This Land is no Stranger Sarah Hollister (best biographies to read .txt) 📖

it whenever it buzzed. He did, however, answer the “warm” phone, the one for business, frequently leaving it on speakerphone so Varzha could hear both sides of the rapid-fire conversation. Mostly he described where they were and how much longer it would take to reach their destination, which he referred to as “the chalet.”

In one exchange, an accented male voice asked Jarl Voss about Varzha herself. She picked out the word agn, bait. The idea made her sick. She imagined herself dangling from a fishing line over the heads of faceless men with money in their hands, shouting out numbers. A supposed virgin, sold to the highest bidder.

In truth, Varzha suspected that Jarl saw himself more as Sweden’s queen rather than its king. She saw him as what she knew him to be, a gay boy. He liked to chatter and boast about his clothes, but would probably be horrified if forced to remove hers, the kind of man who might beat a woman but would never sleep with one. Several times on the drive he snorted white powder, either cocaine or crystal, she didn’t know. The drug revved him up. He talked whether anyone was listening or not. He was constantly on the phone, speaking fast, saying nothing.

A single question burned in Varzha’s mind. Had Moro Part and Dollar Boy managed to wreak vengeance on those who would prey on young Romani girls? They had vowed to do so, but the scheme was risky and open to mistakes. No word had come on the fate of her abductors, Liam and Nils. She tried to ready herself for an explosion of wrath when the news came to JV.

They followed a river valley west into the mountains. The land they drove through was like an abandoned bird’s nest, where only a litter of cracked eggshells showed that any creature had ever lived there at all. They had passed long stretches of nothing but empty pine woods, full of kasali, forest spirits. Varzha didn’t like the Swedish countryside, especially not in winter. Stockholm was better, crowded with life and opportunities.

Anxious and jittery as she was, Varzha managed to fall into an exhausted sleep. She woke abruptly to hear Jarl screaming and pounding on the steering wheel. Blocking the road ahead was a herd of snowy white animals with brown spots, nubby horns, and sly sweet eyes. Several of the reindeer stood mid-pavement, lazily gazing at the SUV with what seemed like mild interest. Some still clung to the side of the hillside slope, while others had already crossed the road and were continuing downward toward the river.

Jarl reached across Varzha to the glove box and pulled out a small pistol. A child-sized weapon, Varzha thought with disdain, a little palm-sized .22 automatic. Against a hundred-and-fifty kilo reindeer, a pea-shooter like that would do nothing. The creatures were famously thick-skulled.

It didn’t matter to Jarl. Her madman captor leaped out of the SUV waving the weapon. Varzha opened the door on the opposite side of the vehicle and stepped out, too.

She had to do something. The fool was going to open fire.

She began to sing in her high, clear voice. A manele, a Romani folk song of love and loss.

The sound echoed eerily off the surrounding hills. Both Jarl and the beasts went stock still. The man stopped brandishing his stupid lady’s gun. Moving slowly, gracefully, dreamily, as if under a spell, the herd gradually moved off the roadway. Evidently, love was a universal concept, and reindeer understood loss.

They drove on. Varzha saw Jarl occasionally turn to glance over at her, a quizzical look on his face. He had heard something in her singing that had touched his cold Voss heart. When he had tossed the pistol back into its hiding place, though, he had made sure to lock the glove box.

The revenge scheme Varzha had embarked upon depended on a frighteningly small piece of electronics, which she kept concealed in a wooden barrette clasping the thick braids of her hair. Dollar Boy found the device for them. It was supposedly the world’s tiniest cell phone, designed, he said, to be smuggled into prisons. “Beat the Man,” the model was called. Compared side by side, tiny keypad and all, it was only a little larger than Varzha’s thumb.

It gave her people pinpoint accuracy to Varzha's physical location, her life-line. If the tiny device were ever discovered, her captors might kill her.

All of Varzha’s modesty had been burned away by her anger over the kidnappings. She retained her maidenhead but lost her innocence. Varzha Luna was like no Romani girl who ever existed, proud, fierce, and without shame. When this was all over, she swore secretly, she would see Vago safe and then hang herself. Perhaps she would pour gasoline over her body and burn alive at her old post on Drottninggatan, in front of Åhlens department store.

So far no one had thought to search Varzha. The easy way she had gone with the men when they came for her on Drottninggatan should have betrayed her secret motives. She had displayed passive willingness, not fear. That alone might have alerted the men that something was off, that she did not resemble their other victims. But Mattias and the others noticed nothing. They were clearly very stupid and careless. The idea that roles could be reversed, that the predator could become the prey, never occurred to them.

Everything depended on the loyalty and fortitude of Moro and Dollar Boy. Dollar Boy had lost his true love, Lel, to a rape hotel in Norway and eventually to suicide. He had repeatedly sworn blood vengeance. But Varzha understood that the human heart was susceptible to change. Perhaps Dollar Boy had distracted himself with another girl. Perhaps the fire in his heart flared only for a little while and then had been snuffed by the passage of time.

Moro she trusted more. He was protecting the lives not only of a few girls but of his entire clan. He was also