“Agreed,” Frank said as he motioned to the table. “But you never know. You can leave them right here if you want. I’ll destroy them for you.”

I thought for sure that Michael wouldn’t be willing to hand over his wallet to this guy, but he did. The rest of us followed suit.

“If we’re leaving it all behind and starting over in another country, none of it matters anyway,” he said.

Michael was right, but now I felt myself growing more and more unnerved.

When we walked out to the truck, Frank smiled and gave me a small knapsack.

“There’s a few necessities in there,” he said. “Just to help you get by until you can get on your feet in Canada. There’s some cash in there as well. No one can track cash. It’s Canadian currency so you shouldn’t have any problems.”

“Thank you,” I said as I took the bag. “There’s only one bag?”

I didn’t mean to sound ungrateful. I was just confused as to why he was only giving a bag to me.

“Yes,” he said with the same pleasant smile. “There enough in there for all of you. I figured that one bag would be easiest.”

“Okay,” I smiled. It was nice of him to do.

The drive to the border patrol station was short and quiet. There was hardly anyone at all on the roads at this hour, and thanks to the shift change, Frank’s friend was one of only two guards at the station. We waited in the truck just far enough out of sight of the station until his friend texted him that the other guard had gone to use the restroom. Then Frank drove us up and quickly ushered us out of the car. His friend met us at the gate.

“One at a time,” the man said. “And quickly. The other guard will be back soon.”

“Ladies first,” he said as he opened the gate.

I put my arms through the straps on the backpack and walked through the gate, knowing that Michael was right behind me. But the instant that my body cleared the opening, the guard slammed the metal gate shut.

“What’s going on?” I said as I turned around in a panic and looked at the guys on the other side of the automatically locking gate. “Why didn’t you let them through yet?”

The guard looked at me and then turned to walk back into the small station building on the Canadian side of the gate. I grabbed onto the metal bars and watched in horror as I saw half a dozen border patrol guards come out from the American side of the station building. They walked up to surround Rob, Adam, and Michael. Even though they didn’t lay a hand on them, they rested their fingers against the guns at their side to indicate that they wouldn’t hesitate to use force if necessary.

“What are you doing?” I screamed at Frank. “What is happening?”

“I’m sorry, Lisette,” Frank said. “Really, I am. But we can’t let all of you go through. The repercussions of that are too severe. We were lucky to convince our boss just to let one of you through, and now I have repaid my debt to your mother. You’re free to go and start a new and happy life in Canada. It’s the best that I can do for you.”

“But I can’t go without them!” I screamed as the tears started to pour down my face. “I can’t ever be happy without them!”

“I had a feeling it would be hard for you to leave your friends behind—lovers maybe? I’m not quite sure what kind of arrangement you all have. That’s why we’re doing it this way. So that you have no choice but to leave without them. I’m saving your life Lisette. If you stay here in America, the people you are running from will catch you. This is my gift to you and your mother. I’m giving you a chance to live a new life now; the kind of life your mother wanted you to live…free from corruption and all the things that are chasing you here.”

“No,” I said. “No, no. You can’t do this to me. Open the gate! Let me back in at least. Just let me come back over to that side and we’ll go and take care of ourselves. You can still consider your debt to my mother paid.”

I stared helplessly at the guys. I could tell that Michael was getting ready to do something rash by the way he was eyeing the guards like a caged and desperate animal. Adam was holding the side of Michael’s shoulder as if he could tell too and was trying not to let Michael get himself killed. They were vastly outnumbered and unarmed.

“Please!” I screamed as I pulled against the bars on the gate. “Let me through!”

None of the guards moved an inch. I ran over and banged on the door to the station building and shouted for Frank’s friend to open the gate, but he ignored me just as the others had. Then I ran back to the gate.

“I knew we shouldn’t have trusted you,” Rob snarled.

“I haven’t done anything to wrong you,” Frank said. “I’ve set Lisette free and the rest of you are free to go whenever you want.”

“What we want,” Adam growled, “is to cross to Canada and be with Lisette.”

“Well, you’re free to do anything except for that,” Frank answered. “I would suggest that you don’t take too long to decide to leave though. The cops will inevitably make their way back here, and there’s nothing that I can do to protect you once they get here. Border patrol doesn’t have jurisdiction over internal matters that the cops preside over. If you don’t leave soon, you won’t make it to see another morning. You’re welcome to spend one more night at my cabin if you need a place to stay and make a plan.”

“Are you serious?” Michael asked with a usurping rage filling his eyes. “You have just separated me from the woman that I love, and you expect me not to want to kill you?”

Frank looked a bit nervous. He should have. If Michael got the chance to, he would definitely kill him for what he did.

“Well, I wouldn’t try to do anything like that here,” Frank said in a put-off and offended tone. “The guards won’t just stand by and watch an attempted murder.”

There was an unease as some of the border patrol guards shifted on their feet, and others seemed to close their fingers around the guns at their waist. The silent stand-off was broken by the faint sound of patrol car sirens off in the distance. The cops were coming. I felt myself start to struggle to breathe as a panic attack set in. Michael stared at me with a frenzied look in his eyes and Adam nervously looked around them as the sounds of the sirens became slowly louder.

“We need to get out of here,” Rob said. “We aren’t going to be able to do anything to fix this mess if we’re dead by morning.”

I couldn’t breathe. It felt like everything was closing in on me and my heart was suddenly beating way too fast for the rest of my body to keep up. All I could see was Michael’s face staring back at me with a fusion of anger, fear, and determination all swirling together like a spilled tray of paint. He turned quickly to Frank.

“You said you did this to save Lisette, so you need to get her away from the border,” Michael said.

“What?” I shouted as I managed to find my voice. My head and nerves were spinning out of control. “What are you talking about?”

Michael pushed past one of the guards before he had a chance to stop him, and although the guard drew his gun out, he didn’t fire on him. Michael’s hands reached through the bars and his fingers wrapped around mine as he set his face against the gate. I pressed my face into the bars until my lips could feel both the cold, hard metal of the gate and Michael’s soft, warm skin against mine.

“Lisette, listen to me,” he said urgently. “You need to go.”

“What? No!”

“You have to go. I will find you. I promise. None of us will make it if we stay here at the border. I need you to go and stay safe and we will come for you.”

Michael tightened his grip on my fingers and pressed his lips through the bars against mine. When he pulled away, I felt like I was going to die.

“I will come find you Lisette. I swear to God I will. Now go, please!”

I couldn’t move. I couldn’t let go of him, and when he tried to pull away, I held tightly to his fingers until my knuckles dug against the gate.

Michael turned his head back to Frank.

“If you let her die here at the gate, then you have failed Paula. You say you did this to repay a debt, so do it. Get her away from the gate and somewhere safe,” Michael shouted at him.

Frank picked up his phone and within seconds, his friend emerged from the Canadian border station. The man was muscular and solid like a tank. He pried me away from the bars and there was no chance that I was going to be able to struggle against him. I screamed, and kicked, and cursed. And when I actually started to choke on my own screams, I looked in silent defeat across the gate as I saw the flashing colors of police lights coming into view of the horizon. I watched as Michael, Adam, and Rob took off running toward the trees that lined the main road and stretched out onto the hillside. Just before he disappeared from sight, Michael stopped and turned to look at me.

I’ll find you. Those were the words that he promised, and they were the only words that I heard over and over again in my head.

I had stopped fighting against the guard once I saw that the guys were gone. I let myself be carried silently away as I heard the police cars come to a screeching halt on the other side of the gate. There was some sort of heated verbal exchange, and one of the cops asked who the woman was that was being carried away on the Canadian side of the border. I heard a few of the border patrol guards lie and tell them that I was a refugee trying to escape persecution. From the sounds of the de-escalated conversation, the cops seemed to believe them. They asked about where the guys had gone, and Frank played stupid. I heard a couple of gunshots and for a second, I wondered who had fired first and which side had been shot—the cops or Frank and the guards. But then I realized that I didn’t care. Michael, and Adam, and Rob were safe. They had run into the woods before the cops had seen them. That’s all that I cared about. That, and the fact that I was here in another country all alone, without Michael.

My body felt like dead weight and I let my head flop against the guard’s chest as he carried me. He was Canadian, I think. I guess he had to be to work on this side of the border. I trivially wondered how he and Frank had become friends. But then I realized once again that I didn’t care. The list of things that I didn’t care about was growing.

“Aren’t you going to ask where I am taking you?” he asked as he looked down at my blank face that stared up at the cloudy sky above me. The daylight was coming now, and I thought about how stupid the concept of “countries” was. The entire planet lived under the same sky, and the sky didn’t care which imaginary lines were drawn on the ground beneath.