Manipulate (Deliver 6)

“Follow me,” he said in Spanish and lumbered away without waiting.

She glanced back, and her prison guard was gone.

Unease gripped her spine. Curiosity tingled her senses. She knew what lay behind her. Whatever waited ahead had to be better.

She jogged to catch up with the guy in gold chains, relieved that the men in the common area didn’t leer or try to approach her.

“We have everything here.” Her escort guided her through one room after another, gesturing at sectioned-off areas, each serving a different purpose, like a makeshift marketplace. “We have a bar, laundry, restaurant, outdoor gym, health care clinic, recreation area, and canteen that sells food, water, and things for grooming.”

The service stations were sad imitations of real places. Each area was pieced together with crates, scrap wood, mismatched furniture, and whatever they could get their hands on to make it work. But the ingenuity behind it was impressive. It almost felt like a tiny mall inside a hotel. Almost.

As he led her into a maze of corridors, she studied him inconspicuously. His Hispanic features were darker than hers. Darker complexion, browner eyes, blacker hair, and bushy eyebrows.

His whiskered jaw hovered in that awkward stage between a scruffy shadow and a squirrelly beard. Despite his need to sculpt his facial hair, he wasn’t terrible looking.

A little bony through the shoulders and rough around the edges, he was probably in his forties. It hadn’t been an easy forty years, given the scars marring his arms and peeking through the open collar of his shirt.

“Do you know where you are?” He turned a corner, his strides never slowing.

“Jaulaso.” Her brows pinched together.

“Sure, but do you know which side this is?”

“No.”

“This is Area Three.” He lifted his chin, his expression fiercely proud. “Home of La Rocha Cartel.”

La Rocha.

The most aggressive, most organized, most violent cartel in existence.

They were here? Inside these walls?

Her shoulders squeezed forward.

The things they did to women… Oh, God. She’d heard stories growing up about how La Rocha members freely raped, maimed, disfigured, and beheaded any female they set their eyes on. They impregnated girls just to crush the babies under their boots after they were born.

She hugged herself at the elbows.

Maybe it wasn’t true.

A shiver slid across her scalp. She felt so small, so naive and fearful, just like the helpless, wide-eyed girl she once was, listening to her mother whisper chilling stories meant to scare guileless daughters away from cartel.

“Pick up your feet.” The man glared at her from the end of the hall. “Faster.”

She hadn’t meant to fall behind, but fuck him. He was lucky she wasn’t sobbing on the floor. That was what she wanted to do. She desperately needed to fall apart.

“Here is your cell.” He ushered her into a small concrete room.

In the corner, a mattress sat on a metal frame. Her shoulders loosened at the sight of the fluffy pillow and the clean-looking white sheets folded beneath it.

A blanket spread over the bed with a llama on it. A llama wearing a sombrero and smiling with big teeth. It looked chillingly perverse in the context of its surroundings, but there were no stains or ratty holes in the fabric.

Definitely an upgrade from the last cell.

Moonlight slanted through a tiny barred window near the ceiling. Artificial light flickered from a bare bulb over a single sink that jutted from the wall. Beside it sat a toilet.

The surfaces appeared reasonably clean.

No bugs or mouse drippings on the floor.

No creepy inmates loitering outside the door.

Better yet, the door was solid. She would be able to close it, and no one would see in. “Is there a lock?”

“No.” He removed an old cell phone from his pocket and tossed it on the bed. “We control all cell phone use within the prison. That’s yours.”

“I can make calls to the States? Whenever I want?”

“Yes.”

The device was a basic model, the kind that couldn’t access email or the Internet. But it would do what she needed it to do. She would be able to call her sister, her boss, a lawyer, and make arrangements for her monthly bills.

She could do this. For a month or two, she could manage her life in Phoenix from the confines of this room. She could keep everything together until she returned. She was going to be okay.

The tension in her body dissolved, muscle by muscle, breath by breath. Until she heard the sound of foil crinkling behind her.

“Now, you pay the rent,” he said at her back.

Her heart shriveled, and her lungs lost air. She didn’t need to turn around to see the condom in his hand or the expectation in his eyes. She knew exactly what form of payment he intended to collect.

“No.” She spun away and stumbled backward across the room. “I’m not doing that. I’ll pay another way.”

“Maybe you’ll come up with something next week, but this is how you pay now.” He unlatched his belt. “Get on the bed.”