‘No.’ She holds out a hand, and that’s when she says it. ‘I want her in prison, too. Always have.’ She reaches towards me. ‘Take me, and ransom her. But I’ll help you – let’s stage it.’
She – Andrea’s – legs are bound at the ankles with blue rope which – regretfully – leaves a mark. Her wrists, too. She’s tied to a chair we brought in the car with us, driving several miles from her house to some unidentifiable part of the desert.
‘Blindfold,’ I say, drawing it between my fingers softly, so softly it doesn’t scare her. The cotton material is new, tough and thick.
The tape comes next. The worst part. It was so painful ripping it off. ‘I’m sorry,’ I tell her, as I cut a small piece off.
‘It’s really fine.’
I pass it to her and she pats it into place, now mute. She does it so gently, so carefully, it moves me. A hand, her mother’s hand, was clamped to my mouth, that first night.
I look at her, sitting there, slim and slender in the chair, then take a photo, and get ready to send it.
How strange and otherworldly it is to be on the other side of it. To do the things the kidnapper did to me, only with different intent, and with my victim without fear. Really, it’s totally different. It occurs to me that I probably never would have been able to do it if she hadn’t complied. I just thought I could. There’s a difference between good people and bad people; there just is. I think so, anyway.
‘No,’ Andrea answers me, sitting casually in the dust of the desert. ‘She’s always been this way, but she’s getting worse. She’s so good at it that nobody knows it. She just wants money. Always wants more and more of it, no matter how much she’s got. She roped her cousin in, too. Then a friend.’
We’re together, by the roadside, two women who – it turns out – were born just three months apart.
‘That’s awful,’ I tell her, a hand outstretched, which she grasps.
‘Yeah. I know. I mean, she was dealing, always dealing. I didn’t know what for years. Dad died when I was a teenager – heart attack – and she got more cunning after that.’ Andrea pauses here, crosses her legs in front of her. ‘I moved out eventually, couldn’t cope with it. She made me go to the little house in Terlingua, said nowhere else was safebecause of her dealings. That’s how she refers to them.’
‘So she knows you know.’
‘Oh yes. And she’s not wrong, either. I’ve been followed, sent threatening texts. She has so many enemies. It’s better for me to stay shut away in the day – studying. Psychology.’
‘Do you think your enemies are people she’s kidnapped, made to do things and released?’
‘Maybe. I don’t know. They could easily be her wingmen, part of the supply chain. In the end I kind of started to just disengage, you know?’ She pauses. ‘But she’s trying to keep me safe.’ Another beat. ‘She cares about me in her own way.’
‘You were waiting for somebody to come forward.’
‘Yeah.’
‘Does it … Does she not consider the fear she engenders in people? As a woman?’
Andrea scoffs. ‘No. All the time, I was thinking about how I could get her to stop. But I was the only one who ever knew, so I couldn’t hand her over. She’d know it was me.’
Texas blisters, still, in the autumn heat beyond us. Another abandoned highway, another crime, I guess, though this one is ethical. It’s win-win for both of us, though I’m surprised Andrea saw it like that immediately.
‘So the thing is,’ she says, ‘this gives me an out, too.’
‘Yeah?’
‘By the time I had moved out, she had taken three women, in total; the ransom was the drugs deal. You’re the fourth, as far as I know. I’ve been mostly living out here, but I went by her place when she had you. She was weird about it, and right away I knew she had someone. It was chilling. She never keeps them long. The people ransomed always do what she wants. It’s just a business model. Before the kidnaps was just old-fashioned drugs.’
‘Is it often parents and children?’
‘It’s always loved ones, that’s all,’ she says sadly. ‘It’s always women she takes, from camps.’
‘I heard you tell her you were going back to Terlingua, and there just aren’t that many houses around here. As soon as we made a run for it, I started steering us in this direction. I knew deep down that this was the only way to fix it, though I had hoped I wouldn’t have to resort to it. We tried other stuff,’ I tell her. ‘We tried finding her in other ways. We had a lawyer look, too, but we were searching for a man. Then in Terlingua I started searching for you in earnest. I googled stuff, too. I googledTorture kidnapperto see if I could torture her into confessing. I was trying to find out if it would work, if somebody who kidnapped would offer a confession under the right circumstances. Under duress. In my case, iftheirdaughter was kidnapped.’
‘Well. She’s good at hiding. As, I guess, am I.’
‘Did you ever want to tell anyone?’
She shades her eyes with a slim hand. ‘Obviously,’ she says.‘The three before you – it’s awful to witness. But it’s a whole web of people. Her cousin does the scouting. Someone at the airport gathers information on their stay. Mom gets the drugs over. But then someone else distributes, too.’ And then she looks at me. ‘Which is why your plan is perfect. She’s the snitch, not me, or you. It’s brilliant. No one makes a single enemy except her. Even if you did have to scare me at first.’
