Escape to the Bayou
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Amber Leigh Williams
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Prologue
Sneaking away to Mexico before the first week of college had been Sloane’s idea. It was a bad one. But as with most bad ideas born out of teenage desperation, this one was especially enticing.
One last “free girls” weekend, Sloane had beckoned.
Grace offered a fast yes. Pia, hesitant, echoed it.
Free girls, Grace thought three long weeks later, dejected.
She hadn’t seen Sloane or Pia in seventeen days. Where had they been taken? They had been abducted from the same house—the little waterfront villa Sloane had rented on the sly. Her well-to-do parents would have flipped if they had known what she was up to. The senator and his wife would never have allowed it. So Sloane had paid for everything on the spot in cash.
Cash had been the problem. Throwing cash around had been their undoing.
If they had been more discreet, would they have been taken? Would the men have even known they were there?
And Alejandro. If Grace hadn’t met Alejandro, would she, Pia and Sloane still be free girls? Had she doomed them all?
“I want to see my friends,” she told him.
Alejandro didn’t look up from the television. Fútbol was on. He leaned forward on the couch, inches away from the screen, his dark eyes magnetized to the ball. “Bad girls don’t get visits,” he said in a flat voice accented heavily in Spanish.
She’d tried escaping again. Could he blame her? She only left the house he and the other men had dropped her off at two weeks before to “work,” as they called it.
Work. She was from the hard streets of New Orleans. She knew what it was to work. This? What he made her do—it wasn’t work.
It was criminal, exploitation... It would take her soul if she let it continue.
She’d made it farther this time. Through the little window of the bathroom into the alley. He’d caught her before she could hit the street.
He’d beaten her. She’d thought someone...anyone...would hear her screams.
No one came. No one stopped Alejandro from locking her back inside the house. This time he had tied her up.
The rope around her wrists burned. She’d stopped tugging at the bind. Her face hurt. There was something wrong with her right arm, her ribs. Every inhale was agony.
At least he’d been generous enough not to traffic her in this condition. He hadn’t driven her to some strange man’s apartment in the city and thrown her at his mercy.
She lay awake at night worrying about disease—about pregnancy. About her friends. Where were they? What were the men doing to Sloane and Pia? Were they even alive at this point?
“Please,” she said through lips that had long gone dry. She felt the bite of tears, but she had none. He hadn’t given her anything to drink in the last twenty-four hours. Her one meal a day was down to rations of aging bread and cheese. “Just tell me if they’re alive. That’s all I need to know.”
At long last, Alejandro turned his face away from the television. The box’s light flickered across one half of his profile. It shrouded the other in darkness. He was a handsome man. It was how he’d drawn her in. Handsome and charming with a smile quick as lightning and just as white.
Was his name even Alejandro? Or was that part of his scheme? How many other women had he drawn into his web—into this life that wasn’t a life—simply by smiling?
Now his smile came slowly. Her heart galloped in fear. She knew him well enough to know what that smile meant for her...for Sloane and Pia.
“Your friends have gone to a better place, carne fresca,” he informed her. Then he turned back to the television, leaning back into the cushions of the couch as he scooped his beer off the side table and drank, satisfied.
He wasn’t looking, but she turned to face the wall. Her lip split as she grimaced, her shame and grief big enough to bite. She was afraid it would eat her up.
There’d be nothing left for him then. Nothing left for him or the rest of them to take.
The sound of glass shattering made Grace instinctively duck—her nerves were on a hair trigger. She’d gotten quick under his “care.”
She peered over the edge of the table. Alejandro slumped forward. He moved gradually, limply, to the floor.
Her lips trembled as his arm flopped toward her, the beer bottle rolling across the bare planks. His sleeve crept up his biceps, revealing the brand—the burned, black Aztec skull she’d noticed he and his men all wore like harbingers of death.
The door burst open, kicked off its hinges.
She ducked farther under the table. The rope cinched tight against her raw wrists.
A pair of boots crept across the threshold. She watched them cross the floor to Alejandro’s prone form. They looked like cowboy boots—snakeskin. She didn’t dare breathe or think or move as she watched a large hand remove the pistol from the small of Alejandro’s back where it was wedged between his beltline and his skin.
“Grace?”
It had been so long since anyone had called her anything but carne fresca, “fresh meat.” She blinked, coming awake on a startled inhale. Still, she didn’t raise her head above the tabletop. Instead, she peered at the boots.
She watched the jean-clad legs bend. Knees appeared. Then thighs. A leather belt, silver buckle, plaid shirt...
A bronze face. Long, dark hair fell from hairline to jaw. Eyes glittered at her, black as night.
“You,” she said, recognizing him at once. She backed away.
He held up his hands. One held a pistol. He tipped it to the floor. “No, no. I’m not here to hurt you,” he blurted.
His English was better than Alejandro’s. And his eyes were kind. But he’d been at the house the night of the abduction. She’d seen him...with the men who’d taken Pia. “Where is she?” she hissed. Emboldened, she tried to grab him...his gun... The rope held her back. “Where’s Pia?” she demanded.
He put his finger to his lips. “You mustn’t yell. I’m here to get you out.”
“Where is she?” she shouted.
His hand fit tightly over her mouth. His face was close to hers under the table, nose to nose.
“Listen,” he told her. “I don’t want to leave that rope around your wrists. But if you fight me, I won’t have a choice. Do you understand, bonita?”
His hand was warm and dry. He’d just shot a man. Shouldn’t it be cold or wet with sweat? She could feel the rough texture, calluses. There was strength there, and she trembled despite the endearment—despite the fact that his grip didn’t hurt. Over the last few weeks, they had conditioned her for pain. She waited for it.
He reached for his belt. She heard the slide of steel. Her eyes widened when he raised the knife.
“I’m going to cut your binds,” he said, his gaze holding fast to hers. “You must be very still.”
She closed her eyes and breathed hard through her nose as the knife lowered to her wrists. She felt the cool steel against the sore skin of her wrists and whimpered.
One pull and her hands fell away from each other. Something in both of her shoulders ached with gratitude. “Ah...”
His hand loosened from her mouth. She gaped at him as he tossed the rope aside. “We must go now,” he explained. “They’ll be coming. Tell me you understand.”
She nodded faintly. He retreated, motioning her to do the same. After a moment’s hesitation, she crawled out from under the table.
“Back door,” he said when she veered for the open one splintered around the locking mechanisms Alejandro had kept firmly in place when she was inside.
She turned to follow him through the house and nearly tripped over Alejandro’s form. Covering her own mouth, she stared at the blood pooling on the floor. “You... You just killed him.”
“What would you have me do instead?” He didn’t raise his voice. He kept it even-tempered as he walked around the body. “Knock on the door and let him use you as a hostage?”
They made it halfway down the hall before she stopped. “Tell me about Pia. What happened to her and Sloane?”
“I’ll tell you everything. But first we—”
“I’m not going anywhere with you,” she said stubbornly. “Not until I know they’re okay.”
Frustration ticked across his face. “They’re alive. And they know we’re coming back for them.”
“Alive?” She could hardly grasp the possibility. Hadn’t Alejandro just told her the opposite? “Sloane and Pia are...alive?”
“Si. They’re alive.”
It seemed too good to be true. She resisted when he tried to move her toward the back door again. “I don’t believe you.”
He made a noise in his throat. The trembling strengthened. His eyes reminded her vividly of Alejandro’s—dark, practically liquid.
Where Alejandro’s had been hard and cold, like smooth volcanic rock, this man’s sparked with heat. They contained firestorms. She didn’t know what to make of that.
Stepping closer, he lowered his face toward hers. “‘Free girls code.’ Does that mean anything to you?”
Free girls. Her heart leaped. “Oh...oh my God.” The bite of tears was back. A sob worked at her throat, and she gasped.
“Now you believe me?”
“Take me to them. Please.”
He took her hand. “This way.”
“I need your name,” she insisted as she followed.
“Javier,” he whispered before sticking his head out into the alley behind the house. It bisected others surrounding the tight-knit neighborhood where there were no yards, no gardens, no trees...just stone and walls and pavement. “Javier Rivera.”
She dropped her voice to a whisper. “Why are you doing this, Javier?” she asked as she trailed him into the alley. “Why are you helping us?”
He stopped long enough to check around the corner. “Because it’s the right thing to do, Grace. Stay close. Entiende?”
She nodded fervently. “Si.”
Pressing his finger to his lips for quiet, he lifted his gun hand before coaxing her around the first in a series of blind corners.
