My defenses were crumbling.

There was a knock at my door and I quickly shoved the pant leg down. Javier hadn’t seen the tattoo yet. I felt like if he saw it, he’d be intruding on a private memory, I’d feel like his very eyes would taint it.

“What?” I asked, brushing the hair off my face while checking to see whether my eyes had leaked tears or not. They hadn’t. I was good.

The handle was jiggled, followed by another knock. I sighed and got off the bed, unlocking the door. I took a step back and it opened. Raul stuck his head in. Not that I wanted to see Javier, but I especially didn’t want to see him.

“Are you alright?” he asked, all beaky nose and widow’s peak. “I thought I heard you crying.”

I glared at him. He couldn’t have looked less concerned, in fact it looked like he found the whole thing to be funny.

“I’m fine, do you mind giving me some privacy?”

His face grew still for a moment before he smiled. “Sure thing. You know, if you ever need to talk, to someone who understands, who is just outside of the equation, you know you can talk to me.”

As if that didn’t sound insincere enough, his eyes traveled down to my chest and back and he ran the tip of his tongue over his teeth.

Before I could tell him to get the fuck out he winked at me and then shut the door. I locked it again, hoping he could hear it, and went back to the bed. I put my fingers up my pant leg, tracing them over the scars, imagining Camden’s hands on top of mine. Then I lay on my side and hoped for sleep to come so I didn’t have to suffer a moment longer.

CHAPTER TEN

CAMDEN

We had gone as far as La Cruces, New Mexico when we met the first of Gus’s contacts. After following I-10 for the last few days, the blistering sun making the interior of the GTO swelter like a fat man’s armpits, with minimal stops for gas and sleep, La Cruces was a sight for sore eyes.

As was Gus’s contact. Lydia DuShane was a Louisiana native who gave up running her battered coffee shop after Hurricane Katrina to run a pie shop in La Cruces. Though she was an older lady, late fifties, she was one who’d aged better than any of the plastic-coated women in LA. Her skin was relatively smooth and freckled, hair a mixture of red and grey, and blue eyes that were nicely wrinkled from smiling too much. She made me feel immediately at home, which was a bit jarring considering what Gus had told me about her.

“When she’s not baking pies, she’s bounty hunting,” he’d said as we pulled into town.

“Uh,” I said, fidgeting in my seat, “isn’t that kind of a problem for me?”

Gus gave me a dry look. “Hey, kid, there’s no bounty on your head yet. Besides, you’re with me. You’re one of the good guys.”

I raised my brow. Right.

Soon after Lydia sat us down in her shop, the last remaining customers in her store dwindled out as it approached the 3PM closing time. We had two fresh pieces of apricot blueberry pie in front of us. That, combined with the steaming cups of coffee and the vintage posters of farm life on the walls, did work as a wonderful front. Who would ever believe that sweet, patient Lydia had a knack for nabbing America’s Most Wanted?

Yet, after she’d flipped the sign to Closed on the front door and locked it, sliding down into the booth with us, she took out a small netbook and slipped on a pair of glasses, ready to get down to the point.

“So you’re hunting Javier Bernal, is that right?” she asked. I could see her flicking from website to website in her glasses’ reflection.

“You know him?” I asked.

She snorted. “I know everyone. If I’m not keeping tabs, I’m not doing my job.”

I leaned forward eagerly. “Is he wanted for something?”

She shook her head. “Nah, not yet. The police have ideas but then again half the force is corrupt anyway in Mississippi. You think the New Orleans PD is bad, you ain’t seen nothing yet.” She took her eyes off the screen and tilted her head at me. “I like to know what the baddies are doing so when they do finally do something to get them in trouble, and believe it catches up to all of them, I know their next step. I was watching this one guy for years before he slipped up and was wanted for a DUI. Considering the guy’s unofficial rap sheet, I knew the reward would be a big one. I knew where his safe house was and I nabbed him the next day. Cops were already on the way.”

“How do you do it? I mean, you’re not frail but …”

She smiled slyly in a satisfied way. “I’m a woman. And that’s the secret. I’ve been around the block. You’d be surprised what a retiree can get away with. Ain’t that right, Gus?”

Gus scratched at his beard and I could have sworn his cheeks turned a shade of pink. That was something to ask him about later, even though I knew his answer would be a glare and a grunt.

He cleared his throat. “So where is Mr. Bernal now?”

“Ocean Springs, Mississippi,” she said, sitting back in her chair. “Are you boys going to eat your pie or what?”

“I’d love to but we really need to get a move on,” I said apologetically. I got up but Gus’s arm shot out and he planted me back down

“Relax, Camden, we’ll get there,” he said. “A town isn’t enough. We need a plan.”

I shook my head. We can plan in the car. If he’s in Ocean Springs and that’s where Ellie lived with him, then I have no doubt that he’s living in the same house he was six years ago.”

“Who is Ellie?” Lydia asked, eyes wide and shining.

I shot Gus a look to keep quiet but he ignored me. “Ellie Watt. She’s Bernal’s ex-girlfriend and is, we think, being more or less held hostage.”

“Ellie Watt,” she said, tapping her pink fingernails on the table. “Ellie Watt. She’s no innocent, is she? She wrapped up in the cartel?”

“No,” I said quickly and probably too defensively. I cleared my throat. “No, she was never involved in that.”

“But she’s not innocent. She’s a con artist,” Gus supplied

“Was a con artist,” I corrected him.

He gave his head a shake. “A tiger doesn’t change their stripes, Camden boy.”

“Ellie’s better than a tiger,” I shot back.

“Either way,” Lydia voiced slowly, “Ellie Watt has been wanted for something before. She was on my radar, briefly.”

Gus and I both looked at her. “For what?” I asked.

She pursed her lips, flamingo pink like her nails, a color I’d used many times in my work, and began scrolling through her files again. After a few tense moments, she shrugged, giving up.

“I’m not sure. This was like three years ago. It wasn’t anything major, maybe just twenty grand, or I would have gone after her.”

“But her name was Ellie Watt …” I reinstated. “Not Eden White or Ellen Williams or anything like that?”

“Nope. Ellie Watt. I remember because my sister’s name is Ellie.”

Now that was troubling. Ellie hadn’t been Ellie since high school. Whoever had placed a bounty for her was someone from a very long time ago. I glanced over at Gus and his furrowed brow told me he was thinking the exact same thing.

“Well, if you do think of anything else, please let me know, I’ve got my cell,” Gus said. “About Ellie that is. Everything about Bernal, we’d like to know now.”

She nodded. “I can tell you he’s got several bodyguards around him at all times.”

“Raul,” I said.

“And that he’s very careful, almost to a point. He never slips up, at least not enough for me to act on. The man has patience and is ruthless and that’s a mighty terrible combination.”

“Tell us something we don’t know,” I said under my breath.

It was loud enough for her to shoot me a sharp look. “Tell me what your plan is when you find her?”

I looked at Gus but he was staring at the wall now, eyes drifting over a pastoral landscape, too green field, bright red barn.

“I’m not sure,” I said slowly when Gus didn’t respond. “We haven’t really worked out the kinks yet.”

She smiled before growing serious. “Well let me tell you this, there are some things in life that you can do by the seat of your pants and there are others you need to plan. What I said about Bernal being careful, it’s no lie. He’ll smell you a mile away if you’re on his territory. If he has his ex-girlfriend, and they’re in the place they used to share together, I would bet he wouldn’t give her up easily. You’re obviously after her for a reason. He was too.”

I swallowed hard and tried to bury the seeds of doubt that were popping up in my head, the fact that I was green, new to this, didn’t know what the fuck I was doing. I was a tattoo artist for crying out loud, not a vigilante. Hell, I wasn’t even a bounty hunter like this middle-aged lady was. I had absolutely no skills to my credit except that I knew how to fire a gun and could kick the shit out of any unarmed man. And I doubted I’d be able to throw a couch and get away with it a second time.

“Well, thank you for your time Lydia,” Gus suddenly said, getting to his feet. “I’m sorry we couldn’t stay for pie, but the kid is right. We need to get going so we could start planning.”

I quickly took my piece of pie and wrapped it in a mound of napkins from the dispenser. “For energy,” I said, trying to give her an easy smile. I think I failed. Her own smile faltered in return.

As we were leaving the shop, I saw Lydia pull Gus aside and whisper to him, “Are you sure you don’t want me to come. For company? Just for old times?”

He grunted. “I’ll be alright, Lyd.”

“I worry about you. You’ve been through so much, and this man, Bernal …”

“I’ll be seeing you.” He patted her on the shoulder and I quickly turned and headed to the car so they wouldn’t know I’d been eavesdropping.

She waved goodbye for us, standing on the stoop of her shop, as we got into the car and roared off down the sunny, dusted, desert streets, sand it seemed I could never escape.

I shot Gus a look. “I guess we need a plan.”

“We need a plan and a prayer,” he said. He eyed me over his glasses. “But you knew that already, didn’t you?”

I did. Yet knowing it didn’t make it easier.

I started nibbling on the pie – absolutely messy but delicious – and got to thinking. We would descend upon Ocean Springs soon.

Tomorrow I might be able to hold Ellie in my arms again.

Tomorrow I might also lose everything.

Ocean Springs definitely wasn’t what I pictured when I thought of Mississippi. Granted, we had driven through Biloxi and Gulfport, still a mix of new casinos and post-Katrina destruction. But Ocean Springs was fresh and charming. A little too quaint for someone like Javier, though what did I know?

We pulled into the small town in the late afternoon, the humidity swept away by the incoming breeze of evening. We didn’t even spend a night in a hotel, instead Gus had me take over during the idle of the night, somewhere in Texas. He figured it was safe enough to not draw any suspicion, our car anonymous amongst the others on the dark stretch of highway.