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He woke with a start—a crawling sensation under his skin alerting him that something was off; the order of things was somehow out of alignment. It was a feeling so subtle that he wouldn’t have been able to describe it, but after years of experience, even the subtlest premonition was enough to wake him, and even if it was from the soundest slumber in recent memory.
Teresa was no longer next to him in her bed, though he’d known that before opening his eyes, before even fully waking. Actually, he realized he’d known it even while he was sleeping, though her absence from the bed itself wasn’t what had disturbed him. He had no problem being physically separate from Teresa. He was used to it. And he felt no need now to try to contain or cling to her. For as long as he’d known her, she had been like a bird trying to fly out of its cage. Ever since she’d busted that cage door open—as soon as she’d torn away from Camila’s grasp—she had never remained long on one perch.
So the feeling he had now wasn’t because she’d slipped out of bed while he was sleeping. It was a deeper sense of absence than that. It was a sense of uneasy stillness, even though he could hear Pote banging around downstairs, even though traces of Teresa—her half-drunk glass of water on the bedstand, her clothes from last night discarded on the floor beside the bed—made it evident she hadn’t totally vanished. Not intentionally, anyway. But still. Something wasn’t right.
He checked the time on his watch on the table next to him. 9:42. Jeez. He’d always been a night owl, never the early riser, but this was late even for him. He got out of bed, quickly stepped into last night’s jeans, and poked his head into the hall to be sure he could get back to his own room undetected. There, he hurried to change and splash some water on his face. It wasn’t so much that he didn’t want Pote or anyone else to know about him and Teresa, but it didn’t feel like his news to share, and besides, he didn’t want to deal with pointed looks or comments right now. There wasn’t time. James was always singular in his purpose, always focused and serious, and his instincts for danger were impeccable. Nothing would distract him this morning. Something was wrong.
As soon as Pote—stirring something on the stove under Kelly Anne’s attentive watch—saw James enter the kitchen, his expression turned from some sort of attempt to look suave to gruff.
“Where’s Teresa?” the older man blustered, “I thought you’d gone with her.”
“No, I have no idea where she is, I just got up. Why? Where’d she go?” James asked, voice taut from trying to subdue the slowly rising panic.
“I don’t know cabrón, that’s why I asked you! Her car was already gone when I came down about half an hour ago.”
“Fuck,” James muttered, running his hand down his face. “Did you call her?”
“Of course I called her, what do you think I’m stupid? When she didn’t pick up, I assumed she must be with you.”
Kelly Anne looked worriedly back and forth between Pote and James. “Maybe she just wanted to head over to the winery early?” she offered tentatively.
“She knows not to go alone,” Pote glowered, “especially after what happened yesterday.”
“And if she’d gone to the winery, she would’ve called back by now. Something’s not right,” James muttered. He jammed his feet into his boots and hurriedly laced them up, running his mind through all the possibilities. If she hadn’t let anyone know where she was going, she must have meant to be back soon. It was the only thing that made sense. “I’m going to go out and see if I can track her down.”
He called up the security app on his phone as he grabbed his keys and sprinted out to his car. It felt like the morning’s camera feed was taking forever to load. He’d started the car and was idling at the foot of the driveway, beginning to wonder whether he could tell which direction she’d gone just by looking for tire tracks on the road, when the video finally loaded. He dragged his finger along the bottom of the feed, watching the morning pass in reverse in high-speed motion. Nine thirty… nine… nothing except squirrels and birds crossed the camera frame. Finally spotted her car pulling out of the driveway and turning right: 8:51. He instantly put his car in gear and drove.
Glancing at his watch, he fully realized the futility of the situation. It had been over an hour already. She could be anywhere by now. Knowing which way she’d turned out of the driveway was barely helpful. But as he sped down county route 17 towards Phoenix, he knew in his gut where he needed to go to find out.
***
At least an hour, maybe two… Teresa couldn’t really be sure how much time had passed in the back of the van. Long enough that she no longer had any doubts about where she was headed. She couldn’t see outside but her kidnappers clearly weren’t concerned about trying to obscure the direction they were going. She’d been about to turn onto 85 heading north when they’d intercepted her, and she’d recognized when they’d turned south instead. This could mean only one thing: they were headed for the Mexican border. And they hadn’t stopped or turned off since. They must be getting close.
A sicario with a birthmark under his eye sat across from her in the back of the van, staring her down. She refused to give him the satisfaction of any kind of reaction, any sign that she was scared or anxious about her fate. Instead, she steadfastly ignored him, ignored the uncomfortable ache in her shoulders and burn at her wrists from the metal handcuffs pinning her arms behind her back, and focused her mind to the night before, as if merely thinking of James could summon him to her, could reveal to him where she was. If she focused hard enough on the memory of his cheek’s soft prickliness under her lips’ first touch, it could overshadow the bruise of the hard metal against her skin; if she recalled her flood of warmth when he had pulled her onto his lap, she could forget how stiff she was now from having been restrained in the same position for so long.
She closed her eyes to shut out the sicario. She rewound time about a dozen hours, lingering in that tower study of James’s where in his remorse she’d finally seen a way through whatever it was that had been holding her back for so long. Now, she struggled to even remember what had felt so impossible to gulf; now that he’d seen all her scars, now that he’d tasted her mouth and run his hands across every inch of her skin, it seemed so obvious that she was utterly and completely safe with him. What had previously felt like a reverence she’d shied away from—she was far from perfect, after all—had melted away last night and become something else. Something so full of respect and care that a lump in her throat almost formed reflecting on it now, but it was also so human. So equal. If he’d been trying to hide some part of himself from her before, she had felt that fear vanish as soon as she’d kissed him. He hadn’t held anything back from her after that. At least (and her heart skipped a few beats now as she remembered him lifting her with sure hands, placing her on her bed, pulling off her shirt and her jeans with a sense of authority not dissimilar to how he handled his guns) he certainly hadn’t seemed to hold anything back.
The lump was no longer just threatening to form, it had taken up full residence in the soft spot in the middle of her clavicle. Her mind drifted now to waking up with James’s sleeping mass next to her, how warm and happy she’d felt, and how, in her urge to do something so sweet for him that he would be blown away, she’d in fact done the opposite. She’d abandoned him without explanation. She wished fervently that she’d stayed in bed and blown him away (she almost blushed) a bit more literally. She should’ve at least left him a note. She realized he might completely misunderstand her absence, and that thought stabbed more painfully than any physical discomfort she was in. She took a deep breath and swallowed, hoping against all hope that he would know.
And then, to her utter panic, the van slowed down to a stop.
***
It hadn’t been hard to track her down. Pecas had immediately—and altogether too smugly—copped to having taken her, and his air of indifference as he’d said, shrugging, “she’s probably halfway to Mexico by now,” had told James everything he’d needed to know. He’d called Charger as he sprinted back out to the car and peeled out of the parking lot.
It didn’t even ring before Charger breathlessly answered the phone. “Boss?”
“Charger. Any sign of her having been at the winery this morning?” he breathed out.
“Nope, the footage is clear. She never showed up.”
“Ok. That’s what I thought. She’s been kidnapped by Pecas.”
“Fuck man—”
“He’s delivering her to Mexico. She’s gotta be somewhere along 85 South. Probably close to the border by now. But I need to know what vehicle.” He clenched his jaw and licked his lips slightly, his mental gears whirring. “They must have been tracking her car somehow. She was heading in the direction of Phoenix this morning when she left. I need you to find her car. ASAP. And then call Lamar at the state police to look for footage. I need a picture of the vehicle and a license plate number.”
“I’m on it.”
James hung up and flung the phone on the passenger seat. He was restless, agitated. Until now, his brain had been buzzing with logistics and plans, plotting out what could’ve happened to her and what to do about it. Now, the only plan he’d had time to hatch was in motion and there was nothing else he could do but drive as fast as he could towards the border and will everything else to work. With nothing else for his mind to do now, he caught it starting to drift back to the previous night, to the deep ache her first soft kiss on his cheek had stirred up. The heat of her slightest touch had turned to molten his hardened insides. He'd been trying for so long to keep his feelings for her boundaried—he couldn’t stomach the idea of her feeling burdened by them—that as soon as she’d so much as tapped against the bulwarks he’d painstakingly built around those feelings, both barricading and protecting them, the walls crumbled.
The memory of it flooded him all over again now as he sped towards the highway. Her gentle certainty had strengthened him, had shone a light on his shame and taken away its power. In letting go of it, then, he had found he could suddenly know her, could feel her fast-beating heart. He understood how much she needed to let her own walls down, too. And when they’d made it to her bedroom and he’d laid her on her bed, she’d looked up at him with lidded eyes so dark and whole that any doubt he’d ever fed himself about whether she could possibly love him too had vanished. He nearly swerved off the road as his body recalled the feeling of seeing her, clothing discarded, supine and waiting for him; how her olive-skinned scar-speckled body had a gravitational force unto itself that was futile to resist. Any reserve he may have initially felt had dissipated when he’d leaned down to kiss her; she’d risen to meet him, arching into his touch, and he’d felt like he was soaring, the world around them receding outside their blaze.
Remembering all this, he couldn’t bring himself to believe she had ghosted him this morning. It made no sense. What she could have possibly left the house for, he had no idea; she was, in all things, an enigma. He ran his hand down his face, rubbing his chin with his thumb. The nagging thoughts pestered him like a mosquito in his ear. What if she’d left to get some space? Clear her mind? What if she regretted what might have been a passing impulse the night before? No, she wouldn’t leave like that, alone, without telling anyone. Would she? She would have at least said something to Pote in that case. Right? But then, why had she left? He couldn’t understand. She had seemed so steady, so sure last night. So connected to him. He couldn’t imagine she hadn’t also felt it. But maybe it had scared her, maybe she’d woken up realizing it was a bad idea…
No. He had to banish the thoughts that threatened to unnerve him, distract him from his intuition. If he was wrong, if she was fine, he would at least know he had done his job to protect her. But to take her absence personally would serve no one.
He glanced at his watch again: 10:18. Teresa had left the house at 8:51. Worst case scenario, if they’d caught up to her by 9, she could be about a half hour from the border by now. There was no way he could catch up with her with that head start. He fervently hoped it wasn’t the worst-case scenario. Regardless, he had to step on it. Out of habit, he glanced in the rearview mirror, skimmed his eyes back and forth between the two side mirrors, and leaned his full weight on the gas pedal. Usually, he drove one of their bulletproof SUVs, but he’d known this morning he would need to be fast. His Ford Mustang had an advertised top speed of 175 mph; now he’d finally get to test it.
***
They must be nearing the border—that was the only explanation she could think of for why they would have stopped. But the sicario across from her looked slightly confused. A wall between the back, where they sat, and the driver’s compartment prevented either of them from seeing out and knowing where they were, but he clearly hadn’t expected them to stop yet. He double-checked that she was snugly chained to the seat and then slipped out of the back of the van.
She strained to hear the words that were being exchanged outside but it was the brief clanging on the outside of the van followed by a whooshing sound and the smell of gasoline that finally clued her in. Despite her problematic circumstances, she couldn’t help but shake her head. Leave it to some idiot sicarios to fail to pull off a kidnapping with enough gas to get to the destination. Evidently, she wasn’t the only one who thought they were idiots—one of the sicarios, she wasn’t sure which, was reaming out the others and she swore she could make out the name “Pecas” being bandied about among them. It struck her that, if she could figure out a way to free herself from the handcuffs, she could potentially make a run for it while they were distracted. But she had to dismiss that idea about as quickly as it’d come to her. For one thing, she realistically had no way to get out of the handcuffs. For another, even if she did, where would she run to? They’d see her and immediately catch her again. Or, worse, kill her. She was fast, but she couldn’t outrun three sicarios with guns and a van.
She closed her eyes and gritted her teeth. She was fast losing hope. She should have learned by now: if you think the other shoe is going to drop any second, you’re right. If you let down your guard for a second, you’re screwed. There was no point now to daydreaming. It would only distract her from mustering every ounce of survival instinct she had. She could blame no one for her predicament right now but herself. And only she could get herself out of it.
***
Against all odds, his plan was working. He’d kept a steady 150 on 85 south, probably double, or more, the speed Teresa’s captors were going. Charger had found Teresa’s car pulled over with multiple flats just before the turn-off to 85 on county route 17, and his call to their connect at the state police had gotten them exactly the grainy footage they’d needed from the closest traffic camera. A white van (so predictable, James had scoffed) with Arizona plates. Further cameras along 85 had showed the van moving south, just as he’d suspected, but was nonetheless relieved to have confirmed. He wove ably through the scattered other vehicles on the highway, eyes constantly flicking left and right, alert to every possible obstacle and sizing up every vehicle. Every cell in his body strained towards the border.
In fact, he’d been so focused on catching up with a moving vehicle, he nearly missed the white van pulled over at a gas station about 15 miles shy of the border. He rapidly slammed on the brakes and pulled over, scanning his brain for an alternative plan. He’d assumed he would have to corner the van, edge it off the road, and then shoot the driver and whoever else came leaping out. He would be on the offensive. But he couldn’t just approach a gas station and start shooting. Not only was that putting him on the defensive, but a gas station itself was way too dangerous. One misfire… he shuddered.
He wished he had his sniper rifle. He could see the van from where he’d pulled over, a little way past the gas station, and now could just barely make out three figures standing in a row a little ways off from it. In fact, what were they doing? He squinted. They weren’t pumping gas. The way they were standing all in a row, facing away from the station… they were pissing. He couldn’t believe it. He almost choked down a laugh except that he knew Teresa was captive in the back of that van and absolutely nothing about that was funny. Hatred seethed in his gut.
He quickly pondered the possibility of sneaking up on the ‘three pissketeers’ on foot, taking them out from behind, one by one. But calculating the distance between them now and the average time it took to piss, he knew he’d be cutting it too close. No. He’d stick with his original plan. He would just need to wait for the van to pull back onto the highway, then pull off a safe distance behind it and do his thing.
***
The first swerve startled her out of survival autopilot. She looked up at the sicario across from her and then quickly away when she realized he was equally startled. The next swerve and lean on the van’s horn had her sitting up as straight and stiff as she could, heart racing as she strained to understand what was happening. The van at first sped up, but a light crash—it seemed unnervingly like another vehicle—against its side forced it to swerve and slow again. What the hell. She heard the driver shout, and the van sped up again, trying to outrun the other vehicle but clearly failing. She felt its tinny, sparking nudge rattle the van again, nearly (but not quite) tipping the van over as it careened to a messy sliding halt over the shoulder of the highway. Her heart pounded violently. The sicario across from her was shouting now too, and she heard a single gunshot and a thud followed by an eruption of gunfire as the sicario pushed open one of the doors before slamming it quickly shut again.
Without even realizing it, she’d begun yanking at her handcuffs, straining with all her might to get away. The sicario realized it too, so that even while his eyes betrayed fear, it was hatred and contempt that she saw in him as he pointed the gun to her head. Her body stilled.
“¿Qué carajo has hecho, puta?”
She closed her eyes.
And then: a chaotic burst of fire. An explosion of agonizing pain in her chest. Sudden choking on air. She was gasping, drowning; darkness pulled urgently at the edges her consciousness.
Through it all, a voice. A soft, demanding voice, a voice that tugged at her, beckoning her to find the strength to resist the lull of darkness. It was so gentle, so warm, so safe.
Teresa, it’s me, it’s James, I’ve got you. You’re safe. Teresa, stay with me, stay with me, I’ve got you.
She blinked up. She saw him, she felt him cradling her neck, cupping her face in his hand. James. But she couldn’t stay. The darkness—she was already in too deep. She couldn’t hold on, she tried to, she had to tell him… James—
***
“No no no—Teresa—no no no, stay with me, fuck fuck fuck, here—” he pulled off his jacket, throwing it on the ground beside them, and stripped off his shirt, stuffing it in the blossoming wound under her right shoulder. He couldn’t lose her, not like this, not on his watch, not when he’d come so close to saving her. James was no stranger to the sight of blood but seeing it gush out of her shoulder he felt queasy and light-headed. Her breathing was labored, and he suddenly felt choked himself as he watched her slip into unconsciousness, the stilling of her own body in stark contrast to the rising panic in his own.
“No no no no—” he couldn’t stop the hollow syllable from spilling rapid-fire from his lips as he pressed Teresa’s wound, grasped her neck. The pounding of his heart in his ears threatened to overpower any rational thoughts and he had to force himself to take a breath, pause, recall the emergency response triage he could normally repeat in his sleep, it had become so second-nature. His hands shook as he quickly turned her over, and he exhaled a heavy sigh of relief as he saw the exit wound on the other side. It would hurt like a bitch, he knew, and it had no doubt punctured a lung, but he’d shot the fucker just in the knick of time to prevent the bullet from lodging in her brain. At least now she had a fighting chance. As long as he could stop the bleeding. And as long as he could get her to a surgeon, quick.
He momentarily cursed himself for coming alone—Pote might’ve been useful about now in hurrying Teresa into the back of the car—but he immediately dismissed that thought. He hated to say it, but the older man would’ve pretty literally been dead weight. Not to mention Pote’s brashness could be a serious liability. Still, it meant now he had to leave her in the back seat, alone, while he drove as fast as he could to get help.
He snaked his belt off and wrapped it around her shoulder to keep pressure on the shirt over her wound, and then gently scooped her up off the ground. She felt lighter than he’d expected, lighter somehow than he recalled from the night before, and flashing back to that now made him nearly moan in distress. She has to be okay. She’s going to be okay, he kept repeating to himself, over and over, as he carried her to his car and laid her carefully on the back seat. He cursed again as he buckled the middle belt around her middle, tugging it just firmly enough around her to keep her from rolling off the seat. Before climbing into the driver’s seat, he checked her wound to make sure the bleeding had slowed (it had), and her pulse to make sure it was still steady. The relief he felt at the faint but steady beat under his fingers momentarily dizzied him, and he fluttered his eyes closed for a brief moment to slow his breath.
“I’ve got you, Teresa, just hold on,” he murmured, and smoothed her hair out of her face with his hand before planting a light kiss on her forehead. Then he climbed into the front seat and stepped on the gas.
***
Beep. Beep. Beep. Beep.
A constant piercing tone like a dripping faucet stirred her out of a deep, still quiet and into a hazy, aching restlessness. Where was she?
Beep. Beep. Beep.
This wasn’t her bed. It was all wrong. It was too bright. Too shrill. She couldn’t bring herself to open her eyes, she could barely tolerate the fluorescence through her eyelids.
Beep. Beep.
Nothing was right, nothing was normal, she couldn’t feel her arm, she couldn’t breathe. She couldn’t remember anything. Why couldn’t she remember anything? She couldn’t breathe. She squirmed, tried to cry out, but her voice wouldn’t work, she couldn’t breathe. Her heart started to pound, faster and faster.
Beepbeepbeepbeepbeepbeep
“Teresa! Doctor, I think she’s awake. Teresa? Can you hear me?”
His voice. She knew his voice. And then she realized he was squeezing her hand, her left hand, which she was now clenching in a fierce fist. The doctor was attending her now, someone was taking vitals, blood pressure, temperature, asking her questions, but she couldn’t understand them, she could only understand the pressure of his hand and the sound of his voice as it repeated her name, Teresa, with a soft -r and a hard -s the way somehow only he said it. Finally, she relaxed her fist and opened it, palm up, to his. His large, calloused hand smoothed hers and enveloped it. Why was he holding her hand?
“Can you open your eyes?” he probed.
Could she? She blinked rapidly, once, twice. Yes, she could. She held them cracked open for a moment to adjust to the light and focused on his hand holding hers, then traced them slowly up his arm to his shoulder and then to his face where she lingered a second on his lips—she was still adjusting to the brightness in the room—before finally raising them to his eyes. His full, penetrating, worried gaze immediately blanketed her, and the room suddenly felt multiple tones warmer. But his gaze was so intimate, too intimate, and she had to look away, disconcerted.
“Where am I?” her voice cracked, and barely any sound escaped her lips.
“At a clinic on the Haken Tsé Reservation.” Taza’s reservation? What did he have to do with this? She must have looked confused, because he continued, “do you remember what happened?”
She started to shake her head, but then, eyes drifting around aimlessly, she saw James’s keys dangling from his belt loop and in a sudden flash she did remember. She remembered all of it. All at once.
She remembered how he had set his keys in front of her and tried to give her his house, tried to leave.
She remembered how she hadn’t let him. How she’d instead forced him to confront his shame and stay with it, stay with her, so she could show him that it didn’t matter to her. That the very act of sharing his deepest wound with her was a gift so precious that, thinking back on it even now, it caused tears to prickle in her eyes.
She remembered kissing him and being surprised at the way he’d kissed her back; she remembered how much power it held. Somehow, his reticence, stemming from his great respect for her, had obscured the very thing she’d most wanted from him, what she’d unconsciously yearned for: his stable and authoritative sense of control. She remembered now, with a flush, how very much he had given her those things, made her feel the absolute center of his calm, sturdy world.
She met his gaze again now and remembered the way he’d looked at her—hands in her hair, forehead against forehead, bodies separated only by the thin sheen of combined sweat—like he could never look away, and she remembered too, with crushing remorse, how she’d crept out of bed the next morning to get him a breakfast steak (seemed so ridiculous now) and had been kidnapped, driven almost to the border, and then shot during what had been, she now realized, James’s rescue mission.
“Yes, I remember,” she murmured, voice still raspy, but a bit stronger now. She clasped his hand and held his gaze. “Thank you.”
He shook his head. “Don’t thank me,” he said, his voice straining with some emotion she couldn’t decipher.
“Who…?” she couldn’t quite finish her question, still struggling a little for air.
“Who kidnapped you?” he finished for her.
She nodded.
“Pecas. On Boaz’s behalf. Long story.”
Pecas? But then why—
“It’s ok, Taza’s safe.” Again he knew her question, before she’d even opened her mouth.
She nodded. “How do you know?” The funny thing was, she knew he was right, even without an explanation.
“You needed immediate medical attention. I knew the only help within 100 miles was here on the reservation. I did what you would’ve done, even though it scared the hell out of me.”
She tilted her head. “And what’s that?”
He smiled wanly. “Followed my instincts.”
She smiled too then, even though the medical beep beep and the fluorescent lights were still irritating her senses, and even though the blunt pain deep in her chest was knocking the wind out of her. Her eyes began to close again, despite her efforts to keep them open.
“Can I ask you something?” his voice sounded strangely far away.
“Mm?” Her own voice was jarring in its proximity, like she was humming underwater.
“Why did you leave this morning?”
The sense of being underwater now was overbearing; she felt heavy, buoyed, rocked by a sense of deep and lulling calm.
“I didn’t,” she whispered, but she couldn’t finish, she was falling asleep, she tried to shake her head but it was too heavy. I’ll tell him when I wake up, she assured herself, and to the gentle brush of his hand along her cheek she drifted off, safe and sound.