The American stands over me like a ghost come from out of nowhere.
“Why did you tie me up?” I’m shaking so bad I hope he doesn’t notice. I don’t want him to know the true level of my fear.
He leans over and picks me up from the floor and lays me back on the bed. I try to kick and hit him until I realize how stupid that is because the only thing it might do is cause me to fall and hit the floor again. Without answering, he goes back around to the other side where he was sitting and puts his hand in a bowl of water on the night stand. He wrings the water from a rag and brings it toward my face, but I try to pull away from him. It doesn’t faze him. Nothing ever seems to, really. I know I’m not going anywhere right now so I just lay here very still, staring directly into his eyes even though he’s not looking back into mine.
I want him to see me, to see the anger in my face, but he doesn’t care to look.
“You punched me?” I can’t believe it, but then again I can.
“Yes.” He dabs the cold wet cloth over my left eye and around the bone.
“So you’re a murderer and a woman beater.”
His dark eyes finally look directly into mine and his hand stops moving as if my accusation struck him the wrong way.
He looks away and goes back to dabbing my face.
“I don’t hit women,” he says, “unless they have a gun pointed at my head.”
I don’t respond to that. He makes a notable argument, if it can be called an argument.
“Do I have a black eye?”
“No,” he says, pulling the wet rag away. “I did not hit you that hard. Just a little swollen.”
I look at him like he’s crazy. “No? Yet you hit me hard enough to knock me unconscious the whole night?”
He stands up from the bed, his tall height looming over me, and walks over to his coat hanging over the back of the chair. He reaches inside one of the pockets and pulls out a bottle of pills.
“You woke up shortly after I knocked you out,” he says as he twists the cap off the bottle. “I had to drug you.”
I blink back the stun.
He shuffles a little white pill into the palm of his hand and holds it out to me. I’m still looking at him like he’s crazy, maybe now even more-so.
“You drugged me? What is that?”
I want to slap him. If my hands weren’t bound I would.
“Sleeping pill,” he says, putting the pill to my lips. “Harmless. I take it myself. You, on the other hand, only need half of one, I know that now.”
I spit the pill onto the yellowed sheet beneath me.
“I think I’ve slept enough.”
“Suit yourself.” He slides the bottle back inside his coat and moves toward the door.
“Where are you going?”
He stops at the window instead and pulls the curtain closed the rest of the way but remains at it watching out through a crack in the thick fabric. With his back to me, I try quietly to work my wrists free.
“Nowhere at the moment,” he says and then turns around again and I stop struggling with my bonds in an instant so that he doesn’t notice.
“Okay…well then what are we doing here and why am I tied up?”
He looks right at me. “Waiting on the men Javier sent here to get you.”
I just swallowed my throat. Tears spring instantly from the corners of my eyes. I start to thrash around, trying my hardest to get my hands and legs free, but to no avail. He tied me better than they tied the pigs back at the compound.
“Please! You can’t let them take me! I’m begging you….”
“It is out of my hands,” he says looking back out the window. “It is why I offered the pill. I thought you’d prefer to be unconscious when they arrive.”
I feel like I’m going to be sick. My heart is beating too fast, my insides are stiffening and I feel like I can’t breathe. I force my body to sit upright and I throw my legs over the side of the bed and try to stand.
“Sit down,” he says turning to look at me again.
Tears barrel from my eyes and I raise my bound hands out toward him. “Please…,” I choke on my tears, my chest shuddering and jerking with fast, uneven breaths. “Don’t let them take me back there!”
“I will ask you one more time,” he says turning to face me fully. “Do you want to be awake for what is about to happen?”
“I don’t want it to happen!” I scream.
I pull my arms up and try working the fabric loose from my wrists with my teeth. The American ignores me and moves over to a long black flat suitcase of sorts sitting on the floor propped against the far wall. Carrying it by the handle he places it on the end of the bed near me and flips the latches to raise the lid, blocking my view from what’s hidden inside.
A sharp glint of reflective sunlight beams against the back of the curtain and the sound of squeaky brakes outside twists my stomach into knots further. I freeze on the edge of the bed, my teeth still clenched around the fabric, my eyes wide and fearful. I look to and from the door and the American who stands at the foot of the bed twisting a long metal thing on the end of a slick black handgun. And then so fast, yet as casual as an early morning walk, he closes the suitcase and slides it underneath the bed and out of sight.
He comes toward me.
I try to kick him again but my bound ankles keep me from doing anything but nearly causing me to fall off the bed.
“No! Leave me alone! Please don’t do this!”
With his free hand he grabs me by the elbow and pulls me harshly to my feet, the gun pointed at the floor in his other hand and then he walks me awkwardly across the small room and toward a tiny restroom.
There is a knock at the door but the American pays no attention to it. He drags me into the restroom and practically pushes me into the disgusting tub. I think my head is going to hit the side but he holds me by the fabric on my wrists and lowers me in the rest of the way safely.
“Stay down low. Don’t raise your head and don’t move.”
“What?” I blink back the confusion. I’m so scared I feel like I’m going to lose control of my bladder any second now.
“Do you understand?” he asks, looming over me. The seriousness in his eyes is palpable.
I hesitate because, no, I don’t understand, but then I just nod in fast, jerking motions.
He reaches around to the back of his pants and slides a knife out from somewhere. My eyes grow wider as the sharp silver moves toward me. Just when I think he’s going to cut me, even though I don’t know why he’d go through all of this just to kill me, he cuts the bonds from my ankles.
“Stay down,” he demands one last time.
And just like that he leaves the restroom and shuts the door behind him.
Frozen in shock, it takes me a moment to get my head together. I gaze down at my unbound feet and I wonder why he did it. Why keep my hands bound but allow me the use of my legs again so that I can run away? It doesn’t matter. I need to free my hands, too. I bite down on the tight knots again, working at them furiously but only getting frustrated. I barely lift my head from the tub to get a better view of the restroom, looking for anything that might work as a knife or scissors so I can try cutting it away instead. Nothing. Just a bone-dry deep plastic industrial-type sink with paint, oil and dirt stains and a disgusting toilet with no lid.
The door opens to the motel room and I hear voices inside.
“Where is she?”
Oh no…that’s Izel’s voice!
My heart speeds up so fast I feel lightheaded as the blood rushes quickly to my head. I bite down on the fabric even harder, twisting the impossible knots with my teeth until it hurts.
“Javier wonders why you didn’t just bring her back yourself,” Izel adds with her trademark sultry, sarcastic tone.
There are more voices, male, speaking Spanish among themselves while Izel talks only to the American. Their voices are muffled. I can’t make out what they’re saying.
“Have a seat,” the Amer
ican says calmly.
“We didn’t come here to visit,” Izel refuses. “Give me Sarai…or—.” I can picture her walking toward the American like the slithering snake she is. “Or, you and I can be alone together for a while first. I would like that.”
Her voice stops abruptly and her seductive tone disappears in an instant. “Fine! Fine! Fucking puto. You’d rather shoot me than fuck me?”
“Yes. I would rather,” the American answers.
“Bring her out here,” Izel demands, her voice laced with contempt.
“Sit first,” the American says.
Suddenly I hear guns cocking and instinctively I lower my body back into the tub as flat as I can make myself. I’m beginning to understand why he forced me in here like this.
“There are five of us and one of you,” Izel says venomously.
Then a shot rings out and I stiffen against the hard plastic beneath me. More shots. Bullets pepper the walls; two move straight through the wall into the restroom where I lay huddled. I hear glass shatter and what sounds like bodies stampeding through the room beyond me. More shots ring out and Izel screams curses over the chaos. The walls shake all around me, knocking thick layers of dust from the exposed light bulb hanging from the water damaged ceiling above. I hear a loud crunch and then the sound of the large window in the room shattering as if someone or something was just pushed through it.
Everything goes silent. All that I can hear now is my heart beating so fast and violently. I’m so scared I can’t even manage tears anymore and my body has stopped shaking. I’m paralyzed with fear.
The acrid smell of gun smoke lingers in the air.
Is the American dead? It’s all I can think about. Maybe they’re all dead and I can get out of here alive.
I go to climb my way out of the tub but then I hear Izel:
“Fuck you. I won’t tell you shit!”
There is a brief bout of silence and then I hear the American say calmly, “You’ve already told me most of what I need to know.”
“How is that?”
“If Javier wanted me alive to kill Guzmán your men never would have drawn on me.”
“He did want you to kill him.”
“So then your men are simply stupid.”
Izel says nothing in response, but I can picture the expression she wears: sour mixed with evil.
Quietly, I crawl out of the tub, careful not to make any abrupt movements and I reach out for the door handle. It comes open the second my fingers touch it as though it hadn’t been shut all the way before, though I know that it had. It must’ve been jarred loose when I heard someone bash against it during the fight.
I push it open barely a crack. The mirror over the sink just outside the door is in view. All that’s left of it now are three large uneven shards of broken glass barely hanging onto the wall.
I can see the American’s back through the reflection.
“I should tell you,” he says. “There will be a new deal now.”
“You’re not the one to be making deals,” Izel spits out the words.
“I believe that I am,” he replies. “First, you will tell me what Javier’s plans were in bringing me to the compound.”
“I’ll tell you shit!”
A muffled shot makes a quick fuddup sound and then Izel screams out in pain. “You fucking shot me!”
The American moves over and out of sight of the mirror, leaving me to glimpse Izel sitting on the chair next to the wall. Her face glistens with sweat and blood drains from the gunshot wound on her thigh, her hands pressed over it trying to stop the flow. Her bronzed face is contorted in agony and anger. She spits at the floor defiantly.
“Merely a flesh wound,” the American says.
I push myself farther against the door. A pair of hands lay open near Izel’s feet: one of the men the American just killed. I swallow hard and try to calm my breathing. The door moves as my hip brushes against it and I suck in sharply that breath I just took. Izel’s head darts sideways as she faces the mirror. She knows I’m hiding in here. I try to step away from the door and move back into the darkness of the restroom, but she sees me. A grin spreads across her face.
“Come out, Sarai,” she says harmoniously. “Javier misses you.”
I don’t move. Maybe if I remain still, what she sees in the reflection of the mirror she’ll start to believe is just the light playing tricks on her eyes.
She turns her gaze away from me as if the American has done something to regain her attention.
“Javier wants Guzmán dead,” Izel says. “He wouldn’t have hired you and let you leave with that money if he didn’t.” She sneers and shakes her head at the American and adds, “You’re a fool.”
I hear the bed creak as if he just sat on the end of it, facing her. While she’s distracted, I position myself farther back from the edge of the door, but in a way that I can get a better view of the room through the reflection in the mirror. I glimpse another body lying haphazardly against the wall on the other side of her.
“And if I kill Guzmán,” the American says, “I will have no trouble getting the other half of my money.” It was a statement, but at the same time, a question.
Izel grins. “Of course.” She tilts her head to one side. “She’s gotten to you already.”
No answer. I know Izel is referring to me.
“The girl wasn’t bought or sold, just so you know,” she adds.
“I didn’t ask.”
“You didn’t need to.”
Izel looks toward the mirror again, without moving her head.
“Going to be the hero?” she says this with sarcasm lacing her voice.
“Hardly,” the American says. “I’m going to use her as leverage.”
I swallow hard.
Should’ve kept my mouth shut….
“That won’t sit well with Javier. She wasn’t part of the deal. You keep the girl and Javier will not be happy.” A strand of black hair falls away from her face. She reaches up as if to move the rest of her hair away, but her hand stops halfway and she places it back down beside her. Anger helps to hide the fear in her face somewhat. She knows that he’ll blow her brains out the back of her head.
“The girl stays with me until I kill Guzmán and then we will make the trade: her for the rest of my money.”
“And what if Javier doesn’t give a shit?”
“You wouldn’t be here now if he didn’t.”
CHAPTER FOUR
Izel rounds her chin defiantly, the skin around her dark eyes peppered with tiny flecks of blood-splatter.
“You’re making a mistake,” she spats, defeat in her voice. “If you want a girl, Javier will give you one. Just not that one. You’ll only make him your enemy by doing this.”
I know that worry in her voice all too well. When Javier is unhappy, he tends to blame it on Izel. If she doesn’t return to the compound with me, he’ll beat her senseless. As much as I hate her for the things she’s done to me, I can’t help but pity her sometimes, too.
“Your offer offends my intelligence,” the American says. “She is the one I want because she is the one he treasures the most. If Javier has no ill intentions then he should have nothing to worry about.” Izel glances toward the bathroom door quickly while he speaks. “I keep the girl until I kill Guzmán. Javier pays me the remainder of my money. I give the girl back. We all leave with what we want.”
I want to dash out of the bathroom and try for one of the cars outside, but I know I won’t make it. My palms are sweating and stinging. I cut my left hand somewhere at some point. I can’t remember when it happened.
Izel curses him in Spanish and presses the palms of her hands on the seat beneath her and begins to rise into a stand.
The American very casually raises his gun and she freezes, anger and resistance in her face.
“Fold your hands together behind the chair,” the American says.
“Go fuck yourself.”
Thwap! Izel’s body jerks sidewa
ys, almost knocking the chair over with her in it. “Motherfucker!” she cries out, holding her hand over a fresh bullet wound on the opposite thigh to match the other one.
The American never moves, his expression and posture always casual and controlled.
“Fold your hands together behind the chair,” he says once more with the exact amount of calm as before.
This time, Izel is compliant. Reluctant and defiant as always, but compliant.
“Come out of the bathroom,” I hear the American say.
I don’t want to. I quietly push my back against the wall, thrusting my bound hands over my chest and lock my fingers together nervously in front of me. I sniffle back the tears, the taste of salt draining down the back of my throat. What should I do? If I just stand here like this it’ll only prolong the inevitable. There’s no way out of this bathroom except through that door.
Finally, I do as he says.
Trying to push the door open the rest of the way, I have to shoulder it hard because of the body lying on the floor on the other side. I try not to look when I step around the man’s left arm, contorted unnaturally behind him, but I glimpse enough that it makes my stomach churn. Especially when I see his eyes. It’s always the eyes, lifeless and empty and glazed over, that makes me sick to my stomach. I take a deep breath and step over him. Izel smiles across at me, not as affected by two gunshot wounds as I imagine anyone else might be. Her breathing is labored and she strains to keep her composure for the sake of taunting me.
“Come here,” the American says and I do.
He pulls the knife from his pocket again and his eyes avert to my wrists briefly. Assuming—and hoping—it’s what he wants, I hold my shaking hands out to him. He slides the blade behind the fabric and cuts me loose.
“Did you tell him that you’re a whore?” Izel asks.
I swallow what saliva is left in my mouth. I’m no whore, but she has always had a way with somehow making me feel ashamed by her accusations. I pretend to be more fixated on my wrists, now that they are no longer tied together.
Izel turns to the American, her hands still folded loosely behind her back. She says with a spiteful smile, “If you’re feeling sorry for her, don’t. That little puta is treated better than anyone, even better than me and I am his sister. Javier has her anytime he wants her. And he doesn’t have to take it.”
Killing Sarai Page 3
