Page 8 of Luka

Arseni shrugs with his palms lifted before he points to the door handle. “Shall we check?”

I slowly,carefully, open the door, like I truly don’t want to scare the girl. When Arseni snickers behind me, I look pointedly at him but can’t fight my smile. I turn back to the girl, still curled into a catatonic little ball, sans her shaking.

She makes no sound, and I want so badly to know what she’s thinking. Does she think we’ll just drive away as long as she doesn’t acknowledge us?

“Little girl,” I whisper, creeping into the car with my knee on the seat. I only mean to be condescending, but for all I know she could be young enough to be a girl. “We can see you.”

“I haven’t seen your faces,” she squeaks, her voice slightly muffled by her arms that she’s hiding in. “I don’t know anything about you. I’m not even from this country. I—I’m here illegally. I won’t tell.”

Arseni nearly giggles behind me while my smile widens. “If you haven’t seen my face, how do you know what I’ve done?”

“I saw your back,” she’s quick to say. “That’s all. And I wasn’t even looking at you. I didn’t see you, I swear.”

“Whatin the worldare you doing in the back of that whore’s car?” I ask with a chuckle.

The girl’s body visibly stiffens. Her breathing becomes audible. Loud and hurried until a little whimper escapes. This is the point where she realizes I’m not worried that she’s seen me, and I’m also not going to let her go.

“Are you not going to answer?” I ask. I count to three before grabbing a fistful of hair and ripping her out of the car, her roly-poly form springing open to reveal arms and legs.

“No,por favor,” she pleads while I drag her to the cliff. “Please. Please no.”

“Actually, we know whatpor favormeans,” Arseni tells her. “You can speak Spanish if you’d like,señorita. It’s kinda sexy. Don’t you think, Luka?”

When I near the edge, I throw the girl down where she lands on her back with her head hanging fifty feet above rocky water. She screeches and tries to scoot away from the edge, but I step on her ankle to stop her. She yelps and writhes beneath me.

I turn to Arseni. “Not really.”

When words fly past her lips, I look back at her, but she’s imploring Arseni, Spanish he can’t understand running over her lips so fast she has to suck in large gusts of air between rambles. Arseni nods, his brows creased like he’s trying to be considerate, but I don’t see how she misses the sparkle in his eyes. He thinks this is hilarious.

We wait until she’s finished, which must take a solid couple of minutes while she recites her autobiography. She pants beneath me, never meeting my eyes, her head rolled purposefully away from me.

Arseni waits another few moments in case she starts up again before he clears his throat, looks at me, and says, “Now you’re telling me that didn’t get you hard?”

The girl sobs while I laugh, easing my foot off her ankle. As I step back, she hurries to sit up, wrapping her arms around her knees, her eyes darting between us.

“Why were you with the whore?” I try again, hardening my expression.

She shudders as her gaze fixes on me. When she starts speaking Spanish, I hold up my hand.

“English.”

Her shoulders hunch. “My truck broke down. She was helping me get supplies.”

I rear back and study the girl’s face through squinted eyes.Piperwas doing a good deed? Is she serious?

I’d laugh if I wasn’t so annoyed.

“How much was she making you pay her?” I ask.

The girl’s eyes flick to Piper’s corpse, and she cringes, her eyes slamming shut. “Nothing.”

“Nothing? She was helping you out of the kindness of her black heart?”

“She was nice,” the girl sobs, then covers her mouth.

No, she wasn’t.

“Are you really an illegal immigrant?” Arseni asks her.

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