King of Her Desire

15

I hit the sand and started looking Sochi over trying to find out where all that blood was coming from.

But then she grabbed my hands and held them real tight like she didn't want me to touch her.

And man, those spooky golden eyes were so wide and terrified that I just gave up and asked her, "Where are you hurt?" In Spanish as always.

I felt Elliott's hand on my shoulder then. She looked as terrified as Sochi. Who tensed all up and started crying and screaming some kind of Indian words over and over again in this trembly, high pitched wail that made her whole body tremble.

And when I tried to touch her face she covered it up with her blood streaked arms and curled up into a ball there on the sand.

So Elliott sank down next to me and said, "I got through to the mayor's guy--we've got to get out of here right now, okay?"

"What the fuck happened?"

"Some...drug guy got pissed at these—oh, I don't know! It's some kind of turf war. This cartel guy gave the order to shoot everything that moved--all the little villages first and then the entire town, they attacked. He was absolutely horrified, Miguel. They were caught completely off guard—this guy has his own army! Armored trucks with these huge guns..."

Sochi buried her head in my lap the way the sibs do when they're really scared. And I cupped the back of her head and said, "We gotta get outta here, okay? I need you to stand up for me. Can you stand up for me?"

"They want us to head for the airport," Elliott said. "They'll let us use their plane. There's this tiny little airport in--"

"She can't go with us."

Elliott sighed real loud and said, "That's true..." And then she struggled her way up onto her feet and said, "Let's just get over there and I'll—God, let's just go!"

We could make it that far without gassing up so I hauled Sochi over to the Jeep and gunned it out of there while Elliott started sending out pictures of Sochi all bloodied up to everyone she could think of.

And this is how you know money talks. Because a few minutes later, she gets this call from someone in some governor's office telling us they'd gotten a pilot from Tucson to fly down and take us to Nogales, where the "consul' (I didn't know what that was) would take care of everything.

I heard the guy say, "Shouldn't take more than 20 or 30 minutes, if that—you're okay, right?"

"I'm okay, but this poor child—she absolutely cannot stay here, Paul. She just can't."

I looked back in the rearview while Elliott was telling him all the gory details she'd heard from that Miguel guy. Sochi was in this weird daze by then. Her eyes just sort of glazed over. Staring in that weird, blank way like some blind people do.

"She's in total shock," Elliott said, tossing her cell aside with a sigh.

"I wonder how she even got here."

"Well, let's just be glad she did. And that that airport is outside of town. I mean, all that carnage—I couldn't bear it."

"Whoa...wow. Lots of cops..."

"We hope it's cops," she said, turning to toss this long, sweaterish thing to Sochi. Who somehow had the presence of mind to put it on and curl up in it so they wouldn't see all that blood.