club in less than a minute. No one noticed. If they did they would think you overdosed and we were getting you help. Happens all the time. Make a fist if you understand.”
She made a fist. And thought of the text she’d sent her mom, her parents would be at Helado soon enough.
“My phone was rigged.” As if he could read her mind. “The text you sent didn’t go through. Your phone is gone. Even if your brother told your parents about The Mansion, they won’t find it. Or you. Your parents have no idea where you are. No one does. Make a fist if you understand.”
She looked for a hole in what he’d told her. Couldn’t find one. She didn’t make a fist this time. He didn’t seem to care.
“This car, the doors are locked. If you scream we’ll punish you. We’ve done this before. Make a fist if you understand.”
She hesitated, made a fist.
“Good. No screaming. Rodrigo—”
Jacques nodded, and Rodrigo lifted his hand.
Immediately a scream rose in her.
She swallowed it down.
Her first test, her first decision. They were still in the city. If she screamed loud enough maybe someone would hear. But probably not. Jacques and Rodrigo were far stronger than she was. She couldn’t fight her way out. Be good. Do what they say. Watch and wait.
“Why?”
The only word she could manage.
“Pourquoi? Only an American would ask. For money, of course. Why else?”
“Money money money money,” Lilly said from the front seat. “Bitcoin, gold, diamonds, pearls. Makes the world go round. An American should know that.”
“Bitch,” Kira said, before she could stop herself.
Jacques punched her in the stomach.
She gasped, bent over, desperate for air. In the front seat Lilly laughed.
* * *
Back when the Unsworths lived in Houston, Becks had helped out on a serial killer case the bureau investigated in South Texas. Kira was ten or eleven. Old enough to understand the snatches of conversations she overheard.
The Border Bandit, the killer was called. A cute name, a not-cute-at-all case. He stuck mainly to undocumented immigrants and first-generation Mexican Americans. No one put the murders together until a rancher’s plane in Dimmit County crashed practically on top of a grave where he’d left three new victims. All with bullets in their skulls, all raped. The local cops asked the FBI for help.
Her parents hadn’t been good at the time. The case had made them worse. It had pulled Rebecca out of the house. Maybe made her hate men a little. Brian had been angry, too. You want to spend weekends working for free.
He’s killing women. For fun. Cool with that, Bri?
Maybe don’t talk about it in front of the kids.
Maybe Brian was right, Rebecca should have tried to keep Kira innocent. But later, Kira realized Rebecca wanted her to know, women really did disappear. Defenseless women. Mexican girls crossing the desert to work at chicken plants. Runaways selling themselves, meeting truckers at gas stations in the night. Some vanished for years before anyone even noticed.
They weren’t always poor. Sometimes they were middle-class secretaries who’d gotten pregnant by a married boyfriend who hated kids as much as child support. Who went out for runs and never came back. Those women were reported missing right away. Volunteers trampled forests for them. But their bodies never turned up. The suspects had carefully concocted alibis the police couldn’t shake. Eventually everyone except the victims’ families forgot.
Years later, Kira had asked Rebecca about the Border Bandit case. No joy, Rebecca said. The FBI never found a plausible suspect, never even figured out how many victims he had. Eventually the murders ended. Maybe because the killer had gone to prison for some unrelated crime. Or died. Or maybe he’d moved to a new state, started a new spree. Serial killers rarely woke up one morning and said, Hey, this is wrong, better stop.
* * *
A single thought: I’m going to die.
Jacques would kill her. Or sell her to someone who would. A super-rich psychopath who had decided he wanted something different, something fun, an American girl.
The idea seemed impossible. But here she was, vanishing into the night, Barcelona falling away as they came to a more American-looking stretch of road, strip malls on either side. The airport was around here somewhere, she thought. Minute by minute, mile by mile, she was leaving her mother and father and brother behind.
Then what? Would they take her to the coast? Throw her onto a yacht?
No. She couldn’t think that way. Rebecca and Brian would be looking