Manipulate Read online

  Summer break had just begun in the States. She wouldn’t be expected back to work for two months.

  No one would look for her until school resumed.

  No one would be coming to her rescue.

  A horrible choking sound rose from her chest and burst past her lips, heaving the air in a series of sobbing gasps.

  Her knees gave out, and she slid down the wall, crumpling into a fetal position. She couldn’t hold it in any longer. Horror, sadness, panic, and terrible, uncontrollable fear exploded from her in a rain of tears.

  She clapped her hands over her mouth and tried to stifle the sounds that would draw attention.

  If only she were invisible. Or a time traveler. God help her, she’d give anything to rewind the clock to yesterday morning and ignore her sister’s phone call.

  But what if Vera was in trouble? Like life-threatening, abducted-by-cartel trouble? Why else would she have not answered her phone?

  What if she was dead?

  More tears fell, harder now. Louder. Vicious pain wheezed past the fingers she clamped against her mouth.

  Her stomach joined in, growling its reminder she hadn’t eaten in over twenty-four hours.

  She usually ate at the deli down the street. They made the best grilled cheese sandwich with fontina and mozzarella. The tantalizing scent of fresh baked cookies always greeted her when she walked in.

  She wished she could smell that now instead of the putrid stench of vomit and misery.

  Nausea rose, chasing away her hunger and replacing it with the crippling weight of exhaustion.

  Her eyes fluttered closed, and she sat up, fighting sleep as it forced itself upon her.

  She won the battle for an hour, maybe two, hugging her knees to her chest, feeling forsaken and panicked in her war against fatigue.

  She was doing good until her head bounced with a jolting nod, kicking her awake.

  Fuck, she couldn’t risk falling asleep. Not until she better understood how to protect herself in this violent place.

  She needed to find a friend in here if that were possible. Someone she could trust to watch her back. But she didn’t have the confidence or energy to leave her dark corner. Not yet.

  As the night dragged on, her body worked against her. Consciousness abandoned her, and pain-drenched dreams pulled her down, down, down.

  She woke to the sound of rustling. Metal clanked beside her, and a gust of hot breath washed over her face.

  Oh, God. Oh, God. Oh, God. She wasn’t alone.

  Her pulse slammed into overdrive, and she scrambled backward in the dark.

  A cruel hand caught her thigh. Another latched onto her hip and yanked down her jeans.

  Her zipper was already open, her shirt shoved to her neck.

  Fear found her, whispering to her in a deranged voice. It told her stomach to buckle, her chest to constrict, and her lungs to slam together.

  It told her she was going to die.

  A scream ripped from her throat as she shoved against the bulk of nude muscle and sticky flesh on top of her.

  Whiskers scratched her cheek, and a hot wet mouth covered hers.

  She jerked her head to the side and tried to buck him off, but he was too strong, too big.

  Meaty fingers shoved her jeans and panties to her knees and wrenched her legs apart.

  “No! Get off me!” She yelled louder, an ear-splitting cry for help as she tried to wrestle her thighs together.

  His trousers gathered around his knees, his body twice her size, damp with sweat, and flush against the front of her, pinning her to the floor.

  The hard jab of his erection pushed against her inner thigh, seeking the bare place between her legs. Her thrashing, frenzied movements wouldn’t hinder penetration for long.

  She clawed and spat, screamed and tried to shove him off, her hands digging into hairy skin and flexed muscle.

  When she felt the leather strap of his belt hanging free, she didn’t hesitate to grab hold and yank it from his pants.

  He didn’t seem to notice, his movements focused on lining himself up to enter her body.

  The belt swung free, and her hands moved on instinct as she looped it around his neck and twisted the ends into a noose.

  She wasn’t a violent person. Never used her fists. Never picked fights. Except that one time when she woke with a scorpion in her bed.

  She’d gone ballistic at the sight of it crawling beside her head and grabbed whatever she could use as a weapon—a lamp, a pillow, a shoe.

  Once she’d started attacking it, she was committed. She’d turned into something savage and feral, beating the ever-loving hell out of it long after its guts smeared the floor, pieces of it scattered the room, and the carnage no longer twitched.

  She channeled that murderous aggression now, operating outside of her body as every muscle burned to choke, maim, and destroy until he lay as dead as that fucking scorpion.

  It was the hardest, most grueling thing she’d ever done. Her arms shook with the effort to cinch the belt as tightly as possible for as long as it took.

  He fought with his weight, rolling across the floor in a breathless rage. Elbows landed against her ribs. His massive torso flopped and flailed, crushing her against the wall.

  But she hung on, mindless in her need to survive, to follow through until the last trickle of life left his body.

  “He’s dead.” A masculine voice drifted from the cell door.

  She flinched, heart racing, and whipped her head toward the silhouette.

  Dressed in a prison guard uniform, the man leaned against the metal frame, arms crossed over his chest as if he’d been there a while.

  “Why didn’t you help me?” She released the belt and stumbled to her feet, yanking her jeans into place. “He tried to rape me!”

  Oh, sweet Jesus, she killed a man. Were there consequences for that in Jaulaso?

  Murderers probably murdered other murderers every day here. Did the prison guards look the other way? Or did they haul the offenders outside in front of a firing squad?

  A tremor raced through her as she stared down at the lifeless body. She did that. One day behind bars, and she strangled a man until he stopped breathing.

  “It was self-defense.” Gulping to catch her breath, she staggered to the farthest wall, away from the dead man and the prison guard who studied her too carefully. “Were you here the whole time?”

  “You’re from the States.” He tilted his head, and a gray ponytail fell over his shoulder. “And you speak Spanish.”

  “Yes.” She hadn’t heard or spoken an English word since her arrest. If she hadn’t known the local language, she would’ve been more lost than she already was.

  “Your options are limited, but you have some.” He sucked on his teeth, watching her. “Money is one of them.”

  “What do you mean? Money for what?”

  “I’ll take you to a better place.” He held out a hand. “If you pay.”

  “Pay?” She blinked at his waiting palm. “I don’t have—”

  “If it was on you during your arrest, you still have it. The military isn’t interested in stealing money.”

  She shoved a hand into her back pocket and pulled out the two-hundred dollars she’d kept at Vera’s house.

  Her breath rushed out in relief.

  She held out the cash to him, but at the last second, she yanked it back. “Where would you take me?”

  “Area Three.”

  She had no idea what that was. “Would I have my own cell with a lock?”

  “Maybe, but it doesn’t matter. You’ll have protection.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “You’re too pretty.” His gaze dipped, flitting down her legs before returning to her eyes. “Prettiest thing Jaulaso has ever seen. You won’t make it a week on this side. Pay me, and I’ll take you to a safer, more suitable living environment. Area Three protects its own.”

  How did she know this guard wasn’t just trying to scam her out o
f money?

  He leaned in and lowered his voice. “You’ll have many luxuries there, including your own toilet and phone.”

  “I’ll be able to make phone calls? To whomever I want?”

  “Yes.”

  For the first time since she was ripped from her Jeep, her chest lifted with hope.

  Maybe he was lying. She wouldn’t know for sure unless she accepted his offer, which was inarguably better than waiting for the next rapist to sneak into her cell.

  She sure as fuck didn’t want to hang around until another guard walked in and found her with a dead body.

  “Okay.” She handed him the money.

  “Come with me.”

  The prison guard led Tula through the overcrowded corridors of Jaulaso, seemingly oblivious to the fact that every inch of her was shaking against a storm of doubt and fear.

  How could she trust this man, who had just watched her fight off a rapist without stepping in to help? It felt like a setup as if he knew she would be attacked, and he was just waiting for the right moment to make her an offer she couldn’t refuse.

  But if he wanted her money, he could’ve just taken it. He carried a rifle, for fuck’s sake.

  The brutal stress of this waking nightmare kinked painful knots in her neck. Her legs wobbled like jelly as she tried to keep up. The reek of cigarette smoke assaulted her nose, the filth in the air so palpable it made her gag.

  How did these people live like this? Sure, they were criminals, and most of them probably deserved to be here. But how many were innocent like her? How many had been forgotten and left here to die?

  The backs of her eyes grew achy as she fixed them on the long gray ponytail of the guard in front of her.

  He ushered her through a metal door and into an outdoor yard, surrounded by two-story walls capped in barbed wire.

  Nighttime had fallen, dark and humid. Another day lost.

  She’d been gone forty-eight hours. Who would collect her mail, water her plants, and pay her landlord for next month’s rent?

  No one.

  Even if she managed to reach her sister on the phone, she couldn’t trust Vera to pay her bills. Access to her bank account would be too tempting.

  Vera would drain her savings. Not that she had savings. She lived paycheck-to-paycheck, and those paychecks would stop if she didn’t show up on the first day of school.

  Two months.

  She would be out of here by then.

  The prison guard escorted her across the yard to another door. A young Hispanic man in civilian clothing stood beside it with a rifle resting on his shoulder.

  Was he an inmate? She’d heard stories about how the cartels ruled the prisons inside their cities, but she never imagined their presence being so blatant. This guy was staring down her uniformed escort with an automatic rifle in his hand.

  Was it true, then? Did the cartel have more power than the prison guards?

  Her stomach tilted. Maybe this wasn’t her best option.

  The armed inmate knocked on the entrance behind him without removing his eyes from her. Deadbolts sounded, and the door opened to a large indoor common area.

  Rap music thumped from somewhere inside. Scantily dressed Latina women danced around a table of smiling men and beer bottles. Guys wearing bandannas and wife-beaters played pool. Others stood around laughing among themselves, not paying any attention to the lost woman in the doorway.

  There was no stench of death and despair. No overcrowding. Plenty of room to walk around and keep to herself. It looked like a casual house party with friends. Nothing like a prison.

  A man stepped into her line of sight, blocking her view. Dressed in a black shirt and trousers, he wore a wreath of gold chains around his thick neck.

  “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.”

  She shook her head wildly, tears rising and burning. This wasn’t happening. She couldn’t do it. She wouldn’t.

  “I was promised safety.” Her legs trembled uncontrollably, shuffling her away until her back hit the wall. “I paid that guard to bring me to a better place. He said I would have protection here.”

  She’d been too desperate to believe him, blindly holding onto a grain of hope so that she wouldn’t completely lose it.

  “You don’t like the arrangement?” He charged toward her. “Then you go back.” He gripped her hair and hauled her toward the door.

  “No! Wait!” She reached for the phone, arms outstretched as the bed blurred by, too far away. “Please, don’t send me back. I’ll work. I can cook, wash clothes, clean bathrooms. I’ll do anything!”

  “You do this.” He grabbed her hips and ground his erection against her backside. “Or you go back and let a dozen men take a turn with you every night.”

  Bile simmered in her chest, and her breaths heaved through great, choking sobs.

  “No. Please, anything else.” She thrashed in his arms, her feet scrambling across the floor as he dragged her into the hall. She needed that phone, the private toilet, the soft bed… “Please, don’t send me back.”