Chapter 7
CHAPTER SEVEN
When we get home, Tyler and I order tacos from our favorite spot, eating on the couch with the TV casting a soft glow across the room. A random stand-up comedy plays, something easy where we can escape mentally for a little while, laughing and letting ourselves fall into it.
The normalcy of it feels borrowed.
Tyler gently nudges my knee with his, making a remark under his breath about the last joke the comedian said, making me laugh harder, causing my head to tip back as the abnormal sound sneaks out of me.
Out of nowhere, his other phone beeps, a very high-pitched sound.
It cuts through the room like a scalpel.
I swallow my next laugh as the air around us shifts, tightening, thickening as if something unseen has just stepped into the space with us.
My eyes snap toward the drawer.
The phone that never goes off unless something happened, something bad.
Tyler automatically freezes next to me, the almost unnoticeable change in him obvious to me.
I stay where I am, observing.
With exaggerated care, he sets his quesadilla down on the plate and reaches for a napkin to wipe his hands. Then he wipes them again, as if he’s buying time before whatever is waiting on that screen becomes real.
The TV keeps playing in the background, and the sound is far away now, forgotten by both of us.
Tyler exhales deeply through his nose and gets to his feet. He doesn’t rush, and somehow that makes it worse.
He crosses the room in a few controlled steps, every movement decisive. Pausing at the drawer and then pulling it open to retrieve the phone.
My gaze is transfixed on him.
As his eyes read the screen, his nostrils flare slightly and his shoulders square. Whatever softness was there a second ago vanishes, replaced by pure concentration.
He doesn’t say a word or look my way. Alternatively, he turns and heads straight for the office. The door shuts behind him with a quiet click, but in the sudden silence, it sounds deafening.
As I sit rooted in the same place, my pulse starts to climb as the weight of what is about to happen settles in.
This is how it always starts. A text. A name.
It sets everything into motion, whether we are ready or not.
I’ve learned not to follow him right away although, in the beginning I did.
I used to run after him not letting that door close, needing to know, needing to see, needing to be in it the second he was. It never ended well, not because Tyler put up a barrier but because I was not ready for what lurked behind that door.
For the things we would find, the horrors we would witness, and the way we would have to harden ourselves just to endure them.
Now I linger, and I give him some time. Allowing him to break into it first and assess, decide, build the angle, and figure out exactly how deep it goes before I step into it with him.
Knowing that once I do, there’s no stepping back out.
After a while, I force myself upright and make my way down the hall. The house feels hollow now, the air crisp on my skin. As I approach the door, I can already hear the rapid clicking of keys.
Tyler has thrown himself headfirst into this.
As I am about to open the door, memories consume my vision as to how this all started.
When we first arrived on the island, Tyler built a fishing charter business.
Early mornings out on open water, salt drying on his skin, and tourists chasing adventure and sunshine.
It took off faster than either of us imagined.
Within a few months, bookings stacked out weeks in advance, money was progressively coming in, and it became enough that he could scale back and bring on managers to handle the day-to-day.
From the outside, we looked like we belonged here, as though we had built something normal.
Beyond funding our lives, it financed our side operations. Taking down local traffickers.
While I was working at the hotel as a receptionist, I cultivated connections with the women who worked there.
The kind that you form when you’re all regarding the same things, feeling the same undercurrent even if no one says it out loud.
Bartenders, waitresses, and housekeeping attendants were around my age or younger.
All of them were far from home, and they all carried that same cunning awareness that something about this place wasn’t as safe as it pretended to be.
We learned each other’s rhythms, covered shifts, walked out together at night, and shared knowing looks when something felt off.
We never said the word, protection, but that’s what it was.
Marie and Sofie slipped into that circle without effort. Marie was a waitress, and Sofie was a housekeeper. They were sisters. Marie was the older one, and Sofie couldn’t have been older than fifteen.
Marie moved through her day as if she had learned early how to take care of herself, fast on her feet and constantly scanning the room without making it obvious. Sofie was always close by her side, delicate, too young, and still holding on to the kind of innocence you want to preserve.
They were inseparable, and somehow, they became inseparable from me too.
They came over to our house after shifts, had dinner with Tyler and I, and laughed with us like they had always been there. Tyler liked them immediately and was easy with them in a way he rarely was with anyone outside of us.
Somewhere in that, something shifted in me, my heart ached for Blair, and they reminded me of her.
Not in the conventional sense, like how they looked or sounded, but how it felt to have them there. As though something I had lost had been placed back into my hands, just long enough for me to believe I could keep it.
Then one day, when I came into work, they didn’t show up for their shift. They didn’t even text me, which was unusual.
The women who worked here didn’t miss shifts. Especially not Marie and Sofie and not both on the same day, without a word.
I started asking around. All the women, bartenders, waitresses, housekeeping, and everyone else who worked there, along with some regulars I had seen come in.
Nothing.
Next, I went to management.
“They quit,” they told me, too nonchalantly.
I tried asking more questions, but they wouldn’t say anything else. There was no plausible explanation for why they would quit when they came here hoping for a better life.
It felt wrong and that feeling lodged itself deep in my gut and refused to leave.
After my shift ended a few days later and still no word, I went right over to their apartment. Worry clouded my judgement on the decision to go solo.
The walk there felt farther than usual, dread in my lower abdomen, the sun going down, shadows stretching across buildings, and all I could hear was my own footsteps across the pavement.
When I reached their door, it was unlocked.
That was the first thing that made my pulse leap.
Marie never left it unlocked.
My hands began to quiver as I nudged the door open.
The putrid smell overwhelmed my senses.
The air was thick with the damp rot of forgotten food, a wet, clinging smell rising from the sink where the dishes sat steeping in cloudy water. The decay of the trash and fruit gone soft and collapsing in on itself, with flies swarming it.
It was humid in a way that doesn’t come from the heat on the island, like the apartment hasn’t breathed since they left.
But beneath it all was their absence.
Then I saw it as I walked further in and peered into the bedroom they shared. Drawers had been ripped open, clothes discarded everywhere, dishes shattered on the floor, and furniture angled out of its original place as if there was some sort of struggle.
My heart started slamming against my chest as I tripped over the carpet, rushing to get out of there.
I stood in front of the neighbor’s door, pounding on it with both fists.
No answer.
I pounded harder until the outside of my fists were sore.
Still nothing.
The third time, I didn’t hold back and used every bit of strength I had and released it.
I heard shuffling on the other side and a few locks undone and then the door creaked open, and an older woman peered out at me, her eyes wary.
She knew. She had seen me before, as recognition showed across her face.
“Where are Marie and Sofie?” I asked, my voice coming out more clipped than I meant for it to.
She tried to shut the door, but I was quicker and stopped it with my foot, putting my hand against the frame, bracing myself.
“Please,” I begged, the word breaking, “I need to know.”
Her attention shifted down the hallway, then back to me, fear washing over her.
“Big Salt,” she whispered.
“Where can I find them?” I asked, advancing closer to her.
Her eyes widened in shock.
“You don’t go looking for Big Salt,” she muttered. “You forget.”
“I’m not forgetting,” I answered, holding my ground and hardening my facial expression.
My tone must have gotten my point across because she leaned in closer to me, and I could smell the cigarette smoke on her breath as her voice came out raspy, “Best case?” She licked her lips, “They’ll be pimped out in brothels.”
The words hit like a physical blow, my mind reeling.
“Worst case, well, you don’t want to know.” She shook her head pitifully.
Goosebumps sweeping over my skin.
“What will happen to them?” I kept digging anyway.
She stared at me then, the wrinkles around her eyes relaxing, enough to tell me she knew the answer but wasn’t going to tell me.
“The look in your eyes, you’re not going to stop.” The words left her in a whisper, as though speaking only to herself.
Then she hauled herself backwards and swung the door shut.
I don’t remember dialing Tyler. My body was shaking too hard, my breath coming too fast, the world shrinking to the noise surrounding me.
When he got there, I was on the curb. Bent forward, trying but failing to steady my breath, sweating profusely with my hands gripping my knees so tightly it was as if I were trying to hold myself together.