Torched: A Thriller by Daniel Powell Page B

when Pegasus crashed,
they were pulled to the bottom through no fault of their own.”
    Miguel shook his
head. “Fuck that, Terri. There were twenty mortgage traders working on those
funds. You going after every one of them?”
    Terri smiled.
“Probably not. After all, none of them are fucking the woman that terrorized my
family and killed my husband, are they?”
    “What are you
going to do to me?” Miguel said. His demeanor had shifted. The knowledge that
his captors were prepared, that they knew him intimately, deflated his bravado.
    “Here. Take a
look at this picture. Tell me if you see anything…different about it.”
    It was a
portrait of Terri, Mike and Erin—taken just a few weeks earlier. The kids wore
synthetic smiles. Terri had more lines around her eyes than ever before. She
barely recognized herself any more when it came to family photographs.
    “It’s you and, I
guess, your kids. Good looking photograph, Terri. I don’t know what…”
    “Look closer.”
    He sighed. After
a moment, he had it.
    “Your daughter.
She’s missing two fingers on her left hand.”
    “Bingo! We’ve
got a winner here, Chaco!”
    “Hey!”
    “So,” Miguel
said, nodding at the table. “That’s what those shears are for, am I right?”
    Terri shrugged.
“We’ll just have to wait and see.”
    ***
    Vivian covered a
little over two miles before the posse caught up to her. Six riders screamed
across the desert on dirt bikes, the bandanas covering their mouths flapping in
the breeze.
    Vivian slowed to
a walk, thankful for the chance to quell the stitch that was forming in her
side. They pulled up short, and she noticed that three riders had automatic
weapons strung across their shoulders.
    They spoke in
rapid-fire Spanish for a moment before dismounting and surrounding her. The
bandanas fell, and she saw that only one of them was young. He had a round baby
face, and he took a position at the front of the group. He wore designer blue
jeans and an expensive tee-shirt. The others wore faded western shirts and
dusty Wranglers.
    “You are her,”
the young man said. He spoke without even a hint of an accent. “Congratulations
on making it past the beasts.”
    “Thank you.”
    “What is your
name?”
    Vivian told him,
and he smiled at her. His teeth were white and straight. “These fellows…they
want me to take you with us.”
    Vivian shook her
head. “I can’t. I have to help someone, and my time is short.”
    “You are driven.
I can see that,” the young man said, his eyes exploring her figure. She was
covered in a thin sheen of sweat, her cheeks flushed from the run. “I don’t
understand the circumstances of the game you are playing, Vivian, but your odds
are not good, it seems.”
    She nodded. “I
understand. But I have to try. I can’t…I can’t give up. Someone is counting on
me.”
    A large man with
a dark goatee and a straw cowboy hat stepped forward and muttered a stream of
Spanish at the young leader. Vivian understood a few of the terms, but the word
“ransom” went right over her head.
    The young man
silenced his subordinate by simply raising his right hand. “Maybe we can
improve those odds. Can you ride a dirt bike?”
    “Probably. I
mean, I can learn.”
    “Good. I
promised myself that, if you survived that nasty pack of alligators, I would
not harm you. Now that I see you in person, it’s very clear to me that you need
some help. Come, let me show you how it works.”
    She followed him
to the large man’s bike. He grumbled beneath his breath, but he stepped aside
when the young man locked eyes with him. He explained the bike’s controls
before mounting the bike and pulling her onto the seat behind him. Her hands
beneath his, he illustrated the brake and the throttle, then let her try it on
her own.
    “It’s a fast
bike. It’ll take you where you need to go, but be careful, Vivian. You survived
those alligators, but there are other monsters out there on the road. Some of
them carry the