Spiders in the Grove (In the Company of Killers #7)(2)

In the background I hear Naeva shriek.

“Bring her here!” the man standing over me orders.

A second later Naeva is shoved on the ground next to me; there’s a lot of blood in her hair; I wonder how they got her out from underneath the van so quickly.

She looks over at me, terrified, shaking. I smile behind the veil of my face, thinking to myself: She’s not afraid, either; she’s just as good at this as I am. And then I realize we’re both insane for not being afraid.

The last thing I see is a fist tearing through the darkness toward me, and I wake up sometime later to the sound of trickling water.





Izabel


Regret? Never. I have come a long way since the last time I was here, in this place, in this nightmare, in this hell. I’m a different person. Sarai no longer exists except in Naeva’s memory; this girl, sitting here now on the dirt floor, hands bound in front of her, blood in her hair and in her mouth, she is a different kind of victim, the most dangerous kind; she’s the kind that’s shaped and molded by her torturers, not broken by them, into the stuff of nightmares. I left Mexico as Sarai, and came back as Izabel. And once I have what I came here to get, I will kill them all.

I hear footfalls in the hallway outside the door. Voices. The shuffling of clothing. But they don’t come into the room, and the sounds fade as they get farther away.

Naeva breathes a sigh of relief.

I breathe a sigh of disappointment.

I don’t know where the sound of water is coming from, but it’s a steady trickle; a leaky pipe, perhaps.

“I never thought I’d be here again,” Naeva says, sitting next to me. “Definitely not on purpose.”

I stare at the dim wedge of light underneath the door; her voice is sharp, distinct in my ear, but my thoughts eclipse it.

“I don’t regret it, though. And I’d do it a hundred times if I had to. For Leo.”

Breaking from my thoughts, I look over at her.

“You really love him.”

She nods, smiles faintly; I can tell whenever I look at her, whenever she talks about this man, that he’s the only thing in the world that makes her smiles real.

I think of Victor. I love him, and I always will. But I’m not smiling, so I look away from her, finding the light underneath the door less competitive.

I don’t know what time it is, but I’m going to say it’s 1:00 a.m. We’ve been locked in this room for more than an hour, and not one person has come to talk to us, or beat us, or even to check on us. Not that they really need to, seeing as how there are no windows, and the only way in or out is the door; I’m sure there are men guarding in the hallway somewhere. And in addition to our bound hands, there’s rope tied around our ankles. Pressing my hands into the dirt behind me, I try to adjust my position. I lean my head against the wall and fall asleep.

I must’ve slept an hour. Still, no one has entered the room. I need to pee.

“I don’t know how you can sleep through any of this?” Naeva says.

“Have to sometime.”

“I tried, but my mind won’t stop racing.”

“How are you going to find this Leo,” I say, “while you’re locked in here with me? How do you even know where he is, if he’s even still alive?”

“He’s alive.”

“How do you know?”

“The same way you know we’re in the right place.” She sighs thoughtfully. “And because I feel it. I feel him. I would know it if he was dead.”

“Then how do you plan to find him?” I repeat.

We had no opportunity to discuss these things when we left Arizona with Ray. Too many ears listening. Too many eyes watching.

She pauses and then answers, “I won’t have to find him—he’ll find me as soon as he knows I’m here.”

I can’t lie and say I’m not curious about how she plans to pull this off, but I’m too focused on my own plans to cater too much to hers right now. My plans that have been seriously altered because I brought her with me. Alone would’ve been so much easier. Now, I have her to worry about. I couldn’t live with myself if I just set her free into the belly of this beast and never looked back. No, she’s my responsibility. But more than that, she’s my friend.

“Is that really how you know?” she asks. “That you’re in the right place—can you just sense it? Can’t really see much in this tiny room, so it can’t be anything visual. Unless you saw something familiar on our way in. I didn’t see anything familiar. Or anyone. Oh, that’s right—you killed them all.” She laughs shortly under her breath.

I fake-smile a little in the darkness. Killed them all? No, not all of them…

“To be fair,” I say, “I had a lot of help the last time I was here. I didn’t pull it off myself.” I glance over. “But how I know we’re in one of the Ruiz compounds is that I secured a ride with a coyote who’d take me through the Ruiz territory. Here, all roads lead to the Ruiz compounds. And yeah, I can kinda feel it, too.”

“I wonder how many are left?” Naeva says.

“Compounds? All of them are always still there. But family members of Javier who run the compounds? That’s a good question.”

“Are you sure you don’t need me to help you?” she asks.