“And that’s enough? Do you like him? Love him?”
“My father, he was worse. My older sister…she run away…to Ciudad Juarez.” She strangled on a sob as if there were some horrible end to that tale. “Chito, he help me. He give my family food and money. You lucky. Tavio, he protect you. You should be nice to Tavio.”
Suddenly Chito lunged for Mia, the lust in his eyes, his strength and the stench of his garlic breath bringing her cruelly back to the present. Catching her again even as she pummeled his thick chest, he dragged her screaming to the cot, where he threw her down. When she fell, her head struck a wooden bar on the cot, and she could only stare up at him in dazed confusion.
“Be still, or I will hurt you worse.” He smiled at her as he took his time unbuttoning his trousers.
She was struggling to sit up when the thick wooden door behind them crashed against the adobe wall. Suddenly Tavio was a black giant in the doorway, his legs widely spread apart. He twirled his golden gun idly.
Instantly the air grew even more charged with electric, hostile danger.
Sweat popping across his brow, Chito jumped back from the cot, his knife falling with a soft thud to the dirt floor.
Feeling like a trapped animal, Mia got up and hurled herself into Tavio’s arms and clung to him, shaking, even though he smelled of those awful crack-laced cigarettes.
“Why is your heart beating like a rabbit’s?” Tavio whispered against her ear, pressing her closer for a second. He turned toward Chito. “I told you to bring her to me. What are you two doing here?”
“Teaching her a lesson since you won’t.”
She scarcely dared draw a breath as the two men exchanged dark, dangerous looks.
“I will deal with you later for the trouble you cost me, Angelita. Go to your room,” Tavio said, releasing her in an instant. When she hesitated, his whisper grew vicious. “Go! Ahora!”
“Don’t kill him.”
“Don’t tell me what to do, woman!” Although his voice was soft, every word bit her, especially the last one.
And then to Chito he said, still in that soft, deadly tone as he knelt and retrieved the knife. “What were you doing with my woman alone—here? Why was she on that cot?” He began to curse and make crude sexual accusations that terrified her.
As she walked toward the door, she heard Chito’s shrill, raised yelps. Then Chito’s knife whizzed past her and hit the exact center of the door.
She gasped. Just like that—she could have had a blade in the back of her neck and been dead.
A slop bucket hit the wall, splashing its foul contents. Chito screamed that he wanted her punished.
“It is not for you to punish my woman.” Another bucket was knocked over, increasing the sewerlike stench. “I will punish her myself.”
Mia flinched.
“She knows too much. It’s dangerous. She tried to escape in Marco’s plane. We can’t trust her.”
“I never trust her before,” Tavio said. “So—she try to escape? So what? She is a gringa. A nobody.”
“Don’t be so sure. A traitor helped her. She will betray us. I can feel it. In my gut.”
“Let me do the thinking. With my brain.”
“You are married to my sister. This woman…”
“She has nothing to do with my marriage. Your sister is still my wife.”
“The men snicker behind your back. They say it is sick the way you follow her around like a lovesick dog. Like you have no balls, mano.”
“I will prove to you and to her that I have balls—tonight. I will take her. You can stand outside in the hall and listen to her screams. But first, I will teach you a lesson.”
She heard fists, blows, a life-and-death scuffle. Chairs were overturned. A body hit the ground. When gunshots exploded, and metal pinged, Mia pulled the knife out of the door and then ran all the way to her second-story bedroom. She went to her bathroom.
Setting the knife down, she stared at the wild woman in the mirror. Her face was still flushed from having gotten so overheated in the airplane and from her struggles with Chito. Her own sweat had plastered her hair to her skull. Not that she cared.
She was too afraid. If Chito came instead of Tavio, she would either stab him or herself. She couldn’t bear for him to touch her ever again.
Too upset to shower, she ran a shaky hand through her hair. The wet tangles just fell back in her eyes. Squeezing her eyes shut, she fought against her rising fear.
For a long time she stood there, paralyzed. Finally Negra came up and rubbed her leg. Then the cat began to purr. Picking the animal up she returned to her bedroom and sat down on the bed where she began to stroke the cat’s soft fur. Doing so restored her a little. If only she knew where Julio lived, she would try to find him and warn him and tell him that he must flee.
For a while Negra endured her affection. Then as if sensing her nervousness, the independent creature sprang to the floor and curled up to sleep on a little rug under a chair. A door slammed downstairs and she heard Tavio shout to his men.
Feeling only slightly relieved, she placed the knife under her pillow and waited. As the awful seconds ticked by, Mia began to feel dull and hopeless. She could do nothing but sit here and wait.
Hours later, when Tavio still hadn’t come upstairs, she finally drove herself to get up from the bed and shower. As she toweled off, she was surprised that such a little thing had made her feel better. After she dressed, she paced back and forth at the end of her bed, her heart racing every time she heard Tavio or one of his men shout angrily below.
She should go to bed and yet she was afraid of the bed and what it might mean tonight. As she stared at the melon-colored adobe walls that imprisoned her, they seemed to close in on her more than ever. She wanted to run, but she knew that behind those high, thick, adobe walls, Tavio Morales’s immense, adobe mansion was a veritable fortress. An army of gunmen patrolled the rancho and airstrips in trucks and SUVs.
A natural spring with cold, icy water bubbled up from the ground not far from the stables, so there was a sure source of water. Tall cottonwood trees grew around the sparkling pool.
Beyond Tavio’s private army, every Mexican peasant, poor men like Ramiro, in the desert belonged to Tavio, as well. If one of their children was sick, Tavio paid for the doctor, buying their undying loyalty.
“They are my ears and eyes,” he’d told her. “I love them. And they love me. I protect them, and they protect me. I very important man here. I am much loved.” He’d smiled as if that thought pleased him. “If you try to escape, my little friends will tell me. If anyone try to help you, they will tell me, and I kill him.”
Remembering Ramiro watching her again, she bit her lips. Worrying about Julio, she went to the barred window. She had to get away or go mad. She had to.
Since the ranch house was located on a slight rise above the desert floor, Mia’s plush room with its heavy furniture and red-velvet spread and draperies had a view of the Chihuahua Desert and Tavio’s airstrip. She’d spent long hours watching the dusty two-lane road that led across the parched earth to the airstrips. Sometimes she’d watched huge dirt devils race across the barren, beige moonscape, and always she had wished she were free to whirl away.
She’d watched the birds, the vultures, hawks and the eagles with special envy because they could fly. In her other life, she had taken freedom for granted.
If I’m ever free again, I will treasure every single moment.
She had to get out of here.
“Oh, Shanghai…”