25 Not Very Nice

Back in his luxurious cell, Evan checked his phone to see if the boy had called back, but the shattered screen showed no missed calls. He slid the RoamZone between mattress and box spring again and went into the bathroom. Getting down on his hands and knees by the sink in the hidden camera’s blind spot, he stared at the J-plug outlet placed beneath the floating counter. Then he rolled onto his back and smashed the plastic cover with the heel of his boot. It took only a few kicks for it to chip and fall away.

Beneath it was nothing but an empty hole in the drywall. Wires stubbed out of the socket, connected to nothing. It was a prop, inserted in the space where a functional outlet had been.

He broke the cover into smaller pieces and flushed them down the toilet.

In the bedroom again, he crawled beneath the built-in desk. The Type C outlet was there in the darkness behind the back panel and the wall. He slipped his hand into the gap and managed to slide the edge of his thumbnail into the groove of one of the tiny screws. After five minutes of cramped machinations, the screw pinged loose, the outlet cover swinging down to reveal the blank wall beneath.

Evan sat back on his heels and marveled at René’s attention to detail. So many fakes and misdirects. Impeccable tradecraft.

When he crawled out, Despi was once more standing by the fireplace. She wore lipstick and a hair tie.

“Wanna not have sex again?” Her full lips shaped the words, a hoarse whisper to thwart the surveillance.

He drew himself upright. “Don’t you get cold?”

She stepped closer, her hips ticktocking. She ran a finger along his jaw. “What I feel is irrelevant. There’s only what I have to do.” Her flat words and expression were divorced from her body language, which she laid on thick for the hidden camera.

He regretted the joke.

She undressed him, pulling off the layers. Then she slid her hand to the nape of his neck, tugging him toward her. “Should we get this over with?” The sensuous affect paired with her matter-of-fact declarations made her seem like an actress who’d been given the wrong dialogue.

Evan steered her to the same spot on the bed, keeping them mostly in the camera’s blind spot. She pulled him on top of her, putting her mouth to his ear. “You have very strong willpower.”

“To not rape you?”

“What it would be,” she said, “is complicated.”

“Not to me.”

“So virtuous.” Her lips tugged to one side, a smirk. “Have you decided that you trust me?”

“Mostly.”

“Only mostly?” She feigned offense. “Well, I have no chopstick. So how would you kill me now, Virtuous Man? Right now?”

He ran his fingers through her thick hair. “I’d rake your head to the side hard enough to fragment your C2 vertebra into your brain stem.”

She took a moment with that one. “And there is a Hollywood movie crackle, and then I die instantly?”

“No. You’d be a quadriplegic. Maybe you could still speak. Or scream. But the break would cut off impulses from your brain to your diaphragm, and you’d eventually suffocate.”

Their faces were close, and they spoke in whispers. “That’s not very nice,” she said.

“No.”

“I’m glad you mostly trust me.” She clasped her hands around his ribs and pulled him tighter. She was skilled at selling the performance. He cringed to think of the experiences that had led her to perfect this skill set.

“How did you get here?” he asked. “Were you taken like me?”

“I was stupid. There was a party on a yacht docked off the coast of Rhodes — that’s where I’m from. My girlfriend was going, and she asked me to join. I was recently divorced, so I said what the hell. René was there. I interested him. Not sexually. But as an object. He takes things and people. He doesn’t understand the difference.”

“No,” Evan said. “He doesn’t seem to.”

“He thinks I am a Greek goddess. It is the only thing we agree on.”

“How did he take you?”

“I drank the champagne. I woke up very much later out at sea. He showed me pictures of my parents in our little apartment. My younger sister at the Athens School of Fine Arts. She’s nineteen. René had her class schedule printed up. He set the pictures and documents before me but said nothing. He didn’t have to.”

He studied her liquid brown eyes for a sign that she was lying. “How long ago was that?”

“Seventeen months, two weeks, and a day.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Me, too.”

“You weren’t stupid.”

“Yes. I was. That doesn’t mean it was my fault, though.” A pause. “When people think of human trafficking, they think of Thai virgins kidnapped from villages and shipped overseas. But sometimes it’s just drinking the wrong glass of champagne.” She let that one land for a moment, then said, “But I don’t know how to fragment a C2 vertebra into someone’s brain stem. So I must do this.” Her grip on his back flagged. “You’re no good at not having sex.”

“Thanks.”

She flipped them over so she was on top. “Let me be in charge.”

“Gladly.”

Her hips did something magical. “Is that you getting aroused?” she asked.

“No,” he said.

“Uh-uh,” he said.

“Nope,” he said.

She smiled. “Maybe I should be less in charge?”

“Maybe so.”

She eased off him a bit.

All of a sudden, outside lights went on, flooding the bedroom through the sliding glass door. There were shouts and sounds of commotion.

Evan got up, pulled on his jeans, and stumbled through the slider, the balcony frosted beneath his bare soles. By the barn four narcos were laid out on their backs, making tiny, listless movements. Another was curled on the wet ground beside them, clutching his stomach, vomit drooling from the side of his mouth. The skinny guard was off the tower, radioing frantically. He waved around one of the slender white remotes, clicking on more lights to illuminate the grounds. Samuel staggered out of the barn, veering unevenly toward the fire. He banged into the suspended pot, knocking it to the ground. A sludge of chili spilled out.

Samuel sat heavily on a crate, wiping sweat from his brow. He pointed to the dark glop of chili on the ground.

The skinny guard’s posture changed. His rail-thin shoulders lowered. He crouched and picked up one of the bone-china plates resting on a crate. Let it drop from his hand. It shattered. He sat on the crate, lowered his head into his hand.

Then he rose, doubled over, and ran into the barn. No doubt looking for a toilet.

“What?” Despi said, keeping a few steps back from the threshold to the balcony. “What is it?”

Before Evan could answer, he heard the resonant boom of the chalet’s front door opening. A moment later Dex lumbered off the porch into view, his massive back bowed, his shadow elongated before him. He approached the barn and spoke to Samuel.

Hard rain spit at Evan. He squinted through the haze as Samuel slid off the crate, collapsing to the ground.

Two dogs, three guards, two snipers, and Dex.

Dex turned, the lights of the eaves hitting him full in the face, his pale bald head seeming to glow. He stared directly at the balcony, at Evan. For a chilling moment, they locked eyes through the quickening rain.

Dex lifted his left hand and slapped the bloody scowl across his face. The tattoo colors were sharp in the glare, glossy red dripping from pointy incisors.

Evan backed into the room.

“What is it?” Despi asked.

The door flew open. Manny charged in, shotgun raised, firing a beanbag round that hit Evan’s center mass. It knocked him into the wall. He slid down lurchingly to sit on the floor.

Nando grabbed Despi’s bare shoulder and flung her behind him. She banged into the desk before falling to the floorboards at René’s feet.

With a polished loafer, René shooed her toward the door. She staggered a bit, pulling herself upright in time to collide with Dex’s chest, now filling the doorway. His rain-wet shirt clung to him, every muscle pronounced. He grabbed her by the wrist, wrenching her arm, and tugged her out of view. A moment later a door opened and slammed up the hall and Dex returned, pocketing a key.

Evan’s lungs were locked up. He couldn’t breathe.

With the toe of his boot, Manny tipped him over, cuffed his hands, hoisted him onto the bed. Evan leaned forward, his mouth wavering, air still out of reach.

At last his muscles relaxed, and he drew in a screeching breath and then another.

René walked over and leaned casually against the desk, examining his fingernails. “Let’s have a talk,” he said.

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