“I gathered that much.”
I go on:
“And of course he’d make me dress up, too.”
I lower my eyes shamefully, mostly because sometimes I enjoyed it, dressing up and being treated like a princess. That was how I always thought of it: a princess, as disturbing as the circumstances were.
“I felt like an arm trophy.”
“That is exactly what you were,” he says and I look back up at him again, quietly stung by his words. “Do you remember anything about the men whose homes you were taken to?”
“Yes,” I say with a nod. “But I think they were vacation homes, or something.”
“Why?”
“Because they mentioned things about how they were only in Mexico for a few weeks, or how they were heading back to California, or Nevada or Florida, places like that.”
“They were Americans?”
“Some of them were, I’m pretty sure they were,” I say. “They didn’t have accents, foreign anyway. They definitely weren’t Mexican, that’s for sure.”
They may have been American, but I knew they wouldn’t help me like I hoped Victor would. They were just as evil as Javier. Two of them even tried to buy me from him. No, none of them would ever have helped me escape so this is why I consider Victor the first American I’ve seen in nine years. Those men lost that privilege by association.
“Do you remember any of their names?”
Victor looks more eager now than I have ever seen him, yet he still manages to maintain an almost flawless unemotional façade.
I think back, trying to recall and coming up short.
“No,” I say, frustrated with myself, “not right now, but I did hear their names on occasion when one would introduce one to another.” I pause and say with more emotion, “Victor, what is it?”
His dangerous bluish eyes lock on mine.
“At the compound, or anywhere Javier could keep tabs on you and control you, you weren’t a threat to him. But now that you’ve escaped, you’re a bigger threat than anyone because you know too much. It is apparent Izel was right to think him foolish with his feelings for you; he probably never anticipated you leaving. You being alive and free is a threat to his entire operation and anyone involved in it.”
I think on it a moment, letting the obvious truth of Victor’s words sink into my mind. I may not have ever known where I was kept in Mexico and even right now I wouldn’t be able to tell American authorities where Lydia and the other girls are being held against their will, but I do know names, still hidden in the back of my memory, but they’re there nonetheless. And I remember faces and conversations, although casual they still held many small bits of information that, I suppose, given to the right people could expose them as drug and sex traffickers.
“Larsaw, or maybe Larsen,” I say suddenly as the name appears on the tip of my tongue. “Gerald Larsen. I remember he was the first American I was ‘shown off’ to when Javier took me to my first house. He had white hair. He was chubby. But I was never directly introduced to anyone. I wasn’t allowed to speak. I learned their names by listening to their conversations.”
Victor looks deeply in thought and shakes his head suddenly.
“John Gerald Lansen is the CEO of Balfour Enterprises and founder of the most reputable charity for ending violence against women in the United States.” He looks right at me. “The information you hold, no matter how insignificant you think it all is, could bring down a lot of high profile people. I imagine if word gets out that you have escaped and the right person—a vengeful sister, perhaps,” he says, I know referring to Izel, “who decides to tell the right people, more than Guzmán will pay to have Javier killed and Javier knows this.”
It hits me like a shock of electricity and I jump from the bed and try to make a run for the door. Victor catches me mid-stride, grabbing me around the waist. I whirl around at him, punching at him blindly. I manage to hit him, but I’m not sure where as my fists move clumsily and in such a chaotic motion that my eyes can’t keep up within the scuffle.
My back hits the floor and I look up, my auburn hair whipped savagely around my face, to see Victor pinning me, straddling my waist.
“Let me go! Let me go, godammit!” I thrash around under his weight, unable to do much with my legs, my hands pinned against the floor above my head, trapped by his own.
“He’s going to kill me! Someone help!”
He manages to bind both of my wrists with one hand, the other he presses over my mouth to muffle my screams. Tears shoot from my eyes. I beg him over and over again, my voice almost completely shut out by the weight of his hand.
“I’m not going to kill you,” he says calmly. “If it was my intention, you’d be dead already.”
He waits for my tense body to ease some before I feel his hand loosen ever so slightly.
“Are you going to be quiet?”
I nod because I still can’t speak with his hand over my mouth.
Finally, after a long moment, Victor moves his hand away slowly.
“Why wouldn’t you kill me?” I ask, my voice still trembling and choked by tears. “Still using me as leverage?”
“In a way, yes,” he answers.
I want to scream again while I have a chance, but his words keep me from it:
“And I don’t kill innocent people.”
Silence fills the small space between us.
“No one is innocent,” I snap, surprising myself. “Least of all me. For years I let that disgusting murderer violate me and I never said no. I sat back and watched in silence as he and his men and that bitch sister of his beat and raped and sold the girls I became close to. I did nothing. I never screamed or fought back or stood up for any of them. Not a single one.” I hear my voice beginning to rise with anger, but I don’t care. I clench my fists together on my chest, looking up into his eyes as he remains seated on top of me. “I pretended like nothing bothered me, that Carmen’s hands being smashed to bits by that hammer didn’t faze me! I didn’t flinch when Marisol was forced to have an abortion by a butcher doctor who left her to bleed to death on the table! I didn’t shed a single tear when the girl with the red hair and freckles was killed right in front of me because the man who came to purchase her didn’t like what he saw!” I bring up my fists and go to slam them down on the tops of his legs out of anger, but he catches my wrists and holds them solidly. “I am not innocent!” I roar.
I feel his hands wrench my wrists, but my head is too clouded by emotion to care.
The things I’ve admitted are things that have haunted me for the longest time. They’ve been buried in my soul, burning through to the very core of me, rendering me emotionless and turning me into someone entirely different than I was supposed to be.
I let my head fall to the side, feeling the pang of defeat. I can’t look at him anymore. Not out of anger or hatred or revenge, but out of shame. I can’t look a murder in the eye because not only am I no better than he is, it’s possible that I’m worse.
“You are very strong,” he says and raises his body from mine. “With a strong survival instinct. It is the only thing that separates you from those other girls. Like them, you were still held there against your will. You were still made to do things against your will. You were physically and emotionally abused. You should not blame yourself for their weakness.”
He walks back over to the table.
I pick myself up from the floor and just look across at him, trying to make sense of his words. Or, maybe the guilt I’ve harbored for so long is only trying to force me not to believe them.
He glances over at me and adds, “You did the right thing.”
I shake my head. “No. I didn’t. I should’ve done something to help them.”
Victor shoulders his duffle bags and takes up the suitcase in the other.
“You did,” he says, standing in front of me now. “You kept your cool. You waited for your opportunity. You pretended to the point of acceptance and trust. You’re risking
your life right now to go back for that girl.”
He walks past me and goes toward the door, turning to look back once he gets there.
“You are innocent,” he says. “And it’s why you’re still alive.”
Then he opens the door and hesitantly, I follow him out.
CHAPTER TWELVE
We arrive in Green Valley nearly three hours later. Both of us sat in silence for most of the drive. I had too much thinking to do, too many unresolved issues to work out, which I didn’t come close to doing in such a short time. And it will take me a very long time to lay my guilt to rest, if I ever can. I don’t care that the things Victor said made sense, I still feel like the most selfish person in the world for what I did. I’ll probably feel this way forever.
And I did ask Victor why we were heading to Green Valley. He had said before that he would tell me what was going on, but when it came down to it, he was vague. He told me that he has an exchange to make near Green Valley, but he wouldn’t go into detail. I guess all that talking he did back at the hotel in Douglas went over his conversational word limit. Because he was back to himself again so quickly, the quiet, reserved, intimidating assassin who, for reasons unknown to me, I almost feel completely safe with.
We pull into a parking lot at the end of a road lined by resort homes. I’ve been here before, once with my best friend when her older sister picked us up from school in her new car. We had gotten lost and she used this place to turn around. It was weeks before my mom forced me to Mexico with her and Javier. This familiar place reminds me that I’m very close to home. I’m so close that I could walk there. It would take several hours, but I could do it.
But where would I go?
Victor shuts the truck’s engine off. I look out through the windshield to see a section of trees and brush separating the parking lot from the interstate. A car flies by every few seconds. But the parking lot is empty save one lone car in the distance parked by a dumpster. On the other side of the lot though, over a low concrete wall there are many cars parked outside a shopping center.
I wonder why he chose a public place, although currently quiet and abandoned, to do whatever it is that we came here to do. Because Javier doesn’t care about the public or risking an innocent bystander getting caught in his crossfire.
“Stay in the truck,” Victor says just before shutting the heavy metal door.
He walks around to the back as a sleek black SUV enters the parking lot from behind the homes. My heart immediately starts pounding. I slink down in the seat, but move around to his side so that I can get a better glimpse out the window. I want to see but I don’t want to be seen.
Victor meets the SUV halfway, about fifty feet from where I am and it stops in the center of the road. I see a man. A white man it looks like and I’m confused by this. Victor nods and then I see his lips moving. I reach over and roll the window down by the old-fashioned crank. It sticks at first, but then the window breaks apart and I manage to open it several inches. But they’re too far away for me to hear anything they’re saying.
Victor starts walking back toward the truck and the SUV follows. I swallow hard and find myself practically all the way in the floorboard now, the top of my head pressing against the hard steering wheel. The driver’s side door opens, exposing me in my awkward position. That other man is standing next to Victor, both of them looking in at me.
The strange man, who I notice looks somewhat like Victor with his tall stature, brown hair, blue eyes and sculpted cheekbones, nods at me as if it’s his way of saying hello. Needless to say, I’m too afraid and unsure of him to give him the same courtesy.
The man, though still looking at me as though I’m a peculiar specimen of sorts that deserves study, says something to Victor in another language. It’s not Spanish. Victor replies to him in that same language, which I’m starting to think is likely German. The man finally looks at Victor.
“This is Niklas,” Victor says to me. “You’re going to ride with him and follow me to another location close by.”
Instantly, I feel my head shaking back and forth in refusal.
Victor reaches out his hand to me, but I reject it. Instead, I start to climb my way out of the floorboard and go toward the other side of the truck. I feel Victor’s hand wrap around part of my thigh.
“He will not harm you,” Victor says. “This truck is not safe for you if Javier or his men open fire on us.”
I glance through the back window at the SUV, assuming it has some kind of bulletproof windows, maybe. I don’t care to ask; I simply don’t want to be left alone with this man, safer vehicle or not.
“This one is not very cooperative,” the man named Niklas says in English. He definitely has an accent, unlike Victor who seems to speak fluently in whatever language he knows.
“Sarai,” Victor says my name and it stuns me immobile; he’s never called me by my name before. “I am asking you to cooperate.”
I look up into Victor’s harsh eyes and hold my gaze for a moment, letting my mind clear out the unexpected reaction that he saying my name has put there. My body relaxes and then soon after Victor’s fingers slide away from my thigh. I look back and forth between the two of them slowly, still unsure, but now more willing.
“Will you tell me what’s going to happen?” I ask, looking at both of them, but Victor knows the question was meant for him.
Niklas keeps his cold blue eyes fixed on me, but it seems more from an observant nature than a possessive one.
“We will meet Javier not far from here in a more secluded area. There, your friend will be handed over to us.”
A dark feeling of uncertainty suddenly grows within the pit of my stomach.
I narrow my gaze on Victor.
“Just like that?” I ask skeptically. “No, Javier won’t just give her over. He’ll…” I back away again against the passenger’s side door, my hand already on the handle in case I need to make a run for it. “…there’s no way he’d do that. You’re trading her for me, aren’t you?” My voice rises. “Aren’t you!”
“Yes,” Victor says.
Niklas remains quiet and calm and ever so observant. It’s starting to unnerve me.
But then I come to my senses and look away from both of them. I stare out the windshield at the landscape and the cars on the other side of the concrete wall, but I really don’t see any of it. All I see is Lydia’s face in my mind, the way I saw it last on that video: bruised and bloodied and tear-streaked and frightened. I know this is what needs to be done. A trade: me for Lydia. That is something I know Javier would agree to, now more than ever.
But he wants me dead….
My hands clench the tattered leather seat beneath me, my fingers digging into the exposed cushion insulation. My entire body trembles with dread. But then I stubbornly force that fear into the back of my mind. Maybe he won’t kill me once he has me back. I could go on pretending like being with him is where I want to be. I could even pretend that Victor kidnapped me. I know I can fool Javier. I know I can! I did it for years! I made him trust me, so much so that he believed he loved me. I can do it again.
Long enough until I get my first chance to kill him.
Yes, that’s exactly what I’ll do. Because I only care about two things anymore: Lydia’s safety and killing Javier. I know that once I do it, I’ll sign my own death warrant. Izel or one of Javier’s men will hunt me down before I can get a mile from the compound and they’ll shoot me dead, just like Victor did that store owner back in Mexico.
But at least Javier will be dead.
And I don’t fear death.
I open the truck door to find Niklas standing at it waiting on me. I was so lost in my thoughts that I never even saw him leave and walk around to my side of the truck.
I shut the door and look over the hood of the truck at Victor on the other side. I’ve never really been able to read his face because his emotions, if he has any, seem impenetrable, but right now I do detect the faintest hint of something unnatu
ral in his eyes. Could it be regret? No, maybe it’s indecision or…no, that can’t be it.
“I’ll do it,” I announce, never taking my eyes from Victor’s. “If you can get Lydia away safely, I’ll do it.”
Victor nods. Then he goes to open the truck door and I stop him.
“But Victor, please take her home. I’m begging you. Just take her home. She lives in El Paso, Texas. With her grandparents. Please.”
Victor doesn’t nod or answer verbally this time, but I know, just by that look in his eyes that he will do it. I’m not sure why I believe that, but I do.
After transferring his bags from the truck to the SUV, he gets inside the truck and the rumble of the engine turning on follows seconds later.
“Come,” Niklas says, taking me by the arm, his fingers wrapped a little more harshly around my bicep than Victor ever did it.
He guides me around to the backseat, opening the door and standing directly behind me as if he’s making sure I get in and don’t try to run away. Once I’m inside, the smell of new leather and car freshener fills my senses. A metal cage barrier separates the backseat from the front, just like a police officer might have in his patrol car. Already I feel trapped. I hear a clicking sound as Niklas locks all of the doors after he’s inside. I glance to my left and right to see that there are no inside lock switches on either of the backseat doors. I am truly trapped in here.
We end up on Interstate 19, following close behind Victor in the old beat-up truck.
“You have become quite a wrench in the gears,” Niklas says from the driver’s seat.
I glance up to meet his eyes in the rearview mirror.
I don’t like him much. Not that I should like him at all considering the situation, but at least with Victor, despite being a killer, I felt a sense of safety. Even back at the compound as I watched him through the crack in the door with Lydia, I got the feeling I could trust him, that he would help me. My hunches were completely off, I admit, but he never hurt me. Regardless of what he is or what he’s done and what complications I’ve caused him, he never treated me badly.