He doesn’t answer. Why doesn’t that surprise me?

I sigh heavily and press my back against the seat again. My trigger finger is cramped from being in the same curled position for so long against the metal. Lowering the gun farther behind the seat so that he can’t see, I switch hands long enough to wriggle my fingers around for a moment and then I place my thumb over the top of each finger individually and press down to ease the stiffness. You don’t realize how heavy a gun is until you hold it non-stop for long periods of time.

“I’m not lying to you,” I say. “About Javier and your money.”

I catch his eyes looking at me in the mirror again.

“I’ve had plenty of time to see how he does business,” I go on as I grip the gun in my right hand again though to the argument of my aching fingers. “He would rather kill you than pay you.”

His eyes are greenish-blue. I can see them more clearly now that we’re riding through a small town with street lights. And small is an understatement because in under a minute we’re engulfed by the darkness of the desolate highway again with nothing in sight except the starlit desert-like landscape.

And then I just start talking; my last ditch attempt to keep myself awake. I don’t care anymore if he adds to the one-sided conversation, I just need to stay conscious.

“I guess if you had a daughter or a sister you might care a little more. I had somewhat of a life before my mother brought me here. It wasn’t much of one, but it was one, nonetheless. We lived in a tiny trailer with cockroaches and walls so thin it felt like sleeping right on the desert floor in the winter. My mother was a slave to heroin. Crack. Meth. You name it she loved it. But not me. I wanted to finish school and get a scholarship to whatever college would have me and make a life for myself. But then I was brought here and all that changed. Javier was sleeping with my mother for a while, but he always had his eyes on me….”

I think I just dozed off for a second.

I snap my eyes open and take a deep breath, pressing my face near the open window to let the air hit me.

And the next thing I know I feel a white-hot pain to the side of my head and everything goes black.

CHAPTER THREE

The sound of trickling water wakes me. My eyes creep open, flinching at the light pouring in through some nearby window. I can tell that I’m in a room somewhere. My vision is blurred and my head feels like it was banged against a brick wall the night before. The left side of my face feels swollen.

I try to lift up but something is tied around my wrists and my ankles. When my eyes gradually blur into focus I see that I’m lying on a bed in a dingy room with tan tapestry wallpaper and dusty mismatched furniture. The television looks just like the one at the compound: ancient and probably only picks up one channel which I’m sure is the one that runs the dramatic Spanish soap operas. In my direct line of vision I see the thick green curtains on the window and pushed against them is a tiny square table with a single wooden chair. A long black trench coat hangs over the back of it.

Realizing what must’ve happened and my instincts finally catching up to me, I force my body onto my back so that I can see the rest of the room. So I can find the American who I know brought me here, wherever here is.

He tied me up. Oh no…he tied me up.

When I notice him sitting in a chair on the other side of the bed, it startles me and I yelp and fall off the bed and onto the floor, my hands and legs bound tight so I can’t do anything to brace for the impact. I hit the floor hard and pain shoots up from my hip and through my back. “Oww!” I moan loudly. In no time I’m trying to twist the fabric loose from my wrists as I squirm around on the floor.

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!”