Page 40 of No Sweeter Poison

“S o.” Callie extends a pill to me but I politely decline. I think it might be ecstasy. “What brings you to Spain?”

“Vacation,” I answer vaguely. “I needed a break from the real world.”

The Asian woman, whose name I don’t yet know, sighs in agreement. “Don’t we all?”

“Are you alone?” Callie frowns. “Or did you ditch your party back there?”

My knee bobs anxiously as I glance out the window. “No, alone.”

“That’s brave of you,” Ron pipes up from the front seat. “Traveling alone is daunting—especially to a country where you don’t speak the language.”

“First time I traveled alone it was to Taiwan. I was eighteen and my mother almost killed me,” Callie laughs then turns her attention to me. “Your poor mother must be worried sick.”

None of the cars around us look familiar. Has no one noticed I’ve escaped yet? I hope not. I need as much time and distance between me and the Narvaez family as possible.

“My mother’s dead,” I reply, mind elsewhere.

For being semi-drunk and mostly high, they’re terribly cognizant of their surroundings. Ron drives with ease and Callie may be slurring a bit but she keeps herself well put together. Is that what happens after years of substance abuse? Everyone is so high functioning that you can’t even tell if they’re on something or not?

I don’t know why I’m reading into it so much. I couldn’t care less—all I want is to get out of here. When we reach their hotel, I’ll tell them the truth. That I’ve been held captive the last few weeks and need their help to leave. Or maybe that conversation is best saved for the morning when they’re fully sober. They’re American like me—we can go to the embassy where I can get a new passport and hopefully be on a plane out of here within twenty-four hours.

“Oh…” the man up front finally speaks. He has a bit of an accent and it reminds me of my fifth-grade history teacher. Mr. Martini was from Albania. “That is very sad. I’m sorry to hear it.”

Callie frowns a bit. “You poor thing…you’re a baby!”

“Twenty-two today, actually.” It feels so strange to say the words aloud. A year ago, I was celebrating my twenty-first at a bar in Greenwich with a bunch of classmates, all of us drinking to our last summer as college kids. Now I’m in Europe escaping captivity. A year really does change everything.

The Asian woman besides me lifts a bow, an emotion I can’t name coloring her words. “Why are you celebrating your birthday here, all alone? Shouldn’t you be with family?”

Tired of this line of questioning, I say, “I don’t have any family.” Turning my head, I catch Ron’s reflection in the rearview mirror. “Are we almost there?”

After a second, he replies. “Almost.”

For the first time, the car falls completely silent. Ron even turns down the music. I half expect someone to start a new conversation as the quiet grows unsettling. Instead, I focus on the view outside my window. Where we were once on a busy highway, we’ve made a left at an exit and the car turns in perfect circles before the road straightens out again. Little by little, the cars around us turn and take different exits, until it’s just us on the road. The highway lights are fewer and farther between and apprehension settles in the pit of my stomach like a heavy rock weighing me down.

Their hotel was supposed to be a fifteen-minute drive from El Rey and down by the beach. It’s been a half hour at least and there’s no shoreline in sight.

I’m seated in the middle between Callie and the other woman, the latter of whom reaches into her purse for a little baggie she extends to Callie. Callie opens it and I can’t pull my gaze away from her fingers, coated in white powder. With a saccharine smile, she extends her hand to me.

“Want some?”

I swallow the lump in my throat and shake my head. “No thank you.”

“It’s good shit,” the guy in the front seat says, eyes visible through the rearview mirror. “You’ll see God.”

“I don’t do drugs.”

Callie holds up her finger, attempting to part my lips. “Not even a little bit?”

I shake my head and push her hand away. “How far are we from the hotel, again?”

No one answers. Ron starts humming a tune and the man next to him shuffles through the glove compartment. My heart rate picks up when I see the man produce a gun and shove it into the waistband of his pants. Callie shifts beside me, tilting back her head, as she sniffs a line off the length of her finger. My chest tightens when she looks at me, dark brown eyes contrasting with the brightness of her icy blonde hair.

“I think you need to take some, Dahlia.” Where she was slurring and slightly tipsy before, she speaks with absolute clarity, her voice steady.

There’s nowhere to go. I’m in the middle and to unlock one of the doors, I’d have to move over the girls. Which I suppose I could manage, except Ron pushes down on the gas pedal, driving at a speed that would cause serious injury if I tried to jump out.

In an instant, Callie pounces on me, pinning me down, as the woman behind me produces a damp cloth out of nowhere. Ron continues whistling his merry tune as I scream, kicking and clawing at the women holding me down, the pungent fumes from the cloth filling my lungs. The woman tries putting it over my mouth and nose but only manages a few seconds before I break free of Callie’s grip and push her away. She hits her head against the window and the Asian woman wraps her arms around me from behind, locking me down.