I shook my head. ‘Nope. You?’
He shook his head, sliding off the stool and approaching the front door. He moved like a freaking cat, he was so stealthy, his feet gliding along the tiles as if they weren’t even touching them.
He keyed in the code and the door clicked, whoever was on the other side opening it immediately.
Guillermo aimed at whoever it was, until the person smacked the gun out of his hand and grabbed his arm, twisting it behind his back and slamming him face-first into the wall.
‘John?’ I asked, watching the gun slide across the tiles.
Guillermo stopped struggling when I said his name.
‘Prez?’ He frowned, apparently confused.
John let him go with a shove, stepping back and removing the hoodie from his head. ‘What the hell was that?’ John asked, his face red and his breathing fast. He looked pretty fucking stressed out, and that made my stomach do all sorts of weird things.
‘I didn’t know it was you,’ Guillermo muttered, looking embarrassed.
‘What happened?’ I asked John.
Guillermo walked back towards the kitchen, massaging his elbow, as John slammed the door shut.
‘Pack an overnight bag,’ John said tersely. ‘Now.’
He never spoke to me like that, and in light of everything that had happened with Murphy, I didn’t see the need to ask questions.
‘What’s going on?’ Guillermo asked, looking between John and me.
‘Dornan happened,’ John said impatiently, looking at me and pointing to my bedroom. I nodded, passing him and entering my room, where I grabbed a duffel bag and started gathering jeans, underwear and make-up. I dumped it all into the bag and zipped it, coming back into the hallway a few moments later.
‘You need me to come?’ Guillermo asked, an off look on his face. Surely he couldn’t tell anything had happened between us just by looking at us, but he had suspicion written all over his face.
‘Stay here,’ John replied, opening the door and motioning me outside. ‘And, call Dornan. He’s got about fifteen hours to fill you in while we drive to Colorado.’
Colorado? Where did I know Colorado from? Those post-it notes that John was always giving me, amounts each month to send to a bank account in Colorado. The wire transfer. I wondered if it was related. Probably not, but I made sure to file that mental note away for later.
Once we were on the freeway, I rounded on John. ‘What happened?’ I asked. ‘Guillermo’s not here now. You have to tell me. What’s in Colorado?’
He stared straight ahead, seemingly in deep thought. Just as I was about to press him again, he started to speak.
‘Has Dornan ever mentioned a woman called Stephanie?’ he asked, glancing at me before looking back at the road.
My stomach dropped. ‘Yeah. His girlfriend? From before we met. Did something happen to her?’
‘She disappeared,’ John said. ‘Sixteen or seventeen years ago, I can’t remember exactly when.’
He didn’t offer any more.
‘Sometimes I’d like to disappear,’ I said after a few moments silence.
John’s hand shot out. He grabbed hold of my wrist and squeezed tight.
‘Ow,’ I said, glaring at him. ‘You’re hurting me.’
‘Do you have any idea what we’re going to walk into tomorrow?’ John hissed. He didn’t ease up on the squeezing. I pressed my teeth together in frustration.
‘No, I don’t know where we’re going,’ I snapped, finally managing to tug my wrist out of his grip. ‘That’s what I’m asking you. What happened to this Stephanie woman?’
John’s lips pressed together to form a thin line. ‘Dornan happened to her,’ he said finally.
I thought of the woman from the trafficking operation, the mother who Dornan had shot in the head. I thought of our baby.
‘What did he do,’ I asked, a lump rising in my throat.
‘I’m not entirely sure,’ John said. ‘Dornan’s always thought she was dead, that her body might turn up one day.’
Realisation settled into my bones like an old friend. ‘You helped her get away,’ I whispered.
John raked a hand through his hair, agitated. ‘She was pregnant,’ he said. ‘She was pregnant and freaking out, and I did the only thing I could think of. I gave her some money and got her out of town.’
I looked back to the road, slumping down in my seat. Shit, it seemed like history was repeating itself.
‘Did you – Were you with her?’ I asked, jealousy stabbing me in the chest for some unknown reason. I’d kissed him exactly one time, and now I was suddenly jealous of some woman he may or may not have been involved with sixteen years ago? I was losing it. I was really, really losing my fucking mind.
‘No,’ he said sharply. ‘Not at all. Caroline and I, we were good back then. Things were good.’
‘Does Dornan know you helped her?’ I asked quietly.
John shrugged. ‘I don’t think so. I don’t know.’
Impulsively, I reached for his hand in the dark. He looked down as I laced my fingers in his, as if I’d just given him an electric shock. He didn’t pull away, though. He looked at the road, squeezing my hand in his, and I felt tears well up in my eyes. How had things gotten to this? How had we ended up with the terrible burden of Murphy’s demise hanging between us like a fatal secret? How had I ended up pregnant with Dornan’s baby? How had we ended up in this car, barrelling down the freeway, on our way to Dornan and the woman he had probably killed?
‘The baby,’ I said suddenly. ‘The one she was pregnant with when she left. What happened?’
John looked like the weight of the world was pressing down on his shoulders as he drove.
‘He’s fifteen years old,’ he said wearily, ‘and I’m pretty sure his father just murdered his mother.’
I took my hand away, crossing my arms over my stomach, convinced that if I tried to leave I’d be next on my lover’s hit list.
Fuck.
We stayed on the road all night and into the morning, checking into a seedy motel that charged by the hour after about ten hours of driving. I’d offered to take the wheel so we could keep going, but John could see how exhausted I was, how nauseous, and he’d insisted we sleep for a couple of hours before we drove the final stretch to Colorado.
The room was like a matchbox, small and threadbare, and when I sat on one of the beds it sagged dramatically. Great. All the trimmings of a five-star establishment. John disappeared for a while, returning with burgers and fries. I inhaled mine, then curled up on the bed furthest from the front door and passed out into a dreamless slumber.
Well, it was dreamless at first, but then I started to have a nightmare. Dornan had his hands around my neck, and he wouldn’t let go. He squeezed and squeezed until my neck broke and I died in his hands. I woke up with my own hands at my throat, as I sat bolt upright and gasped for air.
John must have been a light sleeper. As soon as I sat up, he turned on the bedside lamp and jumped out of bed, reaching out for me.
‘Are you okay?’ he asked, not looking even slightly sleepy. He still looked as wide awake as when we’d arrived, and I guessed that he hadn’t slept at all.
‘Yeah,’ I said, tears streaming down my cheeks. Fucking hormones. John saw my tears, a concerned look on his face as he sat on the edge of my bed and rubbed my bare shoulders. His palms were large and warm, and I wanted to melt into his touch.
Stop! I had to stop reacting to him.
‘Bad dream?’ he asked, smiling sympathetically.
I nodded.
‘You’re okay,’ he said, reaching up and brushing hair from my face. I leaned into his touch, the move almost an unconscious act, and I saw something shift in his gaze.
I reached for him in the dark like my life depended on it. Without giving myself even a moment to stop and think about what I was doing, I pressed my lips to his, opening my mouth, seeking his tongue. He didn’t hesitate, his hands in my hair, at my waist, palming my breasts through the
thin material of my tank top. I moaned when he did that, my nipples hardening to stiff peaks when his hand came into contact with them. He pressed into me and I laid back against the pillows, John shifting so his top half was over me. Just as I was losing all sense of reason and reaching for his belt buckle, he pulled back.
‘I can’t,’ he said, pushing me away.
I put a hand over my mouth, scooting up the bed so I was sitting with my back against the headboard. I didn’t want to look at him, but I couldn’t look away.
‘I’m sorry,’ I said weakly.
He jumped up and began to pace beside the bed. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said, his hands balling into fists that looked like they really wanted to smash something. ‘You’re having his baby. We can’t do that ever again, you understand?’
I just watched him pace.
‘If I wasn’t having his baby, then what?’ I asked quietly.
John shook his head, agitated. ‘No,’ he said, ‘no. You’re not mine to touch. You’re his.’
‘Oh, I’m a fucking possession now?’ Suddenly I was livid. ‘What, I’m Dornan’s toy, so you have to find another one?’
He glared at me. ‘I don’t want another one,’ he said. ‘But this one’s taken. By a man I call my best friend.’
‘Huh,’ I said. ‘Some best friend. You’ve got a lot of secrets for a best friend, John.’
He scoffed. ‘Most of them are yours,’ he said angrily. ‘Let’s not forget that.’
It was like he’d punched me in the face.
‘You’re right,’ I said. ‘I shouldn’t have called you that night.’
‘You should have called Dornan,’ John said flatly.
‘I did call Dornan,’ I snapped. ‘He was busy with his wife.’
John eyed me from the end of the bed. ‘Do you love him?’
I sighed, frustrated. ‘I don’t know,’ I said, throwing my hands in the air. ‘Yes, I do. But he’s not the person I met nine years ago. He’s scaring me. I don’t know how to help him out of this darkness he’s sinking into. It’s like poison, and I’m scared he’s going to pull me in with him.’
‘You gonna tell him about the baby?’ John asked, gesturing to my stomach.
I took a deep breath and let it out in a long whoosh. ‘I don’t know,’ I said again. ‘I don’t want to. I’m afraid of what he’ll do.’ I started to weep. ‘I just want my boy back. I just want to leave and never come back. I want to have this baby where no one will ever find her, or me, or Luis, and we can just stop being afraid.’
Oh God, how it felt to finally externalise that awful, aching longing I’d been carrying around for my Luis.
‘Her?’ John asked.
I nodded. They’d scanned me before I left the hospital after the shooting, and I was already far enough along for them to tell the sex of the baby.
‘It’s a girl,’ I said. ‘I can’t bring a little girl into this world, John. The things Emilio would do to her.’ I shook my head. ‘No. I get out or I have a termination. I can’t do this if I’m still here. But I don’t know if I have it in me to try and run. I don’t want to live every day of my life worrying about when a bullet’s going to hit me.’
John nodded, coming back to sit beside me and pulling me into his arms.
‘I’m glad you called me that night,’ he said.
Complete and utter carnage.
That was the only way John could describe what he was looking at. Dornan leaned against the basin in the small bathroom, irritation and fatigue competing for real estate on his face.
‘You stop in Canada on the way?’ Dornan asked.
John ignored the question. Dornan looked wild, still covered in the blood of the dead woman in the bathtub beside them.
‘You didn’t have time for a shower?’ John asked, looking his best friend up and down. Jesus, the smell of old blood in the room was overwhelming, crawling up his nostrils and burrowing in. He wanted to get the fuck out.
‘The shower was taken,’ Dornan snapped.
Mariana, who’d been explicitly told to stay in the kitchen, appeared in the doorway. Dornan stared at her, and she did the same to him. They didn’t speak.
‘We need to get her out of here,’ John said, positioning his body so that he was blocking Mariana’s line of sight to the bathtub.
At his words, Mariana stiffened. ‘I’m not going anywhere,’ she said, and Dornan chuckled.
‘Not you,’ he said, studying his knuckle. ‘Her.’
Mariana pushed past John and laid eyes on the woman in the bathtub. John scrubbed his hand across his chin, glaring at Dornan.
‘What did you do?’ Mariana whispered.
‘Let me handle this,’ John barked, and Mariana’s eyes went wide. ‘Go and take care of the boy,’ he said, gentler this time.
She nodded, disappearing from view.
‘You didn’t have to do that,’ John said.
‘Do what?’ Dornan asked, grinning.
The bastard was smug. He’d killed the woman he’d been willing to leave the cartel for, and he was fucking smug?
‘Let her see . . . this,’ he said, gesturing to the carnage. ‘Was that really necessary?’
Dornan didn’t answer. He pushed off the vanity, where he’d been resting one foot, and brushed past John.
I’d never seen Dornan so indifferent in the face of death.
When he’d killed the woman in the backseat of his truck, he had cried. Wept as he pulled the trigger and delivered the bullet that ended her life. I’d seen the anguish in his eyes, seen the devastation that engulfed him.
Now he seemed almost bored with the fact that he’d just killed someone. And not just anyone.
He’d loved her, once. That was the part I found the hardest to accept. He’d loved her, and she’d left, and this was what happened when you left a man like Dornan Ross and never came back. Eventually, he found you, and brutally murdered you.
All of these things raced through my head as I stood in a small bedroom and watched the rise and fall of a young boy’s chest.
He might have been fifteen, but in deep sleep he looked younger. He was gorgeous, with olive skin and dark, long eyelashes that covered his closed eyes.
He looked exactly like Dornan. Like a miniature version, though he was almost as tall as him. I held a hand over my mouth as I took him in silently, not wanting to make a noise and risk waking him up. But it seemed like he was knocked out, and that he’d sleep through anything.
I wondered if he’d found his mother. As I was thinking all of this, Dornan entered the room and stood beside me, his hands in his pockets.
‘You can stop looking at me like that,’ he said, his voice like gravel. He pulled out a cigarette and lit it, sending smoke wafting across the room.
‘You shouldn’t be smoking in the house,’ I said warily, and that made him chuckle. ‘Why not?’ he replied, tapping ash on the carpet. ‘The house is about to burn down.’
I thought of my family. How Emilio had burned them.
How the apple never falls far from the tree.
I looked from Dornan to his unconscious son, a coldness settling into my being. I felt shards of ice travel along my veins and arteries, turning everything frozen and black inside. Everything.
‘How could you do this?’ I asked him.
Dornan looked at the ground and then back at me, the fury in his eyes unmistakable.
‘What would you have done,’ he asked darkly, ‘if someone had stolen your child away from you?’
I thought of Murphy, the way he had been so heavy in death. Of Allie, her threats against Luis, and how much lighter she had been as I had stolen her breath away and then rolled her body into the water.
I decided that I wasn’t one to judge, after all.
They’d cleaned the scene as best they could, and after a lot of convincing on John’s part Dornan had agreed not to burn the house down. It was unlikely anyone would trace Stephanie back to Dornan after sixteen years, and he might decide to come back f
or the boy’s things. He was still having trouble referring to Jason as his son. He was like a stranger, this kid who he had to keep sedated to manage, even with his shocking resemblance to Dornan.
They’d buried Stephanie in the woods nearby instead, Dornan insistent on being the one who shovelled dirt onto her bloodied face. He couldn’t separate the hate from the love, and the rage, the rage was the worst part of all. At one point, when half her face was still visible, Dornan had started smashing the shovel down onto her head, until John managed to get the shovel away from him.
He wanted to scream and gnash his teeth and bash her fucking head in, but it wouldn’t matter because she was already dead. He didn’t regret killing her, though. The only thing he regretted was not drawing out her death.
They travelled to a motel, Mariana in the backseat of John’s truck, cradling the boy protectively. At least he’d have her to take care of him, Dornan mused silently. She’d be a good mother. He’d told her that once, and now she’d have someone to mother. All these thoughts swirling in his brain made perfect sense. He didn’t once stop to consider what would happen when the boy woke up. It was a problem that he’d deal with later, and the boy would eventually come around. He’d be mad at first, but he’d understand why his mother was a lying bitch who deserved to die.
They got two rooms at the motel. Dornan dragged the boy in and dumped him on one of two beds in the first room, John and Mariana following on his heels.
‘You want to take first shift?’ he said, addressing John. ‘I know he’s tied up, but the little bastard is strong. Like his dad.’ Dornan smiled proudly, but neither John nor Mariana smiled back. He was starting to get annoyed by their reactions. Didn’t they understand that he’d done this out of love for his son? He was the victim here. He’d just had fifteen years of his child stolen from him, and he intended to make up for lost time just as soon as the boy was awake and calm.
Not now, though. There was no calm space inside Dornan Ross. He was crazed. Drunk on death, on killing. He needed Mariana’s softness, needed her around him. Stephanie’s blood was on his hands, soaked into the fibres of his clothes. He just wanted to forget.
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