She looked down at the boy who knelt at her feet. He was as naked as she’d been back in the beginning, subject to every degradation they could think of including the obvious ones. That was, when they could catch her, when she didn’t fight them with every ounce of the skill Jeremy had taught her, with teeth and nails, until she’d learned to be wary and watchful every moment, and they couldn’t catch her any more.
Still, there were more of them than there were of her. There were times she just endured. She bided her time, watched and waited.
And she learned everything Santiago taught her.
Around them his small army trained with the foreigner Santiago had hired, drilling, learning how to fight like a real army, like commandos. He had ambitions, did Santiago, to be more than just a rebel. He would control this whole region – and more, the people would look to him, look up to him. Someday he would lead. Someday he would rule.
That was for another time.
“No,” she said and shook her head. The horror of what he wanted her to do was nearly overwhelming.
Santiago snatched the whip from her hands and lashed it across her back as he had a thousand times before. Pain streaked through her. He’d whipped her so often there were places that no longer had any feeling, although she hadn’t told him that. That was another secret she kept from him. There were others. He still didn’t know how well she spoke Spanish. That knowledge had saved her more than once.
Still, where she could feel, the burn of the whip across her skin was like fire, shockingly intense no matter how many times she felt it. It took her breath away with each stroke.
“Emotions,” Santiago shouted, “are useless. They make you weak. You will not be weak. You will be strong. There is no pity for you. There is no mercy. Those are for the weak. For fools. If you do not do this, I will, but I will give him ten for every one that you would not.”
That many strokes would kill him, the boy on the ground.
Fear is the mind-killer, the little death.
Inwardly the girl who had once been Callie shuddered, looking at the boy who knelt on the ground in front of her.
He was barely her age, his black hair long, thick and straight, shiny, his dark eyes liquid as he looked back over his shoulder at her. The tawny skin of his back was smooth, unmarked.
Santiago brought the whip down on him viciously. Again.
“No,” she whispered. Then, shaking her head, she said more strongly, “No.”
She became Chica.
Holding out her hand for the whip, Chica looked at Santiago, hating him as intensely as she ever had or more. Hating him for making her do this even as she hardened herself to what she had to do.
Taking a breath, swallowing the tears she would not show, she fought her fury at Santiago’s smile of satisfaction.
But she took the whip.
She couldn’t do a halfway job of it either, she knew, or Santiago would take the whip from her again and do what he’d warned. Steeling herself, she closed off everything inside and brought the whip with force down on the boy’s back. She didn’t flinch when he cried out. Resolutely, she counted out the ten, trying not to make it any worse for him than it was. She laid down each stroke cleanly knowing how much more agonizing it was when the whip flicked across a previous stroke, until at last it was done.
The boy quivered in pain, his head bowed to the earth. In the end, he’d cried out. Everyone did, although Santiago demanded that they should not. She saw the boy’s shame. It was a tool Santiago used. She had cried out, but she hadn’t felt shame.
Still, she swallowed hard, drowning her rage and faced Santiago, keeping everything hidden behind her eyes.
“Very good, Chica,” he said, patting her face. “Very good. You learn quickly.”
Fury was bottled up deep inside her, an incessant throbbing behind her eyes.
“Jorge awaits,” Santiago said. “I have a job for you.”
It had been a test, a test of obedience. She should have known, should have realized.
Her breath caught and Callie fought not to let the hope show through. Jorge, and a job.
Was this the opportunity for which she’d been waiting?
She showed none of it. Instead she simply nodded and went to where Jorge waited for her.
An array of weapons was piled around him, but that was for later. She knew she wouldn’t be allowed to touch them, not yet.
They had trained her to be an assassin among other things, as Callie had learned in the early days, before she’d ‘learned’ some of the Spanish she’d already known.
It wasn’t the first time she’d done a ‘job’ for Santiago. The first time she’d had no chance to plan, no time to do anything, but what she was told. This time she was prepared. She’d been waiting for this.
Jorge wasn’t particularly tall, but he was strong and an experienced street fighter. He’d broken her nose - although they generally stayed away from her face since it was too useful to them - and several fingers as well as cracking a rib or two during her training. Injured or not, she was expected to be there the next day and to fight around her injuries.
Today she wasn’t injured, but she went warily where Jorge was concerned. He liked to hurt her sometimes, just for kicks, assignment or not.
Others waited with Jorge. Backup and guards, as much for her as for additional firepower in case something went wrong.
They said nothing to her. Few did, except when directed by Santiago. Even Jorge.
It was a long trek through the jungle to where a truck waited hidden in the brush. They were silent as they rode. Callie simply looked out the window to where the jungle brushed up against the truck, the thin excuse for a road giving some of those plants a chance at unfiltered sunlight, so they grew more lush and thick there. It reminded her of another trip.
They trundled down through the mountains and hills. Callie dared not sleep, knowing what would happen if she did…Jorge would ‘punish’ her.
Punishments were severe and…unpleasant.
It was after dark when they arrived at the safe house.
The men spread out through the house, quickly checking it as Callie and Jorge entered. One of them took the truck to get more gas for the return trip.
“Get cleaned up,” Jorge said, nodding toward one of the rooms.
This house had running water of a kind, a cistern on the roof that caught rainwater, and a makeshift shower. The water was little more than lukewarm, but it would get her cleaner.
Jorge came to watch. Modesty was a thing of the past, and she’d grown careless of nakedness, having been stripped bare many times in Santiago’s camp. It wasn’t as if Jorge hadn’t seen her that way before and in many more ways since. It was only a question of how far he wanted to take it now.
Reaching out he pinched her nipple idly, but she could tell it was more a reminder of her place than of any intention. At the moment. That could change without notice.
As with everything else, in this she’d learned a great deal, too, whether she wished to or not.
Santiago had insisted she learn all the ways to please a man and in time she had. Those lessons hadn’t always been pleasant. When she’d fought they’d held her down, blown cocaine up her nose and did as they pleased anyway while the drug ran its course.
“I do not want to turn you into an addict, chica. You will be of less use to me then,” Santiago had warned. “But I will if you insist, if you force me to it.”
For a moment, she had been tempted, the yearning for oblivion beguiling. But in the end, she couldn’t. She would survive this.
So she’d learned as she’d learned so much else.
Washing her hair, she was simply grateful to be clean in ways she couldn’t be clean in the camp and ignored Jorge.
“This man you will meet,” Jorge said. “He is a rich and powerful politician, married. He likes young girls, though. He likes them innocent, inexperienced, and pretty. There are those who procure such girls for him. He has them come to
his private villa to play. We have arranged to give him you. He is not a friend to our interests.”
She nodded. She knew what that meant.
Jorge smiled thinly. “At least he will die happy.”
There were peasant-type clothes waiting for her in the other room, the kind of simple blouse and skirt she saw many girls her age wear here. Keeping her eyes averted, she dressed under the watchful eyes of the men. It wasn’t that she cared much anymore; it was just better not to give them an excuse.
Once more they got into the truck - the guards lying flat in the bed - and drove through the streets until they came to the outer wall of a villa, where a man stepped out of the shadows of a hidden doorway.
He took one look at her, smiled broadly and nodded.
Jorge whispered in her ear. “We will be waiting, whether you succeed or fail. If you do not come out, we will come in and you will be punished, severely, when we return. If you are caught, we will make certain you’re killed before you can speak. So be quick. Return to me here. Understand?”
She nodded. Speaking was forbidden to her unless she was bid to do so. It was another lesson she’d learned quickly.
The man at the gate unlocked it; the house guards eyed her low cut blouse and smiled knowingly as she went past them.
It was a large villa, the space within open beyond the outer walls, the house long and low, only about two stories tall with a red-tiled roof and iron railings. The man from the gate led her inside. Out of the sight of Jorge and his men, but there were still too many others around, too many guards and servants. All of them watched as the gate guard led her up the stairs.
Callie eyed everything, looking for exits, lines of escape, as she’d been taught.
She was led to a room, the gate guard waving her inside, bowing to someone unseen at first, before he ducked back out through the door.
Licking her lips a little nervously, Callie looked around.
It was an opulent room, the carpet Persian, the furniture mahogany, if she had any guess. The draperies were damask in deep shades of wine to match the rest of the room. A ceiling fan spun slowly. The room was fairly large and dominated by a four-poster bed draped in mosquito netting.
A man stepped from the balcony by the windows, the darkness having concealed him.
To her surprise, she found he was a handsome man, striking, tall, with an aristocratic face and the kind of beautiful dark long-lashed liquid eyes some Latin men possessed. His mouth was full, sensual, his body lean and strong.
She watched him warily, catching a glimpse of herself in a mirror.
That image caught her off guard for only a few seconds, but it stayed with her.
She’d known she’d lost weight, quite a bit, and become a lot more toned than she’d been, but still… It was like looking into the face of a stranger, her eyes seemed huge, hollow and shadowed, someone younger than her years.
The man walked toward her, nothing in his movements threatening as he studied her.
Slowly, he walked around behind her, lifted a lock of her hair to catch it between his fingers, leaning close to smell her hair.
Callie stood very still.
It was like being stalked by a sleek, dark panther, a predator, his dark eyes lovely…and hungry. Her throat went dry.
His voice was deep. “Clean.”
“Si.” Her voice shook.
Brushing the hair back from her shoulder, he pressed a kiss to her throat, to where her pulse hammered.
“Are you nervous, little one?” he asked, resting his hands on her shoulders. “Afraid?”
She cleared her throat a little and nodded.
“You have nothing to fear from me,” he lied as he guided her back toward the bed, his hands sliding down over her shoulders.
To a poor girl of this place, having a handsome, powerful man pay attention to her would be exciting, but frightening. Her virginity would be much prized. Without it, unless she had a rich and influential patron, she would be damaged goods, forced to marry whoever would take her. She would be hoping to please this man so he might keep her for a time.
If she was truly a virgin as he preferred, she would be frightened, unsure of what was about to happen.
As if unconscious of it, Callie moved with calculated seduction, shifting her hips against him as his hands rubbed up and down her arms. It would distract him. She could feel him shake with excitement, with anticipation, with the need to touch her, restraining himself to draw his pleasure out. That need was apparent. It pressed against her lower back.
He turned her when they reached the bed, his gaze moving over her face, down to her breasts where they swelled against the thin, threadbare fabric of the blouse. Deliberately, she arched her back a little as his gaze locked there, his breath coming short. His hand curled around her throat, slid down to the neckline of her shirt.
Callie reached for the mosquito netting as if grasping for balance and then in one quick movement wound it around his throat. She twisted, turned, pulled him back and down, off-balance as he struggled, the cloth around his throat cutting off any attempt to call for help. As he floundered, Callie dropped backward intentionally, taking him with her as she locked her free arm around his throat as well and wrapped her legs around his waist to secure him in the sleeper-hold.
Her unused voice sounded rough, croaky. The only time she ever used it these days was to scream beneath Santiago’s ‘punishments’.
“You’ve made Ocho Santiago unhappy,” she said softly in his ear as he fought to throw her off and she tightened her grip. “I was sent to kill you. Instead, you will only sleep. Be grateful. He used me because you like young girls. That makes you vulnerable. I would be more careful next time.”
To those outside, the sounds would only be the sounds of struggle, likely not that new to them.
It took surprisingly little time for the sleeper hold to work. Still, care was needed. Even a sleeper-hold could kill, if held too long.
Carefully, she checked his pulse.
Still alive.
Quickly she bound and gagged him. Any noises he made when he woke would sound enough like he was debauching another virgin that no one should interfere for a little while.
With a nod, she slipped over to the drapes by the balcony, pulled them closed.
A quick search of the room revealed her victim to be Alejandro Perez. Senator Alejandro Perez. It was useful to know. It also yielded to her a neat little handgun. Loaded.
She smiled. It was time to go home.
Senator Perez had a wide selection of dark colored shirts in his closet. All were far too long, but she could roll up the sleeves. They would be harder to see in the darkness than the off-white peasant blouse.
Quietly she slid out through the French windows onto the shadowed balcony with its wrought iron railing, staying in the shadows.
Santiago’s men would watch the compound, wait for her to leave. They would also watch the guards, so she would only have moments.
Eyeing the guards, she looked for a place to get over the wall. The gate she’d come in would be locked and guarded. It was dangerous to be a politician in many parts of Latin America, especially one with vices who also tended to make enemies of drug-dealing rebels.
Fashionable, but dangerous.
A garage backed against the wall. She glanced at the guards to be sure they weren’t looking her way, vaulted the railing and raced across the open space. Leaping, she drove her feet against the wall of the garage to give her a little more lift, bounced off it even as she reached for the top of the wall. Her hands closed over it and momentum swung her feet up. She arched like a pole-vaulter and got a foot over the wall. Pulling hard and quickly, she went over the wall in a quick cat vault and dropped over the other side into the darkness.
Moving swiftly and silently, she stayed in the shadows as she crept toward the truck and Jorge, from behind.
He was a greater shadow against the darkness.
Her voice was soft.
�
�Jorge,” she said.
Turning, he caught enough of the light for her to see him smile, revealing his remaining teeth.
“Very good,” he said, “Get in the truck.”
Obediently, she did, sliding in on the other side as he got in on the driver’s side.
The windows were closed. He didn’t turn on the truck, turning to her instead, smiling like a shark. Nor had he radioed the others to return. She knew what he had in mind. It suited her as well.
“You’ve done well,” he said, “Ocho will be pleased, but I have your reward for you first.”
He grabbed his crotch and smiled.
With a matching smile, she pulled the little automatic from her pocket and shot him in the chest. So close that his blood spattered her face.
For a moment, he could only look down in shock and stare at the small neat hole there. The hole over his heart. It would take a moment or two.
She looked at him.
“You taught me well,” she said, quietly, remembering the many times he’d hurt her, the times he’d used her.
The next shot went between his legs. He had no breath to scream.
Her final shot went between his eyes.
She felt no satisfaction.
Ocho Santiago would be very unhappy. In fact, he would be murderously furious. She did smile, just a little, at that thought. There would be no going back now. But she’d never intended to go back. They would have to kill her first.
The cab of the truck had muffled the cracks of the little pistol. Still, the others would get restless soon.
Carefully, she searched Jorge’s pockets, took what money he had and his few valuables.
Opening the door, she let him fall out, then closed the door again as she slid into the driver’s seat. She peeled off the Senator’s shirt, used it to wipe up the blood, and then dropped it out the window as she drove toward the center of town.
It was unlikely she would find a U.S. embassy here and where ‘here’ was she wasn’t entirely certain, but killing Jorge and taking the truck would buy her time. The other men would wait for a while before they started to wonder. Locating other transportation and finding a way to communicate with Santiago, not to mention fear of his rage, would buy her still more time. Thank God they’d filled the gas tank first.
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