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from the office for a while. I’ve never written about drug smuggling or cartels.”
    “Never?” He sounded surprised.
    “Never.” Something tickled her cheek. She gasped, brushed at it, her fingertips knocking what might have been a small spider off her face. She shrank against the bars, looking up to see what else might be about to drop down on her, but it was too dark.
    “How about any big drug busts? Cartels growing dope on national forest land in Colorado? Mexican politics? Anything related to Juárez or the state of Chihuahua?”
    “No. Not at all. I cover mostly local issues. Before I left, I started looking into the sheriff’s handling of some sexual assaults that happened at a local boarding school. I don’t imagine these Zetas care one whit about that.”
    “No, I don’t imagine they do.”
    “Maybe I just caught their attention by trying to stop them from killing Joaquin.”
    “Maybe.” He didn’t sound convinced.
    “Why are you here? Are you a journalist, too?”
    Silence filled the darkness.
    Then at last he answered. “The less you know about me, the better. Let’s just say I made a bad decision and leave it at that.”
    So he’d done something to cross the Zetas. That meant he was probably a criminal, maybe even involved in the drug trade. “That’s all you’re going to tell me?”
    “The Zetas have been . . . interrogating me for six days now. If they thought I’d spilled my guts to you, they’d start interrogating you, too, and believe me, that’s not something either of us wants to see happen.”
    And Natalie understood. They weren’t just asking Zach questions. They were torturing him. Then she noticed something she hadn’t before. The way he spoke his words slowly, the strain in his voice, its rough timbre—he was in pain. “You’re hurt.”
    “Don’t worry about it.”
    “I . . . I’m sorry. I wish I could help—”
    “You can’t.” The tone of his voice was starkly final.
    Something brushed her arm, making her gasp and jump—and she realized it was a lock of her own hair. Good grief, Benoit! “You . . . You’ve been here for six days? I don’t know how you’ve been able to stand it.”
    “Don’t tell me you don’t like the accommodations.” He chuckled, then groaned, as if it hurt to laugh. “I know it’s not five-star, and room service leaves a lot to be desired, but what this place lacks in comfort it more than makes up for in scorpions.”
    Natalie didn’t find that funny. “I hate those things!”
    “Yeah, I figured. I can hear you gasping and jumping around over there. I’m guessing you’re afraid of the dark, too.”
    “No. I’m . . . I’m claustrophobic.”
    And then it dawned on her. She hadn’t had to fight off panic since she’d heard Zach’s voice.
     
    ZACH CONCENTRATED ON Natalie’s words as she told him what had happened to her to make her claustrophobic, the feminine sound of her voice calling him back from the brink, keeping him awake, helping him ignore his pain.
    “Then he turned and saw me standing there. He knew I’d seen him inject that poor old man. I tried to run, but he moved so fast. He put his hand over my mouth and dragged me down the back stairs to the morgue. I fought as hard as I could, but he was so much stronger. He forced me into a morgue locker. He said the same thing to me that I’d overheard him say to the old man—‘H-have a good death, a p-peaceful death.’ And then he . . . he shut the door.”
    Her words quavered slightly, telling him that she was trembling, proof of how hard it was for her to relive what had happened to her during Hurricane Katrina—and no wonder. “Morgue lockers are airtight, aren’t they?”
    “Y-yes. It was cold, so cold. I tried to push the door open . . . but they don’t open from the inside.”
    That made sense, as corpses rarely had a pressing reason to get out.
    “I beat on the door, but that only used up air faster. Most of the staff had been evacuated, so no one