CHAPTER TEN.

The club is less than fifty yards ahead: a box-shaped, white and red building framed by a parking lot that's surrounded by dirt. As I come up on it, I realize it's not quite as small as I thought-maybe about the size of a roller skating rink back home. The parking lot isn't empty but it isn't full, either. I count maybe fifteen or so cars and one ragged out white Honda CB500F.

I notice, as I park beside an old Maxima, that on the wooden porch there's a girl with long, bleached blonde hair wearing nothing but a sombrero and a black string bikini. I wonder how seedy a place has to be for Priscilla to call it that.

It takes me a minute to get off my bike, because my body is so stiff and sore, and after that I have to dig through my bag to find the one source of protection I was able to take across the border: a small, palm-held Taser. I bought it for Suri years ago, when we were all starting college, but she refused to carry it, and somehow it ended up at my house. I slide it into my pocket, check for my wallet, and lock my bag onto the bike.

The whole time, this girl is dancing for me. As I cross the dusty parking lot, where the air smells of sour liquor and fried foods, she rubs her palms over her t.i.ts. I try not to ogle her, but her b.r.e.a.s.t.s are huge and she won't let me break eye contact. When I get to the door, she holds out her hand for me, like she wants me to take it and pull her inside. I don't take it, and she makes a pouting face. A second later, a short, broad-shouldered bouncer comes out the door, trailing a cloud of bar smoke. Mexican party music booms behind him.

He gives me a murderous look, but the girl laughs and says, "This one is okay, Pedro."

The guy flicks his fingers at the door, and I step into the thickest cloud of smoke I've ever seen. I can hear the clink of pool b.a.l.l.s before my eyes clear enough that I can see. In every direction, there's a pool table, and on my left is a long bar where girls in short shorts and skirts are talking to guys in grungy, baggy clothes and sometimes baseball caps. Like inside most bars, the patrons are mainly in their 20s and 30s, but I think I see a few teens.

I choose a booth near the back of the room and pull my phone out of my pocket, pretending to text someone while I get a better look at things. I rest my hands on the table top and cringe at the sticky filth that coats it. I lift my hands, and that's when I notice the filmy curtain on the wall a few feet to my right. Beyond it, I can see women's bodies in various states of undress, gleaming in stage light. If I strain my ears, I can hear the cat calls.

After few minutes of pretend texting, a waitress comes over, wearing nothing but a lacy hot pink ap.r.o.n and a g-string. She turns her body to the side, giving me a good view of her a.s.s. Then she bats her fake eyelashes and smiles at me. Her teeth are crooked. "Can I get you something to drink, sir?" she asks in Spanish.

While I order a bottle of Corona, she looks me over-slowly. I must be really off my game, because it makes me feel uncomfortable. Like she can see all the scars under my clothes. Like she knows my hair is short because I had my skull sawed open less than six months ago.

When my beer arrives, the uncomfortable feeling magnifies. I look around the club and realize I have no idea what to do next. I take a few swigs, discreetly searching the room for someone I could ask about Carlos. I see a few bouncers-one with prominent acne scars, one with a permanent scowl, and one surrounded by flirting women-but none of them is nearby, and none looks in charge.

I finish my drink and order a second. It's been a long while since I drank regularly, so I feel a little lightheaded, but it works for me. Makes me looser. When the waitress brings my second Corona, I lean in and ask her if she knows Carlos.

She hesitates for half a breath, then nods toward the sheer curtain on the other side of the room. "He's there. In the club."

I guess the curtain separates the strip club from the bar. I slide the waitress a twenty. "Thanks."

I want to get to Carlos before she can tell him that I'm coming, so I get up almost right after she saunters off. Unfortunately, she senses me behind her and turns around grinning, probably thinking I'm coming after her.

She waves at herself, as if displaying the merchandise. This is when I know I've definitely lost my game. I can't even come up with something smooth. Instead I hold my hand up and lamely shake my head, and the girl huffs off, shaking her a.s.s like she's got a hula hoop around her waist.

I pa.s.s a cl.u.s.ter of American frat bros, heehawing and guzzling beer from a funnel. The old Cross would have stuck out just like them, so I feel grateful for my dusty clothes and sweat-rumpled appearance. n.o.body seems to notice me as I cross the room.

When I go to duck through the curtain, the womanizing bouncer grabs my left arm from behind. I whirl around, s.n.a.t.c.hing my arm away from him on instinct.

He holds his hands out like he meant no harm. "Two hundred," he says smoothly.

I frown.

"Two hundred dollars."

Is he serious? He doesn't blink, so I pull the money out of my wallet and press it into his palm, and he waves me in.

"Carlos," I say before he slips back onto his bar stool.

"Right there."

He nods at one of the dozen round tables set in the room, this one nestled in a shadowy corner, and I glance quickly around the room before I start that way. It's smaller than the bar and not quite as disgusting. It doesn't smell like stale urine inside a beer bottle, and the lights are more than just bare bulbs. The girls swaying around poles on stage are nothing to scream about, but maybe I'm just not feeling the whole working woman thing these days.

I pick Carlos out before I get to the table. He's sitting with three other men, and he's the smallest one, but he's wearing an expensive looking red silk dress shirt with a diamond-studded pin on the lapel, and the other men at the table are all listening intently as he speaks with broad hand gestures. His longish black hair is slicked back with gel, and even so, he has the shine of wealth that no one else in this place has. Like he has his own personal strippers scrubbing him down in his Jacuzzi every morning.

I dread approaching the table, but I don't let it affect my mannerisms. When I'm within spitball-tossing range, I catch his eye. I step closer, placing one fist on their table: casual but firm. "Can we talk for a minute?"

I realize this might sound threatening, but I'm not sure how else to put it. To my surprise, he looks almost glad to see me. His eyes roll over my body and I shake off the self-conscious feeling that's new to me since the wreck.

He sends the men around him to another table near the stage, and as they leave he motions for me to in the chair one leaves out, across from him. I slide in, taking my time so he doesn't notice my left hand.

Carlos lights up a cigarette and exhales to his right, so it doesn't go into my face. "What can I do for you?" he asks me in English.

"I'm told you're a man who can find people."

Carlos smirks. "It depends on the people."

"I'm looking for someone." I heave a deep breath. "An American who's been in Mexico for a year or two." Based on the e-mails, I think Missy was sold around September 2011, making it almost a year and a half ago-but I don't know that for sure.

"You think I can help you find this girl."

I nod. "The girl I'm looking for is named Missy King. I've heard she's at a church."

My neck feels tight, and my upper arm is aching. I grit my teeth and ignore it, focusing on Carlos's face. He seems to be considering what I've told him, with his palms pressed flat on the table.

"You know...I have heard that a little bird is staying with the Sisters at St. Catherine's Clinic in Guadalupe Victoria."

My heart leaps. Guadalupe Victoria is where Priscilla and Jim Gunn took Lizzy and I. "You've heard of her? You're pretty confident she's there?"

He shrugs. "Most people have heard of this Missy. The Cientos Cartel is nothing to play with."

I nod, trying to match my expression to his reverent one, but I'm too worked up. I tap my foot under the table. "Can you tell me anything about the convent?"

Carlos glances behind me, and then he slowly smiles. "Yes. You are never going to see it." I grunt as I feel the air shift behind me, and something gla.s.s breaks over my head.

Sometimes I think about writing a book.

How to Wreck Your Life in Two Years or Less, by Meredith Kinsey.

As Wednesday afternoon shines hot and sunny down on the convent, and I do my paperwork for the last time, I can't help but think about what happened to me. What I did to myself, and what other people did to me.

How much of the blame is mine, I wonder. If I die tomorrow, will this fate be one I chose, or was it chosen for me? I remember the quandary from high school Sunday school cla.s.s. Predetermination. If G.o.d knew our lives before he made them, how can a good and loving G.o.d choose only some people to be his chosen ones, the ones who go to Heaven when they die? And if he didn't choose, how is he all knowing? All deciding?

It just can't be.

I only know one thing for sure: I wasn't chosen. There's no way I am. So if I die, I guess I'm on my way to h.e.l.l. It doesn't matter how many Hail Marys I said here.

The pain of the blow shoots me up out of my seat. I round on the guy behind me as I reach into my pocket for the Taser. Before I can pull it out, the goon socks me in the jaw, and I see stars. I feel hands on my shoulders, the hardness of the bench under my a.s.s. Something glints in the low light, and Carlos's face is stretched into a big grin.

"Priscilla told me to expect you."

I blink my eyes a few times, still clutching the Taser, and I realize the glint I saw was Carlos's gun. He's holding it out toward me, his hand resting on the table as he points the nose at my chest.

"You can come with me to meet Jesus, or I can kill you now."

I cough a little, tasting blood. "You'd really kill me in the middle of a club?"

"It's my cousin's club." He shrugs. "Sometimes people die here."

My heart speeds up like I've been hit with an epi pen and I glance around behind me for the other guy. He's gone.

I can't see where, but I bet he'll be back. For now, it's just me and Carlos and his gun. I'm probably going to die here, I realize. Then an image of my last few months flits through my mind, and I vow that I won't. I didn't suffer all that s.h.i.t to die in a sleazy Mexican strip joint.

Carlos is giving me his poker face, still pointing his gun my way, when I lunge forward and smash my Taser into his throat. As I move, I twist out of the line of fire, but his fingers jolt along with the rest of him; he never even pulls the trigger. He slumps face-first over the table, his gelled head landing in an ash tray.

I grab his gun, then glance around. No one seems to have noticed. The girls are still dancing. Men are still smoking, laughing, and cat-calling.

Carlos twitches once more.

f.u.c.k.

I inhale, exhale. Focus on the feeling of the floor below my feet and try to ground myself, the way Akemi taught me during that long, long week when I first learned to meditate. Then I stick Carlos's gun and its huge magazine into my pants and glance around again. No one watching me. Carlos is still twitching a little, moaning. He looks like he drank too much, not like I just shocked the s.h.i.t out of him.

I need to get out of here, fast. There's an exit over to my left, beside a bathroom sign. I could run right now, but first...I kneel under the table, heart pounding in my ears, and reach inside Carlos's pockets until I feel something hard and square. My hand is shaking as I work it out, then drop the phone in my pocket beside mine.

"Thanks," I mutter.

I get up and walk quickly to the exit door. When I feel a rush of dry air on my face, I lunge into a run and don't stop until I mount the bike-left leg first, the way I do it fastest. For once, it actually works.

The entire time I'm trying to get my left arm in that d.a.m.n band, I'm sweating bullets. I glance up once more before I gas the bike, going almost sixty before I even leave the lot. I don't slow down until I'm near Ejido Choropo, a rural area south of Mexicali. I pull over in the shelter of a small, scrubby tree and ask Carlos's map app how to get to Guadalupe Victoria.

I wonder if Missy King is even there.

In less than two hours, I'll finally know.

CHAPTER ELEVEN.

Sean was ambitious, but he was raised by a drug addict father and he didn't have any money when he got to Athens Technical College. I think he planned to try school, but it wasn't long before he realized he could exercise his entrepreneurial spirit dealing pot.

Sean and I started dating around the time I graduated, and at first I thought what he did for a living was awful. It wasn't especially dangerous-he was selling to college kids, after all-but when I stayed at his place at night I used to have nightmares about the police kicking his door in and shooting us as we startled awake.

After a few months, I got used to it. I even started to think of myself as some kind of outlaw by a.s.sociation. He enjoyed the way I saw him: some renegade/freedom-fighter mash-up. When Sean insisted on paying for my apartment in Atlanta while I tried to get my freelance writing career going, I let him. The job market sucked, and my aunt and uncle were already helping Landon. By the time Sean needed to move in because there was too much heat on his place, I had started to get weary of his lifestyle. But Sean was paranoid, and he needed me. That's what I told myself.

A few weeks later, Sean decided he wanted to move to Vegas and deal drugs there. I thought of Vegas as a sleazy, gross kind of place, but I knew I would go with him if he asked. I thought I might get some good freelance stories out of it. Maybe I could do something on some of the girls. Something for a national publication. Or if worse came to worse, one of the Atlanta-based magazines that I had worked with.

Finally, at the end of February, we decided it was time to try Vegas. I had packed his car, a brand new black Corolla with shiny rims. He was in one of his paranoid moods, convinced the cops were coming to get him, and I remember I had offered him a handful of my Skittles as we got into the car.

"Everything is fine."

I can still hear myself saying that, half a second before the squeal of tires.

They shot him with rubber bullets and came for me, but Sean had another car, a sleek white Mustang he kept parked two streets over, as a getaway car. I had the keys; I was going to drive it to a trucking company that would ship it across the country.

As I raced away, clutching Sean's key ring and aiming for the Mustang, he was screaming for me, screaming my name like the selfish jerk he was, I guess-but I kept running. I got the keys into the ignition just as a rubber bullet hit the side of the car. Somehow I made it off the one-way side street, out of downtown, onto the interstate.

I got some money at the first ATM I saw and drove straight to Vegas, only stopping for bathroom breaks and gas. I wasn't sure where else to go. Later, on the AJC online, I read about the bust. The police were searching for me. They wanted to ask me questions.

I ditched Sean's Mustang immediately. He had ten thousand dollars in a gym bag, plus two bricks of marijuana. A lot to have in a gym bag, but not enough to last me. I ended up at the Starry Night Brothel and pretended to be reporting. I guess I didn't know what else to do. I liked the girls, and they liked me. It was a reputable-seeming place. I met the owner, a woman named Tess, and I told her what had happened. She offered to sell the weed for me, but she wanted something in return. She wanted me to service a client of hers. Drake Carlson-the governor of California.

"He only does b.l.o.w. .j.o.bs," she told me. "Thinks it's not really cheating if it's not s.e.x, but they say he's impotent."

I remember sitting on the leather couch in Tess's suite, looking at my hands and wondering if I could give a b.l.o.w. .j.o.b to a total stranger. To someone kind of...old.

But Tess thought she could get a lot of money from the weed, and I needed money. I was terrified of going back to Georgia, terrified of prison-even though I'd never done any drug dealing myself-and terrified that maybe Sean was crazy enough to try to pin the whole thing on me. I didn't know what else to do, so I agreed.

It was weird. Not what I'd ever imagined for myself, but I tried to pretend I was a character in a book. We had dinner. Wine. Drake was charming. Funny. Even protective, in a way that Sean had never been. I felt an element of safety for the first time since landing in the city. He said he wanted to see me again, and proved it by pre-paying the brothel. It was a lot of money-and he hadn't been so bad. The next time he was in town, I went down on him. He wasn't impotent, but it was hard to get him off.

The third time, a hot weekend in May, he wanted to touch me. After that, he always touched me, but he never asked for anything except b.l.o.w. .j.o.bs.

Soon I was going to dinners with him. He started introducing me as his mistress. I was living there, with Tess, and I wasn't an escort. I was a b.l.o.w. .j.o.b queen. He named me Missy King, and that's who I was on Tess's roster.

Months pa.s.sed, and I was making more money than Sean had with his pot. And I was saving every penny of it. Once I got a hundred thousand dollars, I wanted to move to California, to San Francisco, and start a new life.

I didn't get there, obviously.

Drake's Las Vegas body guard started dropping by to see me sometimes. His name was Jim Gunn, and I always thought he was a creeper. He used to stare at me like he wanted to eat me for dinner. But the first time, he told me Drake wanted him to take me out to dinner, to see how I was doing. It had been three weeks since the governor was able to make it my way, so I took Jim at his word. He was on Drake's payroll, after all.

After that, Jim took me out to dinner once a week, every week, always asking me personal questions and questions about my past. So the governor could "do damage control" if anyone ever found out he was seeing me. I hated going out with Jim, but I did what I was paid to do. Not once did Drake ever mention my outings with Jim, and it wasn't my job to mention things to Drake.

One week in August, just after Drake had been in town for a 'celebrity' poker tournament, I starting hearing things about this p.o.r.n star named Priscilla Heat. How she wanted Drake. How she thought I wasn't worth his money. Just a few days later, the rumor started that I was cheating on the governor with Jim Gunn.

Drake never asked me about it. He came to Vegas one more time, and we went to a fancy casino restaurant with some of his friends. He went home on a Sunday, but on Monday, Jim Gunn called and told me he'd decided to stay. He wanted me to meet him at his penthouse at the Wynn.

Jim picked me up at six sharp in a big, black SUV I'd never seen before, but I didn't question it. When I got into the back seat, Priscilla Heat was there, and then I started freaking out. The two of them wanted me to quit seeing the governor. Priscilla told me he was hers, and I needed to go back to Georgia. I wondered how she knew I came from Georgia, but then I remembered: I'd told Jim.

"Are you guys working together?"

Priscilla laughed, and they explained how I was going to call Drake and ask him for more money.

"He already knows your plan, my dear." Priscilla grinned. "How you're actually an undercover reporter. How you'll tell everyone about what a lying, cheating b.a.s.t.a.r.d he is if he doesn't pay your price."