by Karina Halle
“You don’t consider breaking me to be a danger?”
“Only because I know you’ll survive it. You’re my son after all. We can survive anything. More than that, we take what tries to destroy us and we use it to become better.”
“You’re full of shit,” I sneer at her. “You’re full of his shit. You’re just like him, justifying the most horrendous acts in order to suit the life you have. That way you don’t have to choose between us. Because you’re fooling yourself into thinking that what you’re doing is for the best of me. Not caring to see how wrong you are.”
She sucks at her teeth and looks away. “I’m going to go now. I’m sorry I have to keep you in here. Your father doesn’t trust you. I don’t blame him.”
“You know that this is going to backfire, horribly,” I call after her as she walks to the door. “You know this.”
She pauses before she puts her hand on the knob.
“You know that love doesn’t make you weak, no matter what he says. You know that love only makes you stronger in the end.” I take in a deep breath, feeling the raw anger and desperation course through me, hoping these words reach her. “You won’t break me. You won’t break her. But you will break this family in half. And that’s something that will never recover.”
She seems to listen but I’m not sure if she’ll let herself feel it.
The choices that will have to be made.
My resolve is only going to deepen.
“I’ll go tend to her,” she says quietly. “I’ll make sure she’s okay.”
I slump to the ground the moment she leaves, locking me in.
It’s a slow start but it’s something.
More than that…
She left the knife behind.
Chapter Sixteen
Ellie
El Segundo can’t go fast enough.
Ellie spends the hours in the backseat of the Challenger, trying to keep the worry at bay but it’s impossible. She’s already bitten down most of her fingernails, torn off the rest.
She can’t shake any of the feelings she has.
But the one that hits her the sharpest, like it’s found a home deep inside her, is that Javier has already hurt her daughter in a horrific way. It’s all she can feel, all she can think about. Like whatever is being done to her is transmitting across from some mystical mother/daughter powerline.
She can’t explain any of it but she knows it to be true.
She also knows she will do anything at all to get her back.
To save her.
To be the mother she never considered herself good enough to be.
Just outside of the tiny town of El Carizzo, they stop to get gas.
While Camden fills it up at the dirty Pemex station, Ellie wanders to the side of the highway, shielding her eyes from the stark sun with her hands, staring across at the flat plains and the soaring dust kicked up by the passing cars.
“You know where we are now, don’t you?” Gus asks, coming up behind her.
“Hell.”
“Close. Just back there we passed the dotted line from Sonora to Sinaloa. We’re in his territory now, Ellie. We have to be careful.”
She doesn’t glance at her father. “You really think he’s expecting us?”
“Don’t you think that has been his plan all along? Violet is bait. For you.”
Ellie shakes her head, trying not to think about it. She hates the word bait. Hates it being applied to her daughter.
God, if she could just rewind time. That’s all she asks for, all she’s thought about during the journey. To go back to the other night and hang on tight. To stand her ground more. Call the police on Vicente, even if he’s got a fake ID and nothing could be proven.
She could have prevented this whole thing.
Woulda, coulda, shoulda.
Instead she’s living her worst nightmare.
And Violet, no doubt, is living hers.
“I need to know what you’re going to do,” her father says. “The time will come and when it comes, I’ll be damned if I lose you.”
The sweet pang of sorrow strikes her and she turns to face her dad. “You would do anything for me. And you have. I will do anything for Violet.”
“I know. But I don’t want to lose you if I don’t have to.”
“Do you really think Javier would kill me, hurt me?”
“Why wouldn’t he?”
Ellie chews on her lip. The sun is starting to feel unbearably hot.
She thinks back to the way he was with her. The bits of tenderness she used to see. She’d told herself all these years later that it had been an illusion. That Javier was always a liar and because of that, nothing was ever as it seemed.
“Don’t mistake obsession for love, Ellie,” Gus says, searching her eyes. “You know this. He’s obsessed because you’re the one that got away, not because he ever felt anything for you. He wants revenge because we all, but especially you, fucked up his life in a big way. And now he’s not at the top. And what do people who start to fall do? They lash out. They focus, so sharply, on the things that went wrong in their lives and the people who wronged them. They don’t look inward to see what they did wrong. They look outward.” He clears his throat, looks back at Camden who is finishing gassing up. “Time is an incubator. In some cases, it changes people. In others, it lets things grow and hatch. Too much time and it turns into a monster.”
“I don’t think he’ll hurt me,” she says, though she feels the lie on her lips.
“He has Violet. He’s already hurting you. Do you really think you’ll be able to waltz on in there and…then what?”
“I can take care of myself. And I’ll have you guys to protect me.”
Gus shakes his head. “I really wish you would reconsider.”
“What? Let you and Camden go?” she asks incredulously.
“Stay with Ben.”
“If you go, I lose you. I’m the bargaining chip here.”
“And we could lose everything otherwise.”
“Guys!” Ben is in car, leaning out the passenger seat. “It’s hot as balls in here and I think I’ve got everything set up.”
Ellie exchanges a look with Camden across the parking lot—it’s time to get moving.
With a tank full of gas, the four of them peel out onto the highway, heading south along Highway 15. Camden drives cautiously at first—he too is aware of where they are now—while Ben goes over his plan. With his two phones, satellite connector, router, iPad and mini laptop, he’s got his own little hacking station up in the front seat. He calls it his emergency pack and Ellie is amazed at what he’s been able to do so far.
She may not be his birth mother but even so, the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree. Her son is a genuine hacker of the criminal variety. She’s proud. And terribly sorry that their relationship is strained and tainted now because of all their lies. She wonders when the time comes if he can ever forgive them.
Until then though, there are bigger things in the works.
Ben’s plan is risky. It’s ballsy.
But it’s the best that they can do with what they have.
There was a moment, back in San Francisco, that Ellie thought contacting the FBI and the DEA would have been the safest bet.
But kidnapping is a long and arduous process, especially when dealing with Mexico, especially over the last twenty years. The lack of communication has played a significant role.
They just don’t have the time.
Not to mention that Ellie, Camden, nor Gus would do very well with a background check.
They also can’t go to the cops here. They’re all on Javier’s payroll.
In fact, Camden better ease up on the gas a bit.
Especially with the sign up ahead indicating they’re coming into Culiacan.
This was the Bernal’s home for a long time, where Javier really built up his empire. Ellie doesn’t know where his compound was, probably in the mountains outside of town, but the whole area w
as his to play with. He was their unofficial mayor, just as El Chapo once was.
“Camden,” Ellie say, placing her hand on his shoulder. “Slow down. You don’t want to draw attention to ourselves here.”
Ben actually snorts at that.
Because a vintage American muscle car—a 1973 black Dodge Challenger with California collector plates—won’t attract attention on its own.
“Actually, you should probably speed up,” Ben says, looking around at the rusted pick-up trucks and dusty Hondas they keep passing. “Get out of here as soon as you can. We’re sticking out like a sore thumb.”
Unfortunately, just as they’re at the southern outskirts of the city, traffic on the highway comes to a snarl.
And the roaring black car is getting everyone’s attention.
Then from behind them, flashing lights.
“Fuck,” Ellie swears, twisting around in the seat to try and see out the small back window.
“Everyone stay calm,” Gus says. “They probably aren’t even after us.”
But the cars are pulling over behind them and the police cruiser is getting closer. Aggressively closer.
“Okay, maybe they are,” Gus says. “Hopefully they just want a bribe.”
“And if they don’t?” Camden asks.
“We’re fucked,” Ben says, immediately putting his electronics away into their hard cases and shoving them in the backpack at his feet.
“You better pull over,” Ellie says quickly as the cruiser comes up alongside the car, nearly colliding into their side.
“If they try anything Camden, you drive like hell, got it?” Gus says.
Camden nods, his grip tightening on the wheel.
He pulls El Segundo to the side of the road, while the traffic continues to crawl past.
The police car stops right behind them. Both cops get out of the car.
Their guns are drawn and at their sides.
Not a good fucking sign, Ellie thinks, her heart trying to beat out of her chest.
One cop goes to Camden’s window. The other goes to Ben’s.
The cop at Camden’s raps on the window with his knuckles.
Camden slowly rolls it down.
“What is your name?” the cop says in English.
Curious first question to ask.
“Connor Malloy,” Camden says automatically. An old lie, one that makes Ellie beam with nostalgia.
“Connor Malloy?” The cop frowns, looks in the backseat at Ellie. “And yours, senora?”
“Eden White,” Ellie says, another easy lie.
She can’t read his eyes underneath his aviator sunglasses, but knows he’s not buying it. She also knows there’s a reason he asked for both their names. He’s been told to look for people just like them, Camden and Ellie McQueen. “I’m going to need to see your licence and passports.”
“Sure, just a minute,” Camden says, reaching for the glove compartment. Ellie sees the look that passes between his eyes and Ben’s.
Now or never.
Camden pops the gears, slams on the gas.
The car lurches forward in a cloud of dust.
Ellie and Gus instinctively duck across each other in the back seat seconds before the window explodes, shot out by the cops as the car races away.
The chase is on.
Luckily El Segundo has a head start and El Segundo rarely loses a race.
But they’re still going to need all the luck they can get considering the highway is still bumper to bumper traffic.
So they’re taking the side of the road. Half-on the shoulder.
The car handles it with ease, burning through the dirt and dust and crumbling pavement, creating a new lane.
The cop car follows in pursuit, quite a way back but still there. On this open stretch of highway, it won’t be easy to lose him.
But Camden has always been a master in these situations.
He and Gus had quite the adventures with the first Jose.
Now that car was a beauty.
“They aren’t going to give up,” Ellie says, flinching when the car almost takes out a couple of goats at the road side.
“They might,” Camden says, eyes on the road. “Is what they’re getting paid really worth it to do this?”
Hard to say.
As the traffic starts to ease again, Camden brings the car back on the pavement and that’s where he really lets it open up. Zigging and zagging between the cars, even taking the open spots on the opposite lanes. The Challenger burns at top speed, over 120 miles an hour, like a knife through butter.
It’s not long before they’ve left the cop car behind.
They don’t let up either.
It’s a two-hour drive from here to the compound Ben located, just outside of Mazatlan in a national park of all places, close to the Pacific Ocean. Camden is certain they can make it in one.
They need to, now that the cops and who knows who else are looking for them.
The grains are nearing the neck of the hourglass.
“Just another three miles to go to the turn-off,” Ben says, eying his phone.
A lot can happen in three miles.
And a lot does.
Chapter Seventeen
Violet
When I was ten years old, Ben and I went for a walk to Gualala Point Regional Park. My Grandpa Gus Gus was supposed to take us, but he was feeling under the weather and Grandma Mimi was taking care of him. Mom was busy in the home studio—I don’t remember where Dad was—but she decided that we were fine to go by ourselves.
Ben was fourteen and the last thing he wanted was to babysit his sister, but I really wanted to go and the way to get there is to walk along Highway 1, south past the town, which can get a lot of traffic, and the footpath, especially over the bridge spanning Gualala River, could get very narrow in places.
We walked single file, Ben in front of me. I remember the cars whizzing past, being scared that I might fall, one way into the traffic, the other over the side of the bridge and into the water below.
But I sucked up my fear and made it. Eventually we came to the park and headed down the windswept dunes to the beach.
The surf was out of control and wild. The wind was powerful. So powerful it was hard to stand up.
But I felt free.
So damn free.
It was beyond euphoric. It was practically cathartic.
Spiritual.
I remember so clearly the feeling of that wind sweeping off the Pacific, assaulting my face with brine and secrets from the deep. I closed my eyes, held my arms back like I was going to fly. The sun beat down on me, birds flew close to shore.
I’d never felt so in tune and connected with the world before.
And after that, the connection stayed.
The days and years after, I felt that I was a worthy cog in this world machine. That my place was important, vital, even in the most insignificant ways. Like how a small grain of sand, the ones that my toes sank into that day, might seem like nothing much but it still makes up the beach.
It’s needed.
I felt needed.
All of that, though, is gone now.
I feel connection to nothing.
The longer I stay in this room, the more that I feel truly severed from the world.
I am no longer a cog in the machine.
I’m a discarded part.
Tossed aside, waiting to rust.
Waiting to die.
Because that’s what’s going to happen to me, isn’t it?
What else could possibly happen?
Unless Vicente somehow springs me out of here, unless he can somehow convince his father to let me go, I’ll die here.
Tortured for the sake of being tortured.
A lesson to Vicente.
Punishment against my mother.
But even my connection to Vicente is gone.
I may be in the same house as him…
Or maybe not.
Either way, when I search deep ins
ide for what my gut is telling me, I come up empty. Even my instincts offer nothing.
There’s no intuition.
Nothing.
Just me, alone in this room, lying in the corner, staring up at the bulb hanging from the the ceiling until my vision goes white. Pretending it’s heaven.
How the fuck could my mom ever get roped up with someone like Javier? How could she fall for him when there was someone like my father?
You know how.
The words slice across my mind.
You did it yourself.
You fell in love with Vicente.
But Vicente is nothing like his father. Maybe he’s supposed to be. But he’s not. And that’s probably why we’re in this mess.
Vicente is ruthless. Manipulative. Conniving.
He’s also a liar.
But the love he has for me is true.
It may have happened fast but that doesn’t make it false.
It just means our love burns brighter, harder.
It’s made us make some pretty stupid decisions.
Romeo and Juliet never thought things through either.
And so is that our fate? Young lovers, blinded by their passion and feelings from the dizzying madness of fresh love, doomed to die because of it?
Or will it just be me?
And Vicente will move on.
To be the hardened shell of a man he’s supposed to become.
To run this cartel and take over the world.
In another world, another life, perhaps I could have even been his queen.
I think I would like that.
You’re delusional, I tell myself, rolling over on the hard floor, careful with my leg. The pain is driving me a bit mad. I have to tell myself not to look at the carnage or it tends to hurt even more.
Just then, the door starts to unlock.
Shit.
I eye the chairs in the middle of the room. If I had enough time, I could grab one, stand behind the door and hit the person over the head with it.
Even though it’s probably La Mueca. Mr. Brooding.
And he won’t take too kindly to that.
But it’s not him who steps inside the room with a tote bag, like they’re going to a fucking beach.
