[English] Killing Sarai

Author : J.A. Redmerski

Somewhere in Mexico
It’s been nine years since I saw the last American here. Nine years. I was beginning to think Javier killed them all.
“Who is he?” my only friend, Lydia, asks as she pushes herself further into view. “How do you know he’s American?”
I press my index finger against my lips and Lydia lowers her whisper, knowing as well as I do that Javier, or that God-awful sister of his will hear us and punish us for eavesdropping. Always paranoid. Always assuming the worst. Always approaching everything with caution and weapons, and rightfully so. Such is the way of life filled with drugs and murder and slavery.
I peer through the sliver in the door, letting my vision focus on the tall, lean white man who looks as though he was born with the inability to smile.
“I don’t know,” I whisper softly. “I can just tell.”
Lydia squints her eyes as though it might help her to hear better. I can feel the heat from her breath warming the skin on my throat as she presses harder against me. We watch the man from the shadow of the tiny room that we have shared since they brought her here a year ago. One door. One window. One bed. Four dingy walls and a bookshelf with a few books in the English language which I have read more times than I can count. But we aren’t locked in and have never been. Javier knows that if we ever try to escape that we won’t get far. I don’t even know where in Mexico I am. But I know that wherever it is it wouldn’t be easy for a young woman like me to find her way back into the United States alone. The second...

Killing Sarai
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CHAPTER ONE

Somewhere in Mexico

It’s been nine years since I saw the last American here. Nine years. I was beginning to think Javier killed them all.

“Who is he?” my only friend, Lydia, asks as she pushes herself further into view. “How do you know he’s American?”

I press my index finger against my lips and Lydia lowers her whisper, knowing as well as I do that Javier, or that God-awful sister of his will hear us and punish us for eavesdropping. Always paranoid. Always assuming the worst. Always approaching everything with caution and weapons, and rightfully so. Such is the way of life filled with drugs and murder and slavery.

I peer through the sliver in the door, letting my vision focus on the tall, lean white man who looks as though he was born with the inability to smile.

“I don’t know,” I whisper softly. “I can just tell.”

Lydia squints her eyes as though it might help her to hear better. I can feel the heat from her breath warming the skin on my throat as she presses harder against me. We watch the man from the shadow of the tiny room that we have shared since they brought her here a year ago. One door. One window. One bed. Four dingy walls and a bookshelf with a few books in the English language which I have read more times than I can count. But we aren’t locked in and have never been. Javier knows that if we ever try to escape that we won’t get far. I don’t even know where in Mexico I am. But I know that wherever it is it wouldn’t be easy for a young woman like me to find her way back into the United States alone. The second I walk out that door and make my way down that dark, dusty road alone is the second I choose suicide as my path.

The American, wearing a long, black trench coat over black clothes sits on the wooden chair in the living room, his back straight, and his gaze expertly filtering every motion within the room. But no one seems to notice this but me. Something tells me that even though Lydia and I are completely hidden inside our room in a dark hallway which barely allows us to see the living room that this man knows we’re watching. He knows everything that is going on around him: one of Javier’s men standing in the shadow of the opposite hall with his gun hidden at the ready. The six men standing in wait outside on the porch. The two men directly behind him with assault rifles cemented to their hands. These two haven’t taken their eyes off the American’s back, but I think the American, although not facing them, sees more of them than they do of him. And then there are the more obvious people in the room: Javier, a dangerous Mexican drug lord who sits directly in front of the American. Smiling and confident and completely unafraid. And then there is Javier’s sister, wearing her usual whorish dress so short that she doesn’t need to bend over for everyone in the room to see that she doesn’t wear panties. She wants the American. She wants anyone who she can ***ually abuse, but this man…there’s something more obsessive in her eyes when it comes to him. And the American knows this, too.

“I only agreed to meet with you,” the American says in fluent Spanish, “because I was assured that you would not waste my time.” He glances at Javier’s sister briefly. She licks her lips. He is unfazed. “I do business only with you. Get rid of the whore or we have nothing to discuss.” His unmoving expression never falters.

Javier’s sister, Izel, looks like someone just slapped her across the face. She starts to speak, but Javier hushes her with only a look and then jerks his head back slightly to demand she leave the room. She does as she’s told, but as usual not without a string of curses that follow her out the front door.

Javier smirks at the American and raises a mug of coffee to his lips. After taking a sip he says, “My offer is three million, American.” He sets the mug on the table that separates the two of them and then leans casually back against the chair, one leg crossed over the other. “I understand that your price was two million?” Javier turns his chin at an angle, looking to the American for recognition of his generous offer.

The American doesn’t give him any.

“I still don’t know how you can you understand what they’re saying so easily,” Lydia whispers quietly.

I want to hush her so that I can hear everything between Javier and the American, but I don’t.

“Live among only Spanish-speaking people for years and you learn to understand it,” I say, but I never take my eyes off of them. “In time, you’ll be as fluent as I am.”

I sense Lydia’s body tense up. She wants to go home as much as I did when I was brought here at fourteen. But she knows as well as I did that she might be here forever and the heavy weight of that reality is what ultimately makes her quiet again.

“The only reason a man such as yourself,” the American begins, “would offer over the going rate would be to secure some kind of hold over me.” He lets out a small, aggravated breath and leans his back against the chair, letting his hands slide away from his knees. “Either that, or you’re desperate, which leads me to believe that my mark, the one you want me to kill, would be willing to pay me more to kill you.”

Javier’s confident grin disappears from his face. He swallows hard and straightens his back awkwardly, but tries to retain some confidence over the situation. For all he knows, that might be exactly why the American is here right now.

“My reasons are not important,” Javier says.

He takes another sip from the mug to hide his discomfort.

“You’re right,” the American says so calmly. “The only important thing here is that you tell Guillermo back there to lower the gun from behind me and that if he doesn’t within three seconds he will be dead.”

Javier and one of the men standing behind the American lock eyes. But three seconds goes by too quickly and I hear a near-silent shot resound and a pop! as a splatter of blood sprays the other man standing beside him. ‘Guillermo’ hits the floor, dead. No one, not even me, seems to know how the American pulled that shot off. He hasn’t even moved. The man standing next to the dead man freezes in his spot, his black eyes wide beneath his oily black hair. Javier purses his lips and swallows again, having a harder time hiding that discomfort of his every unnerving second that passes. His men outnumber the American, but it’s obvious that Javier doesn’t want him dead. Not right now. He raises a hand palm up to order the others to lower their weapons.

The American pulls his hand from inside his trench coat and places his gun on his leg for all to see. His finger remains on the trigger. Javier glances down nervously at the gun once.

Lydia is digging her fingernails into my ribs. I reach down carefully and move her hands away, feeling her body relax now that she realizes what she’s doing. Her breathing is rapid. I drape my arm around her shoulder and pull her into my chest. She’s not used to seeing people die. Not yet. But one day she will be. Cupping one side of her head within my hand, I press my lips against her hair to calm her.

Javier gestures with the dismissing wave of two fingers and says, “Clean this mess up,” to the other gunman standing behind the American. The gunman seems more than happy to oblige, not wanting to end up like his comrade. Every eye in the room is on the American. Not that they weren’t before, but now they are more obvious, much more observant.

“You’ve made your point,” Javier says.

“I wasn’t trying to make one,” the American corrects him.

Javier nods in acknowledgment.

“Three million American dollars,” Javier says. “Do you accept the offer?”

It’s obvious that the American has done more than take Javier down a few notches. He may not be running away in fear or cowering in the corner, but it’s clear that he’s been put in his place. And this is not easy to do. It worries me what Javier might do in retaliation when he feels he has the opportunity. It worries me only because I need that American to get me out of here.

“What are they saying?” Lydia asks, frustrated that she has a long way to go before she will be able to decipher anything said around this place.

I don’t answer, but I squeeze her shoulder once to indicate that I need her to stop talking.

“Three and a half is my price,” the American says.

Javier’s face falls and I think his nostrils just flared. He’s not used to being second best.

“But you said—”

“The price went up,” the American says, leaning his back against the chair again and tapping the butt of his gun softly against his black pants. He offers no more explanation and doesn’t need to. Javier already seems accepting.

Javier nods. “Sí. Sí. Three and a half million. Can you have it done in one week?”

The American stands up, his long black coat falling about his body. He is tall and intimidating with short brown hair buzzed around the back and slightly longer and spiky on top.

I pull Lydia away from the door and shut it softly.

“What are you doing?” she asks as I rush over to the rickety chest of drawers that holds all of the clothes that she and I share.

“We’re...

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“But how will you find me?”

Tears choke her voice.

“I don’t know,” I admit. “But the American will know. He will help me.”

That look in her eyes, it’s hopeless. She doesn’t believe for a second that this insane plan of mine is going to work. And I probably wouldn’t have either nine years ago, but desperation makes a person do crazy things. Lydia’s face hardens and she reaches up to wipe the tears from her cheeks. It’s as if she knows this is the last time she will ever see me.

I kiss her hard on the forehead.

“I will come back for you.”

She nods slowly and I push my way through the tiny room with the pillowcase slung over my back.

“Get under the covers,” I hiss at her as I push open the window.

As Lydia hides under the blanket, I climb my way out the window and into the mild October heat. I crouch low behind the house and make my way around the side and through the hole in the fence surrounding the south side of the compound. Javier has gunmen everywhere, but I’ve always found them rather dense and lacking in the guard-the-compound-from-escapees area because rarely does anyone try to escape. Mostly the guards all stand around talking and smoking cigarettes and making vulgar gestures to the other girls who are enslaved here. The one standing at the entrance to the armory is the one who tried to rape me six weeks ago. The only reason Javier didn’t kill him is because that one is his brother.

But brother or not, he is now a eunuch.

Weaving my way in-between small buildings, I make it to the tree-line and stop in the shadows cast by the nearby house. I stand up straight and press my back against the stucco and make my way carefully around to the front where the twelve-foot barbwire fence starts at the front gate. Outsiders are always made to park their vehicles just beyond it where they are escorted into the compound on foot.

The American would not have been allowed in any differently. I’m sure of it. I hope.

A large swath of light from the post covers the space between me and the area of the gate that I need to get to. There is one guard posted there, but he’s younger and I think I can take him. I’ve had plenty of time to work these things out. All of my teenage life. I stole a handgun from Izel’s room last year and have kept it hidden under a floorboard in mine and Lydia’s room ever since. The second I saw the American enter the house I had pulled back the floorboard to retrieve it and shoved it in the back of my shorts. I knew I’d need it tonight.

I inhale a deep breath and dash across the light in the wide open and just hope that no one spots me. I run hard and fast with the pillowcase beating against my back and the gun gripped in my hand so tight it hurts the bones in my fingers. I make it to the fence and breathe a sigh of relief when I find another shadow to hide within. Shadows move at a distance, coming from the house I just left. I feel sick to my stomach and could actually vomit if I didn’t know I had more important things to do and fast. My heart is hammering against my ribcage. I spot the guard out ahead standing near the front gate and leaning against a tree. The hot amber of a cigarette glows around his copper-colored face and then fades as he pulls his lips away from the filter. The silhouette of his assault rifle gives the impression that he has the gun strap tossed over one shoulder. Thankfully he isn’t holding it at the ready. I walk quickly along the edge of the fence, trying to stay hidden in the shadow cast by the trees on the other side of it. My worn out flip-flops move over the soft sand making no sound at all. The guard is so close that I can smell the funk of his body odor and see the oil glistening in his unwashed air.

I creep up closer, hoping my movement doesn’t attract him. I’m right behind him now and I’m about to pee myself. My legs are shaking and my throat has closed up almost to the point that I can hardly breathe. Carefully and as quietly as possible, I pull my gun back and hit him over the head with the butt as hard as I can. A loud whack! and a crunch! turns my stomach. He falls over unconscious and the burning cigarette hits the sand beside his knees. I grab his gun, practically having to tear it off his arm because of the heavy weight of his body, and then I take off running through the cracked gate and outside the compound.

Just as I had hoped there is only one vehicle parked out front: a slick black car that is probably the most out-of-place object in this area for miles. Nothing here but slums and filth. This is an expensive city car with shiny rims and an attitude.

One more hurdle. But upon seeing the car my confidence in the American having left the doors unlocked are diminishing. Surely he wouldn’t in these parts. I place my hand on the back passenger’s side door and I hold my breath. The door pops open. I don’t have time to be relieved when I hear voices coming through the front gate and I catch a glimpse of a moving shadow from the corner of my eye. I crawl in the back floorboard and shut the door quickly before those approaching are close enough to hear it shut.

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 c*ck 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...

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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...

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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.

The American stands over me like a ghost come from out of nowhere.

“Why did you tie me up?” I’m shaking so bad I hope he doesn’t notice. I don’t want him to know the true level of my fear.

He leans over and picks me up from the floor and lays me back on the bed. I try to kick and hit him until I realize how stupid that is because the only thing it might do is cause me to fall and hit the floor again. Without answering, he goes back around to the other side where he was sitting and puts his hand in a bowl of water on the night stand. He wrings the water from a rag and brings it toward my face, but I try to pull away from him. It doesn’t faze him. Nothing ever seems to, really. I know I’m not going anywhere right now so I just lay here very still, staring directly into his eyes even though he’s not looking back into mine.

I want him to see me, to see the anger in my face, but he doesn’t care to look.

“You punched me?” I can’t believe it, but then again I can.

“Yes.” He dabs the cold wet cloth over my left eye and around the bone.

“So you’re a murderer and a woman beater.”

His dark eyes finally look directly into mine and his hand stops moving as if my accusation struck him the wrong way.

He looks away and goes back to dabbing my face.

“I don’t hit women,” he says, “unless they have a gun pointed at my head.”

I don’t respond to that. He makes a notable argument, if it can be called an argument.

“Do I have a black eye?”

“No,” he says, pulling the wet rag away. “I did not hit you that hard. Just a little swollen.”

I look at him like he’s crazy. “No? Yet you hit me hard enough to knock me unconscious the whole night?”

He stands up from the bed, his tall height looming over me, and walks over to his coat hanging over the back of the chair. He reaches inside one of the pockets and pulls out a bottle of pills.

“You woke up shortly after I knocked you out,” he says as he twists the cap off the bottle. “I had to drug you.”

I blink back the stun.

He shuffles a little white pill into the palm of his hand and holds it out to me. I’m still looking at him like he’s crazy, maybe now even more-so.

“You drugged me? What is that?”

I want to slap him. If my hands weren’t bound I would.

“Sleeping pill,” he says, putting the pill to my lips. “Harmless. I take it myself. You, on the other hand, only need half of one, I know that now.”

I spit the pill onto the yellowed sheet beneath me.

“I think I’ve slept enough.”

“Suit yourself.” He slides the bottle back inside his coat and moves toward the door.

“Where are you going?”

He stops at the window instead and pulls the curtain closed the rest of the way but remains at it watching out through a crack in the thick fabric. With his back to me, I try quietly to work my wrists free.

“Nowhere at the moment,” he says and then turns around again and I stop struggling with my bonds in an instant so that he doesn’t notice.

“Okay…well then what are we doing here and why am I tied up?”

He looks right at me. “Waiting on the men Javier sent here to get you.”

I just swallowed my throat. Tears spring instantly from the corners of my eyes. I start to thrash around, trying my hardest to get my hands and legs free, but to no avail. He tied me better than they tied the pigs back at the compound.

“Please! You can’t let them take me! I’m begging you….”

“It is out of my hands,” he says looking back out the window. “It is why I offered the pill. I thought you’d prefer to be unconscious when they arrive.”

I feel like I’m going to be sick. My heart is beating too fast, my insides are stiffening and I feel like I can’t breathe. I force my body to sit upright and I throw my legs over the side of the bed and try to stand.

“Sit down,” he says turning to look at me again.

Tears barrel from my eyes and I raise my bound hands out toward him. “Please…,” I choke on my tears, my chest shuddering and jerking with fast, uneven breaths. “Don’t let them take me back there!”

“I will ask you one more time,” he says turning to face me fully. “Do you want to be awake for what is about to happen?”

“I don’t want it to happen!” I scream.

I pull my arms up and try working the fabric loose from my wrists with my teeth. The American ignores me and moves over to a long black flat suitcase of sorts sitting on the floor propped against the far wall. Carrying it by the handle he places it on the end of the bed near me and flips the latches to raise the lid, blocking my view from what’s hidden inside.

A sharp glint of reflective sunlight beams against the back of the curtain and the sound of squeaky brakes outside twists my stomach into knots further. I freeze on the edge of the bed, my teeth still clenched around the fabric, my eyes wide and fearful. I look to and from the door and the American who stands at the foot of the bed twisting a long metal thing on the end of a slick black handgun. And then so fast, yet as casual as an early morning walk, he closes the suitcase and slides it underneath the bed and out of sight.

He comes toward me.

I try to kick him again but my bound ankles keep me from doing anything but nearly causing me to fall off the bed.

“No! Leave me alone! Please don’t do this!”

With his free hand he grabs me by the elbow and pulls me harshly to my feet, the gun pointed at the floor in his other hand and then he walks me awkwardly across the small room and toward a tiny restroom.

There is a knock at the door but the American pays no attention to it. He drags me into the restroom and practically pushes me into the disgusting tub. I think my head is going to hit the side but he holds me by the fabric on my wrists and lowers me in the rest of the way safely.

“Stay down low. Don’t raise your head and don’t move.”

“What?” I blink back the confusion. I’m so scared I feel like I’m going to lose control of my bladder any second now.

“Do you understand?” he asks, looming over me. The seriousness in his eyes is palpable.

I hesitate because, no, I don’t understand, but then I just nod in fast, jerking motions.

He reaches around to the back of his pants and slides a knife out from somewhere. My eyes grow wider as the sharp silver moves toward me. Just when I think he’s going to cut me, even though I don’t know why he’d go through all of this just to kill me, he cuts the bonds from my ankles.

“Stay down,” he demands one last time.

And just like that he leaves the restroom and shuts the door behind him.

Frozen in shock, it takes me a moment to get my head together. I gaze down at my unbound feet and I wonder why he did it. Why keep my hands bound but allow me the use of my legs again so that I can run away? It doesn’t matter. I need to free my hands, too. I bite down on the tight knots again, working at them furiously but only getting frustrated. I barely lift my head from the tub to get a better view of the restroom, looking for anything that might work as a knife or scissors so I can try cutting it away instead. Nothing. Just a bone-dry deep plastic industrial-type sink with paint, oil and dirt stains and a disgusting toilet with no lid.

The door opens to the motel room and I hear voices inside.

“Where is she?”

Oh no…that’s Izel’s voice!

My heart speeds up so fast I feel lightheaded as the blood rushes quickly to my head. I bite down on the fabric even harder, twisting the impossible knots with my teeth until it hurts.

“Javier wonders why you didn’t just bring her back yourself,” Izel adds with her trademark sultry, sarcastic tone.

There are more voices, male, speaking Spanish among themselves while Izel talks only to the American. Their voices are muffled. I can’t make out what they’re saying.

“Have a seat,” the American says calmly.

“We didn’t come here to visit,” Izel refuses. “Give me Sarai…or—.” I can picture her walking toward the American like the slithering snake she is. “Or, you and I can be alone together for a while first. I would like that.”

Her voice stops abruptly and her seductive tone disappears in an instant. “Fine! Fine! ****ing puto. You’d rather shoot me than f**k me?”

“Yes. I would rather,” the...

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I push it open barely a crack. The mirror over the sink just outside the door is in view. All that’s left of it now are three large uneven shards of broken glass barely hanging onto the wall.

I can see the American’s back through the reflection.

“I should tell you,” he says. “There will be a new deal now.”

“You’re not the one to be making deals,” Izel spits out the words.

“I believe that I am,” he replies. “First, you will tell me what Javier’s plans were in bringing me to the compound.”

“I’ll tell you ****!”

A muffled shot makes a quick fuddup sound and then Izel screams out in pain. “You f**king shot me!”

The American moves over and out of sight of the mirror, leaving me to glimpse Izel sitting on the chair next to the wall. Her face glistens with sweat and blood drains from the gunshot wound on her thigh, her hands pressed over it trying to stop the flow. Her bronzed face is contorted in agony and anger. She spits at the floor defiantly.

“Merely a flesh wound,” the American says.

I push myself farther against the door. A pair of hands lay open near Izel’s feet: one of the men the American just killed. I swallow hard and try to calm my breathing. The door moves as my hip brushes against it and I suck in sharply that breath I just took. Izel’s head darts sideways as she faces the mirror. She knows I’m hiding in here. I try to step away from the door and move back into the darkness of the restroom, but she sees me. A grin spreads across her face.

“Come out, Sarai,” she says harmoniously. “Javier misses you.”

I don’t move. Maybe if I remain still, what she sees in the reflection of the mirror she’ll start to believe is just the light playing tricks on her eyes.

She turns her gaze away from me as if the American has done something to regain her attention.

“Javier wants Guzmán dead,” Izel says. “He wouldn’t have hired you and let you leave with that money if he didn’t.” She sneers and shakes her head at the American and adds, “You’re a fool.”

I hear the bed creak as if he just sat on the end of it, facing her. While she’s distracted, I position myself farther back from the edge of the door, but in a way that I can get a better view of the room through the reflection in the mirror. I glimpse another body lying haphazardly against the wall on the other side of her.

“And if I kill Guzmán,” the American says, “I will have no trouble getting the other half of my money.” It was a statement, but at the same time, a question.

Izel grins. “Of course.” She tilts her head to one side. “She’s gotten to you already.”

No answer. I know Izel is referring to me.

“The girl wasn’t bought or sold, just so you know,” she adds.

“I didn’t ask.”

“You didn’t need to.”

Izel looks toward the mirror again, without moving her head.

“Going to be the hero?” she says this with sarcasm lacing her voice.

“Hardly,” the American says. “I’m going to use her as leverage.”

I swallow hard.

Should’ve kept my mouth shut….

“That won’t sit well with Javier. She wasn’t part of the deal. You keep the girl and Javier will not be happy.” A strand of black hair falls away from her face. She reaches up as if to move the rest of her hair away, but her hand stops halfway and she places it back down beside her. Anger helps to hide the fear in her face somewhat. She knows that he’ll blow her brains out the back of her head.

“The girl stays with me until I kill Guzmán and then we will make the trade: her for the rest of my money.”

“And what if Javier doesn’t give a ****?”

“You wouldn’t be here now if he didn’t.”

CHAPTER FOUR

Izel rounds her chin defiantly, the skin around her dark eyes peppered with tiny flecks of blood-splatter.

“You’re making a mistake,” she spats, defeat in her voice. “If you want a girl, Javier will give you one. Just not that one. You’ll only make him your enemy by doing this.”

I know that worry in her voice all too well. When Javier is unhappy, he tends to blame it on Izel. If she doesn’t return to the compound with me, he’ll beat her senseless. As much as I hate her for the things she’s done to me, I can’t help but pity her sometimes, too.

“Your offer offends my intelligence,” the American says. “She is the one I want because she is the one he treasures the most. If Javier has no ill intentions then he should have nothing to worry about.” Izel glances toward the bathroom door quickly while he speaks. “I keep the girl until I kill Guzmán. Javier pays me the remainder of my money. I give the girl back. We all leave with what we want.”

I want to dash out of the bathroom and try for one of the cars outside, but I know I won’t make it. My palms are sweating and stinging. I cut my left hand somewhere at some point. I can’t remember when it happened.

Izel curses him in Spanish and presses the palms of her hands on the seat beneath her and begins to rise into a stand.

The American very casually raises his gun and she freezes, anger and resistance in her face.

“Fold your hands together behind the chair,” the American says.

“Go f**k yourself.”

Thwap! Izel’s body jerks sideways, almost knocking the chair over with her in it. “Mother****er!” she cries out, holding her hand over a fresh bullet wound on the opposite thigh to match the other one.

The American never moves, his expression and posture always casual and controlled.

“Fold your hands together behind the chair,” he says once more with the exact amount of calm as before.

This time, Izel is compliant. Reluctant and defiant as always, but compliant.

“Come out of the bathroom,” I hear the American say.

I don’t want to. I quietly push my back against the wall, thrusting my bound hands over my chest and lock my fingers together nervously in front of me. I sniffle back the tears, the taste of salt draining down the back of my throat. What should I do? If I just stand here like this it’ll only prolong the inevitable. There’s no way out of this bathroom except through that door.

Finally, I do as he says.

Trying to push the door open the rest of the way, I have to shoulder it hard because of the body lying on the floor on the other side. I try not to look when I step around the man’s left arm, contorted unnaturally behind him, but I glimpse enough that it makes my stomach churn. Especially when I see his eyes. It’s always the eyes, lifeless and empty and glazed over, that makes me sick to my stomach. I take a deep breath and step over him. Izel smiles across at me, not as affected by two gunshot wounds as I imagine anyone else might be. Her breathing is labored and she strains to keep her composure for the sake of taunting me.

“Come here,” the American says and I do.

He pulls the knife from his pocket again and his eyes avert to my wrists briefly. Assuming—and hoping—it’s what he wants, I hold my shaking hands out to him. He slides the blade behind the fabric and cuts me loose.

“Did you tell him that you’re a whore?” Izel asks.

I swallow what saliva is left in my mouth. I’m no whore, but she has always had a way with somehow making me feel ashamed by her accusations. I pretend to be more fixated on my wrists, now that they are no longer tied together.

Izel turns to the American, her hands still folded loosely behind her back. She says with a spiteful smile, “If you’re feeling sorry for her, don’t. That little puta is treated better than anyone, even better than me and I am his sister. Javier has her anytime he wants her. And he doesn’t have to take it.”

I feel my fingers digging into my palms down at my sides now, but shame eclipses my anger. What she says is only halfway true, but right now isn’t the time to defend myself. Nothing that I say will matter. Not to the American and certainly not to her. I only care what the American thinks because I need him to help me. If he thinks of me as a whore, he’ll surely be less inclined later on. If I can ever convince him to help, that is, which is doubtful.

Showing absolutely no interest in Izel’s obvious attempt to mar my character, the American points to his bag on the table by the window and says to me, “Left zipper, inside pocket you’ll find a rope.”

I walk across the room carefully, my heart pounding violently against my ribs when I go between the two, the hairs on my arms and the back of my neck stand on end as I pass them. I halfway expected Izel to use the opportunity to reach out and grab me, but am relieved when she doesn’t dare move. Making my way through more bodies and debris scattered about the small area, this time I’m too afraid of the two still alive in the room to let myself notice the dead eyes staring up at me from the floor. I smell the blood. At least, I’m pretty sure that faint metallic stench is blood. There’s so much of it all around me. The curtain on the broken window blows inward as a small gust of warm wind pushes through. I reach...

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“Lydia had nothing to do with it!” I yell in Spanish, as if I’m still back at the compound.

I know she’s trying to get to me, but I also know that what she’s saying about Lydia being punished is true and already I’m regretting my reaction. Because it’s exactly what she wanted to see. This entire situation just changed in the worst way. It’s not just about me anymore. I should’ve known this before I crawled out that window. Javier and Izel knew how close Lydia and I became in her short time there.

A large part of me wants to give up and go back, but now with the American controlling the situation, that’s no longer in the cards.

“Stop talking and tie her hands behind her,” the American says from behind.

“Fine. Go ahead. Do what you want with her,” I say to Izel as I walk around behind her chair. “I got out. She didn’t. It’s sad, but there’s nothing I can do about it. I’m not going back to that place, not even for her.” I hope she believes me, that I don’t care what happens to Lydia, so maybe they won’t use her against me.

“I said stop talking.”

The unnatural frustration in the American’s tone, though restrained, is enough to get both of our attention. Izel and I look over at him at the same time.

I do exactly as he says, fearing he might just shoot me in the leg next, and I crouch behind Izel and start tying her wrists together. The American watches Izel seemingly without blinking, waiting for her to slip up and give him more reason to shoot her. I bind her wrists good, wrapping the semi-stretchy rope three times, tying it into a knot each round. Once the rope pinches her skin, Izel tosses her head to the side in an attempt to see me, her teeth gritting in anger. “Watch it,” she snaps and her long black hair falls to one side around her face. I tie the last knot even tighter, just because I can. If looks could kill, I’d be dead ten times over.

“Now step away from her,” the American instructs.

He stands from the bed and slides his elongated suitcase out from underneath it.

I step away and with the backward tilt of his head I continue to follow his instructions and make my way over next to him. He takes my wrist in one hand and his suitcase in the other and walks me toward the door. He only lets go of my wrist long enough to pick his bag up from the table and shoulder it.

He leaves his long black coat. Surely he sees it, but I get the feeling he’s leaving it draped over the back of the chair on purpose.

“I’ll kill you if you leave me here like this,” Izel growls through gritted teeth, but her threat comes out thickly with desperation. She begins to struggle in the chair, trying to work her hands free. “Don’t leave me like this! How can I tell Javier what you want if I’m stuck in this room?”

Sunlight fills the room when the American opens the door with two fingers from the hand holding the suitcase.

“You’ll get yourself free in time,” he says and steps out the door with me at his side. “Inform Javier that I will be in touch and not to lose or discard the cell phone number that I last called him on.” He pulls the door shut with the same two fingers and I hear Izel’s livid voice screaming curses at us from inside as we leave her there.

He guides me around to the front passenger’s seat and closes the door behind me once I’m inside. The trunk pops open and he hides his suitcase and black duffle bag away inside of it.

I hear four muffled shots outside the car as he takes out two tires on each of the trucks parked out front.

He shuts the driver’s side door and looks over at me.

“Put on your seatbelt,” he says and looks away from my eyes, turning the key in the ignition.

The car hums to life as I click my seatbelt in place quickly.

“You shoot women,” I say quietly.

He backs out of the dirt-covered space in front of the odd roadside motel, which really looks more like a five-room shack.

The American presses his foot on the brake and looks over at me again. “Flesh wounds,” he says and shifts the car into Drive. “She’ll live. And that one was hardly a woman.” He pulls away, the sleek black car stirring up a cloud of dirt behind us.

He’s right in that aspect. Izel is a woman, but she doesn’t deserve to be treated like one and it’s her own fault.

As we’re speeding down the dusty highway and away from the motel, the American reaches into the console between us and retrieves a small black cell phone. Running his finger over the screen, the speakerphone comes on and suddenly Izel’s voice fills the car. I’m confused by it at first but soon understand that, if I’m right, there was a reason he left his long coat in the room, after all.

I listen to Izel’s voice stream through the tiny speaker:

“He’s gone! Get up and untie me! Hurry!”

A rustling sound muffles her voice and then other strange, unidentifiable noises.

“Get me out of these ropes!”

One of the men was left alive?

I glance over at the American whose eyes remain fixed on the road out ahead, but his ears are fully open to the voices in his hand. He knew. He knew all along that one of them lay there pretending to be dead. I shudder to think I walked over his body, or around it, so close he could’ve grabbed me by the ankle and took me down with him.

More shuffling and cracking noises funnel through the speakerphone. I hear Izel tell the man to give her a phone and seconds later she’s speaking to Javier:

“Sí, Javier. He took her. He killed them. No.”

She becomes quiet as Javier, I know without having to hear him, threatens her on the other end of the phone.

“Sí,” she says gravelly as if forcing herself to agree though it takes everything in her to do so.

Then I hear a loud shot and shortly after a thump! and I can only assume that she just killed the man who helped her, likely out of anger for whatever Javier said.

Everything becomes quiet now. Maybe Izel left the room. Several seconds pass and still nothing, only the low static hum of the speakerphone itself. The American, although not famous for facial expressions, seems disappointed. He hangs the phone up, rolls the window down beside him and tosses it onto the highway. Then he makes a sharp U-turn and drives in the opposite direction.

“I take it you didn’t hear what you wanted to?” I ask carefully.

His right hand drops from the steering wheel and rests along the top of his leg.

“No,” he answers.

“You still doubt what I told you,” I say.

In my peripheral vision, I see him turn his head slightly to look at me. I’m not comfortable enough with him to meet his eyes when he instigates it. I never will be.

But he doesn’t answer.

A minute later, I say, “I’m not a whore. She was only trying to get to you in case you have any pity for me.”

Maybe I’m insulting his intelligence, just like Izel had at one point, but this is my way of defending myself from her accusation. I want him to know. And I don’t want him to think that way of me.

I go on, finally looking at him now that his eyes are back on the road again.

“But you never had any pity for me to begin with.”

Again, my attempt to engage him in conversation seems to go unnoticed and I give up and lay my head against the car window.

“I know you’re not a whore,” he says.

CHAPTER FIVE

It’s been on rare occasion that I saw much of any other part of Mexico during the day, other than the compound. Javier wasn’t big on sight-seeing, or an early Sunday morning drive. I spent much of my life cooped up behind those fences, only leaving when Lydia and I were relocated with the other girls before other dangerous drug lords came to meet with Javier. It was Javier’s way of keeping us ‘safe’ in case a deal went bad. But we always traveled at night, so despite the predicament I’m in now, I find myself in mild awe as I look out the car window while the bright Mexican landscape flies by.

We’ve been driving for two hours.

“I’m hungry,” I say.

A few quiet seconds pass before he answers.

“I have nothing to eat in this car.”

“Well, can’t we stop somewhere?”

“No.”

If I could at least get him to stop answering my questions like that, I’d almost be satisfied.

“If you’re worried about me trying to run off,” I say, turning sideways to better see him, “then go to a drive-thru. I haven’t had anything to eat since early morning yesterday. Please....”

“There are no drive-thru’s here.”

“Where is here, anyway?” Suddenly, my hunger has taken the backseat. “At least tell me where I’ve spent the last nine years of my life.”

I saw one road sign several minutes back, but I didn’t recognize the name from anything I’ve seen on the maps I’ve poured over time and time again, mostly the maps in an American high school textbook from 1997.

“We are now five miles south of Nacozari de García.”

I sigh, frustrated with myself for not having any idea where that is, either.

“You’re less than two hours from...

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“If you want food,” the American says, turning off the engine, “come inside and eat.”

I’m surprised that we’ve stopped at all, much less to feed me. He walks around to my side of the car and opens the door, likely just to make sure he stays by my side at all times rather than to be gentlemanly. He stands there waiting patiently for me to get out. Finally, I do, just after slipping my bare feet down into my flip-flops in the floorboard.

This place can’t be called a roadside diner; I think it would need a few more tables for that, but there is a place to sit and eat, off in a dark corner near a single black door. I have a microwaved chicken sandwich from the freezer; the American, nothing but black coffee. The two of us look out-of-place here. Both of us obviously with no Spanish genes, in a place that is clearly not a tourist town, him dressed in expensive black slacks and shoes, which were probably shiny at one time but are now covered in a fine layer of dirt. I know I must smell pretty bad. I don’t remember the last time I wore deodorant.

I scarf down half of the chicken sandwich and gulp the bottled water until it’s nearly empty. I learned a long time ago never to drink the water in these parts, that if it isn’t from an unopened bottle, it’ll probably make me sick.

The American sips his coffee gradually, reading the contents of a local newspaper of sorts. If I didn’t know better, we could almost pass for an unconventional married couple having breakfast in any typical American town. Unconventional because I’m only twenty-three, and the American, he’s older than me. Middle to late thirties, maybe. If I didn’t know what he was and I just saw him sitting here one day, like he is now with both feet on the floor and his dress-shirt-covered elbows on the table, I’d find him attractive for an older man. He’s clean cut, though with stubble in a pattern along his face. He has sharp cheekbones and piercing blue-green eyes that seem to contain everything but reveal nothing. And he’s very tall, lean and frightening. I find it notable how he scares me more than Javier ever did, yet without having to say a word. At the same time, I feel like I’m better off with the American than I ever was with the likes of Javier.

At least, for now. That’ll change, I’m sure, when he tries to hand me back over to him.

But I’ll die before I let that happen.

“Are you ever going to tell me your name?” I ask.

He raises his eyes from the newspaper without moving his head.

I can sense immediately that he doesn’t care to tell me, to get that personal with his ‘hostage’, but finally he throws me a bone.

“Victor.”

I’m so stunned he even told me that it takes me a second to think of what to say next.

I sip my water.

“Where are you from?” I ask.

It’s worth a try.

“Why don’t you finish your food,” he suggests and peers back down into the paper.

“You know my name. You know where I’m from. Why don’t you humor me, Victor?” The bitterness in my tone wasn’t an accident.

I figure that if he was going to kill me, I’d be dead already, so I’m not really as afraid of him as my conscience is telling me I should be.

He sighs with annoyance and shakes his head subtly.

“I was born in Boston,” he says. “I have a sister. A year younger than me. My mother is somewhere in Budapest. My father, he’s dead. He was my first kill.”

That small ounce of bravery I summoned evaporates right out of my pores. I look carefully to both sides of me, looking for the man behind the counter who sold us the food. He’s on the opposite side of the store, sweeping the floor and not paying a lick of attention to us.

I look back at…Victor, nervously swallowing what’s left of the saliva in my mouth.

“You killed your father?” I have to believe it was for some obvious reason: his father beat his mother, something along those lines.

He nods.

“Why? How old were you?”

“I think you know enough about me,” he says and takes a sip of his coffee, his long, manicured fingers curled gently around the tiny white Styrofoam cup. “You asked to know more about me and I told you. It was a favor. Not an invitation to ask more questions.”

I wonder why he told me something like that to begin with. Maybe he was just trying to scare me in*****bmission so I’d stop talking altogether.

I stand up from the tiny table. He raises his eyes from the newspaper again.

“I need to use the restroom,” I say.

Setting the newspaper on the table beside his coffee, he stands up to join me. He takes my wrist gently into his hand and I pull it away, shaking my head no. “I can go by myself,” I insist.

“Yes, but I’m going to go with you.”

I cross my arms over my chest and blink with surprise. “You can’t be serious. I’m not using it with you standing there.”

“Then you’re not going to use it.”

My mouth falls open with a spat of air. I look back and forth between him and the door behind him that I’m hoping is a restroom—there are no obvious signs indicating anything. I can detect his annoyance with me, faintly in his face; it makes me feel like I just interrupted his nightly love affair with a glass of wine and classical music.

It doesn’t take me long to understand, really.

“I doubt it’ll be like it is in the movies,” I say. “I try to climb out the window after you make the rookie decision to let me go in alone.” I’m not trying to be mouthy, I’m only stating the obvious. I hope he gets that.

“Take it or leave it,” he says. “If you don’t go now, you might be holding it a while.”

I bite down on the inside of my cheek. “Fine,” I give in and step around and in front of him.

He walks behind me into the restroom. There is one toilet that looks as though it has never once been cleaned in the decades it has been here. Four dirty walls with peeling paint and a burn mark near the tiny window that I doubt I would’ve been able to squeeze through if I had been given the chance to try. The room is so small I can reach out and touch Victor as he stands facing the door with his back to me, his hands folded down in front of him. Feeling only a little embarrassed—unfortunately, peeing in front of a madman isn’t new to me, either—I pull my shorts and panties down and take a seat. When I’m done, I have to drip dry. Toilet paper really is a luxury that Americans take for granted.

As I’m pulling up my clothes, I notice Victor’s shoulders from behind tense up. And then I hear voices as though someone just came inside the store.

Victor reaches around to the back of his pants and slips his hand underneath his shirt, pulling a gun into view, his strong index finger already wrapped around the trigger.

“What is it?” I ask, fearful; already my hands are shaking.

Victor cracks open the door and peers outside, putting up his free hand behind him as if to tell me to be quiet.

Then he turns his head to me briefly and whispers, “Stay here,” and before I can question him, or protest, he disappears out the door and I’m left hiding inside yet another restroom. Only, this one doesn’t have a bathtub to help shield me from flying bullets and I find no comfort in that.

Despite my fears, I can’t stop myself from trying to get a glimpse of what’s going on, so I step up to the door and crack it just like Victor had and press my body against it, looking out. My hot, unsteady breath fills the confined space between the door and my face. I can barely make out the counter where the store owner stands off to the side with the broom still clutched in his old, chubby hands. But I can’t see his face. And I can’t see Victor. Several long anxiety-filled seconds go by and still no gunshots. I take that as a good sign. I notice a figure pass my line of vision, but it’s not Victor. And then another man walks by.

I hear voices in Spanish, though not entirely clear to me from my position behind the door. Something about a car part and a few seconds later, the store owner says he has one, but he’ll have to go around back to get it. I still see no sign of Victor. Did he leave me here? That thought strangely makes me even more afraid and I crack the door open just a little more, trying to get a better visual. At first my misplaced panic of being left alone here makes me second-guess my sanity, but then I realize all over again that despite Victor being an assassin and the fact that I’m being used as leverage in a dangerous game of pay up or die, I’m still a girl all alone in the most dangerous parts of a country that I’m not a native of.

Like it or not, Victor is my only protection until I can get over that border and I’m going to stick with him for as long as I can regardless of my desperate need to get away from him, too.

CHAPTER SIX

Finally, I glimpse the faces of both men, relieved that they don’t look at all familiar. I start to believe they are just passing through. Getting a little claustrophobic, I take it upon myself to open the door the rest of the way. I inhale a deep breath to compose myself and then step out of the restroom as casually as any other customer who just got done...

Killing Sarai
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We stop next to one of the bodies and Victor lets go of my wrist so that he can kneel down beside it. Reaching into the man’s back pocket on his jeans, he pulls out a wad of Mexican money. Sifting through the bills and finding nothing of note, he tosses the money on the dead man’s back and rummages the rest of his pockets, finding a gun hidden behind his belt. But there’s nothing out of the ordinary about that. He does the same to the other man, still not finding anything noteworthy except a set of keys that he decides to pocket.

“What are you looking for?”

“You should’ve stayed in the restroom like I told you.”

I’m surprised at the accusation in his voice; it’s so unlike him to show that much emotion, although it’s still not much.

“They weren’t Javier’s men,” I protest. “I was there long enough to remember every single one of them.”

Victor rises into a stand, seeming even taller than before, but I know it’s just my fear of him playing tricks on my eyes.

“You remember the ones you’ve seen,” he says. “But you’re a foolish girl if you think they are his only men.”

I sigh. “But they were only asking about car parts. Maybe they were having car troubles. I heard them talking.”

“You heard code,” he corrects me. “He asked the owner for a part that doesn’t belong on that truck.” He looks toward the front window of the store where another truck is parked out front. “When the store owner said that yes he had the part, he was telling them that you were here.”

Feeling foolish, I continue pretending, trying to come back from my moment of stupi***y. “Then why didn’t they do anything?”

He shakes his head lightly at me.

“They were keeping tabs on us,” he says. “Or, they were going to try and stall us, long enough to get more men here. Now come on. We have to leave.”

When I don’t follow fast enough, he takes my hand and leads me out of the store and we head straight for the newer truck parked out front, still nothing but a hunk of old metal, but newer than that old rusty Ford that had to have belonged to the owner.

He opens the door on the passenger’s side.

“Get in,” he demands.

Confused, I just look at him, but the next thing I know, he’s lifting me from the ground and forcing me into the cab. Not daring to fight him on this, or waste anymore of what little time I know we have left, I wait until he gets his guns and bags from his car and shoves it all between us on the seat. He slams the heavy metal door once he gets in on the other side.

“What are we doing exactly?”

He finds the right key to start the engine on the first try and the truck rumbles and spits to life. He reaches up to the gear shift next to the steering wheel and slams the truck into gear, narrowly missing the rickety wooden awning covering the front of the store as he makes a close, wide turn and speeds away.

“The car is too much of a giveaway,” he says. “I needed to get rid of it sooner, but running across a vehicle around here that won’t break down in twenty miles is a hit or miss.”

“I wondered why you drove something as nice as that here to begin with,” I say.

“I wasn’t a target then.”

“But now you are because of me.”

I look into the side mirror, watching the dirt swirl chaotically in the truck’s wake. We ride fast over the barren landscape, the truck lurching and bouncing over holes until we make it back onto a paved highway.

“Victor?” I ask, and he glances over at me as if me calling him by his name has hit some enigmatic nerve.

I decide not to say what I intended because I’ve already said it before and it made no difference then.

I look away and I feel his eyes leave me, too.

“Never mind,” I say.

Stick to the new plan, Sarai, I think to myself and feel ridiculous when for a split second I worry if he can hear my thoughts, too.

I’ll wait until we get over the border and then I’ll do whatever it takes to get away from him, even if it means I have to kill him.

~~~

Two hours later, we make it over the border and into Arizona without any trouble from border patrol. Victor spoke to a Border Patrol Inspector, who clearly saw that we had a suspicious-looking suitcase and two duffle bags sitting between us on the seat. They had words in Spanish, though they were few and didn’t make much sense to me, which led me to believe that, like the men back at the convenience store, it was all some kind of code.

Neither the suitcase, nor the bag or even the truck was checked. I don’t care to know why. It doesn’t make any difference to me if Victor has connections of some kind with border patrol which allows him easy access into and out of the United States. That remains obvious to me. But I don’t care. All I care about is my next move.

It takes everything in me to hide my relief and anxiety, knowing that after nine years I’m finally on U.S. soil again. I want to open the door on this truck right now driving fifty-miles per hour down the highway and jump out, rolling bruised and bloody across the desert-like landscape and to my freedom. But I can’t. I have to wait just a little longer, at least until we stop somewhere where there are places I can hide. A city, perhaps. A little lone gas station out in the middle of nowhere won’t do. If I was lucky enough to manage to get away, the only place I could go is out into the wide open, which encompasses every space in every direction as far as I can see.

I don’t want to end up like the store owner, face down in the dirt with a bullet in my back.

Finally, I see a small cluster of lights and buildings on the horizon, dwarfed by a cascade of mountains in the background. We soon come to a stop in a parking lot behind a five-story hotel in Douglas, Arizona.

I get out of the truck and shut the door while Victor grabs his bags from the front seat. Scanning the area, looking for the best way to run which might provide me a place to hide when he comes after me, I see the only way to go is across the street where more buildings are situated.

I glance covertly over at Victor and use that second he’s shouldering his duffle bags to take off running toward the street. Dashing through the light traffic and easily missing the cars, I make it to the other side, running full-throttle past a small building with arched windows. My flip-flops snap underneath my heels as I run. I nearly trip when my feet come down hard on the pavement and the worn-out rubber gets twisted underfoot. But I catch my balance in time and push harder, glancing back only once to see if Victor is coming after me. I see him, running through a small crowd of people and my legs go into overdrive, trying to get as far away from him as I can. Already nearly out of breath, I force my body forward, running past a row of parked cars and in behind another series of buildings. I see a woman carrying a purse on one shoulder, walking out ahead of me.

“Lady! Please help me!”

She looks up as I get closer, her blonde hair falling about her shoulders.

“Please, you have to help me! Call the—.”

Victor emerges from my right, having gone around to the other side of the nearest building instead of staying directly behind me. He remains next to the building letting it hide his whereabouts. Only I can see him. I glimpse the gun in his hand held down at his side, pressed against the side of his leg.

“What happened? Are you OK?” the woman asks, fixing her purse firmly underneath her arm, probably in case I might try to take it from her.

My eyes stray between the two of them, back and forth, and at one point the woman turns to her left to see what I’m looking at, but Victor stays hidden in the shadows.

I know why he’s not moving. I know why his gun is in his hand rather than hidden away in the back of his slacks. Whether this woman lives or dies is entirely up to me.

“Miss?” she asks again, appearing concerned, but wary of me just the same. “Do I need to call the police?”

I try to catch my breath, pressing my hand to my chest, but I realize that it’s no longer the running that’s stealing it away. The thought of Victor shooting this woman because of me—

She reaches inside her purse and pulls out a cell phone.

Victor raises the gun just a little.

“No!” I shout and the woman stops cold with the phone clutched in her ring-decorated hand.

I gesture wildly at her. “I’m sorry. I thought you were someone else.”

She doesn’t look convinced. She narrows her eyes at me.

I fake a small laugh. “Really, I am so sorry. My friends and I were…never mind. I’ve got to go.” I turn and start to jog lightly back in the direction I came, leaving her standing there dumbfounded.

Minutes later, I stand against the side of the truck, my arms crossed as I wait. Two more people walk by, one even nods and smiles at me, but I can’t ask them for help, either. I don’t want to risk it.

Victor walks up as casual as if he had just come back from an early morning stroll. He opens the driver’s side door again and shoulders his duffle bags. With my back turned to him, I feel his eyes on me from the other side of the truck.

“You’re a murderous...

Killing Sarai
Killing Sarai Page 9



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 br**sts. 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 ***. 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....