Page 63 of Mine to Keep
I can remember how I felt the next morning when I woke up to find her bed cold and empty and no calls or texts on my phone. It’s like I can see, smell, and feel everything from that day.
The frantic feeling pulses through me now as vividly as when I was searching her job and the streets for her. Our town wasn’t large, so it didn’t take me long to scour it from end to end.
I asked Patience’s boss if he’d seen her, and he told me she got into a car with a man that came in earlier in her shift who’d said he lived around the corner from us and would give her a ride home.
For the rest of the day and much of the next, I asked everyone I saw on the streets if they’d seen her. No one besides her boss saw her the night she disappeared.
“What happened to her?” Javier asks, breaking me out of my thoughts.
I have to swallow twice before I can speak past the lump in my throat. “It took me a few weeks. I hadn’t stopped asking around, but I couldn’t search as much because I had to work. Iwanted to make sure when Patience came back, we had a roof over our heads. But that didn’t stop me from hanging up missing person fliers or calling the cops too many times to count. They knew me by name and had when I would call down to a science. They hated hearing from me.
“So I was surprised when three weeks after Patience went missing, they called and told me they’d found her. Alive. But ….not good.”
Tears leak from my eyes as I recall how terrible Patience looked. Black and blue almost from head to toe, the skin of her wrists rubbed raw, her feet skinned and bleeding, and she was in a small bikini that hid nothing of her body. The hospital staff said they tried to put a blanket around her, but she only kicked and screamed, begging them not to touch her.
“She’d been trafficked. They took her to Arizona. I fucking hate that state.” I scrub a hand down my face, blood from the cut on my cheek mingling with my tears. “She got away. All on her own, she got away. The police told me she walked fifteen miles through unforgiving terrain in the small stitch of clothing she had on. Someone spotted her and called the cops. She told them where she lived and they were able to get her back to me.”
It took an hour to get her to talk to me and even longer to get her to cover up. Later, she told me the feeling of anything against her skin made her think of the men that would rape her day after day, one after the other for the three weeks she was captive. Even though she was freezing in the hospital, she couldn’t bear anyone or anything touching her.
Tears spill down Talon’s cheeks as well, his knees pulled to his chest. “Who took her?”
I shrug. “Some guy who visited the diner she worked at. She usually caught the bus home, but she believed him whenhe'd said he lived nearby. Like I said, Patience was really trusting.”
I shift to sit up higher against the wall, wincing when my arm screams in pain. “I wanted to kill them all, every last one of them that made her feel pain. Patience didn’t tell the police who took her, but she knew. Like me, she wanted to get her own justice. She was…never the same after that. She wasn’t as bubbly, not as bright, not as happy. But who would be? The things that were done to her…” I pause and pull my legs to my chest, feeling more vulnerable than I ever have in my life. “She wanted revenge and the only way to make her happy, to make her whole, was for me to get it for her.”
Javier asks, “What…what happened next?”
“We found some low people in even lower places, and one of them was able to figure out who sold her and to whom. Patience was so excited to finally get the men that took her. She was practically bouncing off the walls. But the next morning, I woke up and she was gone. She left me a note, telling me she was going to get justice.”
I drove my fucked up car over sixteen hours to get to the address we were given, only stopping to get gas or for bathroom breaks. I didn’t sleep at all. And I was still too late.
“When I got there, as soon as I stepped out of the car, I heard screaming, then two gunshots in rapid succession. Then a third a few seconds later. Patience came stumbling out of the house, a revolver in her hand. When she saw me, she smiled and stumbled over to me. ‘I did it,’ she said and fell into my arms. ‘I did it.’ ‘Yeah,’ I said to her. ‘You did. I’m proud of you.’
“She smiled with tears leaking from her eyes. ‘Burn it down.’ she ordered. She already had gas canisters, so I doused the house and struck the match, standing a few feet away as I tossed the match.”
I pause in my tale and take a steadying breath, too overcome with emotion to finish, but knowing I have to. My voice is thick with emotion when I say the next words. “When I turnedaround, Patience had the gun pointed at her chest, right over her heart. She was crying, tears making tracks down her cheeks, though she wasn’t hysterical. She was resigned. She knew why she went there and she knew she wouldn’t be going home, whether I came for her or not.
“‘I can’t live like this anymore’ she said, shaking her head. ‘They…they won. They broke me. Take my body home, please. Bury me in that graveyard by our house.’ Before I could stop her or try to reason with her, she pulled the trigger. I got to hold her before she died, though. She held on tight, looking at me the entire time. And she smiled at me one last time. So she was at peace, I think.”
I barely feel the pain as I wipe my face, shaking my head. “I was angry. So angry. I wanted everyone to suffer. Everyone that had a hand in her being hurt and her death. Everyone. I went back to the people that got us the names and demanded more. They didn’t have any, but they knew where I could go to get my revenge. And that's how I came to work for The Void. They told me if I worked for them, they could give me resources to track down everyone that hurt my sister. For the first year I worked for them, I fulfilled contracts while I hunted the men that were involved in trafficking Patience or raping her.” I look up at them, my chest hurting. “There were fifty. Fifty men that took advantage of my sister over a span of three weeks. All of them are dead now. After that was done, I had nothing else to live for. I wasn’t the same person I was when I started and I was already in too deep with The Void. So I kept working. My initial contract with them, to pay them back for tracking down all the fuckers that I ended, was five years. But that time came and went. Now I’m here.”
There's nothing left to tell them. Now they know my truth. I didn’t tell them so they would pity me, but I wanted them tounderstand. To at least know why I started, even though they’llnever know why I didn’t stop. I don’t even know why I didn’t stop. Maybe the reasonI was so good at meting out death was because my soul died the moment Patience killed herself.
When they’re quiet for several minutes, I chance a glance up at them. They’re in their silent communications again. There’s a puddle of blood under me from my wounded arm and hand, and I know I can’t ignore my injuries any longer. Luckily, we picked the room with an en suite inside, so I rise to my feet and enter the bathroom, ignoring how they both jump and flinch away from me.
Once inside, I check my injuries again. The cut on my cheek has stopped bleeding and my eye hasn’t swollen too much to affect my vision. The slice in my upper lip still trickles blood, so I dab at it, hoping to staunch the bleeding.
I throw the cloth down in frustration, gripping the countertop and lowering my head. Fuck. I fucked up. I shouldn’t have intruded on their lives. When I ran into them, the most I should have done was gotten them a room until they could get home. I could have found a hotel somewhere else, never to see them again.
But I saw them and felt that stupid pull to them. A pull that I should have ignored as soon as they were safely in their rooms.
But I couldn't help myself. I couldn't help being drawn into their orbit, drawn into theirlight. I couldn't help but crave the warmth they gave me, the warmth that thawed my cold, dead heart.
Are they still light or did my lifestyle dim theirs too? I can’t have that. I won’t. I’m willing to give them up forever if it means protecting their brightness, their brilliance.
I peel my shirt over my head and look closer at the slice on my arm. It will need stitches, but I’m not in the mood to sew myself up right now. So I add another bandage and wrap hellamedical tape around it to keep it dry while I shower. I’m covered in blood and I don’t want to look…unclean for Talon and Javier.
After turning the shower on as hot as it gets, I step under the spray, tipping my head back to wash the blood from my face. Then I lean forward, letting the shower spray race down my spine, chasing away some of the chill that settled deep in my bones from talking about Patience.
