The question I was too afraid to ask: If you’re already taking them, then how can I get you sick?
“I’ll go to a clinic tomorrow,” I said.
“Sorry,” he said. “You had your chance.”
That was a lie. He hadn’t talked to me about this weeks ago, like he claimed. He’d mentioned it in passing the day before, at breakfast.
He had me follow him into the bathroom, then watch as he took two pills and mashed them down to powder with the end of a toothbrush. Then he brushed the powder into the cup, swished the water around, and handed the cup to me.
“Here,” he said. “The medicine makes its way through your system more rapidly once it’s dissolved.”
What choice did I have? My visa, my livelihood—everything depended on this man. I didn’t even have enough money for a flight home. I took the cup, tried to hide the fact that my hand was shaking. He smiled as I drank it down.
“Very good,” he said. “Very good.”
It wasn’t until later that I realized this was a trial run. He wanted to see if the taste of the drink would make me gag or grimace. It didn’t. It tasted like nothing. That pleased him.
“Go on, now,” he said. “I think there’s some broken glass in the game room. Anna was stumbling around drunk last night, as usual.”
I didn’t feel dizzy right away, or if I did, then I don’t remember it. I only remember waking up eight hours later, lying fully clothed on top of the covers in one of the guest bedrooms, with no sense of how I got there. My head was aching. I thought I might vomit. Then I looked over and saw him, standing in the corner and buttoning up his shirt.
It took me two tries to push myself off the bed. The exhaustion felt like a weight pinning me to the mattress. I turned my back to Tony, smoothed out the duvet, then started for the door. He stepped in front of me.
“You’re lucky,” he said. “You know that, right?”
I nodded, kept my eyes on the floor.
“Tell me why you’re lucky.”
I shrugged. All I wanted was to get away from him.
“You see, I hate it when you do that. Why do you nod like a sheep when in fact you have no idea what I’m talking about?”
I didn’t say anything.
“You’re lucky because I didn’t write you up. Normally, when you make one of your patented blunders, I write a little note and stick it in your file. That file will follow you wherever you choose to go in this country. That’s how it works here. Do you understand?”
I said I did.
“You understand that I’ve been very nice to you? That I’ve given you a break?”
I knew what he was really asking. He was asking if I was going to tell anyone about the “vaccination.” He was asking if I planned to report him.
“You are very nice to me,” I said. “Thank you for being so nice.”
He let me pass. I got as far as the front gate before I started retching. When I was finished, I wiped my mouth with my sleeve and kept walking to the highway. On the bus ride home, I made a vow never to return to that place again.
Chapter 30
THE NEXT morning, I woke before dawn, packed a small suitcase, and started for the Greyhound bus station. But I didn’t make it any farther than my building’s front steps. There was a car parked by the fire hydrant across the street. A big, expensive-looking American car. A man got out. I recognized him, but at first I couldn’t say from where. Then I remembered. It was Detective Sean Walsh. I’d seen him before, when he visited Anthony or came to pick up Sarah because her much smaller, much less expensive car was in the shop.
He waved me over. I thought about running, but what good would it do?
“Get in,” he said.
I walked around, climbed into the passenger seat, held my suitcase on my lap. He started driving. I didn’t bother to ask where we were going.
“How are you doing, Serena? Sarah tells me you work your tail off. She’s very fond of you, you know.”
I nodded. No one in this country had been kinder to me than Sarah. How she wound up married to Detective Walsh and working for Tony was a mystery I couldn’t even begin to explain.
Walsh took the entrance ramp onto the highway. For a while neither of us said anything, but I could tell he wanted to talk.
“I need to ask you something,” he said. “Are you being treated well? At your job? Are the Costellos good to you?”
“Please, don’t take me there. Not today. I feel sick.”
He steered onto the shoulder, brought the car to a screeching stop. It felt like something he’d planned ahead of time—as if he was putting on a show.
“If you don’t want me to take you there, then I won’t,” he said. “I can drop you off wherever you want. The suitcase tells me that’s either the airport or the bus station. But I need to be very clear about something first.”
He turned to face me.
“This isn’t the kind of job you just walk away from. There will be consequences. With a man like Anthony, there are always consequences. You understand what I’m saying, don’t you?”
I kept staring straight ahead.
“I’m saying you can’t leave Anthony Costello to wonder what might happen next, because if he starts to wonder, he’s going to assume the worst. He’s going to think you’re a threat. This isn’t a man—or a family, for that matter—you want to threaten.”
“I’m no threat to anyone.”
He took a deep, dramatic breath, then tugged back his blazer and tapped his badge.
“You’re a friend of Sarah’s,” he said. “That means you’re a friend of mine. If something’s wrong, I want to help. So I’ll ask again: are the Costellos treating you
