This blood is still warm.Someone’s bleeding.And if the trail is correct, they went into a container across the alley from me.
Heart in my mouth with fear, I rush to the container and throw it open, terrified that someone was hit in the gunfight.I’m even more worried that Brooks herself did something she shouldn’t do, and managed to get herself hurt.
Or killed.
When the door opens, I find Brooks sitting near the entrance, bleeding from the head, another girl in her lap, and though my heart leaps at the idea that she’s still upright, one look at her wound tells me she won’t be in the position for long.
And the girl in her lap looks like she might already be dead.
Brooks
They say when you’re dying, your life flashes before your eyes.
All the things you’ve ever done or seen or said.The places you’ve been.The thoughts you’ve thought.
The people you’ve loved.
They also say that this is actually your brain going through your entire bank of knowledge and experience, trying to find a way to keep your body alive.I’ve always thought that’s kind of terrible.Your body is dying and your brain–still very much alive and wanting to stay that way–is searching desperately for a way to save the meat sack that happens to be its vehicle in this life.
Because without the body, the brain is done, too.
What a horrible, helpless feeling that must be.
My brain isn’t giving me my whole life right now, and it’s certainly not giving me all my experiences.For some reason, it’s only focusing on the last couple of hours.Maybe it thinks it’ll find something there that’ll get me out of this mess?
I don’t think it’ll succeed.
The long and short of it is, I realized when I was at Lucien’s house that I knew more than I’d told him.Remember when I broke into that computer but didn’t have a pen and paper, and just counted on my brain to remember what I was seeing?Well, it chose that moment at the table with Camille to start remembering.And it remembered some details that I hadn’t even known I’d seen.
Like the addresses of the holding pens for the girls.
And the last stop in New Orleans before they boarded the ships.
I’d thought for about 2.5 seconds before deciding I had to take advantage of the new knowledge, and given it 2.5 additional seconds to go through the pros and cons of contacting Lucien and letting him know.The problem was, he was in some big meeting with people he said straight up he didn’t want me meeting–the asshole–and I wasn’t about to disturb him.Hell, I wasn’t even sure he would answer if I called him.There was really no point in finding out.
Instead, I packed up my favorite Glock, my new butterfly knife, and my phone, and headed for the address I’d remembered as the last place the girls stopped before they were shuffled into vans and taken to the port to ship to wherever they were going.
The plan was simple: Get in, get the girls, and get back out again.The leverage: This time I had weapons and a vehicle.The danger: There were bound to be more guards than there were good guys, and I didn’t have any backup.
I hadn’t let that last bit stop me, though, because I wanted to get those girls out of there, and wasn’t willing to wait for Lucien to get home.I found the place quickly and went in with my one gun blazing and my soul on fire with my mission, and had the good luck to find the girls almost immediately.They’d been on their own and I hadn’t questioned it.I grabbed them, told them I was getting them out of there, and started running.
We made it almost all the way to the front door before the guards found us, took one look at me, and decided I’d come back to join the party.
I put up a good fight, taking two of them out before they got my gun, but in the end I hadn’t been enough—as I feared—and there were enough of them to take me down.I was handcuffed and beat up, and almost immediately found myself in the van with the other girls and on my way to the port.
Turned out I arrived just in the nick of time.If things had gone my way, I would have arrived in the nick of time, sweeping in and saving the girls right before their fates were sealed.
But things hadn’t gone my way.And once again, I was in trouble and had no way to contact Lucien.And I realized–far too late–that I should have included my plan in the note I left him, instead of that clever little comment that didn’t mean anything.
Once again, I’d walked right into trouble without a plan, and this time, Lucien didn’t even know what I’d done.It was starting to be a really, really bad habit, and I promised myself that if I got out of this—if I managed to land on my feet again—I’d start including him in everything I did.
If.
We got to the port in the dark, the night around us quiet as a mouse, and I’d stared out the window, trying to figure out how I was going to handle this.No one was out there to save us, but they also weren’t going to get in the way.If I could cause a big enough distraction, I might be able to get the girls out of there without costing myself any other lives.
An explosion would have been perfect, but I wasn’t sure how to pull it off.A gunfight would have been even better, but I didn’t know how the fuck I was going to pull that off without having an actual gun to hand.
Then a bunch of men appeared out of the darkness, shooting and yelling like they were actually in some sort of war, and I’d jumped to my feet.Girls were already filing off the bus ahead of me, their hands tied in front of them, and I’d gone pushing and shoving through their bodies, desperate to get outside.
