And now, through the red, crusty film that blocked much of my vision, I could clearly see a clear gallon container dangling daintily from a plastic handle between her long fingernails.
She hadwater. And on the ground beside her, a first-aid kit. Gauze. Antiseptic. Painkillers. Aloe.
“I know they taught you how to dothat, at least. It was the first thing they taughtme.”
Mistress Hahn. Ma’am.That’s what she wanted to hear. And if it got me even a sip of water, so what? Not like I hadn’t said it a million times before to women who didn’t deserve it any more than she did.
“Well?” she asked.
Live. Don’t die before you’re killed.
I tasted the word on my lips even before I spat it out.
“Bitch.”
“Okay,” she said brightly, rebuckling the muzzle. “I guess we’ll try this again later.”
Worth it.
The sun had begun to set, the sky tinged pink and orange, whispering of an eerily beautiful desert twilight. I could feel the temperature dropping as the night approached, and despite myself, I shivered in my useless shirt.
And Resi seemed to feel it too, since she dropped down in the dust, drawing her knees up to her chest and hugging them to herself excitedly, like we were about to play Spin the Bottle.
But wait. She was leaving now, right? She had to be leaving.
Instead, she beckoned to Noam, who looked none too pleased.
Oh, right. The cuffs.
The metallic scent of my blood mingled with rust, sweat, and fear in the acrid air, and my hands started to shake as Noam used his own bandaged hands—Resi didn’t have any gloves that fit him, evidently—to grumblingly redo his work from earlier. The goon lazily moved one wire, then another, back into position around my wrists, each sharp thorn digging deeper into my already tormented flesh. Every twist and turn of the wire contained a thousand claws shredding a thousand bloody trails down my skin. Tears formed, but I didn’t cry. I held my breath instead.
It’s like trying to die.
“Yeah, I stopped crying, too, after a while,” she said, eagerly watching me silently keen. “But I learned to let it out again. And I can teachyouto let it out. Oh, honey, I can teach you so many things, you have no idea.”
Every breath was ragged and shallow until eventhatfelt like torture. And finally, as the wire tightened, it constricted my circulation until I swore I felt my own blood pulsing right up against the hot, rusty metal. And still, Noam kept ratcheting and squeezing.No more. Please.Until:
“Stop,” she said.
Noam did. He stepped back, glaring at me as if it were somehowmyfault. And Resi, at last, rose in one graceful, fluid motion. But she paused to drink me in, pleased.
“I read your file, you know,” she remarked. “And I think all your owners were wrong. Youcanbe good.” She leaned inand rubbed her clean, manicured thumb against my bloody, macerated one and kissed the top of my head. Her clothes were the same monochrome color as the sand: leggings, a complicated leather belt, and a flowing blouse, which blended into the pink-tinged sky and swirled in clouds of dust as she strode back to the SUV in her heeled, lace-up boots.
“You just need whatIgot too late,” she said. “Someone to give you a chance.”
HER
My heart pounded against my ribs with every step. Each time the trail split off into different directions, I quickly chose again and kept going. The trees offered little shade, and the desert sun beat down, quickly coating the residue from the inky canal water in dust and sweat.
The trail wound uphill, deeper into the desert. My lungs screamed for mercy, but everything else screamed louder. I stumbled over rocks and roots, tripping but never going down, closing in on the blinking dot, losing ground as my trail broke off in a different direction, panicking, but always regaining it.
I knew where I was headed now. I’d been there before, this place on the hill. At the top was a pyramid-shaped monument, a cenotaph for a territorial governor from centuries ago, and the best place in the park to A) inspire children to learn about history or B) teenagers to get high and chug beer. Hadhepicked this place, this blast from my past? Or had someone else?
It didn’t matter. My spirits buoyed and I picked up my pace. But as the monument rose before me, concealed by another clutch of palo verde and marked by an escarpment on one side, I let my guard down and slipped, tumbling to my knees in the red dust, my phone flying from my hand and bouncing away into thescrub. I reached out, fingers splayed, and just managed to catch it before it skipped away into the rocky canyon. I nearly retched at the thought of losing my only connection to himnowbut forced myself to stand.
Breathing still ragged, hands trembling, I closed the phone’s map app. It lit up the screen, the glowing blue dot indicating my location, a larger one indicating his. I looked at the memorial, and then back at the map. I saw nothing and no one at the top, but this had to be it. This had to be him. The GPS wouldn’t,couldn’tlie.
Could it?
