Oh no…the overhead light.
I grit my teeth watching the light fade above me so slowly that it’s torturous, until finally it blinks out and leaves me in darkness. After shoving the pillowcase underneath the driver’s seat I try to hide the stolen rifle just behind the seat between the leather and the door. It leaves me with enough time to squeeze my little body as far into the floorboard as I can. I wrap my arms tight around my knees which are pressed against my chest and I arc my back over and hold the awkward position.
The voices fade and all that is left is the sound of one pair of legs approaching the car. The trunk pops open and seconds later it closes again.
I hold my breath when the front driver’s side door opens and the overhead light pops on again. The American shuts the door behind him and I feel the car move as he positions himself in the front seat. One. Two. Three. Four. Five. Six. Finally the light fades. I hear the key being slid into the ignition and then the engine purrs to life.
Why aren’t we moving? Why are we just sitting here? Maybe he’s reading something.
And then he says aloud in Spanish, “Cocoa butter lotion. Warm breath. Sweat.”
It takes a moment for my brain to register the meaning behind his strange words and to realize that he’s actually talking to me.
I rise up quickly from behind the seat and cock the handgun, pressing the barrel against the back of his head.
“Just drive,” I say in English, my hands shaking holding the gun in place. I’ve never killed anyone before and I don’t want to, but I’m not going back into that compound.
The American slowly raises his hands. The glint of his thick silver watch catches my eye but I don’t let it distract me. Without another word he places one hand on the steering wheel and the other on the gear shift, putting the car into Drive.
“You’re American,” he says calmly, but I detect the tiniest ounce of interest in his voice.
“Yes, I’m American, now please just drive.”
Keeping the gun pointed at his head, I maneuver myself into the backseat and I pull the gun away from his reach. I catch him glimpse me in the rearview mirror, but it’s so dark inside the car with just the low lights from the dashboard that all I can see are his eyes for a brief moment as they sweep over me.
Finally the car goes into forward motion and he puts both hands on the steering wheel. He’s being calm and cautious, but I get the feeling he isn’t the slightest bit worried about me or what I might be capable of doing. This scares me. I think I’d rather him be begging for his life, stuttering over words of plea, promising me the world. But he looks as dangerous and as uninterested as he did back inside the house even when he put a bullet in that gunman’s head he so casually named Guillermo.
CHAPTER TWO
We’ve been driving for twenty-eight minutes. I’ve been watching the clock in the dashboard, the glowing blue numbers already starting to burn through to my subconscious. The American hasn’t said a word. Not one word. I know it has nothing to do with being afraid. I’m the one with the gun but I’m the only one of us who is afraid. And I don’t understand why he hasn’t spoken. Maybe if he would just turn the radio on…something…because the silence is killing me. I’ve been trying to keep my eyes on him while at the same time trying to get some kind of idea of my whereabouts. But so far the only landmarks that I’ve seen are trees and the occasional stucco house or dilapidated building—it all looks the same as the compound.
Thirty-two minutes in and I realize I’ve already lowered the gun at some point. My finger is still on the trigger and I’m ready to use it if I have to, but I was stupid to think I could hold it up pointed directly at him for longer than a few minutes.
I don’t know what I’m going to do when I get tired. Thankfully the adrenaline is keeping me wide awake for now.
“What’s your name?” I ask him, hoping to stir the silence.
I need to get him to trust me, to want to help me.
“My name is inconsequential.”
“Why?”
He doesn’t respond.
I swallow a lump in my throat, but another one just forms in its place.
“My name is Sarai.”
Still no response.
It kind of feels like torture, the way he ignores me. I’m beginning to think that is exactly what he’s doing: torturing me with silence.
“I need you to help me,” I say. “I’ve been a prisoner of Javier’s since I was fourteen-years-old.”
“And you assume I’m going to help you because I am also American,” he says simply.
I hesitate before I answer, “I-I…well, why wouldn’t you?”
“It is not my business to interfere.”
“Then what is your business?” I ask with a trace of distaste. “To murder people in cold blood?”
“Yes.”
A shiver moves through my back.
Not knowing what to say to something like that, or even if I should, I decide it’s best to change the subject.
“Can you just get me across the border?” I ask, becoming more desperate. “I’ll—.” I lower my eyes in shame. “I’ll do whatever you want. But please, please just help me get over the border.” I feel tears trying to force their way to the surface, but I don’t want him to see me cry. I don’t know why, but I just can’t let him. And I know he understands what it means to do whatever he wants. I hate myself for offering my body to him, but like I said before about desperation….
“If you are referring to the United States border,” he says and for some reason his voice surprises me, “then you must know the distance is longer than I care to have you in my car.”
I raise my back from the seat just a little.
“W-Well how long would you allow me?”
I catch his dark eyes in the rearview mirror again. They lock on mine and this too sends a shiver through my back.
He doesn’t answer.
“Why won’t you help me?” I ask, finally accepting the fact that no matter what I say to him, it’s futile. And when he still doesn’t answer I say with exasperation, “Then pull over and let me out. I’ll walk the rest of the way myself.”
I think his eyes just faintly smiled at me through the mirror. Yes, I’m positive that’s what I saw. He knows as well as I do that I’m better off getting dragged back to the compound than being let out of the car and on my own.
“You will need more than the six bullets you have in that handgun.”
“So then give me more bullets,” I say, getting angrier. “And this isn’t the only gun I have.”
That seems to have piqued his interest, although small.
“I took the rifle off the guard I hit over the head when I got past the fence.”
He nods once, so subtly that if I would’ve blinked in that moment I never would’ve seen it.
“It is a good start,” he says and then puts his eyes back on the dirt road for a moment and turns left at the end. “But what will you do when you run out? Because you will.”
I hate him.
“Then I’ll run.”
“And they will catch you.”
“Then I’ll stab them.”
Suddenly, the American veers slowly off the road and stops the car.
No, no, no! This isn’t how it was supposed to happen. I expected him to keep driving because he knew if he left me out here all alone like this that whatever happened to me would be on his conscience. But I guess he doesn’t have much of one. His dark eyes gaze evenly at me through the mirror, not a trace of compassion or concern in them. I want to shoot him in the back of the head on principle. He just stares at me with that small what-are-you-waiting-for? look and I don’t budge. I glance carefully at the door and then back at him and then down at my gun and back at him again.
“You can use me as leverage,” I say because it’s all I have left.
His eyebrows barely move, but it’s enough that I’ve gotten his attention.
“I’m Javier’s favorite,” I go on
. “I’m…different…from the other girls.”
“What makes you think I need leverage?” he asks.
“Well, did Javier pay you the whole three and a half million?”
“That is not how it works,” he says.
“No, but I know how Javier works and if he didn’t give you the full amount before you left then he never will.”
“Are you going to get out?”
I sigh heavily and glance out the window again and then I raise the gun back up and say, “You’re going to drive me to the border.”
The American licks the dryness from his lips and then the car starts moving again. I’m playing everything by ear now. All of the planned parts of my escape ended when I got inside this car.
When the American spoke of the United States border, it came off to me as if I am closer to the borders of other countries than the U.S. and this terrifies me. If I’m closer to Guatemala or Belize than the United States then I very much doubt that I will make it out of this alive. I have looked at maps. I have sat within that room many times and ran the tip of my finger over the little roads between Zamora and San Luis Potosí and between Los Mochis and Ciudad Juárez. But I always blocked the possibility of being farther south completely from my mind because I never wanted to accept that I could be that far away from home.
Home. That really is such a placeholder word. I don’t have a home in the United States at all. I don’t think I ever really did. But just the same, it was where I was born and where I was raised, though little did my mother do to raise me, really. But I want to go home because it will always be better than where I’ve spent the last nine years of my life.
I position my back partially against the door and partially against the seat so that I can keep my eyes straight on the American. How long I can keep this going is still up in the air. And he knows it.
Maybe I should just shoot him and take the car. But then again, little good it will do when I’m driving around aimlessly in this foreign country that I have seen nothing from other than violence and rape and murder and everything else unimaginable. And Javier is a very powerful man. Very rich. The compound is filthy and misleading. He could be like the drug lords I saw when I used to have the luxury of American television; the ones with rich, immaculate homes with swimming pools and ten bathrooms, but Javier seems to prefer the façade. I don’t know what he spends his fortune on, but it’s not on real estate as far as I know.
It’s been over an hour. I’m getting tired. I can feel the burning behind my eyes, spreading thinly around the edges of my eyelids. I don’t know who it is I think I’m kidding. I have to sleep sometime and the second that I doze off is when I’ll wake up either back at the compound tied to the chair in Javier’s room, or when I don’t wake up at all.
I need to keep talking to help me stay awake.
“Can’t you just tell me your name?” I try once more. “Look, I know I’m not getting out of this country alive. Or your car for that matter. I know that my attempt to escape was wasted the second I stepped out of that gate. So, the least you can do is talk to me. Think of it as my last meal.”
“I am not good at being the shoulder to cry on, I am afraid.”
“Then what are you good at?” I ask. “Besides killing people, of course.”
I notice his jaw move slightly, but he hasn’t looked at me in the rearview mirror in a while.
“Driving,” he answers.
Okay, this is going nowhere.
I want to cry out of frustration.
Fifteen more minutes of silence passes and I notice that my surroundings are beginning to feel all too familiar. We’re going in circles and have been all this time. For a split second I start to say something about it, but I decide it’s probably better that I don’t let him know I’m onto him.
I lean up a little from the seat and point the gun at him and say, “Turn left up here.” And I do this for the next twenty minutes, forcing him to go my way even though I have no idea where I’m taking us. And he plays along, never breaking a sweat, never giving me the slightest impression that he’s worried or afraid of having a gun at his back. The longer we do this the more I begin to realize that even though I’m the one with the gun, he has this whole situation under more control than I thought I did.
What did I get myself into?
More long minutes pass and I’ve lost track of time. I’m so tired. My lids are getting heavier. I snap my head away from the seat behind me and press my finger against the window button to lower the glass. The warm night air rushes inside the car, tossing my auburn hair about my face. I force my eyes open wide and position myself in a more uncomfortable way to help keep me awake, but it doesn’t take long to notice that nothing is working.
The American watches every move I make from the mirror. I notice him every once in a while.
“What makes you his favorite?” he asks and it stuns me.
I was sure he’d been waiting all this time for me to doze off; if he would’ve waited a few more minutes that’s probably what would’ve happened. Now he’s talking to me? I’m thoroughly confused, but I’ll take it.
“I wasn’t bought,” I answer.
Finally he asks me a direct question which could lead to conversation and maybe his help, but ironically the topic makes it difficult to take advantage of the opportunity. It’s hard to talk about even though I’m the one who initially brought it up.
I wait for a long moment before I go on.
“I was brought here a long time ago…by my mother. Javier saw something in me he didn’t see in the other girls. I call it a sickening obsession, he calls it love.”
“I see,” he says and although his words are few, I can tell they hold more weight than they appear.
“I’m from Tucson,” I say. “All I want is to get back there. I’ll pay you. If you don’t want…me…I’ll find a way to pay you cash. I’m good for my word. I wouldn’t try to hide from you. I would eventually pay my debt.”
“If a drug lord believes he is in love with you,” he says casually, “it would not be me you had to hide from.”
“Then you know that I’m in a lot of danger,” I say.
“Yes, but that still does not make you my problem.”
“Are you human?” I hate him more every time he speaks. “What kind of man would not want to help a defenseless young woman out of a life of bondage and violence, especially when she has escaped her captors and is directly pleading for your help?”
He doesn’t answer. Why doesn’t that surprise me?
I sigh heavily and press my back against the seat again. My trigger finger is cramped from being in the same curled position for so long against the metal. Lowering the gun farther behind the seat so that he can’t see, I switch hands long enough to wriggle my fingers around for a moment and then I place my thumb over the top of each finger individually and press down to ease the stiffness. You don’t realize how heavy a gun is until you hold it non-stop for long periods of time.
“I’m not lying to you,” I say. “About Javier and your money.”
I catch his eyes looking at me in the mirror again.
“I’ve had plenty of time to see how he does business,” I go on as I grip the gun in my right hand again though to the argument of my aching fingers. “He would rather kill you than pay you.”
His eyes are greenish-blue. I can see them more clearly now that we’re riding through a small town with street lights. And small is an understatement because in under a minute we’re engulfed by the darkness of the desolate highway again with nothing in sight except the starlit desert-like landscape.
And then I just start talking; my last ditch attempt to keep myself awake. I don’t care anymore if he adds to the one-sided conversation, I just need to stay conscious.
“I guess if you had a daughter or a sister you might care a little more. I had somewhat of a life before my mother brought me here. It wasn’t much of one, but it was one, nonetheless. We lived in a tiny trailer with cockroache
s and walls so thin it felt like sleeping right on the desert floor in the winter. My mother was a slave to heroin. Crack. Meth. You name it she loved it. But not me. I wanted to finish school and get a scholarship to whatever college would have me and make a life for myself. But then I was brought here and all that changed. Javier was sleeping with my mother for a while, but he always had his eyes on me….”
I think I just dozed off for a second.
I snap my eyes open and take a deep breath, pressing my face near the open window to let the air hit me.
And the next thing I know I feel a white-hot pain to the side of my head and everything goes black.
CHAPTER THREE
The sound of trickling water wakes me. My eyes creep open, flinching at the light pouring in through some nearby window. I can tell that I’m in a room somewhere. My vision is blurred and my head feels like it was banged against a brick wall the night before. The left side of my face feels swollen.
I try to lift up but something is tied around my wrists and my ankles. When my eyes gradually blur into focus I see that I’m lying on a bed in a dingy room with tan tapestry wallpaper and dusty mismatched furniture. The television looks just like the one at the compound: ancient and probably only picks up one channel which I’m sure is the one that runs the dramatic Spanish soap operas. In my direct line of vision I see the thick green curtains on the window and pushed against them is a tiny square table with a single wooden chair. A long black trench coat hangs over the back of it.
Realizing what must’ve happened and my instincts finally catching up to me, I force my body onto my back so that I can see the rest of the room. So I can find the American who I know brought me here, wherever here is.
He tied me up. Oh no…he tied me up.
When I notice him sitting in a chair on the other side of the bed, it startles me and I yelp and fall off the bed and onto the floor, my hands and legs bound tight so I can’t do anything to brace for the impact. I hit the floor hard and pain shoots up from my hip and through my back. “Oww!” I moan loudly. In no time I’m trying to twist the fabric loose from my wrists as I squirm around on the floor.