And Victor gives Amber a slight head nod before signing in ASL, “I will bring Dawn back in exchange for my cousin. You have my word.”
“He’s done signing,” one of the guards lets Amber know. He must understand sign language because he adds, “And what he said was legit.”
A digitized voice chirps, “Stopped recording,” and Amber lowers the phone.
“Okay, Butch,” she says. “Let’s do this.”
“My name isn’t Butch. It’s Phantom.”
“Really?” Amber replies. She makes a hand signal, and one of the guards pulls a hood over Phantom’s head. With military precision, each of Amber’s men takes an arm and swiftly escorts his cousin through a gate embedded in the hedge.
“Because you sound exactly like a Butch to me,” Amber calls after Phantom, walking through the gate behind him and her guards.
That’s the last thing Victor hears before the door closes behind them.
But, just a few minutes later, the hedge gate opens again.
And this time, Dawn walks out.
The sight of her hits him like a punch to the gut. His breathing turns shallow, and his blood thunders through his veins as he drinks in the sight of her.
Her expression is flat and unsmiling. She’s dressed in a loose V-neck T-shirt and a pair of striped, flowing shorts, with her usual Aggretsuko tote hanging off her shoulder. She wears her hair up in a bun, and she hasn’t bothered with makeup.
To Victor, she’s a beautiful ghost come back to life.
A ghost who walks right past him and climbs into the back of the Bentley without a word. By the time he gets in himself, she’s buckled in with both her face and torso turned toward the window.
She doesn’t talk to him after he climbs into the seat beside her. Nor does she say anything on the way to their first, but not ultimate, destination.
She pauses when she climbs out of the Bentley to see the private plane waiting for them on the airfield's tarmac. Then she pulls out the secret phone he still wishes he’d stolen when he had the chance and types a message to someone. Most likely Amber.
To his surprise, Dawn doesn’t acknowledge anything that’s happening to her at all. Especially to him.
He lets her board the plane first. Not out of courtesy. He has a bad feeling that if he sits down first, Dawn will choose whatever seat on the aircraft is furthest away from him.
And he’s right. When he takes the seat directly across from her, she fidgets and looks over her shoulder. As if she’s considering a seat exchange.
“Thank you for agreeing to my terms,” he signs before she can follow through on that impulse.
Her eyes meet his for the first time in two months. “Yeah, well, it wasn't like I had much choice. This is the only way I could get you to leave me alone forever.”
He knew this would not be an easy reconciliation. But the rage and resentment burning in her eyes make the guilt and remorse he’s been holding at bay threaten to overtake him.
He swallows and tries again. “I know things ended badly between us on our anniversary. I want you to know that I regret my actions and I’m sorry that—"
“If you were really sorry, I wouldn't be here,” she says before he can finish his apology. Her voice is as cold and dead as a frozen rat in one of their warehouses.
He will be thirty-three in January. Yet, he feels like a seventeen-year-old boy again.
Words stutter inside his fingers as he tries to figure out how to explain himself, how to explain his actions in a way that she’ll understand.
“So I’m here,” Dawn says before he can come up with anything. “Do I still have zero choices?”
Her completely valid question makes him even angrier at himself than he’s been for the last six weeks.
“You have choices now,” he answers, his signs both earnest and emphatic. “From now on, you will have choices with me. That I can promise. You see, Dawn—”
“In that case…” Dawn drops her gaze from his, the sign language equivalent of cutting someone off. She pulls a pair of headphones out of her tote and slams them on before settling back into her seat and squeezing her eyes closed.
And just in case he had any hopes of salvaging the conversation, she starts speaking in a language that sounds like Korean.
After a few confused moments, he gleans that she is listening to some kind of language learning audio course.
So no, it doesn’t look like the heart-to-heart he had planned for the long trip is going to happen.
Victor watches her repeat short Korean phrases for a long time. Not sure what to do. Or even what to say if he had her attention. This was not how he thought this would go.
Actually, he didn’t imagine much past her listening as he explained that he was sorry. During their ten years together, she'd always been willing to listen.
But that was only because you limited her choices, a dark voice reminds him. She had no choice but to listen to you. And now she does.
He wasted so much time denying the truth. Denying that the sweet, funny girl who sometimes presented to him despite her imprisonment was the real Dawn.
But now he knows. He had the real thing, but he let her slip through his hands.
She's never going to forgive you for this….thanks for doing my job for me.
Eventually, he dozes off with Darrell’s words once again swarming inside his head.
And he’s immediately consumed by a nightmare.
The little boy was still in the bedroom. But now, his mother had joined him.
The pee eventually dried. And they were given one meal to eat. A bowl of rice with three gamey pieces of meat. They were also given a single cup with some water inside. It was hot and nasty, and it tasted like metal.
“We’re on the mainland,” his mother explained. “They can't drink water from the tap. They have to boil it, or else you can get sick.”
The little boy had never drunk boiled water before. It tasted like very bad tea. He hated it. But it was something. So he drank every drop after his mother took a sip. And he wished for more when it was gone. The bad man came back to get the tray, but he ignored his mother’s request for more water and food.
And then, the little boy and his mother were alone again for a very long time. He was bored and still hungry and still thirsty.
“Mama, Mama,” he cried pitifully. “I want to go home.”
The little boy’s mother held him tighter. Her swollen belly, which she told him had a little sister inside, pressed into his leg. “I know you do, xiao Tak-lun. But please be quiet. You don’t want the bad man to come back. Try to sleep. Try to dream you’re someplace else. Stop crying.”
This was what she told him. There came no more promises of everything being all right. The little boy tried to follow her instructions, to stop crying. But he was only a child. And children are like animals. They know when something's wrong. He couldn’t stop wailing at the certainty that something terrible was about to happen.
And that something terrible came almost immediately after he fell asleep.
He woke back up in an instant to the sounds of his mother screaming. He'd finally fallen asleep in her arms. And now she was holding onto him tightly as hands he couldn’t see tried to yank him away.
“He’s quiet now!” his mother told the hands. “Don't take him. Please, don’t take him!”