DELIVER(72)

A few miles later, a gas station emerged, the lot half-full with customers. The first stop.

She pulled off and parked at a pump beside a minivan. Bright lights fringed the canopy over the pump islands, flickering with winged insects and bleaching the starless sky. A woman leaned inside the minivan’s sliding door and hollered at the wailing kids within.

Liv approached her with her thumbs hooked in the front pockets of her jeans. “Excuse me, miss?”

The woman turned her head and blew a wayward hair away from her face.

She shaped her mouth into a friendly smile. “Sorry to bother you. Is there any way I can borrow your phone for a minute? Mine’s out of juice, and I really need to check on my dad.”

The woman shifted to face her, and her eyes widened, fixed on Liv’s scar. She looked away quickly. “Uh, yeah. Let me grab it.”

Funny, Liv never really thought about her f*cked up face until she ventured into public. Her internal damage had always been much more distracting to her.

“Here you go.” The woman offered the phone, the pity in her eyes negating her smile.

“Thanks. I’ll just be a minute.” She stepped away from both vehicles until she was out of hearing distance and dialed the number she knew from memory. It was the sixth time she’d called it, and it’d been eight months since the last call.

“Who is this?” Camila’s sultry voice, though always straight to the point, had a way of warming Liv every damned time.

“It’s me.”

“Where?”

The reason for her calls was always the same. “Brady Reservoir.” She gave Camila the GPS coordinates Van had sent. “10:00 PM.”

“Shit. We’re three hours away.” A muffled noise scratched down the line. Then Camila’s voice came back. “We’ll make it. How many?”

“At least one extra man. Maybe two.”

“Stall them. We’ll be there.” The line disconnected.

Stall them? Buyers and their bodyguards did not stall, and it was eight f*cking o’clock. Camila would have to make up a full hour. She sighed, rubbed her eyes. It wouldn’t be the first time Camila overextended.

Fear crept in, like it did before every delivery. Deep breath. This was the last one. She pinched the bridge of her nose, drew in another calming breath, and returned the phone to the woman.

For the next two hours, she smoked one cigarette after another. The stimulant intensified her edginess, so she sang while she smoked. When the tears sneaked in, she changed up the song. The towns grew smaller with each passing mile, stretching farther apart, separated by rocky scrub land. Fifteen minutes outside of Brady Reservoir, she stopped on the side of the road and changed into her costume.

The Deliverer wore a silver under-bust corset over a bra and boy shorts, both made of black latex. The gun went into her thigh-high boot. The knife’s scalpel blade folded in, and the pen-like design fit down the center of the bodice, snug in the corset casing that had originally held a steel bone.

With a few minutes to spare, she knelt beside Kate and brushed the girl’s hair from her sweaty forehead. “I delivered another girl once. Six years ago.” Her chest tightened, testing the seams of the bodice. “She was very brave.” She leaned down, pressed a kiss on trembling lips. “You remind me of her.”

Thanks to the pitch-black interior, she couldn’t see the fear in Kate’s eyes. She didn’t need to. It breathed through the van in a ghastly shudder, desolate and needful.

She returned to the driver’s seat, a sheen of dread dampening her skin and chilling her spine, and faced the next phase of the plan. As she maneuvered the winding roads, dipping and curving around hillocks and banks, she couldn’t escape the grip of doubt.

The emotionally detached letter she’d left Josh weighed on her the most, but she couldn’t leave him with the damaged whispers of her heart. He might’ve clung to her words, searched for her, tried to save her. There were too many people involved in her deliveries, too many identities to safeguard. The less he knew in his freedom the better for everyone.

Stunted bushes crowded the landscape, forming smudges against the inky backdrop of barrenness. The last building was ten miles back. The occasional headlight bobbed in her side mirror and vanished behind the bends in the road. The desolation preyed on her nerves.

The navigation system directed her onto a narrow path that faded into a gnarled expanse of wilderness. As the clutch of trees closed in, she put on her mask, tying the strings to hold the round white face in place.

Up ahead, an arced glow rose through the dark, striping through the skeletal branches. Her boot shook against the gas pedal, and her palms slicked the wheel.

“Glory and Gore” by Lorde invigorated her lungs and heart as she scanned the trees, searching for a sign of her secret saviors.

Ricky, Tomas, Luke, Martin, Tate, and her very first captive, Camila.

She knew them by the names she’d once refused to use, by the bruises on their skin, and by the strength of their forgiveness. Her six deliveries in seven years were dead to her. Until she called. Her freedom fighters always came when she called. And they came for blood.

A car blocked the road, its headlights aimed at her and cut by the silhouettes of two men. She shielded her eyes with a forearm, turned off the engine, and grabbed the phone. In the back, she unstrapped Kate, straightened the girl’s knee-length cotton dress, and led her out. “Stay beside me,” she whispered. “Shoulders back. Eyes down.”