“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 American 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.