Unfiltered & Unsaved (13 page)

“It’s the right thing to do,” Hope said. “And maybe I’m doing it to make up for things I’ve done.”

That put it in terms Avita could accept, and the girl nodded then. “Yeah. Yeah, okay. I’ll do it.”

“Finish your pudding. We need to go.”

“I have to go to the bathroom first,” Avita said, and made a face. “Sorry. It’s a thing, you know? Better now than when we’re in the car.”

“Sure. Go ahead.”

Avita stood up, stretched out as if her back was hurting her, and walked toward the bathroom. When she was at the door, ready to push it open, she looked back at Hope … and a chill ran through Hope’s body. She couldn’t say why, exactly; it was something in the girl’s body language, in the wordless expression of … triumph.

And then something pressed into her back, and a voice at her ear said, “Let’s not make a scene, Miss. Get up, get the bag, and walk quietly toward the exit.”

Avita reversed course from the bathroom and walked back over. It seemed like her entire body language had changed now. She moved with sudden grace and assurance, and she wasn’t scared. Not at all.

Not of Skinner, who was standing behind Hope’s chair, pressing what felt like a gun into her back.

Well,
Hope thought with grim, odd humor,
at least I was wrong for all the right reasons.

Avita came back to the other side of the table, picked up her glass of milk, and finished it in two gulps. Her dark eyes never moved away from Hope’s face.

“You’re just like the rest of them,” she said. “You think because I’m little and I’m pregnant that I’m some little fucking waif everybody pushes around? You think I can’t take care of myself?” She looked at Skinner. “She’s got more, all right. She was going to give me cash
for the baby.
“ Complete with eyeroll.

Of course. Of course it had been a trap; she’d known it deep inside. To her credit, the doe-eyed vulnerable act that Avita put on was near perfect. No wonder Elijah had bought it wholesale, too. “So it’s all a lie. You’re not being abused.”

“Solomon’s my man,” Avita said. “And he doesn’t do anything without checking with me first. He was going to ditch E.J. back in Rio Verde, but I said no, take him along. I thought he’d tell me where to find you. He did tell me about the cash. He told me you wanted to help me. Well, now you can … and you can save your prayers. I don’t need them.”

“Oh, I think you do,” Hope said. “Now more than ever.”

Avita didn’t like that. She gave Hope a scorching look, and grabbed the duffel bag. “Bring her,” she said. “We’ll dump her with her boyfriend.”

###

Solomon was in the van when they arrived, and he slid the cargo door open. He didn’t help Avita inside, even though she had a hard time making the step; Hope automatically reached out to support her, but Avita shook her off.

“Don’t,” she snapped. “I don’t need anybody’s help.”

“Is that the cash?” Solomon asked.

“I told you I’d get it for you,” Avita said. Her tone had shifted now, and so had her body language—not the tough street girl so much now, more of a child eager to please. “See? She bought every bit of it. Can I spot a pigeon or what?”

“You’re great, baby.” Solomon kissed her. It was creepy, and possessive, and yet it also had a weird edge of disinterest to it, too. He didn’t care about Avita any more than he cared about the rest of them … but he was willing to use her for whatever he could. Hope studied him, now that she had a clearer view. Middle-aged but fighting it, with the puffy look around the eyes of a man who didn’t sleep enough and probably drank too much to make up for it. He had a mean look to him, all right. Calculating. “Give me the bag.”

Avita handed it over, and as she did, Skinner pushed Hope into the back, got in, and slammed the door shut. She stumbled over mattresses crammed on the floor and fell to her knees. She barely caught herself before banging her head into the metal wall.

“Hope?”

Elijah’s voice was full of emotion, but she couldn’t unpack all the layers of it. He was sitting in the back corner of the van’s cargo space, by back doors that were chained closed, and he lunged to his knees and toward her. She thought he was trying to throw his arms around her, but he stopped about a foot away with his hands behind his back.

Then he turned slightly, and she saw that his hands were bound tight with some kind of flexible ties. It looked uncomfortable.

“Sit your ass down, E.J.,” Skinner said. He sounded bored. “You, honey, grab a pew next to him. Hey, boss? You want me to cuff her?”

“No,” he said. Solomon sounded bored and dismissive, and he sat down in the driver’s seat with the bag in his lap.

“Jesus, Hope, I wanted you to leave,” Elijah said. He sank down in the corner of the van, and both his body language and his voice sounded defeated. “This is all my fault.”

“No it isn’t. I couldn’t just let you go off like that—unless that was your polite way of ditching me.”

“I’m not that polite,” he said, and looked at her directly. Searchingly. “You should have run, you know that.”

“Yeah,” she agreed. “I probably should have.”

Hope pulled her knees up. It wasn’t the world’s most ladylike position, even in the calf-length skirt she was wearing, but it had the benefit of concealing her hands as she pulled the cell phone out of her pocket. She turned it on and selected the text function. There was only one number programmed in, and she typed in an exclamation point, and hit enter.

Then she shoved the phone under the band of her skirt and into her underwear, and hoped that Brittany hadn’t decided to self-medicate or party or otherwise blow off their agreement. Because if she had …

Solomon unzipped the ASU-RV bag just enough to look inside. She heard him rustling magazines aside, and then he gave a grunt of satisfaction. Avita slid into the seat across from him, and he zipped up the bag and handed it to her. “We’ll count it back home,” he said. “Watch them, Skinner.”

Skinner grunted and folded down a jump seat, the only one in the back other than the mattresses. Hope tried to adjust her position to make herself more comfortable as the van started up; the mattress was lumpy, and sticky, and the van smelled like what it was, a traveling slave pen with the memory-odors of fear, sweat, blood, urine … and sex. Somewhere buried deep, there was the smell of sex. She didn’t want to think about that.

Since her hands were free, she reached out and touched Elijah’s cheek with the back of her hand. “Are you okay?” she asked him. “I was afraid—”

“I can’t believe I bought her fucking act,” he said. His gaze was fixed on Avita, and the look made her shiver. “She played us hard. We all tried to protect her. When he threatened to hurt her, we took beatings for her. When she was short on her take, we gave her ours. She told us he was taking her to his room to rape her, and we all believed it.”

“Maybe he was,” Hope said. “Maybe in the beginning she was a victim just like the rest of you, and then she did what she had to do to protect herself. She helps him because it keeps her safe.”

“And maybe she’s just a stone cold criminal,” Elijah said. “I don’t know anymore.” He shook his head and looked at her instead. “I still can’t believe you did this. What were you
thinking
? You brought him the money and you thought, what, he’d just let me go?”

“He’s got what he wants now. There’s no reason to hang on to either of us.”

“Exactly,” Elijah said. “No reason. And no reason for him to want to leave loose ends behind if there’s that much cash at stake. People kill each other for a lot less.”

She knew that, but she’d been trying to avoid thinking about it. It was a thing she couldn’t control. She had Avita’s word that Solomon didn’t kill people, but honestly, Avita wasn’t the best source for straight info, was she? And Skinner looked like a man who didn’t draw too many lines. If Solomon ordered him to kill, he probably would, and then he’d forget about it before the body hit the floor.

“I wish you’d left me,” Elijah said, when she didn’t respond. She wasn’t sure he was talking to her at all. “I don’t want to see you get hurt.”

She’d been half afraid that for all his charm, all that he’d done to try to get her out of this, Elijah would turn out to be as bad as he claimed, but she knew, right then. She knew that inside there was a genuinely good man. Maybe one that had taken wrong turns and gotten hit hard by circumstance, but he
wanted
to be a good man.

And that mattered.

The van pulled away from the curb, and they were leaving behind whatever safety there would have been on the campus. Elijah shook his head. He looked pale.

“They just left the others behind,” he said. “He’s cutting ties. If he’d wanted to, he could have dumped us with them. There’s a reason he held on to us, Hope.”

“It’s going to be okay,” she said softly.

“I think maybe you don’t understand what that really means,” he said. “But I hope to God you’re right.”

It was impossible to tell where they were going, but Flagstaff wasn’t that big a place, so after thirty solid minutes of driving Hope realized they weren’t stopping in town. That was bad news.

“Hey!” she said, and waved at Skinner. He stared at her with blank, dead eyes. “I need a bathroom. Can we stop, please?”

He reached over and grabbed a disposable plastic container, the kind used for leftovers. “Knock yourself out,” he said. “Seal it when you’re done. We’ll dump it later.”

“I’m
not
peeing in here in front of you!”

“Jesus, princess, I don’t give a shit about your dignity, so just hike the skirt and do it. Trust me, watching women piss doesn’t do it for me.”

“Come on, man, just stop,” Elijah said. “The least you can let her do is pee in private.”

“No, the least I can do is not give her the damn bowl and let her piss on the mattress. I’m already putting myself out, so shut your hole, Elijah. Princess can use the bowl, or hold it.”

“I’ll wait,” Hope said. She sank back against the wall.

She didn’t have to wait long, as it turned out; the van slowed after another fifteen minutes, then made a turn onto a bumpy road that definitely wasn’t interstate-quality. It was slow going, and the bounces were hard enough to slam her head against the van’s wall a couple of times before she balanced herself correctly. “Where are we going?” she whispered to Elijah. He shook his head. He didn’t know.

That definitely was
not
good news. If Brittany had decided to flake out on her …

The van finally bounced one final time over what felt like a ditch big enough to bury a body in, and pulled to a creaking stop. Solomon killed the engine and got out, while Avita scrambled to follow him with the weight of the bag. Skinner left his jump seat and grabbed Hope beneath the arm to haul her to her feet. “Walk,” he told her. “You try anything clever and I’ll put a bullet in your back, and two in your friend.”

She believed him. There was something in the flat delivery and lifeless eyes that convinced her he’d done it before, and wouldn’t hesitate to do it again. So she carefully rose, crab-walked to the sliding door, and cranked it open. The sun poured in to blind her, and she blinked in the glare until she saw a desert landscape that seemed to roll on forever.

She froze.

They’re going to kill us,
she thought.
Kill us and dump us out here for the buzzards and coyotes to dispose of.
But then she turned her head and saw that it wasn’t just empty land after all—there was a sun-faded old adobe house, too. It looked neglected, but not abandoned, and Avita was carrying the duffel bag inside the open front door.

She stepped down onto raw gravel that radiated heat up through her thin flat shoes, and she felt strangely glad of the discomfort. Every sensation seemed to be heightened now, and precious in the face of possible extinction.

She’d rarely felt this alive before. Even the sharp, thin desert air seemed delicious as she took in a deep breath.

Skinner hustled Elijah out, then grabbed her elbow to push them both toward the house. “Congratulations,” he said. “You’re going to get to pee in private after all.”

“What is this?” she asked. “Is it where you live?”

“It’s more of a hotel,” he said. “For temporary guests. Like you. Now shut up and walk.”

She did. There wasn’t a lot to take in; what little effort had been made to put in landscaping looked ancient and unsuccessful, so it was just a plain, square, mud-brown house squatting under the burning sun. The small windows were blocked by sun-rotted curtains. It looked anonymous and forgettable, which she guessed was the whole point.

Crossing the threshold was like going from day to night. It was cave-dark inside, and cave-cool, too. As her eyes adjusted again, she saw that it was an old, worn place with depressed secondhand furniture: a broke-back old blue sofa with a permanent slope in the cushions, a faded Indian rug on the scarred wooden floor. A reasonably new TV set with a game console plugged in sat across from the sofa, but that was where the creature comforts ended. The kitchen was littered with trash and dirty glasses and dishes; the sink was piled high and the whole place smelled like trash.

There was another smell, too. A disturbing one, like an animal pen.

Avita had dumped the bag on the sofa and plumped herself down next to it, running her hands over the thick shape of it as Solomon sat down next to her. “How much is in here?” she asked, and started to unzip the bag. He shoved her hand away and took the bag in his own lap.

“I still need to pee,” Hope said. “Can I –”

“Show the princess her throne,” Solomon said in a bored tone. “We’d damn well better get a decent price for her. She’s fucking annoying.”

Skinner pointed down the narrow hall toward an open door. She walked toward it, looked in, and was surprised to see it was reasonably clean. She shut the door, but there was no lock. No knob, either, and nothing to block it if someone decided to shove it in.

She didn’t really need to pee, but she needed time, and so she sat on the toilet for a few minutes, then flushed and washed her hands carefully.

When she walked out again, Elijah was on his knees.