Jenna glimpsed the man’s face in the headlights.
It was Carlos Villegas.
She reacted instantly, stabbing a finger at the lock button, but even as she grazed it, something slammed into her chest, driving the wind from her lungs and knocking her back into the seat. As she gasped for air, she felt Raul’s hand at her waist, groping for the seat belt, sliding along its length to find the catch so he could hold it secure.
“Nice try, baby,” he said, his voice a smooth and dangerous croon.
“What…?” She couldn’t find the breath to finish the question.
“Good news, chica. You know that job I told you about? It’s all yours. You’re going to love it.” He swung his gaze around to the figure that now stood just outside the window.
Carlos looked in and gave Jenna a cursory glance. “Well, well. The captain’s daughter. Nicely done, hermanito.”
“I thought you’d like. She just walked right up and gave herself to me. Couldn’t believe it.”
“You’re sure this isn’t a setup?”
“Look at her, hermano. She’s all beat up. Her old man did that, like I told you. She’s for real.”
In some distant recess of her mind, Jenna heard the deep sense of satisfaction in Raul’s voice as he savored his older brother’s praise. That was about the only thing that made sense to her.
How did I miss this?
“Take her out to the plane,” Carlos continued. “I’ll get the gate.”
As the elder Villegas brother stepped back, Raul turned to Jenna. “I don’t want to mess up that pretty face of yours, but if you so much as breathe wrong, I’ll knock your teeth down your throat. Got it?”
She nodded, and he let go of the seatbelt.
She spoke, “Raul, what—”
He held up his hand, fingers curled into a fist, and shook it in front of her face. “Shut up.”
She nodded again. He lowered his hand to the gearshift lever, and worked it into position. The Corvette rolled forward again. Jenna saw a long stretch of pavement cutting across their path. A runway lined with small civilian aircraft.
She forced herself to go limp. Maybe if she appeared compliant, the brothers would relax their vigilance just enough for her to break away.
She had misjudged Raul, underestimated him. Somehow, he had gotten word to his brother. A phone call or text message, probably sent when he had gone inside the club for his keys. She didn’t see another car. Carlos must have leapfrogged them, flying from Key West while they were stuck in traffic. While she had been congratulating herself on her ability to manipulate Raul, she had let the Villegas brothers draw her deeper into their web.
Lesson learned, she told herself. Don’t underestimate them again.
Her first mistake had been believing that Raul wanted her for himself. There was something more going on here. She recalled his earlier line about a modeling agency, and his quip about having a ‘job’ for her. I don’t want to mess up that pretty face of yours, he had said.
She shuddered as the picture resolved.
Noah had misjudged the Villegas brothers as well. They weren’t drug dealers, or if they were, it was just one of the criminal enterprises they were running out of The Conch Club. Jenna understood now why the little old lady behind the counter had urged her to get away while she could. She wondered how many girls her own age were imprisoned behind the doors of that unassuming house. Of course the brothers wouldn’t dare put her to work there. She might be recognized. No, they would take her somewhere else. Somewhere out of the country. Then they could sell her, like livestock.
Raul stopped in front of a twin-engine plane at the end of the line. It was a relatively small craft with low slung wings protruding from the bottom of the fuselage. Jenna didn’t know the make or model, but it looked like the kind of aircraft used by island-hopper charter companies.
And smugglers.
“Stay put,” Raul warned, thrusting a finger under her nose for emphasis.
Jenna put on her best deer-in-the-headlights look, and to all appearances, she cowered in the seat. Raul stared at her a moment longer, then seemingly satisfied that he had broken her spirit, he opened his door and got out. Jenna watched through hooded eyes as he circled around the front end of the Corvette. He approached her door and used the remote on his key fob to disengage the lock. Then he reached for the handle.
Jenna’s movements were swift but sure. In the instant that her door started to open, she dropped a hand to the seat-belt buckle and depressed the button. Then, with the same smooth motion, she pivoted and planted both feet on the door panel, thrusting out as if trying to jump sideways across the interior of the car.
The door slammed into Raul and sent him sprawling backward. Jenna used the same energy to propel herself through the open driver’s side door. A moment later, she scrambled to her feet and sprinted down the tarmac.
The Corvette’s lights shone a good fifty yards down the runway. Beyond that expanding cone of illumination, the landing strip was shrouded in darkness. She ran toward the unknown, but she knew whatever awaited her had to be better than what she was leaving behind.
She could hear someone chasing after her, the rapid footfalls just out of sync with her own, but she did not look back. The hard tarmac gave way to soft grass on sandy soil. Almost too late, she saw that the grassy area ended at the perimeter fence they had passed through earlier. She caught herself before slamming headlong into the barrier. Then she quickly laced her fingers through the diamond-shaped mesh and climbed, as if it were a rope ladder to freedom.
When she reached the crest, she realized that the top of the fence was adorned with a long coil of razor wire. The thought of getting ripped up by the barbs stopped her only for a second — what were a few scrapes compared to being sold as a sex-slave — but the moment was enough for Raul to catch her. She felt something clamp around her ankle, and then she was ripped away from the fence and thrown to the ground.
16
Sand cushioned Jenna’s fall, but before she could even begin thinking about what to do, she felt a weight settle onto her chest. In the faint glow of the starlight, she could see the silhouetted form of her attacker sitting astride her chest, pinning her body and left arm beneath his straddled legs.
Noah’s voice flashed through her mind, an ancient movie commentary that seemed grossly inappropriate at the time, but came to her now as welcome knowledge. Three good punches to the kidneys will put a man down and make him piss blood for a week.
Her free hand sprang to action before the memory faded. She struck hard and fast, delivering two solid punches to Raul’s back, just below the ribs, sending a pulse of pressure through the kidneys. Raul shouted in pain. “Bitch!” He caught her arm before the third punch could connect.
She struggled to buck him off, but the effort ended with a blow to the side of her head that nearly knocked her senseless. There was a flash of blue across her vision, like the inside of a lightning bolt. Her ears rang, and the taste of blood filled her mouth.
She knew she could not stop fighting. To give up was to surrender the rest of her life to a fate that seemed like the stuff of bad dreams.