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“Where is here?” Walid asks. “Not where you should be, which is at my front gate doing your job. Do you have somewhere else you need to be?”
Red fury bursts through my body with such heat I sweat it melts the filling in my grinding teeth. My mother—the earth surely rotten where she’s been laid to rest—would challenge me in the same demeaning way. If not for the girls and protection Walid offers, I wouldn’t put up with the way he talks to me.
I won’t have to put up with it much longer.
“I was just headed back from town after seeing to”—I pause as if searching for a word and then fill my voice with repressed disgust—“your entertainers.”
There’s a longer pause on Walid’s end, and I can tell the dig at him has hit its mark. Despite all Walid’s wealth, he is weak, because he’s a grown man who still thinks of himself as a little brother.
His raspy voice fills the line again, but with a lot less venom. “The last shipment sent to the Americas… you oversaw it, no?”
My moment of satisfaction slips away as a worm of dread twists in my gut. To be caught stealing from Walid—and, more importantly, his older brother Aamir—would earn me a brutal and sadistic death. “I did.”
“My man in the States tells me an item is missing. Do you know what I mean?”
“A missing item?” In all the years I’ve been stealing girls from Walid, he’s never challenged me about the women I’ve taken. And I remember this last one, a plump, doe-eyed girl… What’s the big deal? “Yes. I’m handling it.”
“So, you know where my merchandise is?”
I know exactly where she’s buried, and how long she screamed, cried, and begged for mercy. “I’ve men out looking. Not to worry.”
“I don’t want reassurances. Reassurances are something for women and children when you direct them to the gas chamber. I want to know how this happened, where it happened, and who is looking for the item. Come with these answers. Now.”
He hangs up.
I stare at my phone a moment, wishing I could reach through the line and end the man. Since that isn’t possible, I call the only number I have memorized.
My partner answers after one ring. “Yes?”
“We need to replace that girl, the doe-eyed one. Start looking among the refugees.”
“I’ll see to it.” The line is uttered with a tone as flat and determined as the man’s personality. He’s a good second-in-command. Together, we’ve established a growing side business dedicated to the discerning man who literally wants to screw a woman to death.
Soon, we’ll have enough money to relocate, but not now. Now, is a dangerous time, a time I can ill afford to get caught taking from Walid. I’ll have to shift my focus back to the town. If I don’t take too many, no one really notices missing women. Of course, there is one exception to that rule.
“I’ll also need your help in covering the disappearance of a nun.”
There’s a long moment of silence, and I know he’s thinking about the fallout. The people here are very religious. Taking a refugee is one thing, and attracts little notice if not done too often, but taking a nun…
“A nun will be difficult.”
“More difficult than saving your life?”
There is another pause on the line, and this one is longer and heavier. “We’ll have to burn the body.”
4
DADA
Awarm gust molds my tunic against my thighs as I stroll as quickly as possible down the cobbled streets of the town square. The other sisters won’t like that I’m late for the lunch rush, which is becoming my habit—along with nun puns.
I’ve been a nun for a week. I still suck at it. Not only the shift in my persona, but the difficulty of trying to balance undercover operations and nun activities. Four AM prayers? Totally draining. If I were in a more lenient disguise, I could enjoy sunny Oaxaca, with its historic buildings, terra-cotta tiled roofs, stone arches, and steepled white churches. As it is, I can only gaze longingly as I pass carts of different wares and yummy food lining plaza de la ciudad.
Probably for the best. I’m here to do a job. Knowing this, my trained gaze sweeps the people eating at cozy tables, vendors chatting with customers, couples walking hand-and-hand, and a smiling toddler pulling a wheeled, wooden cockatoo. He’s so cute in tiny jeans that cover his little marching legs.
The ache of loss thickens in my throat, and I absently run fingers along my worn leather bracelet. It’s a reminder that I survived captivity, and that I need to prove worthy of the gift Momma gave me when she rescued and adopted me. I should’ve died giving birth alone. Part of my heart died, part of my soul, along with my infant son, but I survived.
I push aside the long-held pain. I’m an undercover operative in The Guild and here to rescue others, not to indulge in what-ifs.
