I squeeze one last section of hair with the towel and then drop it on the floor.

Victor tilts his head gently to one side and then interlocks his hands in front of him, his elbows still resting on the chair arms.

“How did she meet Javier?”

I think back on it for a moment. “I don’t know,” I say. “I mean, I know it had to do with drugs and sex. The same way she met every man she brought into our home. My mother and I didn’t talk much.”

He tilts his head to the other side reflectively. What’s he waiting for? I study him for a moment, trying to get some idea of what brought his interest in my mother on and finally I choose to tell him whatever I can. Maybe because I’ve needed someone to listen for the longest time. Lydia and the other girls were too traumatized by their own abductions and experiences within the compound for me to confide in them. And their lives were much more chaotic than mine, much more…unfair. I could never bring myself to talk to the other girls about my insignificant problems while they were being beaten and raped and mentally and emotionally tortured.

I was in paradise compared to them.

I shake off the imagery and look back over at Victor.

“The first time I saw Javier, I knew he was different from the other men my mother brought home. More powerful somehow. He walked with this proud air about him. Unafraid. Confident. The other men—and there were a lot—were scumbags. They couldn’t wait to get through our tiny living room and past me before feeling my mother up. They were disgusting, pathetic.”

“And Javier wasn’t?” he asks.

I shake my head, gazing off toward the wall now. “He was disgusting because of what he was and how he used my mother, yes, but he was too professional to be pathetic.”

“Professional?” He looks upon me with slight curiosity.

“Yes,” I say with another nod. “Like I said, he was powerful. Though I wasn’t aware of it at the time, about what he was, I knew he was different. I stopped worrying about my mother and the things she got herself into when I was twelve-years-old. I was used to it all by then. She always managed to make it home. Despite being strung-out and sometimes beaten, she never called the police or seemed scared of anything so I guess I started believing in her safety as much as she did.” I look at the wall again, my hands pressed against the edge of the bed on either side of me, my body slouching down in-between my shoulders. “But when I saw Javier, I was scared for her again. I was scared for me.”

I lock eyes with Victor and say, “The moment he saw me, I knew my life was over. I didn’t know how or why at that time, but I just knew. The way he looked at me. I knew….”

My gaze drops to the carpeted floor.

“Why are you asking me this stuff, anyway?” I turn to him again. “Why the interest all of a sudden?”

I catch him glance over at the digital tablet lying on the table next to him. I look at the tablet for a split-second, too, wondering about all of the secrets it holds. Victor stands up from the table and my eyes follow him as he walks toward me.

“Turn around,” he says, standing over me.

I tilt my head back enough to see his face; he’s too close, crowding my space and it’s frightening. “What?” I ask, confused and getting the worst feeling.

He leans over and reaches inside the duffle bag in-between the beds and retrieves another rope just like the one I used to tie Izel to the chair with.

“Turn around,” he says again.

I shake my head frantically. “No,” I say and start to back my way across the bed.

He grabs me by the waist and flips me over onto my stomach.

“I have to get some sleep,” he says, pressing his knee, although carefully, into the center of my back. “You’ll have to make do. I’m sorry.”

“Don’t tie me up! Please!” I try to wiggle myself free, but he grabs one of my wrists with his free hand and fastens it against my back. I struggle and kick and thrash about, but he’s too strong and I feel like a fawn under the paw of a lion. “You’re sorry?! Then don’t do it! Please, Victor!”

His grip around my wrists, now with both of them restrained behind me, tightens harshly and I can’t help but believe it has everything to do with me calling him by his name, rather than my struggling against him. With one side of my face pressed into the mattress, I feel the rope wind around my wrists and then he ties it into several firm knots. After he’s satisfied that I’m unable to get my hands free, he stands up from the bed and grabs my ankles next. I pull one foot back and manage to kick him square in the stomach, but it doesn’t faze him. He just looks at me, catches my leg in mid-air on the second attempt and binds my ankles together with one hand.

Tears barrel from my eyes. But I stop fighting.

He carefully rolls me over onto my side, facing me toward the wall with my back to the bed where I know he’ll be sleeping. The thought of him being behind me like that all night and unable to see him unnerves me to no end.

The lamp between the bed switches off, leaving the room bathed in partial darkness. It’s still early, just after sundown, but I’m exhausted enough that it feels like it’s two o’clock in the morning.

I cry softly into my pillow for a little while. Thinking about my mom and all of the things Victor forced me to remember. And I think about Lydia and Mrs. Gregory who lived two trailers over from me; they are really the only family I’ve ever had. And when the uncomfortable position my arms have been put into becomes painful, I roll my body awkwardly onto the opposite side. I peer through the darkness to see Victor on the other bed lying on his side with his back facing me. He’s still fully clothed. I notice that he did at least take his shoes off, but his feet are covered by thin black dress socks. I wonder if he’s still awake.

“Victor?”

“Go to sleep,” he says without moving a muscle.

“When you take me back to Javier, will you at least give me a gun?”

Silence filters through the space between us.

“Will you?” I ask again, stirring that silence. “It will give me a fighting chance. I’ll either kill Javier myself, or I’ll die knowing that I tried.”

Victor’s shoulder rises and falls slowly as if he’d just taken a deep breath.

“I’ll think about it. Now go to sleep.”

CHAPTER EIGHT

Victor

I’m awoken at 3:42 A.M. staring down the barrel of my 9MM.

“What’s the password?” the girl demands.

She’s keeping a respectable distance. Impressive.

“The password,” she repeats sternly, motioning her head toward the table where my iPad sits.

I don’t move. She may have guts, but she’s still fidgety and it would be unfortunate if she shot me by accident.

“Uppercase F, six, eight, lowercase ‘k’, three, zero, zero, five, uppercase L, uppercase P, lowercase ‘w’, six.” I could easily take the gun from her before she got a shot off, the angle she’s standing, but I’m not ready to. Not yet.

She tries to recall each character precisely the way I said them. Without her having to ask, I repeat it for her and even that gesture seems to confuse her.

Carefully, I lift my back from the bed and she grips the gun tighter. If she happened to pull the trigger, she’d only hit my cheekbone. The bullet might pass through my jaw. I’d be disfigured, but I’d live.

“You don’t want to see what’s on that computer,” I say.

“You admit it, then,” she says nervously. “Something happened. You found out while I was in the shower.”

I’m standing up now. She still hasn’t shot me. She’s not going to unless I try to go after her. Though I’m not so impressed anymore. If I was her, I would have put a bullet in my skull by now.

I nod my answer. I’m only mildly surprised that she figured that much out. I should never have asked about her mother. She’s a smart girl, this one, though still far too sympathetic and human to get out of this by herself alive.