I wait there a moment, just one moment, and then I turn away completely, start walking, staring intently at Rosalina until I come to stand directly in front of her.
“Rosalina, this place you told me about, the ranch—do you know where it’s located in the desert?”
Her eyes shift again, this time toward the floor. They stay there for a moment, then shift back up to stare into mine. Wiping at her face, she slowly nods.
I reach out a hand, place it on her arm. “Show me.”
Ten
After I let the Town Car roll to a stop, I place it in park and shut off the engine. We just sit there then in darkness, neither one of us speaking. Eventually I look over at Rosalina. She looks at me. After a moment she nods and points out through the windshield, at the rocky hills in front of us.
“There,” she says. “It’s over there.”
Rosalina had taken me down the road that leads to the private drive that leads back to the ranch. I’d backtracked then to the highway, taken that for a half mile north. At some point I turned off the highway, cut the headlights and did a good job of not hitting the brakes, rolling over the dirt and rocks and through the sagebrush for a quarter mile, so that anybody driving by on the highway wouldn’t see us. Now we’re wrapped in darkness, the moon almost full, the stars bright, and Rosalina has just confirmed what I already know.
“Wait here,” I say.
I’ve already flicked the dome light off, so when I open the door the darkness remains. I open the back door, reach in and grab the sports bag the boys had given me before I left the garage. They may be cowards but they’re not complete assholes, and they didn’t let me walk away empty-handed.
I’ve changed out of the schoolgirl outfit, now wear jeans and a T-shirt. The only weapon I have on me is a Kimber Micro 9 Nightfall, strapped to my ankle.
The other two weapons I pull out of the sports bag: a nine-millimeter SIG Sauer P226 Nitron and an FN 15 Patrol Carbine.
Rosalina opens her door and slowly steps out. Despite everything she still wears her heels and they crunch the dirt in the dead silence.
“You are really going by yourself?”
I set the P226 on the roof to check the rifle, ejecting the magazine, slamming it back in.
“These are very bad men,” Rosalina says. “They will kill you.”
I strap the FN 15 over my shoulder, grab the gun, check its magazine then rack the slide. Reach back into the sports bag for its holster, clip the holster to my belt.
Rosalina persists. “Why are you doing this?”
It makes me pause. Sure, Nova and Scooter asking the same question, that’s one thing, but a complete stranger, an illegal who has been forced into prostitution asking why I’m trying to help save her?
Before I can respond, she says, “You are a killer, yes? A … assassin?”
Actually, when people ask what it is I do for work, I tell them I’m a nanny. I tell them I watch two children, a boy and a girl, who I sometimes wish were my own children and who I sometimes wish would shut the hell up and quit being brats.
The killing people thing, the non-sanctioned government missions, that’s just work on the side that I keep to myself.
“Do you not want me to kill these men, Rosalina?”
She takes a moment to think about this, raising her thumb to her mouth, biting the nail. Finally she shakes her head.
“These men,” she says, “they are very, very bad. But …”
“But?”
“But us women, we are all here in this country illegally. What … what will then become of us?”
It’s like a giant corkscrew jammed into my stomach, being twisted and twisted, this question of hers catching me so off guard. Here is a girl younger than me but yet looks ten years older, who has been forced into a life of prostitution where half the time she is beaten to an inch of her life—here is this girl finding herself preferring this rather than being sent back home.
“Who says you’ll be sent back?”
Rosalina gives a soft, sardonic laugh. “Everyone in this country hates people like me. We are … less than human. We are trash. They will send me back to my country without a second’s thought or care.”
“But wouldn’t you rather be back in your country? Don’t you have anyone there?”
“I have my husband and children, yes.”
Rosalina sees my expression and quickly shakes her head.
“No, no, believe me when I say I love and miss my family more than anything in the world. We came over here four years ago, us and a dozen others. But then the police came and took my husband and children and many of the others away. There were only a few of us left, women, and we had nothing—no money, no shelter, absolutely nothing.”
“I still don’t understand. Why then wouldn’t you want to go back?”
“Because this … this is America.” She says this in such an obvious way, a soft light starting to burn in her eyes. “This is the land of wealth and freedom. You have to work to get it, and once I get it, I will send for my husband and children.”
I see where she’s going with this and ask, “Rosalina, how much money have you earned since you’ve been at the ranch?”
She looks away, tallying the amount up in her head. “Almost six hundred dollars.”
“So that means you need another four thousand four hundred dollars before you are free.”
She nods, slowly, that soft light dimming bit by bit in her eyes.
I don’t tell her the obvious, something she must already know but something she has blinded herself to. She just stares back at me, her eyes filling again, and slowly
