Марк Грини - One Minute Out

If she had harbored any lingering doubts that she would be killed by her captors, they disappeared when she realized no one around her had any qualms about her knowing exactly where the Director lived.

She knew she was a dead woman now, there was not a shred of doubt about it, but she still held out faint hope that she could reach out to her sister before she died.

On the walls around her in the kitchen she saw pictures of the Director, a man she now knew was named Ken, and his family. A girl of about fifteen stood with her younger brother and sister in one; they all held oars and life preservers in front of a swiftly moving mountain stream as they smiled at the camera. In another, the same kids—younger—stood lined up back to front on skis with an impossibly gorgeous snowcapped mountain chain in the background.

Her eyes drifted back out to the rear of the property, and she was surprised by a hint of movement through the sliding glass doors to her right. There, on the first story of a detached white two-story building covered in vines next to the pool, she saw a brown-haired girl pass in front of a window. Not once, not twice, but repeatedly. The girl seemed to be carrying items back and forth, appearing and then disappearing from view.

She was the right age to be one of the girls Roxana had seen along the pipeline over the past two weeks, but this one didn’t look familiar to her.

The foreign man watching over her poured coffee in cups and insulated tumblers, draining the pot. As he finished, one of the South Africans entered the kitchen.

“We don’t have time for that, mate.”

“Your boss isn’t my boss, and my boss says to get some coffee in his men. Watch the merch while I pass these around the house.”

The man Roxana had heard referred to as Lion Two sighed. “Got any left for me?”

“Be my guest.” The bodyguard grabbed four mugs and started out of the kitchen. On his way into the living room, he looked back to the South African. “She’s tied up. Just don’t let her go anywhere.”

“Hurry it up, then.”

The bodyguard left the room, and the White Lion operative grabbed himself a cup, then began to take a sip.

Just then, Verdoorn came out of the library, hanging up his phone. He had a smile on his face. “Where’s the guard?”

Loots rolled his eyes as he said, “Delivering coffee to Hall and Cage.”

Verdoorn asked, “Is she tied?” referring to Maja across the room at the table, her hands behind her.

“Yeah, boss,” Loots said.

“Okay, come with me. We’ll start hauling shit to the cars.”

“You gonna be a good girl and sit right there?” he asked Roxana as he walked.

She nodded without speaking, and he left the kitchen.

As soon as they disappeared, Roxana looked around frantically for a telephone, and she found one across the kitchen on a cradle. This gave her a moment of optimism, though she had no idea how the hell she could possibly dial her sister’s number, country code and all, with her hands tied behind her back.

But then she turned her attention to the pool house, where she’d caught glimpses of what she took as a young trafficking victim through the window. That girl had clearly not been bound, and Roxana wondered if she could make it out the back screen door, across the pool deck, and inside the pool house without being detected.

She knew she had to try.

She looked quickly back over her shoulder to make sure no one was approaching from behind, then she rose, shot across the kitchen, spun around, and used her hands behind her back to unlock and slide open the glass door. She shut it behind her, then ran as fast as she could in her stocking feet to the pool house. Once there, she turned around again, felt blindly until she grasped the door latch, opened the unlocked door, and stepped inside.

On her left she saw the open kitchen, so she stepped to a counter, found a paring knife on a cutting board, and carefully cut the ties lashing her wrists together.

When this was done, she looked down at the knife in her hand. It was a weapon, but she knew she couldn’t fight her way out of here.

She thought about using it to kill herself, but only for a moment.

No, she wasn’t doing that. Roxana was on a mission, and the mission was to find a damn phone.

A noise startled her, and she looked up to find the girl she’d seen through the window, now walking through the living room. She wore a purple wetsuit, unzipped at the waist with the arms hanging down by her legs. On her body she wore a black long-sleeved rash guard, and she had handmade bracelets on both wrists.

Roxana had seen dozens of sex trafficking victims; none of them dressed like this.

The girl saw her, stopped, and stared, obviously confused.

“Do you speak English?” Roxana asked breathlessly.

“Uhh . . . yeah. Who are you?” The girl spoke with an American accent, and this Roxana found bizarre. There had been no American slaves at the ranch, and certainly none in the pipeline.

Roxana began to answer her, but the American asked, “Are you a friend of Sean’s?”

Roxana just looked at her before saying, “He brought me here. My name is Roxana.”

“Hi,” the girl said awkwardly.

In the quiet that followed, Roxana suddenly realized she’d seen this girl before. Moments ago, in the photos in the kitchen of the Director’s house. She had been younger then, but she was the oldest of the three kids pictured on the ski slope.

“What is your name?” Roxana asked in disbelief.

“Charlotte Cage.”

“You are Ken’s daughter?”

The young girl nodded nervously, like she’d been caught doing something wrong. She said, “Sean and I were supposed to go surfing this morning. I guess he forgot. Look, I’m not supposed to be here. I mean, I’m supposed to meet Sean, but my mom told me not to come home. Will you do me a favor and—”

“I won’t say anything, but your father is over there in the house right now.”

Charlotte looked out the window. “Shit,” she said again.

“Stay here; I’ll tell Sean where you are, and when they are finished with what they are doing, you guys can go surfing.”

Charlotte looked relieved. “Thank you. Please don’t tell my mom and dad.”

Roxana looked at her a moment more, then asked, “You wouldn’t happen to have a phone I can borrow, would you? I need to send a quick text.”

Charlotte cocked her head. “Who doesn’t have a phone?” She reached into the waistband of her wetsuit and pulled out an iPhone.

Sixty seconds later Roxana moved back up the pool area, rewrapping the loose cord around her wrists behind her back as she did so, and tucking the ends in so it looked like she was still bound. She’d just finished when the sliding door opened and the American guard who’d stepped away with the coffee lurched out, grabbed her by her throat, and yanked her back into the kitchen, leaning into her ear as he did so. Softly, so no one else in the house could hear, he said, “Where the fuck did you go, you bitch?”

Roxana stared back at him, and she answered in a low tone herself. “I was looking for a bathroom.”

“Outside?”

“Yeah, outside. I thought there would be one in the pool house and I could get some privacy. But the front door was locked.”

“You weren’t out here a second ago.”

“I tried going around back but couldn’t get in. My hands are tied up, remember?”

The bodyguard stared at the pool house a moment, then shoved her back down into her chair. He searched her thoroughly, but she had done a good job with the cord so he didn’t pick up on the fact she was no longer securely tied.

He began pacing around the kitchen in a panic, but said nothing until the South African who’d been watching her passed by in the hall with a load of files in his hands.