Unfortunately, I didn’t have a silencer on my gun, so I couldn’t shoot him even though I currently had a clear shot. I also didn’t have any means of knocking the guy out without causing any racket. He wasn’t as big as Camden but he was still bigger than me and would put up a fight. At the first sound of struggle, I knew Travis or the guards would come running.
So it had to be me.
I had to do this.
Very slowly, very carefully, I pulled the knife out from my boot. It felt cold and slippery in my sweating hands and I held onto it as tight as I could, channeling my fear through my hand.
I stayed crouched, stayed low, and eased my way toward the man.
I got close.
Really close.
Hoped he couldn’t hear how loud my heart was beating.
I straightened up.
Knife out.
Hand shaking.
The man reached further into the fridge, grabbing something.
I was right behind him.
I raised my arms, one ready to put over his mouth, the other to draw the blade across his throat.
A tear leaked out of my eye.
He suddenly stepped backward, into me, and turned around in surprise. Wide, dark eyes met mine.
He probably expected to see Travis.
Not me.
And before either of us could even react, Camden was sprinting across the kitchen.
Grabbing the knife out of my hand and shouldering me out of the way.
He put his hand over the man’s mouth and pushed the man’s head back into one of the shelves in the fridge.
Camden took the knife with one swift motion, slit the man’s throat.
The man’s eyes widened even more then froze, blood spilling out of him and down his white shirt. Camden held the man there until he was certain he was dead. Then he took the man in his arms and nodded to the pantry, trying to get me to open the door.
I couldn’t move. My body rocked with terrors while everything inside of me froze. Blood pooled toward my boots.
Camden managed to open the pantry and put the body inside, closing the door quietly behind him. Then he came over to the sink, took paper towels from the dispenser and quickly wiped up the blood at my feet. He shoved the reddened towels under the sink, closed the fridge door and grabbed my shoulders. I looked down at his hands, covered in blood, leaving bloody prints on me.
“Ellie,” he whispered, shaking me. “Ellie. Look at me. Look at me.”
I raised my head and looked at his eyes. They were wild, pupils completely dilated, but they were familiar. He was still my Camden.
Oh god, what had he done?
What had I been about to do?
I opened my mouth to speak but nothing came out.
“Ellie,” he said again, his voice hoarser now. “I couldn’t let you do it, you’d never forgive yourself. I’d rather this be on my conscience than yours. I’m getting my son back and I’m going to do whatever I can to make that happen.” He reached into his back pocket and pulled out another gun. “I found this on him. Do you want it or should I?”
I licked my lips and managed to say, “You have it.”
“I’m keeping you safe,” he said and quickly kissed my forehead. “Come on.”
He grabbed my hand and led me out of the kitchen back to the hallway.
As sick with shock and horror at what we had just done, I felt a twinge of relief deep inside. The man, who would have no doubt killed us, was dead. We didn’t have to worry about him. And I now knew, I saw, that Camden was prepared to do absolutely anything to keep me alive and get back to his son. I could only hope that he’d make peace with it one day, if we managed to get out of this on our own two feet. The human heart had the capacity to take on only so much and I knew Camden’s heart was overburdened as it was.
We continued down the hall, pausing every few steps to listen. There was some shuffling from one of the rooms at the very end. The door was open and the room faced to the back where the morning sun was spilling into it. It seemed like a place that Travis would sit and have breakfast, perhaps a sunroom where he could sit and think about all the money he was making, drugs he was distributing, people he was killing.
I wondered if Camden was going to take me straight there. Take himself straight to Travis, kill him and have it all over with.
But someone else’s voice came from that room, speaking in Spanish. Travis answered him, also in Spanish, albeit rusty. I couldn’t really figure out what they were talking about, the news perhaps, some event in Honduras. Unfortunately, that made two of them in there. It wouldn’t be so easy now. I doubted we could go in the room the way we were and take them out.
Camden paused then instead of continuing toward the voices, he carefully tried the handle on the first door to our left.
Locked.
And locked for a reason.
He looked to me questioningly. Could I do this?
I nodded and brought out the lock picker with fumbling fingers. I kept hearing Travis down the hall, knowing how close we were to him, how close we were to getting my mother out. Though it took longer than normal, I managed to pick the lock. We carefully pushed the door open and I held my breath waiting for it creak loudly. It didn’t.
And there were a set of stairs leading down into the dark.
We had found it.
Camden motioned for me to go first, the stairs were lit by a bare bulb, and he ever-so-carefully closed the door behind us. We went down slowly, step by step, my legs feeling weak, my jaw clenched hard.
We had found it but I was afraid to see what it was.
I stepped off the last step, my boots on hard concrete. There was darkness all around us, the light from the stairs not reaching very far.
Suddenly a flashback came into my vision. Me, eleven years old, walking down the stairs to Travis’s basement by accident, looking for money that wasn’t there and only finding the chemicals that would change the course of my entire life.
It wasn’t quite ironic but it was definitely something.
A moan came from the corner of the room and I realized that though we couldn’t see what or who was down here, they could see us.
I squeezed my gun for assurance and then took a step forward.
“Hello?” I whispered softly. “Mom?”
The moan got louder. I walked toward it and then Camden quickly brought out his phone, shining the weak light straight ahead of us.
My chest was shredded by what I saw.
There was a cage in the corner of the room, a large cage, like one you’d see when transporting animals to a zoo.
My mother was in the cage.
She was sitting half up, leaning against the bars, wearing what looked like the same dress I had seen her wear at Travis’s party. Her hands were gathered behind her back. Duct tape around her mouth. Her eyes were crazed, filled with tears, pleading for us.
“We need light,” Camden’s voice came through, calm and steady. He got up quickly, shining his phone around and found another bare bulb hanging from the ceiling and pulled the string.
Everything lit up. I glanced around me quickly, taking in a very familiar sight. It was like the same basement he scarred me in but worse, much, much worse. It looked like a meth lab crossed with a mad scientist’s lab. And very close to where my mother lay in her dirty cage were glass jar after glass jar of crawling black insects. Ants. Bullet ants. Este’s assumption about Travis using them for torture wasn’t just a silly hunch after all.
I looked back to my mom and immediately crouched down beside her, trying to ignore the welts she had all over her bare arms and legs. Insect bites.
“Mom,” I said, my voice breaking. “It’s me, Ellie. Your daughter. We’re going to get out of here okay?”
She shook her head back and forth, tears spilling down her cheeks, and I reached into the cage and pulled the duct tape off of her mouth in one go.
She winced from the pain and I whispered, “Sorry.”
“Ellie,” she cried softly and her voice reached down into my very soul. If I didn’t hold it together I was going to lose it.
“Mom, it’s okay.”
“You won’t get out of here,” she cried.
“Yes, we will,” I told her, my throat closing up. “Together. This is Camden. He’s going to help us.” I motioned behind me to Camden who was crouched down at my back. “Where is Gus?”
“Gus?” she asked. “What are you talking about?”
My veins had more ice than blood in them.
“Gus,” I said again, fighting to keep my voice steady. “He was taken by Travis. You know Gus, Mom, you know Gus. He came all the way to Mexico with Camden, to get me. We have to get him, I owe him this.”
“I’m sorry sweetie,” my mom said softly, shaking her head. “Gus isn’t here.”
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Her words settled over me like fine, cold dust.
Gus. Wasn’t. Here.
“But Javier said …” I started. I didn’t even bother finishing the sentence.
“Javier lies,” my mom said. “How do you think I ended up here with Travis?”
I narrowed my eyes at her, the rage building up inside, threatening to spill out. “Because you’re weak. And you’re a fool. And so am I.”
“Ellie,” Camden warned me.
“No,” I hissed at him. I was about to lose it. About to lose everything. I squeezed my gun so hard I could feel the ridges cutting into my palm. Javier had lied to me. He told me Gus was here. All along I was chasing after something that wasn’t real. Where was Gus?
“Why?” I cried out. “Why did he lie?”
“Because,” she said, her eyes avoiding mine, “he knew you’d never come for me. But you’d go for your father.”
“My father?” I asked while I heard Camden suck in his breath behind me. “He’s dead. I know he’s dead. Don’t tell me Javier lied about that too?”
“Ellie, I think we should get her out of here first,” Camden said quickly. “I hear something upstairs.”
I ignored him and my mom went on. “The father you know is dead, Ellie. I’m sorry sweetie. He was … Travis killed him. To take possession of me. We never knew what we were getting into when we came here. We only wanted … revenge. For you.”
“The father I know?” I asked, suddenly recalling Javier wording things very similarly.
She gave me a sad smile. “Ellie, I’m sorry. Gus is your real father.”
“What?”
What?
This was too much. My brain started to shut down on itself.
Gus. All this time. Gus. The man I was looking for, the man who was like a father to me more than my real father was in fact my real father. This shit couldn’t even be digested. My mother had an affair with Gus. Who the fuck didn’t she have an affair with?
“Fuck,” Camden swore under his breath. “I had a feeling.”
I whipped my head to look at him. “You had a feeling and you didn’t tell me?”
“I didn’t know for sure and I didn’t know how,” he said quickly. “I knew you wanted to get him back badly enough as it was.”
“And Javier knew that too,” my mother went on, trying to adjust herself. I was both so angry at her and her lies and hurting because she was hurt. “He knew you’d come here for Gus if he told you that Travis had him.”