“Victor,” I say, but he stops me.
“I’d prefer it if you didn’t call me by my name.”
“Why not? It’s your name. What else am I supposed to call you?” I surprise myself every time I defy him in the slightest way. Because on the inside, I’m utterly terrified of what he might do to me.
“It doesn’t matter,” he says, sitting down at the table and unzipping his bag. “Just get your shower.”
“Look,” I say, walking around the beds toward him, “I’m scared. You scare the hell out of me. I’m not going to pretend otherwise. I’m terrified of what’s happening to me—”
“You have a strange way of showing it,” he says, not even offering me the luxury of his eyes. He pulls out a digital device of sorts, smaller than a laptop. “I would say you’ve been too numbed by trauma to let it affect you the way that it should.” He sets the device on the tabletop and then the duffle bag on the floor beside his feet. I think the device is one of those digital tablets.
I swallow, rounding my chin. “Maybe I have. Somewhat. But what does that have to do with me calling you by your name?” What he accuses me of is spot on, but what I’ve been through is none of his business. Not unless he intends to help me, which we’ve already established as being nothing more than wishful thinking. “And why do you care?”
“I never said I did.”
“Then don’t probe,” I snap.
The mere fact that he won’t even look at me half the time when he’s speaking to me, makes me angry. And the more he does it, acts as if I’m not worth looking in the eye, the more it infuriates me. And when I get mad, I always cry. It’s how I’ve been for as long as I can remember. And I hate it. I never shout or curse or hit things or people. I cry. Every damn time.
As the tears start to well up in my eyes, I turn my back to him and march quickly toward the restroom. But I stop and turn around to face him once more, my fingernails digging into the palms of my hands down at my sides. “Go to hell!” is all I can say, my poor attempt at lashing out with words instead of tears.
CHAPTER SEVEN
It seems like forever since I’ve had a hot shower like this. I had showers on occasion at the compound—I was the only girl given that luxury—but never one like this. They were always lukewarm at best, but never so hot the water could burn the skin off my back. I don’t even turn the cold on at first, allowing myself to bask in the heat until it becomes too much and I’m forced to. I want to stay in here forever and not think about what is waiting for me on the other side of that door, but the reality of it all wins out and it’s all I think about. I sit down on the floor of the tub and draw my knees toward my chest, wrapping my arms loosely around them and let the water stream down on me from above.
I think a lot about Lydia, wondering if she’s OK or if Izel beat her for a much longer time than usual, all because of me. I know she did. And although there was nothing I could do to stop it, I made a promise to Lydia that I fully intend to fulfill. I won’t let it go on forever.
But if they find out that she knew I was leaving….
After what seems like an hour, the hot water starts to run cold and I get out, wrapping my hair in a towel folded neatly on the back of the toilet. I wish I had a clean set of clothes, panties at least—lost my pillowcase of clothes in Victor’s car when we left it behind. I slip my filthy running shorts on over my panties and then pull the light blue tank top down over my breasts. Javier forbade me ever to wear a bra.
When I step out of the restroom, Victor is still sitting in the same spot he was in as before. But the suitcase is no longer on the foot of the bed.
As I walk toward the bed where the suitcase had been and start to sit down, Victor looks up and catches my eyes. He doesn’t say a word, but I can sense that something is different about him. For a moment, I’m unsettled by his unusual demeanor, but that quiet look in his eyes which I somehow doubt he knows I can see right away, completely catches my interest. It feels almost…tragic.
“Tell me about your mother,” he says.
He turns on the chair to face me, giving me his full attention, resting his arms over the length of the chair arms and letting his fingers dangle casually over the ends. His white dress sleeves have been pushed up just below his elbows.
Completely taken aback by his question, I just stare across the room at him blankly.
“Why?” I ask simply, unsure of his intentions with the information. I go ahead and sit down on the foot of the bed, working the towel in my hair with both hands to dry it. But it’s all just for show; every fiber of my consciousness is focused on Victor and every move he makes.
He doesn’t elaborate. And in case he decides to change his mind and go back to not giving a damn, I speak up before it’s too late:
“What do you want to know?”
I squeeze one last section of hair with the towel and then drop it on the floor.
Victor tilts his head gently to one side and then interlocks his hands in front of him, his elbows still resting on the chair arms.
“How did she meet Javier?”
I think back on it for a moment. “I don’t know,” I say. “I mean, I know it had to do with drugs and sex. The same way she met every man she brought into our home. My mother and I didn’t talk much.”
He tilts his head to the other side reflectively. What’s he waiting for? I study him for a moment, trying to get some idea of what brought his interest in my mother on and finally I choose to tell him whatever I can. Maybe because I’ve needed someone to listen for the longest time. Lydia and the other girls were too traumatized by their own abductions and experiences within the compound for me to confide in them. And their lives were much more chaotic than mine, much more…unfair. I could never bring myself to talk to the other girls about my insignificant problems while they were being beaten and raped and mentally and emotionally tortured.
I was in paradise compared to them.
I shake off the imagery and look back over at Victor.
“The first time I saw Javier, I knew he was different from the other men my mother brought home. More powerful somehow. He walked with this proud air about him. Unafraid. Confident. The other men—and there were a lot—were scumbags. They couldn’t wait to get through our tiny living room and past me before feeling my mother up. They were disgusting, pathetic.”
“And Javier wasn’t?” he asks.
I shake my head, gazing off toward the wall now. “He was disgusting because of what he was and how he used my mother, yes, but he was too professional to be pathetic.”
“Professional?” He looks upon me with slight curiosity.
“Yes,” I say with another nod. “Like I said, he was powerful. Though I wasn’t aware of it at the time, about what he was, I knew he was different. I stopped worrying about my mother and the things she got herself into when I was twelve-years-old. I was used to it all by then. She always managed to make it home. Despite being strung-out and sometimes beaten, she never called the police or seemed scared of anything so I guess I started believing in her safety as much as she did.” I look at the wall again, my hands pressed against the edge of the bed on either side of me, my body slouching down in-between my shoulders. “But when I saw Javier, I was scared for her again. I was scared for me.”
I lock eyes with Victor and say, “The moment he saw me, I knew my life was over. I didn’t know how or why at that time, but I just knew. The way he looked at me. I knew….”
My gaze drops to the carpeted floor.
“Why are you asking me this stuff, anyway?” I turn to him again. “Why the interest all of a sudden?”
I catch him glance over at the digital tablet lying on the table next to him. I look at the tablet for a split-second, too, wondering about all of the secrets it holds. Victor stands up from the table and my eyes follow him as he walks toward me.
“Turn around,” he says, standing over me.
I tilt my head back enough to see his face; he’s too close, crowding
my space and it’s frightening. “What?” I ask, confused and getting the worst feeling.
He leans over and reaches inside the duffle bag in-between the beds and retrieves another rope just like the one I used to tie Izel to the chair with.
“Turn around,” he says again.
I shake my head frantically. “No,” I say and start to back my way across the bed.
He grabs me by the waist and flips me over onto my stomach.
“I have to get some sleep,” he says, pressing his knee, although carefully, into the center of my back. “You’ll have to make do. I’m sorry.”
“Don’t tie me up! Please!” I try to wiggle myself free, but he grabs one of my wrists with his free hand and fastens it against my back. I struggle and kick and thrash about, but he’s too strong and I feel like a fawn under the paw of a lion. “You’re sorry?! Then don’t do it! Please, Victor!”
His grip around my wrists, now with both of them restrained behind me, tightens harshly and I can’t help but believe it has everything to do with me calling him by his name, rather than my struggling against him. With one side of my face pressed into the mattress, I feel the rope wind around my wrists and then he ties it into several firm knots. After he’s satisfied that I’m unable to get my hands free, he stands up from the bed and grabs my ankles next. I pull one foot back and manage to kick him square in the stomach, but it doesn’t faze him. He just looks at me, catches my leg in mid-air on the second attempt and binds my ankles together with one hand.
Tears barrel from my eyes. But I stop fighting.
He carefully rolls me over onto my side, facing me toward the wall with my back to the bed where I know he’ll be sleeping. The thought of him being behind me like that all night and unable to see him unnerves me to no end.
The lamp between the bed switches off, leaving the room bathed in partial darkness. It’s still early, just after sundown, but I’m exhausted enough that it feels like it’s two o’clock in the morning.
I cry softly into my pillow for a little while. Thinking about my mom and all of the things Victor forced me to remember. And I think about Lydia and Mrs. Gregory who lived two trailers over from me; they are really the only family I’ve ever had. And when the uncomfortable position my arms have been put into becomes painful, I roll my body awkwardly onto the opposite side. I peer through the darkness to see Victor on the other bed lying on his side with his back facing me. He’s still fully clothed. I notice that he did at least take his shoes off, but his feet are covered by thin black dress socks. I wonder if he’s still awake.
“Victor?”
“Go to sleep,” he says without moving a muscle.
“When you take me back to Javier, will you at least give me a gun?”
Silence filters through the space between us.
“Will you?” I ask again, stirring that silence. “It will give me a fighting chance. I’ll either kill Javier myself, or I’ll die knowing that I tried.”
Victor’s shoulder rises and falls slowly as if he’d just taken a deep breath.
“I’ll think about it. Now go to sleep.”
CHAPTER EIGHT
Victor
I’m awoken at 3:42 A.M. staring down the barrel of my 9MM.
“What’s the password?” the girl demands.
She’s keeping a respectable distance. Impressive.
“The password,” she repeats sternly, motioning her head toward the table where my iPad sits.
I don’t move. She may have guts, but she’s still fidgety and it would be unfortunate if she shot me by accident.
“Uppercase F, six, eight, lowercase ‘k’, three, zero, zero, five, uppercase L, uppercase P, lowercase ‘w’, six.” I could easily take the gun from her before she got a shot off, the angle she’s standing, but I’m not ready to. Not yet.
She tries to recall each character precisely the way I said them. Without her having to ask, I repeat it for her and even that gesture seems to confuse her.
Carefully, I lift my back from the bed and she grips the gun tighter. If she happened to pull the trigger, she’d only hit my cheekbone. The bullet might pass through my jaw. I’d be disfigured, but I’d live.
“You don’t want to see what’s on that computer,” I say.
“You admit it, then,” she says nervously. “Something happened. You found out while I was in the shower.”
I’m standing up now. She still hasn’t shot me. She’s not going to unless I try to go after her. Though I’m not so impressed anymore. If I was her, I would have put a bullet in my skull by now.
I nod my answer. I’m only mildly surprised that she figured that much out. I should never have asked about her mother. She’s a smart girl, this one, though still far too sympathetic and human to get out of this by herself alive.
Leaving the gun in her right hand and keeping her eyes on me, she takes three and a half steps backward and reaches for the iPad, glancing between it and me, one second each, long enough to type in the password. After one full minute of frustration, unable to find anything, the girl points the gun at the iPad and steps away from the table closer to the wall.
“You pull it up,” she demands. “Whatever it is.”
Her hands, both gripping the gun handle now, are shaking.
“I will tell you one last time, you don’t want to see it.”
“Just show me!”
She’s crying now. Tears roll down her cheeks. I notice her lip quiver on the right side. She’s probably sick to her stomach, her nerves frayed to nothing. I glimpse the ropes I tied her up with lying on the floor. They haven’t been cut. She has small hands, small wrists. Quite the escape artist to have worked herself free from those knots. I glimpse the clock between the beds. But it took her far too long to pull it off, I see.
“Hurry!”
Her eyes are red and glistening with moisture.
I turn the iPad around on the table to face me. Using my finger, I open my private email account and then the folder where I filed away the attachment message I received last night from my liaison:
“What have you done?” Fleischer inquired the night before through the live video feed. “The girl was not part of the deal.” His German accent always bleeding heavily through his English.
“Guzmán’s daughter was there,” I said. “I saw her on the compound before I entered the house.” I looked once toward the restroom where the girl was still showering after fifteen minutes. “Javier Ruiz has an impressive operation.”
“Are you certain you saw the same girl?”
I was offended by Fleischer’s lack of confidence in me, that after years of working together and never being wrong in my assessments that he would still second-guess my findings.
“It was the same girl,” I confirmed evenly. “I took half of the money Javier agreed to and left, as I was ordered to do.”
“And then how did you end up with the other girl?”
“She escaped the compound and hid in my car.”
“And you did not know she was there?” He appeared surprised.
“Yes, I knew,” I confirmed.
“Then explain why—”
“Remember, Fleischer, that you are not my employer. It would be wise not to speak to me as if you were.”
Fleischer swallowed his pride and raised his chin to appear more confident in his moment beneath me.
“What did Javier offer to have Guzmán killed?”
“Not a fraction of what Guzmán offered to kill Javier and Izel and for the safe return of his daughter.”
I added, “I could have fulfilled the contract while I was there.”
“Yes,” Fleischer said. “But that was not part of the plan, the same as keeping the runaway with you.”
“The girl will be useful.”
“So far, she has proven anything but,” Fleischer said, regaining the confidence I stripped from him before. “Everything has changed. The plan. The contract. Your orders.”
“What are my new orders?” I aske
d.
“Vonnegut has given no new orders yet,” he said. “He awaits my contact. Your new orders will depend on the information I get from you now.”
Fleischer and I locked eyes in this moment, both of us sharing the same thoughts: You are my brother and I will do nothing to betray you, no matter our profession or the orders that either of us are ever given.
No one but the two of us know that we share the same father. But over the years since our recruit by the Order when we were young boys, we have grown apart. It is often easy to forget that we share the same blood, especially by Fleischer, first name Niklas, who has lived in my shadow in the Order for so many years.
I simply nodded, knowing that Niklas would relay to our employer, Vonnegut, whatever I needed him to.
To retain the relationship between my brother and me, I offered him information he never asked for:
“The girl will be useful, Niklas,” I repeated, calling him by his first name to offer a truce. “It seems that she is more to Javier than Javier would like us to know.”
Niklas nodded in response, understanding my intent.
“You mean to use the girl to trade for Guzmán’s daughter,” he stated.
“If it comes down to that, yes,” I said. “Tell Vonnegut that I have it under control, but that I will await whatever orders he chooses.”
“I will tell him,” Niklas agreed.
I clicked on the ‘play’ button then to watch the video Javier sent to Vonnegut, in which Fleischer, as my liaison, was then ordered to pass along to me.
It’s just as I thought: Javier has the girl’s friend, Lydia, in a compromising position. He wants the girl to see it, to know that if she doesn’t give herself up or convince me to take her back to him, Lydia will die. I knew then as I watched the scene unfold on the video before me that this Mexican drug lord was far more brutal than the Order knew.
I heard the shower shut off and I ran my finger over the screen to turn off the video, shutting the iPad down afterwards.