The Devil's Elixir

62

“Hey, come on, wake up. Please.”

The words woke me up with a start.

It took a few seconds for my eyes to focus, but I already knew I wasn’t going to like what they showed me. My head felt woolly, not quite like a hangover. More like my skull had been caught in a vise that was just loosened by half a turn.

I was lying on a thin cot and the first thing I noticed was that my hands weren’t bound. The cot squeaked as I bent up, and I saw that my legs weren’t tied either. I glanced around. My surroundings were spartan to a fault. I was in a windowless room, about fifteen-foot square. Its walls were old and made of stone that rose up into a low barrel vault. There was literally nothing else in the room apart from me and the cot and a guy who was just standing there, staring across at me like I was a stranded alien. Which, in a sense, I realized I probably was.

“Who are you?” he asked, his voice wobbly and bristling with racked nerves.

I looked at him, and clarity started to seep back into my brain. “You’re Stephenson.”

Surprise flushed through his face. “How’d you know? Who are you?”

I sat up, slid my feet to the floor, and rubbed some life into my thighs and arms as I looked around our cell.

“I’m Sean Reilly. FBI.” My mouth felt like it was lined with sandpaper.

“What the hell’s happening?” he asked. “Where are we?”

The air was cool, but there was a latent humidity in the room, like it was seeping in through the walls.

“I’d say we’re somewhere in Mexico.”

His jaw dropped, and he had trouble mouthing his next question. “Mexico? What? Why? Do you know what the hell’s going on? I’m a college professor, for God’s sake. They must have the wrong guy.”

He told me they came for him one morning, early. He couldn’t remember exactly how long ago this was. The days since had blended into each other. They’d made him call his secretary, then they’d gagged and blindfolded him and stuffed him into the trunk of a car. From there, he’d been driven somewhere, led down some stairs, and tied to a wall. He’d been held there by some bikers who hadn’t bothered to keep his blindfold on, then he’d been taken by others—Spanish-speaking Latino types who, now that I’d mentioned it, were most likely Mexican. He’d seen the dead bikers littering the place where he’d been held.

Then it was my turn to explain. “I’m Alex Martinez’s father,” I told him. “And no, they don’t have the wrong guy. You’re here—we’re all here—because of Alex.”

His jaw dropped even further.

It didn’t look like we were going anywhere for a while. So I told him what I knew.

And then I let him return the favor.

Tess woke up in a rather different setting.

Her room had vintage mahogany furniture, exposed timber beams, muslin curtains, and tall windows that bathed the room in streams of golden-yellow light. With the birdsong wafting in from the lush trees outside, she could have fooled herself into thinking she was in some sleepy boutique hotel if it wasn’t for the man who was sitting in an armchair across from her bed and watching her with an unreadable frown on his face.

“Where am I?” she asked, though she already knew the answer to that.

“You’re my guests.” Then, pointedly, with the thinnest of smiles. “All of you.”

She sat forward, ramrod straight. “Where’s Alex? And Sean?”

“Alex is fine. He’s still sleeping. I’ll make sure you’re with him when he wakes up.”

She dreaded the next question. “What about Sean?”

He paused, as if thinking of how to answer that one—or maybe he was just letting her anxiety worm its way a bit deeper. “He’s here,” he finally confirmed. “He’s fine.”

She relaxed slightly.

His eyes narrowed as he studied her. “You know why you’re here, don’t you?”

Tess wasn’t sure what to say. “I think so,” she finally replied, “though I’m not sure I believe it.”

“Oh, believe it, Tess. Trust me on this. It’s all real. I know.” His face relaxed into a hint of a smile. “I’ve been there. I’ve seen it. It’s all very, very real.”

Tess felt her nerves sizzle. “How do you know?”

He waved it off as he stood up and walked across to the window. “You’ll understand. With time.” With his back to her, he added, “The more relevant question you need to be asking yourself is, why are you still alive? And the answer to that is simple. You’re here because I need Alex to feel relaxed and comfortable so that Doctor Stephenson can work his magic and get me what I need from the boy.” He turned to face her, his face not betraying a hint of emotion. “That’s your only value to me here, do you understand?”

Tess stared at him and, knowing everything she did about him, she just nodded.

“Good. So I strongly suggest that you help me. Not just for your sake. For Alex’s. I’d prefer it if Stephenson can get the information out of him himself, without complications. If it proves difficult, there are other things I can do to jog Alex’s memory. Things that might not be particularly pleasant for a four-year-old boy. So I would really urge you to help Stephenson and help Alex remember.”

“And then?” she asked, again knowing what the answer—the honest answer—would be.

The slit of a smile came back. “We’ll see. Help me get what I want, and who knows how things will turn out. Cross me . . . and the heroin-addict whore-hell I’ll send you to will be worse than anything you can possibly imagine.”

He kept his stare on her as the words shuddered in. Then he walked out, leaving her to stew in his turbulent wake.