ALEXIS
Three of Raphael’s men disappear and return shortly after in a beaten-up panel van. The windows are so dirty I’m surprised the driver can even see the road. I may be powerless against so many of them, but that doesn’t stop me from fighting like a hellcat when they try and make me get in the back. I’m reminded of a poem, a famous one by Dylan Thomas, ‘Do Not Go Gently Into That Good Night.’ The title in itself is comment enough for the situation I find myself in. The poem demands the reader kick and scream against death, and that’s exactly what I do. I kick and I scream, because getting in the back of that van is the same as dying, and I don’t want to die. I want to go home and listen to my mom gossip about her church friends. I want to do the dishes, and I want to watch TV. I want my sister, always so strong and distanced from everything, to come and find me and save me. I thrash so hard that another of the men has to take hold of my legs in order to restrain me.
“Let me go! Let. Me. G—” I choke on the last word. My head spins as something hard and blunt impacts against the back of my skull.
“Get her in the fucking van,” Raphael snaps, and then another heavy thud connects with my head. No spinning now. No fighting or screaming or clawing furiously for my life. Only a sinking sensation and blackness.
Only blackness.
The void envelops me, whisks me away from the events of the last half hour. I sleep, or lose consciousness, I don’t know. It feels like I’m still awake; I can feel the side-to-side rocking motion of the van as it takes corners. My ears still hear talking, distant and muddled, but I can’t make out the words.
We travel for a long time. I have no idea how long. It could be hours; it could be mere minutes. Everything is a blur. I’m in pain and I’m wet, chilled to the bone.
When I fully regain consciousness, there’s no pretending I’m still out cold. I throw up onto the bare metal flooring of the van, my stomach fiercely rejecting everything inside it. My head is killing me. I want to cry, but I can’t. I simply don’t have the energy.
“Fucking stinks back here,” a male voices complains. “Open the window, asshole.”
There are more comments about the smell I’ve created by puking. I feel like informing them that they shouldn’t hit people so hard over the back of the head if they don’t want to deal with the side effects of concussion, but my tongue feels fat and swollen and I can’t breathe properly.
Fuck.
What the fuck am I going to do?
This is the part where I think about who’s going to be looking for me. Mom will have called Dad to see where we are, and he won’t have answered because he’s in the OR. She’ll maybe have called Sloane, but my sister will be out with her friends, celebrating another day’s survival as an intern. Mom can’t have called Matt, my boyfriend, because she doesn’t even know he exists. None of my family do. Too many questions. Does he go to church? What is he studying? Where is he from? What are his prospects? Is he being respectful?
The answers—doesn’t go to church; not studying anything; from Mount Rainier; no real prospects; and hell no, most definitely not being respectful—would not go down well. So, long story short, my family will have no clue where I am, and neither will Matt.
I throw up again, and this time it’s not from the concussion. It’s from the overwhelming sense of dread cycling through me, feeding on itself, growing by the second. There’s one question playing on repeat inside my head, and I’m too much of a coward to face it yet. It’s there if I stop thinking even for a second, though:
Are they going to rape you?
Are they going to rape you?
Are they going to rape you?
I’m more afraid of this than I am of dying. I’m more afraid of something I have only thus far shared with two people in the whole world being forcefully taken from me than I am of losing my life. If I die, I’ll just be dead. If they do unspeakable, horrific things to me, I will relive that experience every time I open my eyes each morning. Every time I close my eyes at night.
“Left up here, brother. Not far now,” a gruff voice says.
The van’s suspension is shot to hell. My head bangs painfully against the floor as the vehicle swerves and leaves the road, turning onto what must be a dirt track. Someone snickers, and I get the impression it’s at my expense. I’m sure to evil bastards like these, a skinny girl, hands bound behind her back and lying in a pool of her own vomit, is a highly entertaining sight.
I try not to think about how vulnerable I am. I try not to think about what’s going to happen when the van’s engine stops spluttering and we reach wherever we’re going. All I can concentrate on is my breathing, trying to keep it even. I’m dangerously close to hyperventilating, and I don’t want to pass out again, which is what will happen if I let my panic take hold of me.
I breathe in. I breathe out. I breathe in. I breathe out.
“She’s got some great tits,” a different male voice says. I haven’t heard this guy speak before, and I’m shocked—he has no accent. He sounds like he’s from Seattle, though I know whoever he is, he must have some Mexican heritage. Each and every one of my captors appeared to be Hispanic. I barely register that they’re talking about my chest until a hand suddenly grabs hold of one of my breasts. I try to open my eyes at this stage—being manhandled wins out over my splitting headache—but I can’t see anything. They’ve blindfolded me. I kick out with my legs and manage to shove myself away, out of the reach of wandering hands. It still feels like the hand’s there, though, squeezing and kneading my breast; my skin is crawling, prickling with the intensity of my disgust. Matt’s never touched me like that before. Whenever he’s touched me, it’s been to bring me pleasure. Whoever just grabbed hold of me did so for their own pleasure, a fact painfully clear by the way they pinched and rolled my skin.
“What the fuck you two doing back there?” Raphael demands. I know his voice. He sounds suspicious, but then I’ve yet to hear Raphael sound anything but. “Don’t touch that girl, motherfuckers. You heard me lay claim, right? I’ll cut out your fucking tongues if you so much as look at her.”
Two disappointed grunts follow after that.
Someone in the front cranks up the radio to obnoxious levels, and the sound of Taylor Swift’s, We Are Never Getting Back Together blasts from the rear speakers. My head must be right next to one of those speakers, because it feels like it’s on the brink of explosion. I used to like the song, but now? Not so much. The situation descends into outright weirdness when someone in the van, I can’t tell who, begins to sing along. Enthusiastically.
My body is singing in pain. My shoulders are throbbing from the discomfort of having my wrists bound tightly behind my back. Thankfully my hands themselves have gone numb from lack of blood supply, so at least I’m now being spared that particular agony.
Less than fifteen minutes later, the van pulls to a jerky stop. Raphael is the first out; I can tell from the way his voice fades and then cuts off altogether when his door slams shut. The music is still blaring, though it’s not pop music anymore. It’s Mexican rap music. Angry. Hostile. Violent.
The rear doors open, and suddenly someone has hold of my ankles. I’m pulled from my cowering position in the back of the van, and I hit the ground hard. The drop from the vehicle to the ground must only be two feet, but my shoulder impacts first, sending a white hot flash of pain charging through my back and neck.
I cry out, but no one says a word. Hands find me, more than one pair, and they lift me roughly to my feet, pulling me forward. I hear nothing but Mexican rap music and the frantic staccato of my own heartbeat. I stumble after whoever is dragging me behind them, tripping on unseen obstacles and rolling my ankles. The music fades away, and my heartbeat grows even louder.
“Now, you’ll keep your fucking mouth shut, you hear me?” a voice commands. Raphael. Of course, Raphael. “If you want to live, you don’t breathe a fucking word.” He yanks on my arm, unbalancing me, and I drop to one knee, only to have my arm almost wrenched out of its socket as I’m tugged to my feet again.
Without being able to see, my other senses have come alive. A saccharine sweet smell hits me—the smell of sugared almonds and cotton candy. There’s a screeching sound—a screen door opening?—and then I’m jerked to a halt.
“And what is this?” a male voice asks. The timbre of that voice is low and rumbling, husky with a thick accent. Spanish, but not Mexican Spanish. It’s softer, more muted than Raphael’s hard intonation.
“This is mine,” Raphael replies. “I picked her up along the way. The judge is dead, by the way. In case you were wondering.”
“I wasn’t wondering. I gave you a job to do, and I expected you to do it. What I didn’t expect you to do is bring a stranger back to my home.”
The way this person speaks makes something very clear; he is pissed. Seriously pissed. It’s the quiet, careful way he parts with his words that gives me that impression. I’ve had a severe case of mouth sweats ever since I threw up back in the van, but now my throat is miraculously dry.
“She’s been blindfolded the whole time. She doesn’t know anything,” Raphael says.
A cracking sound, and then the dull, slow thudding of feet against wood. One step. Two. Three. The voice is closer now.
“Has she seen your face?”
“Yes.”
“Does she know your name?”
There’s a brief pause. And then, “Yes.”
“Does she know…my name?” The malice in this question makes my palms break out in a sweat. I’m beginning to get the feeling Raphael’s fucked up in kidnapping me, and I’m going to be the one paying the price.
“Yes,” Raphael answers. “She does. But she’s never gonna be out of my sight, Padre. She won’t be a problem.”
“The girl isn’t the problem here, Raphi. You are currently the problem. You do shit without thinking, and that is a really fucking big problem for me, you understand?”
So I know this guy’s name? That must make him Hector, surely? He is Raphael’s boss. Raphael doesn’t say anything to him in return, though his hand tightens around my arm, fingernails digging into my skin. I squirm, trying to free myself, but it’s a complete waste of energy.
“Take the blindfold off her,” Hector commands.
A piercing light stabs into my head, making me gasp. Daylight? Daylight? It was eight thirty in the evening when I first came across the unfortunate Judge Conahue. I blink up at the sky, horrified when I see the sun’s position directly overhead. That would make it almost midday, or around that time anyway. How the hell is that possible? I was dazed after being hit on the head, but I thought I’d been mostly conscious. Obviously I was wrong, otherwise I wouldn’t be surprised by the fact that at least eighteen hours have passed since I was taken.
Eighteen hours. That means I could literally be anywhere. Definitely out of Washington State. Any hope of rescue I might have been harboring plummets.
“I see why you risked pissing me off, Raphi,” Hector says. I lower my gaze and I see him—a tall, dark-haired man with startling green eyes. He’s clearly of some Latin descent, though his skin is more golden than olive. Maybe in his mid forties, he reminds me of the pediatrician I used to see when I was a kid. Except there’s an air of something not-quite-right about this man that Dr. Hereford didn’t have. Something that makes the hairs on the back of my neck stand to attention.
He holds out a hand to me, his cool mint-green irises locked firmly on my face. I don’t know what the hell he expects me to do. My hands are still firmly tied behind my back. Hector doesn’t even turn his head; his eyes simply travel from me to Raphael, and then my captor is moving quickly, hands fumbling to pull a small knife from his belt so he can free me. I’m in instant pain. It’s like my hands are on fire. Blood rushes back into my fingers so quickly and intensely, the piercing sensation takes my breath away. Hector reaches down and takes my right hand in his, and massages his fingers over mine, making a clucking sound at the back of his throat.
“You’ll have to excuse my friend here. He can be very uncivilized when the mood takes him.”
Raphael’s getting antsy in my peripheral vision—he clearly doesn’t like anyone else playing with a toy he considers his—but something primal within me is warning not to look away from Hector. He’s beautiful in an odd way.
And terrifying in every other.
Despite his consideration for my screaming wrists and his apparently sincere apology over my treatment, I haven’t forgotten what I heard back in that alleyway. This man is suspected of murder. The murder of a woman. And I am currently at his mercy.
“What’s your name, sweet girl?” he asks, smiling, head tipped to one side, as though I’m a delightful mystery he’s looking forward to unraveling.
I clench my jaw, torn for a moment. I shouldn’t tell him my name. I shouldn’t tell him who I am. I don’t know why, but I know it with a certainty that makes my heart race in my chest. “If it’s all the same to you, I’d rather not say,” I inform him. Hector’s smile fades. A flicker of disappointment flashes across his face—I have been a bad girl. Hector’s focus flits to Raphael again, this time accompanied with a single arched eyebrow.
“Sophia Letitia Marne,” Raphael reels off. “Twenty-one years old. Student at the Cornish College of the Arts in Seattle.”
I can’t avoid my reaction now; my head whips around so I can look Raphael full in the face. He’s lying to his boss. Sophia isn’t my name. I sure as hell don’t study at Cornish. I recognize the information, though. Raphael’s almost black eyes are glinting with a barely suppressed fury that confirms my suspicions: he hates having to answer to someone else. Hates it with a vengeance. Hector holds out a hand to Raphael; he seems to know what his employer is requesting from him. He reaches into his pocket and pulls out an intimately familiar object —my wallet.
He snaps the clasp open and fishes out a card, which he hands over to Hector. I’m hardly a party girl, but last year a group of my friends wanted to hit a club to see a DJ play, and I was the only one underage at the time. Luke, the boyfriend of one of the other girls, made up a fake driving license for me. I’d memorized the card’s details before going in, chanting my borrowed name and date of birth over and over again in case any of the doormen asked me, only to be let in without even having to produce the damn thing. I then proceeded to forget my fake persona altogether.
My real driving license is sitting on my bedside table at home, snapped in two. I broke it at least a month ago, and since I’m living on campus and don’t have a car at the moment, replacing it has been very low on my list of priorities. There are no credit cards in my wallet, either. Nothing else to give away my real identity. A cold sweat of relief breaks out across my face. Hector studies the license, studies me, studies the license again. He grunts, handing it back to Raphael.
“Well, Sophia,” he says, giving me a small smile. “It would appear you’ve gotten yourself into a bit of a situation. Are you content with Raphael as your new master?”
Am I content with Raphael as my…? I’m at a loss for words. I’m pretty sure I’m covered in my own blood from where I was hit over the head. I reek of vomit, and my wrists are banded with a deep purple ribbon of bruising. I hardly look like the sort of person who came willingly to their newfound servitude. My mouth opens, but I struggle to find the right response to the question.
“Let me put it this way,” Hector says. “Are you going to make trouble inside my home, Sophia? Because I have a zero tolerance policy when it comes to trouble within in my home.”
I haven’t given much thought to the building Hector is standing in front of, but now I take a closer look at the place. The two-story Colonial, white weatherboard with green shutters, looks like something out of Little House On The Prairie. It’s quaint, with its wrap-around porch, swing bench, and multitude of potted flowers balancing on the windowsills. I’d expect this place to belong to some frail, little old Southern lady. I can picture her rocking slowly on the swing, drinking her endless glasses of sweet tea. There are no bars on the windows, and no security gates or armed guards. But…there is also nothing else out here. Not a single building for as far as the eye can see. Just desert. A burnt, alien landscape with no roadways, no stores, or any way of making contact with civilization.
“Well?” Hector asks.
“What if I say yes? What if I am going to make trouble?” I don’t really need to ask this question, though. I know all too well what he’s going to tell me before the words have a chance to leave his lips. Raphael snickers, a wickedly sharp, crackling laugh. Hector just shrugs his shoulders.
“One of the many bonuses of living out in the desert, so far from prying eyes, is that shallow graves are easy to come by, my dear. Should you wish to incite chaos here, to disrupt my peaceful life, you can bank on finding some permanent real estate of your own out here.”
Somehow, I’ve strangely been holding myself together since I was grabbed from the side of the street. I’ve cried, yes, but I haven’t completely lost it. Until now. My legs buckle out from underneath me, ditching me in a heap at Hector’s feet.
“I need to go home. I have to go back to Seattle. My family...my family will be worried about me. The police—”
My head is kicked to one side, pain slamming through my already delicate skull. I didn’t see the hit coming, but I can certainly feel the echo of it relaying around my body. I can’t breathe. I can’t see through the tears welling in my eyes.
“You’d be wise not to mention the police in my presence again, Sophia. They aren’t a group of people I like to discuss.” Hector sinks down into a crouch. He reaches into his pocket and then holds his hand out to me, offering me something inside—almonds. I was right about the smell. Candied almonds. “Why don’t we just say…no kind of law enforcement should be spoken of from this point forward? It will make a happier life for you, and a happier life for me. Don’t you agree?”
I nod, cautiously touching my hand my face, trying to cup the stinging sensation. To make it go away. Hector’s eyes narrow at me. “Why don’t you take an almond? They’re delicious. Don’t you find them delicious? And then Raphael will take you inside so you can speak to Ramona. If you’re polite to her, she may find you some fresh clothes.”
This man is insane.
Certifiably insane.
He flipped so quickly, violence surging out of him like the unexpected eruption of a geyser. He’s unstable, and I don’t want to risk pissing him off again. I get the feeling he wouldn’t flinch away from killing me if he thought I wasn’t going to be compliant. I reach out and take a sugared almond between shaking fingers.
“Good girl. Eat it,” Hector coaxes.
I force the small almond past my lips, and the explosion of sugar that follows makes my mouth ache.
“That’s it. Perfect.” Hector nods appreciatively. He stands, the action so quick and fluid that he makes me jump. He strokes one hand against the top of my head, shhhing me, and then turns his attention to Raphael.
“Get her inside. Make sure she’s given a room on the south side of the house.” He turns and climbs back up the steps that lead up to the wrap-around porch, opens the screen door, and disappears back inside the house.
That leaves Raphael and me, with my stomachful of knife-wielding butterflies. “On your feet, girl,” he snaps at me. The insanity is back in his eyes again. I want to turn and run. I want to blindly flee this malevolent, charming house and run until my legs can’t carry me any further. I would do it too, if it weren’t for the group of grim-looking men leaning up against the van I arrived here in. They all have weapons—a vast array of differently shaped guns and knives, small and large. But mostly, I don’t do it because of the baiting edge in Raphael’s words. It’s almost as if he’s willing me to disobey him, to run, to try and free myself…so he can have the pleasure of capturing me all over again and teaching me a lesson.
I get to my feet.
I go inside the house.
I think, perhaps, I will never see my family again.