by JB Salsbury
I slam to a halt when a woman steps out in front of me. I duck my chin. “Lo siento.”
I try to scoot around her, but she moves to block my path. My gaze finds hers.
Her eyes are huge. Her jaw slack. She rests trembling fingers on the many jewels at her throat. “Ángel.”
Milo
WHAT THE FUCK is taking so long?
I can’t pull my eyes away from the hallway that leads to the restrooms. I’ve debated stomping down there and bursting into the women’s bathroom. But tonight has been so perfect for Mercy, I don’t want to risk ruining it by being an overprotective, paranoid asshole.
I’ll give her another minute.
Maybe thirty seconds.
“It’s you!” a woman calls in Spanish behind me.
Usually this isn’t the kind of thing that would draw my attention—after all, how many people run into each other in restaurants and get overly excited after a few Cuervos? But the way she says it, the inflection in her voice, has me slowly turning around. That’s not a burst of excitement coming from the woman’s voice. Not the joy of familiarity.
Her words are laced with fear.
There in the belly of the dining room is a woman wearing a long silken dress, her black hair twisted up on her head, and she’s facing off with Mercy.
I move as quickly as I can but feel as if I’m knee-deep in mud as the scene plays out. Mercy’s expression morphs from shock to confusion as she stands nose-to-nose with the woman.
“Ángel!”
The one word delivers a punch to Mercy so great, it sends her back a step. “No. No!”
I swoop in behind her and pull her back to my chest. “It’s okay. I’m here.”
The woman stares between Mercy and me, her eyes brimming with tears. The other people at the tables whisper in confusion.
“Is everything all right?” The restaurant manager comes alongside us.
I assure him everything is fine. “How do you know her?” I demand in Spanish.
“Aye dios mio, aye dios mio . . .” Her face drains of color.
“Milo, I . . .” Mercy struggles to stay on her feet. “I need to sit down.”
“Okay, all right.” Shit!
I pull out a nearby vacant chair and lower her into it. This is the closest contact I’ve had to Mercy’s past. I can’t let this woman leave without telling me what she knows.
“Please,” I say to the woman who’s now also sitting while she fans her face. “Can I talk to you?”
Her eyes jerk to mine and focus. “No.”
I squat down to her level. “It’s important. I need you to tell me how you know her.”
She tells her friends in Spanish that she needs to leave, and after she reassures them that she’s okay, they all dumbly nod. She grabs her purse and makes her way to the exit.
All I see in her wake is a missed opportunity to hunt down the fuckers who used Mercy. I start after her but grab Mercy’s hand and drag her along with me, apologizing to the staff the whole way out.
“Come on! We have to hurry!”
“Milo!” The tears in her voice threaten my control.
I’ve been searching for months, done things I hate myself for, with the hope that I could gain a tidbit of information on where Mercy came from. I’ll be damned if this woman thinks she can walk away without giving me something.
I catch her speed-walking through the parking lot, and I drop Mercy’s hand to sprint as she fumbles with her keys. I grab her from behind and sandwich her against her car.
She cries out, but I’m quick to cover her mouth. “Scream again and you’re dead.” Her body turns to stone and her tears wet my hand, making guilt weigh heavy in my gut. “I’m sorry. I don’t want to hurt you, I just need information. Do you understand?”
She shakes her head, and a sob tears from her throat.
I put my lips to her ear. “You know her. You called her Angel. How?”
She whimpers.
Fuck! Why won’t she talk? “Just nod your head, okay?”
She doesn’t answer, but I go on anyway.
“It was at a healing ceremony, right?”
Seconds pass, and I’m about to roar in frustration when she nods once.
“Good. Okay. Do you remember the location?”
Nothing.
Rage rips though my veins. The key to finding Mercy’s captors is inside this woman and I will slice her open from end to end and dig the information out with my bare hands if she doesn’t start talking. I grip her face tighter. “You think I won’t kill you, you’re wrong.”
She groans in agony from behind my hand.
“Just fucking tell me!”
I notice through the front window of the restaurant that people are casually gathering to leave. Soon they’ll walk out and see us. I’m running out of time! I reach to my waistband and pull out my nine mil.
I shove the barrel into her rib cage and say a prayer, asking for forgiveness. “Fucking tell me or I pull the trigg—”
“Milo, stop.”
The gentle command in Mercy’s voice is impossible to ignore. I turn toward her.
Her tears have dried. The weakness gone, and in its place is a confidence I’ve seen in her before. The authority. As if she were the embodiment of the Blessed Mother herself.
“Let me.” She looks at the woman who no longer struggles in my hold.
For a moment, I wonder if she passed out. But as I back away a fraction, she squirms.
Mercy gets close and tilts her head to catch the woman’s eyes. I know the moment they meet because she sobs into my hand. “I remember you.” The woman stills and Mercy looks at me. “Let her speak.”
I keep my gun in hand in case she loses her shit and screams when I release her mouth. She sucks in a deep, tear-soaked breath and mumbles a slurring string of Spanish that sounds more like a confession than a prayer.
Mercy steps closer and hesitantly places her hand on the woman’s shoulder. “It’s going to be okay.”
“Güera,” I whisper only to earn a fierce glare from her.
A half dozen people file out of the restaurant, and Mercy slides in closer. She whispers something and the woman mumbles back.
“I need to know where they held you. Ask her if she remembers.”
Mercy looks at me. How can she remain so calm? It’s then I realize she can’t ask the woman anything—she doesn’t speak Spanish.
“Donde la viste? Ubicacíon?” I say.
Mercy repeats the words to the woman. When she speaks, I lean in close to make sure I pick up every word.
“I don’t know. I was blindfolded. But . . .” She sniffs and stares at Mercy, her eyes growing larger before she sobs again. “I couldn’t get pregnant. My husband said it was me, that I was cursed. They said you could help me.” Her words dissolve into another round of tears.
I watch the people who left the restaurant walk to their cars on the far side of the lot, grateful they don’t seem to notice our little pow-wow.
“She said she was promised you’d help her get pregnant.”
Mercy’s eyebrows turn to white slashes on her face. “They lied to these people.” Anger morphs her angelic face. “They preyed on the desires of their hearts for money.”
“Are you sure there’s nothing you can remember? Where did you meet up and how far was the drive? Sounds? Smells? Anything.”
The woman shakes her head, and Mercy comforts her with soft murmurs in English that the woman won’t understand but still have the same effect.
“It was a sacred place. Far away, maybe one hour from where we were picked up, maybe more. They kept saying we were on holy ground, but . . . I remember the smell. I remember the sounds.”
“What?”
She looks at Mercy and says, “Please forgive me.”
“Tell her there is nothing to forgive if she helps us. Uh . . . no hay nada que perdonar si nos ayudas.” My fingers flex against my gun.
Mercy repeats the words.
The
woman sniffs and wipes at the makeup running down her cheeks. “Prostíbulo.”
Mercy’s eyes dart to mine, her limited Spanish translating that easily. “Prostitutes?”
I nod and address the woman. “Are you sure?”
“I dragged my husband out of plenty to know. I’ve smelled it on him more times than I’d like to remember.”
“Gracias.”
“Ask her,” Mercy says as she holds the woman’s hands. “Um . . . el bebé?” The woman shakes her head, and Mercy’s shoulders slump. “Lo siento. I’m so sorry.”
The woman’s eyes narrow, and a fresh round of tears form in her eyes. “You’re not really an angel, are you?”
Mercy, unable to understand the woman’s question, frowns.
“No. She’s so much more,” I answer for her.
I help the woman into her car, apologizing for being rough with her and explaining briefly that Mercy was held captive and I plan to make things right. She doesn’t seem to care, moving in a daze as if her interaction with Mercy drained her as much as it did me.
We watch her drive away. I tuck my gun away at my lower back before leading Mercy to our car a few rows down. I open her door, and she gets in without a word. The drive back to the hotel is silent. I hate that I don’t know what she’s thinking, but I’m too in my head to try to coax it out of her.
Back in our room, Mercy slips off her shoes and crawls into bed, tucking in tight beneath the covers. How quickly our evening of flirting and foreplay turned to gloom and doom. This is not how I saw the night ending, but Mercy clearly needs space to process this new information and I have some phone calls to make.
I drop onto the side of the bed and run my fingers through her hair. I pull the elastic band from her ponytail and massage her scalp, watching her eyelids grow heavy. “I’m not going to ask if you’re okay because you’ll say yes and I’ll know you’re lying.”
Those crystal-blue eyes blink up at me. “You’re right.”
“I’m going to make all this better for you. I give you my word.”
Her small smile chips away a little of the ice that’s formed around my soul since we ran to Mexico. “I don’t know if that’s possible, but I love you forever for trying.”
I press a kiss to her temple. “Go to sleep. I’m going to step outside to make a couple phone calls.”
She closes her eyes and nods into her pillow.
I brush my thumb along her cheek. “I love you, mi alma.”
“I love you.”
I play with her hair for a few more minutes until I’m convinced she’s asleep, then I move out onto the patio, close the door, and punch in Esteban’s number.
A fucking whorehouse.
Esteban knows of every whorehouse in Baja.
Now it’s time for him to ‘fess the fuck up.
Mercy
SHE’S CRYING FOR me to help her. Not in a language I understand, but the sound of begging is universal. I look down, her body prostrate, arms outstretched, and notice the contrast of her dark hands against my pale feet.
I mumble words I don’t know, syllables and letters strung together that have no meaning and yet mean so much to the woman. Papa pulls me back gently. I stumble when the woman grips my ankles.
Darkness fades in and out of my vision. I want to fight to free myself from her grasp but don’t have the will or the energy.
My head is foggy with a pressing need to escape, however my limbs refuse to comply. I want—
“Mercy.”
I jerk awake and light pierces my eyes.
No longer in a dark room filled with thick air and pungent scents, I blink and take in familiar surroundings. I’m in Milo’s El Camino. Milo cups my face as he squats to look into my eyes.
Worry flashes in his expression, but he quickly covers it with a smile. “Hey. We’re home.”
I sit up taller and realize we’re parked in the underground garage at the compound. “I fell asleep.”
His smile is small and fleeting. “I know. I’m glad you did after all the tossing and turning you did last night.” He takes my hand to help me out of the car. “Bad dreams?”
I peer up at him and frown. “More like memories.”
His brows pop high on his forehead. “Really? You’re having flashbacks?”
“I don’t know, I think so. It’s hard to tell if it really happened or if it’s something I made up in my head.” I explain the dream about the woman from the restaurant, her hands on my feet and me being pulled away at her refusal to let go.
He seems disappointed. I think he’s hoping I’ll have a memory that might give way to an address, but I was never taken from the four walls of that room or the sanctuary—at least not that I remember.
He grabs our bags out of the back and takes my hand to lead me inside. “Huh, yeah, it’s probably having new information and your mind is piecing it together and attempting to fill in the blanks.”
We head through the kitchen, and Maria startles from behind the griddle as she roasts peppers. She says something in Spanish.
Milo is quick to respond with a short phrase that sounds something like, “Don’t worry about it.” When I look at him, he shrugs. “She was wondering why we were home early, that’s all.”
As much as I wanted to stay for another night, I knew when I woke up and saw Milo had packed our bags that he was going to make us leave. The woman from last night could have friends who know about me, and what if they found out where I am? It was time to end the fantasy and head back to the safety of the compound.
Milo takes me to our room, and I stop in the doorway for a moment. Bed, table, windows . . . it’s not all that different from the room I was held in for most of my life. Except this one carries the illusion of freedom.
That’s all it is. An illusion.
I’m no freer now than I was back then.
Milo drops our bags in the closet. “Mercy.”
Huh? He’s watching me from across the room. For how long, I don’t know.
“I’m okay.” I move through the doorway toward the bathroom.
He follows me. “It’s okay that you’re not.”
He sets my toiletry bag on the counter in front of me, and we lock eyes in the mirror.
“Would you have killed her?”
I expect my question to throw him back a step, but he doesn’t even flinch. “I wouldn’t have had to.”
I turn to face him. “You threated to kill her. Would you have done it? If she hadn’t talked, would you have followed through?”
He drops his chin and shakes his head. “Don’t ask questions you don’t want the answers to.”
I recoil and slam my backside against the sink’s edge. “Milo—”
“I have to go,” he says, refusing to meet my eyes.
“Let me guess, Esteban calls.” I hate the tone in my voice. I hate the anger stirring in my chest. I hate that I hate at all.
“Don’t—”
“Do you kill for him? Is that where the blood comes from?”
His body becomes a statue in the bathroom doorway, his back facing me.
“Is that what I’ve done to you? Have I made you into . . .” I choke on the emotion that clogs my throat. I swallow it back and sniff back tears. “Have I made you a murderer?”
He braces his weight on the doorway with one long, powerful arm. “I’ll have Maria bring you up some food—”
“Stop it!”
He spins around to face me, eyes wide with shock.
“You think I don’t notice how you avoid my questions and your attempts to distract me?”
“I’m trying to protect you.”
“By making me a prisoner!”
He lifts his hands to reach for me, but I shake my head. He drops his arms. “For your protection, it’s better that you don’t know.”
“Then that makes you no better than them.” I shove past him and out of the room.
“Where are you going?” he calls after me, but I don’t answer.
&n
bsp; He knows anywhere I run will be within the walls of the compound. I jog down the steps and out the front doors into the sun. I’m momentarily blinded and blink before darting toward the smattering of citrus trees. My pulse slams in my chest and I feel the burn of tears, but I refuse to cry.
He’s been hiding things from me, and I don’t know how to forgive him for that. All I want is to be free to stand on my own feet, but how can I do that when he insists on treating me as if I’m incapable and incompetent? I sag against the trunk of a limóne tree to catch my breath and try to shove back the fear and fury that boils beneath my skin.
I can’t live like this.
I have no purpose. Milo is out there doing—I can’t even imagine, and I’m here, going about my life as clueless as he’s kept me. He may think he loves me, but this isn’t love; this is fealty. He’s sworn an oath to protect me and he’s a man of his word. In reality, he’s just another one of my captors.
When I was a child, I had no choice but to submit to the wishes of those who held me. Now I know enough to put an end to this imprisoned existence and begin a life as a free woman. I don’t have to live a life dictated by someone else. I no longer need a savior. I can save myself.
Milo
DON’T CHASE HER. Give her space. She needs room to breathe.
I chant the words over and over in my head, but they do nothing to slow me as I chase her down.
I whirl around the ornate banister and jump down three stairs at a time. The front door is wide open, giving me a hint to which direction she took. My stomach sours when I think of what must be going through her head. I have to make this right without telling her everything. She’d only worry—
“Emilio, ven aquí!”
Esteban’s command comes from the room behind the stairs, his office—if a man who deals in the illegal trade of guns and drugs needs an office. I suppose that’s why it’s located beneath the stairs. A secret location that can be easily hidden if the Federales raid the estate.
I’m in a tug-o-war between going after Mercy and turning back to him when the words filter through my head again. Give her space. Let her breathe. After last night, she needs some time to process. Besides, she’s safe here. There’s no way she can get away without someone seeing her.
