Josie reintroduced Nick to Otto, Roy, and Phillips, who knew him as the kidnapping negotiator who had helped recover Josie’s ex-boyfriend. They also knew Nick by reputation as one of the best negotiators in northern Mexico. He had brought home an Arizona state senator after a nationally publicized kidnapping two years before.
Josie quickly briefed the group on the situation. “Let’s get our cars facing the road with lights on. We’ll travel in the dark, but I want whoever was stalking my house to think twice about driving up here while we’re out on foot. Marta will remain at the house with the victim. I’d like to leave Phillips positioned by the house to watch for anyone approaching the area. I’ll take Nick with me. Roy, you and Otto work together?”
“You bet,” Roy said.
“We’ll fan out in a line, about a hundred feet between each of us. At the back of the property Nick and I will head to the base of the mountain. You two check Dell’s barn and around his house.”
Each of the officers walked into the night, aware that something horrific had happened to the woman sitting in Josie’s house, and that someone, possibly multiple people, had come back to finish the job. Flashlights were necessary to check the pasture for evidence or clues to the woman’s terror, but the light also broadcast their presence to anyone who might be out there, waiting to strike.
THREE
Marta carried a cup of hot tea and a bowl of canned pineapple chunks into the living room. She’d dug around in Josie’s refrigerator and cabinets and marveled at the lack of food. No wonder she stays so thin, she thought.
Marta placed the food on the coffee table and sat back down beside the woman on the couch to study her. She was hardly a woman, probably just beyond her teenage years. She no longer sat in a rigid ball, but had collapsed into a puddle at the end of the couch, her head lying on the armrest as her eyes stared at the opposite wall.
The woman had warmed up to Marta, and no longer seemed afraid. She sat up and hungrily ate the fruit and sipped at the warm tea flavored with milk and sugar. Marta tried to get her to carry on a conversation, to simply answer a question with a yes or no, but she wouldn’t speak or even shake her head. Her face was void of any expression, as if she had lost her ability to experience anything beyond fulfilling her basic needs.
When whimpering and scratching noises came from somewhere at the back of the house, the girl looked at Marta in alarm. Marta smiled and patted her leg as she walked past her and to the hallway where the sound was coming from. “It’s Chester,” she said, keeping her voice cheerful. “He’s a good dog. No worries.”
Marta stopped at the closed door at the end of the hallway and opened it a few inches. Chester poked his nose out. He was a gentle giant, and Marta thought he might be a good distraction for the woman. She reached her hand around the door and held tight to his collar as she let him out. He walked into the hallway, his tail wagging and his hind end shaking back and forth.
When they reached the couch the woman sat up and smiled at the dog, which was trying to lick her face and nuzzle his nose against her arm. She petted his head and stroked his back. A few minutes later he was lying down on the rug directly underneath her curled-up body on the couch. She rested her hand on his belly, watching it rise and fall as she cried quietly. The sight made Marta want to cry with her.
Marta’s own daughter was a freshman at Texas A&M in Corpus Christi. When she’d helped Teresa unpack her belongings in her dorm room just a few months ago, it had seemed like she’d moved her daughter to a different country, not just across the state. Nine hours separated her from Teresa, who was now living on the Gulf Coast. Her daughter’s dream was to study marine biology, a funny choice for a kid who’d spent her life in the desert, but Teresa had always wanted what seemed out of reach: a sober father, money to spare, a mother who wasn’t overprotective.
Since childhood Teresa had been Marta’s supreme joy and greatest anxiety, causing her countless nights of hand-wringing and praying. Now Marta looked at this young woman lying on Josie’s couch and wondered if there were similarities between the two. Maybe this young woman shared Teresa’s impulsive need to strike out on her own and declare her independence. And maybe it had even caused her to land here, in a strange person’s home, devastated over something Marta dreaded to uncover. She wondered what the young woman’s mother was thinking at that moment. Did she know her daughter was gone? Did she care?
*