me a while, but I managed to escape and, well, here I am.”
Tiny stared at her, his arms folded over his muscular chest, his face impossible to read. “That’s an entertaining story. Too bad it reeks of bullshit.”
“It’s not bullshit. I was trapped up there for—what’s the date?”
“February sixteenth.”
Her heart stuttered. “Oh, my God. I knew I’d lost track of time. I didn’t realize how much.” Her uncle must be worried sick. Even when she’d been stationed overseas with the Army, she’d never gone more than a few weeks without calling him. “That means I was up there for almost five months.”
“Taking care of a sick woman.” Disbelief ran thick in his voice.
“It was his mother. She had cancer. He expected me to cure her. But it was too late for that; her condition was too far advanced.” Not to mention, she was a surgeon, not an oncologist. Curing cancer wasn’t her specialty. But even if that had been her field of expertise, she hadn’t had access to any of the latest medical technology. It was like asking a plumber to re-wire a house with nothing but a screwdriver and a spool of rusty wire. “The most I could do was slow the progress and make her as comfortable as possible.”
“And you just strolled out of there after she died.”
“No, I escaped before anyone realized she was dead. I’m not stupid. I watched the guards for months and learned their habits and routines. When I found a weakness, I took advantage of it, but not until after my patient was deceased.”
He cocked his head a little to the right, and she could practically hear the gears grinding in his head. “This man who kidnapped you, he got a name?”
“Beto. That’s what his mother called him. Everybody else called him El Señor. I never got a last name. And no, I never asked. I learned early on that asking questions could be hazardous to my health.”
Giving a less-than-stellar medical prognosis hadn’t been good for her health, either. And sarcasm…yeah, definitely not good. She’d learned that lesson the hard way. Most of the time, she’d kept her big mouth shut and her eyes wide open, waiting for the opportunity to escape.
Jaw clenched, Tiny stared at her for a few long, uncomfortable moments. His eyes seemed to bore right through her. “Describe Beto.”
Hope closed her eyes and pictured her captor in her mind. “Hispanic male, mid to late-forties, short dark-brown hair, brown eyes…about my height, maybe an inch or two taller. He wasn’t fat, but he was soft, like he used to exercise or do physical labor but hadn’t in a long time.”
“Any scars or distinguishing features?”
“Uh…none that I saw. No visible tattoos or piercings. He walks with a slight limp that gets more pronounced when his minions aren’t lurking around. Oh, and the distal phalanx of his left ring finger is missing.”
A pair of lines appeared between his dark eyebrows. “Distal phalanx?”
Oops. In all the excitement, she forgot to translate that part from doctor to English. It was something she normally did when talking with patients or members of their families to make it easier for them to understand complex medical situations. She held up her hand to show him what she meant. “It’s the last joint of the finger, where the nail is.”
That got his attention. His gaze sharpened, nostrils flared, like a wolf that had just caught the scent of an unfortunate rabbit. “All right, I’ll take you to the American consulate. After you take me to Beto.”
Her heart dropped down to the brown tile floor. “Are you nuts? I’m not going back there.”
“Then you’re on your own. Good luck.” He turned to open the door.
“No, wait! I—” Panic shot more adrenaline into her system as she struggled to keep the tremor from her voice. “If I go back, he’ll kill me.”
“I won’t let that happen.”
“Oh, really?” She didn’t bother masking her skepticism. “Do you have any idea who you’re dealing with?”
“As a matter of fact, I do.” The muscle along his jaw flexed. “Roberto Aranza, age forty-seven. Born in La Tuna, Mexico and raised by a poor farming family. At the age of twelve, he quit school and started to work for the local cartel. By twenty-three, he was running it. Now he’s one of the most powerful drug traffickers in the world. Directly and indirectly, he’s responsible for the deaths of thousands, including my partner. I’m going to kill him.”