Like in my dream, the night sky is dark and cloudless, but there’s no distant shimmer of lights from a city sitting a few miles away. And while there’s silence, it’s a true silence, the night alive with insects making quiet noises in the blue grama and buffalo grass. A light breeze blows through the night, skimming loose dirt across the ground and making the creosote bushes shiver.
Leila said an oil refinery, but that’s not quite true. It’s an oil field, but it’s an abandoned one. At least, it doesn’t appear as if the dozen or so oil derricks are in operation anymore. They stand frozen across the landscape, looking like giant metal beasts in the dark.
I move past one of the motionless derricks toward the shed.
I’m dressed in dark jeans and a black T-shirt and sneakers. Not my preferred tactical wardrobe for a mission, but it’s not like I have many other options. I especially don’t like wearing my sneakers; the tread is distinct and could be matched to my shoes later if things ever got to that point, which means I’ll need to dispose of them and get a new pair, which means an hour drive to the closest Walmart.
The SOG is clipped to my belt. The P320 is pressed against the small of my back, while the 1911 rests easily in my hand.
I haven’t held a gun in my hand this long in almost a year. There’s a familiarity to squeezing the grip—a sense of homecoming—that I’m not yet ready to accept.
The shed is larger than I’d pictured it would be. It looks to be a story and a half tall, like it could hold a truck or two or three. A large barn-style door in the front, a regular-sized door on the side. No windows.
I surveil the shed for a good fifteen minutes—crouched behind a bush—before I decide to make my move. So far I haven’t seen or heard anything that’s raised an alarm. If the girl’s inside the shed, she hasn’t moved or made any noise. Which means either she’s not there or she’s dead or asleep or she’s been tied up to the point where she can’t move.
According to Leila Simmons, the girl’s name is Eleanora. She’s no more than seventeen years old. She’s pregnant, Leila said, or at least she was the last time Leila saw her. Which was just a few days ago. Before Eleanora disappeared. Before Leila got word that Eleanora may have been abducted by those two ICE agents, and had been taken to this shed planted here in the middle of a dead oil field.
Leila started crying when she told me this, as if the realization of how she’d failed the girl finally hit her. She told me how she was sorry that she hadn’t done more, but that she was scared, and at one point I heard her husband’s voice in the background, asking her what was wrong, and Leila had quickly composed herself—I pictured her wiping at her eyes as she blew her nose with a tissue—and told her husband she would be off the phone soon.
The 1911 in hand, I start toward the shed. I walk slowly, quietly, but my sneakers crunching the dirt sounds like gunshots in the silence.
I circle the shed. The only thing I find is a rusting generator on the other side, though it’s doubtful the thing even works.
The door on the side is closed, its wood weathered, just like the rest of the shed. Like it was built fifty years ago and hasn’t been repainted since.
There’s a padlock on the large door, but there isn’t one on the side door. There is a latch, where a lock would hold the door in place, but it’s empty.
I push the door open and immediately step to the side, aiming the 1911 at the darkness within.
Nothing happens.
Nobody wearing a cowboy hat or blue polo steps out of the dark with a gun raised.
I pause a beat, listening to the silence inside, and soon I hear it.
A muffled noise. Like somebody trying to cry out. Only they can’t because something’s over their mouth.
I slip the penlight from my pocket and flick it on. Shine the beam through the doorway.
A green compact tractor sits inside, a large mower deck hooked to its back, but that’s it.
That muffled noise continues, more frantic now.
I move forward, hesitantly, and sweep the penlight’s beam as I step inside.
Besides the tractor, there’s other equipment that means nothing to me—steel barrels and other supplies, the place rank of oil and gasoline—but then the penlight’s beam focuses on the source of the muffled noise.
The girl sits on a wooden chair near the back of the shed. An entire roll of duct tape looks to have been used to hold her in place. Duct tape around her ankles and around her legs and around her middle and her shoulders, as well as over her mouth.
I make my way toward her, not hurrying but moving at a steady speed as I sweep the penlight around the rest of the shed to ensure there are no other surprises.
When I reach her, I sweep the penlight back and see that she’s most definitely pregnant. Looks to be almost eight months along.
“Eleanora?”
The girl momentarily falters from trying to shout past the duct tape. There’s surprise in her dark eyes, like she didn’t expect me to know her name. Then she nods, eagerly, and tries to speak through the duct tape again.
“Leila Simmons sent me. My name’s Jen.”
I stick the end of the penlight between my teeth to keep the beam on Eleanora’s face while I use my free hand to peel the tape from her mouth.
The girl releases a half sob, tears now fleeing her eyes.
“Gracias. Gracias. Gracias.”
Her voice is too loud, and I take the penlight from my mouth and tell her in Spanish to be quiet.
The girl says in Spanish, “Please untie me—please!”
I intend to—I even bite down on the penlight again to use my free hand to unclip the SOG from my belt—but before I press the button to release the blade I pause again. Go very still. Hold my breath.
Eleanora says, “What are you doing?”
I jerk my head back and forth, the penlight’s beam going left to right across her face, but the girl doesn’t seem to get my meaning.
She sucks in air to ask the question again, but by then I’ve pressed the duct tape back over her mouth.
Her eyes go wide, and she tries to shout again through the tape.
I clip the SOG back on my belt, take the penlight from between my teeth, and lean in close to the girl to whisper.
“Quiet.”
The girl goes silent, confused, and I whisper again as I flick off the penlight, shrouding us in darkness.
“Can’t you hear that?”
The girl’s still silent, making it even more possible to hear the approaching sound of an engine and tires crunching dirt outside.
“Somebody’s coming.”