Questions of how long the prisoners had been away from babies became mixed with visions of Wade, who took on the face of her father. For so many years it had been her mother’s features that rippled and echoed in her memory, but now Nola looked at her father’s young face. She had loved to burrow her index finger in his chest hair…. Suddenly, she was the one on the motorcycle, flying through the air, plunging off that cliff. The breath was knocked out of her, her bones crushed. Who was slicing her intestines with knives? The pilot didn’t make money from freeing prisoners; he had been scheduled to transfer body organs! He traveled a regular route, with specific orders. Get me two hearts, three kidneys, a couple of livers, some retinas, too. Patients draped in white sheets waited in operating rooms at the other end. Profit from the living prisoners had been a bonus. No one but Nola bought live people only to set them free. Another plunge off the cliff. The motorcycle’s handlebar got jumbled in her guts, spilled her insides. Save the flying organs! White hot scalpel. Ice packs. Once they got her innards, she’d be out of the way, and they’d get Lulu. Another disposable baby. Her organs and Lulu’s would fetch a good price. Did Daniel know that someone was trying to kill them?

If only the horrible noise would stop. Nola lifted her head. No one was killed. There were only three Chinese men with ancient, parched skins and toothless mouths. Like the old man had been, except that these men were tanned from hard labor. They had scars, scabs and scratches. But at least they were alive. Her free men. Sam, Max and Zach. Good, solid names she’d named them, to give them life. She wanted to laugh. It was hilarious how she’d tricked the authorities. These three had been sold to her whole, unlike their friends who had been sold piecemeal, one organ at a time.

A huge plunge of the plane jerked Nola back to consciousness and she found herself curled up aft, her head on her travel bag, a blanket smelling of urine and horses covering her. It took her a moment to realize that the box behind her back, preventing her from rolling into the wall, was the cooler with human organs. She remembered being lowered onto the floor a long time ago. Before she swam in a warm swamp. Before all these happenings turned to squatters in her head.

The pain intensified. She wished she could die. No more music, no more fame, no more love. Death would be better than this fire that flamed in her stomach. But what about Lulu? There was nothing she could do for this baby. She had failed her, too. If only Jenna were a friend, a sister who could help. So neither one of them would be alone.