Chapter Sixteen

Ensuring Loyalty

A/N: Warnings for more torture. Sorry, but these are not the nicest of guys.

"Lorenzo," El said. It was not an involuntary cry; he knew he was betraying his concern as he said it. He didn't care. He wanted his friend to know he was there, and to know that he cared what happened to him.

Lorenzo twisted in his bonds, trying to see over his shoulder.

His heart pounding, El took a place between two of his breakfast companions, gauging the locations of the armed guards and any escape routes. The results were not encouraging. He resigned himself to the fact that he was going to have to endure whatever they had planned.

Sands stood not far from Delgado, his head tilted.

"So, Señor Romero," said Delgado, "no longer the wealthy playboy."

"Fuck you," said Lorenzo, and El was glad to hear no fear in his voice.

Delgado smiled.

"Mariachi," he said, "your friend will receive a stripe for every time you disobey me or my men. If you betray me, he dies, very unpleasantly."

The craggy-faced man with the whip grinned.

"Señor Sands? Two stripes, please."

The torturer lost his grin and gave Delgado a disappointed look. He walked to directly behind Lorenzo, and held the whip out toward Sands. "Here," he said to the agent.

Sands approached the man with the whip, slowing as he neared him, and put out his own hand. The man put the whip in the agent's hand and Sands turned unerringly toward Lorenzo, giving the whip a testing flick.

El was appalled. "Wait," he was compelled to say. "I haven't disobeyed you."

Delgado turned an expression on El completely devoid of even his false geniality. In fact, the atmosphere turned so hostile El thought he could feel the chill in the air.

Oh. Yeah.

"Do it," Delgado said.

"Lo siento, Lorrie," El said, resigned.

"Don't worry about me," said Lorenzo.

Sands readied the whip, flicking forward along the ground, experimentally, judging distance. The onlookers, including the Castilian-accented torturer, stepped back, in order to not be in range of the backlash. El stood his ground. If the whip came his way he had some plans for it.

With a leisurely motion, Sands struck. Like a living thing, the whip snaked forward and tore an angry, bleeding brand down Lorenzo's back.

Lorenzo yelled with pain and surprise. El was sure his friend had determined to suffer in silence, but he probably had no idea how much the ripping of his skin would hurt. El steeled himself not to flinch.

Sands struck again, the whip cracking, gashing across the first cut to form a gory X on Lorenzo's back.

Again, Lorenzo cried out, twisting in his bonds.

El shut his eyes, giving himself a brief respite from reality. He opened them again when he was reminded of being blindfolded.

He looked at Sands, forever in darkness. El still found the agent difficult to read, but he saw no sign that Sands enjoyed his task. He did not smile, or hum, or bounce cheerfully in his motions. He reacted like a robot, and showed no emotion. His two stripes administered, he stood still, the whip quiescent beside him.

Delgado regarded El. "I trust, Mariachi, that, like Agente Sands, you understand where your loyalties belong."

El did.

"You've already met my cousin, Tomás. I have given his fun to Sands this morning, but he will administer any further punishment. He will be very grateful if you give him an opportunity to play with his toys."

Tomás, the torturer, smiled.

"I, however, will not be grateful. I will be very . . . vengeful."

Delgado seemed to await some response from El. Tight-lipped, El nodded. Any insult from him might earn Lorenzo another lash, but he'd be damned if he'd give Delgado any more of a promise of cooperation than that.

Apparently satisfied, Delgado took out a cell phone and raised it to his ear. He removed the phone, gave it a dark look, and put it away.

"Call the hangar," he ordered a nearby man. "Tell them we are ready."

The man returned through the door into the dining room. No one said anything. The only sound was the creaking of Lorenzo's bonds against the wooden scaffold as the younger mariachi squirmed from the pain of his wounds. El wished he dared say something encouraging to his friend.

Into the silence came the distant, slightly musical sound of a desk phone being dialed. Cell phones, El had observed in another lifetime, had eliminated the musical tones you could get from dialing a land-line phone.

Musical tones . . .

Holy shit.