Page 67

Abby

SK Compound, Myanmar

“ O ne man?” Lucky stares at me, aghast. “You came back here, and now you think that one man can 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 Cardenas 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.”

Three days pass without a word from Dimitry.

Three days that feel like three years.

Three days of being back in hell, of corrosive doubts that eat away at me until I think I’ll go mad.

My grand plan, which seemed so logical while I was sitting on the patio of a luxury Thai villa, now seems like fucking insanity.

I feel guilty for raising my friends’ hopes. Even more at the danger I’m putting them in. And beyond all of that, my certainty that any of this could actually work fades by the minute.

How did I forgot just how many guards there are? How enormous and well protected this place is? Even if Dimitry and Leon can actually get inside that auction room, what exactly are they going to do?

No matter what I told the girls on that first night back in my bunk, regardless of what I know Dimitry has done in his life, this is too much.

He’s going to die here. We all will. And it will be my fucking fault.

My fingers shake as I try to focus on the messages in front of me.

My bruises haven’t made the demands of my supervisors any kinder; if anything, like last time, they enjoy bullying me even more.

I haven’t been able to make target since I got back.

I ran the Loop yesterday, and the way I’m going, I’ll be running it again today.

The problem is that my heart leaps with every new profile I’m sent, only to plunge again moments later when I open it and realize it isn’t Dimitry.

As if to mock me, the notification bell pings at the top of my screen, indicating I’ve been sent a new profile. I swallow the surge of nerves and click to open. I look at the photograph, and my heart completely stops.

A picture of a wooden horse figurine, with a quote above it: “Beware of Greeks bearing gifts.” The profile name is Otis Seuss. Odysseus.

The profile name Dimitry and I made up together while we lay naked in bed, a bottle of wine between us.

It seems like a lifetime ago.

Lucky has attached a brief to the profile, as she always does: Recent inheritance. Single, fat, lonely. Works in a museum. Lived alone with mother until recently. Looking for love, has money to invest, start small.

Hands shaking, I press the keys. Hi, Otis. My name is Helen. I like your profile pic.

Three dots appear, and I wait, my heart racing wildly.

The dots disappear, replaced by a message: Hey, Helen. I like your profile pic, too. I normally Skip most people, but yours got my attention.

Tears spring into my eyes. I inhale deeply and compose my face, glancing around to make sure nobody has noticed.

Dimitry is on the other end of those dots.

He’s alive. He’s out there.

He’s going to come for me.

I draw a shuddering breath.

Tell me about yourself , I type, my fingers clumsy on the keyboard. What do you like doing?

I’m not sure I should answer that. The response comes immediately. I might get in trouble for violating community guidelines.

I almost have to stuff my fingers in my mouth to stop an involuntary gurgle of laughter. Oh , I type, so you’re a bad boy, huh?

The dots barely show up before the reply appears. Well, I’m certainly no Mary fucking Poppins .

My heart slows to a thick, heavy beat that pounds through my head. I stare at the words, reading them over and over.

It can’t be a coincidence.

Poppins was the code word Alexei Petrovsky used last year to contact Mickey, Roman’s tech genius godson. That code word saved Roman’s daughters. It’s been an inside joke between us all ever since.

There’s no way Dimitry would have used that reference by accident.

Mickey must be with him. And if Mickey is there, then Roman is too.

Hope surges inside me, fierce and dangerous.

I seem to remember that Mary Poppins was pretty lethal, in her own way. I type the words then sit back, my eyes glued to the screen as the three dots appear, barely daring to breathe.

The dots disappear.

From what I remember, Poppins had a lot of help from her friends.

“Oh!” I don’t realize I’ve exclaimed aloud until I see the guards frowning at me.

Friends? I slump in my chair, almost weak with relief.

Maybe , I think, just maybe, we have a chance.

I spend all day chatting with Dimitry, but when I push “Otis” to invest, he goes coy, then drops offline. The guard gives me an oily smile.

“Loop for you,” he says, clearly enjoying his power.

But I’m not dreading the Loop. Dimitry knows what happens if I don’t make target. He was supposed to invest today and didn’t. There has to be a reason.

I join the huddle of sad faces at twilight in the courtyard.

The guard pokes my ribs with the muzzle of his rifle, deliberately grinding it into the worst of my bruises.

Oddly enough, Rodrigo didn’t hit me nearly as hard as I know he’s capable of.

In fact, although I came back with a very impressive array of cuts and bruises, they’re mainly surface level and hardly painful at all.

If I didn’t know Rodrigo’s proclivity for causing pain, I’d have thought he was actually trying to spare me.

His blows were brief and precise, almost surgical in the damage they caused.

And he barely looked at me at all during the chopper ride to SK, just stared sullenly out the window.

Still, having a rifle muzzle pressed into bruised flesh isn’t fun by anyone’s standards. I wince, and the guard steps back with a satisfied smile.

What is it with men and causing pain? I lower my head obediently and get ready to run.

The rifle cracks, and we set off.

Usually I head for the front of the pack, eager to set my own speed and have some space. But today I clutch my ribs, wincing, and set off slowly, much to the amusement of the guards, who catcall me as I stumble away from them.

I let the runners gain some distance, maintaining my slow pace, eyes peeled along the fence line. The first mile passes, then the second. I head into the stretch that passes close to the fence. On the other side of the wire looms thick jungle, dark and impenetrable.

Darkness has fallen as I pass the guard tower. The next one gleams up ahead in the distance, a quarter mile on.

A low whistle comes from behind the fence.

I stumble, my heart racing, and slow my pace, my eyes darting sideways.

“Abs.” Luke’s low, reassuring voice comes through the fence, though I can’t make him out amid the foliage. “Keep running. I’ll keep pace with you.”

Luke? Here?

Isn’t he supposed to be in Australia—with my parents ?

My mind races, every bad reason for his sudden appearance gripping me in terror. I run deliberately slowly, stumbling on every other step.

It isn’t hard. Horror is clutching at my heart.

“My parents?” I whisper.

“Safe.” This time I get the merest glimpse of a blackened face, there and gone as Luke slips silently through the jungle. “You?”

Weak with relief, I nod, fighting tears. “All good.” My voice is hoarse, rasping painfully in my throat. I have a thousand questions and no time to ask them.

“The Otis profile is being watched.”

Oh, fuck.

“He’ll keep chatting like a normal scam client.” His voice is as relaxed as if he were planning a picnic, not a raid on a fortified compound. “But there’ll be no more information passed through the messages.”

I keep my head down. “How will I know what to do?” I try to match his low, even tone.

“The auction is this weekend. We’ll get you and your friends out of here, Abs.” For all of Luke’s reassurance, it doesn’t escape me that he avoids the question.

The guard tower is coming closer. I slow my pace again, knowing I’m tempting trouble. “Dimitry?”

His teeth flash white in the darkness. “He’ll see you soon.”

I nod again, not trusting myself to speak.

“Hey!” A guard runs up behind me, his rifle catching me a glancing blow over the head. “You! Run faster!”

I pick up my pace.

When I look at the fence again, Luke is gone.