Pop. Pop. Pop.
I can hear the sound of bullets whizzing by me on either side, nearly hitting my two captors. I look to my left. And fifty yards away I see him. Luke.
Boom. Boom. Boom.
The second assailant begins shooting back at Luke as the first assailant pushes our bodies to the ground. My neck struggles against his grasp as I force my head up. Luke ducks behind a tree, the air silent and momentarily still. I try to wiggle myself free but the assailant has my body pinned. I’m trapped back in my frozen prison, surrounded by snow.
Please God. Please God. Don’t hurt him. Please God.
I push my chest up off the ground once more, my eyes barely able to see above the line of snow. Luke spins around the tree and opens fire.
Pop. Pop. Pop.
The second assailant shoots back. Luke throws his body back around the thick tree, the bullets barely missing him and exploding against the bark.
I try to crawl, armless through the snow but I still can’t move.
“Luke, run!” I scream with the little air I have. I want him to get away from here. To save himself. It’s far too late for me.
But he doesn’t listen. Luke’s body reappears from around the tree again, but before he can fire the first shot, the second assailant has already pulled his trigger.
Boom.
The bullet flies through the air, striking Luke and throwing his body backward. I squeeze my eyes closed for a moment.
Not real, not real, not real, I repeat to myself, like I do when I’m having one of my daymares. When I open my eyes, I expect to be back in the motel room, this whole scene just an anxiety-filled trick on my brain. But as my eyelids rise, I see Luke stumbling backward. I see the blood. I see that this is very, very real.
“Noooooo!” I scream at the top of my lungs as I watch Luke fall to the ground in what feels like slow motion.
Luke, get up! Please get up!
I force my body up once more, fighting to get out of the assailant’s hold but he forces his knee into my back, my spine screaming in agony. Still, I struggle.
I have to get to Luke. I have to get to Luke.
Sirens pierce the momentary silence of the woods. Police sirens.
“Mierda. Policía, policía,” the second assailant says, his voice panicked. He hurries back toward us on the ground where I’m still battling against the excruciating pain and weight of my captor. “Vamos ahora. Vamos ahora.”
“Luke!” I scream out, but before I can take one more breath, my world is black; a cloth bag has been thrown over my head and tied around my neck. I cannot see a thing.
“Vámonos, vámonos, vámonos,” the first assailant hisses, the two men yanking my body up by both arms, as the police sirens come closer. Someone at the motel must have heard us screaming and called the cops.
I try to kick my legs but someone knees me in the stomach, knocking the wind out of my gut. My body goes limp as they pull me, blind and hog-tied, through the snow.
Luke, Luke, Luke, Luke, my mind screams out what my mouth cannot. Please God. Please God. Please God.
I finally gather enough air and give his name one final shout.
“Luke,” I scream with the tiny breath I can muster. I wait to hear a response. A groan, a cry, anything. But I hear nothing. Just police sirens in the distance and the sound of my boots, dragging against the snow.
FIFTEEN
“Stop it … now!” one of the assailants says as I twist and turn, my body rebellious against their strong clutches. I don’t know why I’m even trying. If I somehow get away, they’ll be able to tackle me in a matter of seconds. My hands are forced together in zip ties behind my back, I’m blinded by this hood on my head, and there are trees and branches everywhere that would knock my visually impaired ass to the ground. Still, I struggle. Still, I fight. It’s just part of my DNA.
We’ve been walking through thick snow for what feels like an hour even though it’s been barely five minutes. The sirens have stopped and I wonder if the police are now parked at the motel. Clearly the assailants are taking me somewhere else. I tried to scream as they pulled me away but they dug the pistol into my temple, promising to pull the trigger if I screamed one more time.
“Ay! Por qué no la matamos?” one of them murmurs softly to the other. But I can still make out their words. Why don’t we just kill her?
“Las ordenes eran mantenerlos vivos,” the other answers just as quietly. Orders were to keep them all alive.
“Parece que los hemos jodido,” one says. Looks like we screwed that one up.
And then they laugh.
They laugh big. Hearty. Joyful. Like two frat-boys-in-training recalling stories of last weekend’s debauchery over plates of fries in the cafeteria. They laugh about killing Luke.
Oh God. Luke.
My lungs burn. The bile at the bottom of my stomach churns over again and again like foamy waves in a storm. It rises, getting caught in my throat. If I throw up, I’ll be puking in this bag. It will have no escape.
Not now. Don’t puke now.
My mouth forces out a cough, choking down the rancid taste just as it reaches the back of my tongue. Still the nausea lingers in the hollow of my chest, just one foul thought away from full-out puke.
My shoulders spiral against their grip and I let out a shriek as they drag me farther away from my friend, bleeding and freezing in the snow.
“Stop now!” the assailant yells, striking me hard in the back of my head with what I can only guess is the handle of his pistol. The pain radiates from the center of my brain, expanding in circles, like a drop of rainwater on a crystal-clear lake. It gets wider and wider until the agony crashes against my skull. If my world wasn’t completely black right now, I’m sure I’d see spots.
“Why are you struggling?” one asks me, the snow around my legs getting shallower and less dense. “Give up.”
“Why did you kill him?” I ask, my voice shaking, praying the words aren’t true.
“What does it matter?” one responds with a laugh. “You’ll all be dead soon. He just beat you to it.”
“Why don’t you just kill me now?” I spit as the cloth bag gets caught between my lips. “Get it over with?”
“You will see,” one answers, a throaty chuckle punctuating the disturbing statement.
“Fernando can’t wait to get his hands on you,” the other replies, tightening his grip and deepening the bruise on my arm.
What does that mean? Will they torture us? Try to force me to give up intel? Or just use us as bait to lure down more Black Angels? My mind swirls as I try to figure out what Fernando wants from me, why on earth he’s insistent on keeping me alive instead of executing me on the spot.
“Let’s go,” one of the assailants says gruffly, and I hear the sound of a car door opening. He pushes me inside, forcing my body to scoot up against something. Or someone. And then I hear her crying.
“Harper?” I say, wishing I could reach out for her with my hands.
“Oh my God. Reagan?” she answers between sobs. She grabs for my legs. She has the small luxury of having her hands tied together in front of her body instead of behind, and I’m jealous.
“Are you okay?” I ask even though it’s a very stupid question. Of course she’s not okay. She’s tied up in the back of an SUV with a gun most likely pointed at her head.
“Yes, I’m okay,” she answers quietly, still pawing at my soaking wet pant leg, trying to find some comfort in touch, even if it’s freezing and damp. “What is going on? Where are they taking us?”
“I don’t know,” I say, wildly shaking my head, trying to see if I can move this hood around and get any type of visual. But the material is too thick. I see nothing. My eyes blink against the black.
“Where’s Luke?” she asks and my breath catches, raw and jagged, against my stinging throat.
“They shot him,” I whisper. She answers with an audible gasp.
“Is he … is he dead?” she asks, her hands tightening
their grip on my leg.
“I don’t know,” I whisper, my voice barely discernable. I think he’s dead. I saw the shot. I saw the blood. But I don’t want these guys to go back and guarantee it. Put another bullet through his body just to be sure. If it wasn’t for the police sirens, I know they would have checked and finished the job.
“Oh my God. Oh my God. Not Luke,” Harper says, her cries picking back up again, her fingers digging into my flesh, hurting me even though she doesn’t mean to. I bet she doesn’t even realize what she’s doing. “I’m so sorry, Reagan. This is my fault.”
“It’s not,” I whisper, wishing I could take her trembling body into my own. “If it wasn’t for me, you wouldn’t even be here.”
“What’s going to happen to us?” she asks, her voice shaky as it leaves her mouth.
“Stop talking. Stop crying,” a voice commands as a car door opens and they climb into the backseat next to me, a gun now jammed into my side. My muscles seize up as the barrel presses against my wet clothing, digging into the organs around my stomach. I pray if they shoot me, they don’t shoot me there. It will take minutes, maybe even hours for me to die from a wound to the gut. And it’s painful as hell. If they’re going to kill me, I pray it’s with one clean bullet to the brain.
I hear Harper suck in a series of shaking gasps, trying to calm herself down. I imagine her closing her eyes, trying to find her center or whatever bullshit she learned in yoga.
My eyes stare straight forward, into the endless darkness. All my senses are heightened. I listen and mentally record every sound. The SUV being put into gear. The sound of its tires on smooth pavement. I wait to hear the gravel from the motel parking lot. There is none.
Where did they take us?
I feel the motion of the car. We’re moving forward. We never backed up. They clearly moved the SUV to a different spot or put us in a completely different car altogether. There’s got to be more than one car, more than one team. After losing us in Manhattan, Fernando must have been pissed. He probably sent a small army of people to track us down. We’ve made complete fools of the Torres family time and time again. Killing their guards, executing their family, eluding their captors. But the last laugh may be his.
“Don’t even think about trying to fight me off again,” one of my assailant’s voices says gruffly near my ear. “Or I’ll put a bullet in your skull and you can join your boyfriend in the snow.”
With one hand, he digs the gun into my side. With the other, he grabs at my thigh. The bile in my throat rises at his threat, at his touch. And I puke.
SIXTEEN
“No puedo soportar el olor,” one of the men in the car says with a cough. I can’t take the smell.
My vomit has filled the SUV with its rancid perfume. But it probably smells far better out there than it does in this hood. I’ve been breathing through my mouth, just to avoid the stench. One whiff and I’m afraid I’ll puke again. Vomit clings to my mouth, my chin, my cheeks. It sits in a tiny pool at the bottom of the bag. During our twenty minutes on the road, I’ve felt it drip, drip, drip onto my legs as it leaks through the tiny, breathable holes in the cloth.
“¡Quitate de ella! No puedo soportarlo,” a man in the front seat commands while gagging. Take it off of her. I can’t stand it.
A small smile spreads across my puke-crusted lips. The threat from the assassin and his hand on my leg made me throw up, yes. But I also knew the smell would be too much for them. They’d be forced to get rid of this hood, give me a chance to see what’s going on, where we’re heading. I’ve been trying to pay attention to every little movement of the car. Our speed. The miles we may have covered. How many times we’ve turned (three times left, two times right). But there’s only so much I can do blind. I need to see.
“Okay, okay,” the assailant next to me exclaims, unwrapping the rope that’s bound around my neck, securing the hood and my temporary blindness. As he begins to remove the cloth, my little pool of vomit cascades onto his hands and my freezing, wet jeans.
I ignore the putrid waterfall because now, I can see. I take immediate stock of my surroundings. Four assailants. Two in front. Two in back. The second assailant from the attack in the woods is to my right with a gun still digging into my side. My first assailant, the man with the broken nose and orbital bone, is nowhere to be seen. Definitely two cars.
“Jesucristo,” the second assailant mutters, wiping the vomit off of his body and then my own. He roughly wipes my legs and hands and face, trying to rid the car of the rotting smell. He then rolls down the window, throwing my puke-soaked hood outside and into the snow.
I keep my eyes staring straight ahead, trying to resist the urge to look around, make them think twice about leaving me out in the open, hoodless and hopeful.
Through the windshield, I see we’re traveling down a narrow two-lane road, passing by open fields and the occasional farmhouse. We’ve driven out of the city of Waterloo and past its outskirts. The pockets of subdivisions, grocery stores, and office plazas are long gone. The landscape that’s replaced tiny-town suburban life is square mile after square mile of cornfields.
I could live here is the strange thought that pops into my brain. Despite the gun at my side. Despite the fact that Luke is most likely dead and I’m probably being driven to a private airport to be flown out of the country and never heard from again, I think about the life I could have here. Rising with the sun. Tending to my acres of crops until the endless sky is painted in a sherbet selection of oranges, purples, and pale pinks. I’d spend evenings canning vegetables. My winters sleeping under a thick quilt. I’d eat hearty stews and drink lots of coffee and read books while looking out over the acres of dead land. Yes, I could live here.
My eyes glance over at the assailant to my right and I study his face. Dark hair. Pale skin. Doe eyes. Thick lashes. Strong jaw. Maybe twenty-two. He looks like someone I’d see studying brands of granola at the grocery store or pumping gas next to me in Ohio. I want to ask him why he’s doing this. Why he’s not in college. Why he’s become part of the Torres army instead of working at a bank or a hotel or a real estate office. Money, I’m sure, is the answer. He doesn’t look evil (which I know is a very dangerous thought). But then I remember his hand, his continuous threat of death shouted or whispered into my ear, and the bile in my throat climbs once again.
My mouth coughs down the urgent need to vomit, sending the assailant’s eyes toward me.
“Don’t you puke again,” he says sternly, eyeing my mouth, my throat, my stomach.
“I won’t,” I answer, coughing and swallowing down whatever is fighting its way back up.
“No puking on the plane either,” he says, waving the gun at my face like he’s wagging a disapproving finger rather than a pistol near my brain. “Brand-new jet. Fernando will kill you if you stain the upholstery.”
Hmmm. So we are going to the airport. And clearly the drug business is still going strong without his brother if he was able to buy a new jet.
Keep him talking. Keep him talking. I hear Mom’s voice in my head.
“Where are we going?” I ask, trying to sound casual. Like we’re having a conversation in a coffee shop instead of in the back of a car with my hands tied behind my back.
“No, no, chica,” he says, still waving the gun, like it’s an extension of his hand. “What do you think I am? ¿Estupido?”
He points the barrel of the gun toward his own brain. God, I wish he’d accidentally pull the trigger right now.
“No,” I answer calmly. “I don’t think you’re stupid.”
“You may have been trained by the best, but so have I,” he says, returning the gun back to my side. “You killed my trainer.”
“Santino?” I ask quietly and immediately regret it. Just his name forces the assailant’s eyes to narrow, his mouth to scowl. Shit. I’ve said too much. What was I thinking?
“Yes, Santino Torres,” he says, spitting out his name with force, as if I mispronounced it. His face darken
s even more as he digs the barrel of his pistol hard against my ribs, and I have to remind my paralyzed body to keep breathing.
“I’m sorry,” I whisper.
I never dreamed I’d ever end up apologizing for killing the man who murdered my mother. But it seems I’ve done it more than once. And not just to a member of his army. I’ve apologized to my father. To Luke. To Harper. The mess I’ve created. The ripple effect it’s had on everyone I love. Luke stood in our Vermont kitchen and told me he knows I wouldn’t take it back, even if I could. But as I sit in the back of a car with my best friend tied up next to me and the closest thing I’ll probably ever have to love bleeding out in the snow, I know I would. I’d take it all back right this second. But there is no rewind button in life. There are no do-overs.
Tears begin to sting the corners of my eyes as I picture Luke, blood dripping from his nose and mouth, his eyes blank, staring up into darkness, nothingness. Death.
I shake my brain, erasing the image like an Etch A Sketch in my mind. I bite my tongue, redirecting the pain, forcing the urge to cry for Luke and all I’ve lost back down into their little box. I can’t show weakness. I have to be strong. I have to get us out of this. I have to keep Harper alive.
The SUV comes up over a hill, and in the distance, I see a series of lights. The airport. Every vertebra in my back pulls together, the tendons between each bone straining as we draw closer to what will most likely be our last moments inside the United States. Once we leave the country, our already slim chance of getting out of this alive might as well be cut in half. Harper can feel my body tense. Her fingers dig into my kneecap as if to ask, “What’s going on?”
Telepathy would really come in handy right now. But I can’t speak to her. I can’t do anything to jeopardize our last chance to escape.
Maybe someone will see us. Maybe if I make a scene, someone will call the police. Try to stop us from boarding their jet.
I glance at the digital clock in the dashboard: 3:53. Not exactly a high-traffic time at the airport. But there’s got to be somebody there who will hear me scream. Right?
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