Page 25 of Captive

She’s quiet a while.

“Cole.”

“I’m here.”

“Whatever the answer is. The one you’re not giving me.” Her voice is low and even through the wood. “I already know it. I just want to hear you say it.”

I close my eyes.

At eleven-forty, headlights come over the north rise and die.

I’m on my feet before she can say anything. At the front window, I can’t see anything but dark. Then two doors, far off. The sound of boots on caliche, not trying to be quiet.

I go back to her door and put my hand flat on it.

“Sofia. Take your sample case into the bathroom. Stay below the window. Lock the bathroom door. If I say red, don’t come out for anyone but me or a uniform.”

“Cole. Unlock this door.”

I stand there with my palm on the wood and the brass key in my pocket, and I can hear her breathing on the other side, fast now.

“I will,” I say. “When they’re gone. I swear it.”

Then I go.

Chapter 7

Sofia

Itake the case into the bathroom. I lock the door. I sit on the tile floor with my back against the tub and the case in my lap and my knees pulled up, in the dark, and I listen.

The bathroom lock is a push button. A child could open it with a hairpin. I lock it anyway, because he told me to, and because for four days every lock in this building has belonged to him, and this one is mine.

Two car doors. Boots on caliche. A man’s voice, too far to make out words.

Then Cole’s. Low. One sentence.

A gunshot.

I press my hand over my mouth.

Metal on metal, a heavy crash like a gate hitting a post. A man grunting. A second shot, from farther away, and something sending a tub skidding across concrete. 14C bawls once, high and frightened, and I’m halfway to my feet before I make myself sit back down. More shouting. An engine, fast, reversing through brush. Then an engine going away.

Then silence.

I count to sixty. I count to sixty again.

I think about the bedroom door. Locked. The brass key in his pocket. If he’s on the ground out there, if he’s bleeding in the dirt beside my cow, there is no one in the world who can open that door, and I will sit in this bathroom until someone finds me or I get the window screen off with my teeth.

I think about that, and my whole body goes cold, and it isn’t because of me.

I don’t move.

A knock on the bedroom door. My name. Then a knock on the bathroom door.

“Sofia. It’s me. They’re gone.”

I open the door.