Spiders in the Grove Read online

  I still can’t fucking believe he actually agreed to let Izzy go through with this stupid plan, or that he agreed not to interfere. Fuck him, and everybody else in his Order who’s letting this happen. Fuck ‘em all.

  “Well, what makes you think I won’t just take the money and run?” Jackie asks with a smirk.

  “Because I trust you.” Strange thing is, I actually do trust her.

  “All right,” she says, changing the subject and her tone, “so then who are these two guys you’re sending with me? And how much do you trust them?”

  “Not as much as you,” I say. “But they’ll keep you safe on the mere fact that the other half of their payment depends on it.”

  “Guys you work with?” She’s trying to make herself feel better about all this.

  “I don’t work with them,” I say, “but they work for me.”

  The men I’ll be sending to Mexico with Jackie are not part of my brother’s Order, and don’t even know what it is. They’re just guys I’ve known for a long time, ex-military, and who have seen some messed-up shit in their lives, so their roles in Mexico won’t really faze them much. I hired them for the same reason I’m hiring Jackie: I can’t get anyone from our Order involved, because anyone loyal to Victor, doesn’t necessarily make them loyal to me.

  I spend another three hours with Jackie, going over every detail; I show her photos of Izzy, and, because I want Jackie to be sure herself about this, I also show her photos and videos of the girls in compounds—not just Mexico, but everywhere else, too—and the things that happen to them. Jackie doesn’t want to do this—it’s all over her face—but money is The Great Negotiator, and one million is hard enough for a rich man to pass up, much less a woman who lives in a trailer park and drives a 2001 Acura with a huge dent in the driver’s door.

  “Physically, you’ll be fine,” I tell her. “You’re considered too old to be kidnapped and sold in the slave trade, and my ex-military guys who’ll be going with you can protect you from the occasional horny idiot who might try to have his way with one of the rich buyers. But I doubt you’ll have to worry about that, even. They don’t usually mess with the buyers; but keeping your story straight, and being able to prove you are who you say you are is the most important job. You play the part, and I’ll prove it.”

  “And you’re absolutely sure my story will be backed-up if they try to verify who I am?” she asks.

  “Not if,” I say, “but when. They always do background checks. You just play your part, and don’t worry about the rest. I wouldn’t send you in there if I didn’t have that part under control.”

  “OK.” She can’t keep eye contact with me anymore; her eyes stray everywhere else.

  “Jackie”—I place my hand on her knee—“are you sure you can do this? You can’t go in there with that look on your face.”

  She straightens her back and forces a believable smile easily enough.

  “I’m sure I can do this,” she says. “And I want to. I’ve always wanted to shake things up a bit in my life”—she laughs under her breath—“didn’t exactly envision doing anything like this; I’d always dreamed of being an actress and going to Hollywood parties where I felt important”—she looks right at me; her nervous smile becomes something more confident—“But nothing ever happens how we envision it, does it, Nik?”

  “No, it really doesn’t.” I laugh a little, too.

  “What did you dream of being,” she asks, “before your life took the road it took?”

  Free, I think to myself. Free to be…just like you, Jackie Young.

  I never answer her question.

  I fuck her before I leave, and I head straight for the bar where I’ve been living in a room upstairs, the same bar where I met her. And I don’t sleep—too much shit on my mind—but I just stare at the ceiling until night becomes day, and I can’t help but wonder if Izzy is already dead, and that none of this really matters anymore.

  The Red Lotus

  Hours. Five hours twenty-one minutes. Airline employees are talking amongst themselves about the strange, detached woman sitting on the same chair for over five hours. She moves nothing but her head; her eyes follow people as they walk by, rolling suitcases pulled beside them, briefcases clutched in hands, carry-ons hung over shoulders.

  A man approaches her, dressed in his airline uniform; other employees behind the ticket counter watch from afar.

  “Ma’am,” he begins, uneasiness in his voice, “What flight are you waiting for?”

  The woman raises her eyes; she sees the tiny hairs stand up on the side of his neck as she looks at him blankly, unblinking. She tilts her head, studying him, as if he were an intriguing specimen of sorts.

  After a moment, and no answer: “Ma’am?” The employee takes a small step backward, needing more distance between them.

  And then…she smiles.

  The man blinks, confused by the strange woman.

  “I am waiting for a flight returning from Mexico,” she answers kindly.

  The man nods. “Do you know which one? I could help you; looks like you’ve been waiting for a long time.”

  Another smile, subtle, more around the eyes than her mouth; her movements are still few, but she appears less threatening to the man than before.

  “I came early,” she says. “I didn’t want to miss it, so I came early.”

  The man nods again; like most people, he instinctively knows something is off about this woman, but also like most people, he ignores it. Because she is being kind. Because she is pretty. And small. And seemingly harmless. Because she is a woman.

  Finally, he smiles in return. “Well, is there anything I can do to make your wait more comfortable? Would you like something to drink? A coffee maybe?’ He glances down the wide walkway toward the café.

  “No, but thank you.” She folds her dainty hands together on her lap.

  “OK, well, just let me know if you need anything.” He nods toward the ticket counter. “I’ll just be over there; at least until my shift is over in a few hours.”

  “Thank you,” the woman says.

  The man begins to walk away, but the woman stops him.

  “Sir.”

  He turns around.

  “Would you…like to have a coffee together?”

  His posture shifts. He pulls his cell phone from the pocket of his slacks and checks the time.

  “I guess I can take my break early,” he says and slips the phone back into his pocket. “Let me tell them what’s up and I’ll escort you there.” He smiles.

  The woman smiles, too, and then she watches the man head back over to the ticket counter where the same three women watching them from afar are waiting. A few seconds later, after he informs them of his early break—and no doubt gives them the scoop on the odd exchange—he approaches the woman again, keeping his hands down at his sides and to himself just to keep the encounter professional.

  “Shall we?” he says.

  The woman stands with him; her only possession is her purse, small and made of faux leather, bright yellow, with just enough space inside to make a man wonder what she’s hiding in there.

  They walk side-by-side to the café.

  Izabel

  Tonight’s the big night; after weeks of training with Cesara—or pretending to train, because I know this stuff better than she does—I get to attend my first auction party. Well, technically it isn’t my first, but it will be the first time I attend as a trainer, as one of the pieces of shit I hate more than anything. But I learned from the best of them—and Cesara is far from being the best—and what better way to play this role effectively, believably, than from the one who taught me? And that is why I chose Izel, Javier’s sister, who, for so many years made my life a living hell.

  The girls here are terrified of me, as they should be; I’ve had to make examples of some, and the punishments I chose were cruel, I admit—because they had to be, to avoid blowing my cover—but it was better than killing them. And I’ll never do that;
I’d kill myself before I ever went that far with an innocent life. Besides, part of my plan is to get them out of here too, whenever I make my exit.

  “You look good,” Cesara tells me, looking me over with the hungry sweep of her eyes. “And you seem so…relaxed. I thought you’d be at least a little nervous your first time.”

  I slide another ring onto my finger, and then a gold bracelet around my wrist. When I go for the necklace, I see Cesara behind me in the reflection of the mirror; I feel her naked breasts pressed against my back, her minty breath moving along the shell of my ear, her fingers at my neck, closing the clasp on the necklace for me. “I had hoped you’d be a little nervous,” she says, and a shiver moves along my spine, attacking the back of my eyes.

  “Is that what you want me to be, Cesara?” I whisper seductively, my eyes closed, tingling.

  The warmth of her tongue traces my ear, over my cheek, until her mouth finds mine. She kisses me, one hand against the side of my face, turning it roughly toward her, the other hand sliding down my hip, my thigh, and then to my knee where my silk dress stops.

  “I want you to be yourself,” she says, and then kisses my neck. “Your savagery, the way you carry yourself in front of men who want you, how you deny them, and despise them; it does things to me that no one has ever been able to do.”

  I gasp and rest my hands against the vanity when I feel her fingers inside of me; she presses her other hand to the small of my back and gently pushes me forward so that I’m bent over the vanity in front of her. The coolness of the silk slides over my bottom and I feel it pool in the center of my back, exposing me naked beneath it; her warm hands caress my bottom, followed by her lips as she kisses it all over, taking her time with each spot.

  “You sure you want me to be myself, Cesara?” I ask, my breathing shifting with her touch. “Even with you? I thought you”—I gasp again—“I thought you…liked the control.”

  “I do,” she says as she crouches behind me. “Only with me do I ever want you to show weakness, Lydia. Is that understood?”

  “Only with you…” I say, and shut my eyes as her tongue lashes me into guilt-filled euphoria.

  It’s just after nine, and the guests—some, rumor has it, the biggest buyers in the business—are starting to arrive. This place is a fortress, located approximately fifty-miles from Cesara’s mansion and the compound she runs. Like every mansion I’ve ever been to, there have to be one hundred armed men guarding the grounds, and the roads at least five-miles out in every direction. Nobody gets into a place like this, or even close to it, without an invitation and proper identification. And anyone who tries is shot on sight. No questions asked. No chance to prove innocence.

  Cesara and I make our way into the theatre where a stage is perched against the far back wall, surrounded by tall, heavy, black velvet curtains pulled open. Instead of theatre seats lined neatly in rows, there are about one hundred round tables with four matching chairs pushed underneath; place-cards are set upon the tables nearest the stage, reserved for those ‘big buyers’ everybody’s whispering about in the halls. Admittedly, the big buyers are the ones I’m most interested in, too. If Vonnegut is here tonight, he would have to be among them.

  I am nervous; I can’t lie to myself to make myself feel better—if Vonnegut is here, chances are he will know who I am before I can figure him out.

  “Come,” I hear Cesara say, and she gestures for me to follow her through the theatre and out a side exit.

  Two slave girls, not trained enough to sell yet, tag along behind us everywhere we go. The redhead, Sabine, belongs to me. I glance back at her to make sure she’s keeping up and not doing anything to make me look bad.

  “I want you to meet someone special,” Cesara tells me as we enter a much smaller room.

  My heart nearly falls into my knees when I see the tall Mexican standing there in his dark suit and fancy silk tie, and for a moment I hope like hell no one but me notices I have to steady my breath—the resemblance is frightening.

  “Lydia,” Cesara says, taking me by the elbow, “this is Joaquin Ruiz.” She’s all proud smiles and ass-kissing body language in this man’s presence, and I find it fitting and funny. “He arranges all of the auctions.”

  I step right up to the man, who looks so much like his older brother, Javier, that for a moment almost too long, I can’t speak.

  Finally, I hold out my hand to him as a customary gesture so he can either shake it, or kiss it—if I get a shake, it means he’s not impressed with me.

  Joaquin takes my hand into his, and he bends just enough to plant his warm lips above my knuckles; his milky-brown eyes never leave mine, and I find myself swimming in them, thinking of his brother and the strange life I had with him.

  “It’s a pleasure to meet you, Mr. Ruiz,” I say in a strictly professional voice. As with the rest of Javier’s family, I intend to kill Joaquin, too, before I leave here. But I have to get him alone to kill him—another task, like finding Naeva, that I can’t think about right now.

  “Call me Joaquin,” he offers; a grin just barely tugs one corner of his mouth.

  Noticing his interest in me, Cesara steps up closer—I can’t tell if her jealousy is over me, or Joaquin—and she hands Joaquin a glass of champagne.

  “Lydia has been with me three weeks now,” Cesara tells him. “She’s already surpassed everyone I’ve ever had under me.”

  “So, then maybe this one will last longer than the others?” Joaquin says in a darkly comical way, and then brings the glass to his lips.

  Cesara smiles, and then coils her fingers around my elbow. “Oh, yes,” she says, “I like this one. A lot.”

  Joaquin easily catches the hidden meaning behind her comment.

  His attention shifts when another man enters the room behind us. Joaquin raises a hand, and waves the man over, smiling hugely as if they’ve known one another for many years—now Joaquin is the one with ass-kissing body language.

  “Robert,” Joaquin says, “meet Cesara and Lydia; Cesara, Lydia, meet Robert Randolph.” He steps around to stand at Robert’s side, facing us, champagne class clutched in his hand. “They are the trainers of ten of the girls up for auction tonight.”

  The man named Robert kisses Cesara’s hand, and then with reluctance he shakes mine.

  “A pleasure, Mr. Randolph,” Cesara greets.

  I nod respectfully, already knowing he doesn’t care to speak with me.

  “What color is your card?” he asks.

  “We are red,” Cesara answers.

  Red cards identify trainers with their girls.

  Robert nods. “I will pay extra attention to red tonight,” he says, and kisses Cesara’s hand again.

  This man, probably one of the big buyers, is, without a doubt, one cruel and heartless bastard that any girl unfortunate enough to be sold to him tonight will wish she had died during training, instead. I can see it in his eyes, his hard-lined forty-something face incapable of a smile in any form: he is a rapist, and a murderer, and has no tolerance for mistakes or imperfections. It’s why he didn’t kiss my hand—with the blaring scar across my throat I’m worth less than trash to him. The handshake was simply out of respect, probably for Cesara, who is quite beautiful. And unblemished.

  But is this ‘Robert Randolph’ the ever-elusive Vonnegut?

  No—I don’t think so; I’ve never seen this man before, and there’s nothing in his eyes that suggests he has any idea who I am, either.

  In under thirty minutes, the place is packed; every table and chair in the theatre has been filled. Some buyers have brought their property along, young women and men, sitting on the floor at their feet—it disgusts me to see such things; I wish I could just grab a gun from one of the guards and spray the place with bullets. I glance down at Sabine, my property, sitting obediently at my feet, her head lowered, back straight, hands folded within her lap, legs tucked underneath her bottom. I’m sorry, Sabine, that you’re here. I’ll do everything I can to keep this from bein
g the rest of your life. She slouches, and as if Izel’s ghost lives inside of me, my hand snaps out and I grab her by the back of her hair, wrench her head back on her neck and force her to look up at me. “Keep your back straight or I’ll permanently bend it,” I hiss into her shrinking face.

  I know Cesara is watching—that was the whole point.

  Joaquin Ruiz walks out onto the stage and the dozens of conversations going on all around me cease in an instant. As Joaquin speaks into a tiny mic affixed to the lapel of his suit jacket, his hands free, motioning, his voice fades from my ears, replaced by my own: Not one of them looks familiar, I say to myself as I study the big buyers sitting at the tables closest to the stage in front of me. Not one of them! Joaquin goes on and on, detailing the rules and bidding procedures for new and return buyers; he discusses with the audience the importance of ‘no touching’ and ‘no speaking to the merchandise’ and all of the other stuff I purposely close my ears up to—I hear it, but I also block it all out. Besides, it’s something I’ve heard so often in my life that it’s stamped on my brain like a cancerous lesion.

  Deciding that maybe I was wrong about Vonnegut being one of the big buyers, I turn my attention on the other, less conspicuous men in the room.

  “What are you doing?” Cesara whispers next to me.

  I snap out of my investigation, and turn my head in her direction, already knowing what she’s referring to: I wasn’t paying attention.

  “I thought I recognized someone,” I answer effortlessly, and I lean in closer to her, point discreetly in the direction I had been looking when she caught me, and I whisper, “That man, second table to Mr. Randolph’s right, I can’t be sure, but I think I’ve seen him somewhere before.”

  Cesara looks with curiosity at the man in question, whom I chose from the crowd on a whim, and then she smiles at me confusedly. “You can’t be serious, Lydia—you don’t know who that is?”