After Leila helps Eleanora into the passenger seat, she gently shuts the door and turns to me.
“I … I don’t know what to say.”
“You don’t have to say anything.”
“How”—she pauses, shakes her head in wonder—“how did you do this?”
“I didn’t do anything.”
In the dark, I note a speck of confusion on her face but it quickly morphs to understanding.
“Were … those men there?”
I glance past her at Eleanora in the car. I figure Eleanora will probably tell her everything. Not only what happened between me and the two men, but what those men may have done to her after they abducted her. I’d tried asking Eleanora about her abduction, in case anybody else was involved, but she was exhausted once we made it back to the car, and I didn’t want to put any further stress on her.
“Is she an illegal?”
Leila says nothing. Which is all the answer I need.
“Then I’m going to assume you won’t report what happened to her. I would keep it that way.”
Understanding flicks across her face again.
“Those men—”
I cut her off.
“Are no longer going to be a problem.”
I pause, watching her in the dark, not wanting to ask the next question but knowing I have no other choice.
“Are there others?”
“Others?”
“Who were taken.”
She shakes her head, a deliberate back and forth.
“Not that I know of.”
My first impulse is to tell her to call if she hears of any other girls being abducted. Mulkey and Kyer can’t have been the only two running this particular racket. There are no doubt others, but … no, I can’t get involved in this. I’ve already done more than I should. I killed two men tonight, and while I’ve killed several in the past, that was a different life. I’m no longer that person, and I can’t risk any further exposure.
When I realize Leila Simmons is waiting for me to speak, I softly clear my throat.
“Good.”
I wait another beat, and then tilt my chin at the car.
“Take care of her.”
Leila Simmons nods.
“I will.”
I don’t tell her to call if she needs anything else. I don’t tell her that the phone I’d called her on will be stripped apart and its pieces scattered along the highway. That as far as this woman is concerned she’s never going to see me again. I don’t tell her any of that, because I think she’s smart enough to figure it out, just as she’s smart enough to know she needs to be the one to leave first.
Leila doesn’t say anything else. She just looks at me one last time before climbing into her car.
Eleanora twists in her seat when Leila pulls out of the rest stop, the girl raising her hand goodbye.
I don’t bother returning the gesture. I don’t even acknowledge her with a nod. Because I can’t invest any further time in the girl or the woman. It may sound harsh, but they’re strangers to me, and that’s all they’ll ever be.
The Jetta accelerates as it heads west, its taillights a dim red before fading completely.
I wait there for another minute, listening to the silence of the night, the distant chorus of insects calling from the desert, before I slip into my car and head back to the place I’ve come to think of as home.
Sixteen
Another brown paper bag is waiting for me outside my apartment door. This time the gift inside is big enough to tell exactly what it is. It’s squat and circular, and the note on top—another folded piece of paper—simply says, In case you run out.
A roll of toilet paper. Hardy har har.
I consider knocking on Erik’s door, playfully tossing the toilet paper at his face, but I feel sticky from sweat and smell of gasoline, and besides, I still have my weapons.
Inside my apartment, I set the toilet paper on the kitchen table next to the box of Imodium A-D, as well as the knife and the pistols. They’ll need to be cleaned, which is something I’ll do after my shower. It’ll feel good to clean the weapons—a familiarity I’ve long missed—but they’ll have to wait.
I head to the bathroom, stripping out of my clothes as I go, so that when I flick on the light I’m only wearing my bra and panties. I study my face in the mirror, at the place where the cowboy backhanded me. A slight bruise, but it’s not too noticeable. Nothing a healthy dollop of makeup can’t hide.
I slide the shower curtain back and turn on the water and adjust the faucets until the temperature’s just right, and then I step into the tub and pull the curtain shut and tilt my face down so the warm water beats at the back of my head.
Part of me hopes the shower will not only rid me of the sweat and gasoline but also my exhilaration. Tonight for the first time in a year I felt alive again. Like I had a purpose. For once my existence didn’t consist of the mundane—shelving books, serving drinks—but for a couple hours I had felt like the old me.
And it wasn’t only saving Eleanora—that should have been enough—but what I did to those two men. Making them pay for their crimes. Making sure they would never hurt another helpless girl.
Stop. Just stop it.
I don’t want to be that person again, do I? I made the choice to walk away from everything. To tell Walter Hadden I was done—not just being a bodyguard to his two children, but to all of it. The non-sanctioned work I’d done for the government. The covert missions. The assassinations. The knowledge that with every life I took it was in service to the country and to normal Americans who went about their every day lives completely oblivious to the constant danger surrounding them.
Of course, it wasn’t only Walter and the work I’d walked away from. It was the knowledge that my father—our team leader, who all my life I’d considered a hero—wasn’t really dead. That
