Make that one more thing that I fear, Victor: being trapped in a small space.

I hear Samantha’s footsteps move across the floor above and then the sound of the bedroom door clicking closed once she makes her way out.

Everything is eerily silent: the heaviness of my breath, the pumping of blood through my ears; I can’t hear either of them though I know both should be raucous in the small confined space that conceals me. I can’t see a thing, so I reach my hands out in front of me and start feeling my surroundings. I painfully count three walls to my left, right and in front of me, but am relieved that behind me there is no fourth wall to keep me confined. It’s a narrow hallway.

I don’t have time to investigate it further when I hear the first gunshot, although suppressed like Victor’s always sounds, but I know that this time it isn’t Victor.

Pepper isn’t barking anymore.

I hear a voice. It sounds far off but it echoes from somewhere above me. That’s when I feel a small draft on my hairline and I reach up my hand to feel for the ceiling. There’s a vent, though far too small of one for me to fit my head through much less the rest of my body, but it’s a vent and I know now that’s how I heard the echo of the voice.

There’s another suppressed shot and this time when I hear the voice that succeeds it, I know that it belongs to Javier.

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

“I have four bullets left in this gun,” Javier says to Samantha somewhere in the house. “And I’m going to put one in you every two minutes that my sweet Sarai is still in hiding.”

My hand comes up involuntarily and clutches at my heart.

“Victor is coming back,” Samantha says in a weak, strained voice.

It fills me with dread to think of where Javier has already shot her.

“You lie, puta! You stink of lies. Now tell me where Sarai is. Because I know she’s here.”

How did he know I was here?

Then in Spanish Javier shouts, “Search the house! Every room. Turn it upside-down and find her!”

Two seconds later the sound of furniture being overturned, glass shattering and feet stomping across the floor echoes through the walls.

“She’s not here,” Samantha says as if pushing the words through her teeth. “Victor was here earlier. With a girl. A little black-haired girl he called Izabel. But he took her with him when he left.”

Thwap!

Another shot sounds and Samantha screams out in pain, but then her screams are muffled and I can only imagine that it’s by Javier’s hand. Or maybe someone else within the room. Tears stream down my hot cheeks. There’s a chill in the air being so close to the cold ground outside, but my blood pressure is so high from the incredible amount of stress on my nerves that it feels like my head is on fire.

“I know she’s here,” Javier says coldly. “I know she didn’t leave with him because I was watching. Now you have six more minutes. The last bullet I’ll put in your brain.”

Then Javier’s voice rises:

“You hear that, Sarai?” he calls out to me. “In six more minutes you’ll kill her. Just like you killed Lydia. All I want is to take you home. I could never hurt you, you know that.”

My legs are shaking.

After the ransacking noises finally stop, the extra sets of footsteps, two judging by the pattern, move back into the room with Javier.

“Both of you go outside,” Javier demands. “Look everywhere, search the neighborhood but don’t draw attention. Go!”

I can’t leave Samantha up there with him to die.

“I told you there’s no one here!” she shouts.

The noise I hear this time I know is Javier’s hand across her face and then her body hitting the floor. The floor beams shake above me with the force of her fall.

I turn behind me and start feeling my way through the narrow passage, hoping that it leads me out. Because I won’t leave her like this. Javier can take me back. He can kill me if he wants to, but I won’t hide under here like a coward and let her die for me.

Thwap!

My breath hitches and my bones lock up, but I keep on moving forward and finally come to the end. There’s nothing here, nothing but more walls and the same passage I just walked through. I reach up above me and feel around on the ceiling for another metal door hatch. And sure enough, there is one. And just when I think there’s no way I can lift that lid all the way and climb my way out without making enough noise to tell Javier exactly where I am, I stub my toe on a four-step set of moveable stairs shoved into the corner.

I pick the steps up instead of pushing them across the floor to avoid making any unnecessary noise and I set them underneath the hatch. Climbing to the third one, I have to bend over forward to keep from hitting my head on the ceiling. I reach up with both hands, pressing my palms against the hatch and close my eyes as I push, hoping that it’s not blocked by anything and that wherever it leads it’s not anywhere Javier can see me.

The hatch opens, creaking once which makes me wince and freeze holding it partially open above me. I push again and walk up to the fourth step and my head emerges inside a closet. I see that a foam mattress pad had been folded over and placed on top of the hatch door to conceal it and there is carpet on top of the hatch that matches the carpet on the closet floor; I feel it with my fingertips as I raise the hatch the rest of the way and leave it to lean against the back of the closet wall.

I climb out and quietly push myself through the clothes hanging from the bar above.

Thwap!

“Two more minutes, Sarai!” I hear Javier warn from the living room.

I open the closet door and make my way more quickly now through Samantha’s bedroom, down the hall and into the living room where Javier is waiting on me, every bone and muscle in my body trembling.

“Ah, and there she is!” Javier raises both hands out beside him, his gun latched in the right. He smiles and looks genuinely excited to see me. He’s crazy….

His hands drop to his sides.

“I’ve missed you, Sarai.” He cocks his head to one side to appear sincere. “If you were unhappy why didn’t you just say so? I’d have done anything you wanted, you know that.”

I don’t care about what he has to say, all I care about is making sure that Samantha is alright. Trying to keep my eyes on Javier, my gaze carefully scans the room out ahead of me, looking for her.

Finally, I see her bare feet sticking out from behind the recliner on the other side of the room, her skin stained with blood.

“Samantha, are you OK?”

She doesn’t respond so I know she’s hurt pretty bad.

I look back at Javier, pleading in my eyes.

“Let’s just go. Please. Javier please don’t hurt her anymore.”

He smiles at me, appearing thoughtful but amused.

He’s wearing black from top to bottom: long-sleeved black shirt, black belt, black pants, black shoes. Black heart. He raises his gun at me and motions it for me to go over to him.

He curls his finger at me. “Let me see you.”

I walk closer, my bare feet moving over the Good Housekeeping magazines scattered about the floor. The grandfather clock standing tall in the corner ticks ominously behind me.

“Javier, she’s going to die if we don’t call for an ambulance,” I urge as I get closer. “Let me call nine-one-one. Then we can leave.”

I see her knees now, but it’s all that I can see as the rest of her is obscured by the chair and the darkness.

Javier reaches out his hand.

“Did he f**k you?” he asks and pulls me closer to him by my fingers. “Did you let him f**k you, or are you still mine?” He leans inward and inhales the scent of me, a loose strand of hair fallen from my ponytail he plays with in the tips of his fingers.

“No,” I say breathily. “I’ll always be yours.”

He’s wearing cologne, the same kind he always wore when he’d come to me in the night. And his hair, somewhat long on top, is clean and groomed, the way he always wore it when he’d dress me up and take me with him to the wealthy houses.

“Don’t lie to me,” he says quietly and I feel his breath on my neck. “You don’t know what you’ve done to me. You shouldn’t have left.”

I reach up with my left hand and curl my fingers softly around the back of his neck. I lean into him, the side of my face navigating the opened buttons at the top of his shirt until I feel his chest on my cheek. “I know and I’m sorry.” I kiss his skin lightly. “I am so sorry for leaving you like that,” I add in Spanish.

I shudder, both from pleasure and from disgust, when he slides his hand down the front of my pants and puts two fingers inside of me. It doesn’t matter that he’s insane or that he’s a murderer or that he might kill me any second, the touch still makes me wet. It’s my body betraying me, human nature betraying me, not my mind or my heart. I had conformed years ago to react to him in this way. A twisted survival instinct that they don’t teach in self-defense classes. Javier had to believe he was turning me on or he’d know everything else about me was a lie, too, and so my body learned to react in the way that it knew would keep me alive.

He pulls his fingers out and brings them to his lips, inhaling deeply, his eyes closed as if to savor it. Then he puts them in his mouth.

I take a step backward while he’s distracted, to put as much distance between us as I can manage although small.

“I’m not sure I want you anymore,” he says.

My heart hardens. If he doesn’t want me then I know he’ll kill me, especially after everything that I’ve done, all of the trouble that I’ve caused.

“Javier,” I say, trying to hide the nervousness in my voice, “let’s go. I’m ready to go back.”

His top lip furrows and he shakes his head.

“Izel is dead,” he says probingly, probably wondering if I did it. “I know you hated her. I don’t blame you. But she was my sister.”

I shake my head and start to back up some more.

“I-I didn’t kill her,” I say. “I didn’t know.”

Javier laughs.

I take another step back and two to my right, stepping on a sharp piece of plastic from some random object, but it doesn’t break the skin. I press my hands against the wall behind me.

And then I see her, Samantha, much clearer from this angle. I abandon my dire need to watch Javier’s every move as he approaches me slowly, tauntingly, and all I can see now is Samantha. She’s not moving. She sits slumped over with her back against the wall. Her bloody legs are splayed out into the floor. Her arms lie limply on either side of her, her fingers uncurled.

Her eyes. They’re open. And they’re dead.

Bile churns in my stomach, my hands begin to solidify, hard like metal, down at my sides. I’m shaking all over from anger and hatred and guilt, and godammit, fear.

“You killed her,” I say, my lips trembling.

“I did,” Javier admits proudly. “On the fifth shot.”

“But you said…,” I look to and from him and Samantha’s body, my heart feels like its closing in on itself. “You said if I didn’t—”