As they left the apartment, she pulled out her phone—nothing, ugh—and found The Mansion on the map. “You think she’s there.”
“Of course she’s there. Don’t get too mad at her, Becks.”
“Just a little mad.” She saw neither of them wanted to consider the possibility that Kira had left the bar without telling them. Because Jacques might not be an Islamic terrorist, but he was still a guy…
5
Kira knew it wasn’t cocaine as soon as it went up her nose.
She felt no acceleration. No rush. Only the sweetest pleasure imaginable, an orgasm, five, ten, her body loose and soft. Like staring into the sun. Only instead of blinding her the light made her so very warm.
What, she tried to say, but her mouth didn’t work. She flopped back against the couch, her head dropped, tongue lolled.
She knew she should care but she couldn’t think at all, the words melted into a silver sea. Her mind slid into neutral; she couldn’t follow the strobes or the music, the lights and noise were a million miles away and in her fingertips all at once.
Someone grabbed her, arms under her, pulling her up.
No wait—
But she couldn’t speak.
Anyway, it didn’t matter. She wanted to feel like this forever.
Even breathing felt like too much work—she had to pull the air into her lungs, and she couldn’t figure out how.
The hands held her and, unknowing, she moved through this place to another.
A long, dark hallway, a door open…
A car.
Inside it.
Her eyes closed and she knew she was going to die; the dark rose in her. She couldn’t breathe at all; the air was thick as cotton.
She fell.
Into the black…
* * *
Her eyes sputtered open.
Her nose. Something jammed in her right nostril. Her head back. A puff of liquid spurted into her.
Her shoulders shuddered. Her head twitched. She opened her mouth to breathe again—
Another squirt of the spray and another.
The seconds passed and the ecstasy faded; her first thought, how badly she missed it. But slowly she came back to life, the pieces fit.
She was in a car. Moving. A city at night, barely visible through dark tinted glass.
Men on either side, squeezing her.
Her wrists cuffed together in her lap. A big hand on her right forearm, gripping it.
“She’s coming to,” the man on her left said. She knew his voice.
Barcelona. The club. Dancing.
The cocaine that wasn’t cocaine.
And one final squirt up her nose. What was left of the pleasure fled her body. In its place, fear. Nothing made any sense. Maybe she’d fallen and hit her head. Maybe she was dreaming.
She didn’t feel like she was dreaming. She tried to raise her arms. Jacques held them in place. She didn’t speak. As long as she stayed quiet she could pretend nothing was real, nothing was happening.
* * *
“Kira. Nod if you can hear me.”
She opened her mouth to scream, but the man on the other side put a hand over her lips.
Jacques jammed something into her belly. An electric pain stabbed her. She tried to writhe away but they were too strong, they held her as the fire coursed through.
Jacques lifted his hand. The agony ended. Tears jumped to Kira’s eyes. The other man’s hand stayed on her mouth. The strange smell of nail polish on his thick fingers. Rodrigo. The car turned left, picked up speed.
“Stun gun.” Jacques’s voice was flat, almost robotic. Nothing like the man she’d met in Paris. “Understand? Make a fist.”
She tried to look at him, plead with her eyes. The palm over her mouth kept her still.
“Make a fist if you understand.”
She squeezed her left hand into a fist. The tears kept coming. Stop crying stop crying stop. Her own voice, no one else’s.
“You’re ours now. Behave, you’ll be fine. Don’t, I’ll hurt you. Make a fist if you understand.”
She made a fist.
“That powder you snorted was heroin. A little fentanyl for kicks.”
Now the pleasure made sense.
Sophomore year, soccer, she’d run full-out on a breakaway, tripped on a muddy patch, broken her left ankle and tibia. She had never known what pain meant until then. The orthopedist had prescribed her Oxycontin. I’m only going to give you ten days, be careful with this stuff, what you hear is true. The pills put her on a cloud. This stuff had sent her straight into space.
“We gave you naloxone as an antidote.” Jacques sounded like a doctor now, not a graduate student. He was probably neither, she realized. She had no idea what he was. “We were gone from the