The Best American Mystery Stories 2020

Ryan David Jahn All This Distant Beauty

from Mystery Tribune

Noah Beckett was standing in front of a small airplane hangar, watching the bruise-purple sky turn dark. He lit a cigarette while he waited for George Beverly, his pilot, to pull a small Cessna out onto the faded tarmac. Beverly was a skinny old man with the sad, wet eyes of a basset hound, and he dressed like you might see him stamping paper on bingo night. Noah had never worked with him before, but he used to run drugs for the Medellín cartel before retiring to a stucco bungalow in Valle de Bravo, and a man who’d lived through the life of a drug runner was a man who could handle himself.

Once the plane was out on the tarmac, Beverly pushed the tug back into the hangar and closed the roll-up door. Then he hesitated, looking at Noah with his sad, wet eyes.

“What is it?”

“You seem like a nice guy,” Beverly said. “This job you took, there’s a reason the cops are leaving it alone. You follow through, you’ll probably get yourself killed.”

“Don’t worry,” Noah said. “I’m not a nice guy.”

“It’s your skin, kid.”

“I’m forty-three.”

Beverly shrugged. “My man should be here in about twenty minutes. I have a parachute ready to go, but if you wanna repack it yourself I wouldn’t be offended.”

“I’ll trust you.”

“How much experience you have jumping?”

“Had airborne training in the army.”

“Static lines rather than ripcords?”

Noah nodded, took a drag, flicked his butt away.

“My advice? Pull as late as possible. A parachute’s a big fucking target and they probably have armed guards all around that island. We’re doing our flyover at night, but that don’t make you invisible. Wait till you’re at four hundred feet — ​two hundred if you’re feeling a little suicidal, and I’m guessing you are.”

“This has nothing to do with my mental state. It’s just a job.”

“Bagging groceries is a job.”

Noah first read about the kidnapping four days earlier in El Reformador, the Mexico City newspaper at which the victim, journalist Sofia Trujillo, worked. According to the paper, she’d been investigating an international human trafficking ring when she vanished from her apartment, the only evidence of trouble a broken door frame. A day after the piece ran, the newspaper’s owner came knocking.

Noah was sitting at the kitchen table, drinking coffee in his underwear, when he heard three staccato raps. He cursed to no one, got to his feet, and padded across the cool tile floor. When he pulled open his front door, he found himself looking at a brick of a man. He wore a well-tailored suit, his hair and nails immaculate, but his nose had been broken at least once, the bridge doglegging left midway down, and his eyes were moist. A thick manila folder was gripped in his fist.

“How can I help you?”

“Mr. Beckett?”

“He’s not in. Can I tell him who stopped by?”

“My name is Santino Garcia.” The voice was thinner than you’d expect from a man of his build, as if the sound of a flute came squeaking out of a tuba. “I own a newspaper and something has happened to one of my journalists. I believe Mr. Beckett might be able to help.”

“Is this about the kidnapping?”

“You heard about it.”

“I read about it. Why don’t you come in? We can talk in my office.”

“You’re Mr. Beckett.” It wasn’t a question.

Noah nodded, then stepped left to let Santino inside. He led the man to his kitchen, gestured toward his table.

“This is your office?”

“Wait here. You can have a seat if you’d like.”

When Noah returned — ​now wearing a pair of threadbare cut-off shorts, flip-flops, and a T-shirt — ​Santino was pouring coffee into a chipped mug, the manila envelope left resting on the counter. “I hope you don’t mind.”

“Help yourself.”

Santino sipped his coffee.

“Who told you I might be able to help?”

“Dante Lopez.”

Noah nodded. He didn’t advertise his services, as they tended to be illegal, and only accepted clients if they could name someone he’d worked with before. “What do you think I can do for you?”

“I want you to find Sofia.”

“Do you think they kidnapped her for ransom?”

“I don’t believe so, no.”

“Then there’s nothing to be done. She got too close to something and they wanted her dead.”

“That is my fear, of course.”

“So why are you here?”

“Because I might be wrong,” Santino said. “She’s my stepdaughter, Mr. Beckett. If she’s still alive, I want her home safely.”

“Any idea where they might be holding her?”

“I have the notes from her investigation.” He picked up the envelope and held it out to Noah, who took it from him. “My hope is you’ll read something in there that will help you find her.”

Noah flipped through the paperwork. “It’s almost all in Spanish.”

“You don’t speak Spanish?”

“I speak it okay — ​I’ve been in Mexico a long time — ​but I read at a third-grade level.”

“I can provide a translator.”

“I guess I’ll make do. I don’t like coworkers. But first we need to talk about terms.”

“I can pay you fifty thousand dollars up front and another fifty if you make her mother stop crying. That is every penny of liquid cash I have. I cannot negotiate. Your expenses will have to come from the money you’re paid.”

“Okay,” Noah said.

Noah didn’t know that he believed the man, but fifty thousand dollars in cash would allow him to engage in nothing but fuckery for the next year if he wanted to, even after expenses. The second payment didn’t enter into his calculations at all. Sofia Trujillo was almost certainly dead, which meant the money would never come, but he’d still do what he could to find her.

He spent the rest of the day going through the dead woman’s investigative notes and found himself impressed by her work. He was no investigator himself — ​at best, he was a mercenary given to sloth — ​but he wasn’t so stupid he couldn’t tell when someone had managed to find worms under a rock. She’d uncovered dozens of money transfers to and from prominent men; the names of half a dozen orphanages from which girls aged five to sixteen frequently went missing, and the orphanages’ financial ties to several of those prominent men; she had uncovered what looked to be a reasonable approximation of the trafficking ring’s hierarchy, with a few names missing; and, finally, she’d uncovered a base of operations, which appeared to be Isla de Zapatos, a private island off the coast of southern Mexico whose rubber trees were once harvested for a shoe company, now defunct.

If she’d already been murdered, she was probably buried out in the desert somewhere or stuffed into a wall. But if her abductors had for some reason kept her alive — ​maybe they wanted her to tell them who’d betrayed them by talking to her and giving her documents — ​he might find her on Isla de Zapatos.

Based on Sofia Trujillo’s research, the trafficking ring held girls on the island until buyers came to get them, which meant it had already been set up as some sort of prison camp, the perfect place to hold a kidnapped journalist from whom you wanted information.

It was a long shot, of course, but everything was.

Noah was lighting another cigarette when Beverly’s guy showed up in an old powder-blue Ford pickup that was dotted with rust holes behind the wheel wells. The guy parked in front of the hangar door, killed the engine, and stepped out into the night. He looked at Noah, stepped over to Noah, and held out his hand.

“How you doing? Name’s Gael.”

Noah shook his hand and told him his name.

“Cool, man, cool. Are we ready to go?” He was young and had more enthusiasm for life than Noah liked, but that came with youth. All the things he dreamed of doing hadn’t yet become the things he’d never done. Give him another fifteen years, let regret calcify his soul, and Noah predicted he’d turn into the type of man you could sit next to in a bar and not hate.

“I’m ready.”

“Where’s Bev at?”

“On board.”

Gael stepped up onto the plane and Noah went back to smoking. He looked up at the sky. The bone-colored moon was a thin hooked blade, which was good; the lack of moonlight would increase his odds of getting onto the island unseen.

Satellite images he’d looked up of Isla de Zapatos revealed an utter lack of construction on the south end of the island, nothing but white beach leading into a mangrove forest. If he dropped in there, he might be okay. It’d mean a daylong hike to the north end of the island — ​maybe two days if the terrain was treacherous — ​but he’d just have to live with that. It was preferable to getting riddled with bullets while falling from twelve thousand feet.

The satellite images he’d seen had also revealed the compound, a plane on a dirt runway, and a dock with a boat tied to it on the north end of the island. Noah couldn’t fly a plane, but he could drive a boat, so this was his one and only plan for escape.

Gael poked his head out of the plane. “We’re ready when you are, man. Let’s do it!”

Noah nodded, stoic, took a last drag from his cigarette, and flicked it away. He grabbed his rucksack from the tarmac. It held two changes of clothes, an extra pair of shoes, a small tarp, a blanket, enough food for two days, a hundred feet of twine (you never knew when you might need it), and a flint. A fanny pack already strapped to his waist held a pack of cigarettes and a lighter, a fold-out knife, a compass, his flip phone, a Glock 20, and fifteen 180-grain 10mm rounds. The fanny pack was supposed to be waterproof, but everything in it was bagged anyway, in case of a water landing. He also had a full canteen clipped to his belt.

He walked up into the plane and Gael shut and locked the hatch behind him.

The wind whipped through Noah’s graying hair. The ground below, free of any artificial light, was covered in shadows. The seawater was black ink. He felt sick to his stomach. They were at twelve thousand feet and nearing the jump point. He lowered goggles over his eyes. Gael tapped him on the shoulder. He nodded, turned on a strobe light attached to his rucksack, and threw it out into the night. For a moment he watched it drop, seeing only the rhythmic flashing of the light, then he jumped out into the darkness after it.

He arched his back and put himself in a neutral position, the wind whipping against his body, louder than the plane engine had been.

It was impossible to orient himself in the night. He could make out the silhouettes of trees and occasionally see the moonlight reflecting against the seawater, but had no way to gauge distance.

He looked at his altimeter. Nine thousand feet.

He was gonna pull his chute as late as possible, which would mean a hard landing.

Six thousand feet.

He looked to the north and saw lights in scattered buildings; saw tall lamps surrounding the compound.

Four thousand feet.

He looked down and saw the blinking light on his rucksack. It was still falling — ​then it wasn’t. It landed and the light went out.

Two thousand feet.

He angled down, cutting through the wind.

One thousand feet.

He could now see the world below him more clearly. He was heading for a water landing — ​but not too far from shore.

Eight hundred feet.

He hoped the water had depth where he hit or he might break his legs.

Six hundred feet.

He started to feel genuine panic. Up to this point he’d been flying, but with the ground rushing up at him he knew for sure he was falling. If he’d jumped off the Empire State Building, he’d be about halfway to becoming a smudge.

Two hundred feet — ​you could buy a length of rope that long.

One hundred and—​

He pulled the ripcord.

The chute burst open, caught air — ​one second, two seconds — ​and he splashed into the water, going under completely, feeling the sting of the landing even through the soles of his shoes. For a brief panicked moment he felt disoriented, it was dark underwater and he didn’t know which way was up, but then he surfaced and saw the beach. He began gathering his parachute, stuffing it back into the pack. He’d either have to carry it with him or hide it, but it couldn’t be discovered.

He scanned the water but couldn’t see his rucksack, so he swam toward shore. If it came down to it he still had a knife, a gun, and some water. But when he reached the shore he saw it lying on the beach. The light, still flashing, was half buried in the sand. He lay on the beach beside it and looked up at the sky, heart pounding.

No one had shot at him, which meant he probably hadn’t been seen. Either that or a group of men with guns was cutting its way through the woods to find him.

He reached into his fanny pack, pulled out a sandwich bag holding his cigarettes and lighter, and lit himself a smoke. When he got near the compound he’d probably have to lay off — ​he wouldn’t want to give himself away — ​but for now he thought he was okay.

Once he’d finished his cigarette, he snuffed it out in the sand and put the butt into his pocket. He got to his feet and trudged across the beach, past a group of box thorns with fat green paddles and red bulbs, and into the mangrove forest. He walked some distance, listening to the night animals, looking for a flat surface to lie on. When he found a place, he pulled his tarp and his blanket from his rucksack and laid them out, putting the tarp down first. He undressed and hung his wet clothes from tree branches. He loaded his Glock’s magazine with the fifteen rounds, lay down, wrapping himself up like a human burrito, and with the pistol gripped in his fist, closed his eyes.

Noah woke early the next morning to the sound of distant birds and the sensation that he was being watched. Before he did anything else, he reached for the grip of his pistol, which he’d let go in the night, and then, lying as still as possible, shifted his eyes left, then right, seeing what he could without moving his head.

About ten feet away, sitting among the mangrove trees, was a black jaguar. Its face and head were the color of midnight, but the darkness faded enough that you could see the shadow hints of spots on its flank. Its tail was curled around its body and it was looking at him with its yellow eyes. It was a large cat, at least a hundred and fifty pounds, but it was relaxed, giving Noah no sense that it was prepared to attack. Still, if it changed its mind, he had no doubt that it’d be able to kill him — ​unless he managed to shoot it first.

But he had no intention of doing that unless the thing made an attempt on his life. He wouldn’t murder an innocent creature — ​he had more love for animals than people — ​but also he didn’t want the sound of a gunshot echoing across the island.

He slowly pushed the tarp and blanket off himself and sat up, still holding the pistol. He got to his feet. The jaguar continued to watch him, but it didn’t move, so he pulled his clothes off the mangrove branches and put them back on. He snapped his fanny pack in place but tucked the pistol into his waistband for easy access. He buried his parachute, stuffed his tarp and blanket into his rucksack, and strapped it onto his back. He looked at the jaguar.

It didn’t move.

He didn’t think he could read the jaguar’s mind — ​wild animals were mysterious to him — ​but it did seem that it was waiting for him to do something. He pulled his compass from the fanny pack, oriented himself, and began walking, glancing over his shoulder at the jaguar every once in a while, not fully trusting it wouldn’t attack.

After about ten paces, it began to follow.

He continued to look over his shoulder as he walked, and it continued behind him, never coming closer or falling back.

Every once in a while he would hear the calls of frigate birds or cormorants and glance up to see them flying overhead, far beyond the canopy of trees. The sky was pale blue, like a bolt of faded denim, but he could see dark clouds to the east blowing toward him.

As he continued walking, as he began up the rocky slope of the hill that separated the south end of the island from the north, as he got farther from the shore, he saw them less frequently.

The black jaguar continued to follow.

It got very hot out. Sweat beaded on his forehead and ran down his sun-pinked skin, and the runnels caught on his eyebrows. He wiped them with his arm when they began to tickle and continued on. Sweat ran down his torso. His socks grew damp.

The mangroves were thinning as the terrain grew rockier and the water beneath it less brackish, but new types of foliage appeared, tall grasses mostly, cacti, an occasional cypress, and flowering plants he didn’t recognize.

About noon he discovered a cave in the hillside. It was surrounded by red bursts of panic grass, so he nearly missed it. But didn’t. He entered the cool, earthen-smelling interior of the cave. Somewhere deeper inside he could hear the steady drip of rainwater filtered by the rocks splashing into a standing pool. He shrugged out of his rucksack and sat down. He looked to his left and saw the black jaguar sitting on a boulder about ten feet from the mouth of the cave, looking at him, waiting. He opened his rucksack and pulled out a large bag of beef jerky he’d made a week earlier. He didn’t have a food dehydrator, so he clipped the marinated steak to a box fan he put in his kitchen window and let the sun-heated air do the job. He took a piece out and tossed it to the jaguar, who sniffed it, then ate it. He bit into his own piece, washed it down with a swallow of water from his canteen.

After lunch he strapped the rucksack back on and continued his trek, the jaguar following.

About four o’clock he reached the top of the hill and stood there beneath the sun, looking out on the terrain to the north, the island stretching out before him. It looked to be a completely different habitat. He could see jacarandas on the downslope, and then, as the terrain grew less rocky, black sapotes, big-leaf mahoganies, and panama rubber trees, a forest of them, with the blue sky and the ocean beyond — ​seabirds circling the waters, looking for fish; clouds like pulled cotton Scotch-taped to the firmament. He just stood there a moment, looking out at all this distant beauty, and for a moment he felt completely at peace.

But though he wouldn’t go so far as to call the beauty a lie, it was a half-truth. Once you got close enough you saw the danger: predators lurked in the shadows of the forest, and the sea was haunted by death. Always had been.

It started to rain as he began navigating the rocky slope down. It would have been a relief, except it made the ground beneath him slick and treacherous, slowing his journey. Fortunately, despite falling twice, he avoided any injury worse than a scraped elbow.

It was nearly dark before he reached the base of the hill, and he decided he was finished for the day. It was still raining, he was tired, and he didn’t want to walk through unknown terrain in darkness.

He strung a length of twine between two trees, about three feet off the ground, and put the tarp over it, forming a makeshift tent, then put rocks on the corners of the tarp to keep it from flapping about in the wind. He sat in the mud, listening to the rain thwack against the tarp, and smoked his first and last cigarette of the day.

The jaguar sat beneath a black sapote and waited.

The next morning he and the jaguar reached the rubber tree forest. The trees had great gouges carved into them for the exudate to run down once they’d been tapped, and there were old white-coated buckets scattered among leaves and fallen branches, most of them half buried.

Soon after that they came across an old camp, housing for the laborers who worked the rubber plantation probably. The camp consisted of two dozen wooden huts with corrugated steel roofs, now rusted and falling in.

“Should we go inside one of them, Chloe?”

The jaguar didn’t respond. Noah wasn’t sure she liked her new name.

“I’m gonna check it out,” Noah said. “You can wait here if you want.”

He pushed open a wooden door, the bottom rotted away, and stepped into a small hut. Beams of light stabbed their way in through the rusted roof, dust motes swimming around in them like minnows. The hut held two cots and a table, and on the table an old oil lantern. It was otherwise empty. He thought about the men who must have worked and lived on this plantation and felt brief — ​but overwhelming — ​sadness. This island was beautiful, but there was something rotten about it, something bad seeping up through the soil. The men who had harvested rubber, even if they’d been paid a pittance, had almost certainly lived lives of desperation — ​their hopes and dreams stolen from them by a shoe company so it could make high-tops for kids in Indianapolis — ​and now the island was being used to hold young girls who were being bought and sold into slavery of a different sort. It made him feel sick in his stomach to think about it.

A wolf spider crawled across the table.

Noah looked at it for a moment, then turned and left the hut.

Chloe was sitting just outside the camp. She looked at him as he approached, her face expressionless.

“Let’s get going.”

Noah continued to walk, heading north, and the jaguar followed.

He heard the men talking before he saw them, and, as soon as he did, stopped all movement. He hadn’t looked at his watch for some time, but the sun was low and the sky was streaked with orange and pink, so — ​despite the heat and sweat dripping from his body — ​evening had arrived. He pulled the Glock from his waistband and listened to the conversation, which turned out to be an argument.

“Estoy cansado. Es tu turno.”

“Todavia tengo ampollas de la ultima vez.”

“¿Cómo es mi maldito problema?”

“Porque estoy haciendo tu problema, imbécil.”

Noah took one careful step forward — ​then a second, a third, and a fourth.

He could now see the men between the trunks of the trees. They were standing in a clearing next to a hole they were digging, a hole they had been digging, anyway, before they decided to fight about whose turn it was to work. The larger of the two, olive-skinned and dark-haired, was holding the shovel like a baseball bat, threatening to hit the smaller one, a pale redheaded man, with the spade end, but the small one didn’t appear to be all that concerned.

“¿Cómo se supone que debo cavar si me estás amenazando con la pala?”

This was a solid point and seemed to convince the large one that his threat was pointless. He lowered the shovel, hesitated a moment, and then handed it over. The small one swung it around hard and it whacked against the large man’s skull with a hollow thwack that rang out briefly like a broken bell. The large man collapsed to the ground and the small man hit him in the head again, and again — ​with quick, brutal blows — ​then threw down the shovel and spat.

“Fucking stupid dumbfuck,” the small man said with a Texas accent Noah hadn’t heard in his Spanish. But just listening to those three words in English, Noah knew this was a man who’d wersh his clothes rather than wash them.

He raised his pistol and stepped out into the clearing.

The Texan had his back to Noah, still looking down at the guy he’d hit in the head. The skull was cracked and seeping blood into the soil. The blood looked black and thick as crude oil in the evening light.

Noah walked up behind the Texan as quietly as possible, knowing that with each step he might reveal himself — ​with a snapped twig or the sound of his breathing — ​and once he was close enough, he yanked the revolver from the guy’s waistband.

The Texan jumped, startled, and turned to look at him.

“Who the fuck are you?”

Noah tucked his Glock away but kept the revolver aimed. “I’m pointing a gun at you and you’re unarmed — ​except the ankle piece, and if you go for it, I’ll do you. That means I’m the one who gets to ask the questions. A woman was brought to this island. Where is she?”

The Texan shook his head, as if confused. “I don’t know what you’re talking about, man.”

“Bullshit. Tell me where she is.”

“I don’t know no woman.”

It might have been true. She might as easily have been dead in a ditch on the mainland.

Then Noah saw why the men had been digging — ​something large was on the ground behind the pile of dirt they’d excavated. It was wrapped in a bloodstained sheet.

“What’s the grave for?”

The Texan nodded toward the sheet. “Go look.”

“I think you need to tell me.”

“You can’t shoot me. If you do, a dozen men’ll be here in less than five minutes.”

“I won’t be here in five minutes, but you’ll still be dead, dumbass. What’s in the sheet?”

The Texan shook his head.

Noah stepped forward and used the revolver to whack the man’s temple. The Texan stumbled back dazed, slipped, and fell into the grave, but didn’t seem to like it there much, because he immediately tried to scramble out. Noah decided not to let him. He kicked the guy back into the hole, aimed the revolver at him.

“Tell me where the woman is or get comfortable where you’re lying.”

Chloe slunk out of the shadows as silent as a ghost, her body moving fluidly, and sat down beside Noah, looking at the man in the grave. The man looked back, scared.

“She’s been with the girls most of the time.” He pointed toward the compound — ​clearly more afraid of Chloe than he was of a man with a gun. Noah didn’t blame him. Wild animals hadn’t learned the niceties of civilized life and didn’t care about laws or justice. They were instinctual, and instinct without thought was not only dangerous but unpredictable.

“Is she alive?”

“I don’t know — ​she was.”

“When?”

“What?”

“When was she alive?”

“I saw her about two hours ago.”

During the course of his conversation with the Texan, it had occurred to Noah that he might have to kill him. If he didn’t, the man would talk, everyone else in the compound would know he was here, and that would make it difficult to get off the island alive. He told himself the guy was part of a human trafficking ring and if he killed him he’d be doing the world a favor. It was probably even true. The man had caved in another man’s skull over whose turn it was to dig a hole. He clearly placed no value on human life. But Noah found it was difficult to put himself in the right frame of mind. He’d killed people when he was in the army, had even shot someone once as a cop for the LAPD — ​before he was kicked off the force for stealing cash from the evidence locker — ​but in those situations his life had been threatened. He’d been reacting to danger. Killing a man in cold blood was another thing altogether.

“Where in the compound are they?”

“In the green building. It’s a converted shipping container. You’ll see it. But if you try anything you’ll only get yourself killed.”

“How many men are in the compound?”

The Texan did a mental count. “Sixteen.” Then he looked at the man on the ground with blood seeping from his skull. “Fifteen.”

“Counting you?”

The Texan shook his head.

Fifteen men, probably heavily armed, and some of them were certain to have had military training. Not great odds, but better than the lottery, and he still bought a Melate ticket every once in a while.

Noah rubbed the revolver’s hammer spur, feeling it rough against the pad of his thumb, and thought about what he was going to do. The Texan looked back at him with wide frightened eyes. Noah thought about his mother back home in Dallas or Houston, wondering what had happened to him. He thought of his sister crying at the funeral after the body had been discovered in a shallow grave.

“Stand up.”

The Texan stood up.

“Turn around.”

The Texan turned around.

Noah hit him at the base of the skull with the revolver, and he collapsed to the ground unconscious. Noah then stepped into the grave and pulled the man’s shirt off. He tore off a sleeve and shoved it into the mouth. Then tied the rest of the shirt around the head to keep the sleeve in place. Finally he hogtied the man with twine and left him where he lay — ​let God pass judgment.

Noah didn’t need him dead, just silent.

He stepped out of the grave and walked to whatever was wrapped in the bloody sheet. After pausing a moment, not sure he wanted to see, he pulled the sheet away and found himself looking at the blank face of a teenage girl, maybe sixteen years old. Her left eye had been bruised shut, her nose had been broken, her lower lip was split. Her neck was bent at an unnatural angle. Her right eye stared at him, blank as a broken television screen.

Something inside him shifted and he went cold all over.

He stepped into the grave and stabbed the Texan in the back of his neck, twisted the blade, yanked the knife back out, and watched blood ooze out of the wound.

Maybe God was busy. Maybe sometimes judgment couldn’t wait.

Noah stood beside Chloe, smoked a cigarette, and waited for dark. He told himself this would be the last cigarette he ever smoked if things went bad. Well, everybody died sometime. He might as well do it while trying to accomplish something good, especially after all the bad he’d done. Two ex-wives he hadn’t treated as well as he should have; a daughter who refused to speak to him; money and girlfriends stolen; friends betrayed. He hadn’t been lying when he told Beverly he wasn’t a nice man. But he hadn’t been telling the whole truth either. He wasn’t a nice man — ​but he tried not to be a bad one. He tried to find some kind of balance, to do enough right that it offset the wrong.

The sky went dark.

“Are you ready?”

Chloe looked back at him, but her expression was — ​as always — ​unreadable.

“I’m going,” Noah said.

He walked toward the compound, telling himself not to look back. But he couldn’t help himself. He glanced over his shoulder, expecting the jaguar to be close behind, but she wasn’t. She had walked to the dead girl’s body and lain down beside it, resting her chin on the girl’s breast. She watched him with her yellow eyes, expressionless, but that was it.

It seemed as though their brief friendship was over.

Noah told himself not to be stupid. The jaguar was a wild animal. There was no telling why she’d decided to walk with him for as long as she had, maybe just curiosity, but they hadn’t been friends and he never should have named her.

Yet he’d taken some kind of comfort in the knowledge that they’d be going into the compound together, and now he was going in alone.

Noah stood in the shadows and looked at the compound. It was made up entirely of shipping containers that had been converted to buildings. They sat on concrete blocks, had windows and electricity and plumbing, had slant roofs for the frequent rains to run off of. He could see the green building at the other end of the compound. A girl, maybe thirteen, was looking out the barred window.

Noah was certain there were others inside.

Several armed guards — ​Noah counted six of them, and there were probably others he couldn’t see — ​were standing around the perimeter. They were dressed in army BDUs and holding M16A2 rifles. At the opposite end of the compound was a dirt runway with a small single-prop airplane parked at the end of it. Beyond that, at the shoreline, the dock feeding into the water and the boat he’d seen on satellite images. And surrounding the entire place, the dock excepted, were high-pressure sodium-vapor lamps, set up about every twenty feet, so that there was almost no space for shadow between them. Noah had no idea how he was going to breach the perimeter without being killed almost immediately. So he stood there for a long time, looking in on the place.

He glanced from one building to the next, looking into the windows to see if he could learn anything else. Behind the third window, he saw Sofia Trujillo standing across from a man Noah recognized as a legislator and prominent member of one of Mexico’s national political parties. This was the man Sofia thought was running the entire human trafficking ring, and now she was standing across from him having an apparently relaxed conversation. The legislator said something and patted her arm. She laughed.

It was possible Sofia had managed to put herself in the legislator’s favor in order to get herself out of a bad situation. But she didn’t appear to be the victim of a kidnapping. She didn’t appear to be the victim of anything.

She hugged the legislator, kissed him on the mouth — ​lips parted — ​and picked a purse up from a table. She made her way outside, carrying the purse, and walked to the green shipping container in which the girls were kept. She pulled a key from her pocket and snapped open a padlock. She slipped it out of the staple, flipped open the hasp, and pulled open the door. She stepped inside.

This might be Noah’s only chance — ​if it was a chance.

He walked through the shadows along the perimeter of the compound, looking for a way to get into the building without being seen. But even as he moved, he thought about what might happen if he was seen. He wondered to himself whether the steel of a shipping container might stop a bullet. The walls were made from fourteen-gauge high-strength low-alloy steel — ​he’d once had a friend who wanted to convert one into a bomb shelter, and the motherfucker wouldn’t shut up about it — ​so he thought they’d at least slow down most bullets to the point of nonlethality. They weren’t dealing with aluminum foil here. But there was only one way to find out for sure, and he hoped he didn’t have to.

He was now positioned directly across from the unlocked door, but there were about a hundred feet of well-lighted ground between him and it — ​and no protection. There was also an armed guard positioned so that he’d see Noah the second he stepped out of the darkness.

Noah shrugged out of his rucksack and set it down gently beside the trunk of a tree. He exhaled in a sigh and removed his knife. He gripped it tight, but it felt slick with sweat. He reached up, grabbed a tree branch, and yanked it down. It snapped loudly. He hid himself behind the trunk of a tree and watched.

The armed guard looked toward the sound — ​seemed to be looking right at Noah, though that was impossible — ​but for a moment he didn’t move. Finally he decided to check it out, so he walked toward the woods. Noah held his breath, hoping the guard suspected a capybara or something rather than a human, and watched as the man took step after step through the light before entering the woods and covering himself with shadows.

The guard was now only ten feet away from him — ​now he was eight.

If he turned his head to the right, he’d see Noah, but he didn’t turn his head. He was looking toward the ground, looking to see a creature on the forest floor.

Now he was only five feet away and Noah knew he needed to move — ​if the guard kept walking, he’d only put distance between them.

He jumped out of his hiding spot and wrapped an arm around the guard’s head, covering his mouth with the palm of his hand. The man struggled and elbowed Noah in the ribs. He tried to turn the M16 around so he could fire at him. But Noah ducked left and jammed his knife into the throat just below the jawline. Blood throbbed out of the wound around the blade, each gush timed to the guard’s heartbeat. But soon enough the bleeding stopped with the heart and the guard went limp as a wet towel.

Noah let him drop to the ground, let him sag down, then leaned over, picked up the M16, and strapped it over his shoulder. His right arm was covered in the man’s blood, and more was soaking into his shirt. It smelled strongly of metal. Noah ignored it and walked to the edge of the woods. He looked out at the compound. It was quiet, still. No one had yet noticed the guard was missing.

Noah paused a beat, inhale, exhale, and ran for the building — ​shot out of the darkness and into the light. His heart thumped in his chest. His eyes darted as he looked for danger, but he saw no one, and he believed no one saw him.

He reached the door and pulled it open.

He stepped inside, shut the door behind him, and stood there with his back to it. Seven faces floated in front of him like moons — ​six girls, aged five to sixteen or so, and Sofia Trujillo. From the looks of it, Sofia had been putting makeup onto the youngest girl. She already had eye shadow on, and Sofia was holding a dark red lipstick in her hand. But nobody was doing anything now. Every face was turned toward him, staring, silent.

Noah looked at Sofia. “Santino Garcia sent me here to rescue you — ​if you were still alive — ​but I’m not sure you need rescuing.”

“You shouldn’t have come here. You’re gonna get yourself killed.”

“That may be, but before I do, I’d like you to tell me what’s happening here.”

“I don’t owe you an explanation.”

“That’s where we disagree. You’re the reason I’m here, so I think you owe me something.”

“I’m here to help these girls.”

“By putting makeup on them while they’re being held captive? I read your research. I know what this place is. How you can participate in it is—”

“You need to talk to Jose Luis.”

“Ramos?” She didn’t answer, but her eyes said yes: Jose Luis Ramos, the legislator. “Why is it you think I need to talk to him?”

“Because you don’t understand what’s happening here. I didn’t either, not at first. But they’re getting these girls out of a life of poverty and into new homes in the United States. Into new homes with families who will love them.”

“By keeping them locked in a storage container?”

“For their own safety — ​ask them yourself.”

“I don’t need to. They’ll repeat the lies they’ve been told.”

“You’re wrong.”

“Then why is one of the girls lying beside a shallow grave a quarter mile from here with her fucking neck snapped?”

“Ana?” Sofia looked confused.

“I didn’t get a chance to ask her her name. She was about sixteen. Black hair, cut at the jawline, like a short bob. Big brown eyes.”

“That’s Ana. She went to her new home yesterday afternoon.”

“If her new home is a grave, she’s right next to it.”

“I don’t believe you.”

“What do you think happened to her? How do you think I know what she looked like?”

“I saw her step on a plane with her new father.”

“But what you probably didn’t see is what he tried to do to her on that plane. How she fought back. How he killed her for it. And you didn’t see Ramos’s men unload the body after dark and drag it out into the woods.”

“That can’t be true. Jose Luis is a kind man. He screens the adoptive parents. What he’s doing — ​it might be illegal, but he’s doing it to help these girls.”

Noah glanced over to the girls. They were clean and well fed and staring at him wide-eyed and fearful. As if he were the bad guy. For just a moment he almost allowed himself to believe Sofia’s story. It would make this much easier. He could walk out of here and not look back. Only he didn’t believe her story. He believed that she believed it, but that was all.

“How much money do you think he’s making off them?”

“A person can’t make money and do a good thing?”

“Let me ask you this, Sofia: why is he only ‘rescuing’ girls?”

“His sister died in an orphanage, and the normal adoption process takes so long and—”

“You’re sleeping with him.”

“I don’t—”

“I’ve read your research. You’re too smart to believe any of this bullshit. You dug your way to the truth and now you’re denying facts that you uncovered. The only explanation is, you’re falling for him. Love makes everybody stupid.”

Sofia looked toward the corner for a long time. When she looked back at him there were tears in her eyes. “You’re right. I let myself fall in love with him. I didn’t mean for it to happen — ​I met with him to confront him with what I knew — ​but it did.” She looked down at her hands, at the lipstick and cap she was holding. She twisted down the lipstick, put the cap on it, and tucked it into her purse. “So what do I do now?”

The question was answered by a gunshot. The bullet thwacked through the glass and dinged against the far wall of the building, denting it. It flew by close enough that Noah felt the air move in its wake. Someone outside had seen him and decided to shoot rather than investigate.

The girls screamed and huddled into a corner of the room. Noah shoved Sofia out of the line of fire and ducked down.

People outside were yelling in Spanish, and he could hear the heavy thudding sound of boots pounding earth.

Noah’s plan — ​if it could be called a plan — ​had been to find Sofia, sneak her out of the compound, and get to the boat. But the time for sneaking around had ended with a gunshot. Now he had to react.

In Spanish he told the girls to lie on the floor, facedown. Then he looked at Sofia. “You got a compact in that purse?”

She nodded.

From outside: “Come out of the building with your hands up.”

Noah didn’t respond to the request. He reached over to the purse and grabbed it, dropping it at his feet. He dug through it till he found a Mac foundation compact. He opened it and let the applicator pad fall to the floor.

“We have you surrounded; come out of the fucking building with your hands in the air.”

Noah looked at Sofia. “Real good people here, shooting into a building with six innocent girls inside — ​and you.”

She looked back at him but said nothing.

With his back to the wall, sitting on his haunches just below the window, he held up the compact to get a view of the situation outside. He saw three of the guards standing about thirty feet away, aiming their rifles at the building. Then one of them saw the mirror’s reflection and fired. Noah saw a brief muzzle flash and the compact exploded in his hand.

“Fuck.”

He glanced at the door.

It remained closed — ​for now.

He listened for the sound of footsteps outside but heard nothing.

“You have one more chance — ​come out with your hands in the air.”

He was in the soup now, and didn’t know how to get out of it. After a beat, he decided there wasn’t an elegant solution to this inelegant situation. He’d have to be blunt.

He crawled to the cots on which the girls slept and pulled a mattress down from one of them. It was about six inches thick and filled only with foam; no chance it would stop a bullet, but it would at least block the guards’ view of what was happening inside. He yanked it toward the window and pushed it up, blocking the bullet-punctuated glass. Then pushed it enough to the side that he’d have an inch or so of room to see — ​and to fire.

He flipped the M16 to three-shot bursts, knowing he wouldn’t have time for precision shooting — ​he wasn’t the world’s best shot anyway — ​and got to his feet with his back to the wall. He closed his eyes, inhaled, exhaled, and opened his eyes.

He looked through the strip of glass and pulled back.

A bullet thwacked against the wall, denting it, but didn’t penetrate.

The three guards were standing in the same positions. The other guards — ​and who knew how many there really were; there might be up to ten of them — ​could have been anywhere, but his guess was that they were planning to burst through the door, so he’d have to keep an eye on it.

He waited a moment — ​and then another moment. He looked at the girls and, in Spanish, told them to cover their ears. Then he looked at Sofia. “You too.”

He turned around, fired three three-shot bursts through the window, moving from left to right, taking no time to line up his targets, then put his back against the wall again. The sound of the gunfire in the building, in this small metal room, was deafening. His ears rang with tinnitus.

He glanced quickly through the window.

One of the guards was on the ground. Another had been shot in the shoulder but wasn’t incapacitated. The third he’d missed altogether.

And he had twenty-one rounds left in the M16 — ​if the thirty-round clip jammed into it had been full, of which there was no guarantee.

The door flew open with a bang and a guard in a bulletproof vest barged in, aimed at Noah, and—​

Noah angled the gun toward the head and fired a three-round burst.

The head split open as if it’d been cleaved with an ax and the body dropped, leaving a mist of blood hanging in the air, behind which another man stood.

Noah fired again — ​but not before he took a round to the gut.

The two men — ​Noah and the second guard — ​went down simultaneously. Noah felt hot blood pouring into his lap before he felt the pain, but he knew there could be more men in the doorway, so he aimed toward it and fired blind, pulled the trigger again and again and again and again, until the gun only clicked. The room was now full of smoke and the stink of cordite.

He pulled the Glock from his waistband — ​he must’ve dropped the revolver while running — ​and aimed at the doorway, but the doorway was now empty.

He listened to the silence while pain radiated out through his body in waves from the gunshot wound in his stomach.

He crawled to the doorway and rolled the first guard out into the dirt. He looked at the four other men lying outside beneath the light of the sodium-vapor lamps. One of them lifted his head to look at Noah — ​he’d only been hit in the bulletproof vest: had the wind knocked out of him, maybe broke a rib or two — ​and raised his rifle.

Noah shot him in the face and shut the door.

He sat on the floor and bled. None of the men in the doorway had been the same as those outside his window, which meant there were at least two more guards — ​but as many as seven — ​and he felt sick and sweaty and weak, and the pain was nearly unbearable.

He was forty-three years old. His hair was turning gray. He had a beer belly that flopped over his belt. He smoked a pack of cigarettes a day when he wasn’t on a job, two if he went out drinking. His back hurt every morning when he got out of bed. Nobody out of high school would mistake him for an old man — ​but he was too fucking old and too fucking tired to do shit like this anymore. Unfortunately, he had no job, no skills besides these ones — ​which amounted to half-forgotten military training combined with amoral misanthropy — ​and until the morning Santino had written him a check, he’d had about two thousand dollars to his name. What else was he gonna do with his life?

The silence stretched on.

He looked from the girls to Sofia — ​they were all okay.

“You still thinking Jose Luis Ramos is a swell guy?”

Sofia didn’t respond. She was pale and sick-looking, which was to be expected. Nobody liked violence up close, even those whose job it was to engage in it.

“Are you still alive in there?” Noah recognized the voice. He’d heard it on television and the radio. It was Ramos speaking to him this time.

“No — ​you killed me,” Noah said. “You can leave now.”

“Send the girls out. We don’t want them to get hurt.”

“Then stop shooting at them.”

“You have to know there’s no way out of this for you. You’ll never get off this island alive.”

“I’ve killed seven of your men. That means there’s eight more men on this island, including you. Even if they’re all trained, I don’t think my odds are too bad.”

“If you don’t let the girls walk out of that building, their deaths are on you.”

“Listen, Ramos?”

“Yes?”

“I don’t wanna be rude, but you’re kind of an asshole.”

“Finish it.” This time softer, not speaking to Noah.

Gunfire exploded outside the building. Dozens of shots all at once.

Bullets pounded against the steel wall. Dents hammered themselves into the metal, the paint flaking off in star-shaped bursts. Every fifth or sixth round managed to punch through. Noah was hit by fragments as he lay on the floor. They shot into his back and neck and his hands, which he was using to cover his head. They weren’t even trying to keep the girls alive at this point. They probably weren’t trying to kill them either — ​they were valuable merchandise as far as Ramos was concerned — ​but Ramos was willing to lose them if it meant Noah died too. And willing to lose Sofia, despite whatever love he may have professed.

The shooting stopped.

Noah waited where he lay prone, half expecting another burst of gunfire, but he heard only silence — ​and the sound of the younger girls crying. He looked over at them. The older ones had lain on top of the younger during the gunfire. One of the older girls was bleeding in her neck, another in her arm, but the injuries didn’t appear to be lethal.

He looked at Sofia — ​she was dead.

A bullet had punched through the metal and struck her in the temple. Her eyes stared at him with nothing behind them.

“Goddamnit,” he whispered to himself.

He had to end this. One way or another it was going to end soon anyway. He’d been bleeding for some time, and every minute that passed he grew weaker.

“Fuck it.”

He crawled toward the door and pulled it open as quietly as possible. He almost hoped that a gunman would be there to finish him off — ​he was so tired he didn’t really want to go on — ​but no one was there. He picked up an M16 from one of the corpses and stumbled to the far side of the building, feeling dizzy, black dots floating in front of his eyes.

He stood in the shadow of the building for a moment doing nothing, then looked around the corner. He saw Ramos standing there, a pistol hanging from his fist. He was flanked by the men who remained on the island. All of them. He suddenly wished he’d thought to bring an explosive device. If he had, he could finish this now.

Well, he supposed, it was about to be finished anyway.

He estimated he had thirty rounds in the M16 and another fifteen in the Glock — ​but he seriously doubted he’d live long enough to fire off forty-five rounds.

He stepped out of the shadows and began to shoot in bursts, sweeping back and forth across the line of men, walking forward even as they began to fire back at him, even as he felt sharp pain in his left ear and hot blood began pouring down his face, even as something else kicked his right shoulder back and caused more pain to radiate through his body, and when something tore at his right leg he limped forward, and when the M16 was empty and there were three men left standing, he pulled the Glock from his waistband and continued to shoot, watching the men drop, blood hanging in the air beneath the sodium-vapor lamplight, and then it was only him and Ramos standing there, maybe ten feet apart, and each of them was aiming his pistol at the other.

Noah pulled his trigger — click.

Ramos smiled a sick smile, a malevolent smile, his face spattered with the blood of his men, and pulled his own trigger — ​click.

Noah watched him reach to the ground for a weapon even as the black jaguar leaped out of the shadows, silent as a ghost, sinewy muscle rippling beneath her shiny black coat, and in two bounds she was upon Ramos, her teeth tearing at his throat as a grumbling roar as loud as a truck engine left her mouth, and she shook her head back and forth, ripping at the flesh, and hot blood poured out into the soil, and then — ​like that — ​it was finished.

Noah looked at her.

She turned her head to look back with her unreadable yellow eyes and licked the blood from her muzzle.

“I’m sorry I didn’t get here in time to save you, Ana,” he said, knowing he was being superstitious. But he believed his superstition nonetheless. “I’m very sorry.”

She walked over to him silently, licked his fingertips once, her tongue as coarse as sandpaper, but that was it. She turned and walked back into the woods. She didn’t look back, but he continued to watch until the shadows enveloped her.

He loaded the girls onto the boat and began the drive back to the mainland. The youngest, a five-year-old who told him her name was Luna, stayed beside him while he manned the wheel and talked to him about how her parents had died in a car accident. She was holding a stuffed rabbit named Nicolas, stroking his left ear, which was dirtier and more threadbare than the other — ​her small comfort. Luna was a pretty child with long hair that had been pulled back into a braid, and she wore leggings, a Pikachu T-shirt, and a pair of sneakers. Her eyelids were green with the eye shadow Sofia had put on them, and the eyes themselves — ​despite what they’d seen tonight — ​sparkled with innocence.

During a long silence, the shoreline now coming into view in the early morning light, Luna tapped his arm, and when he looked at her, she said, “¿Por qué estás tan triste?”

“I’m not sad,” Noah said in Spanish. “I’m tired. And I’m in pain.”

“You are sad. You’re very sad — ​here.”

She held out Nicolas the rabbit. Noah tried to refuse, but she shoved it at him again, so he took it and held it while he drove. Luna remained beside him the rest of the trip.

George Beverly and Gael were waiting in the powder-blue Ford pickup when Noah and the girls reached the shore. Beverly helped Noah into the back of the truck, where he could lie down, and the girls piled in after him. By the time the truck engine had begun to rumble, before it had even been put into gear, Noah had passed out.

He woke up on a veterinarian’s metal table as a woman in a white lab coat was digging a bullet out of him — ​but he was only conscious for seconds, and didn’t feel anything. He saw the stainless steel surgical tools on a tray, he saw the vet herself, and he saw Nicolas the rabbit sitting on a counter in the corner. Then his head dropped down again and he was gone.

He recovered over a period of months. News about what had happened on the island got out. It filled front pages during the first week, worked its way toward the back, then vanished altogether. No one identified him by name and the police never came knocking. He would forever be a “mysterious man,” which, in his line of work, was fine. He didn’t want to be on anybody’s radar. He got jobs by whispered reference only. And as far as the police were concerned he was a burnout American who’d fled trouble in the States, a not entirely inaccurate assessment.

Late spring the following year he decided to take a trip to the beach for a week. He could lie out in the sun and drink ice-chest beer and forget about everything. He made reservations for a beach house rental — ​his only major indulgence since he’d been paid fifty thousand dollars by Santino Garcia — ​and loaded the trunk of his car. Then he and his companion were on the road.

Luna, who’d turned six since the events on the island, looked out the window, excited as the world streaked past. She held Nicolas the rabbit, stroking his left ear. He’d given the rabbit back to her on the day she moved in with him, but she’d assured him that Nicolas was both of theirs, to share.

He told himself he’d invited Luna into his life only because she was an orphan and he had a spare bedroom. But somewhere inside he knew it was also because he wanted to try to be a dad again, and maybe this time he wouldn’t fuck it up.

When the beach came into view, he pulled to the side of the road and just sat there, looking at the sea stretching its way to the horizon — ​all this distant beauty.

“Are we gonna go?” Luna asked. “I wanna swim.”

He looked at her with what might have been love, and he smiled.

Then put the car into gear, pulled out onto the road, and drove toward the sea.