KILLING SARAI(5)

“If you are referring to the United States border,” he says and for some reason his voice surprises me, “then you must know the distance is longer than I care to have you in my car.”

I raise my back from the seat just a little.

“W-Well how long would you allow me?”

I catch his dark eyes in the rearview mirror again. They lock on mine and this too sends a shiver through my back.

He doesn’t answer.

“Why won’t you help me?” I ask, finally accepting the fact that no matter what I say to him, it’s futile. And when he still doesn’t answer I say with exasperation, “Then pull over and let me out. I’ll walk the rest of the way myself.”

I think his eyes just faintly smiled at me through the mirror. Yes, I’m positive that’s what I saw. He knows as well as I do that I’m better off getting dragged back to the compound than being let out of the car and on my own.

“You will need more than the six bullets you have in that handgun.”

“So then give me more bullets,” I say, getting angrier. “And this isn’t the only gun I have.”

That seems to have piqued his interest, although small.

“I took the rifle off the guard I hit over the head when I got past the fence.”

He nods once, so subtly that if I would’ve blinked in that moment I never would’ve seen it.

“It is a good start,” he says and then puts his eyes back on the dirt road for a moment and turns left at the end. “But what will you do when you run out? Because you will.”

I hate him.

“Then I’ll run.”

“And they will catch you.”

“Then I’ll stab them.”

Suddenly, the American veers slowly off the road and stops the car.

No, no, no! This isn’t how it was supposed to happen. I expected him to keep driving because he knew if he left me out here all alone like this that whatever happened to me would be on his conscience. But I guess he doesn’t have much of one. His dark eyes gaze evenly at me through the mirror, not a trace of compassion or concern in them. I want to shoot him in the back of the head on principle. He just stares at me with that small what-are-you-waiting-for? look and I don’t budge. I glance carefully at the door and then back at him and then down at my gun and back at him again.

“You can use me as leverage,” I say because it’s all I have left.

His eyebrows barely move, but it’s enough that I’ve gotten his attention.

“I’m Javier’s favorite,” I go on. “I’m…different…from the other girls.”

“What makes you think I need leverage?” he asks.

“Well, did Javier pay you the whole three and a half million?”

“That is not how it works,” he says.

“No, but I know how Javier works and if he didn’t give you the full amount before you left then he never will.”

“Are you going to get out?”

I sigh heavily and glance out the window again and then I raise the gun back up and say, “You’re going to drive me to the border.”

The American licks the dryness from his lips and then the car starts moving again. I’m playing everything by ear now. All of the planned parts of my escape ended when I got inside this car.

When the American spoke of the United States border, it came off to me as if I am closer to the borders of other countries than the U.S. and this terrifies me. If I’m closer to Guatemala or Belize than the United States then I very much doubt that I will make it out of this alive. I have looked at maps. I have sat within that room many times and ran the tip of my finger over the little roads between Zamora and San Luis Potosí and between Los Mochis and Ciudad Juárez. But I always blocked the possibility of being farther south completely from my mind because I never wanted to accept that I could be that far away from home.

Home. That really is such a placeholder word. I don’t have a home in the United States at all. I don’t think I ever really did. But just the same, it was where I was born and where I was raised, though little did my mother do to raise me, really. But I want to go home because it will always be better than where I’ve spent the last nine years of my life.

I position my back partially against the door and partially against the seat so that I can keep my eyes straight on the American. How long I can keep this going is still up in the air. And he knows it.

Maybe I should just shoot him and take the car. But then again, little good it will do when I’m driving around aimlessly in this foreign country that I have seen nothing from other than violence and rape and murder and everything else unimaginable. And Javier is a very powerful man. Very rich. The compound is filthy and misleading. He could be like the drug lords I saw when I used to have the luxury of American television; the ones with rich, immaculate homes with swimming pools and ten bathrooms, but Javier seems to prefer the fa?ade. I don’t know what he spends his fortune on, but it’s not on real estate as far as I know.

It’s been over an hour. I’m getting tired. I can feel the burning behind my eyes, spreading thinly around the edges of my eyelids. I don’t know who it is I think I’m kidding. I have to sleep sometime and the second that I doze off is when I’ll wake up either back at the compound tied to the chair in Javier’s room, or when I don’t wake up at all.