“CIA? Well, what an unexpected windfall.”
The final two hoods came off. The Merricks looked around in a panic. There were standard questions that came with the removal of hoods: Where am I? Why are you holding me? But no one asked them. Charles and Veronica Merrick knew better than to open their mouths. If they thought to question why, they could always refer to the swollen imprint of a pistol barrel that ran along Damon Ogden’s swollen jaw, across his left eye, and up to his forehead. An object lesson in who was in charge and how the rules had changed since the firefight at the airfield. Rule one: Charles Merrick wasn’t blustering his way through this. Rule two: No one gave a damn that Damon Ogden worked for the CIA.
“Do you know who I am?” the woman asked Merrick.
Merrick shook his head, downcast eyes showing a deference Lea never thought she’d see. Apparently, it took a pistol-whipping to teach her father a little humility.
“That’s not unexpected. My name is Lucinda King Soto. Although you never met face-to-face, my husband worked for many years to move your money out of the United States. I’ve come for that money and for the honor of my husband, Montel Soto Flores.”
Lea didn’t recognize the name, but her parents and Damon Ogden certainly did. The three of them looked at the older woman in shock and fear.
“That’s not possible,” said Ogden. “You died in Mexico.”
“Yes,” Lucinda said. “Thank you for that.”
“How?”
“How what? How did I stay alive after you painted my husband as a government informant?”
“That’s not what happened—”
“Isn’t it? Charles Merrick didn’t betray my husband to save himself? Your government didn’t exploit my husband’s connection to Merrick to make cases against the cartel and its associates? And to seize the money he laundered on their behalf? Until even an idiot could see that my husband was the common link to all the arrests and seizures? And the cartel is not run by idiots. They reacted exactly as you expected they would and did your dirty work for you.” Lucinda paused, her scars pulsing in anger. “Deny it again and I will have my son remove your tongue.”
Damon Ogden seemed to take the old woman at her word. Lucinda nodded and a smoke-trail smile drifted across her lips. Lea recognized that smile. They were all actors in a play that Lucinda King Soto had been scripting for a long, long time. This suite was a stage, and Lucinda already knew the ending. Everything that happened from now until the end had been rehearsed in her imagination, and Lea and Ogden were now being written into the final act. This was the face of revenge, and it was ugly to see in someone else. Was this what she looked like? Lea wondered. Was this what Dorian Gray saw when he glimpsed his picture?
A knock at the suite’s door interrupted Lucinda’s moment. She glared at the two men who were ushered inside. They conferred in hushed tones with Emerson, who cursed under his breath. Lucinda demanded an explanation, which her son again knelt to deliver.
“Go,” she said. “Leave Hector and Rafael. Take the others and deal with it.”
Her son stood and led his men to the door. Lucinda stopped him.
“Emerson,” she said. “They do not leave the lobby. Yes?”
“It will be done, Mother.”
When they were alone, Lucinda studied Damon Ogden thoughtfully. The next act of the play was about to begin.
“It’s fascinating how little we understand the forces at work in our lives. Up until now, I thought I had a clear understanding of Charles Merrick’s betrayal. But it is only with your presence, Mr. Ogden, that I see the entire picture. That I must ask myself why the CIA would care about Charles Merrick. For years, I considered his paltry sentence proof that he had sold out his money launderer to secure a deal. But now I see that the real prize lay in China, didn’t it? My husband was merely collateral damage. We were nothing but pawns to be cleared from your board. You let the cartel do your dirty work for you and eliminate the only man who could connect Charles Merrick back to China.”
Ogden said nothing.
“I appreciate you not insulting me with a denial. To answer your question, Mr. Ogden, the cartel took my husband and I in Chiapas as we prepared to flee into Guatemala. At the time, we didn’t know who had betrayed us. Only later did I realized that Charles Merrick was our patient zero. The source of the infection. Then we could only guess that the cartel had some sort of doubts about us. But when they took us alive, we thought foolishly that we would have a chance to plead our case directly to the patrón. After all, my husband’s loyalty had never been questioned. Had he not overseen networks that for decades had laundered billions in cartel money without incident? Instead, we were delivered to an abandoned warehouse. Water dripped from the ceiling. Humidity like a clenched fist. We were bound to wooden chairs. Hoods blinding us.”
Lucinda signaled to one of her remaining men, who put the hoods back onto their heads while she continued her story.
“We lived there, side by side, for days and nights. Yet I never saw my husband again. I heard him, though. And he heard me. Man from the CIA—you asked how I survived? Well, you have to make a choice, you see. It isn’t an easy one to make, but you have to choose to endure. To cling to sanity even as your face burns.
“We knew nothing, as you well know, so we had nothing we could tell them. No way to satisfy them. And since our guilt was beyond dispute, that made them very angry. I confessed a thousand times. I would have confessed to nailing Jesus to the cross, but since I could not tell them to what I was confessing, they would not grant me the death I craved. They had a man. A gifted man. One at a time, we were untied and dragged into the adjoining room to this man so that the other might hear the screams. You cannot know the powerlessness and the despair that brings. To pray for your own agony to begin again if only to spare the one you love.”
Lea listened to Lucinda King Soto tell her story with a mix of revulsion and empathy. Under the hood, she cried silent tears. For Lucinda King Soto, for herself. She knew enough theater to know that this story was but a preamble to something terrible.
“They always gave us a few minutes’ respite between sessions,” Lucinda continued. “Time to whisper to each other pledges of love. Never did we speak of what was occurring. Always my husband told stories of our youth. How we met. Private moments to take us away from our misery. While the cartel men laughed and cursed us. Then it began again.”