“Do you really eat together every night?” Savannah asked, folding her napkin neatly in her lap.
“Of course,” Viviana piped up. “Don’t you?”
Savannah gave her a little smile. “My parents are very busy.”
“That’s sad,” said Nina.
“Nina!” Mrs. Morales scolded.
“No, it’s okay,” Savannah said softly, and got very busy cutting her dinner up into small and then smaller pieces.
The door slammed. Sophia came storming in, all riled up.
“Three missed calls. Are you serious right now, Papa?”
“You still live under my roof. So please, have a seat. I said . . . sit with your family.” Dr. Morales was having none of it. “Jojo, please pass the corn.”
Sophia plopped loudly down in a chair, scraping it closer to the table and resting both elbows on the edge, refusing to eat, like a little kid. She glanced up at Jane, clearly recognizing her from the mall. I stiffened, but she didn’t say anything.
We should caution you that the images you’re about to see are very disturbing, the television anchor warned us in the background. We all turned to see.
“Dios mío.” Mrs. Morales was the first to look away from the distant images of four silhouetted bodies dangling from the bridge. Jane choked back her food.
Dr. Morales cleared his throat loudly.
“So, about what happened today . . .” He put down his fork. “I want you to think about it. Sophia, pay attention. This is the kind of violence we see when one cartel moves to take over another’s territory. This is the time when you can get caught up in it if you’re not careful.”
Sophia slammed down her glass. Water sloshed onto the embroidered tablecloth. “Why do you say Sophia, pay attention?”
“You know what Diego is.”
“Yeah . . . my boyfriend.”
“He’s a halcón.”
“Nice, Dad. Really? You’ve decided Diego spies for the cartels based on what?”
“I know who does what in this town.”
“Oh, really? You have informants too now? Your own halcones? Who are they? The sick cats and dogs at your office?” Sophia countered.
“Enough,” her father ordered.
“No, I’ve had enough. He’s not like that.”
I thought about Diego’s getup in the mall. The clothes, the attitude. Jane shot me a nervous look. What if he was something more than a con artist who could get documents for people? Halcón. I knew what that meant. It was slang for street-level informant. A falcon. Circling the skies with laser-sharp vision and talons that could scoop up even the smallest things to carry back.
Dr. Morales spoke softly but with conviction.
“These four bodies. This is only the latest example. You think back over the years. You think about Lola. The post office that burned down. Our neighbor’s cousin. How many crime scenes will Thomas Mack and his workers clean up? He thought his company was going to handle cleanup for floods or fire damage. The cartel is no natural disaster. It is avoidable. No one chooses a tornado. But the devil is a different story.”
An uncomfortable and long silence filled the room. Even Nina and Viviana went quiet.
A loud, official-sounding knock snapped us out of it. The rap on the door repeated, louder. Dr. Morales frowned and walked over to check the peephole.
“Aha!” he exclaimed, and opened it. “Garrett Maddison, long time no see, come on in.”
“Hey, Doc, nice to see you too. Is, uh, Savannah here?”
“Right here. Would you like to join us?”
“Oh, that’s kind, but not this time. We have to get home.”
Mr. Maddison tapped a fancy watch, peeking out from where his cuffs lined up with his light gray blazer. The suit, the shoes—all of it breathed success. An image of my dad flashed to mind, unshaven, stained jeans, undershirt.
Savannah got up quickly from the table and walked to the door.
“What are you doing here, Daddy? I texted you where I was,” Savannah said quietly, but I could still hear.
“You didn’t answer your phone. I was concerned,” he said.
“You didn’t answer yours,” Savannah mumbled.
“Tone,” her father warned.
She blushed. “Sorry, Daddy.”
“Let’s go. Your mother’s been worried.”
Savannah circled back and hugged us all goodbye. I could tell she was stalling.
“Thanks for taking care of Savannah on such a nerve-racking day,” Mr. Maddison said politely, holding the door open for his daughter and ushering her out. She gave a little wave and hurried down the steps.
Another awkward silence fell.
“It’s getting late. I should, uh, probably go too,” Gunner said. “Mrs. Morales, thank you. You know I love your enchiladas.”
“Same,” I added, picking up my plate to take to the kitchen.
Dr. Morales held up a finger, motioning us back to the table to listen.
“I wouldn’t be a good father if I didn’t remind each of you: Helping the cartel is no better than being in it. Anyone who has anything to with them could wind up dead.”
JANE
“All right. Talk to me,” Cade said the second we got in the truck and were alone.
The truck smelled like the Mexican food that lingered on our hair and clothes. The Moraleses’ house disappeared in the rearview mirror, kitchen-glow windows getting smaller, eyes closing against the night. Being in their home was like being placed into a bright mosaic. Even when they argued, even when the news told them the world was broken, they took those broken pieces and glued them into a picture. That’s what a family was.
“What’s going on?” Cade pushed.
“It’s bad,” I whispered.
Cade was waiting for more. I didn’t help.
“It’s bad doesn’t really explain anything, Jane.” He ran his hands through his messy hair, fed up with my silence.
“It’s time for me to leave Tanner.”
“You already said that. But I want to know why right now?” Cade demanded.
“You never told me everything that happened here: the post office, the girl whose tongue they cut out.”
“That stuff all happened a long time ago,” Cade said. “And I thought this would be over once Ivan was gone.”
“I never would have stayed if I had known all those things,” I said.
“That’s not fair.” Cade got huffy. “Why would I ever do something to put you in danger? Any of us? Don’t get mad at me when you’re the one with all the secrets.”
He was driving faster than usual. “I only know what you tell me, which isn’t much.”
“I don’t tell you things to protect you,” I said.
“You need to tell me some things so I can protect me,” Cade responded. “And you.”
The candor in his voice put a lump in my throat. I opened my mouth, closed it again. Anything I told him put him at risk. But he was right. Keeping him in the dark did the same.
“I don’t know where to start,” I mumbled.
“Start with who killed Raff.”
I struggled to find the words. “Raff was killed by his boss . . . to keep him from selling their secrets to a new cartel. . . . That new cartel sent Ivan after me.”
Cade stayed quiet as he let that sink in.
“And you think that new cartel is who’s behind the bridge murders?” he asked.
“Defect or die. That was the message on the bridge,” I choked out. “That’s the same thing the new cartel offered Raff: Join them or die. So he joined. And then he was killed by his old one for the betrayal.”
Tears welled and then overflowed. Cade took one look at me and threw the truck into park. “Come here. I’m sorry. I’m sorry for yelling at you.”
I slid acros
s the seat, and he wrapped one arm around me. A light rain spattered droplets across the windshield.
“You’re right,” Cade said, letting out a long hiss of a held breath. “This is bad.”
We sat for a couple more minutes, the only sound the nervous taps of rain.
“Why don’t we go back to the barn?” Cade asked. “And come up with a plan.”
“Okay,” I whispered.
I knew the twists and turns of the road back to the barn in my body, the rumble of the seat up my back, the slight yank left at the fork, then back around right, the last few bumps before we came to a stop. Cade tried to hold his sweatshirt over my head to keep me dry as we darted through the rain to the barn.
“Gotta check in on my dad and get something.”
“All right,” I said.
“I’ll be right back. You gonna be okay alone for a few?”
“Yes.”
But I couldn’t stop shaking, even after I changed out of my wet clothes into a threadbare T-shirt of Cade’s and a pair of his sweatpants and curled up under the faded baby blanket on my mattress. The drizzle outside had picked up, and the rain on the weathered wood drummed in impatient fingers, counting down.
Cade knocked lightly.
“Come on in.”
Once inside, Cade moved the table and chairs and then even the old wheelbarrow against the door as barricades. He leaned something carefully against the wall.
“Wait . . . is that a gun?” I asked.
“It’s one of my dad’s. He’s passed out for the night. I don’t like what you told me. Just being extra careful.”
He double-checked that the doors were jammed closed.
“And this is exactly why I have to leave,” I said. “It’s not right to do this to you.”
Cade shrugged. “You don’t get to decide that for me.”
He took off his rain-soaked T-shirt and climbed in next to me, pulling the blanket over his bare chest. Hunter happily plopped down in his favorite spot between us, and I breathed in the popcorn smell of his paws. As Cade and I both absently stroked Hunter’s fuzzy back, our hands crossed over each other’s. Outside, rain dragged diagonal. The hurricane lamp swung in the slightest of breezes, illuminating the gun and then dropping it back to the shadows.
“Why would you ever put yourself through this?” I asked.
Cade’s face was closer to mine than I was used to. I could see a thin scar between his lip and the edge of his nose, just a thread of a line, and another over his eye. Cade noticed me looking and took my hand. He traced my fingers along the scar, down his jaw to a bigger one that went all the way around the back of his neck. Then he pushed the blanket down and ran my hand to his rib cage to a scar new enough that it still had shiny patches of skin. I flattened my palm against his chest, feeling his heartbeat. It seemed to quicken under my touch, and my breath audibly caught as my own heartbeat sped up too.
“Because you get it,” Cade whispered, placing his hand over mine.
I took his other hand and placed it over his old T-shirt, along the raised edges of my long, thick knife scar. I couldn’t bring myself to let him touch the ragged ridges directly.
“I win,” I joked.
Cade let air out his nose in a little laugh. “Like I said, you get it. Life can suck.”
“Sure can.”
“Hasn’t felt that way though . . . as much . . . lately,” Cade said. “Since you got here.”
“Oh yeah? Because I think I’ve brought you nothing but problems.”
“There’s been some crazy stuff that went down . . . but for some reason I feel more normal than I have in a long time,” Cade said. “I like having you here.”
“I find that hard to believe.”
“Why? It’s nice having someone to talk to . . . make breakfast for . . . meet up with after football.”
“That’s pretty much ‘insert girl here.’ That’s just . . . company,” I said. “That’s nothing specific to me.”
“Fine,” Cade said. “I like your ponytail.”
“What?” I had to laugh.
“I like how it bops around when you dance. It looks silly. And I like how you start to smile before you say something sarcastic.”
I gave him a wary look.
“Um, what else specific? I like how you smell,” he said.
“Well, you bought me the soap.”
“Fine, how’s this? All the trouble is what kind of makes you amazing. You’re tough as all hell. I don’t know anyone like you.”
Cade placed my hand back beside me and let go. “And that’s about as mushy as I’m going to get, Jane Doe.”
“That’s pretty mushy.”
“You gonna leave me hanging?”
“If I didn’t feel the same way, I would already be gone. How’s that?” I said.
“It would be better if you said you would stay,” Cade answered.
“It’s not that I don’t want to.”
“You’ll need money. For a bus ticket. And to cover you till you get a job wherever you go.”
Cade was being realistic. Without that bag of money from Raff, it was dollar in, dollar out from the diner. I had nothing. And after all this time, I had to assume that bag was just . . . gone.
“A bus ticket to Portland, Maine, from here only costs about a hundred and sixty dollars,” I said. I’d searched that day one, on the school computers.
“Right. The puffins,” Cade snorted. His voice went flat. “I don’t even have enough for new cleats right now, Jane.”
“I’m not asking for your money,” I said. “I can probably make enough at the diner for the ticket and enough extra to live off of for a little while in about two or three weekends, if we don’t spend it on anything else.”
Cade shook his head. “I hate this.”
“Me too.”
He shrugged in defeat. “So . . . two more weeks then.”
“Two more weeks,” I echoed. “At least we’re committing to something, right?”
“Right.”
“I mean, go or stay . . . stay or go. Hide or run. This back-and-forth dance, it’s been killing me.”
Dancing, back when I was little girl, was simply to twirl as fast as I could, then abruptly stop, arms over my head for balance, barely able to catch my breath while the walls blurred around me.
First you spin.
Then the room does.
Even when you hold still, if you’ve been moving too fast, the world around you keeps going. Even when you want to see clearly, you can’t. At least not right away. You have to wait for everything to come back into focus. And as the dizziness fades, sometimes there’s that little pulse of nausea. The sick reality.
I kicked the blanket off of us and stood up on the mattress.
“Will you dance with me?” I asked.
“Here?”
“No, in chemistry class next Monday. Yes, here.”
“That crazy dance team stuff you do? Hell no.”
“Just . . . normal.”
Cade shook his head at me like I was nuts but stood up beside me. He took my hands and placed them on his shoulders and held his rigid at my waist.
“How ’bout like a middle school slow dance?” he asked, keeping a ridiculous amount of space between us. It had the intended effect. I started laughing.
“You’ve got skills,” I nodded and widened my eyes wide in mock sincerity.
“Girl, don’t judge.” He swayed awkwardly and pretended to step on my feet.
We cracked up laughing some more but didn’t let go. Instead Cade eased out of his stilted joke dance and pulled me against him. I relaxed my arms around his neck and rested against his chest.
The amazing thing about music is that it stays. Our brains can somehow recall and play back the melodies without any instruments or si
ngers there. I don’t know what music Cade was hearing, but we swayed to the same slow rhythm in the silence of the barn, and even though I wasn’t spinning in a little tornado like I used to, all the sharp edges and straight lines still smudged around us. The world is softer when you’re dancing.
Dancing is a lie.
We lay back down on the mattress, staring at the ceiling for a while. Cade settled against me, the weird platonic-not-platonic way we slept, shoulder to shoulder, on our backs, like that kept it from becoming something we had to talk about. But I was always aware of each point of our bodies that touched: shoulder, elbow, wrist, hip, ankle, outside edge of my left foot. My eyes got heavier.
Cade’s face flashed across my mind, the first time I ever saw it, going in and out of focus against the sky as I lay bleeding in the dirt. And then there was blood on his face and chest instead of mine, a big red X painted on his body like Raff. . . . The wolf was back, and it was laughing and . . .
“Hey, wake up! Wake up!”
Cade was shaking me awake. How long had we been asleep?
“You were dreaming. Crying.”
“Sorry.”
“You wanna talk about it?” Cade asked.
“It was a just bad dream.” I tried to brush it off.
Cade propped himself up on an elbow. “Not the first time.”
“What do you mean?”
“You talk a lot . . . in your sleep.”
“Really? What do I say?”
Cade looked uncomfortable. “You, um, you say Raff a lot. You call his name.”
I sighed. Of course the whisper of the only person who ever cared about me until now still lingered. The memory might always bleed.
“You kept saying, I won’t tell. And mumbling something about . . . a pharmacy?”
“Don’t worry about it,” I said, but Cade wouldn’t leave it alone.
“It’s always the same though. Blood. The pharmacy. Is that where . . . your boyfriend was killed?”
“No. It’s where he killed people.”
I knew that would shock him. Maybe I wanted it to.
“Oh” was all Cade said.
Oh. Oh yeah, that’s right, Cade, I used to be a murderer’s girlfriend. I’m not just some girl with a cute ponytail. Still like having someone to make breakfast for? He needed to remember who I was before I could believe any of what he said. Cade might think it was worth it to keep me around, but he was wrong. And just because he was allowing me to pull him into my mess didn’t make it okay.
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