City of Saints & Thieves(81)

I can’t move. All I can see is the photo seared in my mind. One tattooed hand holding a newspaper, the other holding a gun to her temple. Her terrified eyes.

My sister Kiki’s eyes.





THIRTY-SEVEN


There are no rules for this. I am out of rules.

? ? ?

“Come on, Tiny Girl, you gotta snap out of it. You’re okay, we’re gonna be okay, but we’ve got to think . . . Tiny?”

I wish Boyboy would stop talking to me.

I rest my forehead on my knees. I can smell my sweat and the metallic tang of dried blood on my wrists. I would like to collapse into myself, lay my cheek on the cool dead leaves, and never move again.

I have no idea what to do now.

“Tina,” Boyboy says, turning his head to look at me with the eye that isn’t swollen shut. “They’re probably going to separate us soon. And they’ll most likely kill me—I’m no use to Omoko anymore; he said so. We don’t have much time. You have to talk to me. Help me figure out what to do.”

We’re chained to a tree like animals. After he showed me Kiki’s photo, Mr. Omoko handed me over to Ketchup, who gleefully paraded me through the militia camp and tied me to the tree next to Boyboy. Boyboy was silent while he was around, but now his voice is urgent, if slurred, around a split lip. The whole left side of his face looks like it’s been run over.

I’ve counted five Goondas—Mr. Omoko’s bodyguards. His elite squad, Yaya, Toofoh or Toto—something like that—and two others whose names I don’t know, but I’m pretty sure are the guys who chased us yesterday. Plus Ketchup. Plus thirty or so guys in ratty fatigues. From the looks of the camp, they’ve been here awhile. The Goondas and the militia dudes don’t mix. Most of the militia are swaddled in cheap blankets, still half asleep. A handful are cleaning their guns or sharpening the pangas they use to hack through the jungle. The forest floor is littered with their trash, mostly small plastic baggies that once held a swallow of kill-me-quick oil-drum spirits.

I close my eyes again and wonder if this was how Mama felt, a captive of the militia, hopeless, waiting to die. The same sort of hopelessness, thick and sticky as tar, tugs my limbs toward the ground. My blood is sluggish traitor blood. Murderer blood. Omoko’s blood. How much of who I am and what I do is because I am his daughter?

“They’ve got Michael,” Boyboy tries again.

“I know.”

“Well, don’t you want to do something about it?” Boyboy pleads furiously.

“There’s nothing we can do.”

“Tina, I swear to God, I am going to—”

“Omoko killed my mom.”

Boyboy goes still. My head drops back down to my knees.

“What?” he finally asks.

I feel like I’ve never been so tired in my entire life, but I manage to relay, in fragments, how Omoko was Mr. Greyhill’s Number Two, and what Catherine told me he did to my mother, and how Mr. Omoko is now holding Kiki captive, so I won’t try to do anything stupid. Like rescue Michael.

When I’m done, Boyboy just stares at the ground. “I can’t . . . All this time. It was him. He’s your dad? Your dad killed your mom?”

“And now he’s going to trade Michael to Mr. G for a payday, and then kill them too,” I say flatly.

I turn my face so one eye looks out on the camp. I see it like I am far away, like I’m one of those incessantly twittering birds watching from the trees. Like I can watch until I don’t want to see any more and then I can just jump into the sky and be gone.

“Tina. Listen to me. We have to do something. We can get out of this. We just have to think.”

I don’t answer. What can I do? I can’t rescue Michael—Mr. Omoko will hurt Kiki. It’s that simple. I go through my rules in my head, searching for one that will make sense of all of this. One that will give me some direction, some purpose.

Nothing.

They all seem silly now, paper swords.

I am so stupid. All this time it was Omoko. It was always him. He always had the power. He tortured my mother and controlled me like a puppet, and I let him. I am his fool.

“Come on, Tina. Work with me here.”

“There’s nothing we can do.”

“Maybe if—”

“I said there’s nothing we can do!” I snarl. Some part of me registers the surprise and hurt in his eyes, but the rest of me curls inward. I have my own wounds to lick.

“So you’re done. You’re just giving up.”

I say nothing.

“You’re going to let him win. You’re not going to do anything to get us out of here.”

“I don’t know what you want me to do! I don’t know who you think I am!”

“I think you’re the same girl you’ve always been! You’re Tiny Girl! You’re a thief and a survivor! Somebody who doesn’t just roll over and die! Somebody who makes her own damn plans! Someone who makes her own damn rules!”

I can feel hot tears spilling down my cheeks. But I don’t look up. “I can’t. I can’t do it, Boyboy. You don’t understand. He’ll kill her. She’s all I’ve got.”

For a while, there is nothing but the labored sound of Boyboy breathing. Then, to my surprise, he snorts a laugh. “You think you’re the only one who ever had to worry about someone they love getting hurt? You’re still out here all on your own, in your own little head, aren’t you? Don’t you even see me?”