Somewhere In Mexico

Chapter 7

Emma and Aiden were home, but the house didn’t feel like home anymore. No one spoke. The silence suffocated the walls and pressed down on them like a weight they couldn’t lift. Emma couldn't bear it any longer. The guilt was a stone in her chest, growing heavier by the second.

“Dad…” she said softly, her voice trembling. Burdett, seated on the edge of the couch with his face buried in his hands, slowly turned his head toward her, eyes hollow. He didn’t answer, so she kept going.

“Are you and Mom still mad at us? We’re really sorry. It’s already hard enough knowing Marcus is gone—and then we left without saying much. I just…” Her voice cracked as tears spilled freely. “Please don’t stay mad forever.”

Burdett stood and walked to her, pulling her close. “We’re not angry, sweetheart. Not anymore. We’re scared. You could’ve been taken too. And your mother and I… we couldn’t survive losing all three of you. We’re just trying to hold on.” His voice faltered at the end, and he buried his face in her shoulder.

Carla wrapped her arms tightly around Aiden. Her face showed no signs of peace—just a mother’s fragile relief painted over with sorrow. Her babies were home, but her firstborn was still lost.

Word of their return spread fast. Friends and neighbors trickled in to offer weak smiles, hugs, and hollow condolences that did nothing to stitch up the gaping hole in the family. The police intensified their search. A city-wide curfew had been declared, and vehicles were now being stopped and searched before they left town.

Alejandro drove the van through the faded gates of a dimly lit metro complex in Arizona. The building loomed like a warehouse from a forgotten war, its walls coated in grime, its windows shuttered with steel. The van came to a jarring halt outside a structure with a flickering sign that read Market Supplies & Provisions. The lie on the outside masked the infernal truth on the inside.

Marcus was transferred into another van—his unconscious body stuffed inside like freight. Alejandro and Sergio stepped out, the metal doors creaking behind them. They dragged Marcus out, zipped him free from the black post-mortem bag, and dumped him on the cold concrete like discarded meat.

The air inside reeked of bleach, cocaine, and cold metal. Stacks of neatly wrapped narcotics lined the walls, packed in vacuum-sealed bricks. Machinery whirred in the background, churning pills with mechanical indifference.

“Who the hell is that?” a man snarled from behind a crate. The voice belonged to Armando—a broad-chested enforcer with scars crisscrossing his arms and neck like trophies.

Armando marched forward. His presence silenced the room. One eye twitched from an old injury, and he tapped his machete against his thigh as he eyed Marcus’s limp form.

"What the fuck is this, Sergio?" he growled, stepping so close Sergio could smell the tobacco on his breath.

Sergio leaned in, voice low but urgent. “He’s not just cargo. Él Ligeró wants him alive. He's worth 1.2 million.”

Armando paused. “You're selling kids now? You made that kind of call without me?”

Sergio didn’t answer. Armando's face twitched, and suddenly, he slammed his machete into a nearby crate, splitting it open with a sickening crack.

"You betrayed me, cabrón,” he hissed. “I should skin you and send you back to Mexico in plastic wrap.”

Sergio held his ground. “Four hundred thousand is yours. It’s already wired to your offshore.”

Armando’s anger flickered, then simmered. The money soothed his pride, but the betrayal still lingered.

“Next time you make a deal without me,” he said, yanking the blade from the crate, “I carve my initials into your tongue.”

Marcus groaned from the ground.

“He’s waking up,” someone muttered.

Sergio walked over and stomped Marcus’s chest, pinning him down with a boot. Marcus choked and wheezed, his breath caught under the full weight of a man who’d done this more times than he could count.

“Welcome to your new life, chico,” Sergio muttered.

Blood pooled from Marcus’s lip, and the echo of laughter filled the depot.

Saturday morning crept in without fanfare. No one had slept well. Emma lay in bed, motionless. Her body was there, but her spirit had crawled into some dark hole inside her.

A knock pulled her from the abyss.

“It’s time for breakfast,” Burdett’s voice came softly through the door.

She cleaned up, descended the stairs, and sat beside Aiden at the table. No words passed between them. Just the click of cutlery and the ache of absence.

Carla stared blankly at her untouched plate. She had a mother’s intuition—Marcus wasn’t in the city anymore. But saying it aloud made it too real, too final.

So she didn’t say a word.

The town had taken to gossip. Some claimed Marcus had joined a gang. Others whispered that he’d stolen from drug dealers. The more outrageous ones accused the family of faking it all for attention. Beacon High buzzed with anticipation—everyone wanted to hear the "real" story from Emma and Aiden.

That afternoon, Carla entered Emma’s room. “Georgia’s here to see you,” she said gently before stepping aside.

Georgia entered quietly, carrying a small care package. Her eyes scanned Emma’s figure—slouched, distant, hollow. The sight nearly undid her.

She sat beside her and tried to smile. “Hey, buddy. Everyone misses you. You coming back Monday?”

Emma didn’t respond. She stared ahead, locked in grief.

Georgia pressed on. She had to. That’s what friends did.

They had history—ugly, complicated, and unexpectedly beautiful. They were enemies once. Until the day Jake played his cruel prank in fifth grade and left Georgia exposed in front of the whole class. Emma, who once hated her, had handed over her sweater and bloodied Jake’s nose with a punch that echoed across the playground.

She’d been suspended for a week. When she returned, Georgia had been waiting with a thank-you gift.

From that day forward, they were inseparable.

“Emma,” Georgia said again, her voice quivering. “Don’t shut me out, okay?”

Emma finally turned, clutching her friend’s hand. Her smile was thin and broken.

“I’m sorry for the way I’ve been. I’m just... I feel like I’m falling apart. We were so close to finding him.”

“You’ll get him back,” Georgia said with conviction she didn’t quite feel. “And you’ll come back to school. Deal?”

Emma nodded. “Deal.”

***

The articulated truck sat in the dark, its engine purring like a beast awaiting prey. Marcus had been wrapped in black thermal sheeting and shoved into a hollowed-out space behind twenty-five tonnes of industrial PVC. The air inside was suffocating even with the oxygen tank strapped to him. He couldn’t move. His wrists were bound with coarse wire, and his ankles already bruised from being shackled too tightly.

Two handlers grabbed him roughly—one of them dislocating his shoulder in the process as they jammed his body into the crawlspace.

He screamed into the duct tape across his mouth, his body convulsing in pain, but no one flinched.

The driver smirked as he kicked the space shut. “If he dies, it’s one less problem.”

Sergio lit a cigarette and blew smoke into the wind. “He won’t die. Not yet. Ligeró wants him scared. Wants him broken before the introductions.”

The driver chuckled. “He’ll be broken by the time we hit Nogales.”

The truck growled as it tore away from the depot. Inside the hidden compartment, Marcus blinked away tears. The oxygen hissed in his ears, but it was the sound of his own shallow breathing—panicked and desperate—that haunted him most.

His nightmare was far from over.