Chapter 55
FIFTY-FIVE
The door shut with a soft click.
Lucía didn’t flinch, but her spine stiffened. She sat in the center of the large room, wrists bound to the arms of a metal chair, feet strapped at the ankles. There were no windows. Just one bare bulb above her and a drain in the floor that whispered its own implications.
She’d been waiting nearly an hour. The restraints bit at her wrists.
Her shoulder throbbed where the gunshot wound had reopened during the struggle.
Her mouth was dry, but her mind was clear.
Sharp. She had catalogued every sound in the building: the scuff of boots on tile, the clack of a radio clipped to someone’s vest, the low murmur of Spanish outside the door. But not his voice. Not yet.
Then: the latch had turned. The door had opened. And in Javier Esquivel had walked. Strolled, actually, like it was a wine bar and not a torture chamber.
He was alone, and he appeared to be unarmed.
Somehow, he looked exactly as she remembered, and yet nothing like she remembered.
The silver at his temples had grown and there were more lines on his face.
And yet that squared-jawed, movie-star handsomeness was still intact.
His shirt was custom-made, crisp and elegant, sleeves rolled with surgical precision.
And he was carrying her ghost laptop, which she’d last seen… Where? In their SUV back at the abandoned motel?
He didn’t smile, and his tone was business-like. “Lucía.”
She didn’t respond.
He stepped closer. His cologne reached her: something expensive, citrus, cedar. Not the same as before, and yet so like him it seemed to slot into her memory of him with ease.
“You look…feral,” he said. “I was worried the American had domesticated you.”
Lucía stared at him. “Where’s the boy?”
Javier cocked his head. “No pleasantries? I’m a little hurt.
” He crossed to a metal table against the wall and placed the laptop down carefully.
Then picked up a blowtorch, inspecting it like he wasn’t sure what its function was.
The slight smile playing on his face said otherwise.
“But maybe not as much as you’re about to be. ”
Lucía’s stomach felt like it had dropped out of her body. She gripped the armrests of the chair. “Where is he?”
He continued to ignore the question. “You’re angry,” he said. “That’s good. It means you haven’t given up yet.”
Lucía’s jaw flexed.
“I always admired that about you. You weren’t like the others. Pretty, yes. But you didn’t lead with it. You were smart. Hardworking. You wanted things.”
“I wanted to matter,” she said coldly. “I mistook you for someone who could give me that.”
Finally, Javier smiled. “And I did, didn’t I?”
“You gave me a cell with better furniture.”
He placed the blowtorch down with exaggerated care, then stepped closer to her. “You remember how I work, don’t you?” he asked, voice low. “You remember the nights you came to my office. How you used to look at me?”
She felt the air shrink.
“I remember,” she said. “I remember trying to please you. Trying to survive.”
He smiled. “You did more than survive.”
She shook her head slowly. “I was young. I was hungry. And you knew exactly what to do with girls like me.”
“Mmmm,” he said, like he was remembering exactly that. “I did, didn’t I?”
Lucía’s cheeks flamed. Before she had a chance to respond, his hand whipped out, as quick as a snake, to grip her jaw. He squeezed hard. His black eyes looked bottomless, empty. How had she ever thought he was handsome? He was grotesque.
“Do you know what’s beautiful about our history?
” he said. “It’s unfinished. This ledger, this vendetta, it’s just a footnote.
You and I? We’re the real story.” He leaned down until their faces were inches apart.
“I’m offering you a way out,” he said. “One last time. Give me the passphrase. The key.”
It was hard to speak with his hand on her jaw. “And if I refuse?”
He let go, and stood, smoothed his hands down his suit. “I really hope you don’t. You always had such beautiful skin.”
Lucía swallowed. Her wrists burned. Her shoulder ached. Her whole body ached.
But what hurt the most wasn’t from her bindings, or her wounds, or even from the fear of what he was about to do to her.
It was from recognition. From realizing that this was who he’d always been. This was who she had once bent herself around, like ivy curling around a poisoned tree. “You think I’ll trade what’s in my head for your mercy.”
“I do,” he said, in that low, certain way of his. As if to provide evidence of his certainty, he turned back to the table and picked up the blowtorch again. He clicked the igniter, and the bright blue flame flared to life.
He came back around to face her, squatting down so he was level with her.
He didn’t say anything, just looked up at her with an almost adoring expression, like he was trying to memorize her face.
It was an expression a man might give the woman he loved, if this were a romance and not a horror story.
He lifted the blowtorch, but he didn’t direct it to her skin. Instead, he aimed the flame at the metal frame of the chair near her thigh.
Lucía felt a tremble start in her legs and travel up her body. She could control her mind, she could lean into the fear, but her bones and tissue and sinews wanted no part of what was about to happen.
The metal began to warm beneath her. The hiss of the torch grew louder. The air shimmered with heat. Then the heat crept upward, slow at first, until her skin began to prickle, then throb. Then the metal began to tick, soft, irregular pings as it expanded under the flame.
The sound got inside her head.
Ping. Ping. Ping.
“You just need to say the words, Lucía, and it all stops.”
Her mouth was dry, but somehow she managed to collect enough saliva in her mouth to spit on his face.
Javier didn’t react; he just kept the gas flame directed at the metal frame. At the point of contact, the metal had turned white hot.
Her throat worked, but she refused to make a sound. The smell of something acrid reached her—burned oil, scorched dust, maybe fabric—and for a moment she told herself that was all it was. Then came the pain.
It didn’t come as a wave. It bloomed. A flower of fire spreading under her thighs, into the soft places at the back of her legs, along the curve of her spine.
Her body jolted once, involuntary, and the zip ties at her ankles bit deep. Her breath came fast and short, the way it did before crying, but she wouldn’t cry. She couldn’t give him that.
Javier watched her, head tilted slightly, studying her face like a man assessing a work of art.
“Pain,” he said quietly, almost conversationally. “It isn’t the enemy, Lucía.”
He shifted the torch a few inches. The blue flame licked along the frame. The heat climbed. The metal armrest began to glow faintly orange.
The smell changed. Stronger. Sharper. Meatier.
Lucía’s stomach lurched. She bit the inside of her cheek until she tasted blood.
Another ping. The chair popped loudly as the welds expanded.
Lucía’s mind fractured into two distinct planes—one screaming, the other counting. She counted her breaths. Counted how long it had been since he’d turned the flame on. Twenty seconds? Thirty? The air smelled of burned hair and something worse.
“Say the password,” he said softly. “It’s only a few words. Just words, querida.”
The back of her legs felt wet now. Sweat, she told herself. It’s just sweat.
“Fuck you,” she whispered.
Javier watched her for a long moment, the torch steady, the reflection of its flame turning his eyes a hellish gold. Then, finally, he shut it off. The silence afterward was almost unbearable—her pulse roaring in her ears, her breath ragged.
He stood, set the torch on the table with delicate care. “I’ll be back in an hour for round two,” he said, almost tenderly. “And you’ll beg before sunrise.”
He straightened, checked the cuffs on her wrists as though adjusting jewelry, then walked to the door. Then he was gone. The door shut behind him with that same soft click.
Lucía sat in the stillness, panting, her body trembling uncontrollably.
She stared at the flame-shaped shadow still dancing on the wall from the afterimage burned into her retinas.
The smell of scorched metal filled her nose; the pain was so complete it felt almost distant now, as if it belonged to someone else.