CHAPTER 29
CAMILA
I had thrown-in my baby blue dress with the small white flowers on it into my bag the night we moved to the safe house, and now I was glad I did. The color matched the streamers, and I was choosing to believe it was a good omen rather than just a coincidence. Today’s event would be a success.
I came downstairs at seven-thirty to find Jason standing in the kitchen drinking coffee, and I stopped on the bottom step.
He was wearing the most comprehensively ridiculous outfit I had ever seen on an adult human being.
Multicolored stripes, jester-style, in every color that existed and several that shouldn’t.
This was what was in the bag Audrey had slipped into Jason’s hand the evening before, and I had pretended not to notice it.
I knew they were planning something big for the event, but that it included Jason becoming a ridiculous, silly clown, I couldn’t have guessed.
He was wearing a matching jester hat with small bells at the points.
And on his nose — his perfectly proportioned, objectively handsome nose — was a large red clown nose.
I started laughing before I could stop myself.
Then I registered his expression.
He was on the phone, and his face had the FBI-handler expression. He was talking to Briggs. I stopped laughing.
He caught my eye and held up one finger. One moment.
I waited.
“I understand the recommendation.” His voice was even, professional, the voice of someone who had spent years making decisions under pressure. “And I’m choosing to disregard it. I have the ability to protect my wife.” A pause. “My ex-wife. I’ll be in contact.”
He hung up.
He looked at me for a moment, and then the controlled expression released and he smiled. He honked the clown nose.
“How do I look?”
“Exactly as you intended,” I smiled. “Exactly as you and Audrey planned.” I looked at him properly.
“What did Briggs say?”
He set his coffee mug down. “The bodyguard, Pablo Moreno, was spotted in town last night.”
The morning felt slightly different after that — the same sunshine, the same blue dress, but with something underneath it that hadn’t been there before.
“Briggs said we shouldn’t go to the event today. It’s not safe.”
He looked at me directly. “But I told him we’re going. You’ve been planning this for months. The animals are ready. The people are coming.”
He picked up his jester hat, which had fallen slightly sideways, and straightened it. “You’re going to get a record donation this year.”
I looked at him — in his clown outfit, with his red nose, ready to take on the day, despite the warning.
“Okay,” I said.
He honked his nose, apparently testing its reliability.
“Let’s go,” I said.
The show was extraordinary.
I say this as someone who had seen pictures and videos of every Happy Hopes fundraiser for the past ten years and knew what they usually looked like — earnest, warm, modestly attended, the kind of event that raised enough to matter and not quite enough to transform.
This was different from the first hour.
Jason took the space as if he had been doing this for years, which — in the clown outfit, with the jester bells ringing with every step — should not have worked as well as it did.
But children attached themselves to him immediately. He gave them his full attention, making silly jokes, kneeling to their level, letting them interact with the animals, building the crowd’s investment in each creature before the tricks began.
Audrey was his sidekick, also in costume — a sequined ringmaster jacket she had apparently acquired at short notice — and together they had arranged the show with a structure that built and built.
Paco the beagle and his figure-eights. The border collies sitting in a perfect line. Three dogs walking in formation, weaving between Jason’s legs, circling Audrey, returning to their marks with a focused joy.
And then Sparkles.
Sparkles, who eleven days ago had been in a corner refusing to eat, walked to the center of the space on a lead held by Jason, sat when he asked, lifted one paw, and accepted her treat with quiet dignity.
The crowd went crazy when Audrey took to the microphone to give them a background of Sparkle’s story.
I stood at the edge of the space with my hand over my mouth and did not cry, which took more effort than I was willing to admit.
And then — the turtle. The ninety-year-old, famously antisocial turtle, carried in carefully by Jess and placed on a low platform, where it proceeded to follow a piece of lettuce held by Jason in a slow, determined circle while the audience lost its collective mind.
At the end of the show, when the crowds were still milling and the animals were being settled, Jess came over to me.
“Come to the office,” she said. “There’s something you need to see.”
An email was open on her computer. It was a donation confirmation for the shelter for five million dollars, sent through the shelter’s official channel, timestamped forty minutes ago.
I sat in Jess’s chair and read it twice.
The donor was anonymous, but there was a mandatory phone number they had to provide. It was Jason’s number.
Jason was donating five million dollars towards a full renovation of the animal enclosures, extra rooms for storage, and brand new office supplies.
He had done it quietly. Without making it a gesture or a statement or anything that required a response.
He had just done it.
I stood up, thanked Jess, and walked out of the office.
I had to thank him. For the donation, for the event. For dressing up like a clown, when he could be back in Florida, closing deals worth millions of dollars. I had to thank him for everything.
I stood at the edge of the entrance door and looked out into the afternoon sun at the outdoor space where the event was taking place. It took me a minute to spot him.
Jason had changed out of the clown outfit into a white t-shirt and blue jeans. He was talking to a family with two small boys, laughing at something the older one had said.
I was just about to step out toward him, when someone grabbed me from behind.
A hand covered my mouth before I could make a sound. And I was pulled backward into the shadow at the side of the building so fast that the afternoon sun simply disappeared.
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The hand over my mouth was enormous and immovable.
I recognized Pablo immediately — the heavyset frame, the flat professional eyes. He half-carried, half-dragged me toward the back of the building while I twisted and fought with everything I had. It made no difference.
Then Scarlett stepped out of the shadow.
She looked at me the way she had looked at me in the stateroom on the cruise — measuring, dismissive, entirely unbothered.
The sounds of the fundraiser carried faintly from the other side of the building. Children laughing. Applause. A world that was twenty meters away and completely unreachable.
Pablo forced me toward a white van parked in the far corner of the lot, hidden behind a delivery truck.
Scarlett said something in Spanish, and Pablo reached for a rope.
Then Scarlett looked at my blue dress with the white flowers and said simply: strip her first.
What followed was quick and brutal and designed to humiliate. Pablo tied up my hands with the rope, and put duct tape on my mouth. I tried to yank out of his grip, all the while keeping my eyes focused on Scarlett. She had a wicked, twisted smile on her face.
“Strip her, Pablo.” She shouted again.
He grabbed the neckline of my dress, and tore the entire dress apart in one swift motion. I stood just in my black bra and panties, and I was shaking, but gathered enough strength to try one last time to escape.
As I wriggled and tried to escape Pablo’s grip, Scarlett came closer to me, and yanked down one cup of my black bra. She smiled as one of my breasts came exposed. I felt humiliated, scared and completely helpless.
She ordered something more to Pablo in Spanish. He bound my ankles with the rope and threw me into the van’s cargo space.
The doors slammed.
The engine started.
Through a narrow gap in the panel, I watched the shelter disappear, and then the town, and then there was only forest.