The Beasts of Juarez by R.B. Schow (best books to read for beginners txt) 📕

say the least. She saw him, though, a slight lump on the floor in the corner.

She knelt down before him. He was asleep on his side, naked. Just as she opened her mouth to speak, the door slammed shut behind her and the darkness enveloped her.

She spun around, saw nothing but darkness.

Son of a bitch!

“You just signed your own death warrant, Warden,” she said. “You just died and you don’t even know it!”

Atlas jolted awake, scurried back into the wall, and waited there, his breathing quick and shallow.

“Who’s there?” he asked.

“It’s Cira,” she said.

“Cira?”

She felt his hands find her, then she held them and they began to shake. And then, just like that, it all stopped.

“You shouldn’t be in here,” he said. “This is no place for a lady.”

She crawled toward him, the concrete floor murder on her knees. Feeling his face, she felt a big beard, longish hair, and a lean body.

“How did you get in here?” he asked.

He returned the touch feeling not just her face but her body as well. It was as if he wasn’t quite sure what was real and what might be fiction.

“There’s been a kidnapping,” she explained. “Three little girls and a prominent man’s wife. They were abducted in El Paso and trafficked into Juárez.”

“How old are the girls?”

“Eight, twelve, and sixteen. The wife is forty-six.”

“Why would you get me involved in anything that involves prominent people?”

“Because it’s gone international. No one will know you in Juárez. Hell, the way you must look right now, I might not even recognize you if someone turned the lights on in this freaking dungeon.”

He reached for her hand again and that’s when the smell hit her. “I can’t tell what stinks,” she said. “Is it you or the cell?”

“They won’t let you bathe in here. There is this floor, one sock, and a hole to dump in. As I said, this is no place for a lady.”

“What did they do to you in here?”

“They do nothing for me here but give me one terrible meal and a glass of water a day. Other than that—”

“I mean here in prison. What did they do to you here in prison? And why exactly are you in solitary confinement, Atlas?”

“I did this to myself.”

“Why do you feel like a Neanderthal?”

“I wasn’t going to cut my beard or hair until Leopold came for me. When he got here, I wanted him to know how long he has been gone so that he has a concept of time relating to my daughter. Five months is an eternity to a child in captivity. She may not even be alive anymore.”

“She is alive, Atlas. Leopold gave you the photo.”

“That was five months ago.”

“It’s been closer to six months now.”

A great sadness seemed to fall over him, or so she imagined. After learning about his missing daughter, she had tried to imagine having a child and then having her taken. And then she tried to imagine how she would feel if she never found the child. When she had finished this last thought, Cira felt her eyes fill with tears and her heart had ached for him. But just knowing Alabama was alive was not the full extent of Atlas’s plight. After so much had already gone wrong, she imagined getting a glimpse of this child only to learn she was out there somewhere but there was nothing you could do about it. That’s when it really struck her, when she really started to feel like she was beginning to understand Atlas’s agitation and his rage. If she were in his position, she would have gone crazy. Maybe he had gone crazy, too.

“Leopold will come for us.”

“Who are you again?” he asked. “I’m sorry, but…are you real, or is this a figment of my imagination?”

“I told you, it’s Cira,” she said, cupping his cheek and wrapping a hand over his arm. “You’re just waking up and this place isn’t good for the mind.”

“No, it’s not,” he said. He spoke a moment later. “How can you be sure Leopold will come for us?”

“Because that ferocious nightmare you became in Russia and Ukraine…we really need that guy. We need you. Can you become him again? Are you well enough for the task?”

“All I’ve done since I last saw you is hone my body and my fighting skills for the next time. If this is the next time, then yes, I’m ready.”

“What about your mind?”

“Nothing some sunlight, food, and a shower won’t make right.”

“Let’s hope for both of our sakes that you get those things,” she said. “Especially the shower.”

Lying on her side, the concrete pressing into her ankle, the side of her knee, and her hip bone, she leaned against Atlas.

As she lay there, she thought about her own past and the bad choices she made. No matter her position in life, her status with Leopold, or the measure of her talent, her previous life was sordid enough to never lift her nose too high at the rest of society. Setting aside some of the questionable decisions he had made—because she’d made a few herself—Atlas was a good man, a man with whom she had shared her bed and her heart.

“If you weren’t lying on me right now,” she heard Atlas say in a groggy voice, “I would feel as though my mind was playing tricks on me.”

Later, when she felt herself drifting off to sleep, she wondered how he handled this bleak nightmare. He’d been pitched into a hole to rot, remanded to darkness and solitude, unwanted by the world. It was the saddest most desolate thing she’d ever felt.

Chapter Twenty-One

YERGHA MUGHERI

Yergha and Estella crossed into Mexico through the Bridge of the Americas less than half an hour