“It’s just Derek,” Camden explained. “We’re getting you to a doctor and then we’re getting Gus.”

“We have to get Gus first,” I said, grabbing his collar.

He gave me a steady gaze. “No, Ellie. Derek says Gus is safe. You can’t save him if you’re dead and I don’t want you losing that pretty leg of yours either. It would be a shame to lose such art.”

“But who knows how much longer he’ll be safe?”

“Ellie,” he said sadly. “I couldn’t save your mom, even though I tried. Travis found us before I could even get a few rounds off. But I can save you. I will save you. I promised I’d keep you safe, even at the expense of Gus. You’ve been shot. You’re lucky to be alive and I’ll do everything in me to keep you alive. No ifs, ands, or buts.”

Derek pulled the car up to us and leaped out of the driver’s seat, quickly ushering us into the back of the car.

“Why can’t we take the helicopter?” I asked as Camden lay me down in the back. My jeans had been torn off at the knees and mounds of bandages had been wrapped around my calf.

“Out of gas,” Derek said as he got back in the driver’s seat. “And the Zetas would be coming by copter anyway. This is safer.”

He drove that Escalade like a rally driver, bounding us from rough road to rough road and after a few precarious turns on mountainsides, I wondered how much safer it could be.

The pain was slowly growing worse too, to the point where I had a death grip on Camden’s hand, body covered in sweat. It felt like my leg was on fire and stabbed with a million knives at the same time. It was all encompassing and all-consuming.

“How much longer?” Camden asked Derek.

“An hour,” Derek said. “Tops. I know a doctor right before the border into Guatemala.”

“Hold on, baby,” Camden said, squeezing my hand. “I’ve got you.”

Even Camden couldn’t save me from my agony. My eyes rolled back into my head and I tried to divert my attention from my leg. Questions. Painful questions. I had a lot of them. I had time to ask them.

“Derek,” I choked out. “If we’re paying you for all this, questions are included right?”

Silence. Then, “Yes. What do you want to know?”

“My mother. The truth. What happened to her? How did she end up married to Travis?”

“She wasn’t married. That’s not how Javier put it.”

Of course he knew.

He went on, “Javier recruited your parents to work for him right after Travis went and switched sides. I heard from different sources that it was so Javier could have closer ties to you. I heard from Javier it’s because they wanted revenge on Travis. They’d stopped conning at this point and had their hands in a whole bunch of work from the cartels already, so it was not a big career change for them. Then one day they left and Javier tracked them down to Veracruz. To Travis. He was angry. That’s where you came in.”

“His angel of death,” I muttered then groaned as another wave of pain went through me. “Why not kill them all with one stone?”

“To his credit, Javier seemed shocked when he learned you were going to Travis’s house back in Veracruz,” Camden spoke up, surprising me. “I don’t think he meant for you to kill them all.”

“What does it matter?” I snapped. “I was being used, just like I was used here. Javier got his way, he got his wish. Even if he’s dead, he’s still won. My mother is dead. And so is Travis. And I killed them both.” The tears teased me again, moisture swelling in my throat but I refused to give in. I grinded my teeth until my jaw was sore. “I was the fool who did as he asked.”

“Don’t say that,” Camden said. “You didn’t have a choice and you know it. You can grieve for your mother but I will not let you punish yourself for this. You don’t deserve this burden. None of us deserve what went on in there.”

The memory of the man dying by Camden’s hands filled my head and I remembered I wasn’t the only one who lost a piece of themselves back in the jungle.

“Then why would my parents go to work for Travis? What happened then?” I asked, wanting the distraction.

I saw Derek shrug. “I don’t know.”

My mother had told me it was revenge. For me. I wanted to believe that now, though it didn’t make things hurt any less.

“And she never married Travis. Travis took her in because he was obsessed with her. Killed your father, kept her as his own. Kept her is the key word that was thrown around a lot. I can’t say what went on. I don’t know all the facts, I only know what I read and what I’ve been told. I’m guessing it was something like Stockholm syndrome. If they were ever officially married, I never heard about it. I just know it was a fucked-up, messy situation.”

I had my fair share of that. I held Camden’s hand tighter again and hoped that the Watt cycle of being sucked into co-dependent, obsessive and unhealthy relationships was finally over. As long as I had Camden, I had broken free of that. I wouldn’t end up like her.

“Did you know that Gus was my real father?”

“I did,” he answered simply. “Javier was supposed to tell you, it was part of the plan. But he held off at the last minute. Maybe he was afraid that when the time came and you found out that he’d tricked you after finding out the truth about Gus, you’d come after him. I guess he was right about that, wasn’t he?”

Was he fucking ever.

“So what happens next?” Camden asked. “After we get Ellie fixed up and get Gus. What happens to us? And to you? How do we know you won’t kill us or come after us?”

Derek eyed him in the rear view mirror. “Because so far, that’s not my job. And, believe it or not, it wouldn’t become my job. I like you two. I fucking hate dealing with the cartels and yes I do it for a living but some jobs are better than others. I take what interests me and that’s it. I want you to get to Gus and I want you to get home to California. Then I want to take a nice long week of drinking and fucking tourists on a beautiful beach.” He paused and scrunched up his brows. “I will say this to you, man. Camden. When we took off in the jungle that morning, I was certain we were only leaving Ellie behind. Javier wanted to take you with him. I told him not to, that it would slow down our operation. So he left you behind. He didn’t want to.”

“Of course,” Camden scoffed. “He wanted to off me somewhere.”

“No,” Derek told us. “That wasn’t it. We all had specific instructions to keep both you and Ellie safe. But the emphasis was placed on you, Camden. You were the priority.”

I coughed at the tickle in my throat and threw a bewildered look to Camden. “What the hell does that mean?”

“I have no idea, honestly,” Derek said. “But that’s what we were told. There were too many other things to question than that.”

Camden looked at me, lips pursed and I could tell he had no clue either.

The next couple of hours were a blur. Instead of some farmhouse like the one that Javier had taken Violetta to, Derek drove me to an honest-to-god medical clinic. It was after hours of course since gunshot wounds attracted at least some attention but the woman who ran the clinic was quick, silent and efficient. And by efficient, I mean she pumped me full of drugs until I couldn’t tell what was up and what was down. Not quite morphine but something that made me stop wanting to chop off my leg.

She had no problems pulling out the bullet, least it didn’t seem that way in my drugged up head and said I was lucky it didn’t strike an artery. She gave Camden the medication, painkillers and antibiotics to fight infection, wrapped me up and I was somewhat good to go. Derek handed her a handsome wad of American bills for her effort.

“So,” Camden said as they put me back in the Escalade. “Now we’ve all been shot. You, me, Gus. Quite the team, right?”

I jerked my head. “We’ll be a team once we see him again. Derek, that’s our next stop.”

“Yes, m’am,” he said, seeming to lighten up a bit. “Back to Mexico you go.”

We drove through the night, passing through the Guatemalan and Mexican borders with ease. Now that my leg was fixed, we weren’t attracting any suspicion. Just three gringos with Mexican plates. And even if they did search the car and found the guns and ammo we still had in here, Derek was ready to bribe them. Or take them out. Whichever came first.

Derek had told us that Javier kept Gus in the city of Oaxaca, a place we had already driven through on our way to Guatemala and Honduras. That fact made me rage inside, pushing away the euphoria that the drugs had laced my brain with. All this time I was wrong. All this time I was being led like a puppet on a barbed wire by Javier and Gus was alone somewhere, hurt, wondering if we’d ever come for him. We had been so close, so damn close and I believed Javier. I fell for his lies time and time again.

At least I wouldn’t fall for them anymore. My chest choked up with feelings of sorrow and fear. I didn’t know if I could ever find peace knowing he was alive. I didn’t know if I could ever be relieved knowing he was dead. There I was, still caught on the drifting cobwebs of the past.

It was the middle of the night when Derek pulled the Escalade into the suburbs of the city. Despite taking another dose of painkillers, I was wide awake, anxious to see Gus.

“I don’t understand why they even have Gus, though,” I mused. “Like, not that I wanted this to happen, obviously, but why didn’t Javier just kill him? He must have told you why?”

“I don’t know,” Derek said. “Though I wouldn’t be surprised if he had some affection for him. Maybe if you thought Gus was dead, you wouldn’t go with Javier.”

“Oh, please,” I said in disgust. “Like I would have anyway.”

“Javier is used to getting what he wants,” he explained. “I think in the end, he still wanted you.”

Camden stiffened and I put my hand on his knee to comfort him. We road in silence for a few moments and I did my best not to dwell on Javier, how he could both still want me and be someone who would leave me behind to die.

How the hell did his love for me get so fucked-up?

“Are you sure they’ll let Gus go willingly,” I asked Derek, shaking memories out of my head. “I mean, you’re not the one running this show.”

He eyed me over his shoulder and gave me a handsome smirk. “Who said anything about willingly? We’re taking him whether they let us or not.”

Oh great. Another one of these.

“Obviously you’re staying in the car,” Camden filled in beside me, stifling a yawn. “You’re not going anywhere on that leg.”

I cocked my head at him. “Oh really?”

His eyes were serious in the darkness of the car. “Really. Ellie. You need to stay safe. I’ll get your father back.”

Father.

My heart warmed.

And filled me with determination. I wasn’t letting the men do this without me. Gus had come for me now I was going for him. After everything I’d been through, I wasn’t leaving without him, the only family I truly had left.