4. Sandrine
Sandrine
“So can I call you this weekend, El?” Vince lingers at the table to keep chatting with Elodie.
“I’m busy with work,” my cousin says, playing it cool, making the rejection look effortless. “I’m working on a big story in Vegas.”
“I’ll give you a call next week then.” Vince shoves his hands into his pockets and walks off across the sunlit plaza with a kick in his step, thinking he has a chance.
When he disappears around the corner, I look down at my melting ice cream in a cup bigger than I wanted. I asked for a small cup, but Vince got us both large, like spending the extra fifty cents would impress my cousin.
“Sorry about that. God, I forgot how exhausting he is,” Elodie apologizes, pushing her sunglasses up into her hair. “You feeling better now after an hour at the spa?”
“I’m fine,” I reply, licking the stickiness from my thumb.
I’ve learned to say fine a lot. Fine keeps people from asking too many questions.
“I’m so glad I was home when Marlowe called,” Elodie says, her tone serious. “If I’d been in Vegas, I couldn’t have gotten here. Are you sure you’re feeling okay? What triggered the episode?”
Again, I see that painting on the student’s phone in my head. If I bring it up, it might reveal something that would restrict my freedom.
“It was all the questions,” I say and try for one more soupy taste of the ice cream.
“I spoke to Lourdes and Ares when Dr. Waters brought up using you for the case study. We were hoping it would work out differently.”
“It’s just been a stressful week. New meds. New therapies.”
“Right.” Elodie pokes at her ice cream, too, mimicking me.
“How is that story coming?” I ask her about the article she’s writing.
A story that’s got her all tense.
“I’m being very careful.” She’s been flying back and forth to Las Vegas for months. “That place is crawling with mafia.”
The word catches in my throat with a sharp little hook.
Mafia.
That word shouldn’t mean anything to me, but my body reacts before my mind can catch up. That small twitch in my fingers starts again. But just one. On my left hand. Odd.
“Is Ares mafia?” The question slips out before I can stop it. “He’s rich and made all kinds of things happen for Lourdes.”
Elodie goes stiff, and color rises faintly in her cheeks. “You should ask your sister that,” she says, pursing her lips. “She’s still the boss.”
I scoff a laugh. The boss of what I’m told and not told. Like how she planned to move me out of the Chicago state home and the New York facility well before she told me.
Still, the idea of being part of the mafia now builds pressure at the back of my head again. It’s a dull, persistent throb. Like something is trying to push through from the other side. I gently rub my temples as I breathe through my nose.
I wait to see something behind my mind’s eye. But the sensation passes. It always passes.
Elodie watches me carefully, then glances down at her watch. “We should probably get going,” she says. “Your appointment with Dr. Giles is in forty minutes.”
“I appreciate your gynecologist taking me on as a patient.” I hide the disdainful thought of a man I don’t know touching me.
My cousin nods. “Do you remember seeing a gyno before your accident, Jess?”
Jess. The name has been rubbing me the wrong way lately for some reason.
“No,” I say after a moment, shaking my head. “I don’t remember anything from before.”
“Right. I’m sorry.” Elodie leans forward, her eyes lowering. “Okay, then I’m going to ask you something, and you can totally tell me to shut up if it’s weird.”
I blink, caught off guard. “Okay.”
“Have you had sex?”
Heat rushes to my face so fast it feels like I’ve been burned. “No,” I choke out, my pulse hammering in my throat. “Not since, since the accident anyway.”
“You were nineteen when you fell,” she says, with an investigative pitch. “It’s possible you did. Before.”
“I don’t know.” I shrug and stare down at the melting remains of my ice cream, watching it collapse in on itself. “If I did, I don’t remember.”
God, I feel like I’ve said that a million times. But Elodie is touching a nerve that has nothing to do with my lack of memories.
“And I haven’t really been interested in that. Sex,” I add to clarify. “But lately… I don’t know. I feel different.”
“Different how?” Elodie asks, her tone sharpening with interest.
I shift in my seat, suddenly aware of my body in a way that is new and strange. “Tingling feelings. Hormones, maybe,” I say, fumbling for the right word. “A doctor at the place in New York told me that could happen as I got better. My cycle was off forever. It’s finally on a regular schedule.”
Elodie’s eyes light up, leaning forward again. “Do you think you’re ready to have sex?”
“I don’t know.” I give a soft, nervous laugh. “I’ve been having dreams.”
“Oh, this sounds good,” she says, grinning. “Tell me everything.”
“They’re not clear,” I admit, closing my eyes for a second as I try to grasp the vision in my head that always slips away when I reach for it.
“Of a man. But I can’t see his face. Not really.
There are just shadows. But he’s tall. I can tell.
” I swallow, searching for the shape of him.
“He’s lean. Has a square jaw and big tattooed hands. ”
Sometimes they’re around my neck. And I like it.
Elodie’s grin widens, her eyes dancing. “Go on.”
“But he’s kind,” I add. “He keeps telling me everything will be okay. That I have nothing to worry about.”
My words linger in the air, and when I open my eyes, Elodie’s expression has darkened.
“That’s pretty specific.” She breathes out slowly. “Did it feel non-consensual?”
I know that word. I’ve learned it from soft-voiced therapists in sessions where they taught me how to name sensitive subjects.
I shake my head. “No,” I say firmly. “It doesn’t feel like that.”
My cousin studies me, waiting for me to elaborate.
“It felt…” I hesitate, my pulse picking up again. “Rough,” I admit, an unfamiliar heat curling low in my stomach. “But I liked it.”
Elodie’s concern melts into a delighted grin, and she reaches across the table to pinch my arm. “You might have been a little sex kitten,” she teases. “Don’t worry. We’ll get your groove back when you’re ready.”
I scoff, doubting it.
Together we stand, tossing our napkins and empty cups into the trash. The sun has shifted in the sky while we ate the ice cream. It feels warmer, the air heavier as midday approaches.
We walk side by side toward the parking lot, the pavement warm beneath my flip-flops.
“I’m parked in the east Marlowe lot,” Elodie tells me, pointing that way.
I see her red SUV a few rows down. She drives us everywhere. I never learned to drive after that accident. I don’t even know if I had a license to begin with. But I’m still prone to anxiety attacks, so driving right now is off the table for me.
I’m halfway through asking my cousin something about the gyno appointment, about what to expect while being examined, when my world changes.
It’s like glass shattering in slow motion.
Tires skid and a black SUV comes up beside us. The rear passenger door flies open and cool air spills out. Next, men are everywhere. They’ve got on black masks, dark clothing, and they’re carrying long guns.
Arizona is an open carry state. I’ve seen these. But why are they surrounding us?
“What the hell is this?” my cousin says, pushing me behind her.
“Elodie—” I start, but my voice dies in my throat as one of the men steps right in front of us, his rifle angled at her head.
Oh no. Her story. The mafia.
“Don’t scream,” a tall, bulky man in front of us says, his voice low and controlled. “And do not run.”
My body locks, every muscle going rigid. My heart slams so hard in my chest it feels like it might crack my ribs.
Elodie pulls me against her back. “What do you want, fuckface?” she hisses at the men.
The taller one tilts his head. “I want your little friend there.”
What little friend? Wait. Me?
Next, a set of hands grabs me from behind, rough and unyielding. I reach for Elodie and catch her purse, dragging her with us.
“Not you,” the man grabbing me orders her. “Walk away.”
The scent of leather and musky cologne fills my nose, strong and suffocating.
“Not a chance,” Elodie argues. “This is my cousin. You’re not taking her.”
“We are taking her,” the second man says, his voice gravelly and lethal.
Even cold and dangerous, I know that voice. I think I do. But the only sound I hear now is the rush of blood in my ears.
Elodie’s protest fails. The man with the gravelly voice drags me toward the open SUV. But my cousin doesn’t let go of me.
The SUV’s interior is dark and cavernous, like a mouth waiting to swallow me whole.
“We are not getting in this thing.” Elodie resists one more time.
The two men look at each other, then sigh, right before they pounce. The gravelly man grabs me, the tall man grabs her.
“Get your hands off her!” Elodie snaps, twisting against the grip on her arms. “Do you know who you’re—”
The world tilts as I’m lifted next, my feet leaving the ground for a second before I’m thrown into the SUV.
The arm of a captain’s chair slams into my side, knocking the breath from my lungs.
Sharp pain blooms in my hip immediately.
There’s no time to process it before Elodie is shoved in after me, landing just as hard in the seat next to me.
The door begins to close, the strip of sunlight narrowing, cutting us off from the world.
The man whose voice tickled something inside my soul catches the door with his gloved hand and climbs in. He sits in a rear-facing seat behind the other masked man who sits in the front passenger seat.
Gravelly man stays rigid and watchful. For just a second, I see the chaos behind his blue eyes, glowing through the holes in his mask.
Then all the locks engage.
“Go,” he hisses. “Airport.”
Airport?