Chapter 1
About nine-thirty on a Friday night, Mary Fowler pushed her grocery cart through the double sliding glass doors. It was three weeks before Christmas. The sun had set, and the temperature had begun to cool rapidly in Magic Valley, Texas. Mary had noticed the store was still crowded, even at this time of night. Inside, she had talked nearly half an hour to her next-door neighbor, Alice. They had visited in an aisle, standing between boxes of sugar and spices on one side and paper bags of flour on the other. Mostly they talked about Mary’s pregnancy, and how crowded the area was with Winter Texans, who had made their yearly migration to the warmer climate of South Texas. Both women agreed that they would be glad when March came and all the snowbirds returned home.
Outside, Mary was preoccupied as she crossed the well-lit parking lot toward her blue Toyota. She thought, Alice is nice. It’s a shame I never really get to see her. But, with both of us working and her husband and two children at home to take care of, there’s not enough hours in the day. What am I going to do for time after my baby comes?
Alice was a good neighbor. Mary liked her and her husband Tom. She was a skinny redhead with lots of energy. Up close she looked a little gaunt, slightly bucktoothed, with an unattractive strawberry mark on her right cheek that distracted people from seeing how truly graceful she was. All in all, Mary thought, Alice is kind of homely, but she’s sweet and so good to her kids.
Mary was a perfect contrast to Alice. She was very attractive with dark shimmering hair, large brown eyes and a knockout figure. That is, until about two months ago when she entered her second trimester. This morning before her husband Ricky left for work, he had told her how beautiful she was.
I know he was just trying to make me feel good, Mary thought as she approached her car. Then, without warning, a new Dodge truck roared through the parking lot toward her. The blue, four wheel drive, truck had dark tinted windows and was jacked high off the ground.
She said out loud, “What idiots. They could kill someone.”
The Dodge raced around a line of parked cars coming to a screeching stop beside her just as she closed the trunk of her car. Mary stepped between her car and the car parked next to her for safety. Suddenly, two men jumped from the pickup, not three feet from where Mary stood still holding a full sack of food.
The first man out of the truck was a young Hispanic with jet- black hair. He had no chin. He was a beanpole with big ears and an Adam’s apple that bobbed up and down when he talked. He was saying something to her in Spanish. The second man was older and bigger. His hair was slicked back, held in place with a red bandanna. His eyes were wild and menacing. Danger clung on these men like a foul scent. Mary dropped her sack of food and ran for her car door. She fumbled with her keys desperately trying to unlock her car. It was too late. The skinny Mexican grabbed her arms and jerked her around to face him.
My God, someone help me, Mary thought, they’re going to rape me.
The second man, with the red handkerchief, grabbed her from behind and closed his nasty smelling hand over her mouth. With his other hand, he reached under her arm and around her chest, pulling her toward the waiting vehicle. Within a matter of fifteen seconds from the time the men had jumped out of the truck, one was back inside with his victim and closing the door. The skinny man was already in Mary’s Toyota and driving away.
Neither Mary nor her car was ever seen again. They simply disappeared. There were some who said Mary Fowler had simply run away. But, everyone who knew her was convinced that something terrible had happened to her. They knew she just wasn’t the type of girl to run away, knowing her family would be sick with worry. To the police, it was another missing person report… The third report of a pregnant woman to disappear without a trace in the last six months.
Chapter 2
On February twenty-eighth, Ben Hoover’s married daughter Cindy Feller went to the grocery store to pick up a few items before the family left on their return trip to Chicago. This was the first year Cindy had accompanied her parents to South Texas for the winter. She was eight months pregnant and excited to be going home to her husband and her doctor. Cindy never returned to the Hoover’s motor home.
The next day Cindy was driven, blindfolded to a ranch in Mexico. A few miles away, Sierra Lara and her small baby girl hunkered behind a wooden outhouse. As the foul smell of rotting bile and urine emanated from the privy, Sierra shivering, cold and wet thought she might throw up. The heavy morning shower had now stopped, but threatening black clouds still hung on the tops of the mountains to the north. Carefully she peeked around the corner of the filthy outbuilding and prayed that X would not see her. The smell was horrible. She had to fight back a wave of nausea. Flies buzzed around her nose and eyes. She wanted to slap them away. Once she started to swat at the vile insects, but quickly stopped. Sierra knew she could not move until she was certain where X was.
”Where is he,” she wondered?
Then she saw him, stumbling, as he came around the corner of the edificio. She watched him run into the middle of the street. She could see him squint. She felt the anger in his steel eyes searching the dirty street and the rundown storefronts, looking for her.
I’m dead if he finds me… or worse, she thought.
X spat, cleared his throat and spat again. He was only twenty feet from where she crouched. She could hear him breathing, his boots sloshing in the sticky mud. She heard him swear and ask, “Where could she have gone?” Suddenly she jumped. She couldn’t help herself when she saw a flea-infested rat crawling across her cold and wet left leg.
“Oh my God, please help me,” she whispered. Somehow she managed to lie quietly in the mud. She held her breath, waiting, scared and thanking God, X had not heard her.
Suddenly X bolted down the muddy street. He ran right past where she lay, his head turning side to side as he ran, looking in every store and building. As soon as he was out of her sight, she kicked as hard as she could and sent the rat flying. Once it landed, it turned to give her a what’s the matter with you look, then ran into a crack under the privy. A huge black fly landed on her face and rapidly crawled across her lips. Feeling the fly’s spiny Velcro feet on her lips made her gag. Now she had to stand. Wiping at her mouth, Sierra turned and began to run when she saw X again. He was about half a block to her east,. The sun behind him pushed his shadow toward her.
“Sierra, mi preciosa, you can’t escape,” he hollered. “Come here cabrona, you ungrateful little witch.”
She put her head down, hugged her tiny baby closer to her and ran as fast as she could around the privy and through the edificio. She didn’t look back, but she knew X was right behind her and closing ground between them quickly. She knew that if he caught her, he’d drag her back to the farm. She knew he’d sell her baby to the German couple and, after he and the Idiot-boy were through with her, he’d sell her to Mondo or the Chinese. Either way, she was doomed to be someone’s whore.
She was not going to let X separate her from her baby so she ran until every muscle in her body screamed for relief. She quickly turned right, down an alley and then right again through the small market square. People stopped and looked at her and Angie Marie pressed to her bosom. She ran through a candle shop and out the back door into another muddy alley. Her heart was pounding, about to explode. Then she saw a cart of straw. With one hand she pulled herself up into the cart and quickly looked to see if X was in the alley yet. He was nowhere in sight and she fell into the pile of straw, covering herself and her tiny baby as best she could.
She lay still, hoping that Angie Marie wouldn’t cry. Santa Maria, Madre de Dios, please help me. Dear God please help me, and my baby. She heard X’s feet pounding the mud as he raced past. Sierra thanked Jesus. She wondered how in God’s name had she ever gotten herself in this mess.
Angie Marie began to wiggle and started to cry.
“Hush Little Baby, don’t cry. Mama’s going to somehow get us out of here.”
Gasping