Page 29 of Blind Trust
She found nothing on the fourth wall, and now she was back to the wall with the door.
This small room, no more than eight foot by ten foot was now her prison, with one door and a window that did barely anything to help with the heat.
Is there water? I need water.
She realized she was dehydrated.
Next, she dropped down onto her hands and knees to search the floor, in case there was water there, somewhere.
Even a dog would be given a water bowl.
A dirt floor. Where the hell am I? Mexico somewhere, but where? How will anyone find me here?
The floor was dirt; there was no water. There was nothing else in the room, except a mattress on the floor. A stinky mattress she moved away from, into the center of the room.
She wrapped her arms around her knees, squatting on the ground, and began to cry.
I am in hell. The heat, the stink. I am in hell, and there are bad men here who are going to harm me. Maybe soon. Please God, get me out of here somehow. Please send Brian for me.
Then it came to her.
The pendant.
In her groggy, drugged state she had forgotten about the pendant. She’d pressed it once before they’d injected her.
Brian had made a plan if something were to happen to her. He’d prepared for this, and she’d forgotten.
Now that she remembered, she started pressing it frantically, over and over, praying that it still worked, crying as tears began to stream down her face.
* * *
Brian was drivingand following the GPS movements on his phone while trying not to get pulled over for speeding. The clock was ticking, and there was no way in hell he was following the speed limit.
I have to get to Cecelia before something even worse than being kidnapped happens.
Using the app on his phone to track her, via the pendant on her necklace, he knew she was across the border in Mexico.
The longer she wore the necklace undetected, the better. However, there was a very real possibility that her captors would find the pendant and remove it from her.
Following the route they’d taken, he drove toward the border.
He looked at his phone again. Movement on the GPS screen had stopped.
This could mean she was in a final location. Or in a final location, for now.
Ensenada.
That’s where she is now.
He took his phone and dialed Arturo, a Mexican national who had dual citizenship. Brian and Arturo had served in the Marines together overseas, and then Arturo had decided not to re-enlist, but to return home to fight corruption in the city of his grandparents and his cousins. He was now a Mexican policeman, who trained the SWAT team.
Arturo answered, “Hola.”
“Hola. Arturo, this is Barbie,” Brian said. Using that nickname, Arturo would know this was a serious call.
Instead of using Brian’s “Barbie” nickname, Arturo called Brian his “brother from another mother”, and the two of them had been as close as brothers. Only fellow Marines called Brian Barbie, a nickname he’d picked up in boot camp because his last name was Ken, and his sergeant had thought that was funny.
“Amigo, what are you up to?” The pleasure of hearing from his friend was in Arturo’s voice.
