Loyalty

The soft scratching of rock against cement was the only indication that time had not frozen in the small, bare room.

Satisfied with the white line he had created, Nate blew away the dust particles and leaned back to view the grand picture. Fifteen white lines in a row stared back at him. Before he was transferred here, he had drawn seven white lines on another wall. He looked out the barred window of his mostly underground cell at a quarter moon. Tonight was his twenty-second night in a Peruvian prison—if he was in fact, still in Peru. The transfer happened at nighttime, while he was blindfolded and injected with a sedative. With the loss of an entire day, he could be anywhere, in a cement box, in the middle of the jungle.

He sat with his back against the cold wall and closed his eyes. He should've listened to Sully. He should've gone to the market, gotten the groceries, and come back home. Picking the policeman's pocket was the dumbest thing he had ever done.

. . .

Nate opened his eyes quickly at the sound of a pebble landing on the floor. Sleeping in prison had taught him to wake at an instant's notice.

Another pebble came through the window, this time landing close to his foot. He looked up through the opening. It was dark outside, sometime past midnight.

A man dressed in black came into view. The moonlight reflected off his blue-grey eyes as he searched the cell below.

Nate jumped to his feet. He rubbed his eyes in disbelief.

"Sully?" he whispered.

Sully broke into a wide grin. "Yeah, it's me. It's goddamn good to see you, kid. You have no idea how hard you've been to track down."

Nate sucked in his breath. He hadn't lost hope, but it had been slowly slipping out of him with each passing day.

"I'm getting you out," said Sully.

"How?"

Sully reached into a pocket and pulled out a skeleton key that matched the one hanging from every guard's belt.

Nate caught the key before it landed on the floor.

"The guard will come check in on you in four minutes. When he leaves, use that to open the door, and meet me outside."

"But there are two other guards outside," said Nate.

"Let me worry about them," said Sully. "Remember, four minutes. I'll see you outside."

Sully turned his head quickly as the voices of the perimeter patrol guards neared, and disappeared into the night.

Nate stared at the window for a few seconds before resuming his seat against the wall, the key tucked carefully away inside his waistband.

He closed his eyes and waited, trying to keep his heart from racing. Did he just hallucinate that? Was Sully really outside his window? He touched the cool metal of the skeleton key twice to make sure it was still there.

The guard was right on time, making his routine rounds. Nate sat perfectly still, practicing slow and steady breaths. Satisfied with the prisoner's status, the guard walked slowly back the way he came.

Nate breathed a sigh of relief. He retrieved the key and quickly unlocked his cell through the long, iron bars. Quietly, he shuffled the short distance to the prison entrance and took a deep breath before opening the door.

Sully stood next to the unconscious bodies of the remaining guards.

"Come on kid, let's go."

After half an hour of hurrying through the thick jungle, they finally reached an old, rusted truck.

Sully breathed out a sigh of relief at the sight of the car. "I was beginning to think we got turned around somehow. Glad to see this piece of junk again."

Nate also stopped to catch his breath. He looked back the way they had come, but only saw darkness through the trees. They really were in the middle of nowhere. He turned to Sully, and surprising both his mentor and himself, hugged the older man tightly.

After a couple of seconds, he felt Sully's hands around his shoulders, returning the hug.

"You okay, kid?" Sully asked.

Nate didn't respond. He squeezed his eyes tightly against the tears that threatened to spill.

"If they treated you badly, I have no problem hiring a couple of guys to hunt down the people that put you in there in the first place."

Nate shook his head. He pressed his face deeper into the fabric of Sully's shirt. He never thought he would miss the smell of cigar smoke so much.

"Tell me what's wrong," Sully tried again.

Nate forced his hands to unclench from Sully's side.

"I'm just…glad to see you. Thanks for coming back for me."

"Look, kid, I'm sorry it took so long. I got close to figuring out where you were, then they moved you to this new place. The two guards I approached from the first prison just so happened to be the only ones in Peru that wouldn't take a bribe, so I had to start over and do it the old fashioned way. When I finally traced you to this place, I had to scope out the patrol pattern for a couple of nights before I could make my move."

Nate nodded, absorbing his words.

"You sure you're okay?" Sully asked.

Nate nodded again.

"I don't need to put in an ad for thugs for hire?"

Nate smiled, and shook his head. "Let's go home."

"I was thinking the same thing," said Sully. "I've been working on something else while you were locked up. Look what I received in the mail today. Hot off the press."

Sully produced two documents from his pocket. Nate examined the items closely. They were a passport and birth certificate that both contained his name. He looked up at Sully.

"You think these can pass?"

"Made by the best in South America," said Sully. "At least that's their tagline. We'll see. It's the best quality I've seen in a long time."

"Where are we going?" Nate asked.

Sully grinned. "We're going home home. Palm Bay, Florida. Beaches, palm trees, and women in skin-tight bikinis. What do you say?"

Looking at the man, Nate couldn't remember why he ever doubted Sully would come back for him.

"I can't wait," he said, returning the smile.