Just another part of her ploy.
“No. I want to help. Renato bad. Run.”
“I know Renato is hurt. You don’t have to tell me that. We’re getting out of this slum. Give me the phone.”
“Yes,” she said. But when she bent down to pick up the phone, Renato said something in Portuguese, and she stopped.
Then, he turned his gaze to me.
“Not the phone, Emily. We must leave now before those people arrive. And we are taking no trackable gadgets with us.”
“But this is our chance. I just need to send one email—tell my boss we’re in Gloria Santa—she can send help.”
“No phone. I’ve already told you. We need to protect ourselves. And Camila . . . she must die.”
Chapter 23
I stared at the phone on the ground, its screen bright against the concrete. Camila’s trembling legs contrasted to the stillness of the case. I had a window to the whole world only a couple of feet away, one that would allow me to call for help. A window kept shut from me for five days.
This was my best chance since the beginning of this madness. I could tell the world where I was. But I would not pull the trigger anymore.
“ I’m not killing her, Renato. What are you talking about?”
Renato spoke energetically. “The moment we leave her house, she’ll put the word out. It’s our lives at stake. She’s chosen a side, not ours, and she needs to face the consequences.”
I looked at Camila, her hands shaking and embracing herself as she waited to die. She didn’t seem to be a menace, not at all. She seemed sincerely frightened, as though we were the ones menacing her, not the other way around.
I glanced back at her phone on the floor, its screen black. A terrible desire to pick it up and type on its virtual keyboard gnawed inside me. I’d never be able to shoot her. Not unless she pointed a gun at me, and it was her or me.
“Renato, I’ll send a single message, then we’ll destroy the phone. I need to let people know I’m alive, and where we are. It won’t take long.”
“All right,” Renato sighed. He went on. “But first I need to check her phone, see what kind of messages she might have sent. Hand it over, Camila.”
Camila bent over and picked the phone up. She reached out trembling hands, uttered Portuguese words, pleading innocence. Renato took hold of the phone and thumbed the screen, scrolling it down. Then he pushed himself up, raised his good arm, and threw the phone against the floor.
He slouched back at the sofa, exhausted, and spoke through lips barely opened, “I told you. She let them know, Emily. She let them know. We can’t trust nobody.”
My stomach shriveled into a mass of grunts and anguish as the shards of the phone, of my only hope, shattered over the house floor. Camila stepped back, shifting her gaze between my eyes and the pistol in my hand.
She must have believed I’d use it at any moment. But Renato was losing his mind. I’d struggled too much, had been chased for too long, to believe that using a stranger’s cell phone would make the sky fall—like it hadn’t already.
Renato, after all, had crushed my best chance.
“Don’t let her out,” he said. “Don’t let her out.”
I fixed my eyes on Camila. Tears welled up in my eyes. I stifled an urge to cry and squeezed the pistol grip. Not to set it off, but to throw it against the wall, to smash it into pieces, along with the TV, the chair, anything to bury myself into, a perfect analogy of what my life had become.
Tears dripped down my cheeks, blurring my sight. When I rubbed my eyes with my back hand, I lost sight of Camila for only one or two seconds. When I opened my eyes I was staggering back, trying to keep straight. Those few seconds I didn’t stare at her, Camila darted toward me like an agile tiger, shoved me aside, and fled out the door.
“Não!” Renato said. “Emily, I told you. Damn it... cough... We gotta go, now. We gotta leave.”
I was destroyed, trying to muster the courage to continue, but I felt relieved. Camila had run away without getting shot.
“I’d never kill her, Renato. I’ve already killed today, and that’s enough for a whole lifetime.”
“I understand, Emily. I know you’re a good person. But we are fighting our own war inside a battle zone. The war for our lives. You have to understand that people die in wars. A life spared might be the one pulling the trigger against us in the future.”
It was hard processing his words. I still carried the illusion that I had been merely undergoing a nightmare, as though at any moment, someone would find me, and pull me out of it, just like waking up. But Renato’s reality drowned my hopes and made that nightmare continue.
“I’m sorry, Renato. I just . . . can’t believe she really intended to give us away.”
“The Devil has pretty faces, Emily. From now on, let me have the gun.”
“But you can barely walk,” I said.
“I’m strong enough to pull the trigger. There’s no room for hesitation if we want to stay alive.” He shifter over the couch, moaning. “Now, let me have it.”
I felt dizzy, incapable of taking in my surroundings, of properly recognizing the signs my eyes and my other senses were catching.
When coming up to Gloria Santa, I wasn’t welcome in the slum. The ugly stares were convincing. Yet, Renato assured me they came from frightened, fragile people that could only trust what they knew. And now, when
