Juraci awoke to a splitting headache, her body drenched in sweat, her heart beating wildly in her chest, the nightmare fresh in her mind.
Except it wasn’t a nightmare. A man wearing a hood had broken down her door, had pinned her to her bed, had stuck a hypodermic needle in her arm. Now she was… she was… where the hell was she?
The place reminded her of nothing so much as a windowless prison cell. Except for the door: no bars, solid wood. The walls smelled of fresh cement. On one of them, held in place by a single nail driven into the concrete, was a typewritten piece of paper. She stared at it until the letters came into focus:
The Rules
Do not talk to us. We will not answer you.
Do not shout, or scream. No one will hear you.
This is about money. You are being held for ransom. When your son pays us, you’ll be released unharmed.
When you stretch out on the floor, your hands will come within twenty centimeters of the door. This will enable you to reach your food trays and exchange used buckets for clean ones.
The bucket is your toilet. After use, put it against the wall to the right of the door. It will be removed and exchanged for a clean one. We will do this when we bring you food.
You will be fed three times a day. We will knock. You will sit on the bed. We will open the door wide enough to put the tray on the floor. Only after the door has closed again may you stretch out and drag the tray toward you. After eating, put the tray back in the same place you got it from.
If you violate any rule, you will spend the next twentyfour hours without food or water.
A FTER SHE’D READ THE seventh rule, she’d curled herself into a ball and wept.
Hours later, it seemed, they’d given her food for the first time. It consisted of a ham and cheese sandwich and a bottle of water.
There’d been no eating utensils, no cup, or glass. The bread, at least, had been fresh.
While she’d been unconscious, they’d changed her clothes, taken off her urine-stained nightgown and dressed her in a track suit. It pinched at the waist, in the armpits, in the crotch. They could have abused her when she was naked, but they hadn’t.
Maybe, she thought, because I still stink of piss.
She’d wanted to use some of the water to clean herself, but she was so thirsty, and there was so little of it, that she’d drunk it all.
There was a chain around her ankle, loosely fastened with a small padlock. Another padlock linked the chain to an eye bolt set into the wall. The loop around her ankle was beginning to chafe her skin.
Her cell was square, the walls about four meters apart. In the middle of the ceiling, a bare bulb hung from a wire. What they’d referred to as a bed was, in reality, no more than a mattress on the floor, no frame, no spring, no sheets. The air was warm and stale. The only source of fresh air was a single aluminum vent set into the top of the door.
There was no radio, no television, but they’d left her a stack of old magazines. She was grateful for that.
Her captors were two, one tall and broad-shouldered, one of less than average height and girth for a man, but average on both counts if the captor was a woman. Their outfits were identical: blue coveralls, a hood made of blue cloth, black tennis shoes and vinyl gloves.
They rotated, first one, then the other, never coming into her cell together, never speaking.
Except once.
That time, they had come in together. The big one had handed her a newspaper, and told her how to hold it, while the smaller one took a photograph.
That incident happened shortly after she awoke. The flash had made her headache worse. They’d taken the newspaper with them when they’d left.
Were they people she knew?
The thought disturbed her.
Something else disturbed her, too.
Back in her bedroom, before the big oaf put the needle in her arm, she’d heard two sharp reports.
In the favela of her childhood, such sounds were everyday events, background noise, like birdsong in the countryside, or surf on a beach. She’d heard them many hundreds of times.
Gunshots.