Take Me

by Anna Zaires, Pepper Winters, Skye Warren, Lynda Chance, Pam Godwin, Amber Lin

  I must’ve passed out from the blast, but I am not sure. By the time I recover enough to walk, the fire consuming the building is almost over.

  Dazed, I stumble up the hill and start searching through the smoldering ruins of the warehouse. Occasionally, I find something that looks like a charred limb, and a couple of times, I come across a body that’s very nearly whole, with only a head or a leg missing. I register these findings on some level, but I don’t fully process them. I feel oddly detached, like I’m not really there. Nothing touches me. Nothing bothers me. Even the physical sensations are dulled by shock.

  I search for him for hours. By the time I stop, the sun is high up in the sky, and I’m dripping with sweat.

  I have no choice but to face the truth now.

  There are no survivors. It’s as simple as that.

  I should cry. I should scream. I should feel something.

  But I don’t.

  I just feel numb instead.

  Leaving the warehouse, I begin walking. I don’t know where I am going, and I don’t care. All I’m capable of doing is putting one foot in front of the other.

  By the time it starts getting dark, I come across a cluster of tiny houses made of wooden poles and cardboard. There is a shallow creek running through the middle of the settlement, and I see a couple of women doing laundry there by hand.

  Their shocked faces are the last thing I remember before I collapse a few feet away from them.

  * * *

  “Miss Leston, do you feel up to answering a few questions for me? I’m Agent Wilson, FBI, and this is Agent Bosovsky.”

  I look up at the plump middle-aged man standing next to my bed. He’s not at all like I imagined FBI agents to be. His face is round, almost cherubic-looking, with rosy cheeks and dancing blue eyes. If Agent Wilson wore a red hat and had a white beard, he would’ve made a great Santa Claus. In contrast, his partner—Agent Bosovsky—is painfully thin, with deep frown lines etched into his narrow face.

  For the past two days, I have been recuperating in a hospital in Bangkok. Apparently, one of the women at the creek had notified the local authorities about the girl that wandered into their village. I vaguely recall them questioning me, but I doubt I made any sense when I spoke to them. However, they understood enough to contact the American Embassy on my behalf, and the US officials took it from there.

  “Your parents are on the way,” Agent Bosovsky says when I continue to stare at them without saying a word. “Their flight lands in a few hours.”

  I blink, his words somehow penetrating the layer of ice that has kept me insulated from everyone and everything since the explosion. “My parents?” I croak, my throat feeling strangely swollen.

  The thin agent nods. “Yes, Miss Leston. They were notified yesterday, and we got them on the earliest flight to Bangkok. They wanted to speak to you, but you were sedated at that point.”

  I process that information. The doctors already informed me that I have a mild concussion, along with first-degree burns and lacerations on my feet. Other than that, they were impressed by my overall good health—dehydration, recent surgery, and various bruises notwithstanding. Still, they must’ve sedated me to let me rest.

  “Do you think you could answer some questions before your parents arrive?” Agent Wilson asks gently when I continue to remain silent.

  I nod, almost imperceptibly, and he pulls up a chair. Agent Bosovsky does the same thing.

  “Miss Leston, you were abducted in June of last year,” Agent Wilson says, the expression on his round face warm and understanding. “Can you tell us anything about your abduction?”

  I hesitate for a moment. Do I want to tell them anything about Julian? And then I remember that he’s dead and that none of it matters. For a second, the agony is so sharp, it steals my breath away, but then the numbing wall of ice encases me again. “Sure,” I say evenly. “What do you want to know?”

  “Do you know his name?”

  “Julian Esguerra. He is—” I swallow hard, “—he was an arms dealer.”

  The FBI agent’s eyes widen. “An arms dealer?”

  I nod and tell them what I know about Julian’s organization. Agent Bosovsky scribbles down notes as quickly as he can, while Agent Wilson continues asking me questions about Julian’s activities and the terrorists who stole me from him. They seem disappointed that he’s dead—and that I know so little—and I explain that I haven’t been off the island since my abduction.

  “He kept you there for the entire fifteen months?” Agent Bosovsky asks, the frown lines on his thin face deepening. “Just you and this woman, Beth?”

  “Yes.”

  The agents exchange a look, and I stare at them, knowing what they’re thinking. Poor girl, kept like an animal in a cage for a criminal’s amusement. Once I felt that way too, but no longer. Now I would do anything to rewind the clock and go back to being Julian’s captive.

  Agent Wilson turns toward me and clears his throat. “Miss Leston, we’ll have a sexual abuse counselor speak to you later this afternoon. She’s very good—”

  “There’s no need,” I interrupt. “I’m fine.”

  And I am. I don’t feel victimized or abused. I just feel numb.

  After a few more questions, they leave me alone. I don’t tell them any details of my relationship with Julian, but I think they get the gist of it.

  The FBI sketch artist comes to see me next, and I describe Julian to him. He keeps giving me funny looks as I correct his interpretation of my descriptions. “No, his eyebrows are a little thicker, a little straighter . . . His hair is a little wavier, yes, like that . . .”

  He has particular trouble with Julian’s mouth. It’s hard to describe the beauty of that dark, angelic smile of his. “Make the upper lip a little fuller . . . No, that’s too full—it should be more sensuous, almost pretty . . .”

  Finally, we’re done, and Julian’s face stares at me from the white sheet of paper. A bolt of agony spears through me again, but the numbness comes to my rescue right away, as it did before.

  “That’s a handsome fellow,” the artist comments, examining his handiwork. “You don’t see men like that every day.”

  My hands clench tightly, my nails digging into my skin. “No, you don’t.”

  The next person to visit my room is the sexual abuse counselor they mentioned to me before. She’s a slightly overweight brunette who looks to be in her late forties, but something about her direct gaze reminds me of Beth.

  “I’m Diane,” she says, introducing herself to me as she pulls up a chair. “May I call you Nora?”

  “That’s fine,” I say wearily. I don’t particularly want to talk to this woman, but the determined look on her face tells me that she has no intention of leaving until I do.

  “Nora, can you tell me about your time on the island?” she asks, looking at me.

  “What do you want to know?”

  “Whatever you feel comfortable telling me.”

  I think about it for a moment. The truth of the matter is that I’m not comfortable telling her anything. How can I describe the way Julian made me feel? How can I explain the highs and lows of our unorthodox relationship? I know what she’s going to think—that I’m screwed up in the head for loving him. That my feelings aren’t real, but a byproduct of my captivity.

  And she would probably be right—but it doesn’t matter to me anymore. There is right and wrong, and then there’s what Julian and I had together. Nothing and no one will ever be able to fill the void left inside me. No amount of counseling would make the pain of losing him go away.

  I give Diane a polite smile. “I’m sorry,” I say quietly. “I’d rather not talk to you right now.”

  She nods, not the least bit surprised. “I understand. Often, as victims, we blame ourselves for what happened. We think we did something to cause this thing to happen to us.”

  “I don’t think that,” I say, frowning. Okay, maybe the thought did flit briefly through my mind when I was fir
st taken, but getting to know Julian had quickly disabused me of that notion. He was a man who simply took what he wanted—and he had wanted me.

  “I see,” she says, looking slightly puzzled. Then her brow clears as she appears to solve the mystery in her mind. “He was a very good-looking man, wasn’t he?” she guesses, staring at me.

  I hold her gaze silently, not willing to admit anything. I can’t talk about my feelings right now, not if I want to maintain that icy distance that keeps me sane.

  She looks at me for a few seconds, then gets up, handing me her card. “If you’re ever ready to talk, Nora, please call me,” she says softly. “You can’t keep it all bottled up inside. It will eventually consume you—”

  “Okay, I will call you,” I interrupt, taking the card and placing it on my bedside table. I’m lying through my teeth, and I’m sure she knows it.

  The corners of her mouth tilt up in a faint smile, and then she exits the room, finally leaving me alone with my thoughts.

  * * *

  For my parents’ arrival, I insist on getting up and putting on normal clothes. I don’t want them to see me lying in a hospital bed. I’m sure they have already spent too much time worrying about me, and the last thing I want is to add to their anxiety.

  One of the nurses gives me a pair of jeans and a T-shirt, and I gratefully put them on. They fit me well. The nurse is a petite Thai woman, and we’re roughly the same size. It’s strange to wear these types of clothes again. I had gotten so used to light summer dresses that jeans feel unusually rough and heavy against my skin. I don’t put on any shoes, though, since my feet still have to heal from the burns I got wandering through the remnants of the warehouse.

  When my parents finally enter the room, I am sitting in a chair, waiting for them. My mom comes in first. Her face crumples as soon as she sees me, and she rushes across the room, tears streaming down her face. My dad is right behind her, and soon they are both hugging me, chattering a mile a minute, and sobbing with joy.

  I smile widely, hug them in return, and do my best to reassure them that I’m all right, that all of my injuries are minor and there’s nothing to worry about. I don’t cry, though. I can’t. Everything feels dull and distant, and even my parents seem more like beloved memories than real people. Nonetheless, I make an effort to act normally; I already caused them far too much stress and anxiety.

  After a little while, they calm down enough to sit and talk.

  “He contacted you, right?” I ask, remembering Julian’s promise. “He told you I was alive?”

  My dad nods, his face drawn tight. “A couple of weeks after you disappeared, we got a deposit into our bank account,” he says quietly. “A deposit in the amount of one million dollars from an untraceable offshore account. Supposedly it was a lottery that we won.”

  My mouth falls open. “What?” Julian gave my parents money?

  “At the same time, we received an email,” my dad continues, his voice shaking. “The subject was: ‘From your daughter with love.’ It had your picture. You were lying on a beach, reading a book. You looked so beautiful, so peaceful . . .” He swallows visibly. “The email said that you were well and that you were with someone who would take care of you—and that we should use the money to pay off our mortgage. It also said that we would be putting you in danger if we went to the police with this information.”

  I stare at him in bemusement, trying to imagine what they must’ve thought at that point. A million dollars . . .

  “We didn’t know what to do,” my mom says, her hands anxiously twisting together. “We thought this could be a useful lead in the investigation, but at the same time, we didn’t want to do anything to jeopardize you, wherever you were . . .”

  “So what did you do?” I ask in fascination. The FBI didn’t say anything about a million dollars, so my parents couldn’t have spoken to them about this. At the same time, I can’t imagine my parents simply taking the money and not pursuing this further.

  “We used the money to hire a team of private investigators,” my dad explains. “The best ones we could find. They were able to track the deposit to a shell corporation in the Cayman Islands, but the trail died there.” He pauses, looking at me. “We’ve been using that money to look for you ever since.”

  “What happened, honey?” my mom asks, leaning forward in her chair. “Who took you? Where did this money come from? Where have you been this whole time?”

  I smile and begin answering their questions. At the same time, I watch them, drinking in their familiar features. My parents are a handsome couple, both of them healthy and in good shape. They had me when they were both in their early twenties, so they are still relatively young. My dad has only traces of gray in his dark hair, though there is more gray now than I remember seeing before.

  “So you really were swimming in the ocean and reading books on the beach?” My mom stares at me in disbelief as I describe my typical day on the island.

  “Yes.” I give her a huge smile. “In some ways, it was like a really long vacation. And he did take care of me, like he told you he would.”

  “But why did he take you?” my dad asks in frustration. “Why did he steal you away?”

  I shrug, not wanting to go into detailed explanations about Maria and Julian’s extreme possessiveness. “Because that’s just the type of man he was, I guess,” I say casually. “Because he couldn’t really date me normally, given his profession.”

  “Did he hurt you, honey?” my mom asks, her dark eyes filled with sympathy. “Was he cruel to you?”

  “No,” I say softly. “He wasn’t cruel to me at all.”

  I can’t explain the complexity of my relationship with Julian to my parents, so I don’t even try. Instead, I gloss over many aspects of my captivity, focusing only on the positive. I tell them about my early morning fishing expeditions with Beth and my newfound painting hobby. I describe the beauty of the island and how I got back into running. By the time I pause to catch my breath, they are both staring at me with strange looks on their faces.

  “Nora, honey,” my mom asks uncertainly, “are you . . . are you in love with this Julian?”

  I laugh, but the sound comes out raw and empty. “Love? No, of course not!” I’m not sure what gave her that idea, since I have been trying to avoid talking about Julian at all. The more I think about him, the more I feel like the wall of ice around me might crack, letting the pain drown me.

  “Of course not,” my dad says, watching me closely, and I see that he doesn’t believe me.

  Somehow both of my parents can sense the truth—that I’m far more traumatized by my rescue than by my abduction.

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Over the next four months, I attempt to pick up the pieces of my life.

  After another day in the Bangkok hospital, I’m deemed healthy enough to travel, and I go home, back to Illinois with my parents. We have two FBI escorts on our trip home—Agents Wilson and Bosovsky—who use the twenty-hour flight to ask me even more questions. Both of them seem frustrated because, according to their databases, Julian Esguerra simply doesn’t exist.

  “There are no other aliases you’ve heard him use?” Agent Bosovsky asks me for the third time, after their Interpol query comes back without any results.

  “No,” I say patiently. “I only knew him as Julian. The terrorists called him Esguerra.”

  Beth’s guess about the identities of the men who stole us from Julian’s clinic turned out to be correct. They were indeed part of a particularly dangerous Jihadist organization called Al-Quadar—that much the FBI had been able to find out.

  “This just doesn’t make sense,” Agent Wilson says, his round cheeks quivering with frustration. “Anyone with that kind of clout should have been on our radar. If he was head of an illegal organization that manufactured and distributed cutting-edge weapons, how is it possible that not a single government agency is aware of his existence?”

  I don’t know what to tell him, so I just shrug in
response. The private investigators my parents hired hadn’t been able to find out anything about him either.

  My parents and I had debated telling the FBI about Julian’s money, but ultimately decided against it. Revealing this information so late in the game would only get my parents in trouble and could potentially cause the FBI to think that I had been Julian’s accessory. After all, what kidnapper sends money to his victim’s family?

  By the time we get home, I am exhausted. I’m tired of my parents hovering over me all the time, and I’m sick of the FBI coming to me with a million questions that I can’t answer. Most of all, I’m tired of being around so many people. After more than a year with minimal human contact, I feel overwhelmed by the airport crowds.

  I find my old room in my parents’ house virtually untouched. “We always hoped you’d be back,” my mom explains, her face glowing with happiness. I smile and give her a hug before gently ushering her out of the room. More than anything, I need to be alone right now—because I don’t know how long I can keep up my ‘normal’ facade.

  That night, as I take a shower in my old childhood bathroom, I finally give in to my grief and cry.

  * * *

  Two weeks after my arrival home, I move out of my parents’ house. They try to talk me out of it, but I convince them that I need this—that I have to be on my own and independent. The truth of the matter is, as much as I love my parents, I can’t be around them twenty-four-seven. I’m no longer that carefree girl they remember, and I find it too draining to pretend to be her.

  It’s much easier to be myself in the tiny studio I rent nearby.

  My parents try to give me what remains of Julian’s gift to them—half a million with small change—but I refuse. The way I see it, that money had been for my parents’ mortgage and I want it used for that purpose. After numerous arguments, we reach an agreement: they pay off most of their mortgage and refinance the rest, and the remaining money goes into my college fund.

  Although I technically don’t need to work for a while, I get a waitressing job anyway. It gets me out of the house, but is not particularly demanding—which is exactly what I need right now. There are nights when I don’t sleep and days when getting out of bed is torture. The emptiness inside me is crushing, the grief almost suffocating, and it takes every bit of my strength to function at a semi-normal level.