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Daar stared out the back windows of the van.
It was the worst possible scenario. Him against the chancellor. It should have never have come to this. Daar hadn’t wanted things to change, but the chancellor was backed into a corner and scared of losing it all.
He was going to regret doubting Daar as much as Daar regretted being doubted.
Thursday. Unknown, New York City, NY.
Robin flexed her wrists. Her fingers still tingled, but at least they were free.
Unfortunately, the three of them were all locked in a room with no windows and the ceiling was too high up for one of them to try to go over the walls.
Jessica was on another circuit of the small room, this time running her hands along the cinderblock surface. “Where do you think we are?”
“Somewhere in New York City.”
“Saaina, any idea?” Jessica asked.
“No,” Saaina said in a small voice. She was perhaps the most terrified out of all of them. Then again, she seemed to know the most about Uncle Daar.
Right.
If Robin was going to die, and she didn’t see how she’d avoid that, she wanted to know all of it. Every gory detail.
“Saaina?”
Saaina lifted her chin, looking at Robin with large, soulful eyes.
How hard had Saaina worked at maintaining her story? She’d maintained that act for a decade and a half. That was commitment, and Robin had never known.
“I want to know about Uncle Daar. I want to know all of it. What we never talked about. The stuff you know. Please? If he’s going to kill us, I at least want to know why. What was worth protecting?”
Saaina hunched her shoulders and glanced at the door. The one white man working for Uncle Daar had specifically told them to pee now because he would not be back until morning.
“Please?” Robin crossed the room and crouched next to Saaina. “Please tell me what’s worth killing us all over?”
Jessica left her investigation of the wall to join Robin looking at Saaina.
Saaina blew out a breath and stretched her legs out in front of her.
“Fine,” she said. “I’ll tell you what I know. It isn’t much.”
Robin and Jessica lowered to the concrete floor as one.
“I first heard of your uncle when my family was going through a tough time. We’d fled Syria to Turkey and were struggling. My brother said he’d heard of someone he thought he could get some work from. That was Daar. My brother still works for him. He’s Daar’s right-hand man. But it has changed him. You see, Daar runs three different routes smuggling people out of Syria. It’s dangerous work.”
“He smuggles people? That’s not that bad…” Robin wasn’t sure what she’d suspected. Drugs or something.
Saaina stared at her for a moment, lips parted. “When you have to travel like that, you’re in as much danger from the people you’ve paid to help you as you are anyone else. It is common practice to set a price, then hike it right before leaving. If they think someone has more money, they’ll threaten to throw them off the boat, out of a plane, unless they pay more. He extorts people.”
Robin’s eyes widened. “That’s terrible…”
Saaina chuckled bitterly. “What’s worse is how my brother got the job. You know what he did? He went around the truck transporting us and threatened the people with a gun. He took their money then gave it to Daar’s men and told them to give him a job. That he’d make them rich.”
“Holy shit,” Jessica muttered.
Robin didn’t have words.
Saaina locked eyes with her. “That’s just the beginning. I later learned that Daar doesn’t manage that business himself. It’s a side business he considers to becharity.”
