Lex talionis
Chapter 21. Into the maze

They were on the trail of one of the suspects in that terrible and cruel chain of more than a dozen disappearances and gruesome deaths, systematically visiting various locations where they thought he might be hiding. It was a long list of places, because the guy was a freelance courier and was constantly on the move, even from one side of the border to the other.

The people responsible for the case divided their resources between several joint pairs of Federal Police and FBI agents.

Isobel had been assigned with Darío Montero. He was a young and rookie agent -but with a lot of self-confidence- stationed at the Federal Police station in Nuevo Laredo, Mexico.

For several days now, they had already been to six or seven sites, maybe more, because they hadn't found anything at all and it was starting to become routine.

Next one was an old abandoned warehouse in the middle of a dusty plain. Montero had suggested going for a bite to eat, but Isobel had preferred to cross one more place off the list first.

There didn't seem to be anything there. It was padlocked shut. They walked around it, peering through the boarding trying to see what was inside. It was a bit ramshackle, but it was huge. What few windows it had were covered.

"No, Montero. I'm not going to drink tequila with you tonight either," said Isobel as they finished circling the building.

He had been trying to convince her, countless times, to share a few drinks when their service was over. Isobel had turned him down on several occasions because it was obvious that what he was after was to hook up with her. However, the young man would not give up.

"Please call me Darío," he asked for the umpteenth time. Suddenly, Montero stopped dead in his tracks. "Did you hear that?" he said.

Isobel looked at him quizzically. She didn't know what he meant. She shook her head as she strained to hear something.

"A scream," Montero clarified, pointing inside the warehouse.

At first, Isobel thought it was another one of his silly jokes. He wouldn't stop doing them. "Yes, sure..."

He disregarded the sarcasm in her tone. "We have to go in."

"I have not heard anything, Montero," Isobel replied, somewhat annoyed.

He did not listen to reason, going back to the car and bringing a crowbar. Isobel tried to dissuade him, but Montero popped the lock and opened the door.

Isobel knew from the first moment that this was not normal.

Where there should have been an open space, a maze of corridors seemed to begin. She was telling Montero that they needed reinforcements to get into such a place... Then, she heard it too. A shriek of pain that curdled both their blood in their veins. It sounded like a young girl. Not stopping to think about it for a second, the Federales agent drew his gun and ran.

"Montero!" Isobel called uselessly behind his back as he walked away without looking back.

She hesitated. She should call for those reinforcements, but could she risk letting him go in there alone? Yes, Isobel had just met him less than a week ago, but now he was her partner. And he was a good kid despite his foolishness and annoying insistence on flirting with her. Besides, the yelling was still going on.

Isobel cursed under her breath and followed him.

Montero was following the sound of the screams through those planked corridors, with Isobel only a few steps behind. At the third corner he turned, the floor suddenly gave way beneath his feet. Leaping in desperation, she grabbed him as best she could, in mid-air. Thanks to that, Montero held on to the edge just before falling. He climbed up with the help of Isobel, who pulled him up. Sitting on the edge, the two of them peered into the hole, panting. It wasn't very deep, but they found that a handful of sharpened stakes had waited for him in the walls and bottom.

"Mother of God... Thank you," said Montero, looking at her with wide eyes.

Then they saw that one of Montero's thighs was bleeding. One of the stakes had wounded him with a slanted grace, tearing fabric, skin and flesh. Pain assaulted him suddenly at that moment.

"¡Hijo de la chingada!" exclaimed the agent between clenched teeth.

Isobel checked her cell phone. No bars in there. "We have to go back," she said. "We can't go any farther with you having a leg like that."

Montero shook his head vigorously. "It's no big deal. Just a scratch. I'm fine."

Somewhat laboriously, but he managed to get to his feet, and continued to move forward, followed by an increasingly worried Isobel.

They proceeded much more cautiously from that moment on. The screaming stopped, falling into an ominous silence.

A subtle hiss was all that warned them before throwing wood splinters at them. Montero pulled Isobel back quickly, but not in time to prevent some of the splinters from sticking in her left arm. Isobel cried at the sharp pain. It hadn't taken them long to discover that the first one was not the only trap; the place was riddled with them. They had dodged one that would have shattered their ankles; another designed to fill their eyes with crystal dust. This time they had not been so lucky.

A little further on, Isobel stopped. They were both bleeding and no closer to getting anywhere. "We can't go on like this."

Montero did not answer; he had leaned against a wall and was slipping down. His pant leg was soaked with blood.

Isobel asked him for the fine linen jacket he was wearing and used it to bandage his wound by tying a tight knot.

This time when Montero wanted to stand up, he finally needed Isobel's help.

"We should go back, Montero," she insisted, although at this point she wasn't sure if they would know how to go back.

"It's 'Darío'. No way. We have a job to do."

He took a determined stride. Isobel stood in his way. She went to argue, but then, thanks surely to the fact that she was now looking down the corridor they had come from, she noticed that sometimes the panels changed places, preventing them from even retracing their own steps.

Panic was about to seize Isobel. The psycho had them trapped right where he wanted them. Moreover, it was obvious he was having fun with them. It seemed to her that they had been in there for hours. It was only a matter of time before they fell squarely into one of his traps, or he managed to separate them, and did them real harm.

It was Montero's determination, despite his wound, that reminded Isobel of something essential: somewhere out there, there was a girl who might still be alive and desperately needed their help. They could no longer play along with that bastard.

Isobel consulted the compass on her car key ring. She looked around and suddenly fired her gun... at the boards that had just moved out of the narrow hallway.

Montero looked at her as if she had lost her mind. But Isobel had a target: she had aimed at the joint where it joined the wall. She weakened the material. Then she hit it with the butt of her gun to break it. Montero did not take long to understand what she was up to. Pushing and hitting between the two of them, they managed to break the board.

Finding another corridor on the other side did not surprise Isobel. Searching carefully, Montero was able to find a camera.

"I knew he was watching us somehow," said Isobel.

"It must have taken him months to set this place up. Fucking nutcase," Montero replied, destroying the camera.

They were no longer completely at the mercy of that maniac. But now, in what direction could they go?

The young agent did something desperate. "Hey, girl! Call out! We'll come to your help!" he shouted with all his might.

No one answered. Isobel eyed him fatalistically. It was too remote a possibility.

Montero did not give up. "Come on, call out loud! We'll find you!" he insisted.

Again only silence answered.

He was taking a breath to try again, when then... something was heard.

At first, it was just a hoarse moan. "Heeee…"

The two looked at each other and strained their ears.

"Here...!" it sounded clearer. And it gained strength "Help! Here!"

"Hold on, we're coming!" Montero yelled, and he charged against the panel that prevented them from going in the direction of the voice.

Isobel ripped one of the rails of the movable planks they had destroyed out of the floor and began to use it as a lever.

They went through several more panels, trying to go in a straight line, destroying cameras as they discovered them. With his ashen face covered in sweat, Montero kept asking the girl to call them and she sounded closer and closer.

Suddenly, there was an angry bellow, a desperate 'No!' from the girl and a squeal of pain.

"Don't touch her, you son of a bitch!" roared Montero, frantic, smashing the wood in front of him.

Isobel gritted her teeth and kicked them hard. The two of them broke through like an enraged beast.

A wall gave way and they were no longer in a corridor, but in a large, well-lit room. Unlike the rest of the place, the floor was smooth concrete. The first thing that struck Isobel was the smell. A pungent stench that told terrible things of pain and humiliation. In the center of the room was an autopsy table and to it was strapped a girl in her mid teens. She was naked, covered with bruises and bleeding from several wounds. She was so still that Isobel could not even tell if she was still alive.

She and Montero immediately drew their guns, pointing them in all directions, but no one else was there.

Grimacing in anguish, Montero limped over to the table, while Isobel covered him, expecting an ambush at any moment. He hesitated, as if afraid of hurting the girl more by touching her, but he felt her pulse.

"She's alive," he sighed with relief. Isobel exhaled the air she had been holding. "But she urgently needs a doctor."

As Isobel inhaled again, the air didn't seem to feed her lungs as it should. She realized she was gasping for breath.

She and Montero looked at each other not knowing what to do next. He, too, was breathing heavily and seemed somewhat dizzy.

"I don't know if... We should... move her..." his voice trailed off.

It was his glassy eyes that alarmed Isobel. She sniffed the air, aghast. She couldn't smell anything different, but she had received training at Quantico once about that. A pang of visceral terror shot through her from side to side. The air was becoming unbreathable.

Montero staggered and dropped to one knee.

"Montero! Gas! Hold your breath!" Isobel exclaimed, covering her mouth and nose with the inside of her elbow.

She yanked off one sleeve of her T-shirt and tied it over her airway. "Montero! We have to get out of here!" She went to him, who had covered his mouth with his hand and was shaking his head to keep from being knocked out. His body was going limp. Isobel shook him. "Montero!"

But to no avail. His eyes closed and he lost consciousness, lying on the ground.

"Darío!"

A strange blurred veil crossed Isobel's vision and suddenly Darío was in a hospital bed, pale as death, wires and tubes cruelly piercing his body everywhere. She shook him again, but he showed no signs of life. He was so cold. Tears of despair rolled down Isobel's cheeks.

"Darío! Darío, please!"

A touch, warm and tender -first on the back of her hand, then on her cheek- a deep and soft voice, made the very existence around her ripple and shiver.

She woke up sitting up, leaning forward on her own arms, at the foot of Darío's bed in the Montemorelos hospital. Her face was soaked. Kneeling beside her, Jubal held her hand and stroked her head.

"Isobel," he called to her with a touching sweetness. "Isobel, wake up... It's just a bad dream..."

Several agonizing sobs escaped her, as she stared into Jubal's worried eyes, trying unsuccessfully to cling to reality. He drew her against his chest and Isobel allowed him to do so. It was his embrace that gradually restored her calm.

·~·~·

When they had returned from the rooftop, Darío had been transferred to the ward, was no longer intubated and had a slightly better color, although he was still unconscious.

Isobel remained serious and distraught, distracted by how they were going to resolve the situation. Jubal could almost hear the cogs spinning inside her head, and simultaneously skidding from her concern for Darío. Still, she had clearly managed to regain some of her balance. It had been satisfying to being able to help, and it was peculiar how doing so had restored his own balance as well.

For his part, however, Jubal was having trouble regaining another kind of steadiness. What had happened up on the rooftop, that painful vulnerability in Isobel's eyes, had made him feel something so intense that he had been sorely in need of pouring all his devotion into a kiss... He had not done so, not on the lips as he would have liked; he hadn't wanted to confuse things, when what he was offering was hope and comfort. But now he couldn't get out of his mind how Isobel had looked at him before and after that historic embrace, how wordlessly she had held his hand as they walked down the stairs. His heart had crossed a line he didn't think it'd ever be able to come back from. That worried him, a lot.

To distract himself a little, he had gone to get something to eat so that Isobel could regain her strength, but when he returned he had found her asleep, lying at the foot of his friend's sickbed. Jubal was thankful, because he thought that maybe this would give her some rest, which she obviously needed so much.

Sorrowful, Jubal carefully studied Darío's face, now sadly devoid of his vivacity and wit. Jubal really hoped he would wake up. He was a brave and loyal man. He did not deserve such a fate.

Then Isobel began to stir in her sleep, calling out to Darío in anguish. It had taken Jubal an agonizingly long time to wake her.

"What were you dreaming?" asked Jubal while Isobel calmed down in his arms, trying to give her an anchor to regain her composure.

She parted slowly, wiping away her own tears. "We were in that warehouse, where we both almost die."

"That time when you two first met?" he said softly.

Isobel nodded, still trembling slightly. "But that time I managed to save him, while in the dream he didn't..." She let out a shaky sigh. "Now- Now I can't do anything either. Nothing..."

Jubal's chest heaved at the way her eyes looked at Darío, at the heartbreaking desolation they showed.

"Why did Darío say that you both almost died because of him?" he asked, trying to find something to distract her from her pain.

Isobel's mouth quirked up in a small, tender, sad smile. "Actually, he is unfair to himself. He made a serious mistake, but it was out due to an excess of zeal..."

Reaching for a chair to sit next to her, Jubal looked at her expectantly, silently asking her to tell him more. Taking a breath, Isobel's eyes unfocused and she began to remember.

"I had only been in the field office of Laredo, Texas, for a few months..."

·~·~·

"Then that bastard tried to gas us. I think he was just trying to put us to sleep so he could do whatever he wanted with us." Isobel couldn't control a shudder at what she knew he might have done to both of them. "Thank heavens, it wasn't fast enough."

When she had shaken Darío, unlike in her nightmare, he blinked shaking his head. And he gave himself a tremendous slap to clear his head. Isobel still remembered even being startled at that. A faint smile escaped her at the memory.

He had then said to her: "I told you to call me Darío, dammit."

She had given him an exasperated look, as she gave him the other sleeve of her shirt so that he would also cover his mouth. She never called him Montero again.

Isobel told him to try to inhale as little as possible, and he had nodded. Cutting the girl's bonds with a pocketknife, Darío carefully picked the girl up in his arms.

"I located the front door and shot the lock off," she continued, telling Jubal. "On our way out we ran into that SOB. He was on the run -nearly got away from us- but once outside, he didn't stand a chance. He tried to get me to kill him during the arrest," Isobel's expression took on a fierce smile that Jubal found unexpectedly and irresistibly sexy. "But I didn't fall for that. Now he's rotting on death row in a Texas maximum security prison."

Maybe that's all that it will take, Isobel thought then, feeling the inner spark of a revelation. Instead of avoiding traps by trying to solve the maze, what I should do is beat it from within...

"So, Darío's folly was really to go in there without letting you call for reinforcements," said Jubal, understanding.

"Yeah. He later apologized for putting me in danger and told me why he had done it." Isobel swallowed hard. "One of Darío's sisters disappeared at the age of seventeen. She was never heard from again."

Jubal put his hand to his mouth in an unconscious gesture of horror.

"He was only thirteen then," she continued. "They were very close. How his sister possibly died has always haunted him. It's the reason he joined the Policía Federal... The whole situation, understandably, triggered his trauma."

Jubal eyed Darío with genuine admiration. He seemed like a very whole man to have gone through such a loss. He himself was not sure he would be able to get over something like that. That eternal uncertainty and pain...

Isobel snorted slightly through her nose, drawing his attention back.

"Darío was sure I would report against him. But I did not." She shrugged. "I really didn't think he deserved it."

Right there was the Isobel for whom Jubal's heart was pounding so hard. He smiled at her with a special warmth.

"So in the end we managed to save that girl's life," she continued. "Selena, her name is. She survived, healed and has become someone who helps every day other people to overcome terrible experiences like hers." She smiled with certain satisfaction. "And also, we even both received recognition from our bosses..."

In fact, that case earned Isobel a significant promotion.

"You forgot to tell," Darío then said from the bed in a hoarse voice, "that we spent that night together, giving free rein to our passion."

Isobel's face suddenly lit up. "No such thing ever happened, you scamp," she contradicted him, getting up from the wheelchair and laboriously hurrying to the head of the bed. "You spent that night in the hospital." It was amazing how happy it made her that the first thing Darío had said was such a characteristic joke of his. There were tears in her eyes, but they were very different. Joyful. She took his hand. "Will I ever stop having to save your ass?"

He almost didn't even have the strength to return the gesture. "I don't think so," he retorted cheekily but with severe shortness of breath. "I've gotten used to it and I kinda... took the like of it."

He seemed to have a hard time keeping his eyes open, but he was being completely himself. Jubal was smiling too, profoundly relieved.

"Besides," added Darío, "I think that this time the one who saved both of our skins this time was Jubal." He gave the older man an honest and grateful nod. "And Adriana." His eyes searched the room and turned troubled. "Where is she? And Sofia and Carlos?"

Trying not to get carried away with resentment and discouragement in doing so, Isobel told him plainly that the three of them had left. Darío's face was an open book. It was heartbreaking for her to see the disappointment, betrayal, and anger shadow his features. He turned his face away because the drugs made it impossible for him to hide everything he was feeling.

"But Adriana promised she would come back," Jubal pointed out.

Darío snorted, skeptical. "I highly doubt she will," he replied bitterly through a thick voice. "If she does, she'll face charges of forgery of documents and" he coughed, "desecration of corpses. If she's gone, she's not coming back," he said flatly.

He seemed disappointed on a level too deep to express. He made an obvious effort to turn to Isobel and focus his gaze on her. "What are we going to do now?" he asked desolately.

Isobel gathered and compacted all the resolve she was capable of. "Now... we'll burst the maze. From within."

~.~.~.~