“I’ll do it,” I announce, never taking my eyes from Victor’s. “If you can get Lydia away safely, I’ll do it.”

Victor nods. Then he goes to open the truck door and I stop him.

“But Victor, please take her home. I’m begging you. Just take her home. She lives in El Paso, Texas. With her grandparents. Please.”

Victor doesn’t nod or answer verbally this time, but I know, just by that look in his eyes that he will do it. I’m not sure why I believe that, but I do.

After transferring his bags from the truck to the SUV, he gets inside the truck and the rumble of the engine turning on follows seconds later.

“Come,” Niklas says, taking me by the arm, his fingers wrapped a little more harshly around my bicep than Victor ever did it.

He guides me around to the backseat, opening the door and standing directly behind me as if he’s making sure I get in and don’t try to run away. Once I’m inside, the smell of new leather and car freshener fills my senses. A metal cage barrier separates the backseat from the front, just like a police officer might have in his patrol car. Already I feel trapped. I hear a clicking sound as Niklas locks all of the doors after he’s inside. I glance to my left and right to see that there are no inside lock switches on either of the backseat doors. I am truly trapped in here.

We end up on Interstate 19, following close behind Victor in the old beat-up truck.

“You have become quite a wrench in the gears,” Niklas says from the driver’s seat.

I glance up to meet his eyes in the rearview mirror.

I don’t like him much. Not that I should like him at all considering the situation, but at least with Victor, despite being a killer, I felt a sense of safety. Even back at the compound as I watched him through the crack in the door with Lydia, I got the feeling I could trust him, that he would help me. My hunches were completely off, I admit, but he never hurt me. Regardless of what he is or what he’s done and what complications I’ve caused him, he never treated me badly.

Niklas, on the other hand, I get the sense is a little more intolerant.

I try to keep my eyes on the road out ahead, but it’s hard not to meet his gaze in the mirror every now and then. Because he’s always watching.

I swallow and say, “I didn’t mean to cause you and Victor any trouble.” His eyes narrow suddenly in the mirror and I catch it immediately. “But I don’t understand why it’s such a huge inconvenience to either one of you, to help me.” I tried to mask the bitterness in that, but I didn’t do so well.

“Victor,” Niklas says icily, which strikes me in the worst way, “since you’re now on a first-name basis with him, should have dragged you back to Javier Ruiz the second he found you.”

I hate this man.

I grit my teeth and breathe sharply through my nostrils.

“But he didn’t,” I snap. “And that tells me he’s more human than you apparently are.”

My acidic words don’t faze him like how I had hoped they would. Instead, he does something I least expected: he smiles.

“Oh, I see what you think this is,” he says with that evident German accent. “You think you’ve enchanted him somehow with your innocent girlish wiles. You’ve done nothing of the sort, just so you know. Victor, everything he does, he does it for the better of our Order. If he believes it better not to set you free or to hand you over, it has nothing to do with your well-being.”

I don’t want to believe him though a small part of me does, but I refuse to give Niklas the satisfaction of knowing he succeeded in getting under my skin.

I round my chin and look away from him, putting my eyes solely on the truck Victor is driving out ahead of us. Soon, we veer off to the right and enter an unpaved dusty road right off the interstate. The road winds through several sections of low-lining bushes and young trees, but mostly there’s nothing but dirt and an endless stretch of almost barren land three hundred and sixty-degrees around me. A few houses are perched in the distance on top of dirt hills, but I get the feeling this section of land has not been traveled in a very long time by those who own it, or anyone else for that matter.

The front of the SUV rises higher over the land as we head up a hill. Once we level out at the crest and the dust begins to settle I see four old trucks, much like the one Victor is driving, parked out in the open, waiting for us.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

Eight men stand outside the trucks, shouldering rifles, all of them Javier’s men. I grip the leather seat beneath me, finding it harder to penetrate with my fingertips than the worn-out seats in the old truck. We come to a stop about one hundred feet away.

But I don’t see Javier. Or Izel.

I begin to panic when at first I don’t see Lydia, either, but then I spot her inside the cream-colored Ford. At least, I’m pretty sure that’s Lydia. I press my face against the metal cage as closely as I can, trying to see better, but it doesn’t help much.

Niklas turns his head to look at me.

“Sit back and stay out of sight,” he demands.

I do what he says, not because he ordered it but because it’s probably best.

The truck door slams shut. Victor walks out ahead of it towards them. One by one I look at each of the men, wondering which one was sent here to speak for Javier since he’s not here himself, but then I see Izel’s black hair sliding past the window of the green truck as she gets out.

“This makes twice Javier’s been too much of a coward to come himself,” I say out loud, not necessarily to Niklas.

“He knows by now that Victor can kill him with little effort,” Niklas says, watching out the window. “I’d say it’s a smart move on Javier’s part.”

Izel tries to approach Victor with her usual sultry walk, but she’s clearly in pain from the wounds he left on her legs and she stumbles just as she passes the rusted hood. One of the men step over quickly to help her, but she smacks him hard across the face and shouts curses at him, telling him to back off. She hates pity. I think she hates everything, including herself.

Words are exchanged between Izel and Victor. I can’t hear what they’re saying, but by the body language, I can tell it’s the usual: Izel trying to scare him with threats about Javier and how he’s made a very dangerous enemy—same opening conversation as they had back at the motel that day. And just like before, Victor is unfazed by her and it only adds fuel to the fire in her expression.

I try to hear what they’re saying even though I know I can’t, but mostly, I try to see Lydia.

Against Niklas’ demand, I push up closer to the cage again, trying to glimpse her through the window. I’m positive that’s her sitting on the passenger’s side. But I think there’s someone sitting next to her.

Izel raises her hand to the men by the truck behind her and one of them runs around to open the door. He reaches inside and grabs the one I think is Lydia and drags her out.

“It’s her!” I say excitedly, relieved.

Niklas snaps his head around.

“I said sit back,” he growls through bared teeth. “Don’t fuck this up any more than you already have.”

I freeze hearing this and I fall backward against the seat again, though only enough that it satisfies him and he turns away.

Lydia looks like hell, but at least she’s able to walk. At least she’s alive. She’s dressed in the same dirty clothes she was wearing when I saw her on that video. The bloodstains left from her mouth and nose are evident on the front of her thin white t-shirt, even from here at a distance. Her hands are bound at the wrists down in front of her. Her light red hair is disheveled and filthy and matted. She’s crying, gazing hopelessly toward us in the SUV and I can only imagine she’s wondering whether or not I’m in here. I want to run out of here and toward her, to let her know that I’m OK and that she’s finally going home, but wishing I could do that I know is all that I can do.