The cartel. It has to be. The Reyes family, retaliating for Alejandro's conviction. And if Jon was right about the brother, about the ghost who makes people vanish, then the man driving this van is the worst person who could have come for me.
That last thought is the one that breaks through the chemical fog and grabs me by the throat. No one knows I'm gone. I leftthe office at nine. I texted my mother on the subway. My next expected contact with anyone is Sunday dinner. That's two full days before anyone starts to wonder where I am. Two days before mother calls and gets no answer. Two days before Aaron sends a text about Monday's prep session and it goes unread.
Two days is an eternity when you've been taken by a man who makes people disappear for a living.
I open my eyes. The van's cargo area is dark, but not completely. Light leaks in from the front, enough that I can make out shapes. There are tool chests along one wall, a duffel bag near my head, and the metal ribs of the van's interior curving above me.
The driver is visible through the gap between the front seats. I can see the back of his head, his dark hair, the line of his jaw, one hand on the steering wheel. He drives the way he grabbed me, steadily, without urgency, as if this is routine.
I work at the binding on my wrists. It isn't tape but something smoother and more flexible. Medical restraints, maybe. The kind that hold without damaging skin. It's a strange detail, the kind of care you'd expect from a man who understands that visible injuries raise questions.
The van slows and turns. The road surface changes from smooth to rough, and I feel every bump and pothole through the thin carpet. We're off the highway. Wherever he's taking me, we're close.
I stop working at the restraints and go still. I play dead again and wait.
The van stops. The engine cuts. I hear the driver's door open and close, then footsteps on gravel, and then the rear doors swing wide and cold air rushes in, carrying the smell of pine trees and woodsmoke and something else, the particular emptiness that rural places have, the absence of traffic and sirens and ten million people breathing.
We're not in the city anymore.
He stands at the open doors for a moment. I can feel him looking at me, assessing, the way I imagine he looks at every job. Then the blanket is pulled back and his hand touches my shoulder.
"I know you're awake."
His voice is low and quiet, with an accent that softens the consonants. It is neither threatening nor gentle. Just factual.
I open my eyes and look at him.
He's crouching at the van's rear, outlined by a sky full of stars that you never see in the city. This close, I can see the scar along his jaw, a thin white line that looks old. It is the same scar from the traffic camera photo in my case files. Mateo Reyes. The ghost. His eyes are dark brown, almost black, and they're watching me with a focus that makes my skin crawl. He is assessing me, measuring me, as if he's already mapped every move I might make and planned for each one.
"Can you walk?" he asks.
"Fuck you."
Something flickers in his expression, a twitch at the corner of his mouth that might be respect. It disappears immediately.
"I'll take that as a yes." He reaches for my wrists and I jerk away from him, pressing my back against the far wall of the van. He waits, patient. "I'm going to remove the restraints. If you run, there's nowhere to go. We're miles from the nearest town. There's no cell service. It's twenty degrees outside and you're not dressed for it."
He's right. I'm still wearing my work clothes, a wool skirt and a blouse. My coat is gone and so are the heels I didn't bother changing out of before leaving the office. I don't know when he removed them.
He reaches for me again. This time I hold still, because he's right and I know it and the fury of that knowledge burnsbrighter than the fear. He cuts the restraints with a small blade he produces from his pocket, and the blood rushes back into my hands with a tingling that borders on pain.
"Out," he says.
I climb out of the van on legs that barely hold me. The ground is gravel, then frozen dirt, and the cold cuts through my stockings and into my feet immediately. We're in front of a house, old, with a sagging porch, dark high windows, on property that disappears into trees. There is nothing else. No other buildings, no other lights, no road visible beyond the one we came in on.
He takes my arm, not roughly but not gently, and walks me up the porch steps and through the front door. Inside, a space heater sits in the corner of a room that smells like dust and old wood. There’s a table, two chairs, and a couch that's seen better decades. A kitchen is visible through an opening, lit by a single bulb. A hallway leads to what I assume are bedrooms.
He leads me down the hallway and opens a door. The room beyond is small, with a bed that looks like it has clean sheets and a single window with the frame nailed shut. On the bedside table sit a bottle of water, a granola bar, and a flashlight.
"Your room," he says.
I almost laugh. The phrasing is so polite, so procedural, as if this is a hotel and he's the bellhop, as if I checked in voluntarily and tipped him on the way up.
"My cell," I correct him.
He doesn't respond to that. "There's a half bath through that door." He nods toward a narrow door in the corner and then to the window. "The window is nailed shut from the outside, so don't waste your time."
"How considerate."
