The CIA Shit #2
To her right, she’d eventually circle through too many empty rooms where the performers held their nightly acts.
Nothing to hide behind there unless she barricaded herself in one of the control rooms that oversaw the mechanics of each space.
She’d be blocked in, but eventually they’d be able to force their way through the barricade.
While it might buy her a few more minutes to breathe, it wouldn’t stop them.
Behind her was the lobby and two branches of the outer circle that would lead her to the performers’ spaces.
If she could get to the lobby fast enough, she could possibly get into the rafters, and there would be plenty of places to hide.
But the space was one giant circle, and again, Guillermo would be able to find her hiding space quickly.
Her only option was forward. She recognized a roaring lion painted on the wall, which Triumph had told her was a clue to how to get to The Lion’s Den, a small, hidden bar.
The turn was cleverly camouflaged about twenty feet farther along that wall, on the right.
If she could get to the secret spot, she might stand a chance as they searched for the hidden passage.
At a dead sprint, she raced for the point in the wall where she could disappear.
She had almost reached the end of the passageway when she heard Guillermo roar her name. Ducking into the spot, she quickly pulled the hinge on the floor Triumph had told her about, the one that held the couple he’d caught, and closed it before Guillermo was close enough to see the panel moving.
Holding her breath, she didn’t dare move so much as an inch. On the other side of her hiding spot, she heard the two men come to a skidding halt. Guillermo roared again, this time an inarticulate exhalation of rage, and he emptied the magazine of his gun into the ceiling.
He shouted at Cesar in Spanish. Cesar answered, his words calm and measured, although he was definitely breathing hard from the run through the maze.
When they began walking away in separate directions, looking for where she’d suddenly vanished, she carefully and quietly let out her breath so she could take in more air.
Stealthily, she turned to the wall behind her, reached down to the hinge, and prayed it was well-oiled and would unlock easily.
When it did, she sent up a silent thanks to Triumph’s control-freak nature that required everything to be in perfect working condition, and she took off down the new avenue created.
Her success was short-lived. Something gave her away because she heard Guillermo call out to her. “Very sneaky, Glennon. But you’ve nowhere to go. Might as well give up now.”
She dared to take another precious moment to think. Where to go? She’d made it to the arcade, but now where? Behind the food-truck facades? The center of the carousel to hide inside the mechanical room? Under one of the game-booth skirts?
Movement and the sound of heavy weight sliding along the floor pulled her gaze to the far left corner of the open space.
Her eyes lit up at the next sight she took in.
Through the entry to the Hall of Mirrors, she could see the panels shifting!
They had turned on with all the other elements of the club when she hit the preset switch.
Did she dare? She would be caught in its web, but so would Guillermo and Cesar, and perhaps that could be used to her advantage.
Once again, she took off as fast as she could, not bothering to look behind her as she entered the maze within the maze, hoping to lose herself in the ever-shifting space.
Moments later, Glennon stood in the middle chamber, or what she thought was the middle chamber, and allowed her body to come down from its flight response.
Hundreds of her reflected back in the ten-foot-tall panels, then reflected within the reflections of each other.
It was difficult to tell which way to turn.
Intellectually, she knew there were hallways to duck into, but psychologically, the experience was overwhelming.
She took two steps forward and to the left to try to orient herself to the wall, but the movement of all the other versions of her created a sense of vertigo and a lack of direction. Putting her eyes to the floor, she stared at her shoes like Triumph taught her.
Before lifting her eyes, she took several more steps to the left until her hand touched the glass at her side.
Leaving her hand on its surface, she began the slow ascent of looking up her body, across her arm, and to her fingertips, until she saw her reflection at her point of origin.
Turning her back and pressing it against the glass she’d come to think of as her home base, she felt some of the nausea and sense of falling leave her.
She slid along the mirrored walls until she hit a gap that created a hallway.
She was about to slip into it when there was a grinding noise, and the mirrors began to flip into their new positions, obliterating the path she’d intended to slip down.
Even though she’d known they moved, it was still discomforting.
Hopefully, her knowledge about the randomness of shifts and times would help her and lead the men into a false sense of security.
She prayed her plan would work to her advantage.
Guillermo’s voice took her by surprise. “I never took you for a vain woman, Gigi.”
Fuck! How had he found her so fast? Were they both inside, moving toward her? Or had only Guillermo entered, leaving Cesar to guard either the entrance or the exit? There was no way to know until she left the space.
The voice sounded like it came from her right, but when she looked, there was no one there. He could be right on the other side of the mirror she stood against. She prayed the walls didn’t shift and reveal her to him, like a haunted house’s revolving bookcase.
“You always hated mirrors while we were together. It was one of the reasons I found you so interesting. You didn’t spend hours in front of them like most women do.”
“I couldn’t stand to look at myself,” she answered. “I hated who I’d become, even though it was necessary.”
Guillermo made a clicking sound with his tongue and teeth. “Yes. You weren’t who I thought you were. Pity. Apparently, even I can be fooled by a beautiful woman.”
“You were never as smart as you thought you were.”
“Perhaps not.”
She heard his shoes clicking against the glass-covered floor, and he suddenly came into view. When she first saw him, however, he wasn’t looking at her. He was looking to her right, and she realized what she had thought was him was actually a reflection of him.
“It’s time to stop this, Gigi,” he chided.
“We know that in the end, I’m going to win.
Why tire yourself out? Come out now, and I promise to make the end quick.
Well… quicker than it will be if you draw it out.
I guarantee… if that occurs? I’ll make it the most painful experience you’ve ever felt.
And you’d best hope I find you first, my dear, because if Cesar finds you before I do?
I’ve granted him the prize of an opportunity to do as he wishes since he was so rudely cheated inside the gap. I don’t think you want that.”
Her throat closed up. No, absolutely she did not.
“I think I’ll pass.”
He hummed in response. Suddenly, he was in front of her. “I guess today you got lucky.”
A chill ran through her body. She knew Guillermo’s cruelty. During her nine years at his side, she’d witnessed it firsthand. The worst, though, had been the violence against women.
His gun was nowhere to be seen. He reached for her injured hand and squeezed it while he raised it to his lips. She couldn’t keep back the wail of pain, and it made him smile. After kissing the back of it, he left it in his hand, the other covering the top of it, now able to squeeze it even harder.
She wanted to sink to her knees in pain, but that would be unadvisable, so she focused all her energy on remaining standing, even when she heard the crunching sound as he broke a bone.
“Ah, corazón, why do you make me hurt you this way? We could have been so wonderful together. You could have been my queen. Together, we could have controlled all of Argentina. Maybe even all of South America one day. Why couldn’t you have been exactly who you pretended to be?”
“Fuck you!” she spat. “I was always who I was. You were just too stupid to see the truth.”
Smack!
Her head snapped to the left, and stars twinkled at the edges of her vision. A faint hint of blood hit her tongue from where her teeth cut into her cheek at the slap. Apparently, taunting Guillermo was not one of her better choices.
She doubled down and spat the blood onto his white suit.
Oops. Sorry, not sorry.
The next thing she knew, his hand was pinching her jaw, and he had smashed his mouth down onto hers, forcing his tongue inside.
Desperately, she tried to clamp down on it with her teeth, but his grip was too strong, and his squeezing her in the same place Cesar had days ago, created new trauma on top of the old.