Page 146

SK Compound, Myanmar

“One man?” Lucky stares at me, aghast. “You came back here, and now you think thatone mancan get us all out?”

I look around at the pale faces of my bunkmates, clustered together on the floor in the middle of our little square space. Mary is glancing around warily, her hands shaking. Yrsa is hunched into a small ball, her legs crossed and drawn up to her chest, arms tightly wrapped around them. She’s so thin the veins on her hands gleam blue beneath almost-translucent skin. In the dim light from the exit sign, her face is ghostly, as if part of her has already left her body.

“You don’t know what he’s capable of.” I’m whispering, my voice barely audible as our heads press together. This isn’t a conversation we can risk being overheard, which is why it’s taking place in the early hours of the morning. “Please trust me. I wouldn’t have come back if I wasn’t sure about this.”

I mentally cross my fingers. The truth is that I’m every bit as nervous about this as they are.

But when I weigh a week of nerves against a lifetime of them, it’s a fucking no-brainer.

Dimitry and I will win this thing or we’ll both die.

I choose door number one.

“Can you do it?” I turn to Lucky. “Can you make sure I get assigned the client profile I set up for Dimitry?”

She nods slowly. “That part is easy—yes, of course.”

“It’s the next part that’s difficult.” I frown. “How do we make sure all of us are in the room on the night of the auction?”

This is what makes me nervous. The auction room is on the other side of the compound, in the commercial part. If Lucky, Yrsa, and Mary are back in this part, my chances of getting them out are incredibly slim. Dimitry, Leon, and I spoke about this issue, but none of us could come up with anything.

To my surprise, it’s Mary’s low whisper that finally breaks the silence. “This Cardeñas man,” she says tentatively. “He requested you, yes? That’s how you went to the first auction?”

I nod. “Yes.”

“So why can’t he request all of us?” She looks around. When nobody speaks, she continues. “They think he likes to torture you, yes?”

I nod again.

She lifts a shoulder, tilting her chin with an oddly staunch expression. “So, then, he wants to make his game more interesting. What would be more fun than torturing your friends as well?”

I frown.Surely it can’t be that easy.

But the more I think about it, the more I think her idea could actually work. Oddly enough, back in Colombia, it’s exactly the kind of game that would have turned Rodrigo on.Just like keeping me here for his pleasure, to take out when he feels like it.

“That could work,” I say slowly.

Mary flushes, ducking her head. “I think so, too.” She turns sideways, rocking her body softly against Yrsa’s. “And you, Yrsa?”

Yrsa’s fingers whiten around her legs, the pointed edge of her chin digging into her knees. Her eyes are wide, darting this way and that.

Mary puts an arm around her. “It’s a chance,” she says quietly. “And you know you’re running out of time.”

I look between them, then at Lucky, who ducks her head and avoids my eyes. “What do you mean?”

Yrsa’s eyes touch mine, then look away. It’s Mary who finally answers me. “Yrsa hasn’t made target for weeks. They let it go at first, because she does so many video calls. But this week they’ve taken three clients away from her. And we all know what comes next.”

She doesn’t need to say it.

Webcam work. Prostitution.

And while there might be many girls who can withstand the brutal hours and exploitation of that work, by the way Yrsa is trembling now, her fingers nervously plucking at her skin, she isn’t one of them.

“Can you get the message to your friends?” Mary asks, holding Yrsa close. There’s a glint of determination in her eyes that I know well. It’s the strength friendship gives us, the ability to be brave for others when we might not fight for ourselves.

“Yes.” I glance at Lucky. “If you assign me Dimitry’s client profile, he can get a message to Rodrigo that he should ask for all four of us to be in the room. I can’t guarantee the guards will agree, but we can try.”