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My legs burned beneath me as the man looked me up and down, spending special attention to my head. His mouth opened like he was going to say something before his eyes darted behind me. “Oh,” he muttered.
“What are you…” I pivoted and stumbled backward. Where I expected to find the two masked men chasing after me, there was only one man dressed in a suit with a gun at his side. My breath caught before I whirled back to the worker who had a blank expression on his face. He didn’t even spare me a glance before nodding at the man with the gun and turning away. “Wait, please!” I lunged after him, but he waved me off, the other workers following suit.
I pushed forward again and grabbed the man’s arm, yanking with all my strength until he was forced to turn and look at me.
“Look at me!” I ordered. “You have to help me!”
“Sorry, ma’am.”
The hope that had been coursing through my veins, fueling my tired body forward, all but vanished as I realized they weren’t going to help me. By the worker’s reaction, he wasn’t involved in my kidnapping which meant that whatever evil stalked behind me was worse than I could have imagined. I shuddered just as my legs gave out, but strong arms wrapped around my waist and kept me on two feet.
“Cuídate, cariño,” the whisper sent chills down my spine. “I got you.”
His arm loosened and he turned me until we were face to face. When I found the courage to look up, I sucked in a breath— momentarily stunned by the man I saw. His jaw was tight, his eyes impossibly dark, and his lips were slightly parted as he observed me. I leaned away but his arm tightened until our chests were mashed together and a strange fluttering in my stomach chased away any other sensation blazing through me. His fingers pinched my chin and he turned my head to the side, narrowing his eyes at the source of the dried blood on my shirt.
“Who did this to you?”
Confused, I blinked hard– trying to make sense of everything. Wouldn’t he know the men I’d left on the asphalt near the van?
A whimper escaped my lips when he bent and hoisted me over his broad shoulders, his arm firmly against the back of my thighs. Dizziness took over and my fingers fisted the jacket at his back. His face was burned in my mind, his piercing eyes as he looked me up and down— had that been… anger?
I bounced against him, his shoulder uncomfortable against my stomach until he came to a stop, and I heard sniffling and groaning. His arm loosened and he slid me down until my feet touched the ground, his arm still holding me upright. I was sure if he let go, I would be a puddle on the ground, unable to drag myself upright. There went my hope for escaping.
His free hand slid behind his back, and I hissed when I saw the gun. He barked at the men behind me, words I couldn’t understand no matter how bad I wanted to, the vibration passing from his chest to mine. I turned and saw the masked men, red-eyed, snotty, and sneering in my direction. There was a quick back and forth between the three of them before the man in the suit raised the gun and pulled the trigger twice, the explosion of gunfire ringing in my ear. I screamed as the men crumpled to the ground, brain matter and blood splattered against the van.
Before I had even sucked in a breath, the man had me slung over his shoulder again, walking toward the parked eighteen-wheelers as if he hadn’t just executed two people.
This time, I found the energy to kick against him.
In between ragged breaths, I screamed and pounded my fists against his back, wishing that I had just bit the bullet and called the Uber from the start. By the time we stopped again, my throat burned, and my eyes fluttered shut from the sheer dizziness. I didn’t need to go to the doctor to know I had a concussion; the waves of nausea and vertigo were proof enough.
“You Yuri?” I perked up, realizing I could understand even as my ears were still ringing.
The man with his arm uncomfortably close to my ass nodded his head while I bent and arched my back to see who he was talking to. Yuri, I filed his name away, along with his deadly accuracy with the gun he was still holding. Another older man with a bright yellow vest stood against the chassis of a freight truck, a cigarette hanging out of his thin lips.
“We goin’ across the border?” He asked, the Texas twang unmistakable.
Yuri nodded again. I struggled to keep my eye on the trucker when his eyes darted between the two of us. Without another word he hiked up the running board and unlatched the door, gesturing inside.
“Load up.”
We moved and without missing a beat, Yuri kept me over his shoulder and hoisted us into the truck, dipping slightly so my head didn’t bang against the ceiling. Once inside, he bent and set me down behind the seats on the thin mattress that was, I suspected, the worker’s home away from home. The cab smelled dingy, and the old sleeping bag squeaked as I scooted back as far as I could, desperate to get some distance from Yuri as he flaunted the side of the gun in a warning. He settled into the passenger seat, the gun against his thigh. My fingers shook as I pulled my knees into my chest, collapsing in on myself.
This was not happening. I couldn’t believe it. Everything in me rejected reality.
The driver’s side opened and closed and with a lurch, we were moving. My thoughts were going a mile a minute— somehow, I had been taken in broad daylight, watched two men being murdered, and was about to be whisked over the border into Mexico.
Through the throbbing in my temple, I tried to remember if any stories had come out recently that matched mine, but nothing came to mind. Was this some sort of sex trafficking organization? McAllen was a relatively tight-knit community– kidnappers picking off women and smuggling them out of the US would have been the talk of the town. But nothing came to mind.
Petty criminals wouldn’t have been bold enough to do it during the day and at City Hall, let alone have the resources of strength to sway dozens of people to look the other way. No, whomever I was dealing with, whoever sat casually in the seat in front of me, was a cold-blooded, psychopathic killer and was the only thing stopping me from throwing myself out of this moving truck.
The only thing that I was sure of was that if I was going to escape, I needed to do it before crossing the border. I had a sickening feeling that past that man-made territorial barrier, Yuri would be even more powerful.
I made quick eye contact with the driver through the rearview mirror, hoping that he would find his humanity, but the man averted his gaze as quick as he could and a chill rippled through my bones. When Yuri slid a phone out of his pocket and lifted it to his ear, I searched around me as quietly as I could, running my fingers along the edges of the mattress in search of anything that I could use as a weapon. Stacks of clothes were pressed against the left wall and to the right was an empty leather bag. Tucked above me were some shelves, but I couldn’t risk looking in there without Yuri or the driver seeing.
Yuri spoke in Spanish, a quick conversation before stuffing the phone back into the inside of his jacket. My only option, it seemed, would be to draw attention to myself when we went over the border— assuming we had to pass through the checkpoint. If that was the case, every car and truck was stopped by a patrol agent thanks to a recent search ban. Thank God. If I could scream or make a scene, the agent would have to act, and I was sure that Yuri wouldn’t be able to kill all the agents and everyone else as a witness. It had to work. My freedom depended on it.
I propped myself up, feeling the adrenaline begin to course through my veins as we passed a sign: one mile to the border. I squinted and peeked above the dash and could just make out the concrete structure over the bridge to Hidalgo. Cars were lined up, a funnel forming, as everyone was checked by the armed guards spread all across the area.
