Holding The Line: A romantic suspense that will get your pulse racing

“You don’t want to see his body.”

“Don’t tell me what I want. I need to see his body.” Her mind was swimming again, being pulled down by fast currents of questions. “How? How could he still be undercover?” It was impossible. Beth read every file ever written on the Treintas. She had written most of them. She knew every agent working in Mexico, by name and face. She would have known if Torres was still undercover.

Patterson lifted his shoulders again.

“Where is his body?”

“The morgue in Laredo. His body was shipped up from Mazatlan yesterday. There is going to be a service tomorrow. Something small. His family is gone. Mom died last year.”

Her breath caught. Oh God. It was real. This was real. Torres was dead. She should feel something. She was empty. Nothing, there was nothing in her.

“I need to see him.”

“Let me drive you.”

Beth shook her head. “No, I’m fine. He isn’t the first agent we have lost. And he probably won’t be our last.”

“But you –”

“Yeah I slept with him. I have slept with a lot of people. I’m fine.”

Chapter Two (#u8ad3f949-ac25-53cc-aa3b-67d4b8626fe3)

There was a dark constancy in the jungle, day in day out, always shadows. If he looked straight up until his head hit his back he could see tiny pockets of light amongst the leaves. But the rays never hit the ground. There was always another leaf there, competing for it, stealing it, hijacking the light. Was the sun shining somewhere above the canopy? Was is raining? He would never know. Hell, there could even be a tornado up there and the sad fuckers on the ground would never know. The bottom got shadows and damp. He was one of those sad fuckers.

Torres pulled against the rusty chains that bound him to the trunk of a kapok tree so he could lie down. He had lost feeling in his arms. Chaining him was unnecessary. Where the fuck was he going to go?

A mile away there was a clearing. All the trees had been cut and burned to the ground to make way. That is where heaven was: acres and acres of clear land, not a single tree to block out the sun, just a field of coca that went on forever. Next time he was there, he was going to stand and let the sun warm his skin until a soldier came and whipped him. Every lash would be worth it to feel the sun on his face again. His back might drip with blood but that would be OK too, it would give him an excuse to keep his shirt off – more sun. And the pain wouldn’t last long anyway. They were allowed to chew coca as they worked. It tasted like tea but it made everything tolerable. Wounds hurt less, the smell of shit became merely an annoyance, the smug faces of the guards all merged into one, his muscles relaxed and his hatred lessened to an angry simmer. It was a good plant, this cocaine. He could see how people became addicted.

Torres rested his head on his arm. He was careful not to pull too hard on his chains. The rusty links tore into his flesh. He only knew he was injured because of the slow oozing trickle of hot blood. He couldn’t feel it. It was a blessing and a curse. He was going to get back to the fields. Tomorrow he would be more compliant. When he wanted to spit in the guard’s face he would smile. When he wanted to rip out his throat, he would rub the open wounds on his hands and remember why he needed to be unchained. He couldn’t work the fields with bloody hands.

He picked up the rock, his rock, and dug it into the bark, marking the passing of another day. He would have lost count by now, probably would have lost count after the weeks became months.

And then the months had become years… three years.

*****

Torres rubbed his wrists. The skin was open again, not just blood this time, now it was yellow pus streaked with red. The scabs never had a chance to heal because every night, in his sleep, he pulled against his chains. They needed to heal so he could go back to the fields. He needed out of the dark. He needed the sun. He needed hope.

He carefully stretched his hands up. His head itched. He had fleas but it was worth it because at least Torres had a plan. That wasn’t true, he had always had a plan, since the night he woke up in the jungle of Colombia, but now he had the means to execute his plan, thanks to a mangy flea-infested dog.

The bitch pushed her wet nose into his side.

“I don’t have anything for you tonight,” Torres apologized. He strained to stroke her but his hands would not reach. “Sorry, girl. I’ll save something for you tomorrow.” The dog seemed to understand. She lowered her head again, rubbing it along Torres’ face.

“That’s my good girl. You’re a clever girl, aren’t you?” The dog looked up at him with sad eyes. Torres moved his head back and forth so he was effectively petting her. “Good girl.”

Torres hadn’t given her a name. She was just “Girl”. He couldn’t give her a name when he knew what was going to happen to her.

She was his way out.

If he wanted to, Torres could have broken through his rusted chains, but there was nowhere to go. The cocaine fields were surrounded with landmines. They weren’t the kind he had seen in Iraq. These were more primitive but just as effective. The bombs here were loaded with shrapnel and human feces. If the nails didn’t get you, the shit would, days or weeks later when your wounds turned septic and poisoned you from within.

That is why he needed Girl. It had taken months for her to learn to trust him. It had happened slowly, excruciatingly so, a single scrap of food at a time and then a pet or stroke along her matted fur. And then, he was able to train her, all it took was time. Lucky for Torres, he had plenty of that.

After the dog had come, the guards had brought another prisoner.

Torres looked over at the whimpering boy chained to the tree across from him. He looked like he was about eighteen, twenty at the oldest, just a boy.

Torres had been alone for a long time, for over three years, he knew because he kept a tally carved on the trunk of his tree. Three years with no one to speak to but the guards and the mangy dog.

The guards always kept him separate from the other prisoners. Everyone else slept in a clearing at the other side of the fields. He couldn’t see them but he preferred it that way. When he was well enough to work the fields he saw the other prisoners, poor miserable fuckers, all of them, with all their crying and praying and promising Christ they would be better if they ever got out.

Torres wanted to tell them all to shut up. Moaning just made it worse. But he didn’t because that would mean speaking to them and he wouldn’t. He wanted no part of them, the guards or the prisoners. He hated them both equally, the guards for the sadistic pleasure they took in beating prisoners until they pissed themselves and the prisoners for giving them the satisfaction of crying out when the lashings began.

The boy cried out again. Torres lifted his head. He wished the guards would take him back to the clearing. He needed to be with the other prisoners, where he could scream and cry.

“Please!” the boy screamed. “Please! Come back!’

Torres clamped his mouth shut to keep from telling him to shut the fuck up. No one was coming for him, or any of them.

“Please! Come back,” he screamed. A sob tore through his body, like an axe through a rotting carcass. His slim body shook with it. “Please!”

Torres closed his eyes and focused on the sound of the frogs. He could pick out the individual sounds, like an amphibian orchestra, the low resonant bass, reedy croaks, and then a higher silvery timbre.

But he couldn’t hear them tonight over the screams.

The screams turned to sobs and then finally a whimper.

*****

The boy was screaming again. Every night for a year it was the same: pleading screams that turned to tears and then finally an exhausted sleep.

If Torres could reach him, he would kill him.

He would do it when the boy finally lost himself to sleep. He would lay his forearm against his throat and press until the life drained out of him. The boy wouldn’t know it happened, he just wouldn’t wake up. There would be no more screaming then, no more suffering.

“Please!” the boy moaned.

Torres closed his eyes. He could feel his arm on his scrawny neck, pushing down until his frail body gave itself over to death. Five minutes, that is all it would take. If the boy knew, he would probably thank him, for giving him the only freedom he could hope to achieve.

The boy thrashed against his chains. A year and the boy still thought he could break free. Where the fuck did he think he was going to go?

“Stop pulling, you’re going to wear away your skin and you’ll never get back to the fields.”

“What?” The boy’s voice was pierced with shock. Torres never spoke to him, not even to tell him to shut up, so the boy had stopped trying to talk to him after a few weeks.

“Don’t pull on your chains. If your skin rips you’ll get an infection. Just lay still.”