Page 79 of Lash

"We'll find her, Ren," he murmurs. "She's the toughest bitch this side of Hell, and we both know it."

Lorenzo finds his feet after a moment, swiping at his nose with his wrist, nodding. "Sorry. I’m—I am sorry, I—"

Chance's mammoth arms pull him into a crushing hug. "No apologies, bro. We all know exactly how you feel. We’ve all had our women in danger. We'll stop at nothing to get her back, even if we have to wade into fuckin' hell itself."

“He fuckingtorturedher," Lorenzo hisses, his accent thicker than I've ever heard it. "Beat her. Cut her. Pulled out her fingernails. I…I fucking—when I get my hands on him, no death will be too fucking slow for that—that…" he shakes his head. "I do not have the word for what he is."

Solomon moves to Lorenzo's other side. “You gotta keep watching, man. She's giving you a message. You gotta watch."

Lorenzo takes the tablet from me and plays the recording again.

"Look at her eyes," Solomon says. "Watch."

She's blinking strangely, I realize. Too fast or too slow, and in a strange rhythm.

"Oh, fuck," Kane says. "Morse code!”

"What?" Saxon asks. "She's blinking in Morse Code?”

“Yeah," Kane says. "I read about this on Reddit once. There was this POW in Vietnam. They made him make one of those propaganda videos, you know? He was saying what they told him to say, but he was blinking a whole other fuckin' message in Morse Code. Can’t remember what the message was, but it doesn't matter."

"So, who knows Morse code?" Lorenzo asks. "I did not know she knew it."

"Inez is a deep well of mysteries," Silas says. "None of us really know her. Shit man, you don't know her—not all the way. You knew the woman she was. The woman she still can be, and still is in some ways, but she's also totally someone else."

Lorenzo waves this off with a disgusted sigh. "I know you are right, but psychology is meaningless to me right now. What the fuck is she saying? That is what I need to know."

Solomon brings up an internet search on the tablet. “Here we go. We need a notebook or something.”

A few minutes later, Solomon has transcribed the Morse code alphabet onto a notebook page. Then he rewinds the video and plays it frame by frame, writing down the pattern of Inez's blinked message—it's a slow, painstaking process. Once the message has been written down in Morse Code, Solomon and Scarlett work together to translate it.

Finally, Solomon smacks the page. "Inez, you clever fuckin' bitch."

"What?" Lorenzo snarls, snatching the notebook, and reading out loud. “R knows who not where. Name is Lorenzo Oliveira." Lorenzo chokes, here, voice shaking. "He is in—shit. Shit! What does this say, Solomon?"

Sol peers at it. "Man, she's spelling the name of a town I've never heard of in Brazil, and she's spelling it Morse fucking Code." He checks the notes. "Looks like…S-U-R-U-C-U-C-U."

Lorenzo growls, rubbing his face. "That's not what you wrote here. This is gibberish." He holds up his hand, head hanging. "I apologize— it is not your fault. I have heard of this place—it is a very small place, barely a village on the Corumbá River, south of Brasilia." He scrubs his face. "The message concludes—'R will find L. You find first. Forget me. Get L.'"

Silence.

"She named him Lorenzo," Lorenzo whispers. To the group, then. "We must go, now. I will arrange transport to Brasilia." Helooks at Tatiana. "I will also make arrangements for your father. I am sorry for your loss."

Tatiana, tears streaking anew down her face, meets his gaze. "This Rafael or Mercado, or whatever he calls himself—he owes us all a slow death. It is a tragedy we cannot kill him more than once."

“Facts,” Saxon says. "Let’s find keys for these slick-ass rides and get the fuck to Brazil, ASAP."

"Agreed," Silas says. "I don't like feeling like I fucked up and failed. This motherfucker is gonna die."

Lorenzo says nothing, but the venomous fury on his face says it all.

little lorenzo

Tatiana

Lorenzo once again uses his extensive network of contacts—we trade Rafael's Range Rovers and the Suburban for seats on a Colombian Army Chinook headed to Manaus for a joint training exercise. True to his word, he also secured a plain pine coffin for Tata's body and a flight back to Zagreb.

It's hard to fathom that my father is gone.