The American nods toward Izel.

“Tie her hands behind the chair at her wrists,” he instructs.

My heart leaps. Still trying my best to keep from looking at her, the attempt is thrown out the window with his words and look at her is exactly what I do. She’ll surely grab me if I’m standing that close.

The conflict in my eyes tells the American everything that the words I can’t get out, can’t.

He moves the gun in his hand subtly at Izel, his wrist still propped on his leg. “She will not touch you,” he says, looking only at me. “If she so much as flinches in a manner that I feel is threatening, I’ll kill her and she knows it.”

From the corner of my eye, I see Izel’s nostrils flare and her mouth twist in anger.

The American nods toward her again to indicate that I should proceed.

Fumbling the rope in my fingers, I step over the bodies again and slowly make my way toward Izel, finding it impossible not to look at her the closer I get. Her smile spreads. My hands are shaking so conspicuously she takes notice; her brown eyes skirt them briefly without moving her head.

“You really did it this time,” she taunts. “How did you get out of the fence? Did Lydia help you?”

I’m almost behind her when she says Lydia’s name and I stop dead in my tracks. Izel notices my reaction exactly for what it is: worry. And she runs with it.

An even more sadistic grin tugs the corners of her lips. “Ah, I see,” she says. “So she did help you.” She clicks her tongue. “Unfortunate for poor Lydia, she will be punished. But you already knew that, didn’t you, Sarai?”

“Lydia had nothing to do with it!” I yell in Spanish, as if I’m still back at the compound.

I know she’s trying to get to me, but I also know that what she’s saying about Lydia being punished is true and already I’m regretting my reaction. Because it’s exactly what she wanted to see. This entire situation just changed in the worst way. It’s not just about me anymore. I should’ve known this before I crawled out that window. Javier and Izel knew how close Lydia and I became in her short time there.

A large part of me wants to give up and go back, but now with the American controlling the situation, that’s no longer in the cards.

“Stop talking and tie her hands behind her,” the American says from behind.

“Fine. Go ahead. Do what you want with her,” I say to Izel as I walk around behind her chair. “I got out. She didn’t. It’s sad, but there’s nothing I can do about it. I’m not going back to that place, not even for her.” I hope she believes me, that I don’t care what happens to Lydia, so maybe they won’t use her against me.

“I said stop talking.”

The unnatural frustration in the American’s tone, though restrained, is enough to get both of our attention. Izel and I look over at him at the same time.

I do exactly as he says, fearing he might just shoot me in the leg next, and I crouch behind Izel and start tying her wrists together. The American watches Izel seemingly without blinking, waiting for her to slip up and give him more reason to shoot her. I bind her wrists good, wrapping the semi-stretchy rope three times, tying it into a knot each round. Once the rope pinches her skin, Izel tosses her head to the side in an attempt to see me, her teeth gritting in anger. “Watch it,” she snaps and her long black hair falls to one side around her face. I tie the last knot even tighter, just because I can. If looks could kill, I’d be dead ten times over.

“Now step away from her,” the American instructs.

He stands from the bed and slides his elongated suitcase out from underneath it.

I step away and with the backward tilt of his head I continue to follow his instructions and make my way over next to him. He takes my wrist in one hand and his suitcase in the other and walks me toward the door. He only lets go of my wrist long enough to pick his bag up from the table and shoulder it.

He leaves his long black coat. Surely he sees it, but I get the feeling he’s leaving it draped over the back of the chair on purpose.

“I’ll kill you if you leave me here like this,” Izel growls through gritted teeth, but her threat comes out thickly with desperation. She begins to struggle in the chair, trying to work her hands free. “Don’t leave me like this! How can I tell Javier what you want if I’m stuck in this room?”

Sunlight fills the room when the American opens the door with two fingers from the hand holding the suitcase.

“You’ll get yourself free in time,” he says and steps out the door with me at his side. “Inform Javier that I will be in touch and not to lose or discard the cell phone number that I last called him on.” He pulls the door shut with the same two fingers and I hear Izel’s livid voice screaming curses at us from inside as we leave her there.

He guides me around to the front passenger’s seat and closes the door behind me once I’m inside. The trunk pops open and he hides his suitcase and black duffle bag away inside of it.

I hear four muffled shots outside the car as he takes out two tires on each of the trucks parked out front.

He shuts the driver’s side door and looks over at me.

“Put on your seatbelt,” he says and looks away from my eyes, turning the key in the ignition.

The car hums to life as I click my seatbelt in place quickly.

“You shoot women,” I say quietly.

He backs out of the dirt-covered space in front of the odd roadside motel, which really looks more like a five-room shack.

The American presses his foot on the brake and looks over at me again. “Flesh wounds,” he says and shifts the car into Drive. “She’ll live. And that one was hardly a woman.” He pulls away, the sleek black car stirring up a cloud of dirt behind us.

He’s right in that aspect. Izel is a woman, but she doesn’t deserve to be treated like one and it’s her own fault.

As we’re speeding down the dusty highway and away from the motel, the American reaches into the console between us and retrieves a small black cell phone. Running his finger over the screen, the speakerphone comes on and suddenly Izel’s voice fills the car. I’m confused by it at first but soon understand that, if I’m right, there was a reason he left his long coat in the room, after all.

I listen to Izel’s voice stream through the tiny speaker:

“He’s gone! Get up and untie me! Hurry!”

A rustling sound muffles her voice and then other strange, unidentifiable noises.

“Get me out of these ropes!”

One of the men was left alive?

I glance over at the American whose eyes remain fixed on the road out ahead, but his ears are fully open to the voices in his hand. He knew. He knew all along that one of them lay there pretending to be dead. I shudder to think I walked over his body, or around it, so close he could’ve grabbed me by the ankle and took me down with him.

More shuffling and cracking noises funnel through the speakerphone. I hear Izel tell the man to give her a phone and seconds later she’s speaking to Javier:

“Sí, Javier. He took her. He killed them. No.”

She becomes quiet as Javier, I know without having to hear him, threatens her on the other end of the phone.

“Sí,” she says gravelly as if forcing herself to agree though it takes everything in her to do so.

Then I hear a loud shot and shortly after a thump! and I can only assume that she just killed the man who helped her, likely out of anger for whatever Javier said.

Everything becomes quiet now. Maybe Izel left the room. Several seconds pass and still nothing, only the low static hum of the speakerphone itself. The American, although not famous for facial expressions, seems disappointed. He hangs the phone up, rolls the window down beside him and tosses it onto the highway. Then he makes a sharp U-turn and drives in the opposite direction.