“Oh, give it a rest, angel,” he said, exasperated. “One minute I’m hurting you, the next minute you like it.”

“I haven’t liked it for a long time,” I seethed through my teeth.

“Is that so?” He cocked his head at me. “I could have sworn it was just a few days ago that I last made you scream.”

“Fuck you.”

He grinned. “That you did, my angel. That you did.”

I ripped myself out of his grasp before we exited the building. Outside the air was cooler, the sky layered with pink, blue and orange, like the sand art I used to see in the gift shops along the Mississippi coast. As we walked toward Jose, looking more battered than ever in the fading light, I asked him, “Are you sure we can trust Dom?”

He shook his head. “Can I be sure? No. But he knows if something goes wrong, he will pay for it in the end. Or, his family will pay and he will have to watch.”

“Does everything have to be a threat with you?” What I really wanted to do was call him a sick fuck but he’d heard it too many times already.

“If there are no threats, then people die. I don’t feel like dying anytime soon. Do you? Does Camden?”

I rubbed my lips together, wishing I had some lip balm on me. Actually, what I really wished for was a long hot shower, then a drink or two, then a few hours by myself to think.

No. Not by myself. With Camden. I needed him to think with me.

When we got to the car, he was turned around in his seat and speaking to Violetta. At a closer look, he was holding her hand as she lay in the back. My lungs pinched at the sight, as silly as it was. Poor thing was in agony and I was getting jealous.

“What are you doing?” Javier asked him as he got into the backseat, Violetta slowly sitting up.

“He’s holding my hand, what does it look like?” Violetta asked snidely. She looked like utter shit. Her face was ashen, her forehead thick with sweat, her lips dry and cracking. A shiver occasionally rocked through her despite my leather jacket that covered her shoulders that Camden must have gotten out of the trunk.

Camden looked to me and said, “She’s in a lot of pain.”

I nodded. “We’re taking her to the doctor now.”

“Took you long enough,” she said, then groaned. I noticed Camden squeezing her hand harder. I looked behind me at Javier who was watching them with a look of utter disdain.

“Javier,” I said carefully, slowly, until he looked at me. “Where are we taking her?”

He looked at the piece of paper that Dom had given him. “Outside of town. I know where this is. Take your first left until you see signs for the highway. Take it west.”

I did as he suggested, hoping the cops wouldn’t pull us over for driving with one headlight. It was Mexico but Aguascalientes was a lot more civilized than Mexico City and Veracruz had been.

We drove for a few miles outside of the suburbs before we came to a ranch house that was surrounded by darkness, only a few lights on inside. It looked like a farm – not exactly the place I had been picturing in my head. You know, like a doctor’s office or a hospital.

“This better not be another vet,” Camden mumbled. “Though I could use a refill on the dog medication now that we’ve run out.”

“Not a vet,” Javier said with impatience. “Pull up beside the truck there. This is Alonso’s house. He’s part of my … family.”

His cartel. I wondered if he was still on the “payroll” as Dom seemed to be, if he too was banished back to Mexico when Travis up and switched sides. More and more I was finding out that Javier didn’t have the power I once thought he did.

We got out of the car, Camden easing Violetta to her feet and supporting her. Javier marched past them, apparently no longer caring that Camden was touching his sister – not like he was offering to help her himself – and went for the front door. The path lit up from motion sensor lights.

He rang the doorbell and we waited a few moments.

A short man with thick grey hair and mustache eyed us over a pair of square glasses. “Si?”

“Alonso,” Javier said. “Como est a?”

“Javier?”

“Si.”

Alonso rattled off something in Spanish and eyed the rest of us.

Javier waved in our direction, said something about his sister needing surgery and something else. Probably that we were two gringos and inconsequential.

Alonso sighed dejectedly and opened the door wider, quickly motioning for us to come inside.

Camden helped Violetta through, Alonso staring at his tattoos with a mix of curiosity and revulsion. He then looked to Violetta’s arm and nodded grimly.

“Okay,” Alonso said.

Javier took her from Camden, much to her annoyance and he gave us both a steady look. “He’s going to fix her. You stay here. If you move, if you run, I will kill you. That is all.”

Then he, Violetta and Alonso disappeared down a darkened hallway until they entered a brightly lit room at the end of the hall. I could see Violetta’s eyes glinting as she turned her head to look back at us. Then they disappeared behind a dark door, the latch echoing in the quiet house.

Camden watched the door for a few moments before he folded his arms and looked at me.

“What went on in there?”

“With Dom?”

“Yeah. Him. He a good guy or a bad guy?”

My lips twitched in a half-hearted smile. “I don’t think there are good guys and bad guys anymore. I don’t even know what I am.”

“Ellie,” he said, his voice becoming softer. “You had to kill those men.”

I gave him a sharp nod. “I know.”

“I had to do some things that I’m not proud of too.” There was a rawness in his tone, like he was close cracking open. “I don’t think you and I can ever go back to being the people we were before.”

His words hit me hard, splicing me open. It wasn’t that I couldn’t go back to being me – I was never very good to begin with – but that if we’d both changed, could we find each other again as we had before? Did Camden lose himself in order to save me, and if he did, did that mean I’d lost the Camden that loved me?

Violetta’s scream pierced through my thoughts, jolting me into the present. I was about to take off toward the room when Javier came out, strolling toward us casually, his face in shadow until the last minute.

“What happened?” I exclaimed.

“He set her arm,” he said. He walked over to the bar and pulled out a crystal bottle of dark amber liquid, pulling the top off with a pop.

“Without any pain medication?” Camden asked incredulously.

He calmly poured the liquid into a textured highball glass and swirled it around. “We don’t have a lot of time. She bit down on something, don’t worry.”

“Don’t worry?” Camden sneered, stepping up to him.

Javier sipped his drink and winced, peering at the glass. “I’m fairly sure Alonso made this in his bathtub.” He eyed Camden with amusement. “And yes. Don’t worry. She’s my sister. I know what’s best for her. She’ll be on some pain medication, the good kind, better than that monkey shit you were given.”

Camden’s fists clenched and Javier saw that too.

“Easy there, big boy,” he said, grinning. He finished the rest of the drink and slammed the glass down. He wiped the back of his hand across his snaking lips. “You’re so overprotective over the ladies. They’re a lot tougher than you give them credit for, you know.”

Javier winked at me and went back down the hall. Camden went to the bar, snatched the booze off the table and then stormed out the front door and into the emptiness of the night, perhaps hoping to drink the rage out of him.

I didn’t know what direction to go. Camden wanted to be alone and I didn’t want to be with Javier.

I sighed and sat down on Alonso’s couch.

And waited.

CHAPTER SIX

“Ellie, do you mind sleeping with me tonight?”

I looked behind me at Violetta. I was pulling Jose up to the motel that Dom had recommended. It was actually a clean-looking place, quite busy, with noise thumping from the bar at the end of the row. That was where Dom had wanted to meet us.

“I’d love to,” I told her.

“If it’s not one Bernal, it’s another,” Javier remarked.

I glared at him though he didn’t seem to notice. Instead, he merely tapped the front of the seat so I could let him out. Camden was still asleep from the alcohol he downed, his head resting against the window.

We had been at Alonso’s for about an hour. Eventually Violetta was brought out to us, high as a kite on morphine and with a sling around her shoulder, protecting the makeshift cast covering her arm. Camden had successfully drunk half the bottle of mystery booze and had lapsed into an even more quiet and introverted state. Alonso didn’t seem to mind, he just wanted us out of his house and gone. I wondered if he really was a doctor, and if so, if he was still practicing. The more I learned about the cartels and the people tied to them, the more their history interested me. I couldn’t imagine someone like Javier being anything else before becoming a drug lord and I couldn’t see him going on to any other career if he had to. This was Javier’s past and future, this was his destiny, and nothing else would ever compare to that.

I certainly never did.

Don’t get me wrong, I wasn’t feeling sorry for myself. I knew now what I didn’t know then, that for some people love was never enough. It’s just sad that I had to learn that twice, two lessons six years apart.

Okay, maybe I was feeling a little bit sorry for myself. It was hard not to when I was reminded of what I had with Camden and what my actions had cost me.

We stepped out of the car, Camden slowly stirring awake, and surveyed the area. So far so good. Nothing suspicious, no one out to kill us. Not yet, anyway.

“I’ll get us the rooms,” I said, about to walk off but Javier pulled me back.

“With what money?” he asked.

I pulled out my wallet from my back jean pocket and waved it at him. “There’s more than a few lives in that car, more than a few credit cards. One of them will work.”

He raised his brow. “Perhaps you should start taking inventory of your stuff before you begin making assumptions. You know what happens when you assume, don’t you?”

I rolled my eyes. “Yes, they make an ‘ass’ out of ‘u’ and ‘me’.”

“They get you killed,” he said quickly. He pushed me back slightly and took off for the motel office, tossing over his shoulder, “I’ll get this. And yes, I’ll make sure you and Violetta can share a room together.”

Oh, of course, like he was letting us. The ass always had to be in control.

I turned to see Violetta and Camden standing beside each other and leaning against the car in matching poses, her dark skin glistening in the heat of the night, his body, strong yet tired. Both of them were a little fucked-up in the head at the moment, their eyes glazed, their half-smiles loopy. I had to admit, I was kind of envious. It would be nice to be oblivious to the shit going on around me at every given turn.