Fight For You (18 page)

Ten minutes later, I hear the car pull into the garage and the garage door humming closed. A moment later, Danny hurries into the foyer, an aluminum baseball bat in one hand and our sock masks in the other. “They’re not far behind me. We should get ready. Remember, most important thing is that we get the door closed behind them before we make a move.”

I nod. “I’ll take care of Rosa and then come help you if you need it.”

“All right,” he says, pulling the sock mask on, making his lips look fuller and pinker in contrast with the rough fabric covering the rest of his face. “But I think I’ll be okay. They should be too stunned to fight back while I’m giving the injection. I just have to be sure not to hit them too hard.”

I slip the mask over my face and tuck my hair underneath. When I open my eyes again, I’m seeing Danny through frames of black cotton and the reality of the moment hits hard enough to make me flinch.

It’s here. We’re ready and there is no turning back.

“See you on the other side,” he says softly.

“On the other side.”

He reaches out a hand and I take it, squeezing his fingers between mine, drawing strength from his touch, his presence. Tonight, I am not alone. Tonight I have the upper hand and J.D. and Jeremy are going to learn what it feels like to be powerless and terrified.

Outside, the sound of a car pulling into the driveway rumbles through the night air before it falls silent. A car door slams and a moment later, I hear Rosa’s laugh and her lightly accented voice telling the men that the rest of the party is inside. My hand slips from Danny’s as I move back into the shadows behind the door and he takes his place around the corner, hidden from view in the hall leading into the kitchen.

Any second, the men I came here to punish will be walking through the door.

The knowledge fills my mouth with a bitter, acrid taste. My heart races and my nerve endings feel like they’re catching fire, but at the center of the storm, there is a calm place that fear and panic can’t touch. And from that calm place I reach into my own mind, doing what I have to do.

I take a deep breath and let go, pulling back the calloused skin that protected me for so many months, flinging open mental doors I’ve learned to keep locked tight. These are the rooms where the horror lives, where there is nothing but blood and pain and the sounds of my own screams. But tonight, these memories won’t bring me nightmares or leave me sweating and shaking in my bed, reliving every helpless moment until I don’t know if I’ll live to see morning.

Tonight, they will bring me strength.

As the doorknob begins to turn, time slows to a crawl and I go back.

Back to the pool table’s rough felt beneath my cheek, back to the smell of sour beer and whiskey breath and the sweat of unfamiliar male bodies dripping onto my face. I go back to J.D.’s hands shoving me down onto the table and ripping my jeans down my legs while I kicked and screamed and Todd and Jeremy egged him on.

He was the first and I was still fighting hard. J.D. isn’t much taller than I am or much bigger. There was a chance I could have fought him off if Jeremy hadn’t crawled up on the table and grabbed my wrists, pinning them to the felt as he trapped my head between his thighs and squeezed, holding me in a vice grip between his legs as J.D. forced himself inside me, tearing me apart.

I had never been with anyone but Danny, had never known any pain associated with sex except that slight sting and ache the night Danny and I were each other’s first. He had always been careful with me, always taken the time to be sure I was ready.

J.D. didn’t take time; he took my dignity.

He took something that should only ever be about pleasure and gave me pain and degradation. He showed me that I was nothing to him. I was not human or even animal. I was an object unworthy of kindness or compassion. I was something to be used to make him feel powerful and then passed around to his friends.

Now, he will pay.

Now, he and Jeremy will learn what it feels like to be nothing.

I watch Rosa swing inside, wearing a tiny red dress and stiletto heels, in slow motion. My blood is rushing so loud in my ears I can’t make sense of what she’s saying to J.D. and Jeremy or what they say in return. I don’t feel like myself anymore. I am nothing but rage so huge that it feels like my soul is expanding past the confines of my body until it fills the room, shatters the windows, explodes into the night sky leaving a trail of fire behind.

And then Jeremy and J.D. come through the door and everything happens at once.

Danny comes out swinging and Jeremy falls almost immediately, the thunk of the bat connecting with his skull followed closely by the sound of his body crumpling to the floor. J.D. turns to run, but I’ve already kicked the door closed. In my peripheral vision, I see Danny’s bat swinging through the air as I reach for Rosa. She’s unsteady in her heels and falls into me as I wrap my arm around her neck and squeeze, applying pressure to her carotid arteries.

I’ve never used full force before—sparring on the mats at the gym we were taught to hold back to keep from knocking our partner unconscious—and I’m shocked at how quickly she goes limp in my arms.

It takes maybe seven, eight seconds at most and then I’m guiding her carefully to the floor. I take a moment to look up and see that J.D. and Jeremy are flat on their backs and Danny is already jabbing a needle into Jeremy’s thigh, before turning back to Rosa. I inject her with a much smaller dose of ketamine as gently as I can, not wanting to cause her any more pain, even if she is unconscious, and then sit back on my heels. Danny finishes delivering J.D.’s injection and looks up, meeting my gaze across the bodies littering the floor.

We’re both still for a moment, catching our breath, and then Danny reaches down, grabs the car keys from where they’ve fallen, and tosses them my way.

I catch them with a steady hand.

“I’ll get these two into the trunk,” he says. “You want to pull their car out of the driveway so I can get out?”

I nod, loving him even more for knowing I need to keep this all business. There’s no time for a post-mortem about the events of tonight until after it’s all over.

And maybe not even then.

Maybe this is one of those things that we’ll put to bed and never speak of again, like the time I kissed another boy at a graduation party, or last summer when Danny got drunk and said hurtful things that could ruin us if we gave those memories too much air and sunlight.

Some things are meant to be locked away in the dark and starved of attention until they all but disappear.

But before we can lock them away, we have to see this through.

I stand. “I’ll get Rosa taken care of and meet you at the site.”

“All right,” he says. “Do you need me to come back in and help you get her into the trunk?”

“Nope,” I say. “She’s light and it’s better for you to go. We don’t want those two waking up before you get out of town. I’ll text you after I’ve dropped her off. If you don’t hear from me in thirty minutes, start without me.”

“I’m not starting without you,” he says, kneeling and picking up J.D. with a soft grunt. “If there are people outside her apartment, leave her on the street somewhere and call 911 to let the cops know where she is. The emergency number is the same here as it is in the states.”

“I’m not going to leave her unconscious on the street,” I say, knowing what can happen to women who are left alone and defenseless even for a few minutes. “I’ll get her inside her building, and into her apartment if I can figure out which is hers, and I’ll get to you as fast as I can.”

With a resigned sigh, Danny carries J.D. into the garage. I pull their rental car out to the street and head back inside. While Danny loads Jeremy into the trunk beside J.D., I hustle into the living room and turn off the music before grabbing the bleach spray we bought and mopping up the blood smeared across the floor near Jeremy’s head. J.D. and Rosa didn’t make a mess so all that’s left to do is lock up and get Rosa loaded into the trunk.

As I walk back to the curb to fetch the car, Danny is already backing down the drive. He pulls out into the street and shifts gears, heading off into the night without any parting words out his open window.

I know he thinks I’m taking an unnecessary risk with Rosa, but I have to make sure she’s safe.

My revenge will not claim any innocent lives. And Rosa is innocent, no matter what kind of life she’s chosen to lead. No woman, virgin or whore or anything in between, deserves to have her autonomy taken away. Our bodies belong to us and they are all equally valuable and sacred. I’ve used Rosa, but I won’t abuse her, or leave her vulnerable to anyone else’s abuse.

Carefully, I carry her into the garage and tuck her into the trunk. She’s breathing easy, but I make sure to lay her on her side. I read that some people can have trouble breathing after a ketamine injection and it’s better to be safe than sorry. I leave the key in the drop box by the front door where the rental agreement said to leave it and get back in the car. No one will be by to check on the house until after checkout time at ten tomorrow morning, and no one will be able to say that Danny and I didn’t spend the night here.

Everything is going so smoothly, better than I could have imagined.

I arrive at Rosa’s apartment to find the street deserted except for a couple of bums digging through the trash at the end of the block. I pull the car up to the curb, cut the engine, and wait. It takes a good twenty minutes, but finally the homeless men turn the corner, and I make my move.

I pop the trunk and swing out into the warm night. I’ve removed my mask, but my black long-sleeved shirt and jeans are still too warm for the tropical climate. I’m sweating even before I lift Rosa out of the car. By the time I get us both up the steps and the apartment building’s sticky front door unlocked, beads of perspiration are rolling down my face.

One lands on Rosa’s cheek as I lay her on the stained couch in the lobby. She flinches before letting out a low moan.

Considering her size, she shouldn’t be conscious for another hour or two at least, but apparently Rosa has one hell of a metabolism and is already burning through the meds like a champ. She moans again and I launch into motion.

Heart pounding, I quickly wipe the sweat from her cheek with my sleeve, place her keys into her curled fingers, and head for the door. I force myself to walk to the car, knowing that running attracts attention. But I shouldn’t have worried. There is no one to see me run, and no one to watch as I get back into the car and pull away.

I make it through town without incident, shooting Danny a text that I’m on my way while stopped at a light near the central market.

His response comes through a second later.
See you soon, doll.

Doll. The unexpected pet name makes me frown.

I’m a lot smaller than Danny, but after carrying another woman up a flight of stairs I’m not feeling delicate or doll-like. It bothers me for another reason, too. I’m not sure what it is, but I eventually dismiss the gnawing at the back of my brain, knowing I need to stay focused on more important things.

By the time I reach the gravel road and turn right, heading up into an isolated stretch of jungle not far from the airstrip where I brought Danny for target practice, I’m feeling pretty confident. If the second half of the night goes as smoothly as the first, we’ll be at the airport early enough to grab breakfast in the terminal before we board our flight to Samui, Thailand.

I’m confident, but not cocky.

I’ve never been cocky, even back before the attack, when I was an athlete who had never met a ball she couldn’t spike or a wave she couldn’t ride.

I’ve always known that I have my faults and weaknesses. I’ve always been honest with myself, and I believe that honesty made me better.

While my teammates in high school were busy blaming a lost game on someone else’s performance, I was watching video of the match and seeing where I could improve. When other surfers said they needed a different board or cleaner waves, I kept paddling back out until I found a way to work with whatever the ocean was giving me on a particular day.

I don’t suffer from hubris, that overabundance of pride that doomed so many Greek heroes to tragic fates. I don’t fly too close to the sun, I don’t believe I can take on a six-headed sea monster and come out on top.

So when I pull into the clearing, where the hole Danny and I dug in the forest floor is waiting, to see the rental car’s trunk open, the driver’s door ajar, and the headlights casting eerie shadows across the mouth of the pit, I don’t assume there is a reasonable explanation. I park near the trees, a good hundred feet from the other car and make as little noise as possible getting out. I can’t see if J.D. and Jeremy are in the trunk or the pit, but there is no sign of Danny anywhere nearby and the jungle is weirdly quiet.

I resist the urge to call his name, not wanting to let anyone know I’m here if they haven’t heard the car pull up.

Ears straining and my skin crawling with the certainty that something has gone horribly wrong, I reach into the backseat, open my backpack, and pull out the rifle. Danny wanted me to leave it buried in the woods behind the cabin, but I refused to get rid of it until after all our affairs were in order. Now, it gives me comfort to have a weapon, still assembled and ready to use.