“What are they doing in there?” Camilla said.
“We have to get out of here,” one of the girls mumbled.
The other shot her a look, a finger pressed to her lips. “Be quiet.”
“If we wait here, we’re next,” she hissed. She moved toward the door, still watching the bathroom over her shoulder. Her fingers gripped the handle.
“What are you doing?”
But she slipped out without another word, her steps heavy as she ran down the metal stairs and into the parking lot. Camilla could feel herself inching off the bed, her legs shaking as she fought to sit still. The other girl, the one whose friend was lying unconscious in the tub, took a step toward the door. Then she took another and then another.
Something wafted out with the steam, sharp and pricking at Camilla’s senses. Putrid, sulfur. She coughed, choking on the smell and when she looked up the other girl was gone too. She was alone. The only one left sitting on the edge of that damp mattress.
She rose to her feet, still watching the bathroom door, still mapping their shadows. But then the knob twisted, the door fell open. And the first thing she saw was the blood, dark and painting his forearms, the hem of his shirt. She turned to run, to scream. But his hand was already pressed over her mouth and the girl’s blood slick against her lips until it was all she could taste, until its dark imprint along his skin was all she could see.
Chapter 27
Veronica
Boston
Veronica could feel it warm and rising up around her, the sand giving way around her hips, the ocean carving her from the earth. It slipped in between her legs and down over her shoulders, the foam licking at her cheeks. All she had to do was close her eyes. All she had to do was sink. But they fluttered open, a shadow hanging over her. And there he was again. Ripping her from the tide. Wringing her dry.
She examined the man from the corner of her eye. He had a different face this time—an older face, wider, the skin along his brow pinched in dry folds. He had a different mouth too. And his eyes. They weren’t brown like they were that morning or afternoon. They weren’t a dark sallow yellow like they’d been the day before. No, this time they were grey—pale and lucid and scaling every inch of her except her face. But the rest of him—his palms damp and fumbling, the sweet tinge of alcohol on his breath, his weight on her—all of that was the same.
He hesitated, listening to the footsteps of other men being led to other rooms and Veronica wondered if he was afraid of himself, if he was afraid of what he was about to do. For weeks men had been slipping into her room—while she lay on the cold floor listening to the thrum of music in the club downstairs, while she curled up in the corner behind the door and tried to sleep. They’d rip her from the silence, filling it with the click of their teeth, slurred words, and the splitting of their zipper.
It was always the same.
Hers was the only flesh altered. Hers were the only broken pieces left in a frail heap on the cold concrete floor. But while she usually clung to those moments just before their eyes met, just before he could steal the glance she’d been dreading, this time she wanted him to see her. This time she wanted him to see her eyes and the pain churning there with his reflection. She wanted him to see.
So when he climbed on top of her she turned to face him, her eyes wide and unflinching. And for a moment he grew still. Subdued not by the harsh glint in them, the pain fluxing in those irises, but by the man he saw tangled there—dark and hollow and dead.
Chapter 28
Camilla
Boston
In the dark, sounds swelled and took shape—grating across Camilla’s skin, sliding cold down her back. Her ears burned, twisted beneath the blindfold pressed tight to her face, and then all she could hear was her pulse. The knot dug into her hairline, a few strands caught in the fabric, and she rubbed her neck along the back of her seat trying to rip them free.
Someone placed a hand on her knee, his thumb pressed hard to her bone as the paved road gave way to a manic emptiness. They pulled to a stop, a hand reaching for her arm, gripping her tight. She stumbled out after them, her hand sweeping across some frozen grass, the dew burning cold against her fingertips. She was pushed forward and then she felt the cold, dank darkness pouring over her.
They threw her against the wall and she slumped to the floor. They ripped off her blindfold but it was still dark, their silhouettes lit only by the small glow of a cell phone as they searched for the light switch. Suddenly a flame swelled from the center of the room. It burned and Camilla closed her eyes, trying to hear past the buzzing of the breaker box.
Soiled colors peeled down the walls in long petrified drips. Her hands bound behind her were numb, her head spinning. That smell still hung on the edge of her lips. But there was a fervency to it, raw and wild.
A dark ribbon cut between her legs, spilling into the cracks along the floor. And there was so much. There was too much. Camilla leaned forward, heaving, trying not to look, to breathe. But in the corner of her eye there was a shadow slumped against the wall, the girl’s arms wrangled in the same position.
She turned her face, meeting Camilla’s eyes, letting her see her. And Camilla didn’t want to see. She didn’t want to count the bodies, she didn’t want to know. But then, against everything inside her, she turned to the mangled mess on the floor and looked.
Part III
Chapter 29
Jax
Jax sat in hand cuffs across from Medina in a private lobby area.
“They’re just precautionary,” Medina had assured him, “until the girl is well enough to corroborate your story.”
A young doctor with a goatee and his long hair pulled back into a ponytail entered the room. His hands rested in the pockets of his slacks and he shook his head when Medina stood to meet him.
“Whoever did this to her must have had hands like a...” He paused, shook his head again. “It’s obvious she was held down and bruising along her jaw line suggests he probably tried to strangle her. We’ve located some internal bleeding as well.”
“Shit,” Medina said. “Anything else?”
“There was evidence of a sexual assault. There’s severe bruising along her hips and there was semen found on her clothes. The asshole definitely wasn’t trying to be…”
And then their voices trailed off as if they were speaking under water and Jax lurched forward, vomiting all over Medina’s briefcase. He couldn’t breathe.
“Whoa, hold on,” the doctor said, placing a hand on Jax’s shoulder.
“What the hell kid?” Medina yelled, trying to shake the mess from his briefcase.
“Come on, let’s get you to a room.”
“Is she going to be ok?” Jax asked.
“That’s none of your goddamn business,” Medina said.
“Did you bring these two in together?”
“Yeah, but we’re still not sure about his role in all of this. He’s fucking Pascual’s kid brother.”
“I didn’t touch her.”
“Oh, really? Because it looked like you were trying to make a run for it in the park.”
“I was trying to help her. If I’d done that to her don’t you think I would have just left her to die in that fire?”
“She was there? Is that where you were holding her?”
“Not me. I was trying to get her out.”
“Then who did this?”
“I don’t know who did it.”
“Wrong answer, kid.” Medina knelt in front of Jax, their faces inches apart. “I really wish you’d stop trying to cover up for that fucking brother of yours.”
“I don’t give a shit about Pascual.”
“Is that so? Then why don’t you tell me where he’s been hiding. Or about that nun he abducted in broad daylight and then left her body decimated in one of the pews of my uncle’s church. Or where—”
“What?”
“Don’t play dumb with me.”
“I have no fucking clue what you’
re talking about. I’ve stayed the hell away from Pascual for the past month and where he’s hiding…I don’t know. Could be anywhere now that the building on fourth’s been burned down.”
“So he was there?”
“Usually. But not tonight.”
“Think maybe he’s responsible? Maybe he set the fire to get back at some lackeys who crossed him?”
Jax had no idea what kind of damage had been done by the fire he’d started. He hadn’t meant for anyone to get hurt who didn’t deserve it but if they had, if the fire had managed to spread the length of the block before the firemen could stop it, then he could be in a shit load of trouble if they found out it was him.
“He was worried about a rat,” Jax offered.
Medina smiled slyly to himself. “He’s smarter than I thought.”
“He could have been cleaning house, who knows.”
“Then why were you there?”
“I went back for Rani.”
“Rani,” Medina repeated. His gaze shifted to the wall behind Jax. “You mean Esperanza?”
“How do you know that?”
Medina turned back toward the doctor. “When can I speak with the girl?”
“She’s awake now. But just for a few minutes.”
Medina took off down the hallway toward Rani’s room.
“Wait,” Jax said, trying to stand.
“You stay there.”
Jax paced the lobby, eyes trained on the doorway to Rani’s room. He finally leaned against the wall of the hallway trying to make out Rani’s silhouette glowing behind the small glass window separating them. He strained forward, listening. But it was quiet, the low whirr of medical equipment drowning out Medina’s questions. Jax finally slumped down in one of the empty chairs, his eyes still on the light flooding from Rani’s room, until the entire space was a trembling water color, tears cutting it into pieces.
Chapter 30
Rani
Rani heard the door slide open and she was jolted by the sound. She tried to sit up but could only manage to lift her head. A shadow swelled along her privacy curtain before the fabric was pushed back and a man entered. It was the man from the park. The police officer.
“Rani?” he said. “I’m Detective Medina. Do you remember seeing me in the park?”
Rani nodded, the numbness along the left side of her face discouraging her lips.
He moved closer and sat down in a chair against the wall. “I know your sister Nadia.”
Rani rolled over. “What?” she whispered.
“We’ve been looking for you and your siblings. Our plan to have someone meet you when you landed was…intercepted. Pascual murdered the nun who was to take you to meet your sister in New Bedford. That’s where she is. She’s alive and well and waiting for you."
Rani felt herself sinking, every word falling on her like a small lead weight. She blinked. “Is she coming?” she asked Medina.
He shook his head. “It would be too dangerous. As soon as you’re well enough we’ll take you to her and your siblings. We just need to know where they are.”
“I…I don’t know.”
Rani felt trapped by the IV flowing into her wrist, the bandages stuck to her skin; the numbness from the pain medications they’d given her. She had to find them, she had to move. Medina reached a hand out but she pulled away.
“Jax,” she said, remembering the coat he’d strung around her shoulders, the carton of fries he’d laid at her feet. “He knows where they are.”
Chapter 31
Jax
After Jax gave an officer the address of the motel it took less than half an hour for all four of them to be reunited again, Breezy laying next to Rani in her hospital bed and Enzo sleeping in the crook of Max’s arm in the chair next to them. Jax was still confined to the lobby, his wrists still handcuffed. Even though Rani had corroborated his story, had told Medina that he’d saved her life, they were still wary of him.
Different officers took their turn questioning Jax and trying to lure out of him any information he had about Pascual and his operation. He shrunk at the word. Operation. He could still remember when Pascual was just the neighborhood thug, making deliveries on his bike, coke taped along the inseam of his backpack. But then he dropped out of school, started making moves, gathering an army. It was barbaric at first, animalistic, unsophisticated. There were no rules, no logistics. But then something changed. Pascual got smart. He started working with the cartel in South America, helping to transport their mules, distribute their product.
For four years he perfected the process, streamlining every aspect, grooming law enforcement, meeting city officials for lunch. And on reputation alone he’d perpetuated this fear, this myth of who he was. That’s what Medina and every other police officer who’d ever gone after Pascual didn’t realize. The man they feared, the man that was ripping their city apart at the seams was just an illusion.
The real man behind the war—behind the revenge killings, the threatening of reporters and catholic priests, the slaughter of mules in cheap motel rooms—was a middle school dropout who would still be living with his mother if she hadn’t moved to Texas to get away from him. Jax had always held onto that, using it to quell his own guilt, his own fears that they were somehow the same. Because they were.
Jax thought about that day in the park with Sam. His silence. Everything he didn’t say still burned at the back of his throat and he’d tasted it again that day he was slumped at Pascual’s feet, his finger quavering over the trigger of a gun. But then he’d swallowed it down again, deciding in that second that his life was worth more than the one lying broken in front of him.
And still, he didn’t leave.
Jax was still eyeing the hallway as if Rani was about to step outside, as if he might catch a glimpse of her. He thought about the way her face had looked before, the way her eyes sat wide from the bridge of her small nose, the way she bit her chapped lips before she spoke. He wondered what her lips looked like when she smiled.
He tried to hold on to that image of her face, to the fearlessness that had glowed behind her dark eyes that night on the beach when she’d hovered over him, the tip of a blade pressed to his throat. But the memory dissolved and her face returned to him, not the way it looked, but the way it had felt that night in the attic of Pascual’s hideout when he’d tried to wake her. The blood near her lips still warm, her hair in a damp tangle.
He answered the rest of their questions in half beat sighs, monotone, matter of fact, impatience dripping from every word.
He finally turned, meeting the officer’s eyes. “I’ve been here for hours,” he said. “I let you slap a pair of cuffs on me and I answered all of your questions. Can you at least let me see Rani? I just want to know she’s alright.”
“You heard the doctor. She’s fine now. You don’t need to see her.”
“I don’t give a shit what the doctor said. I’m through answering your fucking questions and I want to see her.”
“You’re through, huh? Then maybe it’s time to for you to go.”
One of the officers pulled Jax onto his feet.
“Where the fuck are you taking me?” he said.
“Just drop him back on the street,” Medina said as he joined them in the waiting room.
“Wait. But, wait, just…” Jax looked at Medina, took a breath. “I can help you.”
“How?” Medina said, eyebrow raised.
“I…I can help you find Pascual.”
“So you do know where he is.”
“No. But I am his brother,” Jax scoffed. “I’ll just tell him I have Rani and that I found Nadia and—”
“Is that what you did? Is that how all of this shit happened? You used them as some kind of pawn to—”
“I was trying to help them find their sister. I was only pretending to help Pascual and that was only after he found us. I never…”
And then the lights flickered, a low hum passing over the entire floor as each one shuddered off.
“Shit. What the hell was that?”
Jax tried to step away from the rows of chairs and end tables—instinct maneuvering his legs as he waited for their shadows to solidify.
“The intercom is down,” a nurse said as a door slid closed.
Jax could hear her feeling along her desk for the phone. In the quiet, at the buzz of the voice on the other end, his muscles slackened a bit. He exhaled.
“They’ll have someone up in a minute. Just a…”
There was a soft click and then the sound of something falling limp against the linoleum floor. Jax started running, his eyes searching for solid shapes as he made his way to Rani’s room. It was dark too but when he threw back the privacy curtain he saw their silhouettes lit up by the moonlight passing through the hospital room window. It was already ajar and Rani had an arm draped over Max’s shoulders.
Jax moved to help them but his wrists were still trapped in the handcuffs so he slid past them and climbed over the windowsill into the empty lot. Breezy and Enzo were already outside, huddled together next to the wall. When Breezy saw Jax she wrapped an arm around his leg, her other hand clutching the sleeve of Enzo’s coat.
Rani managed to step over the window’s ledge using Jax’s chest and Max’s shoulder for balance but the moment both of Rani’s feet were on the ground, a series of shallow shots rang behind the closed door. It flew open and a low crouching figure backed into the room. Medina emerged from behind the privacy curtain, gun drawn and pointed toward the empty doorway.
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