There were a few close calls, another semi changing lanes to get out of the way, a family-filled sedan staring at our car in horror as we nearly rammed them. But we managed to escape from crashing and navigated the moving maze by the skin of our teeth. I felt like I was in a deadly, real-life version of Frogger. My hands started to get cold and clammy, the gearshift slipping under my palm.
Once we were back at optimal speed, I took the wheel back and started booting up the shoulder, overtaking everyone and leaving them in a storm cloud of loose roadwork. It was then that I chose to look down at my arm. I saw nothing but blood, starting from the shoulder where it met my collarbone and soaking its way down, a red ink blot that started taking on new shapes before my eyes.
“Oh, fuck,” I said, grinding my teeth together as the pain began to manifest itself. “I’ve been shot.”
“Where?” Gus said alarmed and peering over at me.
“My shoulder,” I grunted, then screamed. “This fucking hurts!”
He seemed to consider that for a moment before he said, full-on smart ass, “Yes, being shot hurts.”
I glared at him, my glasses fogging up. “If I die on you, you’re going to feel really bad about it.”
“I’m sure I will,” he said. “Just keep driving. I think we’ve lost them for now. Get us to Ixtapa road, the next exit’s coming up on your right, then take the road until it intersects with 132. Take 132 …” And Gus droned on. I was having a hard time hearing him, my vision was beginning to blur and my ears felt like they had cotton balls in them. I guess I subconsciously took it all in because together, with him steering the wheel sometimes, we followed his directions and ended up at an abandoned gas station on the outskirts of a small town. The cops hadn’t followed us.
But I’d been shot. And before I could do anything about it, the world around me started getting fuzzy.
Then nothing.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
ELLIE
As to be expected, sleeping with Javier was awkward. After we returned from our mini-trip to Veracruz, case of beer in hand, we all had a few and then retired to our rooms. I could sense Raul’s eyes on me the whole time, but Javier didn’t act any different around him. I was glad for that because I didn’t want Raul to think I’d snitched – he wasn’t someone I wanted to further antagonize.
Javier shut the door behind me and flicked on the tall standing lamp in the corner, kitschy Mexican décor. “What side of the bed do you want?” he asked.
Then he proceeded to take off his suit. He flung the jacket onto an armchair across the room and began unbuttoning his shirt. I didn’t know where to look, my cheeks growing hot like I was a naïve teenager. I’d seen him shirtless before. Hell, I’d seen and felt every single part of that man. Still, it didn’t make the feeling go away.
“Feeling bashful?” Now his tone was smug.
I looked up and his shirt was off. His body was pretty much the same as I remembered, but wider, in a more athletic and lean kind of way. He’d grown into it and taken great care of his body over the years. His abs and arms looked like he’d do chin-ups in his spare time, yet it was still very elegant and subtle. His skin was a dark bronze, shadowed by the lamp.
“No,” I answered.
“Good.” And then his pants dropped.
And I’d totally forgotten he liked to go commando.
“Oh my god,” I cried out, shielding my eyes and facing the wall. “Please, put some pants on. Or underwear.”
“Say ‘oh my god’ again, I liked the sound of it,” he said and I could hear him coming closer. “It reminds me of old times.”
“Javier, I’m serious.”
“When are you not serious, Ellie?”
I kept my eyes clamped shut until he started shuffling through the drawers. “Okay, okay, calm down. There, I have pants on now.”
I bent down and snapped up my pajama bottoms and a t-shirt then walked past him to the door, not wanting to risk a look in his direction. When I came out of the bathroom, after a long, hot and much-needed shower, he was already in bed with the lights off. This was exactly what I was counting on. I wanted to go to sleep on my side of the bed and be done with it. No thinking about the situation, no chit chat.
I carefully closed the door and eased my way across the room, my bare feet padding on the woven rugs, the moonlight outside the open window illuminating my passage. With the sea breeze coming in and the sound of the fishing boats rising and falling in their berths, the whole thing was soothing. Even romantic.
I crawled in, pulling only the sheet over my body and faced the wall. The moon was bright on my face.
After a few moments, when my heart rate had started to calm and I was beginning to forget where I was, Javier called out softly. “Angel?”
I wanted to pretend to be asleep. I wanted to ignore him. But he’d used a name I hated and I was sick of hearing it.
“Please don’t call me that,” I whispered back, pulling sheet closer around my shoulders.
He turned over in the bed and suddenly he was right behind me, causing the hairs on my neck to rise. “Why not?”
I tried to steady my breath. “I’m not your angel.”
“You’re someone’s angel. God’s.”
“God’s? How can you call me an angel when you think I’m no good?”
He was silent for a moment. Waves crashed outside.
“There are fallen angels, too. Angels with dirty wings.”
“Lucifer was a fallen angel,” I pointed out.
“You’re right. But Lucifer had no moral code. You and I, angel, I think we fell somewhere in between all of that. We made our place. Our own home.”
I closed my eyes at his words, my soul and heart and everything getting sucked back into a vortex of memories, all bright, shiny, and good. Memories of him and I together, memories I thought I’d erased.
His lips were at my ear, his warm hand on my shoulder, holding me in place rather than giving comfort. Instead of stiffening, my whole body relaxed.
“We evolved, Ellie,” he whispered, sending shivers down my back. “And we’ll keep evolving.” Then he moved away, back to his side of the bed, cozying up under the covers.
I didn’t fall asleep for hours.
The next day Peter and Raul went off somewhere in Pedro’s tiny Toyota and Javier and I took the Rover into Veracruz to meet this new contact of his, a woman called Amandine.
We had dressed appropriately for the occasion. I was wearing a long peasant skirt and gladiator sandals that wrapped up to my knee, covering my cherry blossoms even if anyone could see them. On top though I was showing a lot of skin. No bra under a low-cut and tight low-back white lace tank. I spent extra effort on my hair, styling it until it lay straight and smooth, just past my chin, and put on more makeup than usual. Nothing trashy but I knew I had the ability to stand out when I wanted to.
“That’s perfect,” Javier said when he saw me, his eyes savoring my body. “Of course, if you were still mine, there’s no way I’d let you out in public like that.”
“Good thing I’m not yours,” I’d told him.
The way I looked like an attractive American tourist, Javier looked the complete opposite of a drug lord. Jeans, a black and orange San Francisco Giants jersey, aviators and a plain black baseball cap.
Actually it was kind of weird being with him looking like that. Javier had always been a very smooth and elegant dresser and now here he was looking like any twenty-nine-year-old baseball fan, albeit one with high cheekbones. Even dressed down he still looked extraordinarily … pretty.
We cruised through the busy streets of the city, both of us taking comfort in the bulletproof glass, until we found the address. It was a café across from one of the various small lakes and lagoons that were sprinkled throughout Veracruz.
We parked across the lagoon and took the long way around, following a small boardwalk. He took my hand and squeezed it before I could take it back.
“You’re just an American girl and I’m your Mexican boyfriend,” he said with a cheery smile that made him look terribly young. “We’re the modern day Romeo and Juliet.”
“Romeo and Juliet was a tragedy, not a romance,” I answered.
He held onto my hand the whole way, keeping me close to him, occasionally pointing to one of the flamingos on the lagoon and I pretended to take interest, putting on a show for the folks who probably weren’t watching us. People were spread about the park, workers on their lunch break, college students having make-out sessions and picnics at the water’s edge.
When we approached the café, he whispered, “There she is,” with all the skill of a ventriloquist. A woman was sitting at a small table at the very corner of the café, where the patio petered out into the grass. There was no one by her except an old couple reading the newspaper together.
“Amandine?” Javier asked as we stopped at the end of the table.
The woman looked up, surprised. She was pretty hot, right off the bat. About our age, maybe early thirties, long wavy hair done up in honey browns, sunkissed skin and blue eyes that matched her top.
“Hi,” she exclaimed brightly with incredibly white teeth. “You must be Enrico’s friends.”
We nodded. Javier gestured to the empty seats across from her. “May we sit down?”
“Yes, yes of course, please do.”
Once seated, I offered my hand. “I’m Ellie.”
She shook it, nice and firm. “Nice to meet you. And you too, Javier.”
He smiled and folded his hands in front of him for a second before I guess he realized it was a bit too formal for his new persona and instead leaned back in his chair, legs splayed.
I almost rolled my eyes at his quasi-gangster pose.
“So,” he said, getting down to business. “I’m sure Enrico told you what this was all about. So how can you help us, Amandine?”
Her face grew a little serious. “I’m sure Enrico also told you about my student loan …”
“Money is not going to be a problem,” he said with a quick wave of his hand.
“Okay, well,” she went on, “I was with Travis for a bit.”
Javier and exchanged a look. He straightened up in his seat and looked around at the café.
“Don’t worry,” Amandine said, taking a sip of her latte. “This place is pretty safe. Mainly tourists come here. No one knows to listen. Do they?”
He shook his head, his jaw tense. “No. They don’t. I didn’t expect to hear this. What do you mean you were with him? As his lover?”
She laughed and covered up her mouth. “No, not like that. I took a job cleaning his house. I needed the extra money for tuition. It was only for the summer. I didn’t know of course who he was but I figured it out pretty fast. At first I thought he liked to hire really attractive women to be his help, if I can be so modest, and I thought maybe he was a financial banker or something like that. I don’t know, I was naïve. I’m a good girl and I study hard and I didn’t grow up with that. I knew there were drugs all over the city and that the cartels were closing in, but at the time it wasn’t all that bad.”