“I see. A friend.”

“Yup. Isn’t that the plight of every geeky teenager out there? Always doomed to be the friend? So anyway, I was in love with her and every day I’d try to work up the nerve and the guts to tell her how I felt and to kiss her. One day, I just did it.”

“How was that?”

I chewed on my lip, trying to figure out how best to explain it. “It took something away from me.” After I first felt Ellie’s lips on mine, the warmth, sweetness, I was never the same. She took a piece of me that I was unable to get back until I was inside her, feeling her heart and her sins in my hands.

I was so afraid I’d never get to experience that again. All those years of longing, of looking for that part of me and she was the only one who could supply it. She really was the only one I truly, drowning in my passion, loved.

Even at her very worst, she made me want to be better man. To be good enough for the both of us.

“She must have cared about you a lot to walk away with that man.”

“He is no man,” I spat out. “He’s a monster.”

I could tell Gus wanted to say something about that but he didn’t. He just gave a grunt.

I took the subject around the corner. “Do you think Ellie knows he wants her to kill her parents? I can’t figure it out. Why?”

“I don’t think there’s much reason to any of this.”

“I think you’re wrong,” I argued, jabbing my finger on the dusty dashboard. “You know how calculated he is. He’s had six years to come after her. There’s a reason behind everything now.”

“Knowing there’s a reason isn’t helping us get an answer.”

I studied Gus, his jowly face helped only by his beard, small eyes, grey bushy brows. He looked like your friendly neighbor on a TV show, a real Mr. Friendly. But this was a man who had shot and killed two people and didn’t seem to care much about it. I wondered if I’d ever surround myself with normal people again or if this was the life I’d have to lead forever. I wondered if this is what it felt like to be Ellie, to never know who to trust or where you’ll next lay your head.

I chewed on my lip again, feeling some of that pain come back, when I first caught her robbing me. If only she’d really decided to go straight and get a job in Palm Valley and settle down. I would have somehow got out of the money laundering business … I at least would have tried. I never would have had to catch her. We’d never have to run or worry about getting caught. We could have settled down in my tiny house above the shop and lived a good life.

But I guess Javier would have shown up anyway. Wanting her in exchange for fifty thousand dollars. What on earth was worth fifty thousand dollars? Was it just to kill her parents? To kill Travis? Was Javier seriously going around and killing everyone who had ever hurt her, even without her say?

Or was it more?

A flash of him and her flooded my head, bare legs tangled together, my art on her limb, his hands tracing her scars, the flowers, everything. My throat closed up. It couldn’t be that. It couldn’t be that. Because if it was, it meant one of two things: he would either rape her or take full advantage of her and if that was the case, I’d take that tattoo machine and draw him a new asshole before I rammed it straight into the motherfucker’s skull. And if it wasn’t that, Ellie must have wanted him.

“Are you alright, boy?” Gus asked, taking his foot off the gas. “Your lip is bleeding.”

I looked down at my hand where a drop had fallen, ruby red and glossy. Like the finest ink. I wiped my hand across my mouth, smearing it. Art.

“Camden!” Gus barked.

I jumped in my seat and looked at him. “What?”

He frowned. “You looked all sorts of wrong there.”

I nodded and leaned my head back. “Just thinking of things I shouldn’t. So once we get across the border, then what. ‘They went to Mexico’ is kind of a vague route to take.”

“It is. We’ll ask around.”

“Is asking around about one of the largest and deadliest drug cartels in Mexico, while being two gringos in Mexico, really the wisest decision?”

“I have my sources,” he said. “If they haven’t turned.”

“If they haven’t turned?” I repeated.

He shot me a quick grin. “Everyone has their price these days.”

I was getting to know that a little too well.

Despite me fumbling with my passport like a god damn fool, the border crossing was easy. Gus was right, they didn’t really care who was going in. We kept driving until nightfall, when we reached a small settlement just before Monterrey. That’s when we were pulled over by a state police officer wearing a ski mask while holding an automatic assault rifle.

“Buenos noches. Where are you going?” he asked us, switching to English once he noticed how white we were.

“To see a friend of ours,” Gus answered amicably.

The officer peered into the back of the GTO. We might have been able to go through the border with no inspection but I didn’t know if it would be the same case here. I tried not to tense up but fuck, what kind of a cop wears a ski mask?

Then he rapped on the roof of the car and told us to drive on.

Gus gave him a small wave and we roared off. We were a ways down the highway before he let out a large puff of air.

“What?” I asked him, not used to seeing him anxious. It made me worry.

“The police here are all controlled by the Los Zetas.”

I watched the buildings grow larger and more affluent as we headed toward the city. “I’m not surprised. But we’re good. We don’t belong to any cartel.”

“That who casts doubt on himself is often as good as dead,” he said.

I looked at him askew. “Did you just make that up?”

A beat passed. “Yes. No good?”

I grinned and shook my head, letting out some of my frayed nerves. “No Gus, it’s no good.”

We drove around the city of Monterrey, a huge, sprawling mess that grew darker and quieter as we went on. Gus told me the entire city had a sort of unofficial curfew, which made our car with its fake Cali plates stand out. Even though the city was still one of the largest cosmopolises in all of Mexico, it was very much under a different sort of law and whether we were looking for the Los Zetas or not didn’t matter when we were two white dudes in a cool car. Prime kidnapping material.

Soon, we were pulling up to a small house in a nearby town that seemed to consist of a gas station and a post office. It didn’t look like much of anything but it seemed to be an unofficial hotel and the plump woman who answered the door with two children at her heels, up way past their bedtime, was more than happy to let us stay.

She led us through to the back of the house where we had our own room and a tiny bathroom. American magazines sat on a bedside table.

“I stayed here once, a long time ago,” he said as he stretched out on one of the tiny twin beds. “She was thin back then, if you can believe it.”

“Two jokes in one day,” I said. “A record.”

He smiled, then covered it up by turning off the light. There was a chance he was finally warming up to me.

I didn’t bother getting under the sheets, the oppressive heat filled up our tiny room in minutes and the rickety fan overhead did nothing disperse it. I closed my eyes and thought of Ellie.

There was a moment back in high school that Ellie never knew about. I never wanted to tell her, what would be the point? We were both sixteen and hadn’t talked properly for years. It was after I’d done the photography project on her and frankly I knew she hated my guts. She considered me a freak, thinking I was creepy and obsessive and a bit of a stalker. Sadly, I was all of those things. That was just me and it couldn’t be helped.

There had been a school dance, the “Spring Fling” or something lame like that. Ellie didn’t go. I never expected her to. But I did. Just to be a pain in the ass, really. I wanted to show up and have people whisper to each other, “oh The Queen is here.” The attention, no matter how fucked up, was better than staying at home listening to my dad scream at my stepmother. He always would scream at me after.

I went, dressed in a tux, like a normal person, except my tux was pastel blue. Yeah, I was trying to do an homage to Dumb and Dumber and it was lost on most of the school. So, of course I was already shoved by a few dickheads by the time I’d arrived.

But there was this one dick, Curran Simpson, a real fucking jackass with big fists and a bigger mouth, who came barrelling up to me and spilled all of his punch down the front of my tux.

The anger was already threatening to come out. I did what I could to keep it inside, to do what I had always done, which was to take it, take it, take it.

Then he says to me, his voice low, as if he didn’t want to be heard, “Where’s your retarded girlfriend? The one you’re stalking all the time. Have you ever stolen her fake leg yet? Do you jack off to it?”

None of what he was saying really made any sense. He was a fucking idiot through and through. But it didn’t matter. This was the first time I’d lost it, when I let the blackness out and I was high above my body, pummeling the shit out of the guy. I don’t know how I did it. Suddenly he was knocked to the ground and I was on top of him, punching him like a man possessed. I got maybe three good hits before one of his friends pulled me off and held me there while he retaliated. And of course he retaliated worse.

I had a broken nose from it and Curran was suspended for a week. Even though I threw the first punch, even though I actually knocked the big fucker down, no one ever mentioned it. The teachers were so used to me getting beat up, that they were more than happy to put him out of school for a while. I wasn’t his only victim. As for me, it got twisted into an urban legend, that Camden finally went crazy and we better make sure he doesn’t bring homemade bombs to school. The kids definitely stayed away from me if they hadn’t already.

That was probably my first shining moment, that feeling of actually winning for once. The adrenaline coupled with the fear of myself and what I could do, what I might do, was addicting. But I never acted out like that again. I wouldn’t do it for just anyone.

Only for her. Only for Ellie.

I must have fallen asleep soon after those thoughts because before I knew it, the morning sun was streaming in through the window and I thought I was going to choke on the humidity. I sat up, feeling disgusting. The bed was soaked from my sweat and when I put my glasses on, they fogged up in seconds.

I got up and pulled off my sticky shirt just as Gus came out from the bathroom, completely dressed and looking ready to go.

“Jesus,” he said as he eyed my chest and abs.

I looked down. Sometimes I’d forget about my tattoos. Or rather I’d forget that not everyone had them. “Not a fan of tattoos, Gus?”

“Not after seeing you wield a needle,” he said and motioned for me to turn around. I did so, not feeling shy in the slightest. If there was anything I loved to talk about it, it was my tattoos. And, well, I’d been working out pretty much every day for the last seven years. My body was hard and ripped as shit and it felt good to make Gus take notice, to let him know that I wasn’t some pushover, that I could do more than hold my own in a fight.