“She wasn’t downstairs either?” Dylan asked, bracketing her hands on her hips as she tried to breathe.
“Tana…” I gulped, shaking my head, knowing I had to tell them. “She’s dead.”
“What?” Jilly breathed in horror. “How do you know?”
“I saw her,” I answered, letting my gaze roll to the skies as I tried to keep the tears at bay. The image of Tana on that slab would haunt me forever. “They have a makeshift morgue downstairs and I saw her. She was,” I gulped, hating the image seared into my brain “she was beaten to death. I don’t know when she died but she’s gone.”
Dylan swore under her breath, looking away but not before I caught the sheen in her eyes. “Goddamn motherfuckers,” she spat “they all ought to rot in hell for what they’ve done.”
“She was so scared,” Jilly recalled, her eyes spilling with tears “she pleaded with them to take her back, that she’d changed her mind. I was the last to see her before they dragged her out of the room. She was crying when they took her away. Not even the Xanax could help her calm down.”
I remembered.
“What did they do to her?” Jilly cried, the question rhetorical.
But I didn’t have time to answer. A car was coming our way. Hope leaped into my throat until I realized the car was driving too fast to be good. “Hide!” I said in a harsh voice as we melted back into the forest, dropping to our bellies to avoid being seen from the road.
Jilly was confused, tears still glistening on her cheek. “Why are we hiding?” she asked, looking to both Dylan and me. “We need a ride out of here.”
Dylan was grim as she answered, “It was them. They’re looking for us.”
I nodded. “They must’ve put the fire out and realized we weren’t in our rooms or they realized there was no way they were going to be able to put out that fire and ran to save their own asses. Either way, they’ve figured out that we’re loose and we can’t afford to be seen.”
“What are we going to do?” Jilly asked, fearful.
“We’re going to walk, stick to the forest line. Eventually, we’ll reach a spot where we can safely find a ride,” I said.
“Do you know where we are?” Jilly asked.
“No,” I admitted, plus it was dark. Nothing looked the same under cover of night. “But all roads lead somewhere, right? Do you remember how long the car ride took when Mr. Personality picked you up?”
“About an hour?” Dylan estimated.
“Same for me.”
Jilly nodded, agreeing.
“Okay, so we know we can’t be too far from the city. There’s gotta be a town close enough to walk to. We’ll try to get a ride back to the city from there.” I spoke with more confidence than I felt. Dylan was still pretty banged up and Jilly looked like she was about to have a nervous break down any minute but we had to keep moving. I didn’t need to tell them that either we kept moving or we got swept up in Madame Moirai’s net again.
“I can hot-wire a car if we find one,” Dylan piped in, agreeing to my plan. She squared her shoulders as she said, “Let’s do it. I’m no stranger to walking.”
I wasn’t either but I was very glad that at least one of us could boost a car. I could pick a lock but I’d never messed around with grand theft auto.
We set out with a brisk pace, ignoring the pain in our feet and the bruises on our bodies. Silence wound itself around us, our own thoughts holding us captive as walked. None of us wanted to talk. There was too much in our heads, too much to process. We were numb to it. Maybe in shock. I felt miles away from the girl who’d signed away her life for the false promise of a better one. I didn’t really know how to return to my old life.
I didn’t know if it was safe to ever return.
All Tana had wanted was a secure future for her grandmother. She hadn’t even thought of using the money for herself.
I’d wanted to get away from my mother.
I had no idea what hopes and plans Jilly or Dylan had prompted them to take the deal.
Fear gripped me as I faced a terrifying unknown with even less than I had started with. Taking a big risk had seemed worth it for an even bigger payout but now we had less than nothing and we couldn’t go home.
We would end up putting everyone who cared about us into harm’s way if we tried. For me, that was Lora. I couldn’t handle the thought of Lora getting swept up in this ugly mess. It wasn’t her fault and I wouldn’t subject her to any of this.
What have I done?
How was it possible that less than a week ago, I’d been sitting in my room, studying for an English exam and now I was running for my life?
“She’s never going to let us go,” Jilly said, echoing my own thoughts. “We’re loose ends. If we talked Madame Moirai could go to jail.”
“Do you know who Madame Moirai is?” Dylan returned with too much sarcasm for what we’d all been through. “‘Cause I sure as hell don’t. Who are we going to tell? Who would believe us?”
“Shouldn’t we go to the cops?” Jilly asked.
“And say what? ‘Hi Officer, we signed a contract with a stranger to sell our virginity for a shit-ton of money but then that stranger turned on us and tried to have us killed after we’d served our purpose?’ Yeah, it doesn’t really have a catchy ring to it. No cop is going to touch that with a ten-foot pole,” Dylan said. “We’re on our own.”
“You don’t know that the cops can’t help us. We’re kids for godsakes” Jilly said, panic returning to her voice. “Holy fuck, doesn’t anyone care about us at all?”
“No,” I answered quietly, meeting her gaze. “No one cares about people like us. That’s how Madame Moirai gets away with this shit. You think she’s going to go after the prom queen or the captain of the debate club? No, she goes after kids who are desperate because the world turned its back on them a long time ago. It’s kinda brilliant, actually.”
“It’s not fair,” Jilly cried. “And she’s not fucking brilliant, she’s an opportunistic sadist.”
“With a head for business,” Dylan added with a dark expression.
I cast a look to Dylan that said, shut the fuck up, but only muttered to Jilly, “Tell that to Tana. Fair is a word that never applied to us.”
I didn’t want to talk anymore. My heart hurt. My soul felt broken. I just wanted to find someplace safe to hole up and sleep for a few days. I had no idea where that might be but I knew I couldn’t go back so I had to keep moving forward. “Just keep walking. We need to find a place to hide out for a while until we figure out what to do next.”
“I know a place we can go, back in the city,” Dylan volunteered gruffly. At my surprise, she scowled. “Look, I’m not interested in holding hands and becoming besties are anything but we’re fucking stuck together for the time being so we might as well pool our resources, right?”
“All cops aren’t bad,” Jilly persisted. “We should go straight to the first police station and tell them what’s happened to us.”
Jilly desperately wanted someone to save us. Someone bigger, stronger and with more resources but I agreed with Dylan, no one was going to help us. They’d take one look at us and make a quick judgment, assuming we were lying or trying to pull off a con. Or worse, they’d arrest us for being whores because prostitution was still illegal.
“We need to lay low for a few days,” I told Jilly, being gentle because Dylan was not. “After we make sure that we’re not being followed, maybe we can approach a cop but not until we know that we can trust them.”
It was a compromise that worked for Jilly. She nodded, conceding, “I guess that makes sense. But you promise we’ll go to the cops in a few days?”