A Small Fortune Read Online Free PDF

than the fear of what might happen next.

5
     
    When I wake my first thought is that I’ve fallen asleep at the beach and am awakened by Jonathon coming to join me. My skin and clothes smell like the ocean. My face tight from salt. But it’s dark, and my head and neck ache. When I try to move I realize that not only am I sitting in a chair, my arms are tied behind me, my feet are bare and bound to the chair legs. The reason I can’t see is because I’m blindfolded.
    I remember the car, the men, the struggle to breathe. The last thing I saw before I passed out was Benicio’s amber eyes locked onto mine, and they were filled with a kind of terror I’d never seen.
    Oliver. Where is Oliver?
    My brain pounds against my skull. My mouth tastes of gasoline. I drop my chin to my chest, afraid I’m about to throw up. I haven’t eaten all day. What I think is still today. I have no idea how much time has passed.
    The room is quiet. The smell of sweat and sulfur. Someone cooking. The scent of burned tin on a hotplate. Cinnamon. I quiet my breath, steady the blood pounding my ears. I hear a distant car horn as if it’s traveling up a canyon.
    “Hello?” I say.
    “Celia. You’re awake.”
    Benicio.
    “Untie me!” My mind races through all the reasons they kidnapped me. None of them are good.
    “I can’t,” he says.
    How could that look of terror in his eyes have been an act? I yank at my wrists and ankles, bound by what feels like hard plastic zip ties, the kind police use these days for cuffs. The edges tear into my skin. “Of course you can,” I say.
    A door opens and a ray of light creeps beneath my blindfold. “ Habla español, señora ?”
    I go still.
    “Hey.” Someone kicks my foot. “I’m talking to you.”
    “My husband is president of a bank,” I say, my voice barely a squeak. “If it’s money you want, he can get it for you.”
    An argument suddenly breaks out in Spanish between two men. A mad firing of rolling tongues, and the only thing I understand is my name. The voices continue to attack one another until the sound of a harsh slap silences them both.
    Hands grip the blindfold at the back of my head and tear it away. I blink in the dim room, trying to see clearly through tears I have no way of wiping. It appears to be dusk, though the sun might also be rising.
    Where am I? White stone walls. A small bed with a red and yellow Aztec blanket, red and orange handmade pillows, the kind the vendors sell at the beach. The ceiling is a series of low beams. One door. Thick knotty pine and slightly ajar, leading into a hallway. Something small on the terra-cotta tiles through the crack. A toy. A child’s alphabet block. D.
    “So.” Whoever has pulled the blindfold off behind me steps forward. I look up long enough to see it isn’t Benicio. This man has short hair and a thick chest. The head of a howling wolf is tattooed on his beefy right forearm. Our eyes lock, and my first thought is that I’ve seen his face. It’s clear to us both that I can identify him. This isn’t a good sign.
    “Celia,” he says in a way that makes my skin shrink.
    “Let me go. I won’t tell anyone.” It sounds stupid, even to me.
    The man laughs. Hoarsely. Thick with cigarettes.
    “Please. I have a son who needs me.”
    “We know what you have, Celia. We know everything about you.”
    He’s just trying to get inside my head. “Then why’d you ask if I could speak Spanish?”
    “You’re clever, aren’t you? Graduated at the top of your class. Reed College, wasn’t it?”
    Blood races to my brain to help unscramble the fact that he knows this about me.
    “And pretty. Just like Benicio said.”
    My chest caves, wringing out my breath. “What do you want from me?” I steady my eyes on the bed. Tell myself to breathe.
    “You know exactly what we want from you.”
    “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
    “Maybe it will all become clear when your husband gets here.”
    A surge of panic shoots through