“It is not safe for you,” he said.
“It’s not safe for you, either,” I replied. “We’re partners in this project, are we not?”
He gave me a rueful smile. “Are all American women so difficult?” he said.
“I can’t speak for all American women,” I said. “I’m not difficult, just determined.”
We had walked beyond the structure to get a wide-angle view of the property. In addition to the main building, there was a large wooden shed with barn doors. A patch of weeds ran along one side. We turned back to approach the building from the other direction. It was completely dark. Not even a slit of light showed near the metal door, and the windows were black, the glass panes painted to prevent anyone from peering in.
Father Alfredo inserted his key into the padlock on the gate. To our sensitive ears, the sharp click as the lock released sounded like a gunshot in the quiet night. We froze in place, hardly daring to breathe, fearing the noise would alert the watchman and set the dog to howling again. But no one responded, including the dog.
We allowed ourselves to breathe again. Father Alfredo opened the gate little by little, testing for squeaks and leaving barely enough room for us to slip inside the property. He slid his body through and motioned for me to follow. I put my foot inside the gap, holding the gate with both hands to make sure it didn’t move and sound a warning. Once through, I let go of the gate, but my jacket pocket caught on the hasp, jerking me back roughly. A gasp escaped my lips. Father Alfredo turned, a finger to his lips. Seeing my predicament, he gently extricated the fabric from the metal strap.
Once through the gate, we crept into the shadows of the shed. Father Alfredo tried again to convince me to hide, pointing to the front door and then to himself, and indicating the far side of the shed where he wanted me to go. We argued silently, me shaking my head and making a circle with my finger to show him I would go around to the back. Eventually he gave up. Cautioning me to be on alert, he moved slowly toward the door, gingerly planting one foot after the other in the gravel and dirt to muffle the sound of his footfalls.
I made my move, too, using the swath of weeds alongside the shed to steal quietly to the rear of the building. My eyes, now more accustomed to the dark, surveyed the terrain. The building had a concrete loading dock with several doors to the interior. I climbed up onto the platform. Other than a pile of scrap lumber and a stack of two-by-fours, the dock was bare. I pressed my ear to the first door and tried to discern any sounds inside. I heard nothing. Holding my breath, I slowly tried the doorknob, hoping someone had been lax enough to leave the door unlocked. No luck. I checked each door in succession, listening first, then trying the knob. At the last door, I detected a shuffling noise inside. It seemed to be coming closer. I grabbed a four-foot length of board and hurried back, positioning myself to the side of the door away from where it would open, my back pressed against the wall. Had they discovered Father Alfredo? Were they questioning him, pressuring him? Did they suspect he came with an accomplice and intend to look for me?
The sounds from inside grew louder. Something heavy was being shoved along the floor. I could hear the scrape of its movement. There was a crash, and a muffled growl. Whoever it was fell against the door and rattled the doorknob. Then I heard the snick of the lock. I raised the board over my head as the door slowly opened.
“Señora, are you there?” a voice called. It was Father Alfredo.
I dropped my arms and heaved a sigh of relief. “You were almost a victim yourself, Father,” I said, cocking my head toward my would-be weapon.
“I’m glad you thought to wait before swinging,” he said. “Come inside. There’s no one here.”
“No one? No guard? No Vaughan?”
“Not that I could find. The place is deserted. But watch out—there are boxes everywhere.”
I followed him through the door, reached in my bag for my flashlight, and shined the beam around the space. Wooden crates and stacks of cardboard boxes were scattered across the floor. I pulled aside the straw in an open crate to see a colorful hand-painted ceramic sink. A brief search revealed boxes of handmade crafts—plates and pitchers, clay bird rattles, marionettes dressed like Mexican peasants, pierced metal frames, papier-mâché masks, wooden maracas, tissue-paper piñatas—waiting to be crated for shipment.
“Are you sure no one is here?” I asked.
“They are not here now. Whether they will be back at any moment, I cannot tell.”
“And no sign of Vaughan?”
He shook his head sadly. “I am sorry, Señora.”
I wandered the room. One side was clearly a packing area. Hammers, crowbars, and other tools dangled from nails tapped into the wall. Crates sat empty next to bales of straw. New and half-used rolls of packing tape were threaded on a dowel. Near the front door, I found a light switch. I flipped it up and three widely spaced fixtures—really just bare bulbs—came to life, spilling dim pools of light on the warehouse floor. To my right, two chairs and a table sat next to a large garbage can, the top of which had been left off. A half-empty liquor bottle sat on the floor.
“Are you sure we should turn on the light? Maybe they were never here. Maybe this is the wrong building,” Father Alfredo said, looking around uncertainly. “We are not here legally, and we don’t want to be noticed.”
“The key opened the gate,” I said. “How did you get in the building?”
“The door was unlocked.”
“Then we must be in the right place,” I said. “And if I’m not mistaken, someone was here recently.” I leaned over the garbage can and aimed the flashlight to examine its contents.
“What have you found?”
“Leftover food. It hasn’t been here very long.”
“How can you tell?”
“It doesn’t smell bad yet, but I’m afraid if you leave the top off overnight, you’ll notice quite a difference in the morning.”
Father Alfredo clicked his tongue. “They’re going to draw rats with this garbage.”
“They may have already,” I said, angling my head to catch a soft scratching sound. I swung the beam of my flashlight around the perimeter of the room, looking for an indication of rodents.
Father Alfredo shuddered. “I am very brave with people,” he said, “but I do not like rats. I think we should go.”
“I realize you’re concerned about our being discovered here,” I said. “You can wait outside if it will make you feel better. I just need a little more time.”
“No. No, I would never think to leave you alone.”
“That’s very kind of you,” I said, smiling at him. I put my shoulder bag and flashlight on the table and examined each of the chairs, running my fingers over the rough wooden rails on the top and sides. “I’ll only be a minute more.”
“What are you looking for?”
“Fibers. Hairs. Any evidence that indicates Vaughan was here—and I think I may have found it.”
Father Alfredo drew closer and squinted at the chair. “I don’t see anything.”
“There’s something sticky on this chair.”
“Why is that important? Someone with dirty hands, maybe from the food?”
I sniffed at the chair. “It’s not food,” I said. “And it’s on both sides. It could be adhesive from packing tape.”
“To repair the chair?”
“It doesn’t look as if it’s been repaired,” I said, “but they might have used the tape to keep someone in the seat.”
I retrieved my flashlight and swung it from side to side, box to box. The floor was littered with fragments of straw. I spotted several bales stacked on a pallet, ready to be packed around goods.
“I think I hear the rats,” he said. “Do you see them?”
“The packing area is over here,” I said, pointing the beam at the bales. “Why is there a pile of straw down there?” The straw lay beside several wooden crates that looked as if they had been hammered shut, ready for shipping.
“Maybe someone has been stealing some of the goods,” he said. “Or maybe that’s where the rats—they are making a nest. We must go. I have a bad feeling here.”
“I wonder,” I said, walking away from him to examine the pattern of straw on the floor. “Look,” I said. “The fragments of straw are pretty evenly distributed, but here something was dragged through it. See these lines that lead from the table?”
“The boxes, they are heavy. Maybe the men pushed one out of the way. I had to do that to get to the back door.”
“Show me where you moved the box,” I said.
“Certainly.” He walked toward the door we’d used to enter the warehouse and gazed around to get his bearings. “This is the one,” he said, patting the top of a wooden case. “I’m sure of it. I stubbed my foot on this corner.”
The light was too diffuse to see clearly. I knelt down, training my flashlight on the floor and the edge of the crate. “The pattern here is different,” I said. “Over there are two parallel lines. Here’s a clear patch where the bottom of the crate pushed the straw away.” I walked back to the lines in the straw at the other end of the room.
“You are a very observant woman. This is good,” Father Alfredo said. “It is time to go now. Yes?”
I took a rough measurement of the space between the lines and went back to the chairs. The distance between the lines matched the space between the two back legs of the chair.
“They dragged the chair over there,” I said softly to myself. “It must be because it was too heavy to lift.” I followed the lines. “A box would make a much broader mark in the straw,” I mused. “These lines go to the crates in the corner.”
“Señora?”
I put one finger up to ask him to wait, as my eyes went to where the chair had been dragged. “There’s only one set of marks. I suppose the chair must have been carried back to the table. It would have been lighter then.”
“Señora, it is getting late.”
“I’ll be right with you,” I said, “but let me take a look at those crates first.”
“All right, but please hurry.”
I grabbed a crowbar that had been left in the packing area.
“We don’t need to open them, do we?” he said, following me.
“That noise we heard earlier was coming from somewhere around here,” I said, tapping on a crate.
“Why do you want to disturb the rats? I think we should leave them alone.”
I peered at the tops of the crates. “There,” I said, pointing to a crate hemmed in by three others. “On the front ones, there’s only one set of nails, but on that one, you can see the nails and holes where they were removed once.”
“Why can’t we just open this one? It’s closer.”
Using all my strength, I attempted to shove one of the crates out of the way, unmindful of the racket it made as the wood scraped against the stone floor. It barely budged.
“Careful now. You will hurt your back. That’s too heavy for you,” he said. “I’ll help you.” We pressed our weight against the rough wooden slats until, one by one, we were able to wrestle the crates aside and gain access to the one I wanted.
I took the crowbar and wedged it under the corner of the top where it had been hammered shut. “Let’s get this open,” I said.
“Let me,” Father Alfredo said, taking over and levering the bar enough to release the nails with a loud squeal.
“Now this side,” I said. I could no longer hear the scratching, but I was certain this was the right crate.
Father Alfredo jammed the crowbar under the opposite corner. “I think I have it now.”
We managed to lift the top a few inches, but it was too dark to see inside the crate.
“It needs to come off,” I said.
“I hope you know what you’re doing.” Father Alfredo maneuvered to the other side of the crate and repeated the work with the crowbar. When the last nail gave up its hold with a sigh, the top was freed. He pulled it off and flung it aside; it landed with a noisy clatter on the floor.
I leaned over the side of the crate and directed my flashlight inside. A heavy blanket concealed the contents. I reached in and pulled up a corner of it.
“Madre de Dios,”
Father Alfredo said, crossing himself.
He was curled in the bottom of the crate, his eyes shut, his clothes filthy, flecked with straw and I didn’t want to think what else, hands and feet bound with tape. His hair, usually so neatly groomed, was dusty and stood away from his scalp in spikes. His mouth was sealed with more tape, the plastic close in hue to the deathly pallor of his mottled skin and the stubble of whiskers that shadowed his gaunt cheeks.
“Is he alive?” Father Alfredo whispered.
“Vaughan?” I said softly.
He opened his eyes.
Chapter Twenty-three
I
t took all our strength to lift Vaughan out of the crate. I carried over a chair from the table, the same one in which he’d been bound, then dragged to his wooden prison. He slumped in the seat, his eyes closed, while we worked to release his bindings and delicately tear away the tape covering his mouth. Father Alfredo’s face was a mask of grief as he silently ministered to Vaughan, patiently cutting away the hair where the adhesive pulled at his skin to spare him the pain of ripping the tape off, rubbing his ankles and calves, then his shoulders, arms, and wrists to revive the circulation as each limb was released.
Vaughn took in a deep breath through his mouth when the last bit of tape was removed. Father Alfredo retrieved the liquor bottle we’d found next to the garbage can. “We have no medicine,” he said, “but this may prevent infection.” He dabbed alcohol on Vaughan’s wrists where the tape had abraded his skin.
“Ouch, that stings,” Vaughan croaked. “I think I’d be better off drinking it.”
Father Alfredo offered him the bottle. Vaughan shook his head and gave a slight snort. “Not unless you have a straw.” He gestured to his lips, which were cracked and bleeding. “But I thank you, sir.”
I watched the exchange, silently assessing Vaughan’s condition. Dark circles ringed his eyes, and I was sure every muscle in his body was sore. He was exhausted from lack of sleep, but his sense of humor was undamaged. He turned to me. “Ah, Jessica,” he said. “I had faith you would find me. But the heroines in your books work a lot faster. What took you so long?”