More Than Eyes Alone Can See
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Sands was sitting on what he was coming to think of as his
bed in a room he was starting to hate to look of, despite the face that he
couldn’t see it. It was enough that he
could hear what it sounded like. If he
had to see it as well, he might well have taken his guns and started blowing
patterns ithe the bare walls to keep himself occupied.
How did he know the
walls were bare? Every sound in the room
echoed and was amplified. Acoustically,
it was a cross between a bathroom and a storage closet.
held only a bare minimum of furniture and no decorative touches at all.
arrangement. That did lend
some credence to “la
Her name is Tessa.
a decent amount of pain to shoot through his head.
Any facial movement at all caused pain to shoot through his head.
but it was one he had latched on to with both hands.
time, he imagined, than having to exist in a sightless and soundless world. Might
as well be dead. And he really had
fought too hard to simply eat his gun now.
of the population, but the climate definitely leaves something to be
desired. It’s night.
is
shoulders, he thought, With
infection and running a fever. Just when
you think it can’t get any worse.
Remembering some of the shows he had watched, mainly lame Saturday
morning cartoons (hey, everyone had a guilty pleasure), he thought with some
degree of humor, At least it’s not
raining. That was probably the best
thing he could say about his life right now.
pan>pan>It wasn’t raining on him.
It was boring to
sit for untold periods of time with no one to talk to.
again, hoping that sleep would help him leave behind the pain and the
tediousness of his day so far, but knew better than that.
trouble might come knocking. Thinking
back to the telephone call earlier that day, he decided that it would not be
the best idea to let his defenses down at the moment – not when there was no
one in the house to alert him to danger.
away. While he got a perverse type
of satisfaction from making people think he didn’t speak a lick of Spanish, he
was more than fluent in it. To the
regret of his Spanish teacher, he had taken four years of it in high school and
three in college. He’d even dated a
Nicaraguan exchange student for a few months while at the
of
That had been a
surprise – the school, not the girl. His
prospects during his senior year of high school had been much better than some
run-of-the-mill four year college. His
SAT and ACT scores had been good enough for the Ivy League – his parents more
than able to afford the tuition. He had
actually enjoyed letting them down by attending some school in
that would accept most anyone, provitheythey had the GPA and the money.
since. And they hadn’t exactly tried to
speak to him either. Well, his mother
kept sending Christmas cards and belated birthday wishes – belated, he figured,
because she tried to get dear old dad to sign them as well.
I wasn’t the perfect son they wanted, and they weren’t the parents I
wanted.
you be worrying about whoever it is that your bosses sent down after you?
Bosses? The CIA?
who can’t decide upon any course of action without first having a seven hour
meeting over it and filling out twelve different forms . . . in
triplicate?
They called . . . they’re looking for you.
They think they talked to a crazy Mexican señorita.
can’t see me.
Oh, so you’re two years old now?
I must admit that things were ever so much simpler then. “If I saw it –
it’s mine. If I touched it – it’s
mine. If I want it – it’s mine . . . .”
is that different from your philosophy now?
was enjoying itself at his expense. If
it had a face, it’d probably be split in two from a huge smile.
whatever the crap the voice represented.
What? Is your personality so
fragmented that you can’t remember who you’re talking
to?
Before he could answer
himself, a clock somewhere in the house distantly called out the hour.
probably unconscious or listening to the woman babble.
that it was
hours already. How had that happened?
her so far.
extent within the cartel, although she has failed to mention how she ended up
“catching their attention.” She has
Mexican and American citizenship, something that would make it easy to move
between the two countries on cartel business.
She claims to have left the cartel behiwhicwhich would place her neck in
a considerable amount of danger should she ever be caught.
some of the headache building up there.
Catching back up with his train of thought he continued,
enough to them that the risk of being caught would remain relatively high.
there’s something she’s not saying.
Simply wanting to thumb her nose at Barillo seems as if it wouldn’t be
enough of a motivation to stay so close.
Perhaps she has no regard for her own life?
always talking about death. Could it be
that she wants to get caught, or is she still working
for them? The thought was an
uncomfortable one. If she was still
working for them, then he was a sitting duck, no matter how many guns she gave
him. If she were suicidal, then she’d
drag down those around her with her. But
she had taken in those kids, and from the way she acted around them, it seemed
unlikely that she would deliberately act in ways that would put them in more
danger. Perhaps she’s just stupid or overly confident of her ability to stay
one step ahead of everyone.
Perhaps she’s just nuts.
Perhaps, but even madness has some method to it, or so they say.
time with the cartel and the things she had learned, he thought,
Guilt? Some warped loyalty to
some cause only she sees? Sighing,
he continued, Perhaps it
strong enough for her to take others down with her.
find something for you to wear somewhere.”
Responsibility, hmm?
point in her thought process, not that I can track her thought process.
Irrelevant. What else do you
know about her?
and then did some kind of internship with Barillo’s butcher.
written about it. Likes children.
even when I’m doing my best to piss her off.
Thinking of how
Tess had managed to help support him during their trip here the night before,
Sands switched his mindset to her physical characteristics.
tall, perhaps an inch or so shorter than me.
Sturdy; was able to make it all the way back here while supporting most
of my weight. Has gentle hands, even
when she would like to be pissed at me.
Has a decent enough singing voice and a speaking one that sounds as
gentle as her hands feel.
Yeah, and if she has a weakness for blind guys, maybe you’ll get lucky.
Sands ignored
lean on her to make it somewhere and the side that had been pressed against him
as he walked, he thought, Her shoulders
don’t seem to be too broad, and ink ink they may have been a little bony.
the time . . . like containing groans of agony.
Not that any of this really
matters. It’d just be nice if I had some
kind of mental image to go with the voice.
As he sat and
thought, he became aware of a noise coming from the doorway.
attention from his thoughts to his ears.
There was someone standing the in doorway – he could hear
Several minutes passed as he waited for the other person to speak.
kids. An adult would have been arrogant
enough to think that they could move around freely without him detecting their
presence.
His patience was
rewarded when the other person shuffled their feet.
Are you awake?\\
ignoring the voice that whispered that the boy’s name was Marcos.
children. They were just so kindly naïve
that he had always just wanted to avoid them – it wasn’t as if they had
anything he wanted. That and he had
always been afraid that his cynical nature would taint them somehow.
tough time and automatically assume everything would be better the next
day. It was that part of him that had
shelled out the money to buy the kid’s gum.
(and most probably) owed this kid his life, he wasn’t about to make the kid pay
for that either. Everyone bet on a loser
at some point in their life – it wasn’t the kid’s
fault that he had picked Sands. But he
wasn’t going to speak Spanish for the kid.
“Yeah, I’m awake.”
The boy took a step
inside the room, pausing again just over the threshold.
Sands shrugged,
unwilling to admit anything that would make the kid feel either sorrow or pity
for him. He’d manage the pain.
//Couldn’t sleep.\
“Why not?”
work?
comment. Whether he liked it or not, he
owed the kid something for what he had done.
If a night of sleep was the best he could do, so be it.
//I’m worried.\
“About what?”
just me, or is it hard to get any usable information out of the Mexican
populace in general?
//Señora Tessa.\
This caught his
attention. What could Tessa possibly be
doing that would cause the kid to be worried?
Shifting his weight over cautiously because of his many wounds, Sands
beckoned the kid over to take a seat on the bed.
Marcos heard the
note of iron in the man’s carefully modulated voice.
concerns, but in the end he gave into the worry for one of the two adults
currently in his small world. //I think
she went to look at the corner where my parents died.
my home last night.\
*****************************************
While Sands was
careful to not voice his opinion of this aloud, in his mind he was cursing the
idiot woman who thought she was indestructible enough to meddle in affairs that
were apparently worth killing over. She
was clearly delusional, even suicidal.
First she wanted to go to his motel and pick up clothes for him, when
there was a very good chance that either the cartel,
renegade militia, the Mexican government, or the CIA would have a surveillance
detail somewhere in the area. Now she wasitisiting crime scenes and hunting
down men who had a visible interest in a boy who had helped a man who had been
supposed to die in the street from either having his eyes gouged from his head
or from a quick bullet from a cartel flunkie.
Oh yes, the woman had brains, but it was obvious that she had no common
sense whatsoever.
In the midst of
this rant, Sands abruptly remembered what else the boy had said.
Marcos nodded,
see the movement. //Sí, señor.\
took a deep breath, then continued.
//There was so much blood. I
think they were shot several times, but the police, they would not let me get
close enough to look and I didn’t stay to ask.
I needed to check on my brother and sisters – to see if they were dead
too.\
Sands was impressed
by the maturity of this statement, and he also realized why the boy had sought
him out. The kid couldn’t have been any
older than ten or twelve, but there were some things that just couldn’t be
talked over with a woman. Especially in
a society where women were still supposed to be protected from the harsher side
of life. “So you went to your house and
found that men were watching it. I’m
impressed. Not many kids your age would
have noticed that.”
Some of the b
sh
shuddering breaths eased. //Sí, but
yesterday was a strange day.\\
sisters, but they were scared. I
ldn’ldn’t take care of them.\
The confession was
agonizing to hear. This was a culture
where the man of the house was supposed to be able to provide for his
family. As the oldest brother, Marcos
would have been taught that. “So you
brought them here.” There was no answer,
but Sands could hear the boy moving, could feel the bed moving.
closer to him, leaning against the wall, sitting just close enough for the
sleeve of his shirt to touch Sands’ arm.
He didn’t quite know what to think, didn’t know what to do.
handled most things – but he had no idea how to comfort a boy who had lost all
the stability in his world in such a short period of time.
Sands realized that talking was all he had to do.
//Señor?\
“Hmm?”
//Were you scared
yesterday?\ The question didn’t carry
an idle inquiry behind it, but rather the uncertainty of child hoping to find
that he was normal – an assurance that what he was feeling was normal.
Sands took time to
weigh his words. He knew that he had the
choice to lie and save face or tell the truth and perhaps give a child some
sort of peace of mind. He didn’t think
of himself as a nice person, or a kind person, or even a sympathetic person,
but he choose to forget that for the moment.
“Terrified.”
*****************************************
Ever since Sheldon
Jeffery Sands had moved across the country to go to school, he had been in
control of himself and his surroundings.
Halfway through his freshman year, he had realized he had a large talent
for manipulating and reading people; for gng tng them to do exactly what he
wanted, for knowing exactly how far he could push them before they
snapped. His years in grade school had
been too full of anger and antagonism for him to have learned this before.
in his life, without daddy’s money or mother’s societies and community
functions to blunt the teeth of reality.
He loved it. Most people hated
him, but that was alright, because he could still get
them to do what he wanted. He knew he
was full of it, but he managed to pull it off without getting his ass kicked,
so who cared.
School had been a
breeze. He was smart enough to be able
to pass his classes with a minimum of effort, and as a result of having so much
free time, he had taken up the sport of people baiting.
what buttons to push to get which reactions.
It had been amusing to see how many people he could alienate or twist
around his little finger. It was then -
five months into his freshman year - that he had decided to join the CIA when
he graduated. The possibilities of the
manipulations he could pull off on a national level had intrigued him.
enjoyed than getting paid to do it?
He had left the U
of W campus five years later with a masters in
Political Science, a BS in Economics, and half a BS in psychology.
and he was set loose. Well, not
loose. He’d had to do a lot of dirty
work, jobs that were the equivalent of having to scrub urinals with one’s
toothbrush before he was allowed to do what he really wanted.
caused by other more incompetent agents, and then the higher-ups had seen what
he was good at doing. Keeping the
balance, walking the line between legality and outright criminal behavior,
between madness and brilliance. And
then, three years ago – the big offer had come his way.
favorably for the
And for a little
over two years he had walked that line, had kept that balance.
his ears through one of his many channels of information.
the way his bosses would want. But this
time there was a lot of money involved.
Enough money that whoever could get a hold of it would be able to run
this country while quitting his day job.
He could disappear and pull the strings of political power in a manner
that suited him. Or he could move to
another country entirely and set up shop there.
Either way he figured, it was just another chance to expand his talent;
that it was the next logical step.
Except this time he had overreached himself, had made one tiny yet fatal
misstep.
When Ajedrez had
sat down across from him in that dinner with that self-satisfied smirk on her
face, he had known that the game was up.
He thought he could face that, but then he had felt the needle pierce
his skin, and all he could feel was an overwhelming fear as he fell from his
position on the fence. Icharus had
failed to learn from past mistakes and had once again flown too close to the
sun.
And then there came
all the things he tried not to think about, but couldn’t make leave his
mind. Worst was the knowledge that he
was strapped to a table, unable to move, and a madman was going to remove his
eyes while a bunch of goons and one traitorous bitch sat around and laughed at
the stupid American.
Yes, had been
scared yesterday. He’d been so terrified
that he was lucky his underpants were still clean.
allowed to leave. The feel of mingled
sun and blood on his face had chilled him to the core.
he was scared – he had fought. And in
the end it still hadn’t been enough. If
Marcos hadn’t come along or if Tessa had refused to treat him, he’d be dead
right now. He would have lost everything
in one fell swoop – his freedom, his future, his life, and worst of all, his
independence. He had been fucking
petrified. But what he had admitted to
the boy would suffice – the kid didn’t need to know the rest.
*****************************************
Tess wanted to go
home. The graze on her arm throbbed with
a low pain, that had she been able to hear it, would have sounded similar to
the pulsing sound waves of the lowest musical instrument on the planet.
blood. Deciding that it was safe to head
home, she made a U-turn in an empty parking lot and headed back across the
city.
She had been
driving around for a little over an hour now, making sure that there was no one
following her. When she had caught a
glimpse of her attackers at the motel, she hadn’t thought her two assailants
had had a car, and now she was reasonably sure that she was right.
peeled for any hint of pursuit, Tessa had seen no trace of her attackers, even
though she had stopped outside two apartments and the hospital.
lot for twenty minutes and hadn’t seen a single car go by.
in on her patient, check on the children, tend her wounds, take her
medications, and go to bed.
Making sure to park
behind the house where her car wouldn’t be visible from the street, Tess
climbed out of the car, holding her injured arm to her chest to keep the pain
as dim as she could until she could tend to it properly.
as if any of it would spoil overnight.
about the suitcase? You certainly paid enough
to get it. Shouldn’t you bring it in?
And a wuss. Stop whining and
bring it in.
I don’t care.
Walking the three
steps back to the car, she opened the door and grabbed the suitcase in her good
hand. Setting it on the ground so that
she could close the door quietly, she noticed the bullet holes in her car.
look at it tomorrow and see if I can pull any bullets out.
discount with a reasonable amount of surety.
But if it hadn’t been cartel, she had no idea who it might have been.
Approaching the
house with dragging steps, she once again set down her burden to unlock the door,
keeping her bloody arm motionless. After
drawing a pint of blood yesterday, Tessa wasn’t ready to lose this much blood
today; she was already drowsy and getting lightheaded.
floor by the kitchen door, unwilling to carry it any farther tonight.
the house, but the voice interrupted her.
You know, locking the door
might be a good idea. She made a
face, but did turn back to set the deadlock.
“Now can I go to bed?” she asked wearily and quietly.
Walking down the
hallway, concentrating to keep from weaving on her feet, she made it to her
bedroom. She was only a step or two
inside the door when she heard the click of a safety switching off.
patient was wide awake . . . but the boy at his side was not.
showed just how befuddled her mind was, “What is Marcos doing in here?”
Now that he knew
who was in the house, Sands lowered the gun.
Embarrassed to be caught with the boy asleep on the bed at his side, he
ignored her question in favor of asking his own.
offensive. “What took you so long?
groceries. Did you get my cigarettes?”
“I did get
groceries. And I got your
cigarettes. But I also had to buy some
clothes for the kids, and I didn’t know what sizes they wore, and then I had to
get clothes for you . . . .” She trailed
off.
“I wasn’t aware
that stores in
stayed open past
indeed that late. So much for that
excuse. “Let me guess – a crime scene
managed to distract you on your way home?”
Tess rolled her
eyes. Well, she knew how the man had
entertained himself while she was away – by pumping information out of
Marcos. She was about to berate him for
that before he could berate her for doing something with the potential of being
dangerous when Marcos woke up, disturbed by their conversation.
She considered
making a run for the bathroom before he spotted her injury, but didn’t have
time. As soon as he opened his eyes he
saw her, and the moment after that he realized that she was bleeding.
What’s happened?! You’re bleeding
*****************************************
The idiot woman had
managed to get herself hurt. He had
known it. Served her right for doing
something so foolhardy as to go back to the sight where people had been
murdered, or where people were obviously lying in wait for prey.
He listened as she
tried to quiet the boy in a voice that was steadily getting weaker and
weaker. Whatever he thought of her
actions, it sounded like she needed medical attention soon.
functioning adult in the house was put out of commission.
Go to bed.”
The boy stopped his
flow of Spanish long enough for Sands to be sure that he had been understood.
heard bare feet walk across the room.
Heard Tess give a murmured reassurance, then
heard the door close. Then nothing for
several moments. “How bad is it?”
“It’s just a
graze. I’ll be fine.”
outside to see if there were any rainbows or leprechauns in sight.
mover across the hardwood floor in the direction of the bathroom.
that was fine with him. He’d used up any
gentleness he had on the boy. He was in
no mood to comfort a fool.
He heard clothes
being taken off, the soft thud of fabric hitting the floor, the hissed breath
of someone in pain. Serves her right, he thought, trying to defeat the urge to get up
and see . . . find out . . . what exactly was wrong.
for several moments, but a low cry broke that resolve.
Getting up,
ignoring the fact that he was wearing next to nothing, Sands made his way into
the bathroom. He knew he had reached his
goal when an exhausted voice told him, “Go back to bed.
you spend the night on the floor, because I won’t be able to pick you up.”
“Relax,
chiquita.
it is, and how you got it. Marcos
sounded fairly concerned.”
She glanced at him
in the mirror before turning her mind back to the problem of how to get her
t-shirt off without hurting herself more.
“Marcos has had a rough past twenty-four hours.
modicum of safety in a world gone mad, and me getting injured means that he’s
not as safe as he would wish to be.”
Sands said nothing, obviously waiting for answers to his questions.
dear. Just tell the man what he wants to
hear.
in the arm, but luckily the bullet only grazed me.
manner that might be called ‘profuse’ under other circumstances, I will be fine
as soon I as get the chance to patch myself up.”
“And what was the
situation that you forced your way into that involved guns and flying bullets?”
“None of your
business.”
Sands clicked his
tongue and shook his head. “That was
rude. I think my delicate feelings have
been smashed. You want to try again?”
“No.”
“Why not?”
have thought that the man behind her was inquiring after the health of
someone’s dearest great-aunt. Then
again, his ‘tirado’ vibes were out in full force.
from her even if he had to bar the way out of the bathroom until one of them
passed out from weariness.
“Because you’re
going to get mad, and that would be bad for you until you’ve had a bit more
time to recover.”
freezing. The lack of expression on it
was chilling. There was only one thing
he could think of that would make him mad.
“You found out where I was staying and went there, didn’t you.”
of a hunch.
“Yes.”
shoulder and waited for the blow she knew was sure to follow her
admission. It never came.
“I think that I owe
you a rather large ‘I-told-you-so.’” He
let that sink in for a few seconds before asking in a voice that clearly
indicated how inept he thought she was, “I don’t suppose you got a look at the
men who shot you?”
“I didn’t need to,
and I didn’t loiter once I figured out that someone was trying to kill me.
who it wasn’t – or least I’m reasonably sure.”
The man looked unconvinced. She
sighed. “Whoever was firing at me was
using a silencer. Those aren’t standard
issue within the cartel. Barillo had
enough power in the area that he didn’t need to hide what he was doing.
quiet. It was someone else.”