Niklas
I pick up a shaken Jackie at the airport and she doesn’t say anything on the ride to her trailer; she just stares out the windshield, her hands folded on her lap, her legs pressed together. She’s been here for hours, waiting for me to get back from Mexico.
“Why didn’t you call a cab?” I had asked her when she got inside my car.
“I just…don’t want be alone at my place right now,” she had said. “I’d just rather be here, out in the open, with a lot of people.”
I never should’ve sent her to Mexico. I’m gonna regret it for the rest of my life, I can already tell, because I feel guilty as hell. Why I feel guilty is what I haven’t figured out yet. She agreed to it. I told her everything—a big part of me even tried to make her refuse—and I warned her, but she chose to go. Because she wanted the money. I thought that was the reason I went through with it and let her go, after all—because of the money, and the desperation, and how badly she probably wanted to spend it on drugs. I thought to myself, Hey, she’s just a drug addict, and if anything happens to her, it’s her own damn fault. But deep down, I didn’t really feel that way; I was conflicted. Conflicted because I haven’t seen Jackie do drugs in a while. Conflicted because nothing about her lifestyle or her little trailer gives me any real reason to believe she has a drug addiction at all. Conflicted because my suspicions aren’t enough, and when they aren’t enough that usually means they’re dead wrong.
Which leads me right back to the damn money. She spent every cent of it, not on drugs, but to save the lives of young women she didn’t even know.
And that’s how I know I’m a fucking prick, and that I was wrong, and that I knew it in my heart all along, but I didn’t want to believe it because I needed someone there to watch Izzy for me. I’m a prick because I used Jackie and ignored what my gut was telling me about her—that she’s a good person, a better person than I’ll ever think of being.
“Thanks for the ride, Nik,” she tells me and goes to get out of the car.
I had intended to stay here with her for a while.
“I thought you didn’t want to be alone?” I say.
She pauses but gets out anyway, and then peers inside at me. “I don’t,” she says. “I’m gonna go over to Shellie’s”—she points at the trailer across from hers—“I’d say thanks for the free trip to Mexico, but, well…” She doesn’t finish.
I stop her before she closes the car door. “Uh, Jackie, I really am sorry. About all of this. I shouldn’t have—”
“Nah, don’t do that, Nik,” she cuts me off. “I’m a grown woman, perfectly capable of making my own decisions. And you warned me. You didn’t do this, I did. I’ll be fine. I made it back alive and that’s what matters. I’ll get over it in a couple days and be back to my old self.” She smiles in at me, trying to lighten the mood, but it just makes me feel even more like the piece of shit that I am. “And we can get back to normal soon too. If you want.” She grins suggestively, but I know she’s just trying to be strong, pretending she’s not traumatized by her experience, and that sex with me is the last thing on her mind.
I try to force a smile, but I don’t think it comes out as one.
“I’ll come over tomorrow and check on you,” I say.
“OK, Nik.” Her smile brightens, and it chokes me up a little because I can tell it’s real and that she’s already forgiven me and that she’s innocent and kind and—dammit!
I back out of her driveway and pull onto the road, passing up a black SUV blinding me with its bright lights as I leave. Tomorrow I’m going to put a lot of money into her bank account; set her up for life. I know it’ll never make up for what I put her through, but I have to start somewhere.
Fifteen minutes later, just as I’m reaching for my phone to call a number back that I’d missed—it could be Izzy—Jackie’s name lights up on the screen.
“Changed your mind?” I say with the phone pressed to my ear as I take the exit heading toward my room above the bar.
“You have forty-eight hours,” a man says in Italian on the other end of the phone. “I want you for this whore.”
I pull onto the side of the road; my tires skidding to a halt on the pavement. The SUV…Jackie mentioning unfamiliar cars had been the talk of the trailer park as of late…I should’ve known. I should’ve fucking known!
“Who the fuck is this?” My heart is hammering in my ears.
There’s a pause, and then the voice: “You murdered my daughter,” he answers. “Francesca Moretti.”—(my heart stops)—“And in precisely forty-eight hours if you’re not at the address I will text you following this call, this woman will be at the bottom of the ocean.”
No…
My mouth is dry; my mind is racing; I hear Jackie’s muffled cries in the background.
I don’t even have to think about it. “I’ll be there,” I tell Mr. Moretti. “Bet your ass I’m coming.”
He ends the call and three seconds later the address comes through, and I’m on my way to the airport again, even faster and more reckless than I had been when trying to get to Mexico for Izzy.
And for the first time in my life, I feel like…I might not make it out of this one alive.