At the edge of the village, we gather our things and step into the waiting pickup. A boy no older than the girls we’re saving, waits to drive us. His eyes so dark they reflect the world.
The desert here isn’t like the ones in movies; it’s flat and white, with heat simmering just above the horizon and giving everything a mirage blur. The radio hisses in another language, cutting in and out. The plan is simple: Dillian will jam their cameras, Jonathan will negotiate the drop while I cover him, then we grab them and run before the rest of the enemies change their minds. Everyone expects it to go badly and it might, if they realize who we are and that we could pay more. I wouldn’t put it past the greedy bastards to try.
The drive takes an hour, the sun climbing overhead, pounding the roof of the pickup. I swear I can hear sizzle. The closer we get, the more I start to think of the girls, how they might be huddled together in the bus, dehydrated, and how their throats must be raw from crying and their wrists bruised from ties. It reminds me of things I locked away a long time ago, people I couldn’t save when I was new at this. Some mornings I wake up convinced those ghosts are sitting at the foot of my bed.
Dillian’s phone buzzes a warning: We’ve reached the drop site. The pickup stops behind a spit of rock, and we walk the rest of the short distance on foot.
When we’re in position, Jonathan takes a moment to kneel in the sand and say a prayer. He sayshe doesn’t believe in God, but I’ve been doing this with him long enough to know better. Maybe it’s for the girls, maybe it’s for us, or maybe it’s for the wife and daughter he hasn’t seen in ten years. I don’t ask.
I’m not sure when they realized it, but my worse fear is going down. They know who we are and are making more demands of Jonathan. They shot first, aiming for Dillian.
Then, the gun battle is exactly as expected, a short, brutal window of noise and dust and men screaming in four different languages. We’re faster, better trained, and more desperate than they are, especially after Dillian’s surprise cut to the bus’s battery, which unlocks the doors and switches off the cameras. There’s blood on my hands today, but thankfully, not innocent blood.
When it’s over, we hustle the girls into the bed of the pickup, counting off twelve terrified faces, none of them older than thirteen. We tell the boy to drive fast, and he does. Back at the village, the parents don’t hug them right away; they just stare, wide-eyed, as if the universe has played a trick on them by returning what was lost. We add security measures to the local villages so that this is less likely to happen again, at least in the near future.
After the debrief, when I am alone at sunset and can finally breathe, I find myself thinking not of the girls or the bullets, but of Lila, curled in her chair, reading the books I’d left her. She knows nothing about this side of me. She may not want to. Even so, she is the only thing that feels real when the adrenaline fades.
Now, I can’t wait to get home. I can’t wait to pay my girl a visit.
14
Lila
I’m not sure howlong I’ve been asleep, but when I wake up, it’s still dark. Thirsty, I notice my water bottle is empty. I decide to head to the kitchen and fill it with filtered water from the refrigerator before going back to sleep.
Since I threatened him with the knife, I'd only seen him sporadically, when before I'd seen him nearly every night. I've lost track of how long it's been since I saw him. Which is good. Maybe he's forgotten about me. And after that day Eli chased me in my library, he’s only been staying home for a night or two at a time before leaving again. I wish I knew exactly what he was doing, but I can’t go into his office to investigate. He watches me from wherever he is. I also wouldn’t be surprised if there was an alarm on that door.
As I turn away, I lean against the sink, taking a drink from my newly filled water bottle. That’s when I see movement by the sliding door. My stalker stands there holdingthe handle, looking inside, staring right at me. The sight of him makes my heart pound. Swallowing the water in my mouth, it immediately goes dry, and pressure builds in my head.
I just stand here and stare at him, frozen in place. Then, the door slowly clicks shut and latches. That sound hits me hard, I realize he was just inside while I slept, and I forgot to check the cameras before leaving my library. I know better than to check the cameras now; there won’t be anything to see. They will be cycling and there would be no evidence. They’ve both been gone so long that I keep forgetting to check and Eli must be gone if he’s this close. He backs carefully away from the door toward the steps, and that’s when my body kicks back into gear.
Grabbing a knife from the butcher’s block, I stomp toward the door as he steps down onto the patio below. Throwing it open so hard that it slams against the frame as I rush through it and toward the same steps. My foot lands on the first tread when I remember it rained earlier, and I’m barefoot. I slip, and thankfully, the knife clatters on the deck behind me instead of under me as I slide down a few treads.
Fuck, fuck, fuck.
It takes me a moment to register that he stands in front of me, his mask still on. He must have turned back when I fell. I can’t see his face, only his mouth, where a small dimple rests in his chin. His head tilts down at my sheer white tank and thin black night shorts. Suddenly, he rushes me, pinning my wrists above my head. The weight of him presses down on me as he slides a knee up between my legs and spreads them apart. A gasp escapes my lips. Heatradiates from my wrists down between my legs, and my face burns.
“I won’t hurt you,” he whispers in my ear, his hot breath caressing my neck, sending a warm thrill coursing through my body, straight to my core.
He moves one hand from my wrists to caress the side of my face, then slowly trails it down over my breast and hard nipple; I shudder at the contact as he continues down to my waist. I can feel his hard length straining against his pants as he starts to grind over my now throbbing clit. My body ignites with desire; a soft moan slips from me, and I hear him groan in response.
“I’ve missed you,” he says.
I am ruined, absolutely ruined. My stalker grinds into me, and I let him do it. I must be sick in the head, but god, I love it. If this is what depravity feels like, then I embrace it fully. The edges of his mask lightly scratch against my skin while he kisses and nips gently at my neck and jaw. He moves against me. The friction builds toward an orgasm while I sigh and gasp. I know I’m soaked; I can feel it between my legs, knowing I’ll leave that evidence on his pants.
He slides his hand up into my shirt between my breasts, massaging that space tenderly as he growls low in my ear, “No bra? Naughty girl.”
Then he cups my breast and palms my nipple while continuing to kiss the sensitive skin of my neck and cheek. At that moment, I come apart, sparks fly before my eyes, and no one has ever given me an orgasm before. God, what have I been missing?
I can’t believe I just came like this. He didn’t even need to touch the tender skin under my shorts with his hands. Have I really been so touch starved that this does it for me?
Once the spasms subside, he pulls his hand from under my shirt and hooks a finger into the crotch of my shorts, nuzzling gently against my throbbing flesh. The touch makes me let out a light, breathy moan.
“So wet for me,” he groans in response. “Gorgeous.”
Realization crashes over me, I recognize his voice; itISthe man from the bookstore, and even though part of me wants more, another part knows and that word escapes me anyway: softly spoken yet barely audible to myself. He hears it; suddenly his weight disappears from atop me and I miss the warmth immediately.
I scramble trying to get on my feet, hoping not to slip again I end up climbing back up the steps on my hands and feet, I quickly reach down and grab the knife before rushing through the door behind me, locking it tight after flipping the door latch closed, and tossing the knife into the sink as panic floods through me while looking out through the window down towards the driveway leading to the main road of our community: he’s gone.
