When she didn’t answer, he told her anyway.
“These are our orders from Rafael, our team leader. We are getting close to the day we will finally destroy the Great Satan. These orders tell us that when the courier delivers these parts we need for that glorious day, we must kill the courier. That is you.” He flicked a hand against the paper. “You are this courier. It says we should kill you so that no one knows where you took this package, or who was here to take it from you. Dead people can’t talk, no? Americans are stupid. You make it easy for us. You are all easy to fool. So, you see, you were dead the moment you picked up this package. You should be happy that we are merciful and let you have one last fuck to enjoy.”
The others chuckled.
Angela hadn’t expected that, exactly. She expected that they were planning on killing her when they had finished, but simply for the lust of killing as well as to cover up their crime. She hadn’t expected that they would receive orders to kill her. She especially hadn’t expected that she would be the one to deliver her own death warrant.
Angela accepted her fate with grim resignation. As she was growing up she had always expected that one lunatic or another would eventually kill her. That sense of destiny had always shadowed her. She had always thought she was living on borrowed time. She was ready to die. Life held little for her. Death promised more. Death promised release.
The only time she felt truly alive was when she was killing men who killed, when she was making them suffer for what they had done to women who couldn’t fight back, women who could never seek justice for themselves. When she was killing a man who had done things to his victims like these men were doing to her, it gave her a high. It was ecstasy.
That was all she lived for. That was all that her life was good for—bringing death to men like these, bringing justice down on them, preventing them from ever again harming anyone.
It seemed ironic that this was to be the way she died.
Death, though, held the quiet offer of everlasting peace. If there was a God, then maybe He would let her be with the only ones she had ever loved—her grandparents.
In a way, she was surprised she had lived this long. She took chances she knew could get her killed, like with Owen, because she didn’t really care if she died, and being that close to the edge made it all the more exhilarating.
Those risks enabled her to get closer to the pure ecstasy of vengeance.
Angela had grown up around dangerous men. Now she hunted dangerous killers. She’d always known that death could come at any time.
Miguel abruptly snatched her by her hair and hauled her to her feet. She stood before him, before all four men, naked, shivering both in pain and in helpless fear of what was coming. She didn’t really care if she was about to die, but she feared the agony of how they would do it. Men like this didn’t like to make a quick kill. They liked to make it an agonizing death.
Miguel spoke in Spanish to the others. They discussed something for a moment, and then Emilio ran off into a room to the side. He came back with a rope.
Emilio held the coiled rope he’d retrieved up before her. “A rope can kill quick, no?” He held a hand up above his head and did an impression of being hanged and the rope snapping taut. His tongue flopped out to the side of his mouth. “See? Break the neck and it is quick.”
“But quick is too good for Americans,” Miguel said.
Juan and Pedro nodded their agreement. By now, she had learned all their names, and the name of the man who gave the orders: Rafael.
“We have something better in mind for you,” Emilio said.
A wicked smile grew on Miguel’s face. “Hold her.”
As the other men held her arms and hair again, Miguel tied one end of the rope around her neck. The rope was coarse and hard. It hurt as they tied a knot at the back of her neck and jerked it tight. It was already starting to choke her. Angela didn’t know much about hanging, but she did understand that they didn’t want it to be an easy death by breaking her neck.
“Should we tie her arms?” Emilio asked.
“No,” Miguel scoffed. “Let her have her hands free so she can claw at the rope that will be choking her to death. Let her be free to struggle. That will make it worse that she cannot get the rope that is strangling her from her neck.”
Emilio peered up at the ceiling for a moment and then tossed the rope up and over one of the iron beams.
The men all let go of her to grab hold of the end of the rope. They quickly pulled together and hoisted her up off the ground by the rope around her neck.
Angela took one last gasping breath as her feet were lifted off the floor and her weight tightened the rope. The men pulled together until she was about four feet above the floor. It might as well have been a mile. Already she was panicking from not being able to breathe.
One of the men tied off the end of the rope on a post.
Angela kicked and twisted. She wanted to scream at the men, but she couldn’t. Desperation took control of her. She clawed at the rope that was strangling her, just as Miguel said she would.
“Let’s go,” Miguel said.
“Don’t you want to watch the American whore die?” Emilio asked.
“Now that we have the parts we need, you know that we have other things we must do. It is already getting late. We will come back for her truck later. When we do, we will dispose of her body as well. We already took too much time with her.” He grinned as he smacked her bare bottom. “But it was worth it, eh?”
Angela kicked at his head, but he easily dodged to the side. She desperately wished that she could reach a table with her feet, but the tables were way too far away. Her body rotated around and around as she kicked, all the while desperately clawing at the rope strangling her. Tears streamed down her cheeks, mixing with all the blood that was dripping off her jaw.
She was still kicking and struggling as she watched the four men hurry toward the door carrying more bundles from the shelves. She couldn’t see it, but she heard the front door scrape the ground and then slam shut. She heard the car start as doors shut and then the tires chirp as it raced away.
Angela was completely alone in a dark, deserted factory her grandfather had helped build. No one was going to save her.
The rope around her throat held all her weight. The pain was horrific. She desperately needed a breath.
Her vision was narrowing down to a dark tunnel.
As she twisted, the world was starting to go black.
TWENTY-FOUR
Hanging by her neck at the end of the rope, Angela twisted and spun as she struggled. She could only imagine the shock when her corpse was eventually found hanging there, naked, her tongue bulging out of her mouth, her skin blue.
What a sensation—a naked girl found hanging by her neck.
Naked.
The word seared through her panic-stricken mind.
She was naked—except for her boots.
They had pulled off her shorts and underwear and then ripped off her top to get at what they wanted, but they hadn’t bothered with her boots.
Even as she realized that she was still wearing her boots, Angela knew she was rapidly running out of time. A desperate plan was forming in her mind, but being unable to breathe she knew that her window of time for a chance to do anything to save herself was very small and closing fast.
If she wanted to live, she knew she had only seconds to act.
Move, Angela, she told herself. Don’t let them win. Move!