Cindy grabbed the bottle and read the label. “E-R-G-O. What are you taking that for?”
“I said, it’s none of your business.”
“Tell me or I’ll ask Mom.”
Celeste shot her an angry look and snatched the bottle back. “I’m taking it because I think I’m pregnant, okay?”
Cindy’s mouth fell open. “You were with a boy?”
“No.”
“Then how’d you get pregnant?”
Celeste lowered her eyes and said, “I’ve been having dreams.”
“What kind of dreams?”
“About Dad. He comes to me.”
Cindy felt her blood begin to boil. “And?”
“At night sometimes, I hear him outside my bedroom window. The leaves crunch every time he makes a step. Then I get up, but I’m not really awake. I can see myself walking down the hall, downstairs. I go to the back door and open it. I see nothing but these swirling leaves in the wind. But then suddenly he’s there, and I don’t know how, but I’m naked, and he’s there, like it used to be, and-”
“Stop it!”
“He pulls me on top of him, and-”
“Celeste, you’re a liar!”
“I’m not lying! You were just too young. He would have come for you too, if he hadn’t killed himself. He might still come.”
“Girls!”
They froze. Their mother was outside the door.
“What’s going on in there?”
Celeste went to the door and opened it a crack. “It’s okay, Mom.”
Cindy listened as her sister and mother talked it out through the slightly opened door. Celeste had turned her back on her sister, and Cindy felt a sudden urge to grab something and hit her over the back of the head, exactly the way she’d felt when Celeste had ruined their father’s graveside service with her lies. Cindy could even see it in her mind, Celeste falling to the floor all bloody and unconscious. Celeste and her false accusations. No one had ever spelled it out for her, but Cindy knew it was true: Celeste had driven their own father to suicide, taken him away from her.
Celeste was pleading with their mother, trying to assure her that they weren’t up to any mischief and that there was no reason for her to barge in. Cindy grabbed the bottle of ergo and took a good, long look at the label. She wasn’t sure what it was, but Celeste had given her all the information she needed. A little was medicine; a lot was poison. She glanced at the “milkshake” on the counter, and a thought came over her.
What might happen if she poured Celeste a little more?
•
“Welcome back,” the man said.
Cindy looked up into his cold, dark eyes. Her face was right in front of her, then gone, then back again. It was as if each blink of her eyes lasted several seconds. He put something beneath her nose, and she jerked back violently. Smelling salts, she realized. Slowly, she felt her body coming back to life.
“I need you to stand on your own two feet now,” he said as he pulled her up from the bathroom floor.
Her legs wobbled, and she braced her body against his.
“That’s it,” he said. “You’ll be fine in a few minutes. Unless you do something stupid.”
Cindy tried to speak, but her mouth couldn’t form words. He pried her jaws apart and shoved something long and cold into her mouth until it pressed against the back of her throat. She could taste metal. She could smell the powder from a gun that had been fired many times before. She saw the evil look in his eyes. It felt a lot like a place she’d been before, five years earlier, with a madman named Esteban-a place to which she’d never wanted to return. Her heart pounded, and she was suddenly alert.
“Nothing stupid, you hear me?”
Cindy nodded.
“Okay,” he said as he nudged her forward. “Let’s go.”
65
•
Nobody move,” said Yuri, his voice booming across the living room.
Katrina and Jack froze. Yuri had Cindy in front of him with a gun to her head, using her as a human shield. The fear in her eyes was more than Jack could handle.
“Let go of my wife!”
“Shut up!” said Yuri.
“Who are you?” said Jack.
“His name’s Yuri,” said Katrina. “What do you want?”
“I want you to do as you’re told.”
“I can’t do that.”
“So I heard. Did you really think I was foolish enough to send you here alone and not follow you? I heard everything you said.”
“Then you’re the man. I guess you’re just going to have to do Jack Swyteck yourself.”
He shoved the gun into Cindy’s cheek. “You’ll do as you’re told. Or I’ll kill his wife.”
“You’re going to kill her anyway.”
“Stop,” said Jack. “Let her go, Yuri, or whatever your name is. Then you and I can get in your car, and we’ll go to a nice quiet place in the woods. You can do whatever it is you need to do with me. Just let Cindy go.”
“Oh, aren’t you the hero?” he said, scoffing. Then his smile faded. “Down on the floor, Swyteck. Face-first.”
Jack didn’t move. Yuri tightened his grip on Cindy’s throat. Her eyes bulged, and she gasped audibly. “I said, get down!”
Jack lowered himself to the rug.
“Hands behind your head.”
Jack locked his fingers as commanded.
“Very good. Now, Katrina. Let’s do what we came here to do.”
She glared at Yuri, then glanced at Jack on the floor. The room was silent. Slowly, she reached inside her jacket and removed her.22.
“’Atta girl,” said Yuri. “Now move closer. Remember what I told you about the bullet in the brain. I want to see you use that.22 the way it’s supposed to be used.”
She crossed the living room, then stopped at the edge of the rug. She was close, but not so close that Jack could reach out and grab her ankle.
“Don’t do this, Katrina.”
“Put a sock in it, Swyteck,” said Yuri. “I’m trying to be a nice guy. I’m giving you the privilege of dying with the faint hope that I might actually let your wife live. One more word, and I’m taking that away from you.”
A tense silence fell over the room. Katrina could hear the sound of her own breathing.
Yuri narrowed his eyes and said, “Do it, Katrina.”
She could feel her palm sweating as she squeezed the handle of her gun and pointed the barrel in Jack’s direction.
“That’s it,” said Yuri.
She had one eye on Jack, the other on Yuri. Her finger caressed the trigger.
“Do it!”
Her hand was shaking, but her thoughts were coming clear. “This doesn’t make sense.”
“Stop stalling.”
“There are so many easier ways to do this.”
“This is the way I want to do it. Now pull the trigger!”
“Why? Why are you making me do it?”
“Because I can. Now shoot him!”
“Why? Why is it so important to you that I do it?”
“Don’t you dare disobey me. I know who you are, you little slut. Did you honestly think you could fool me?”
“What?”
“If I can get you to snip the hairs off your pussy and hand them over to me in a plastic bag, surely I can talk you into pulling the trigger. This is what you are. I know what you’re made of, and I own you. It’s like I used to say, remember? No decision we make is meaningless. We all determine our own fate. Now do as you’re told. Kill him!”
It was him, she realized, and the discovery cut to her core. Bits and pieces of information she’d gathered over the last few months had suggested that he was the man she’d been looking for, and now there was no denying it. Something snapped inside her, a fury sparked by the sickening reality of what drove this pervert. It was all about domination and control, from her friend Beatriz who was killed in his factory for refusing to give her body to him, to her own indignity of selling pubic clippings in a bag-and the truly unspeakable things she was forced to do at gunpoint when the clippings just weren’t enough. She couldn’t be certain that he’d murdered that woman with AIDS in Georgia, but only this creep was low enough to sell the blood of his victims. We all determine our own fate.