“That’s a Category 2 violation of the protocol, Emilia.”

Since Beto had taken office, the room had changed a lot, and I was grateful for that. It no longer reminded me of the awful things I’d been through, right in this spot, just a few weeks ago. It smelled like fresh paint rather than cold cigar smoke and the ugly, shaggy carpet in the center of the room had disappeared, having hopefully suffered the same fate as Gustavo.

The new design of the security office perfectly reflected Beto’s personality. It was bland and boring, in the most innocuous kind of way. The chairs were more modern and upholstered in a uniform fabric as black as his thinning hair, and the walls were painted a warm sweat-stain shade of gray.

Beto crossed his arms, waiting for an answer, but all I did was yawn in apprehension of his endless lecture.

“You know what that means, right?” he asked.

Perhaps the drugs were wearing off, or the adrenaline was taking over, but I didn’t feel as lethargic as I did earlier. Still, I spoke slowly, drawling out my words, buying myself some time while Juan hopefully figured something out.

“It means... it means that I did something really bad. And now, I’ll get a slap on the wrist, and Pablo will have to pay a fine to himself, which is apparently a huge deal,” I mumbled. “So then, he’ll have to buy a new camera, and I– well, all I have to do is sit here, and listen to you read a three-thousand-page-long protocol I don’t understand a single word of.”

Beto’s eyes glazed over behind the frame of his little square glasses, and he blinked.

“Are you drunk?” he asked.

I let out a mocking snort. “No.”

For a second, he squinted, his eyes narrowing in confusion at first, and then in annoyance. He sighed and pinched the bridge of his nose. I let out a small burp and a laugh followed.

“Why did you do it, Emilia?”

I waited a while before I answered. The more time I wasted, the better.

“I don’t know,” I shrugged. “I guess I was angry, or something like that. It’s not a big deal. It’s just a camera.”

“Angry at who?”

I rolled my eyes. “Are you Pablo’s Head of Security, or are you my therapist?”

Beto tilted his head to one side, like a confused little pigeon.

“What would Pablo say about this?” he tutted.

“I don’t know, but hopefully something along the lines of ′I’m sorry I messed up your entire life by kidnapping you, torturing you, and forcing you to kill your best friend’.”

I concluded my sentence with a dramatic shrug, and he stayed quiet, staring at his empty drink as if he wanted to melt away like one of the ice cubes in his cup.

“Listen, all I want is to get this over with,” he said. “Neither of us wants to be here, we both want to go back to the party and–”

“Don’t waste your time then,” I cut him off, grabbing the protocol from under his nose. “I can read this on my own.”

Beto swiftly swatted my hand away, slamming his hand down on the pile of paper. “Don’t touch my stuff.”

“Right,” I mumbled, slumping back in my chair. “Sorry.”

He let out a weary sigh, flitting through the pages of his protocol with one hand, and pushing his glasses up with the other.

“So, as a reminder,” he began, “category 2 violations of general security protocol, including but not limited to malicious tampering with surveillance infrastructure...”

I heard a distant thump, like something bouncing off the window. Beto didn’t hear it at all, and kept on reading the protocol.

“...breaches of health and safety guidelines, major breaches of protocol without malicious intent and–”

The sound echoed again, and this time, Beto heard it too. All he did was look over his shoulder, scrunch up his nose for a split second, and then he kept on reading in his monotonous, robotic voice.

“Endangerment of level 3 and up subjects may result in corporal corrections proportional to the seriousness, frequency and circumstances of said violation.”

This time, I saw the rock hit the window, and bounce off like it was made of rubber. My teeth sank deep into my bottom lip.

Obviously, the windows were bulletproof. Juan, who supposedly grew up here, should have known that, if only his empty skull contained more than three brain cells in a straight line. Perhaps he assumed they weren’t rock-proof.

“Sorry,” Beto muttered as he shifted through his pile of papers. “Where was I?”

“You were talking about some kind of protocol,” I replied.

He looked up at me with a deadpan glare. “Thank you.”

Before he could pick up his protocol again, another rock banged against the window.

“Can you just give me a second?” Beto sighed.

My throat tightened and my back straightened as I watched him get out of his chair, pull away the blinds, and fight with the jammed handle to open the window.

Whatever it was that Juan was trying to do, throwing stones at the window like he was the Romeo to my Juliet, I prayed he wouldn’t get caught.

Beto finally managed to open the window, and leaned out a little as his eyes scoured the garden. I held my breath for a quiet moment.

Something shattered, and Beto cried out in pain.

He turned around, holding the broken pieces of his glasses’ lens in the palm of his hand. A single line of blood trickled down from a small cut on the top of his cheek, just a fraction of an inch below his right eye.

“Oh shit,” I breathed. “Are you okay?”

“Yeah, I– uh,” Beto stuttered. “I don’t know what that was.”

A mischievous grin tickled the corner of my lips. I pinched them tight to keep it down.

“Do you want to go clean that up?” I asked innocently. “I can wait here, if you want.”

“Sure,” he muttered, dabbing the blood from his eye with his fingertip. “I’ll be back in a minute.”

A heavy breath escaped from me as soon as Beto walked out the door. I sat still and stunned for an instant, raising my eyebrows and jutting out my bottom lip, pleasantly weirded out by the fact that Juan’s strategy turned out to be successful.

I looked around the office. Although most of it had been redecorated, they still weren’t done sorting out Gustavo’s old files. There were so many of them, spilling out of filing cabinets, piled up on the floor and the shelves on the walls. Overall, there was enough paper scattered around the room to make a rainforest weep with terror. Some of them were covered in layers of dust almost as thick as the files themselves, others were disorganized in leaning towers that threatened to tumble off the shelves and crash into my face.

I didn’t have much time, and I didn’t even know where to begin. I didn’t even know Mafer’s full name, and the files probably weren’t sorted in alphabetical order anyway. I leaned on Beto’s desk and massaged my temples, trying to push some fresh blood into my brain.

There was one pile of files that looked like it had been gone through recently. It had been carefully straightened and wasn’t as dusty. It was also right next to the shredder, patiently waiting to disappear forever. If Mafer’s file was still in this room, it would most likely be in there.

I started to sift through the papers, looking for anything that looked familiar. I recognized a few faces in the pictures of scanned ID cards, and found out that there were at least four different guards named José, but didn’t see anything about Mafer.

The last file was Majo’s. In her photo, she scowled at the camera like it had just stolen her boyfriend. On the second page of her file was her address, complete with the name of her village, GPS coordinates, and a few satellite pictures of the house she lived in.

I left that file on the desk, and kept looking. Some files dated back to as late as 2012, others were crossed out with black marker, and a few were stapled to a three-page-long list of protocol violations. Still, no sign of Mafer.

With my luck, that file had disappeared the very minute they had gotten rid of her.

Many minutes had passed, and Beto was going to walk in any time soon. I flinched at every sound, and my blood ran cold when I heard footsteps echo in the corridor.

I didn’t want this all to be for nothing, and since Mafer and Majo used to be so close, I figured there was a chance she might know something.

With that thought in mind, I hurriedly shoved Majo’s file up the back of my dress and sat back down in my chair, just moments before Beto walked in.

“Sorry I took so long,” he said. “I had to find another pair of glasses.”

“No worries,” I answered with a grin. “I actually read the protocol while you were gone. Can I leave now?”

His shoulders dropped with relief, and he nodded.

“Yes, please,” he groaned, shooing me out of his office. “This security briefing thing is stupid, anyway.”

I smiled and walked out the door. I made sure not to turn my back to Beto until I was far enough, so that he wouldn’t notice the outline of a stolen file poking through my dress, just between my shoulder blades.

I snuck through the crowd that had packed in the Hall and the kitchen, making my way back into the garden before anybody noticed I was up to something weird. I sat on the counter of the pool bar, just next to the broken camera, and waited.

Juan didn’t take long to show up. His silhouette pierced through the sputtering rain, and he ran to me with a wide grin on his face.

“So, did it work?” he asked.

“Once you hit him square in the face, it did,” I retorted. “You’re lucky he didn’t lose an eye.”

His smile disappeared immediately, as if my words had flipped a switch.

“I sure hope you’re not judging me,” he said. “That would be kind of hypocritical coming from, you know, someone who literally murders people.”

“First of all, one person,” I spat, wagging my finger in his face. “I murdered one person. Second of all, I had my fucking reasons, which is the whole point of why I’m doing this bullshit. Third and final point, you sell drugs, that people overdose off of, and then they die. Therefore, we are both murderers.”

“You really need to chill, Em,” he murmured. “And just so you know, technically, my Dad is the one selling drugs. I just live off his money.”

I glared at him. “That’s not the flex that you think it is.”

“Whatever, you psycho,” he muttered. “Did you find anything?”

I hopped off the counter and wiggled around to pull out the file I’d taken with me. Juan glanced down at my thighs, watching how my dress rode up to my hips, licking his lips as the fabric slipped and revealed my bare skin.

“I found Majo’s file,” I explained, waving the papers in his face to grab his attention.

He kept his hands in his pockets, leaning his head away from the flapping pages. He had a smug arch in his brow, but a disappointed frown on the bottom half of his face.

“So, what you’re saying is that you didn’t find anything,” he snickered. “I warned you that you wouldn’t.”

He lit up a cigarette, and glared at me through its smoke, as if I was nothing but a delusional psychopath, who goes around and shoots people as revenge for a conspiracy I had entirely hallucinated while I was high on drugs and trauma.

“I just told you, I found Majo’s file,” I whined. “I know it doesn’t say anything about Mafer, but they knew each other well. We could ask her if she knew anything.”

“If she did, she would have told me.”

My blood boiled and my heart cracked. I could see sorrow and disappointment seeping through his haughty expression. His dull eyes were devoid of dreams, as if he’d given up on running away with me to Budapest the moment he’d convinced himself I was absolutely crazy.

Maybe I was dangerously stubborn, but I wanted to prove him wrong, no matter the cost.

“Not if she was afraid of backlash, she wouldn’t,” I said. “But now she’s been fired, she might talk more freely.”

“I’ve already tried to call her, Em,” he replied. “She changed her number.”

“Then, we can go to her house,” I insisted, tapping my finger on the page with the satellite pictures. “The address is right here.”

“We?” he scoffed. “Em, you can’t come with me. You’re not even allowed outside of the house.”

“If I don’t come, all you’ll do is ask for a blowjob, get distracted, and then come back here and tell me you didn’t learn anything,” I hissed. “And then I’ll be stuck here forever, with the guys who kidnapped me and the other ones who think I’m just insane.”

Juan rolled his eyes, but a guilty gulp bobbing down his throat told me I was probably right.

“It’s just not worth it, Em,” he muttered.

“I’m sure she knows something. I’ll go ask her, with or without you.”

“And how do you plan on making it past the gate?” he asked with a bitter laugh.

“Oso owes me one.”

Juan shook his head. “You’re even crazier than I thought.”

“No, I’m not,” I mumbled.

“Yes, you are, because not only are you convinced that some random, innocent maid, who did nothing but scrub toilets for years before you even arrived here, is actually a spy whose only mission was to betray you and fuck your boyfriend,” he ranted, “you’re also convinced that you can trust a guy who has been one of Pablo’s personal bodyguards for as long as I can remember.”

I swallowed my spit, and Juan continued:

“And you also think that just because you stopped Oso from bleeding out, he’s going to let you sneak out the house and snoop around the country for clues, without telling his boss you stole a bunch of classified files.”

“If you don’t believe me, why did you help me distract Beto?” I asked.

Silence filled the air, meddling with the cloud of cigarette smoke. Juan stared at his shoes, and blushed.

“Listen, if you’re going to do this, I’d rather be there with you,” he murmured.

“Really?”

He smirked, and let out a deep sigh as he leaned back on the counter. He picked Majo’s file from my hands, and rolled up his sleeves as he read it.

“She lives half an hour away from San José,” he said. “Do you think you can get Oso to drive you there and leave you alone for like, two hours, so we have time to go there, talk to Majo, and come back?”

“Sure.”

“You don’t look convinced,” he said with a nervous chuckle. “I can go alone, you know.”

“I think we’ll work best as a team,” I whispered. “You know Majo better than I do, but I was closer to Mafer. I just want to make sure we don’t miss any details.”

A tender grin tugged at the corners of his mouth. “You’re a bad influence, Emily Smith.”

“No, you are,” I jeered. “We wouldn’t be doing this if you just believed me.”

He smiled uncomfortably, licking his teeth and nervously rubbing the side of his face.

“Right,” he said. “I’ll meet you tomorrow at 2 o’clock in San José, in the bar that’s right across the pier.”

•••

I could feel a lilting in my heartbeat as we drove down the colorful and bustling streets of San José.

“Where is the pedicure place, Baby Dog?” asked Oso as he fiddled around with his phone.

“Andrea said it’s not far from the pier,” I lied. “Just drop me off there. And stop looking at your phone, you almost just crashed into that tuk-tuk.”

My arm hung out the open window, and my fingers anxiously tapped against the side of the car. I was already fifteen minutes late, because Pablo had held me back for ages, and kept asking me a bunch of stupid questions, like why did I want a pedicure, which salon I was going to, if I didn’t prefer to have someone come and do it at home, and whether I wanted to go horseriding with him when I came back.

Juan had left a while ago, and told everyone he was going to get some alterations on the suit he’d wear at his wedding next week. Thankfully for us both, it seemed that nobody had questioned him.

“Is this the salon?” Oso asked, slowing down as we drove past the tacky storefront of some cheap-looking beautician.

“No, it’s a fancier place, just over there,” I answered as I pointed at somewhere vague, far away down the street.

“Okay, shout when I must stop,” he said.

“Just drop me off at the pier, Big Puppy, I’ll be fine,” I repeated, gritting my teeth in frustration.

He parked the car in front of the lake. It was a sunny day, with only a few clouds dotting the sky. The streets were full of people running errands, and it would be easy for me to disappear in the crowd. If only I didn’t like Oso enough to care about what would happen to him if I escaped on his watch, today would have been the perfect day to run away.

Oso got out of the driver’s seat and walked around the car to open my door.

“Let’s go,” he said, “It’s time to pedicure the Baby Dog.”

I frowned. “Wait, are you coming with me?”

“Yes, why not?”

I bit my tongue, trying to remember one of the many excuses I’d quietly rehearsed in the car.

“It’s kind of weird for you to sit there and watch while I get my feet scrubbed and my toenails painted,” I answered.

Oso shrugged. “I don’t think it is weird. I am making sure you are not in danger.”

“The salon is super safe, Big Puppy, Andrea goes there all the time,” I scoffed, silently praying to God that no one would ask Andrea any questions. “What are they going to do, stab me with a nail file?”

“So I just wait in the car?” he asked, arching one eyebrow.

“Yeah. Or you can go grab some ice cream, or a beer, or something. I’ll meet you here in two hours when I’m done.”

His other eyebrow rose up, and he shrugged. “Okay.”

I stood up from my seat, and while Oso was busy looking for his wallet, I quickly scuttled to the other side of the street.

Curse me for even thinking this could be easy, I thought. Of course, it wouldn’t be. Sweat pearled down my forehead just from thinking of how close I’d come to fucking up this little secret mission. I was insanely lucky that Oso had caved in, and trusted me enough to walk across a road on my own.

I didn’t know if Juan would be pissed or impressed, but I reckoned it was easier not to share any details about how I’d gotten away from my bodyguard. We didn’t have time to argue about that, anyway.

I quickly found the bar he had told me about. It was half a block away from the pier, at the angle of two busy streets, and miles apart from the kind of place I imagined Juan would ever frequent.

The bar’s red walls were grimy with a layer of soot so thick it looked like black paint. All the wooden tables were old and cracked, varnished with a sticky sheen of spilled beer, and decorated with nothing else than bright yellow candles that smelled like lemongrass and kept the mosquitos out. The white plastic chairs, turned brittle by the blazing sun, seemed to have turned gray about a decade ago.

There was no one there, aside from the girl behind the bar, two old men playing cards who stared at me as I walked past them, and Juan, sitting at a table in a dark corner, right at the back of the bar.

“Hey, Em,” he murmured, smiling as he looked up at me.

I took a deep breath, fanning myself with my hand. I already felt drained, but we only had two hours, and we had to make them count.

“Are you ready?” I said.

Juan didn’t answer. His face froze in an awkward, toothy grin.

“Did you bring the file?” I asked him.

A flash of red burned up his face, and he suddenly turned pale. His gaze detached from mine, and lost itself somewhere over my shoulder.

“Don’t tell me you forgot her address,” I muttered.

“Forgot the address of who?” rumbled a deep voice behind me.

My nails dug into the palms of my hands as I tightened my fists.

“Shit,” I couldn’t help but hiss.

“What are you guys doing here?” Juan asked, his voice faltering as he struggled to stay calm.

A strong hand grabbed me by the shoulder and spun me around like a weather vane. Panic seized my entire body, and my legs all but collapsed under me.

“We, uh, we were–” I stammered.

“Baby Dog,” Oso interrupted. “Do you think I am stupid?”

Bad Influence

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