Breath 19
The heat inside the agent’s silver sedan was unbearable,
like a furnace sealed tight with no mercy.
The AC barely worked—just coughed out lukewarm gusts of air
that couldn’t even make the sweat dry on their foreheads.
The Indian man’s wife sat in front, next to her agent boyfriend,
her trembling hand pressed flat against her stomach,
the other braced against the door.
Her fingers kept inching toward the zippered duffel bag at her feet—
the one stuffed with thick wads of cash and the glint of gold bars
wrapped in dishtowels.
The metal edges of one poked through the fabric.
The agent kept looking at the bag.
His eyes weren’t subtle.
Every few seconds, even as he drove, his gaze slid downward,
lingering on the duffel like a wolf assessing a wounded animal.
The sound of tires on asphalt became louder,
rougher, more hollow, like the highway itself sensed what they were running from.
She shifted in her seat. "Can you not do that?" she muttered.
"Do what?" His voice was flat, unreadable.
"Keep looking at the bag. You're making me nervous."
He didn’t answer.
His jaw was clenched, a flicker of something tight around his eyes.
Sweat dripped down the side of his face and pooled at the curve of his neck.
He rubbed his hand against the gear shift like he wanted to grab something.
Silence stretched between them.
Then—a flicker.
Something at the edge of his vision.
Two figures walking down the side of the road,
half-shaded by the wall of a closed liquor store, heads bowed against the sun.
A woman in her 50’s. And another way much older woman, possibly in her 80’s.
Both familiar.
Ploy. Her mother.
Recognition crashed into him like ice water.
The restaurant. The Immigration raid.
That night: The chaos. The stabbing.
Had they been there?
Did they see?
How much do they know?
“Shit,” he hissed under his breath.
His hands jerked the wheel hard.
Tires screeched against the pavement as the sedan whipped around,
a violent U-turn that made the Indian wife slam against the door.
“What the fuck are you doing?” she gasped, her seatbelt biting into her collarbone.
“I’ll take care of it,” he muttered, already reaching for the glovebox.
“What? Take care of what?”
But he was out of the car before she could finish.
He crossed the street like a missile with lug wrench in hand.
"Hey!" he barked, voice sharp and splitting through the summer air.
Ploy turned first, startled.
Her mother reached to shield her instinctively.
“No, please,” she whispered, sensing the danger before it fully arrived.
Too late.
He was on them.
With one blow, the lug wrench hits Ploy’s head
A shove sent her crashing into the side of the building,
her head hitting the brick with a sickening thud.
Her mother screamed, tried to pull him off,
but he punched her hard in the ribs and she crumpled.
He was about to hit her head with the lug wrench when he noticed
her eyes, it was not panicking, it’s pleading.
"Don’t fucking plead, it’s futile" he snapped,
he kicked her on her stomach as he drag the unconscious body of Ploy
towards the sedan, followed by her weak mom.
He moved like a man possessed, driven by fear and urgency,
but also by some darker undercurrent—panic laced with cruelty.
Ploy’s face was bleeding. Her mother gasped for air, clutching her side.
The Indian wife sat frozen, horror in her eyes as she watched
her boyfriend shove Ploy’s unconscious body at the back seat,
followed by her mom, weakly struggling body.
The door slammed shut, locked from the front as the agent takes the driver’s seat.
He starts to drive as if nothing happened.
Her eyes met Ploy's mom for a second. It was glassy, dazed.
“Who are they?” she asked, her voice raw.
The agent slammed the break, tires spinning on gravel.
“Witnesses. Maybe.”
“You’re insane,” she whispered. “You think kidnapping them will help us?”
“I’m not risking anything,” he said.
“We're close to the border. I know where to drop them.”
“Drop them? I don’t think she’s dead, and her mom, I mean, look at her,
she’s staring at me!”
His fingers drummed against the wheel. Fast. Uneven.
“I’ll deal with them when we get to the place.”
They drove in silence, the desert creeping in around them—dust, cracked hills, silence.
Then, from the backseat, a voice—quiet but clear.
“คุณได้รับบาดเจ็บหรือเปล่า?” (“Are you hurt?”)
It was Ploy’s mother. She was staring at the Indian wife.
The woman blinked. “What? Sorry, I don’t speak…whatever your language is”
Ploy’s mom pointed to the blood stain on her sari.
The Indian wife looked down.
The smear of deep red across her waist had dried, but it was still thick, obvious.
For a long second, she didn’t speak.
Then: “It’s not mine. I’m ok. You should be worrying more about yourself and that…that person
next to you. Both of you will be dead by the time I dry clean my Sari.”
And she turned her head towards the window.
She can’t believe she just said those words.
It’s cruel.
It’s not like her.
What’s going on.
She became- the person her mother always warned her not to be:
Cold.
Outside, the horizon bent downward into a stretch of sun-bleached earth.
Covered in the shadows of the darkness.
The road ahead twisted toward Crab Point—a place whispered
about in immigrant shelters and backroom kitchens.
A desert of lost names.
Of burned shoes and broken phones and bones.
A place where immigrants screams and dies.
No signs. No law.
Only choices.
And the kind you never come back from.
