CHAPTER NINETEEN
Sam
“There is strong shadow
where there is much light.”
-Goethe
When you’ve been waiting on something for a long, long time, and then the moment you’ve been anticipating is suddenly at hand, it can be hard to know what to feel. It’s like the anticipation of the event has become its own separate entity, a thing that’s hard to let go of.
I have a hard time letting go.
I wake up in a daze and stay there as we pack up camp and make our way back down the cliff.
Today is the day. Today is the day that I will have my revenge.
Today is the day that two men will suffer and one man will die and then I will get on a plane and fly away with nothing to anticipate but how nice it will be to live in a world without Todd Winslow in it.
All the way through the jungle, my thoughts are a record stuck in a single groove, repeating the same things over and over again. But it isn’t until Danny and I have hugged everyone goodbye and are back in the cabin, packing up our things, that reality finally settles in.
The fear hits a moment later.
A moment after that, I’m on the floor with my head between my legs, hyperventilating, trying my best not to pass out.
“It’s okay.” Danny rubs my back in soothing circles. “It hit me about an hour ago. It will pass. Just give it a second. Think about right now and nothing else and you’ll be okay.”
I bring my thoughts to this moment, to the worn wooden floor beneath my feet and the lizard who slithered under the bed when I plunked down a little too close to him. I think about drawing breath into my body and letting it out and the faint smell of wood smoke and mildew that lingers in the cabin. I think about the crick in my neck from sleeping on the tiny camping pillow and the more pleasant ache between my legs from making love.
After a few more breaths, I lift my head and look at my half-filled backpack.
I need to finish packing. That’s what I’m doing right now. I’m packing. I’m not drugging anyone or dumping them in a pit in the middle of the jungle. I’m not watching someone convulse as they die from a lethal dose of arsenic.
If I keep imagining what’s going to happen, I’m going to live through it a hundred times before nightfall and I won’t have any energy left for the actual event. When the time comes, I have to be strong, solid, and focused, not drained and freaking out. I’ve spent a year training my body to face the men who hurt me, but only now do I realize I should have been training my mind as well. I’m beginning to think that in order for a murder to go off without a hitch, the mind is the most important muscle involved.
Luckily, mine has Danny to help it stay on task.
After I’m finished packing, he hands me a dust rag and a broom and leaves me to start cleaning up the cabin while he runs out to the mess hall. By the time I’m finished dusting and sweeping, he’s back with a loaf of bread, a jar of peanut butter, and a few oranges he’s liberated from the kitchen and puts me to work making sack lunches for our dinner while he cleans the bathroom.
Because one shouldn’t commit murder or kidnapping on an empty stomach.
The thought inspires a sharp, hysterical burst of laughter, but luckily Danny is flushing the toilet and doesn’t hear me.
That’s good. I don’t want him to be worried about me. I’m ready for this and as long as I keep busy I’m not going to have a breakdown.
We leave the commune just after three o’clock, allegedly on our way to a romantic dinner in the next town over. The dinner is our excuse for begging off from a night on the town with Paola and the rest of the guides to celebrate our last night in Costa Rica.
As Danny drives, I let myself imagine what it would be like to be the Sam they think I am, a woman without a care in the world but what exotic location she and her boyfriend are on their way to next. I imagine that Sam, drinking beers by the beach with her new friends and then getting talked into dancing at the tiny club in town, wiggling to perky techno music that never seems to make it onto the airwaves in the states.
It’s so real I can almost see it.
So real that I think maybe that Sam does exist somewhere, in a parallel universe where I wasn’t shattered and put back together with sharper edges than I had before.
But her world isn’t my world, and by the time we reach the rental house and park the car in the garage, I’m coming fully online for the first time all day. As Danny and I pull on our gloves—we’re not going to leave any prints behind—and do a quick check of the house and the surrounding areas, ensuring the house across the street is still unoccupied and no one will be watching our guests pull in later tonight, my blood rushes faster and my senses sharpen. I feel like I used to right before a volleyball game in high school, after our coach had delivered the pep talk and we were just waiting to run out onto the court.
Everything is ready, now it’s just a matter of sticking to the game plan and following through.
“I’m going to tell Rosa to text me if she has any trouble getting J.D. and Jeremy out of the hotel,” Danny says after we’ve each forced down half a sandwich and some water. “If I don’t hear from her within ten minutes of dropping her off, I’ll be on my way back here. I’ll text you before I head out.”
I force myself to exhale slowly. “I’ll be ready. Be careful.”
“I will.” He watches me for a beat, before he adds, “This is it. Last chance to bow out. I can handle it alone if you need me to.”
I shake my head. “No. I’m nervous, but I want to be a part of it. I need to be a part of it.”
“Okay.” He squeezes my hand. “It’s almost over. Just keep remembering that. It’s almost behind us.”
“Love you.” I lean in for a kiss, which he returns, firmly, but sweetly, and then he’s gone.
After he leaves, I change into my blacks in the garage and pull my hair back into a bun I’ll tuck under my sock mask when the time comes. I scan the concrete for hairs and tuck the few I find into the pocket of my black jeans, determined not to leave any DNA evidence behind.
Last, I check the lock on the front door to make sure it’s open, turn the radio on in the living room so it sounds like there’s a party in the house, and get the ketamine injections ready to go.
It seems like only a few minutes have passed when Danny texts me that operation Rosa was a success and he’s on his way back.
All day long, time has been dragging, but now everything speeds up until it feels like the future is a bullet train bearing down on me and there’s no time to get off the tracks. But I don’t want to jump to safety. I’m going to stand and face the future.
Because the past demands it.
Because on New Year’s Eve a year and a half ago, four boys set this series of events in motion. They created the monster I am now, and tonight, they are going to reap what they have sown.
Ten minutes later, I hear the car pull into the garage and the garage door humming closed. A moment later, Danny hurries into the foyer, an aluminum baseball bat in one hand and our sock masks in the other. “They’re not far behind me. We should get ready. Remember, most important thing is that we get the door closed behind them before we make a move.”
I nod. “I’ll take care of Rosa and then come help you if you need it.”
“All right,” he says, pulling the sock mask on, making his lips look fuller and pinker in contrast with the rough fabric covering the rest of his face. “But I think I’ll be okay. They should be too stunned to fight back while I’m giving the injection. I just have to be sure not to hit them too hard.”
I slip the mask over my face and tuck my hair underneath. When I open my eyes again, I’m seeing Danny through frames of black cotton and the reality of the moment hits hard enough to make me flinch.
It’s here. We’re ready and there is no turning back.
“See you on the other side,” he says softly.
“On the other side.”
He reaches out a hand and I take it, squeezing his fingers between mine, drawing strength from his touch, his presence. Tonight, I am not alone. Tonight I have the upper hand and J.D. and Jeremy are going to learn what it feels like to be powerless and terrified.
Outside, the sound of a car pulling into the driveway rumbles through the night air before it falls silent. A car door slams and a moment later, I hear Rosa’s laugh and her lightly accented voice telling the men that the rest of the party is inside. My hand slips from Danny’s as I move back into the shadows behind the door and he takes his place around the corner, hidden from view in the hall leading into the kitchen.
Any second, the men I came here to punish will be walking through the door.
The knowledge fills my mouth with a bitter, acrid taste. My heart races and my nerve endings feel like they’re catching fire, but at the center of the storm, there is a calm place that fear and panic can’t touch. And from that calm place I reach into my own mind, doing what I have to do.
I take a deep breath and let go, pulling back the calloused skin that protected me for so many months, flinging open mental doors I’ve learned to keep locked tight. These are the rooms where the horror lives, where there is nothing but blood and pain and the sounds of my own screams. But tonight, these memories won’t bring me nightmares or leave me sweating and shaking in my bed, reliving every helpless moment until I don’t know if I’ll live to see morning.
Tonight, they will bring me strength.
As the doorknob begins to turn, time slows to a crawl and I go back.
Back to the pool table’s rough felt beneath my cheek, back to the smell of sour beer and whiskey breath and the sweat of unfamiliar male bodies dripping onto my face. I go back to J.D.’s hands shoving me down onto the table and ripping my jeans down my legs while I kicked and screamed and Todd and Jeremy egged him on.
He was the first and I was still fighting hard. J.D. isn’t much taller than I am or much bigger. There was a chance I could have fought him off if Jeremy hadn’t crawled up on the table and grabbed my wrists, pinning them to the felt as he trapped my head between his thighs and squeezed, holding me in a vice grip between his legs as J.D. forced himself inside me, tearing me apart.
I had never been with anyone but Danny, had never known any pain associated with sex except that slight sting and ache the night Danny and I were each other’s first. He had always been careful with me, always taken the time to be sure I was ready.
J.D. didn’t take time; he took my dignity.
He took something that should only ever be about pleasure and gave me pain and degradation. He showed me that I was nothing to him. I was not human or even animal. I was an object unworthy of kindness or compassion. I was something to be used to make him feel powerful and then passed around to his friends.
Now, he will pay.
Now, he and Jeremy will learn what it feels like to be nothing.
I watch Rosa swing inside, wearing a tiny red dress and stiletto heels, in slow motion. My blood is rushing so loud in my ears I can’t make sense of what she’s saying to J.D. and Jeremy or what they say in return. I don’t feel like myself anymore. I am nothing but rage so huge that it feels like my soul is expanding past the confines of my body until it fills the room, shatters the windows, explodes into the night sky leaving a trail of fire behind.
And then Jeremy and J.D. come through the door and everything happens at once.
Danny comes out swinging and Jeremy falls almost immediately, the thunk of the bat connecting with his skull followed closely by the sound of his body crumpling to the floor. J.D. turns to run, but I’ve already kicked the door closed. In my peripheral vision, I see Danny’s bat swinging through the air as I reach for Rosa. She’s unsteady in her heels and falls into me as I wrap my arm around her neck and squeeze, applying pressure to her carotid arteries.
I’ve never used full force before—sparring on the mats at the gym we were taught to hold back to keep from knocking our partner unconscious—and I’m shocked at how quickly she goes limp in my arms.
It takes maybe seven, eight seconds at most and then I’m guiding her carefully to the floor. I take a moment to look up and see that J.D. and Jeremy are flat on their backs and Danny is already jabbing a needle into Jeremy’s thigh, before turning back to Rosa. I inject her with a much smaller dose of ketamine as gently as I can, not wanting to cause her any more pain, even if she is unconscious, and then sit back on my heels. Danny finishes delivering J.D.’s injection and looks up, meeting my gaze across the bodies littering the floor.
We’re both still for a moment, catching our breath, and then Danny reaches down, grabs the car keys from where they’ve fallen, and tosses them my way.
I catch them with a steady hand.
“I’ll get these two into the trunk,” he says. “You want to pull their car out of the driveway so I can get out?”
I nod, loving him even more for knowing I need to keep this all business. There’s no time for a post-mortem about the events of tonight until after it’s all over.
And maybe not even then.
Maybe this is one of those things that we’ll put to bed and never speak of again, like the time I kissed another boy at a graduation party, or last summer when Danny got drunk and said hurtful things that could ruin us if we gave those memories too much air and sunlight.
Some things are meant to be locked away in the dark and starved of attention until they all but disappear.
But before we can lock them away, we have to see this through.
I stand. “I’ll get Rosa taken care of and meet you at the site.”
“All right,” he says. “Do you need me to come back in and help you get her into the trunk?”
“Nope,” I say. “She’s light and it’s better for you to go. We don’t want those two waking up before you get out of town. I’ll text you after I’ve dropped her off. If you don’t hear from me in thirty minutes, start without me.”
“I’m not starting without you,” he says, kneeling and picking up J.D. with a soft grunt. “If there are people outside her apartment, leave her on the street somewhere and call 911 to let the cops know where she is. The emergency number is the same here as it is in the states.”
“I’m not going to leave her unconscious on the street,” I say, knowing what can happen to women who are left alone and defenseless even for a few minutes. “I’ll get her inside her building, and into her apartment if I can figure out which is hers, and I’ll get to you as fast as I can.”
With a resigned sigh, Danny carries J.D. into the garage. I pull their rental car out to the street and head back inside. While Danny loads Jeremy into the trunk beside J.D., I hustle into the living room and turn off the music before grabbing the bleach spray we bought and mopping up the blood smeared across the floor near Jeremy’s head. J.D. and Rosa didn’t make a mess so all that’s left to do is lock up and get Rosa loaded into the trunk.
As I walk back to the curb to fetch the car, Danny is already backing down the drive. He pulls out into the street and shifts gears, heading off into the night without any parting words out his open window.
I know he thinks I’m taking an unnecessary risk with Rosa, but I have to make sure she’s safe.
My revenge will not claim any innocent lives. And Rosa is innocent, no matter what kind of life she’s chosen to lead. No woman, virgin or whore or anything in between, deserves to have her autonomy taken away. Our bodies belong to us and they are all equally valuable and sacred. I’ve used Rosa, but I won’t abuse her, or leave her vulnerable to anyone else’s abuse.
Carefully, I carry her into the garage and tuck her into the trunk. She’s breathing easy, but I make sure to lay her on her side. I read that some people can have trouble breathing after a ketamine injection and it’s better to be safe than sorry. I leave the key in the drop box by the front door where the rental agreement said to leave it and get back in the car. No one will be by to check on the house until after checkout time at ten tomorrow morning, and no one will be able to say that Danny and I didn’t spend the night here.
Everything is going so smoothly, better than I could have imagined.
I arrive at Rosa’s apartment to find the street deserted except for a couple of bums digging through the trash at the end of the block. I pull the car up to the curb, cut the engine, and wait. It takes a good twenty minutes, but finally the homeless men turn the corner, and I make my move.
I pop the trunk and swing out into the warm night. I’ve removed my mask, but my black long-sleeved shirt and jeans are still too warm for the tropical climate. I’m sweating even before I lift Rosa out of the car. By the time I get us both up the steps and the apartment building’s sticky front door unlocked, beads of perspiration are rolling down my face.
One lands on Rosa’s cheek as I lay her on the stained couch in the lobby. She flinches before letting out a low moan.
Considering her size, she shouldn’t be conscious for another hour or two at least, but apparently Rosa has one hell of a metabolism and is already burning through the meds like a champ. She moans again and I launch into motion.
Heart pounding, I quickly wipe the sweat from her cheek with my sleeve, place her keys into her curled fingers, and head for the door. I force myself to walk to the car, knowing that running attracts attention. But I shouldn’t have worried. There is no one to see me run, and no one to watch as I get back into the car and pull away.
I make it through town without incident, shooting Danny a text that I’m on my way while stopped at a light near the central market.
His response comes through a second later. See you soon, doll.
Doll. The unexpected pet name makes me frown.
I’m a lot smaller than Danny, but after carrying another woman up a flight of stairs I’m not feeling delicate or doll-like. It bothers me for another reason, too. I’m not sure what it is, but I eventually dismiss the gnawing at the back of my brain, knowing I need to stay focused on more important things.
By the time I reach the gravel road and turn right, heading up into an isolated stretch of jungle not far from the airstrip where I brought Danny for target practice, I’m feeling pretty confident. If the second half of the night goes as smoothly as the first, we’ll be at the airport early enough to grab breakfast in the terminal before we board our flight to Samui, Thailand.
I’m confident, but not cocky.
I’ve never been cocky, even back before the attack, when I was an athlete who had never met a ball she couldn’t spike or a wave she couldn’t ride.
I’ve always known that I have my faults and weaknesses. I’ve always been honest with myself, and I believe that honesty made me better.
While my teammates in high school were busy blaming a lost game on someone else’s performance, I was watching video of the match and seeing where I could improve. When other surfers said they needed a different board or cleaner waves, I kept paddling back out until I found a way to work with whatever the ocean was giving me on a particular day.
I don’t suffer from hubris, that overabundance of pride that doomed so many Greek heroes to tragic fates. I don’t fly too close to the sun, I don’t believe I can take on a six-headed sea monster and come out on top.
So when I pull into the clearing, where the hole Danny and I dug in the forest floor is waiting, to see the rental car’s trunk open, the driver’s door ajar, and the headlights casting eerie shadows across the mouth of the pit, I don’t assume there is a reasonable explanation. I park near the trees, a good hundred feet from the other car and make as little noise as possible getting out. I can’t see if J.D. and Jeremy are in the trunk or the pit, but there is no sign of Danny anywhere nearby and the jungle is weirdly quiet.
I resist the urge to call his name, not wanting to let anyone know I’m here if they haven’t heard the car pull up.
Ears straining and my skin crawling with the certainty that something has gone horribly wrong, I reach into the backseat, open my backpack, and pull out the rifle. Danny wanted me to leave it buried in the woods behind the cabin, but I refused to get rid of it until after all our affairs were in order. Now, it gives me comfort to have a weapon, still assembled and ready to use.
Scanning the clearing, I don’t see anyone watching me, but I can’t know for sure. Still, it seems like a good idea to check the car. Hunching over at the waist, I creep slowly through the shadows, feeling exposed until I’m squatting down beside the open door.
A quick glance inside reveals nothing that would make me worry.
The keys are in the driver’s seat, but Danny might have left them there, knowing no one would be around to snatch them. I look into the backseat, seeing his bat lying on the floor. But that still doesn’t mean anything. With J.D. and Jeremy drugged, he probably wouldn’t have thought he needed it.
Still…
I tuck the gun in the back of my jeans—grateful for its compact size—and reach behind the seats to grab the bat. We’re a good three miles from the road, far enough no one will hear J.D. and Jeremy scream, but maybe not so far that the sound of a gunshot wouldn’t carry. Just in case, the bat is a better weapon if I can get away with it.
Gripping the cool aluminum tight, I circle around to the open trunk and peek inside. J.D. and Jeremy aren’t there. I’m guessing that means they’re in the pit, but for some reason I’m scared to go look. I’m suddenly possessed by the unreasonable fear that if I stand at the edge someone will push me in.
Or maybe it’s not such an unreasonable fear.
There’s a chance the brothers have escaped. They might have woken up too fast, like Rosa, caught Danny by surprise, and beaten him unconscious before heading back to civilization. He might be out there in the jungle, bleeding to death under a tree somewhere, and if so, I can blame myself for it.
Blame myself, and my need for vengeance.
There was a choice to be made, like Danny said, and I’ve made the wrong one. I should never have put him in danger. I should have kidnapped him if I had to and made him run away with me. Only now, as I realize revenge might cost me the man I love, do I realize that it isn’t worth it.
Yes, these men deserve to be punished, but love is more important. It’s more important than the law that insists the brothers’ fates belong in the hands of the court, but it’s also more important than vengeance. It is bigger than this, bigger than the hurt and the pain and the hate. I feel that truth shudder through my bones as I start back toward the darkness at the edge of the clearing.
Slowly, squeezing the bat hard enough to make my knuckles ache, I creep around the perimeter of the bare earth with the pit at its center, keeping close to the trees, scanning the area for any sign of life. I move quietly, carefully, the bat cocked over my shoulder, ready to strike the second I have a target. I check the clearing and the shadows beneath the trees, just in case there is someone hiding in the woods.
Every sense in my body is on high alert, my ears straining for any sound that can’t be explained away by the wind or some night creature stirring in the brush. I am so focused that I would swear I hear the almost inaudible hum of the bug lanterns before I see them. And I certainly see the lanterns—and the scene they illuminate—long before Todd sees me, but it doesn’t matter.
And it doesn’t matter that I know I could take Todd out with this bat if I had to, not when Todd has a knife pressed to Danny’s throat.