Wicked Intentions(43)

“Alleged, but never proven. Not that it matters either way. When dawn rose over the village, both Mariana’s parents and nearly everyone else she’d ever known were dead. The avocado fields were smoking and black. The cattle had been slaughtered. Her beloved yellow dog lay still in the dirt, missing half his head.

“Mariana was six at this time. Her sister, Nina, was ten. For the next four years, they hid in the hills with a few other children, living like scavengers, little nocturnal animals stealing what they could from nearby villages to survive. They hid from the guerillas who swept through every so often, starving and filthy and forgotten by the rest of the world.”

“Jesus,” Ryan says, his voice choked.

I smile sadly. “No. He never showed his face in Chengue. He forgot about them, too.”

Ryan rolls us to our sides, pulls me up against him so my back is nestled against his chest, and draws his knees up behind mine. He pulls me tight to his body, his arm an iron band around my waist, and buries his face in my hair.

“One day,” I continue, my voice sounding very faraway to my own ears, “the guerillas finally caught the children. They were so weak by then. Just skin and bones, their eyes huge and sunken in their lice-ridden heads. The few boys in the group were quickly killed. Their necks were so brittle, so easily snapped. But the girls…well. Unfortunately, the girls were pretty. That’s what they said, anyway, the men who dragged them kicking and screaming from their hiding places. They said words like pretty and money and pure, and although the girls didn’t know what they meant, they knew enough to be terrified.

“And so they were sold to a trafficker named Beatriz, a woman with gold teeth and no soul, who took off their clothes and inspected them to see if they’d ever been had by a man.”

Behind me, Ryan’s breathing is uneven. His body is shaking in reaction to my words, when strangely I feel more and more calm as I continue to speak, as if I’m releasing poison from my veins.

“The girls were taken to the port. They were loaded with other girls from other villages into a shipping container. There were no lights. There was no food. Each girl was chained to the wall, a collar around her throat, steel cuffs around her ankles and wrists, one gallon of drinking water in a plastic bottle by her side. They sat in the darkness for days that were like decades, listening to each other’s pitiful cries and retching from seasickness, until one by one they fell silent and there were only a few more whimpering voices left.

“By the time the rocking stopped and the doors creaked open, none of them were making any sounds at all. Mute and wretched, they lifted their eyes to the light.”

I have to stop. My throat has closed in on itself as it did when that container door creaked open and I caught my first glimpse of Reynard’s horrified face.

I was nothing by then. I wasn’t even human. I was an animal. The only instinct I had left was primal rage.

As if it’s a movie projected directly onto my mind’s eye, I see Reynard press a handkerchief to his nose. He staggers back several feet, overcome by the stench of human waste and rotting corpses.

“I was the last one taken out of the container. I couldn’t walk, so they dragged me out by one arm. They dropped me at Reynard’s feet. I lay in the dirt while they corralled the other girls into a bus that was waiting to take us to Capo’s. I thought I would die. I didn’t care. Even the sound of my sister crying my name didn’t move me. Then Reynard knelt down and brushed the hair off my face. When I looked up at him, I saw tears on his cheeks.”

I realize I’ve reverted to first person when I feel tears on my cheeks, too. I don’t bother to wipe them away. It’s almost the end of the story.

“The last time I saw my sister was through a dirty window of a yellow bus. She had blood running from her nose. Her hands were pressed to the glass, and I could tell she was screaming, but for some reason, I couldn’t hear her. I couldn’t hear anything. Then the bus drove away, and Reynard picked me up in his arms.

“As he carried me to his car, a dragonfly landed on his shoulder. It had iridescent blue wings. I’ll never forget the color of those wings. The dragonfly looked at me and said, ‘Survive.’ I know I must’ve been hallucinating, but that’s what it said. ‘Survive.’ And somehow in my mind, the dragonfly was my sister, and she was telling me to live, to live for all of us, all the girls in that dark cage who would never grow up to be wives and mothers and lovers. All the girls who’d had their childhoods stolen, who were abused so brutally, who were sold off by adults with no more care than you’d sell a used car.

“So I did what the dragonfly told me to. I survived. Reynard nursed me back to health. He was kind to me. He raised me and gave me an education and continued to skim money from Capo’s operation so that every once in a while he could save a little girl from a nightmare.

“And every time I steal something at Capo’s request, I honor the memory of my sister and those dead girls by leaving the totem of the dragonfly, a beautiful creature that has a very short life. A creature that visited me when I was close to death and gave me a reason to live. Without that dragonfly on Reynard’s shoulder, I know I wouldn’t have made it past that night.”

After I stop speaking, there’s total silence. Ryan’s heartbeat thuds against my shoulder blades. His breathing is shallow, and there’s a small tremor in the arm he’s bound around me. Finally, he presses the softest of kisses to the nape of my neck.

I turn over and throw my arms around his shoulders, burying my face in his chest.

He cradles me close, his feet tangling with mine, a low sigh slipping from his lips. “Angel,” he whispers gruffly, “you’re a miracle. I’m so grateful you lived. And for as long as you do, I want to be beside you.”

I burst into tears.

He lets me cry without shushing me, just holding me tight against his body, letting me take strength from him, giving me a soft place to fall. When it’s over and I’m sniffling and snot-faced, he goes to the bathroom and comes back with a wet washcloth and gently wipes my cheeks and nose. Then he strips off his jeans and underwear, crawls under the covers, and spoons me again, one arm under my head and the other tight around my waist, his breath warm and soft on my shoulders.

I fall in love with him the way the dying give up their last breath: irrevocably, with both hope and terror for what lies on the other side.



* * *

We sleep.

I don’t know for how long, but we both come awake at the same time, our hands and mouths finding each other, our bodies and hearts perfectly in tune. Ryan makes love to me with a tenderness that’s painful because it’s so raw. I’ve been stripped of the hard, protective skin I’ve worn for so long. I’m nothing but exposed nerves and a beating heart and a ravenous, insatiable hunger. Hunger for him, for this beautiful man who saw me from the beginning, who so easily saw what I really was and accepted me without judgment or fear, only good humor and open arms.

He gives me hope for mankind.

“What time is it?” I ask hours later, when we’re both sated and sweaty, a tangle of arms and legs under the rumpled sheets.

“Dunno,” he replies sleepily. He turns his head on the pillow and gazes at me, smiling. “Why, you ready to go again?”

My laugh is low and happy. “Sure, if you have a wheelchair handy. I don’t think I’ll be able to walk right for a week.”

Ryan looks like this is the best compliment he’s ever received. Beaming, he lifts himself up to an elbow and kisses my shoulder. “You don’t need to walk, remember? You’ve got your own personal wheelchair right here.” He flexes his arm, making his biceps muscles bulge, and me laugh.

“You’re crazy.”

“Crazy for you.” He smiles into my eyes, and I’m so floating and light, I must be hooked up to a helium tank.

“I need a shower,” he says, throwing back the covers. “You in?”

“Get the water warm for me. Be right there.”

“Don’t take too long, Angel. I’m a hot-water hog.”

He winks, rises from the bed, and treats me to the sight of his gorgeous backside as he swaggers naked into the bathroom. I stretch under the covers, feeling the soreness in all my muscles, trying not to let darker thoughts of what’s going to happen tomorrow intrude on my happy little oasis.

But as soon as I try to push my worries away, they come back in full force and the moment is ruined.

As the water goes on in the bathroom, I sit up in bed and scrub my hands over my face. The need to check in with Reynard has been scratching at my brain for hours, and now it’s finally turned into an all-out assault I can no longer avoid if I want to stay sane.

I don’t know exactly what I can tell him, but at the very least I need to let him know I have the diamond, and I’ll be back soon.

Ryan is whistling in the shower when I rise from bed. I dig the phone he gave me out of the pocket of my jeans, discarded on the floor hours ago, and dial Reynard’s number.

It rings. And rings.

And rings.

He’s never not answered my call before.

My fear is an invisible fist that reaches out and grabs my heart. It’s impossible to breathe. My pulse beats fast and fluttery. I wait, holding the phone tight to my ear, fighting a sense of doom so strong it makes my hands tremble.