You Won't See Me Coming

by Kristen Orlando

  “I untie you, I know what happens,” he says, tilting his head to one side, his dark hair falling across his black and bulging eye.

  I push my body back into my seat, my stomach grumbling, desperate for just one cracker. I eye the tasty squares, the crackers dyed a shade of bright orange not found in nature, but what I really want is the peanut butter. At least the tablespoon sandwiched between the squares has some protein. Who knows when they’ll feed us again.

  “Can’t you just give them to her?” I ask, nodding toward Harper, who can feed herself with her arms in front of her body.

  “You want them?” he asks, his voice rising, bordering on offended. He stands up from his seat, opens the package, and shakes them over my head, dumping the six crackers and their crumbs onto my lap. “You eat like a pig.”

  Asshole. You effing asshole.

  He throws the cellophane wrapper in my face, like an exclamation point on his disgust at my rejection. He settles back down in his seat as the men around him laugh. One gives him a high five. I stare down at the crackers and can feel the heat rising up my neck, no doubt painting my skin a fiery red. And suddenly, I feel naked, exposed. They’re just crackers on my lap, but I feel like I’ve been stripped down and put on display. Humiliated and vulnerable, all at once.

  I look over at Harper, who is quietly eating her own crackers. Her big eyes stare back at me, silently trying to calm me.

  It’s okay. It’s okay, I can almost feel her mind pulsing, sending waves of comfort toward mine.

  “Here,” she whispers, slowly raising her hand and offering me one of her crackers. I open my mouth but the assailant immediately stands up, smacking it away from her hand and forcing it to fall onto the ground.

  “Don’t you feed her,” he yells at Harper. “You eat like a pig or you don’t eat at all.”

  Fuck you. Fuck you. Fuck you. Fuck you.

  He stares back down at me, the right corner of his blood-crusted mouth turned up, smug with power. I wish I was untied so I could throw my elbow into his other eye socket, remind him just how powerless he is when we’re on an even playing field.

  His eyes hold on to mine as he slowly backs up and flops his giant body into his seat, his limbs outstretched and casual, like a king on a throne who’s lost interest in his crown. I finally break our shared stare, turning my eyes downward to the broken crackers, spread out into pieces across my lap.

  I will kill them. I will kill them. I will kill them.

  I bite down at the inside of my cheek as I think about getting away. We can’t escape at the airport. It’s too dangerous. And Harper would be dead in seconds. But I will not let us die at the hands of these cowards. After Santino, I never wanted to kill again. But that fire has reignited in my core. And it’s starting to climb.

  I look toward the window and see we’re getting closer to the dark blue ocean. I’ve felt us descending for the last ten minutes and I’m anxious for us to get over land so I can see the terrain, try and figure out just where they’re taking us.

  “Abrochense los cinturones,” a voice says over the built-in speakers of the plane. The pilot. He hasn’t said two words the entire flight. The men follow his command and settle back down in their seats, fastening their seat belts tight across their laps.

  My eyes are fixed on the ocean, its color growing lighter the closer we get to land. With each mile and changing shade, that dark cloud of dread pulls taut on my lungs, not knowing just what awaits us on the other end of this flight.

  And then … there it is. Land. We fly over a busy port and adjacent shipyard. Large ships are stacked high with rectangular shipping containers, all painted different shades of red, blue, black, and green. From several thousand feet up, they look more like Legos than cargo. Beyond the industrious port, a sprawling city with the occasional high rise that I’m sure charges a premium for ocean views. As we get continue to descend, I see rickety shelters along a river and mud-covered roads. Slums. I try to piece together where we could be but I just can’t tell. Colombia would be my best guess. A coastal town where drug trafficking is still a major problem. Buenaventura, perhaps? I’m hoping there will be some sign at the airport or along our route that will give our town away. Not that I’ll be able to tell anyone. It’s not like I can radio back to CORE our location. And with Luke potentially gone, it might be a couple days before my father and the other senior leaders even realize we’ve disappeared. By then, it could be too late. There may be nothing left to save.

  I shudder, trying to push away the oncoming daymare, but it seeps into my brain anyway. Usually in my daymares, I’m alive. But this time, I’m dead. I’m in dark blue water; my hair floats around me like a mermaid. My hands and feet are tied together, anchored to a cinder block. My skin is gray and peeling. Dozens of tiny fish feast on my flesh. And suddenly, my eyelids lift. My eyes are gone.

  My limbs begin to shake and I swallow the shriek buoying in my throat.

  Not real. Not real. Not real.

  I shake my head, clearing my brain, and stare back out the window as the plane gets lower to the ground. Distinguishable buildings and cars and people are finally coming into view. And then, black. A tarmac. The wheels touch down and I feel my body thrown forward as the plane hits the brakes, but I dig my feet into the jet’s plush carpet, trying to stay in my awkward state of upright.

  “Toto, I don’t think we’re in Kansas anymore,” Harper says quietly as she glances out at the palm trees, blue skies, and men directing our plane, dressed in shorts and T-shirts. We’re much closer to the equator than to the cold and snowy tarmac in Iowa.

  “Silencio!” my second assailant scolds, an angry grimace carved into his face.

  Harper presses her lips into a thin line and turns back toward the window, her chest rising in a crescendo of tiny bursts.

  I stare at the men with their orange vests and tiny green sticks, directing us into an assigned spot at the private airport. Harper sees them too. Her eyes grow wide and I know what she’s thinking: maybe they can help us. My heart enlarges hideously in my chest with each painful, rapid beat, knowing they could truly be our last hope. But if we try to signal for help and it doesn’t go our way, they will kill Harper. Maybe not on the runway, but within the hour. They’ll drive us out of town to a secluded spot, force her to her knees, and put a bullet in her brain. If we run or scream or try to escape, Harper won’t live to see another sunset.

  The jet begins to slow its taxi, pulling up next to two waiting SUVs. The windows are dark, tinted, and probably bulletproof. In fact, the entire black body is most likely bulletproof. A cartel, though powerful and feared, is always a target. For police, for rival cartels. They live in a precarious state of luxury, control, and danger.

  As the pilot brings the jet to a complete stop, the men begin unbuckling their seat belts, stretching their arms and wearily standing up from their seats as if they each just ran a marathon. It’s hard work kidnapping two girls in the middle of the night.

  “Don’t move,” the first assailant spits in my face, his gun back in his hands. He holds it out in front of him and then slowly raises the barrel up, pushing it to the center of my forehead, its steel cold on my warm skin.

  “I’m a little stuck here,” I say, glancing down at the belt tied around my waist, my arms aching and still secured behind my back. “We’re not going anywhere.”

  “You wait here,” he says, like I have another choice in the matter. He pushes the gun against my skin one more time, his finger moving near the trigger, and my heart claps like a summer thunderstorm inside my body so loud, I’m surprised he can’t hear it. He returns the gun to his side and backs down the aisle, his eyes still on me. I watch him as he ducks out the jet door and bounces down the plane steps, joining the other men in the sunlight. He brings a pair of sunglasses to his face and tilts his head toward the blue sky.

  The passenger door of the first SUV opens and a man with large aviator sunglasses and a black baseball cap climbs out of the car. He greets eac
h man with a handshake before placing his fingers along the hips of his dark jeans. His face, though hidden, looks strikingly familiar. I know I’ve seen that jawline, that five o’clock shadow before. My mind filters through the catalogue of guards and assailants I’ve encountered over the last year dealing with Torres. Perhaps he was one of the guards at the ranch where my mother was killed? I squint my eyes, trying to take in his face, trying to place him, but I can’t.

  “Reagan,” Harper whispers, even though there’s no one on the plane to hear us. “The traffic control guys…”

  She doesn’t finish her sentence. She doesn’t need to. My eyes glance at the lone traffic control worker still near our jet. He fiddles with his orange vest, glancing occasionally toward the meeting of Fernando’s soldiers just outside the jet’s door, careful not to keep his eyes on them for too long. Just the way he looks at them, with a mix of curiosity and fear, tells me he knows who they are. What they do. What they’re capable of.

  “We can’t,” I simply say and shake my head. But even as the words leave my lips, my head is swiveling around the cabin, searching for another exit, another way out. But there is none.

  When I turn back around, the man in the black ball cap and glasses is hurrying up the jet stairs, leaving the others still talking on the ground. He enters the plane and quickly makes his way up the aisle toward us. As he takes off his mirrored frames, Harper gasps, her fingers digging into my forearm. And before she says his name, I know exactly who he is.

  “Mateo?” she says, her voice thin and shaky, her eyes slick with sudden tears.

  He gives her a small smile and nods his head, his eyes warmed by her emotional greeting. He comes closer to us, leaning over her to help her unbuckle her seat belt.

  “You bastard,” she says, her voice swelling, her fists lunging toward him, connecting hard against his shoulder. He catches her wrists before she can strike him again, shaking her and shushing her rising emotions.

  “Stop, stop. Stop, mi amor,” he says, still holding on to her wrists as she tries to wrestle her arms free to swing at his face.

  “Mi amor? Fuck you,” Harper says, her voice still rising. Mateo puts a hand over her mouth and looks out the window onto the tarmac. The men are finishing up their conversation, one of the assailant’s legs bounces up and down on the first step, just moments away from climbing the stairs back onto the plane.

  “Stop, stop,” he whispers, shaking her again, his hand gingerly placed over her trembling lips. “Don’t do anything foolish. Okay? Either of you.”

  He glances over at me and I nod my head. Mateo (if that’s even his real name) turns back to Harper, carefully removing his fingertips from her lips. A tear breaks free, falling down her weary face, her eyebrows stitched together, angry. They stare at each other for a moment, an intensity passing between them. Betrayal and heat and love and hate, all in one breath.

  “Vámonos,” a voice commands at the jet’s door. Mateo snaps to attention, picking Harper up by her arm, still holding her gaze. As he turns around, he confidently puts a hand on her back, guiding her out of the jet and down the steps. My first assailant walks toward me, bruised and broken and still bloody. He tears off my seat belt and yanks me to my feet.

  “You see my face?” he asks as he pushes me closer to him. “I’ll do far worse to you later, little girl.”

  “Yeah, but only because I’ll be chained up.” My lips speak before my brain can stop me. He grabs at my arms, twisting them even tighter behind my back as he pushes me down the aisle.

  “Keep talking,” he says, pushing me toward the jet’s stairs. “Keep talking.”

  My head ducks out of the oval jet door and I step into the tropical sunshine. I take in a breath, knowing it could be one of my last moments in fresh air. I wish for sweetness or salt from the ocean. But the smell of toxic fuel fills my nose instead.

  I shudder, another daymare sweeping into my brain. I’m lying in the dark, hog-tied, a thick white cloth tied around my mouth. Liquid is being poured onto my body. I smell it. Gasoline. I struggle and try to scream but no sound comes out of my gagged mouth. A match is lit, illuminating a man’s face, before that tiny flame is dropped at my feet.

  NINETEEN

  Despite the sunny weather when we arrived, clouds have begun to form the farther we travel away from the city center. Harper stares blankly out the window next to me as we pass through a slum on a small river. We’re outside of Buenaventura, Colombia (a sign near the airport confirmed that location), on our way to what I can only guess will be a guarded mansion in the countryside. Fernando lives like a king while thousands live in shacks made of plastic tarps and rotting two-by-fours.

  Harper and I sit together in the center of the SUV’s backseat, Mateo to her left, my first assailant to my right, loaded guns in their laps, their fingers near the triggers, ready to be pointed in our faces at any moment. I was surprised they didn’t bring hoods for us to wear on the drive. But someone up front made the comment that we’d be dead soon. So why did it even matter?

  His declaration sparked a shudder in Harper, but I certainly wasn’t going to turn down the opportunity to drive to Fernando’s compound with full sight. At least I’ll know where we are, where we could run to. That is … if we can make it out of this drug cartel’s grip.

  Mateo keeps looking over at Harper, and I wish I could read what’s written in his eyes. It’s like he’s trying to get her to look at him, but she flat-out refuses to give him even a passing glance. I document and try to decode Harper’s body language. Her straight, almost rigid upright posture and deep frown tells me the first emotion lingering beneath her skin is no longer fear. It’s anger. She is freaking pissed. She’s behaving more like a scorned girlfriend who found out her boyfriend has a side piece, not like someone on her way to face one of the most dreaded cartel leaders in the world. But that’s okay. I guess after hours of raw anxiety and terror tearing apart her stomach, betrayal is a welcome distraction.

  We drive in silence for forty-five minutes, past lush green mountains and scarcely populated villages. We’ve passed exactly eight people. Four in cars passing in the other direction, two on bikes, and two walking between villages, a bucket in one man’s hand, a fishing pole in the other’s. But for the past five minutes, I’ve seen no one. No cars, no people. No signs of life. The car weaves around a mountain and then I see it. A fifteen-foot-high wall, lined with barbed wire that seems to go on forever. The compound.

  Shit. There’s no getting over that thing.

  If we can somehow get out of the house or wherever we’ll be kept, I have to figure out how the hell we can get off of these grounds. My head swivels slowly. I pretend to be looking at my hands, still tied behind my back, but I’m really double-checking what’s behind us. Nothing. Just mountains and tropical vegetation and a poorly paved two-lane road. If we escape, we’ll have nowhere to run to.

  I face forward just as the car pulls up to a guarded gatehouse. The guard stands at attention, dressed in a dark green uniform, a machine gun in his hand. He looks very official, like a member of the military rather than a trained assassin, his paycheck coming in the form of dirty drug money.

  The driver rolls down his window as our car slowly approaches the guard post and the enormous wood-and-iron gate. The wood is stained a deep chocolate brown with clusters of dark pink bougainvillea flowers growing like ivy up either sides. It looks more like the entrance to an exclusive Florida golf course or five-star resort rather than a drug compound. But then again, these guys are billionaires. They can afford the lavish touches of flower-covered gates and chrome-wheeled SUVs with all the money they make from keeping the world addicted to drugs.

  “Tenemos a las chicas,” the driver says when the guard approaches the front window. We’ve got the girls. The guard looks at Harper and me, tied up in the backseat, and gives the driver a small smile.

  “Fernando estará contento,” the guard responds, pointing his square chin in our direction. Fernando will be pleased.


  I inhale through my mouth, air entering my body with the same density of lead, and I feel my lips start to tingle. The guard looks at me one more time, his smirk growing in size, then clutches his semiautomatic weapon to his chest and walks back toward the gatehouse. I watch as he enters the tiny building and hits a button at the top of his desk. The wood-and-iron gate shakes and then pulls back, disappearing into the high wall. The guard waves us through and the driver lifts his foot off the brake, slowly rolling the wheels of our car closer to the compound, Fernando, and our waiting dungeon.

  He wants something from us. I’m not quite sure what it is yet. Information on the Black Angels? To draw more agents into the mouth of his heavily armed, illegal army? That lead-laced breath cuts into my chest as I think about the torture that awaits me. I’ll be wishing for the interrogation tactics of the CIA. Sleep deprivation and wall standing sound like a picnic compared to what Fernando will probably do to me. Nothing is off-limits. The tingling in my lips begins to spread, numbing me in preparation for sadistic cruelty and unrelenting pain.

  The SUV pulls through the gate, gravel crunching beneath its tires. But as I look out the window, I can clearly see this is rich-people gravel. Tiny polished pebbles make up an opulent driveway, with enormous trees lining our route to a colossal white stone house. We pass by a tennis court, two helipads on the left, and an enormous stone building on the right. I make mental notes of every spot, every guard, every wall. There are two guards stationed outside the building. But there are no guards at the helipads or tennis court. And while there are high stone walls around most of the property, as we get closer to the mansion, I can see that in the back the high walls disappear and are replaced with a tall chain-link fence with imposing barbed wire on top. That’s the spot. If we get out of the house, that is the spot I’m going to run like hell toward. It’s our best chance of escape.

  The SUV turns into the circular driveway, winding its way past a beautiful fountain surrounded by well-trimmed hedges, and finally the driver puts the car in park at the front door. I look up at the house with its peaked roof, dormers, and black shutters and feel like I’ve pulled up to a house in the south of France instead of Colombia. The formal, symmetrical architecture seems supremely out of place in this tropical climate.