“So anyway,” he went on, “I remembered those teachings. Funniest thing, because I’d been through some shit since I got back to the States, and never once had I thought to practice some Zen. I guess I associated it with war, and waking in that cage definitely applied.” He shook his head as though clearing it. “When the lights came on, there was another cage in the cellar with me, and there was a guy in it.”
All the hair was standing up on Evan’s arms. This was it. Exactly what he’d experienced. It had to be connected. All these years later. Evan’s head was spinning. “Who was he? The guy?”
“Hanh. I don’t know his last name. Don’t even know how to spell his first name, so in my head I pictured it h-a-n-h.”
Evan picked up his phone and opened the notes app, typing in the name. “Have you seen him? Do you know where he is?”
“Not a clue. We got separated during the escape, and I don’t even know if he went to the police. He wasn’t a legal citizen, for one thing, so he might not have for fear of being deported.” He gave a low chuckle that held little humor. “Like that would be worse. I’d want to get the hell out of Dodge after that, but . . . evil shit happens everywhere. I told all of this to the cops, by the way,” Lars said. “As for me, the police thought I was having a psychotic episode. I’d spent some time in the mental ward, diagnosed with PTSD. A few times, I even wondered myself if I’d imagined it all.”
“I don’t think you did,” Evan said. “Although whether that’s a comfort or not . . .”
Lars gave a distracted smile. “No, I know I didn’t. Those memories have edges, just like the ones from Nam.”
“You don’t have to go through every specific, obviously,” Evan said. “But if you could sum up what they did to you and Hanh, I’d really appreciate it.”
“Sick mind games is what they did. They tried to make us sell each other out to avoid something worse. Just like you, it sounds like.”
Words failed him for a moment. A nod sufficed.
“See, but I wasn’t gonna do that,” Lars went on. “I saw enough sick shit in that jungle over there, and I knew what giving in to the monster inside would do to you. Maybe not right away, but later.”
“Were you . . . rented?”
“Rented? You mean like sex trafficked?”
Evan nodded.
“Not me. Maybe Hanh. We didn’t talk about what had happened to us when they took us out of our cages. Hanh was . . . prettier, though, let’s say. And definitely younger. If any of that even makes a difference to sick fucks who do stuff like that.”
Evan swallowed. He figured there was a market for everything. But, yeah, youth and attractiveness were always going to be hot commodities in the trafficking business. Some people simply had less of a likelihood of being victimized in that specific way. Case in point: a seventy-year-old man. And yet . . .
“So what’d they do to you to try to get you to betray Hanh?”
“Betray,” he said, as though testing the word. “Huh, yeah, I guess that’s what it would have been, right?” He paused. “Scare tactics, mostly. They put me in a locked room with three hungry pit bulls. Told me I had to stay in there for an hour, and if I wasn’t mauled, I could change my mind at any point before the time was up and they’d take Hanh’s hand or a leg or something.”
“Fuck,” Evan said. He felt sick. “Zen?” he asked, and his voice croaked slightly.
Lars smiled. His teeth were strong, just like the rest of him. “Zen,” he confirmed. God, this big dude, a Vietnam veteran who’d spent time in the mental ward, had meditated his way through an hour in a room with three hungry pit bulls. People surprised the hell out of him sometimes.
“Did you see any cameras in any of the rooms you were in?”
Lars shook his head. “No, but I knew someone was watching. The guy who came to get us out of our cage and toss us back in said things he could only know if he’d been watching us.”
He pictured the guy who had played the same role with him and Noelle. Red shoes. He’d worn red shoes. He wondered if that had been part of some uniform as it was very distinct. “Did anything stand out about that man?” he asked. “Anything specific that he wore that you remember?”
Lars shrugged. “Ugly son of a bitch. Face like a pug dog. But other than that? No.”
“No red shoes then?” Evan hadn’t wanted to lead him, but he had to make sure mentioning it wouldn’t jog a memory.
“Red shoes? No. He wore black boots.”
Evan nodded. “Will you tell me about your escape?”
“Yeah.” He scratched at his jaw, thinking. “We started getting things delivered with our meals—items and weird little riddles. We were told they were gifts, and they were, because they’re the things that helped us get free.”
Evan had broken out in a cold sweat, excitement and dread coursing through his blood. He felt sick and slightly feverish, and he now knew without a single doubt that the same people who were responsible for abducting him and Noelle had abducted this man and his “partner,” Hanh.
“It was like—”
A guard sitting at the front of the room at a desk suddenly announced, “Ten minutes, and visiting time is up.”
“It was like we were both sent things that only we would know how to use or that seemed meant for us in some specific way.” He was speaking more quickly now, obviously aware of the time constraint. His forehead wrinkles became deeper as he frowned. “It’s hard to explain.”
“It’s as if they knew your strengths and how you could use them.”
“Yeah, exactly.” He looked surprised to be understood. Believed. “Like, Hanh didn’t speak much English, but he knew numbers. We had to gesture quite a bit to get something across to each other. But I’m good at that. Do you know how much time you spend in the jungle communicating with the other guys without ever saying a word? Maybe it worked in our favor, because if people were watching us, they couldn’t figure out everything we were communicating. Hanh was—is, I guess—some kind of genius with numbers. He figured out the code being inputted into our cage locks somehow from the way the guy typed the numbers in before opening the door. It took hearing it many times before he knew for sure he had both. But once we had the codes—or thought we did anyway—it was a matter of figuring out how to make it out of the room. But it was like, the things we were given were tools only we might know how to apply to our circumstance.” He scratched his head as though the idea still baffled him.
But it piqued Evan’s interest. It was familiar. Someone had left Noelle a piece of graphite that she’d used to start a fire. How had someone guessed she’d know how to do that? And not only that, but they’d known she’d take the risk of being burned alive to be free.
When he thought back on it, some of it almost seemed planned. But not by them. Was that even possible? A chill snaked down his spine.
“We knew it would take both of us, and it did,” Lars said. “One of us escaping would have never worked.”
Yes. Again, the same with him and Noelle. Exactly the same. We leave here whole, and we leave here together. “Once you got free of your cages, did anyone try to stop you?” Evan asked.
“Yeah. I heard them coming after us, but it was weird because when we left the building, we weren’t pursued. We were in the middle of fuckin’ nowhere, so we had to make our way to the closest town.”
“Where in the middle of nowhere?”
“Here. In Texas, but way out in the desert. It took us six hours to walk to civilization. But as far as I could tell, they just let us go.”
That was similar to their situation too. He only saw that looking back, though. At the time, he’d been terrified and paranoid that they’d be found, that some sort of posse was hot on their heels and eager to put them back in cages. But in actuality, no one had come after them, even years and years later. And for a while, he’d been worried about that. So Evan had gotten a concealed carry. He worked out regularly and ran long distances whenever he had the time. He kept in fighting shape. Because maybe in the back of his mind, he thought there’d be a time when he’d be forced to fight again.
But maybe . . . maybe no one was interested in him anymore. Or the man across the table. Maybe once they’d escaped, they were no longer of any importance to their once captors.
Because they’d won.