Amanda and Penny are both crying as we make our way further into the house.
“We can grab some clothes from the—”
We all freeze, the sound of tires on gravel nearly stopping my heart in terror.
Lola rushes past Angel’s body in the middle of the living room, pulling the front door open an inch and looking outside. I see the relief wash over her with whoever is out there. She swings the door open, and Amanda and Penny scramble to hide.
Lola stands in the open doorway as if she’s ready to take on the world rather than being in slinky lingerie and covered in blood. I’d be in awe of her resiliency if I weren’t questioning her mental health.
“Well, fuck,” a man says as he climbs onto the porch and sees Angel’s body.
I’m hiding in the doorway of one of the rooms, but I know he can see me standing there.
“Yeah, it’s a fucking mess, but we don’t have time for cleanup. Two of the men are missing. Javier Nolasco, and some piece of shit named Miguel. It’s best that we don’t stick around.”
“How many?” he asks as he hands over his coat.
My eyes widen when he hands her a gun that she tucks into the inside pocket.
“Amanda, Cara, Penny, let’s go. We don’t need to be here if they come back.” Lola’s eyes studiously avoid Angel’s body as she looks at me. “Come on.”
I move first. This man can’t be bad if he’s handing her a gun, right? A sex trafficker would never give someone the opportunity to hurt him.
“If you’re not in the truck by the time I have my seat belt on, we’re leaving without you,” Lola says as she walks off the front porch.
I’m right behind her, and although the other two women are more reluctant, they eventually appear beside the vehicle.
***
“I’m going with you,” I hiss when Lola tries to walk away again.
It’s been three days since we were rescued from that hellhole in El Salvador. I didn’t even know where we were until I heard her on the phone. She quickly walked away before I could get any more information.
I’m not going to let her walk away again without answers.
I grab her arm when she turns to leave.
“I heard you confront, Javier,” I confess. “I know there was more going on in that house than just our abductions.”
“You don’t know anything,” she snaps, pulling her arm from my grip.
“I know you’re some type of cop or a Fed.”
This stops her in her tracks.
“I also know that Javier wasn’t who he pretended to be. I know that Angel—”
“Enough,” she growls, her eyes darting over my shoulder to the other two girls and the social workers that have come to help us.
We’re in El Paso, Texas, and I know she’s planning something that has to do with Javier. All the others in the house may have been dead, but she mentioned him being missing. She tried to seem like she doesn’t care what happened to him, an attempt to make us all believe he was the bad guy we were shown, but I feel it in my gut that the situation is different from what has been portrayed.
It’s her grip on my own arm now as she drags me outside of the building we were brought to.
“You can’t go with me.”
“I’m going whether you like it or not.” I pull myself from her grip, crossing my arms stubbornly over my chest.
Chapter 20
Thumper
My head rolls on my shoulders, eyes fluttering when he hits me in the face again. At first, I was counting the strikes to my face, noting each one. I intended to double them on him when I got the chance, but after the twentieth, I lost count, no longer planning revenge but just praying they put an end to my misery sooner rather than later.
There seems to be no end in sight as Ernesto, a man I’ve determined is Juan’s twin brother, stands from the chair in the corner. He doesn’t seem satisfied in the way his buddy is working me over. I was wondering how long it would take for him to get his hands dirty. There’s blood on them already in the sense that he shot and killed Angel and Lanza, then held me at gunpoint while two of his guys made the rounds in the house to make sure everyone else was dead. They didn’t have much work because that piece of shit Miguel had already killed all the other staff.
“Tell me what happened again,” Ernesto demands, but he isn’t talking to me.
“Juan wanted a little action, so he pulled one of those bitches and fucked her,” Miguel says as he walks up and stands beside Ernesto, both men now glaring down at me like I’m the one with more sins than can be counted. “Angel, that dead fucker from the house, beat the shit out of him, held him down until this asshole got down there. But I got vengeance. I killed everyone at the house. All those bitches whimpered and cried, begged me not to hurt them. I slit their throats and spit on them as they bled out at my feet.”