Hostage Zero

The cushions crinkled as Gail sat on them.

“They don’t get sat in very often,” Navarro said, reading her thoughts. “Under the circumstances, I’m not all that fond of visitors.”

Gail gave a pleasant smile.

“You must be proud of yourself for finding a man so many have been hunting for so long,” Navarro said.

“I had certain advantages,” she said. “It helps to be doing the right thing for the right reasons.”

Navarro nodded. “My sister’s note mentioned something about a kidnapping.”

Gail revealed the details of the assault on Resurrection House and the information they’d learned since. As she laid out the story, the lines in Navarro’s face grew progressively deeper.

“Mr. Navarro,” she concluded, “you are the common denominator in this story. Arthur Guinn is being threatened in order to silence his testimony against Sammy Bell and the Slater syndicate, Marilyn Schuler worked for you, and you worked for Sammy Bell. The smart money says you’re the one who can untie this knot.”

For the longest time, he just sat there, mulling over the story he’d just heard. Gail gave him space. After a minute or so, she saw the shotgun lift out of the crook of his arm, and she went to high alert-but only for an instant. He swung the weapon in a wide arc, the muzzle never in play, and set it down on the coffee table in front of the love seat.

He stood, shoved his hands into his trouser pockets, and turned to look out the front window.

“Life never ceases to surprise me,” he said, his back turned to Gail. “You don’t get into the kind of trouble I’m in and expect to survive all that long. It’s been a good run for me-nine years is about ten years longer than I had a right to. I always figured that when I was finally busted, there’d be a lot more violence.”

He turned to make eye contact, and Gail tried to conjure her most pleasant smile.

“If I tell you this, what happens to the information?”

“We use it to rescue a child.”

Navarro thought for a moment more, then resigned himself to the inevitable.

CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

They walked for a long time. Evan guessed it was three hours, but it could just as well have been two or five. The jungle never changed. The heat never cooled. A foul smell filled the air at every step, as if everything around them were rotting in the heat. At first, he’d wished that he had boots like Oscar and the soldiers did, but after walking over and over again through shin-deep water, he bet they wished that they were barefoot like him. He saw a show on History Channel on trench foot, and given the shit they’d had to wade through, his guards would be lucky not to pull their skin off when they removed their socks.

No one spoke during the walk-certainly, no one spoke to him-which was fine with Evan, because he’d promised himself not to say anything to anyone until someone had answers. So he just walked. One foot in front of the other, hoping, even though it was ridiculous, that his footprints might leave a clue for someone to come and rescue him.

No one could find him out here. No one except God, of course, and as he slogged along, he offered up a continuous prayer that maybe He would at least tell Father Dom that he was okay. Father Dom would worry about that sort of thing.

It’s funny how your mind shifts into neutral when there’s nothing to say and nothing to see. It occurred to him that despite the hours spent marching along like this, he had no real memory of any of it. There were no special plants or flowers that stuck out to him-although he knew that he had seen some beautiful ones. It’s as if the sameness just attracted more sameness, and in the end it all translated into nothingness.

He was mentally entrenched in that sameness place when he became aware of a new aroma. He didn’t know where it was coming from, but it was as if something pleasant were struggling to push away the constant fart smell of the jungle. Could it be food?

He told himself that he was just getting hungry, and that he was imagining things; but within a dozen steps or so, he changed his mind. He was definitely smelling food. His stomach rumbled.

Apparently the others smelled it, too, because the whole line picked up its pace. By Evan’s estimation, they’d been doing about one step per second, and now they were doing like twice that. Would they let him eat?

His heart skipped a beat as he had a wild thought: Maybe someone in whatever place was cooking food would help him get away. Was that too much to ask? He didn’t need a big break-a little one would do. Any port in a storm, as Father Dom used to say.

The parade picked up the pace even more as the terrain became steeper. Evan didn’t have to run, exactly, but he had to move quickly to keep from getting run over by the soldiers behind him.

The ground was hard and dry here. The hard-packed dirt felt good against the soles of his feet. And the food smelled fabulous.