Linebacker was holding me, pinning my arms to my body, and I took the knife in my fist and swung my arm down and plunged it into Linebacker’s thigh as hard as I could. I felt the warm spurt of blood right before he started to scream and instinctively let me go. I jumped to my feet and got in a defensive stance.
From a distance, I could hear sirens. Someone had called the police?
Diablo came for me, but my knife was still in Linebacker’s thigh, so I threw my best punch, right at his face. He staggered back, but then came at me again, trying to uppercut me, but I dodged his fist.
I was starting to fatigue and wondered how much longer I could fight. From his wobbling, it looked like Diablo was getting pretty out of breath, too.
Lunging at him, I grabbed him and tried to twist him to get him to fall to the ground. I was able to knock him off balance, but as soon as I did, we all heard the unmistakable sound of a machine gun peppering the air with bullets. Baseball Cap was standing in the doorway of the airplane, firing at us.
Dropping to the ground, I yelled, “Lily, get down!” The sound of gunfire kept going and I Army crawled around to the back side of the SUV, and crouched behind one of the tires. The sirens were getting closer and closer.
Finally, Baseball Cap stopped firing and just shut the door to the plane. A minute or so later, the plane started to move, and began to take off.
“Esperate!” said Linebacker, as he heard his ride back to South America leaving. It was too late; the plane was taking off as the police and ambulance arrived. Diablo took off on foot into the desert.
My heart was pounding and I was out of breath as I stood to knock on the car window. “Lily. It’s okay. You and Bailey and Paige can come out.”
I saw two heads pop up and look out the window. The door cracked open and Lily said, “Is it over?”
“Yeah, honey. Come on out.”
Lily came out of the car and straight into my arms. Bailey came out next, and stood there awkwardly until I motioned for her to come into the hug, too.
Over their heads, I looked into the back seat of the car. “Where’s Paige?” I asked.
“She’s not with us,” Bailey said.
“She’s what?” I said, shocked.
“She’s not here. She helped us escape from the motel, but then these guys found us and one of them, the Diablo guy, brought us here, and the other one, the fat one, took Paige with him. Diablo said he could ‘have’ her and then he was supposed to dump her in the desert.”
Oh my god. Paige was still missing.
“Everybody freeze. Put your hands up where I can see them.”
We complied, of course. “Who called the cops?” I asked.
“I did,” Lily said. “I used that emergency panic button in the car.”
“Good thinking.”
The whole time the cops were securing the scene and I was standing there with my hands up, waiting for them to realize I wasn’t the bad guy here, I was trying to figure out how I was going to find Paige.
Forty-Two
Paige
I wasn’t exactly sure where I was at the moment, as I was in the back room of what appeared to be a restaurant or bar. There were cardboard boxes and crates of things. But from the look of it, none of it had been used in quite some time.
I closed my eyes, wishing I could rub them, but my hands were tied. Watching Bailey and Lily be dragged kicking and screaming into that SUV was one of the worst moments of my life. I had no idea whether they were on a plane to South America at the moment, or not.
As soon as that Diablo guy took off with the girls, the guy who’d been holding me let go. I started to run after the car, and he just stood there laughing. His laugh was raspy and his teeth were yellowed. The guy smelled like he hadn’t had a shower in weeks.
“You go ahead, cariño. Get all sweaty chasing after that car. I love a little salt on my food.”
He then took a disgusting bandana out of his pants pocket and put it over my eyes. The thing smelled like you would imagine, having been stuffed down his pants like that. I thought I was going to puke.
He put me on his bike, blindfolded, and then got on in front of me, and said, “You better hang on, cariño, or you’re gonna fall off.”
