The T-shirt sleeves are long enough to cover up my track marks. Thank heavens for small mercies.
I watch the three guys and wonder how they even found each other. I tell myself I must ask them one day soon, to tell me the story of how they even met. How did Elliot and Jase get beyond their abject hatred for one another, their desire to actually kill the other, to end up working together? I mean, they’re actually talking to each other and shit. It’s insane. And Luis fits in like they’ve all known each other a lifetime, in the way they communicate, the way they operate as a team.
I suddenly feel very out of place as the lone damsel in distress. It doesn’t alarm me, it just occurs to me that I’m in their space now. Funny that. And yet without me, without the things I’ve done in the name of revenge, they might have never met each other at all.
The boys finish loading their bags and things into the back of a tan-colored jeep, and gesture for me to get off the boat. Luis hands the owner a thick wad of cash, something that startles me out of my daydream.
Money. My money, the money my father and Mariana spirited away for me all those years ago, just in case the worst happened. Which of course, it did. Stolen cash, hidden carefully away, in a collection of bogus business accounts across several tax havens. It occurs to me I might actually need it soon. I mean, we’re in the middle of fucking nowhere, and I’m assuming we’re hiding out for a good long while. That requires money, and I need my stash of documents in the L.A. safety-deposit box before I can access any of that money. I’ll need to see a doctor sometime soon, we need somewhere to stay…I can already see the dollars piling up in my frazzled mind.
Right now, I am the poorest rich girl around.
Jase sticks a hand out to me and I grab on, letting him haul me off the boat and onto the thin jetty. It looks ancient, rickety enough to wash away in the next tide. Luis is already in the front passenger seat of the jeep parked at the end of the jetty, a caramel-colored dude who looks to be in his mid-thirties in the driver’s seat. I approach cautiously, my trust in humanity as a whole seriously eroded, wondering if this guy is legit. I study his face from behind my thick sunglasses—oversized drugstore cheapies to shield my basement-eyes from the glare, thanks Luis—and notice the two share the same nose and jawline.
“Where are we?” I ask Luis as I slide into the back seat. Jase slides in behind me, Elliot on the opposite side. Great. Because sitting between the two men I love isn’t going to be awkward at all.
Sandwiched in the middle, I look to Luis, who’s busy texting somebody. He drops his phone into his cup holder once he’s finished and turns around. “We’re in my country, bebé,” he says, winking at me. “Welcome to Colombia.”
As the driver throws the car into gear and burns rubber, I take a deep, steadying breath as a dense jungle whizzes past us.
As I think, we are a long, long way from Venice Beach.
Crammed between Jason Ross and Elliot McRae. In other circumstances, what a delicious sandwich that would be, but with our reality, it’s just fucking weird. Elliot tried to kill Jase. And Jase loathes Elliot. Yet here we are, the three Musketeers and me, with Luis’s older version driving us god only knows where. After about an hour, we make it out of the remote jungle and onto a sealed road.
We don’t stay on the road for long, five minutes if we’re lucky, and then we’re pulling into another dirt stretch that leads up a hill and to a small stucco house. It looks like a dirty brown box, sitting there in the midst of tall trees and dense vegetation, but to me it is positively luxurious. If it’s got running water, that’s a plus.
Inside is just as drab, chipped laminate furniture and beds that sag in the middle. I couldn’t care less if I tried. I am out of the dungeon, finally.
As we get into the house, Luis directs me to a bedroom at the far end of the hall. I fix the most pleading look I can muster onto my face, and he grins, shaking his head.
“Five minutes, bebé.”
Before I can protest, he disappears, back in the direction of the car, and the boys.
I enter the bedroom, my nose immediately twitching at the dust. This house looks like it was once lived in, but it hasn’t been inhabited for some time. Thick dust coats the windowsills, a small dresser shoved up against one wall. Even the floral bedspread that covers the double bed looks like it used to be a brighter color, until the dust grayed it out. I feel like that right now. Dull. Grayed out.
It’s hot here, a humid kind of air that sticks to my skin. We mustn’t be that far from the ocean, because I still smell salt in the air that hangs around me, heavy and oppressive.