Page 75 of Blood Revealed

I wince and gasp as the hot vinegar water touches the shredded pads of my feet. The pain becomes so intense that I’m forced to grip the cushion of the chair I’m sitting in and squeeze my eyes shut in order not to pass out or something equally embarrassing.

Although it sounds cruel and I really don’t wish this pain on—almost—anyone, I’m comforted to see Celeste have the same reaction. Now I don’t feel like such a wimp.

“I have to check on the other girls,” Nicola says, pushing up from the squat she’s been in while helping us out.

“You’re going to make yourself sick,” I argue. “You need to rest, too.”

“I’ll rest when the others are good. Make sure they find the water.”

“I’ll come,” Carmen offers. “Get it done faster with more hands.”

She’s right and I could kick myself for being this incredibly useless when they need the help. As the pain eases, the warmth of the water begins to lull me under until Celeste breaks the solace of the moment to speak. “I don’t know what to do now that I’m free,” she says.

“What do you mean?”

“They kidnapped me and my mama when I was ten. Sold my mama before they even got her to the mansion.El maestrohad his people out looking for a younger woman with long, brown hair, brown eyes, and delicate features. These men, it’s like they submit a shopping list of traits they want a particular woman to have and he sends people out to find them. My mom was only fifteen when she had me, came from a bad home. When I was ten, she was only twenty-five years old.”

“How old are you now?” I ask, a thought beginning to form in my head.

“Nineteen,” she answers. “They were gonna sell me to a pedo who loved to play with little girls. It was practically a done deal untilel maestrosaw me in person for the first time and decided I’d grow up pretty enough to join his personal stable. Not that he’s much better than that pedo. Once I had hips and tits, he bedded me.”

I don’t know what to say because I spent my formative years trying to avoid that exact scenario. But then it hits me. She’s nineteen. Went in at ten. She might have crossed paths with Cassandra. “Did you ever meet a woman named Cassandra?” I whisper in my ugly, raspy voice. It hurts to speak, but I need to know.

“Long, brown-almost-black hair?”

“Yes,” I answer excitedly.

“She took me under her wing—tried to protect me the best she could since my own mama was gone. I cried for days when she died.”

“Mymom.” The tears prick at the backs of my eyes, just like they always do when I talk about Cassandra.

“You’rethatHannah?”

“She talked about me?” I ask.

“Every day. You and your sister—”

“Brinley,” I say. We fall quiet after that. That was Cassandra. The woman had a heart bigger than the sun. Now I hope Escalante is lying dead in a pool of his own blood from that head injury up in his bedroom. “I need a phone.”

I must have dozed off because I’m shocked awake by the feel of a plastic bottle rim and cool water touching my lips. I lick at the moisture, grabbing the bottle from Carmen, and suck down the liquid. It goes down rough when I drink too much at one time. Instead of soothing my throat, it burns.

“Slow,” Carmen orders. I try to comply, I really do, but once the water breaches my lips, it’s like flood waters breaching a levy. There’s no stopping until I’ve tipped the last of it into my mouth, leaving an empty bottle.

For the next two days, Nicola and Carmen play prison wardens, not allowing me out of the trailer in order to let my feet heal. Celeste stays in lockdown along with me. The other women come in and out of the trailers as they please. Most of them spend their time in the outside oasis of the courtyard. It allows them a sense of freedom denied them for so long, yet it keeps them out of sight.

Now that my feet appear more like feet rather than processed meat product, I have to get to the town. I need to find a phone. I get it, why the women insisted I stay put. We have no idea if Escalante and his men are out looking for us and if they still are, the way my feet slowed me down, I’d never have outrun them. The fear isn’t only recapturing, but that they might torture me enough to give up the location of the safehouse.

Nicola outfits me in actual undergarments. Simple, comfortable, breathable cotton. Pink cotton shorts, a paler pink, snuggly fit T-shirt with a Kawaii strawberry figure on the front that reads:Delicious!Along with the white ankle socks and running shoes, I look like I should be headed for cheer camp or something.

There are two usable bikes on the property, as in the pedal kind, not the rumbling engine variety. Nicola sends Carmen with me up to town with a list of things to pick up at the one little store in town, along with funds from the petty cash box to pay for them. What they say about ‘it’s like riding a bike’—yeah,theydon’t know what they’re talking about. It’s been years since either of us has ridden a bike and the wobbly front tire and the having to stop every two rotations of the chain to put one of our feet down after losing balance proves that point.

I think at one point or another, both of us would have given up if not for the necessity of supplies for the other women, that, and I have a husband, a family out looking for me. I’m sure most of these other women do too; they just aren’t lucky enough to have the family looking for them be the Lords.

Eventually, we get the hang of things and the rest of the ride is, I wouldn’t say smoother, but less rocky. Halfway has one stop at a four-way intersection with the gas station/church on one corner, the grocers across the street, and then there’s a post office and finally a bar because where else does one go after experiencing the holiness of a gas station/church, but the bar?

Our first stop, the aptly named Halfway Market, actually has cheap, disposable cell phones behind the counter along with minutes to buy. I could cry, I’m so happy. Carmen takes the shopping list while I purchase a little flip phone, using the store’s Wi-Fi—yes, the Halfway Market has actual Wi-Fi—to set up my account.

“Are there any biker clubs close by?” I ask the cashier, a little old lady with tight pin curls of silver-white hair, varicose veins protruding through her paper-thin skin, and coke-bottle glasses.

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