results. There wasn’t another boarding school in Colorado or across the country that could compare with Whitcomb when it came to the wealth of its endowment. In fact, Whitcomb exceeded even some private colleges. Did the school have a lot of wealthy donors or did the money come from—

Behind her, the clock on the mantel struck two a.m., making her gasp.

Get a grip on yourself, girl!

She drew a deep breath, blew it out, trying to relax.

As late as it was, she ought to quit working and go to bed. But she’d tried that once already, and she hadn’t been able to sleep. Every time she’d closed her eyes, she’d seen images of murdered girls, their bodies violated, twisted, broken. She’d given up at midnight and decided that if she was awake she might as well work.

Not that she was getting anywhere.