“Our coffee too strong for you?” Dan asked.
“Yes, quite.” I poured some of the powder in my coffee and then screwed the lid off of it. I held the container in my hand. Dan was watching me, puzzled.
Finally he said, “Checking for poison?”
I shook my head. “Want your lighter back?”
He frowned but nodded and put his cigarette between his lips. I reached across to give him back the lighter and said, “Perhaps Gus and I should be going. We seem to be taking up a lot of your time.” I wanted to get this show rolling.
His eyes flicked to Gus and back to me. His hands grasped the lighter but I didn’t let go. I stared deep at him and gave him a little smile. “You wouldn’t happen to have a gun under the table would you?”
The corner of his mouth hitched up. “You’re pretty observant for an American. What gang are you from?”
“I’m a tattoo artist.”
“Dan,” Gus said in a long breath. “It’s me. I didn’t come here to cause trouble, you know this. I only want to know where Travis is.”
Dan avoided his friend’s eyes and kept them on me and the lighter I was refusing to give up. Not now, not yet. “You want to stop something that should happen. I can’t let you do that. You are my friend but my loyalty to my family comes first.”
“Revenge over love,” I said.
“Yes, though not that poetic.”
He adjusted the gun under the table. I chose that moment to let go of the lighter. He leaned back in his chair and brought it under his cigarette.
“I’m sorry,” he said, flicking the Zippo.
Here went nothing and everything at the same time. “No, I’m sorry.”
I flung the contents of the non-dairy creamer out into his face just as the flame produced. The particles hung suspended in air for one moment, a cloud of white that enveloped his face, before the flame interacted with them.
It went up in an orange blaze, the heat and flames making me fall backward out of my seat. Dan was screaming, his face, hair, everything, ignited in a horrible fireball that had momentarily stretched to the roof before simmering back down into a puff of curdling black smoke.
There was no time to take it all in. I scrambled to my feet and ran out of Dan’s house, Gus right behind me.
I got behind the wheel this time and the moment Gus was in the car, I started peeling backward through the dense sand. Once the GTO hit the solid dirt, I spun it around with a hit to the E-break and bolted forward. We bounced and pitched and crunched down that pale dirt road, the car feeling alive beneath my hands, willing to take us anywhere we wanted, as fast as it wanted.
Gus wasn’t driving anymore.
We didn’t say a word to each other until we finally whipped out onto the main paved street that would take us back to the highway, overtaking a cart pulled by donkeys as we did so, chickens squawking in our wake.
“I’m sorry, Gus,” I told him, my eyes darting to the rear-view mirror to make sure we weren’t being followed. I don’t know how badly Dan was burned, if he was still alive with only minor redness, or if he was rolling on the floor suffering as his skin melted away. I didn’t want to think about it. I couldn’t.
“He would have killed us,” he said gruffly, his attention turned to the window. I noticed he was wringing his hands together.
“I know. And I’m sorry for that too.”
A moment passed before he said, “Thank you.”
That was the most we talked about it. Another incident swept away. Not because there wasn’t more to say, because there was, I mean the god damn coffee creamer actually worked. I had opened my mouth to say something about that, then closed it, thinking it in poor taste considering what had happened.
It didn’t matter because in the next instance I looked at the rear-view mirror again and saw flashing lights far behind us. It almost looked like a mirage in the sun-soaked haze of the road.
“Oh shit,” I swore.
Gus twisted in his seat and looked behind him. “Double shit. They’ll be with the Zetas.” He eyed me nervously. “Do you want me to drive?”
I gripped the wheel tighter and gunned it.
“I think I’ve got this.”
The chase was on.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
ELLIE
The trek through the jungle didn’t take as long as I imagined it would but it felt a hell of a lot longer with the tension between Javier and I. Burt Reynolds led the way, a chatty Kathy to Peter behind him, while I was sandwiched behind Raul in front, Javier in back. I could feel his damn eyes on me the whole time, burning holes at my back, at the tattoo on my leg. As childish as it was for me to enjoy rubbing it in, that Camden left his mark, it also made me worry for him. Javier was nothing if not jealous and unpredictable. I was doing all of this to protect Camden but I had to wonder if I was putting him in danger all the same.
Aside from being awkward, the ride was unbearably sweaty and uncomfortable, horsehair sticking to my legs, mosquitos feasting on every bare inch of me. Howler monkeys added to the hostility, hurling animal obscenities from hidden spots in the trees above. The tiny seaside hamlet of Montepio seemed like a godsend after that.
Javier handed over a wad of US bills to Burt Reynolds who eagerly took it from him, stuffing it away in various pockets like a squirrel. Raul helped me off Churro much to my dismay, especially since his hands seemed to linger a bit around my ass.
I swatted him away under the guise of wiping off horsehair and glared at him. Javier was watching us over Burt’s shoulder, cold and calculating, but I didn’t care. I just wanted to be someplace air-conditioned, a cold drink in hand. To be honest, I think I wanted to be back on the boat. Captive or not, it was the only place I’d been able to get a routine going since I’d left Palm Valley for the first time.
We handed the horses to Burt who attached them all together in a long line and led them back into the jungle.
“Now what?” I asked Javier, hands on my hips. The four of us were standing on a cobblestoned street corner and getting some pretty curious looks from bare-footed children who were walking past.
Javier looked to Raul and Peter, completely ignoring me. “There’s a car waiting for us around the corner from here. It will take us to Alvarado. We have a house there, disguised as a fish shop. I’m afraid it might smell a bit but that’s as far as we can get to Veracruz without causing trouble. At least, not right away.”
I could have sworn that last bit was directed at me.
We followed Javier down the street, past the faded signs of small shops and businesses, past the group of kids who were hiding behind a phone booth and peering at us with gap-toothed grins, past a produce stand where an owner and a customer were in a showdown over the price of bananas. It was such a scene of old Mexico but as I followed Javier and his men, all in their sharp suits, striding confidently, easily, through this tiny town, I had to wonder how far reaching the cartels were. Was there nowhere in the country left untouched? Would the children on the street have to come home to a murdered father or mother, as Javier did? The place he described growing up didn’t seem too much different from this place.
Sympathy for the devil, I thought. It crept up on me more and more.
The car was a Range Rover, at least ten years old with a dented fender. It was tough and fast enough to get us around but it didn’t look like the vehicle that a drug cartel rode around in. Just your everyday quasi-Mexican family going out for a drive, nothing to see here.
Javier checked something on his phone and then pulled a key out of his breast pocket. He opened the door and unlocked the rest of them.
Then he turned and looked at me for the first time in hours. “You’re riding in the front. With me.”
My heart clanged in my chest. I forced a smile to hide my nervousness. “Sure.”
I climbed in and was surprised at how high tech it looked inside. GPS, mp3, the works. “Nice,” I commented, feeling like I had to say something.
Javier started the car and knocked on his window. “Bullet-proof glass. I made sure this was totally outfitted. Piece of shit from the outside, a fortress inside.”
“Like the Popemobile.”
A smug smile spread across his lips and I knew I had appealed to his god-complex. “Yes, just like that.”
We headed out of the town and crawled our way through narrow, twisting mountainous passages, the sea temporarily disappearing as the Range Rover plunged deep into the heart of the Los Tuxtlas reserve. The green seemed to enclose around us as lizards ran across the ragged road just in time and the sun poked through the canopies. Waterfalls tumbled out of volcanic remnants, close enough to splash mist on the car. It was nice to see it from an air-conditioned vehicle, especially one that was outfitted in bullet-proof glass. I felt safe for the first time in a while, which was so ridiculous considering who I was in the car with.
Suddenly, the switchbacks seemed to be too much and we nearly went off the road when a bus came careening around the corner, the lush mountains leveling out. Soon, we were pulling the Range Rover onto the Minititlan-Veracruz highway, speeding along the plains and rows of fruit crops.
“I bet when you thought of Mexico before,” Javier began, relaxing at the wheel, “you thought of Cancun and Puerto Vallarta and all the resort towns.”
I swallowed and nodded, watching the immense land, the countless farms and houses flying past. “I did. I never really thought of it having so much space.”
“It’s a big country, you know. It can be surprising and beautiful too. The people. The little pockets of life.”
I looked over at him, feeling like we were the only two people in the car. “Are you happy to be back? Did you miss this?”
He scratched at his sideburn, eyes darkening momentarily. “I miss it sometimes. It seems peaceful and simple in my memories. But I know it’s not true. Behind every house you see, there are secrets. And death.”
“That’s everywhere,” I pointed out.
“Yes, it’s true.” He adjusted his grip at the wheel. “Still, you forget here. You think there are so many people, so many lives, how can there be that many secrets? When I was young, really young, and my mother would drive me and my sisters to Mascota where my aunt lived, I’d watch all the houses go past and I’d play a game with myself. I’d say, ‘What would it be like to be that person? To live there? Or there, or there? What life would I have?’” He trailed off and looked in the rear-view mirror. It was like he just remembered where he was. He suddenly shrugged. “I was young and stupid and I thought the world was good and other lives were better and well, all of us know that’s not true.”
He became silent after that, flicking through the radio until he gave up and put a Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds album on. “Do You Love Me?” came out in full bass and creepy organ and I had to wonder how orchestrated this was. It added an ominous quality to our journey and a flurry inside my gut, something that pulled me in all directions.
I did not think about Javier. I did not listen to the lyrics, those terribly fitting lyrics. I did not fall for his guise of music. This was not “On Every Street.”
