“How long ago was this?” he asked.

“Two years ago, two and a bit,” she said, thinking it over. “It was nothing like it is now. This is my city, my home. My family’s home. Now we have Los Zetas and The Los Zetas Killers and who else knows who, all wanting a piece of this pie and it’s rotten through and through. Bodies are left in the streets. People, good people, journalists, teachers, are murdered and no one is doing a thing about it. Not the police. Not the military. Not the government. Organized crime has taken over this city. As soon as I am done school, I am gone. And when I make money one day, I will take my family with me.”

“Well, Amandine,” Javier said calmly. “If you are of great help to us, I will make sure you have the money before you even start your next class. And it will be enough to get your family out of here in the meantime.”

She looked flabbergasted. I couldn’t blame her. How much money was Javier giving this young woman and why? Just to be nice? That didn’t sound like him. Not when he was no better than The Los Zetas Killers.

“I couldn’t accept that,” she said.

“Yes, you can and you will. Because your information will be worth it. The lives of my own sisters depend on it.”

Her face fell. “Oh. I see. Travis … Los Zetas. Did they do something to them?”

Javier didn’t say anything. I couldn’t see his eyes save for the amber reflection of his aviators and he was probably glad for that. You couldn’t read his face at all.

“If you help me, it will stop Travis from hurting them and hurting everyone else in this city.”

I ignored what Javier had told me on the boat that day, that the drug Lords were all like zombies and another one would pop up to take their place. Did Javier really want the drug cartels, the violence, to stop? Or did he just want to protect his sisters and come out on top?

She swallowed hard and took another sip of her latte. Her hands were shaking now. I placed my own on the table as a show of solidarity.

“It’s okay,” I told her. “We’ll protect you. We just need to know what you can tell us about Travis, that’s all. Places he goes, who lives in the house with him, how well-protected you think he is – how many bodyguards. That sort of thing. It won’t take up much of your time, we promise, and then you can have your money.”

She slowly lowered her drink and nodded. “Okay.”

Javier shot me an impressed look, lips teasing upward.

Amandine told us everything she knew about Travis over the last two years. He liked to go to the Mercado Hidalgo Market on Saturdays where the local police force would practically salute him. Friday nights he’d frequent a night club or a bar, mainly The Zoo, a touristy joint with high security where he’d drink in his private room. He usually brought women home from these places and his driver would take them home right after their session in the sack. I wanted to ask Amandine if I was Travis’s type, if he’d find me attractive but I knew how degrading and embarrassing that question was, to admit to what I was going to do.

And, honestly, as she explained his mansion in the hills, all five of his bodyguards, some I could tell Javier recognized, past brothers, I started to worry. I started to freak out a bit, my pulse quickening, waves of nausea sweeping through me. I was sure I couldn’t do it, that I’d fail, he’d catch me, kill me and everything would be for nothing. I didn’t want to have my body dumped behind a garbage can or my head on the steps of a hotel. I didn’t want to die by that man’s hands.

“Ellie?” It was Javier, his hand over mine. “Are you okay?”

I nodded quickly, trying to come back to reality. “Yes. Sorry. What … what were we talking about?”

Amandine was looking at me with a quizzical expression. “I asked if there was anything else you wanted to know.”

“No, I’m good. Sorry. I think I’ve had too much sun,” I said, shielding it with my hand.

“I think you’re right,” Javier said, getting out of his chair and pulling me up to my feet. “Thank you, Amandine, you have been a great help. I will be in touch with you if I need anymore help. Oh.” He reached into his back jean pocket and pulled out a Bank of America check book and started scribbling on it with one of Amandine’s pens.

“It’s in US funds and from an American bank so it might take a while for your bank to clear it, but I can guarantee it will clear.” He ripped the check out of the book and handed it to her.

Her eyes bugged. “I can’t take this.”

“You’ll take it, you earned it. Just make sure you share it with your family,” he said. “Come on, Ellie.”

He pulled me over to him and led me away from Amandine, still staring at the check in shock. We were halfway across the park when I asked, “How much did you give her?”

“About thirty thousand dollars, US,” he stated matter-of-factly.

“Shit,” I said. “You made her life.”

“If she has a life for much longer,” he said quietly. “After we do what we have to do, I have no doubt it will all get back to her. That’s the way things work here. Those who talk, die. My only hope is that she gets her family out of here first, to at least give them a chance somewhere else.”

I bit my lip, wishing that pretty Amandine would somehow get out of this alive. Wishing I would get out of this alive. “Is this place really that bad?”

“It’s the wild wild east, my dear, and the sheriff is nowhere to be seen.”

“And who are you? The lone ranger?”

“Don Diego de la Vega,” he answered. “Zorro.”

We got back in the car and drove out of the city and onto the highway that would take us to Alvarado.

We were about halfway there when I started to have a nervous breakdown.

All I could think about was Travis getting a hold of Amandine and cutting her head off, leaving it for her parents to find. What would happen to me if he did the same? Who would mourn me? Camden would probably never know about it. Neither would my parents, wherever the hell they were. The only one I had at that moment was right beside me: Javier.

And that in itself was what set me off.

I hadn’t had a panic attack in weeks so it snuck up on me, like a hand reached around from behind me and began squeezing my lungs until there was no breath left. I started gasping for air, my hand at my throat, taking in nothing. Tears filled my eyes and spilled down my cheeks in dirty rivulets and my body began to shake.

“Jesus Christ,” Javier swore, nearly taking the car off the road. “Ellie, Ellie. What’s happening?”

I gulped and gasped unable to stop from crying, panic seizing me all over from my shoulders to my feet and I thrashed back and forth in order to get free.

Next thing I knew, he’d pulled the car down a private dirt road that ran between two orchards and he was undoing my seatbelt. He came around to my side and took me in his arms and away from the car. We disappeared into the orchards, the smell of orange blossoms in the air.

He put me down, propped up against a tree and smoothed the hair off of my face. His sunglasses and baseball cap were gone, his hair mussed, his worried eyes searching me.

“Hey, Ellie,” he said gently, running his hand down the side of my face and feeling the pulse under my jaw. “It’s okay, it’s all going to be okay.”

I shook my head, feeling disgusting and messy and lost. I sobbed. “It’s not going to be okay. I can’t do this, I can’t do this.”

He cupped my face in his hands and forced me to look at him. “You can. And you will. You are strong. You are very strong. Right here.” He lay his hand in the middle of my chest. “You will do this and you will succeed.”

I finally found my breath again, the fresh air flowing down the sun-streaked orchard coming into my lungs. “I will fail.”

“You won’t.”

I sniffed. “I don’t even want this,” I admitted.

He cocked his head and let go of my face. “Then why are you doing this?”

“Because you’re making me!” I cried out. “You’re forcing me to!”

His head jerked back. “I am doing no such thing.”

“You are! You’ll kill my Camden if I don’t.”

I didn’t see the outburst coming. Suddenly Javier was in my face, his skin turning red, his eyes narrowing into viper-like slits, all yellow and full of hate.

“He is not your Camden!” he screamed. I closed my eyes.

“He isn’t here with you now,” he went on, words harsh and short, like bullets. “I am here with you.”

“I know!” I screamed back. “And I hate it! I hate it! I hate you!”

Then before I knew what was happening, I had wound up my hand and slapped him hard across his face. The sound ricocheted down the groves.

I waited, surprised at myself, breathing hard. I watched as his face contorted in the same type of shock. And then something odd flashed across his brow. Something like betrayal. I knew betrayal all too well. I knew it had been on my own face when I found out what Uncle Jim was planning to do.

My dead uncle.

I slapped him again, harder this time, my palm stinging like I was being stabbed with a million tiny knives. “That was for my uncle!” I cried. “You killed him.”

Now I wound up for a punch and decked Javier right in the side of the head. “You killed him,” I repeated, tears streaming down my cheeks again. “You keep taking everyone I love away!”

The whole time, Javier just stayed there. Not ducking my hits, not getting out of the way. He just let me, watching me with that impassive look upon his face.

“Well, come on!” I screamed. “Hit me back. You know you want to!”

I decked him in the head again, my knuckles exploding in pain. “Come on!” I pushed my hands into his shoulders and tried to throw him to the ground. He fell easily, and I threw myself on top of him, throwing punch after punch after punch until he finally reached up and grabbed my wrists with both his hands.

“I’m not going to hit you,” he said, gazing deeply at me with wild eyes, his lip bleeding. “You can hit me all you want but if you’re doing it so I can hit you back, it won’t work. You’ll just break every part of me.”

“I want to break every part of you!” I exclaimed but gave up and collapsed on him. “I want you to break,” I whispered, my head on his chest, my eyes focused absently on an orange tree.

“You have,” he said softly, his hand stroking the back of my head. “I told you that you broke me when you left. And you did. I’m not lying to you.”

“You always lie.”

“No. Not now.” His voice dropped a register.

I raised my head to look at him. He brought his hands on both sides of my cheeks and held me there, his eyes searching me for something.

“Angel,” he said through a breath.

He pulled my face to his, my lips meeting his, slowly. Just a taste of blood and tears. Lips and tongue. The sensation pulled me under, the heat that spread from him and through me, the memories mixing with the smell of orange blossoms. All the pain disappeared as our kiss deepened, all the worry, all the danger melted like my lips and his did together.