No opportunity for heroics, Hatch complied.
"Turn around and put your hands on your head."
Hatch looked in the direction of the rooftop Ayala and Rothman had escaped to. She was scanning the debris field of laundry fluttering in the warm breeze whispering of the approaching heat of day and was relieved the two were nowhere to be seen.
An unnecessary pistol whip was delivered to the side of her head by one of the men who wielded the cold hard steel like a blackjack. Hatch's vision blurred and she fell forward onto the tin roof.
And just before she disappeared into the dark, the light of the moon danced across the top of a yellow Nissan, as it slipped away undetected.
Thirty-Three
The stagnant water a foot below Hatch's head captured the image of her blood-soaked face. The butt stroke to the side of her skull had bled steadily, as evidenced by the amount that was dried and caked across her face. It had clotted while she was unconscious.
In the few minutes since her vision had cleared, she'd taken the time to assess her circumstances. She was suspended over a round metal kiddie pool, the kind Hatch had seen in the black and white westerns her dad watched when she was young. A belt connected the top of the chair to a bolted hook on the wall behind her, keeping the chair and Hatch, who was strapped to it, held firmly at a forty-five-degree angle to the water below.
The tight restraints bit into her flesh at her wrists and ankles, the worst of which had cut open her right wrist, adding what would surely be new scars over the old one. The ripples made by her steadily dripping blood carried away the grotesque image of Hatch's face.
Warm wet blood slickened her wrist where it escaped from her body, lubricating the cord just enough that Hatch felt it budge. Her hand was now an inch freer than it had been a minute ago.
There was no clock on the wall, or at least none she could see when craning her neck. Hatch knew a countdown had begun. To whose end was still up for debate. Under the current set of circumstances, Hatch did not feel the odds were in her favor. But Hatch had surprised herself in the past, so didn't count herself out of the game, just maybe down a few points. With Ayala making touchdown receptions, maybe Hatch would get her turn in the endzone. And if she did, she hoped she or one of her teammates would send the big yellow goal crashing down on top of Hector Fuentes’ skull.
Beside the metal pool lay car batteries and the black and red leads coming out of them were dangling loosely near, but not clipped to, the pool. The dim light of the room taunted Hatch and warned her of terrible things to come.
She continued to work at the restraint on her right wrist before she heard the door behind her open and close.
A metal chair dragged across the concrete floor and came to a stop just in eyeshot of Hatch's peripheral vision. Moreno’s scarred face was now tinging an orange hue. Hatch thought of the oversized walrus championing the cartel's juice company. In her mind, the orange sunglasses-wearing tusked creature became synonymous with the beast of a troll described in Ayala's fable.
"Miss Nighthawk, you have been quite troublesome for my employer. And as angry as he is with you for what you've done to his nightclub and how much you have taken from him, he would like your audience for a brief moment of your time. Before the last sands of your hourglass add to your life's pile, Mr. Fuentes would like to ensure when I arrange your disappearance, that nobody else comes looking afterwards to finish the trouble you started. It ends, here, today, with you. My employer believes, all truth lies just beneath the surface of a person's eyes. And before I dispatch you, he wants to look you in the eye himself."
Hatch thought of the people she would leave behind and those who would undoubtedly hunt for her until they found word it was no longer necessary, just as she had done with Angela Rothman. She thought of Savage, and how she wished the smell of his licorice overpowered the funk of the room she was in now.
She gave the man nothing in return. She would not entertain the whimsy of a murderous cartel thug, nor the wishes of his master. Hatch would face her end the way she had faced everything in her life up to this point, head tall and eyes front. She would give this man, and any to follow, no satisfaction to the contrary.
"You don't feel like talking. I understand. I think you will find you and I are a lot alike. I can smell the military training coming off your sweat. Did a little digging. Nothing came up under a Daphne Nighthawk. I think I can safely assume that's not your real name. But not to worry, I have other ways of digging. They're just a bit more painful." Moreno winked. "I'm very thorough. When we're done here today, there won't be a piece your life that I haven't peeled back and exposed."
The thought churned in her stomach, souring the bountiful meal she received at Josefina's hand. She thought of her family, of her mom, of Daphne, of Jake, and the last face to cross her mind’s periphery was that of Dalton Savage. In running from Hawk's Landing, Hatch had effectively traded one threat for another. Was there ever a time when they'd be safe?
"Mr. Fuentes is in the other room finishing up his breakfast. It may not look like it by this room, but it is one of his favorite restaurants when he ventures out to be among his people." Moreno's reverence for Hector Fuentes went beyond the norm, speaking of him as God or a holy man, whose power and influence extended into the very soul of the cartel leader's top enforcer and personal bodyguard.
The door opened again.