Page 64 of You Can Run

TWENTY-FOUR

Jessica sat pressedbetween the two men, her arms pulled tight against her ribs. Every time Trent shifted gears, his elbow brushed her sleeve. Every time the truck swerved, she felt the hard, steady line of Dante’s shoulder. She felt like she was the only thing keeping the two men from colliding.

She looked out the window as the industrial bones of the harbor blurred into the flat, grey-green expanse of the marshlands. The further they got from the sirens, the more the frantic pounding in her ears began to subside.

He’s dead, she thought, the words a silent prayer.Ferrera is actually dead.

Jessica let her head rest back against the seat, closing her eyes. She felt a hysterical relief bubbling up in her chest. Trent had done it. Her broken, jealous mess of an ex-boyfriend had actually finished what the rest of world couldn’t.

“We’re almost there,” Trent muttered. His voice was thick, his jaw barely moving.

“Good,” Dante said. His voice was cold, a flat line of indifference.

He didn't thank him for the shot. To Dante, Trent was still the man who had sold her out—a man who had finally paid a very small installment on an unpayable debt.

The truck slowed, turning off the asphalt onto a track of crushed shells and weeds. The tall grass scraped against the sides of the Ram like fingernails on tin. At the end of the path sat a leaning, corrugated metal shed.

Trent pulled the truck into the darkness of the shed and killed the engine. The sudden silence was suffocating.

Jessica exhaled, her shoulders finally dropping. “We did it,” she whispered, looking at Dante. “He’s gone. Ferrera is gone. We can find a way off the island, Dante. We can go.”

Dante didn't look relieved. He looked at the shadows stretching across the marsh. “Ferrera was just the one we could see, Jessica. There must be others.”

“But he was the one,” she insisted, her voice rising with a desperate kind of hope. “He was the link.”

“Back in Corpus,” Trent interrupted, his voice barely a whisper in the gloom of the shed. He was staring straight ahead through the windshield, his hands still gripped tight on the wheel. “The woman that came to the house. She wasn't talking about Ferrera. She didn't even mention the cartel.”

Jessica felt a cold prickle of unease crawl up her spine. “What are you talking about?”

Trent turned his head slowly. The bruising on his face had turned a deep, sickly plum color. “She said she was working for a 'Russian.' What does that even mean?”

The air in the cab seemed to turn to ice.

Jessica’s heart didn't just speed up; it stopped. The word “Russian” hit her with the force of a physical blow.

She remembered the dog crate in the dilapidated Philly house. The smell of blood and death coming from the tortured and strangled woman in the cage beside hers. The dog bites onher flesh. The blood-encrusted power tools on the table in the center of room. Power tools that had nearly been used on her, by the three thugs Borya Sokolov had sent to fetch her years ago. She’d escaped them, but she’d never escaped the memory of his name.

She thought too of the girls she’d met back in Panama City Beach, the ones with the hollow eyes and the stories they only told after a few drinks. Stories of clubs up and down the East Coast, and the men who worked for a man named Borya. They’d talked about the “rooms” he kept, places where girls went and never came out the same. They’d talked about the scars that never faded and the way he treated women like property to be broken and traded.

“No,” she breathed, her hands starting to shake. “No, not him.”

“Who?” Trent asked, his eyes moving between her and Dante. “Who is the Russian?”

Dante’s face had gone completely still. “Borya Sokolov.” He didn't elaborate any further, leaving Trent looking just as confused. But Jessica knew he had drifted down his own dark memory lane, filled with his own terrifying recollections of the man who'd made his life hell too.

Jessica gripped the edge of the seat until her knuckles turned white. Ferrera was a thug. But Borya was the architect of the nightmare she had heard about in every strip club and dive bar from Florida to Texas. He was the one who owned the darkness.

“If he's the one who actually sent her,” Jessica whispered, her voice trembling, “then it isn't over. It was never about Ferrera.”

She looked at Dante, her eyes pleading for him to tell her she was wrong. But Dante was looking out the windshield, his hand still resting on the gun.

Jessica watched Dante standing ten feet away in the shadows of the shed, his back to the cab, watching the mouth of the dirt track. He hadn't spoken to her in twenty minutes. He hadn't spoken to Trent at all.

Inside the truck, the silence weighed on her. Trent was slumped against the driver's side door, his head lolling back against the frame. The ego that had fueled his chase from Corpus Christi seemed to have leaked out of him, leaving something hollowed-out behind.

“Why did you do it,” Jessica said. She didn't turn to look at him. She kept her eyes on Dante's silhouette. “Why did you give them my name?”

Trent's breath hitched. The pause before he answered was long enough that she thought he might not.