Claim Me Read Free Page B

from the van’s AC washing over my sweaty face. I drove all night, stopping only to steal another car and get the clothes, and I’m exhausted. I’ve been on the lookout for the sound of helicopter blades and the whine of sirens every minute I’ve been on the road. The fact that I’ve gotten this far without incident is nothing short of a miracle, and I know my luck could run out at any moment.
    Still, even that fear is not enough to overcome my exhaustion. As Contreras’s van gets on the highway, heading northeast, I feel my eyelids closing, and I don’t fight the drugging pull of sleep.
    I just need to nap for a few minutes, and then I’ll be ready to face whatever comes next.
----
    “ W ake up , Yulia.”
    The hushed urgency of Contreras’s tone yanks me out of a dream where I’m watching a movie with Lucas. My eyes snap open as I sit up and quickly take in the situation.
    It’s already twilight, and we appear stuck in some kind of traffic.
    “Where are we? What is this?”
    “Roadblock,” Contreras says tersely. “They’re checking all the cars. You need to get in the crate, now.”
    “Your border guard isn’t—”
    “No, we’re still some twenty miles from the Venezuelan border. I don’t know what this roadblock is about, but it can’t be good.”
    Shit. I unbuckle my seatbelt and crawl through a small window into the back of the van. As Contreras said, there is a crate back there, but it looks far too small to fit a person. A child, maybe, but not a woman of my height.
    Then again, in magic acts, they fit people into all kinds of seemingly too-small containers. That’s how the cut-in-half trick is often done: one flexible girl is the “upper body” and a second one is “legs.”
    I’m not as flexible as a typical magician’s assistant, but I’m far more motivated.
    Opening the crate, I lie down on my back and try to fold my legs in such a way that I’d be able to close the lid over me. After a couple of frustrating minutes, I concede that it’s an impossible task; my knees are at least five centimeters above the edge of the crate. Why did Contreras get a crate this small? A few centimeters deeper, and I would’ve been fine.
    The van begins moving, and I realize we’re getting closer to the checkpoint. At any moment, the doors at the back of the van will open, and I’ll be discovered.
    I need to fit into this fucking crate.
    Gritting my teeth, I turn sideways and try to wedge my knees into the tiny space between my chest and the side of the crate. They don’t fit, so I suck in a breath and try again, ignoring the burst of pain in my kneecap as it bumps against the metal edge. As I struggle, I hear raised voices speaking Spanish and feel the van come to a stop again.
    We’re at the checkpoint.
    Frantic, I turn and grab the lid of the crate, pulling it over me with shaking hands.
    There are footsteps, followed by voices at the back of the van.
    They’re going to open the doors.
    My heart pounding, I flatten myself into an impossibly tiny ball, squashing my breasts with my knees. Even with the numbing effects of adrenaline, my body screams with pain at the unnatural position.
    The lid meets the edge of the crate, and the van doors swing open.

5
    L ucas

    M y meeting with Winters takes just under an hour. We go over the current state of my investments and discuss how to proceed given the recent froth in the market. In the time that Jared Winters has been managing my portfolio, he’s tripled it to just over twelve million, so I’m not particularly concerned when he says he’s liquidating most of my equity holdings and getting ready to short a popular tech stock.
    “The CEO is about to get in some serious legal trouble,” Winters explains, and I don’t bother asking how he knows that. Trading on insider information may be a crime, but our contacts at the SEC ensure that Winters’s fund is nowhere on their radar.
    “How much are you putting behind the trade?” I ask.
    “Seven