The Devil's Elixir (34 page)

“This could be much worse,” I added. “Meth and crack, as bad as they are for you—they don’t rewire your brain. They get you high, you’ll get addicted to them, and they’ll ruin your body, but when you’re not tripping, your brain’s essentially back to what it was even if everything around it is falling apart. Hard-core hallucinogens work differently. These drugs can—and will—rewire your brain. Someone who takes stuff like what McKinnon was talking about runs a real risk of coming out of it as a different person with potentially different moral views, a different psychological take on the world, a completely different perception of the world that you live in, how you relate to it . . .”

Tess looked confused. “What, like
ayahuasca
? ’Cause that’s a hard-core hallucinogen, right? But I remember reading about people who’d suffered from depression all their lives who went deep into the Amazon and spent, like, a week there with shamans taking it and coming out of it saying it had cured them.”

“Yes, but they did that within a ceremonial setting with an expert healer by their side. And they took it
to get healed
. The problem with stories like that is that you read them and you think these drugs are an easy cure to all our problems. You’d be thinking
ayahuasca
is a magic bullet for depression and
iboga
should be given to all heroin addicts to help get them off it. But the thing about these hallucinogens is that it’s as much about you as it is about the drug. It’s about what state of mind you’re in when you take it, what you’re hoping to get out of it, about having the right physiology—and the right guidance. That’s crucial. The guidance, the ritualized, sacred framework with others around you and shamans looking over you and guiding you through your trip. If this becomes a street drug, the average junkie or suburban teen tripping on this in some squat or in a basement den or in some loud, strobe-lit nightclub isn’t going to have any of that. Where’s the guidance going to come from? Where’s the highly experienced healer who’s going to help them interpret all the repressed stuff they might see as they see it and tell them they’re not going insane and help them understand what their psyche is telling them?”

“Okay, but if it’s going to give such a bad trip and be that dangerous, it’ll put people off taking it, won’t it? It doesn’t sound like something that’s going to be popular in nightclubs.”

I shook my head with a slight scoff. “Drug user psychology has very little to do with common sense. You know that. People seek out what’s dangerous. Like with heroin. Every once in a while, a new batch that causes a lot of overdoses hits the street. And guess what? That’s the brand everyone then wants. They pay more for it. They seek it out. Hearing that people died from it only makes it more popular. Same with AIDS and needles, or the
krokodil
heroin substitute that’s raging through in Moscow these days. People who have an appetite for this stuff don’t react rationally, by definition. They’re looking for the strongest thrill they can get their hands on. They’ll love the dark side of it—more intense than a 3-D horror movie. And if it’s as easy as popping a pill . . .”

Tess let out a weary, ponderous sigh. “Okay, so . . . what now?”

“You and Alex will need to stay here for a while. I’m sorry. I also think you ought to call your mom and Hazel and give them some idea of what’s going on so they can keep an eye out for anything suspicious.”

Her face tightened with alarm. “You don’t think—”

I cut her off, knowing she didn’t want to say it. “No, I doubt they’re in any danger. But I’d rather make sure we cover all the bases. I’ve got the local sheriff keeping an eye on the ranch already. Discreetly.”

“You sure?”

I reached out and put my hand on her arm. “They’re safe, Tess. I’ve made sure of that.”

Her expression sank into gloom. “Okay, I’ll . . . I’ll call them tomorrow. But . . . whoever’s after this . . . they think you’ve got it, right?”

Her look clearly telegraphed what she was worried about.

“It’s what I do, Tess. And I’ve had a lot of practice.” I gave her a half-smile. “We now know what they’re after. They want it, we have it. Which means we’re in the driver’s seat. And we can use that to try and force a mistake out of them.”

I needed to boost her confidence, though I wasn’t sure I bought it myself. We still didn’t know who we were dealing with. I found myself thinking again about McKinnon’s own words, the ones that had started it all.

The words that sealed his fate.

And many others’, since.

One way or another, I needed to put an end to their poisonous sting.

And I knew that, to do that, I’d have to draw them out. Using the one thing I knew they wanted.

Me.

H
ank Corliss parked his car in the single garage of his house, climbed up three small steps, and went through the narrow doorway that led to his quiet, empty home.

Like he did every night.

He set down his attaché case on the couch and plodded across to the kitchen, where he got a clean tumbler out of a cabinet. He filled it using the fridge’s ice maker, then retrieved a bottle of Scotch from another cabinet and filled the glass slowly, his weary eyes staring through the ice cubes as they cracked and popped and settled in. He carried the glass into the living room, set himself on the couch, and flicked on the TV. He didn’t change the channel. He didn’t adjust the volume. He just looked dead ahead as the random images unfurled on the screen and raised the glass for that first sip, rolling it around his mouth, feeling the burn tickle his throat, letting the golden potion work its magic.

Like he did every night.

Only tonight, things were a little different.

Tonight, there was a glint of hope breaking through the desolate numbness in his mind.

Hope that the beast who’d wrecked his life might finally be made to pay for the horrors he’d caused.

It wasn’t likely. It wasn’t probable. But it was possible. And right now, that was worth something. It was a hell of a lot more than he’d had in years.

His thoughts coasted back to that time, five years earlier, when he was running the DEA field office in Mexico City, fighting an unwinnable war against a well-armed, ruthless enemy that was everywhere and had the power to corrupt anyone. There was a reason why the posting had been nicknamed “the greatest laxative in the foreign service.” Beyond being insanely dangerous, it was also a thankless task. Few Mexicans wanted him or his agents in their country, even though the cartel’s turf wars were claiming thousands of victims every year. The locals blamed his countrymen for what was happening to their homeland, lambasting the insatiable appetite for drugs north of their border that had created the market in the first place while condemning the unlimited supply of easily bought weapons that were flooding south across the Rio Grande and spilling Mexican blood with increasing savagery.

“Poor Mexico . . . so far from God, so close to the United States,” the dictator Porfirio Díaz had quipped in the nineteenth century.

For most of Díaz’s countrymen today, the quip still held.

Despite all that, despite the difficulties he knew he’d face on the ground, Corliss had thrown himself into his assignment with the steely resolve and unflinching commitment he was known for. The posting was a badge of honor for him, the ultimate challenge for someone whose entire career had been devoted to the War on Drugs. It was a chance to take the fight to the enemy’s backyard, to disrupt the poisonous scourge at its source, before it reached American soil.

To show those gutless
cabróns
how it was done.

Right off the bat, he and his men had notched up some decent successes. Against a rising tide of severed heads dumped in coolers, mass graves, and spiraling corruption that reached the very highest levels of government, Corliss’s agents had led successful raids on several labs, torched many tons of narcotics, and put their hands on millions of dollars of illegal earnings.

Then the call had come in.

The call that changed everything.

Corliss tried not to think about that night, but he couldn’t help it. Even if he wanted to, even if he could somehow overpower his mind and force it to forget, his body wouldn’t let him.

The pain and the scars left behind by twenty-three bullet holes would see to that.

He hadn’t expected the attack. No one had. Not at his house. Not in the gated compound, not at the home of the head of the DEA in Mexico. But that’s where it had taken place. And the barrage of painful images that battered his mind whenever he relived it was so intense and so surreal that he didn’t know what was real from what was imagined, not anymore.

The men had burst in on them in the middle of the night, rousing him and his wife, Laura, from their sleep. Four men in balaclavas, four soulless demons that rose out of the pits of hell, dragged them out of their bed, and threw them into the living room to face their worst fear: the sight of their nine-year-old daughter, Wendy, sheer terror crippling her face, in the clutches of one of the men, the one who was their leader. The one who didn’t bother with a mask.

Raoul Navarro.

The man who’d hardly ever been photographed, the one of whom the agency had no more than a couple of grainy, out-of-date photographs. And yet, here he was, in Corliss’s own living room, not even bothering to hide his own face.

Which didn’t bode well at all.

The Mexican had one hand clasped around Wendy’s neck, anchoring her in place. In the other, resting against the other side of her neck, he held a thin, small knife. Its compactness wasn’t any source of comfort. Not when its smooth, sleek blade glinted with such ferocity.

“You took something from me,” Navarro announced. “I want it back.”

At first, Corliss’s frazzled mind didn’t register any of it. He didn’t understand what the man wanted. He pleaded with him to let his daughter go, saying he’d give him whatever it was he wanted and asking him to explain what he was talking about.

“McKinnon,” Navarro added, coldly.

In a blinding flash that seared right through him, Corliss understood.

“The journal,” he muttered. “I have it. It’s right here.” He pointed to a corner cabinet in the living room, his eyes begging for permission to retrieve it.

Navarro gave him the smallest of nods, and Corliss scurried across the room, his breath coming short and fast, his fingers twitching as he rummaged through a drawer before pulling out the old, tattered leather-covered book.

The book he’d had translated by an analyst at the agency.

The one whose contents he hadn’t shared with anyone else there.

He held it up to his captor like a trophy.

“Here,” he said, edging closer to him, one hesitant step after another, a supplicant approaching his executioner. “Now, please. Let her go.”

Navarro nodded to one of his men, who stepped in and took hold of the journal, tucking it into his backpack.

“Please,” Corliss pleaded.

Navarro smiled—an awful smile, a smile that chilled the bone more than any frown.

“Do you take me for a
baboso
?”

Corliss was lost.

“That’s not what I came for,” Navarro added, fixing him with a murderous stare while tightening his grip on Wendy and pressing the blade against her skin.

Corliss could see Wendy’s artery straining against the edge of the blade. “No, please. I don’t know what—” Then, in a stomach-wrenching flash, he got it. What Navarro had come for. And the realization hit him like he’d been stabbed with live wires.

“I don’t have it,” he told the Mexican. “We don’t have it. We couldn’t access it.”

“Bullshit.” He pressed the blade in even tighter.

“I’m telling you, we never got it. The laptop, it had a password, we couldn’t crack it. The hard drive got wiped. I’m telling you we don’t have it.”

“I’m not going to ask you again.”

Corliss’s mind was scrambling for answers, but he couldn’t think of any. “Please. You’ve got to believe me. I’d give it to you if I had it. I’d give you anything you want. Just don’t—don’t hurt her. Please.”

And then he saw it. A narrowing in Navarro’s eyes, a hardening of his jaw muscles. A seething exhale. And the fingers, tightening their grip on Wendy’s neck—and on the blade.

“Okay, well, if that’s how you want to play it,” Navarro said—

And Corliss bolted.

“No!”

He lunged forward, arms outstretched to grab his daughter and pull her to safety, with Navarro’s men leaping at him while the startled Mexican lurched backward—

And in the flash of chaos, in that instant of madness, Corliss saw the blade nick Wendy’s neck, saw the blood shoot out, saw her eyes shoot open with fear, saw her mouth go wide and heard her scream tear into his ears—