Retribution

The pillow was damp, cold, and musty, and smelled like it had been boxed up in the lightless, dark room for years. The room was a cave.

“Oh, Madre de Dios. Me duele la cabeza . . .”

Enrico Hernandez’s head was pounding. His eyelids seemed to be weighed down to the point that he had to concentrate just to open them. The blanket only came up to his shoulder blades, and the chill of the room above the wool was painful to his neck and upper shoulders.

“Oh, God.” He tried to move his hand up to his face. The handcuff cut into his wrist and wouldn’t move. Hernandez’s mouth was dry, but his head hurt more. He lifted his head away from the pillow, realizing that the dampness was from his drool. The drug suppressed everything except the pressure on his bladder.

“Help, help.” Enrico heard his voice. It seemed as if it was coming from someone else. “Help me.” It was barely stronger than a mumble.

Two men were talking in some other language. He could hear their voices coming through a thin wall.

“Help, please. Por favor! Help me.”

Again, Enrico lifted his head so his voice carried beyond the pillow. The voices in the other room stopped. Footsteps seemed to be crossing a wooden floor. And then the door opened.

“Oh, Jesus. The light!”

The bright light blinded him.

The man closed the door part of the way; however, the light still came through the partial opening like a searchlight. Enrico focused on the wall.

Plain, simply plain and green.

Enrico was struck by how the wall had no pictures, nothing hanging on it, and it was painted in a pale green.

Where have I seen that color?

He tried to focus his mind. It was a watered-down green.

It was that pale green that he remembered seeing in the Walmart aisle under Easter decorations. It reminded him of his daughter.

“My friend, are you okay?”

The man was young. His voice carried an accent. He was clearly Arab, with a well-trimmed moustache that extended just beyond the limits of his mouth. He had white teeth, one of them crooked, distorting his smile. The man’s shirt seemed to have been doused in cologne. He was so close that the smell nauseated Hernandez.

“I’m thirsty.”

“Of course you are.”

Enrico’s captor held a cold bottle of water to his lips.

Hernandez downed the water in one desperate gulp.

“Easy, my friend. There is more.”

He drained the bottle.

“Another, please.”

The man reached across the room. Hernandez heard the chatter of ice as the man pulled another bottle from a bucket of some sort.

“Here, try this.”

Hernandez drank half of it before coming up for air.

“I need to use the head.”

“The head?”

Hernandez’s brain felt like he had been hit with a sledgehammer between the eyes.

“The bathroom.”

“My friend, can you focus?”

The man used the term friend too often for his taste.

“Yeah,” he lied. It didn’t matter. He needed to use the head or the bed was getting ready to get soaked.

“Listen to me, Mr. Hernandez.” The man pulled out two photographs from the pocket of the brown coat he was wearing. “You see these?”

Enrico focused in the dim light.

He knows my name. And my goddamn family!

“Listen, you son of a bitch—”

“No, you listen! I’m going to uncuff you. The loo is through that door.” He pointed over his shoulder.

“Okay.” Hernandez would have to reach deep, but with some luck he would have his hand on the man’s throat as soon as the key slid the lock open on the cuffs.

“Understand this, friend. You can no doubt kill me in a matter of seconds and be on the street in a bloody instant. But if you do, the two people in those photographs will never see tomorrow’s sunrise.”