The Most Beautiful Girl in Cuba(52)

My cheeks heat, but before I can turn around and deny it, peals of laughter greet me.

I join in, my shoulders shaking with feigned mirth as I pour the drug into their coffee.





Nineteen





The moon burns bright in the sky, illuminating far more of the night than I’d prefer. The temperature is hot, the air still, the heat bearing down on me.

My room is on the second story of the prison on the Sigua Street side. There is a small window that looks out to the city and opens up to a flat roof that must be about twenty feet wide, hidden from the sight of the street by a high parapet along the front of the building.

Behind me, the women in the dormitory sleep, dreaming laudanum-laced dreams. I increased the dosage from the night before to ensure there would be no repeats of Rosa or any of the others waking, but hopefully not so much as the doctor cautioned would bring about death.

The rhythmic sounds of their breathing are a balm to the nerves inside me.

I stare out at the sky, at the clouds surrounding the moon. There is a movement across the street, and I think I see three figures walking toward me once more, but then they are gone.

Have they given up entirely?

“Evangelina.”

At the sound of my name, I glance down from the sky to where a man stands on the roof. He walks toward me, and I recognize him instantly from last night’s attempted escape.

“Are you ready?” Karl whispers.

“I am.”

His friends, who introduced themselves as William MacDonald and Francisco De Besche, join him and they immediately set to work on the window bars again, using a wrench on the one they already began sawing last night, and even though I now know how loud it can be, my heart still pounds with fear that we will be discovered.

What sort of people risk their lives to save someone like me? If they’re caught aiding in my escape, they’ll end up behind bars as well. I am immensely grateful that they are willing to risk their freedom for someone they’ve never even met.

And then, as though I dreamed it, the bar in front of me breaks with a clear ringing sound that could wake the dead.

But miraculously, no one stirs behind me.

I lean forward, dropping to my knees, and try to pull the bar even farther apart, as though I could escape through my own force of will, but Decker pushes me away. He catches the bar and pulls it toward him in a “V” motion, creating an opening.

I can hardly contain the sound of relief that escapes my lips.

“Is the opening big enough for you?” Decker asks.

It hardly seems as though it could be so, but I stick my head between the bars, relieved to see that it does indeed fit. My body follows, and I realize I can easily slip through the gap.

Decker reaches for me.

“Don’t try to climb all the way out,” he hisses. “They’ll hear you. Let me lift you out.”

“It’s easy to be still when you haven’t been locked up for over a year,” I whisper back, but I force myself to keep from moving, my body hanging limp as he lifts me out of the gap created by the broken bar.

Decker grabs me around the waist and slides me fully through the bars.

The moment my feet hit the solid ground of the roof beneath me, I think my legs might give out at my first taste of freedom.

By some miracle, I stay upright, my escape by no means a foregone conclusion.

There is still much to be done.

A cry escapes born of relief and exhaustion, and all the emotions crashing through me now. Decker puts his hand over my mouth and picks me up in his arms and carries me quickly to where a ladder lies, urgency in all of our movements.

What if the guards decide to check the dormitory and see the broken bars? What if they notice I’m not in my bed as I should be?

MacDonald waits for us to follow him, crossing first. A spindly ladder that sags in the middle runs from the wall to the roof of the house across the street.

“Let me carry you across the ladder,” Karl whispers. “It was the best we could find on such short notice, but the ladder’s old and it’s not particularly sturdy.”

“It’s too risky,” I protest. “I’ll do better on my own. Trust me.”

He sets me down on my feet.

They seem to want to treat me as though I am as breakable as glass, but they don’t realize that I couldn’t have survived this time in Recogidas if I wasn’t made of sturdier stuff.

I take a deep breath and put my foot on the first rung over the ladder. Decker reaches out and steadies me for a beat before he lets me go. I take the first step, relief filling me when the ladder doesn’t collapse beneath my weight. I take another step. Then another, focusing on putting one foot down at a time, counting as I go. It takes a dozen steps to cross from the jail to the house they’ve rented across the alleyway, but I run quickly as I go, bending forward, my arms outstretched to keep me from falling off the narrow crossing. It feels like I’m flying over Havana.

Behind me, Decker stumbles over the rungs, and more than a few times I worry that the noise he’s making will be enough to raise the alarm that I’ve escaped, but for me the ladder is the easiest part of the journey. After all I’ve been through, to be this close to safety, well—my feet carry me home.

When I reach the parapet of the house, MacDonald catches me in his arms and lifts me to the roof.