“Okay,” I answer softly, confused, but still willing to trust him. Despite everything, he hasn’t let me down yet.
“Come on,” he says, standing. “We have to hurry.”
“What?” I ask, stomach doing flip-flops.
He grins at me. “I promised you the beach. So let’s go to the beach.”
I slowly stand up and look at him. He hands me a sweatshirt to put on overtop of my clothes. “Hood up,” he says, and I put it up. “Come on. Stay close.”
We leave my cell, and for the first time I get a look at the place where they’re keeping me.
As we walk down the hall, I’m surprised at how much like a school it seems. There are rooms lining the halls, and while I know they’re probably cells containing girls just like me, they look like classrooms. The walls are even that painted cinderblock look that public schools have, although there are no posters or lockers anywhere.
Up ahead, we come to a corner. There’s a guard down at the other end walking toward us.
“Don’t talk,” Logan says quietly to me as we approach the guard.
“What’s she doing?” the guard asks in a heavily accented English.
“Taking her for a little lesson,” Logan says.
The guard eyes us both. I keep my head down and stare at the floor, hands folded in front of me, trying to look as invisible and submissive as possible.
“Why you leave?” he asks.
Logan steps up to the guy, and while I can’t see their faces, I can hear the danger in Logan’s voice.
“Anton wants me to get results. You gonna stop me?”
There’s a pause. “No,” he guard says finally. “Go ahead.”
“That’s what I thought.” Logan takes my arm. “Come on.”
We start walking again and soon we leave a door and step out into the night.
I take a deep breath of fresh air for the first time in what feels like ages. The moon is full in the sky and we walk across a compound toward a wall at the far side. There are a few buildings, and they’re all in surprisingly good shape, though they were probably built in the fifties or the sixties. It really looks like a high school back home, just with more buildings. And more armed guards prowling the walls.
“Come on,” he whispers. “This way. Move fast now.”
We move quickly across an empty field and reach the wall in a few seconds. It’s relatively large, about eight feet tall, with barbed wire around the top. It’s made of concrete and corrugated metal all along the sides.
Logan leads us along the wall until he stops at a spot hidden behind a little shed. There’s a piece of corrugated metal, but it’s bent and warped. Logan grabs it and peels it back, making an opening just large enough to slip through.
“After you,” he says.
I shimmy my way through and pop out on the other side. A second later, Logan follows me.
I’m free. I stand there on the other side of the wall and for a second, I think that I’m free. I can do anything or go anywhere. I’m a real person again.
But I’m not, and I know it. I’m still a prisoner. Even if I did run away and managed to escape, I’d be leaving behind Logan. Worse, I’d be marooned with no money in a country that’s openly hostile to me with bad men looking for me. I can’t speak Spanish so I can’t ask for help. They’d find me and they’d hurt me.
But Logan won’t let that happen. Maybe he’s going to free me, but no, of course he’s not. He could have done that already if he was going to do it.
“Listen,” he says, almost reading my mind. “This is just for a couple hours. If I were going to help you escape ... ” He trails off, looking down, and then looks back at me. “It’s not the right time. Do you understand?”
“No,” I say honestly.
“But do you trust me?”
I pause, considering. “Yes,” I say. “I trust you.”
“Good.” He smiles and takes my hand. “Now let’s go walk along the beach.”
We head away from the wall and down a short slope. I can hear the water now that I’m listening, and we turn left, skirting a small village. We move through some scrubland, up another short rise, and there it is.
The beach stretches out in either direction.
I take a deep breath of salty ocean air and let it out. I can feel tears dripping down my cheeks but I don’t bother to wipe them away. For a second, the world is completely gone.
It’s just me out there on the dune overlooking the ocean. The water stretches on forever, the moonlight reflected off its surface like a rippled mirror, and I stare at the motion of the water. It’s such a simple thing, really, something so many people experience all the time. I’m just standing in front of the water.