Missing Lynx (35 page)

No Reiki love session was going to touch this guy. All I could do was try not to provoke him. I scrambled after him, cowering against the wall to stay out of arms’ reach. I tried to block all of the crap he yelled at me in Spanish. How ugly and horrible I was… I didn’t need him to take me down a peg. I was already rock bottom.

Yup. Pretty much every day I had contact with him was a day my loathing grew. And even though he revolted me, I had decided to attach to him briefly. I wanted to see if he went anywhere interesting in the prison. I wanted to try to gather more intel.

Turns out that besides harassing me and the other prisoners, this man did very little. He went into an office where he sat and took swigs from a bottle he had hidden there. Fortunately for me, he sat facing in, away from the window. There was a Honduran map that came into focus every time his head swung left. Push pins dotted the image, and on the East Coast was a big red dot. That must be us.

If my assumptions were correct, then I needed to leave the country by plane or boat. On foot it would be too treacherous, and I wouldn’t survive the trek - especially standing out the way I did – all blond and fair skinned. I didn’t know about the web-of-intrigue I had caught myself in here. All I really knew was that Maria took me from point A to point B. Was it just Maria, for God-knows what reason? Or Sylanos? Or some unknown? I didn’t know if anyone would come looking for me, or if everyone would come looking for me. If they would spend tons of time and money? Or if they would shrug their shoulders and eat some beans.

Why was I here? Knowing that would make my decision making so much easier. I served someone’s purpose…but what? Since I landed in this hell hole, I had tried to puzzle through every crumb of my knowledge to get the answers I needed. And still, I had nothing. What if Sylanos found out that I was the one who solved the crime and busted his operations? He’d be furious with me, but then, why wasn’t I already dead? A Honduran freaking prison?

Drunk got up and headed back to my corridor. I slipped back into my body. I still felt tipsy from his booze when Drunk opened my cell door. Why was he here? I had already exercised. Fear washed over me.

“Es el tiempo por la ducha,” he snarled.

“Huh?” I shook my head trying to be coherent – his alcohol tolerance was far superior to mine.

“
Ducha,”
he yelled.

Shower time, yay! I still had to play confused. We walked down the hall in the opposite direction of the exercise yard. We moved through a thick metal door to the outside. Drunk held my arm in a tourniquet-tight grip. A guard with his dog stood under the roofline. It was the one I call Socks. Socks laid his ears back and growled viciously, warning Drunk to let me go. Afraid Socks was going to try to protect me, I sent images of calm, and I asked Socks to stay quiet and sit, and sure enough he did. That was a close call. I didn’t want to show my hand – didn’t want anyone to know that Socks played on my team.

“That’s right, you nasty mutt. You shut your mouth and sit your ass down when you see me,” snarled Drunk.

I sent love and thanks to Socks.

I’d like to say that washing up was a wonderful experience, but the best I could say was I got clean. I was ushered unceremoniously into the shower room where I was provided with shampoo, a wash cloth, and a towel. I was told to undress in front of Drunk and the male shower attendant. They took my clothes away. Including my shoes. This made me nervous. If they gave me prison garb and flip flops like some of the other prisoners wore, that was going to add another element of difficulty to my escape plans…whatever they were.

I stood under the warm water and imagined myself away from the ogling. I scrubbed myself over and over again. I had kept clean as best I could, with my scrap of soap and ice-cold water, but this was so much more. After a while, I guess the guards got bored with me. They told me to stop. I wrapped up in a towel, and they escorted me to a windowless room, where I sat by myself. I was there a long time. When Drunk finally opened the door, he handed me a pile of laundry. All of my clothes had been cleaned, including my shoes, and I was given a fresh blanket and linens.

Drunk took me to yet another room. This one had a chair and nothing else. I was made to sit in the chair with yesterday’s paper in front of me,
Diario de Mexico
, a Mexican City local paper. A video camera was set up with a guard crouched behind the tripod adjusting the focus.

“You are okay?” asked a man with a horribly pock-marked face. He spoke in heavily accented English and stood to the side of the guy with the video equipment.

I said nothing.
What do I do? What do I do? This is my chance…

“You will answer me, when I ask you questions. You will be polite, and you will say ‘Yes, sir.’”

“Yes, sir.” I tried to think of a way to pass information to whoever would be seeing this. I flashed back to a story I read about the Vietnam prisoner of war who had trained himself to blink ‘torture’ in Morse code, while he spoke. His wife saw that something was off with his eyes. They finally figured it out, and America knew of his heroism. It didn’t help his lot, though. He wasn’t rescued.

I hadn’t thought of the possibility of a video. I hadn’t practiced blinking in Morse code. I didn’t know what information I would send, if I had. All I had was the sliver thin possibility that I was in a prison on the East Coast of Honduras. How helpful was that? Not very. I sighed loudly and drooped in my chair, defeated and deflated from the outset.

“What is your name?”

“Lexi Sobado,” I mumbled, still trying to come up with a plan.

“You eat every day?”

I nodded.

Pock-mark glared at me.

“Yes, sir.”

“You are not abused?”

Was I? Well they weren’t beating and torturing me. I turned my head to the side and looked down at the floor. Just my being here was abusive. “No, sir.”

“You have time for exercise every day?”

“Yes, sir.”

“You are well?”

I sat with my lips pursed tightly, eyes glaring straight ahead. Hell no, I wasn’t “well.”

“You are well?” he repeated with emphasis.

“I am coping,” I managed to spit out through clenched teeth. Beating myself up for not having a plan in place to surreptitiously pass information to Strike Force.

“Good, good. You are well.”

I said nothing. We sat there in silence. I guessed the guy had run out of questions or English phrases. The red light on the camera blinked off and the guard stood up and stretched his back. I picked up my linens and plodded off behind Drunk, back to my cell, thoroughly depressed.

Lying on my shelf, I thought about Striker and the team. Seeing this video was going to be hard on them. Elicia had been giving me almost twice the food she had before. I knew she gave me everything she could. Beyond my share. Surely this meant there was less for the others. That made me feel guilty. Very guilty. But there was nothing I could do about it.

Each day, I was doing an hour of yoga, an hour of calisthenics, and an hour of martial arts. I was losing a lot of weight. Even fresh from the dryer, my once tight jeans hung from my hips. My bra was loose to the point of being ineffectual; my skin looked gray and dry. I had thought maybe I should cut down on exercising, but I needed my strength, needed to waste time, and I needed to shed some of the stress that had rooted itself deeply in my psyche. The physicality helped me maintain my sanity. So I would continue.

If I were calculating correctly, then I’d been gone over four weeks. I’d missed my twenty-first birthday; it was about two weeks ago. I had imagined a fun cocktail party with all of my friends, lots of music and dancing. All I had was solitary and gray-glue oatmeal. It sucked.

Today, had been too much for me. Thinking about my team and how frantic they must be to get me back. Homesickness thrummed in my veins. Right now I needed to sleep, but tonight I would try to use the Veil to visit home…if I could at all manage it.

Thirty-Seven

E
ight o’clock, the church bells clanged from south of the prison. The sunset painted the sky fire-opal, and a flock of birds chirruped to each other as they flew toward the tree line to roost for the night. It must be ten o’clock in Washington. I worked on reasoning out a strategy for my attempted Veil walk – the best route to successfully make contact with my team.

In my imagination, they had someone in place at my house in case anything interesting happened in my neighborhood. If positions were reversed and I had drawn up the plans, I’d have chosen Gater for the assignment. Striker would want to be at Command, and Gater had already established a presence in my neighborhood – the neighbors all knew him; he’d cared for their children. Yes, they’d feel most comfortable going to Gater if they had anything at all to share. I tapped thoughtful fingers on the sleeping shelf where I sat cross-legged in my holey jeans and bare feet. Yup, Gater would make the most sense – the person I’d probably find at my house. I’d bet I could find him at my kitchen table.

I lay down on my cot and breathed deeply, conjuring a picture of Gater. Focusing hard, I willed myself to go behind the Veil. There. . .Oh, I felt the pull…it was easier than I expected. Strangely simple. Unnerving. I was actually frightened by how effortlessly my consciousness separated from my body, how tenuous my hold was to this plane.

Gater and I sat at my kitchen table, chewing pizza. I could taste the hot cheese and grease. Oh yum. Flavor. Texture. We swigged a bottle of beer. The yeasty liquid bubbled, cold and relaxing, down his throat.

Gater hung warm, familiar, and huge on my small frame as I wore him like my father’s winter coat when I ran downstairs for the mail as a child. Gater also weighed heavily in spirit. It was hard to support him in my weakened state. He was deep down-tired, as if he had gone for a long time with endless days and nights. Unbearable guilt consumed him.

A phone vibrated against his hip. “Gater here.”

I heard a sugar-sweet wheedling voice. “Hey, baby, where are you?” Must be Amy.

“Lexi’s house.” Our answer was monotone, numb.

“Any word?”

“Yeah.” Gater cleared his throat.

Her voice dropped to a whisper. “What’s happening?”

“I can’t tell you.”

“Not good?”

“Classified.” They must have gotten the video already.

“Oh. Okay. Do you want me to come over and take your mind off
her
for a little while?” She purred her invitation. Sex? Was she offering to come over and screw around with Gater? What? That was a scenario I had never envisaged. Imagine going behind the Veil to find…Oh. No, no, no.
Say no, Gater; I can’t be around for that.

“Amy, look. I’m just…I’m not gonna be able to do this right now, I’m sorry.”

“Do what, Gater?” Her voice hitched. “What are you saying?”

“I’m saying I gotta hang up. I’ll call you when things get better.”

As he was talking, Beetle and Bella had trotted in to the room and stared hard at us – unnerving Gater. Beetle whined and sniffed the air, and Bella followed. I knew they could sense me, but they couldn’t see me or smell me. Poor girls. But they gave me an idea.

Using the same mind techniques I’d practiced with the guard dogs, I commanded Bella to go into the living room and get the picture of me and Angel that sat on my side table. She brought it back and laid it in Gater’s lap, and then sat and whined again, stomping her paw emphatically.

“I’m here,” I said. “I’m here. I’m here.”

Gater froze. We focused first on the dogs and then on the photo. He held his breath. Muscles taut. Nerves strained. He moved only his eyes as we looked slowly around.

“I’m here, Gater. I’m here.”

Gater stilled his search. Not even blinking. His scalp prickled. His heart raced, making his blood drum in his ears. He pulled out his phone and pressed two on his speed dial for Striker.

“Hey, man, get over here. Now,” he said, pressing end before Striker responded.

The dogs whined and tapped at the floor insistently, jacking up Gater’s tension.

“You feel her, too, don’t you? She’s here, ain’t she? This is damned creepy.”

Gater and I breathed and waited.

Striker must have broken the speed of sound getting to my house; that, or he was already close by. It wasn’t long until we heard a knock at the front door, the key in the lock, and heavy foot-steps moving toward the kitchen.

“What’s going on?” Striker asked, walking in on the strange scene.

Gater turned his head and…Striker. Oh. He was
so
beautiful. I wanted to fling myself into his arms. Feel him against me.

“Striker, man, she’s here. She’s here in the room with us.”

“Lexi?” Striker looked wildly around at nothing.

“Yeah.” We swallowed; Gater’s spit caught on the lump in his throat.

“Can you tell me how you know?” Striker stood in the middle of my kitchen hands on hips, legs wide, eyes narrowed, looking too big for such a small space.

“Well, I sat here on the phone, when Beetle and Bella started looking at me that there way.” We pointed a finger at the girls. “Bella, she run out of the room, and brought me this here photo and slipped it in my lap, and now they’re crying.”

“And you think she’s made contact with you?”

“I thought I heard her. Well, no. I didn’t hear her. You know how she says ‘I had a knowing?’ If I could describe it, that there’s the way I’d say it. I have a knowing that she’s here.” Sparks of anticipation lit Gater’s nerves.

“Okay, okay, let’s think this through for a minute. If she
is
here, and she walked behind the Veil, then she gets snatches of information and puts them together, she said it’s like tiles on a mosaic. She reads the thoughts and sensations of the person she’s connected to… Have you ever heard her say anything about passing information to someone from her side?”

Gater shook his head and worked his jaw.

“We have to communicate with her. I don’t know how she gets information best, so let’s try some different ways.” Striker pinched at his lower lip – a sure sign that his mind was working on over-drive. “We need Laugherty,” he announced.