“No. I’m . . . I’m claustrophobic.”
And then it dawned on her. She hadn’t had to fight off panic since she’d heard Zach’s voice.
ZACH CONCENTRATED ON Natalie’s words as she told him what had happened to her to make her claustrophobic, the feminine sound of her voice calling him back from the brink, keeping him awake, helping him ignore his pain.
“Then he turned and saw me standing there. He knew I’d seen him inject that poor old man. I tried to run, but he moved so fast. He put his hand over my mouth and dragged me down the back stairs to the morgue. I fought as hard as I could, but he was so much stronger. He forced me into a morgue locker. He said the same thing to me that I’d overheard him say to the old man—‘H-have a good death, a p-peaceful death.’ And then he . . . he shut the door.”
Her words quavered slightly, telling him that she was trembling, proof of how hard it was for her to relive what had happened to her during Hurricane Katrina—and no wonder. “Morgue lockers are airtight, aren’t they?”
“Y-yes. It was cold, so cold. I tried to push the door open . . . but they don’t open from the inside.”
That made sense, as corpses rarely had a pressing reason to get out.
“I beat on the door, but that only used up air faster. Most of the staff had been evacuated, so no one was on the other side to hear.” Her voice quavered again, something twisting in Zach’s chest at the sound. “I started to fall asleep. I knew I was suffocating. I blacked out. Then a doctor was standing over me, pumping air into my lungs. They’d brought down the body of one of his victims and ended up finding me.”
And none too soon from the sound of it.
“What happened to the intern?” It was bad enough that the bastard had decided to play God, murdering dying people, robbing them of their last days. But what he’d done to Natalie . . .
Have a good death, a peaceful death.
What kind of fucked up insanity was that? The son of a bitch was a sociopath, and Zach hoped someone had kicked his ass. And all at once it struck Zach as grotesquely unfair that Natalie had survived her ordeal during Katrina only to end up in the hands of the Zetas.
God has a sick sense of humor, McBride. You know that.
He sure as hell did.
“When I was fully conscious again, I told them what had happened. They arrested him. I wrote about it for the paper and testified at his trial. The jury sentenced him to life without parole. But I’ve been claustrophobic ever since. I . . . I just can’t take feeling shut in.”
Zach couldn’t blame her for that. As he knew only too well, some experiences marked a person for life. But that was then. This was now.
“Listen to me, Natalie, and listen hard. Spiders won’t kill you. These scorpions won’t kill you—they’re not the deadly kind. The dark sure as hell won’t kill you, and no matter how it feels to you, this closed-in space won’t kill you, either. But those men out there—there’s not one of them who would think twice about taking your life.”
For a moment she said nothing.
“What are they going to do to you, Zach?”
Wasn’t that obvious? “You’re talking to a dead man.”
“Are you sure? Maybe, if you—”
“I’m sure.”
“Aren’t you . . . aren’t you afraid?”
Hell, yeah, he was afraid—of breaking, of giving up intel that would get other people killed, of betraying his country, his fellow DUSMs, his mission. But he couldn’t tell her that. “I’m not afraid of dying.”
“You’re braver than I am.” She paused. “Wh-what do you think they’ll do to me?”
Ah, hell.
How was he supposed to answer that question?
“Are you sure you want to go there?”
“I’m going to end up like the other girls who’ve gone missing from Juárez, aren’t I?” She spoke the words calmly, but he knew she was terrified. What woman wouldn’t be?
He wished he could tell her that everything would be okay, but he couldn’t lie to her. “I don’t think these guys are going to touch you. I heard them say they’re saving you for their boss, for Cárdenas.”