Drugs, Treasons and Other Demons

40. THE WINNING MOVE

TW: this chapter includes the depiction of a sex scene but it's not smut it's just cringe af

"Can we go over the plan again?" I whispered. "Just one more time."

My trembling hand hovered over my heart, to stop it from tearing through my skin and beating out of my chest. This was the night I'd escape. I could already hear the first songs of a party upstairs, a party that would keep Pablo and his men busy enough that they wouldn't notice that I had disappeared.

"So, Majo's bedroom is at the very very end of that hallway, right?" said Mafer.

I took another deep breath and nervously clawed at the sides of my throat. It was frightening. Tonight was the night I'd either break away, or break apart.

I tore myself away from my daunting thoughts and focused on what was important: paying attention to Mafer.

"Right," I breathed.

"Just outside Majo's bedroom window, there's a camera," she continued. "It's super easy to reach. You just hit it and it'll tilt up. Majo and I have done it a thousand times, when we want to take a smoke break after lights out, or when we want to meet up with our boyfriends."

The peaceful tone in her voice should have reassured me. Mafer had thought this plan through and through. She'd done this herself many times before, and it would work out just fine. There was only a tiny difference. For me, the stakes were a little higher than being caught with a cigarette just after my bedtime.

"We have the same shift today so she won't get off work until 10:30, so you've got until then," said Mafer. "But the later you do it, the smaller the chances are that someone will notice."

"Ten thirty," I repeated, nodding to seal the mental note.

"Once you've moved the camera, you go down to the pantry," she kept on going, while I shut my eyes to picture the path, and concentrate a little more. "If you climb out one of the little windows, and you'll be right under that camera you just tilted. You'll be in a little courtyard– well, not a courtyard. It's more like a path, really– with a hedge on the side. If you manage to get through, or over, or under the hedge there, you can get past the other cameras. And then, if you're super quiet, you can get past the guards too."

If, if, if. So many 'ifs'. So many ways this could all go wrong. If it was just me, if this was a rash decision, another 'genius' plan I'd cooked up after one too many cocktails, I would have run for it. I had nothing to lose, aside from a few hundred square feet to roam in, and all it took for me to win back Pablo's favors was doe eyes and a few one-liners. But now Mafer was involved, and the sheer thought that something might happen to her froze the blood in my veins and the cells in my brain.

"Are you listening?" she mumbled.

"Yes, sorry–" I stuttered, rubbing my hands down my face to erase the fear and the sweat sticking to my skin. "I'm just... trying not... not to forget anything."

"It's okay," she murmured. "So, the bus stop is three hundred meters away, right-hand side at the end of the driveway. The last bus to San José is supposedly at eleven, but it's always fifteen to thirty minutes late."

"What if I miss it?" I gulped.

"I'll give you my watch so you can keep track of time," she said. She didn't wait for an answer, and immediately began to unlatch it from her wrist. "But if you leave here at say, ten, or ten past ten, it gives you more than an hour to get there. It should be enough to get to the bus stop, and you'll be long gone before anyone notices."

She dangled her watch right in front of my eyes for a solid minute before I even noticed it. I could barely wrap it around my wrist, and it felt painful from how tight it fit. It hurt me to have to take anything more from Mafer, but I needed all the help I could get.