I thought he loved me like I loved him.
I guess that’s just me being gullible all over again. I thought I could save my best friend. I thought I could get the guy.
Turns out I don’t get anything.
• • •
Rafe leaves that night, and our kiss good-bye seems to last for an hour. His mouth is possessive over mine, devouring, and fills me with aching sadness knowing that this is going to be our last one. When he finally gives my nose a gentle kiss and then leaves, this time for good, I hold it together until he leaves the room. Then, I curl up in my sorry bed and cry my eyes out.
They’re puffy and itchy the next morning, but I’ve never been prized for my eyes anyhow. I force myself to get out of bed and shower. There are a few stitches in my shoulder and some on my back. The wound doesn’t look nearly as awful as it feels. It’s all bruised to hell, though. I wash carefully, which reminds me of Rafe and the sponge bath I gave him, and I start crying all over again.
I dress in an old shirt and cargo shorts that are too big for me and peer out the window of my room. I haven’t been anywhere since I got to the island. The room I’m in looks kind of like a hotel room, and I have a view of the beach not too far away. It’s gorgeous, and I want to see it before I leave. I figure I might as well.
Bennito flags me down and offers me a few slices of what looks and smells like banana bread. “Cuca de banana,” he tells me with a grin. “We’re not in Brazil anymore, but we still eat like we are.” He gives me a cup of something called pingado that tastes like extra-milky latte. I wolf the food down and sit with him in the little kitchenette.
“What is this place?” I ask him.
“It’s an old hotel. Was a cover for a gunrunner paradise back in the day, but now we just use it as base and let people set up shop here for a few until they can make a home on the island for themselves.”
I nod, not really caring. I won’t be here to see Rafe again, so it doesn’t matter. “I want to go to the beach.”
“You sure?” His brows draw together and he crosses his arms. “Rafe says you’re still weak.”
I dust off my sleeve with my good hand, freeing crumbs. “Rafe’s not here and I want to see the ocean before I leave.”
“Fair enough, you just lemme know.”
I nod and leave the kitchenette, heading for the ocean in the distance. I know he’s watching me still—and will probably report back to Rafe, but I don’t care.
I remember the ocean from my dream with Rose, and I need to go sit in the sand and think.
It takes forever for me to make it the couple of hundred yards to the shore, and by the time I do, I’m exhausted. I stagger weakly to the sand and sit at the edge of the waves. I tuck my cast against my chest to keep it from getting wet, and I stare out at the ocean as the water moves over my feet.
Rose is gone.
I think of going back to New York and our apartment. Our friends, who are more her friends than mine. Our jobs, which are more her jobs than mine. I spread my fingers and stare down at my hands. They look like hell. There are bug bites and dark red stains from burns. Scratches cover my skin, and my nails are ragged and still have rings of dirt under them. My pinky is splinted and my wrist is in a cast. Hand modeling’s an iffy job, and I’ll be out of it for a long time. I’m not a jet-setter like Rose was. She’d go off to Paris and Milan to walk the runways. I’d go to the QVC headquarters and hold a shoe for six hours.
I’m lost. Not just because Rose is gone and my hands are shit. I’m lost without Rafe. I need him to tell me everything’s going to be okay and to kiss my worries away. I think maybe that’s one reason why I thought we were so good for each other. I’m confident in all the ways that he’s not, and he’s take-charge where I hesitate.
I wish he could see that we belong together.
The stupid tears start again, and I wipe my eyes, then groan because I’m getting salt water in them. I grab the corner of my shirt and dab at my stinging eyeballs, mentally cussing.
When I look up, a woman’s coming down the beach toward me.
I think about getting up and leaving, but I’m so tired. I just want to sit here for a while longer and let the water relax me. So I wiggle my toes in the sand and pretend I don’t see her. I’m not here to bother anyone. I just want to be left alone until I have to leave.
To my surprise, she comes and sits next to me. “You the boss’s lady?” she asks me in accented English.
I look over at her. She’s beautiful with the gorgeous Brazilian coloring I admire. Dark hair, bronze skin, and hazel eyes. She’s also got a wicked scar slashing across one cheek to the next, as if someone cut her mouth open lengthwise and it was sewn up again.
“Who’s the boss?” I ask.
“Mendoza. I heard his lady was brought to the island.” She nods at me and crosses her legs, her feet not quite hitting the surf. “You her?”
“I don’t know. Why?” What’s this woman want?
She looks at me. “My daughter’s pregnant. She’s thirteen. Couple of other girls are pregnant, too. We need a midwife here.”
My eyes widen and I raise my hands. “Wait, hold up, I’m not a midwife—”
She laughs and gives a slight roll of her eyes. “I know. But you’re his lady. He’ll listen to you. We want you to go talk to him for us.”
“Why . . .” I lick my lips, thinking carefully. This seems important and I don’t want to mess it up. “Why don’t you go to him yourself and ask?”
This time, she’s the one that doesn’t make eye contact. When she answers, her voice is small. “We’re safe here, but we’re still scared. It’s hard to go to a man and ask for things. There’s no woman we can come to and talk to.”
Oh. It dawns on me. This is an island run by mercenaries, trying to make a better living for everyone that comes to them, but there are some things you can’t ask a guy when you’re a girl. Especially if you’re a girl that’s been abused in the past. “Is there . . . no midwife here? At all? No woman in charge? No female medical doctor?”
“No. And we need things. Pills. Diapers.” She eyes me. “Better tampons.”
I wince. “Let me guess. They’re men, so they buy what’s cheapest and not the stuff with the good applicators.”
She gestures at me as if to say now you get it. “You ever try to have a tampon conversation with a soldier?”
A reluctant giggle escapes me. “I guess that’s difficult.”
“Real difficult when you’re someone like me.” Her mouth trembles. “It was hard to come out here. To see you. I had to wait until you were alone.”
I soften. “Rafe’s a good guy. He would listen. I promise.”
“I know,” she says simply. “But sometimes it’s easier to come to a woman.”
We talk for another hour or two, sitting in the sand. Her name is Fernanda, and she worked at a brothel for over ten years before the men shut it down and rescued everyone and took them to the Tears of God favela. I look at her, and she has to be a year or two younger than me, which is horrifying to think about. That she’s been a whore since childhood and has a child that’s thirteen. God.
She says there are a lot of teen girls on the island that used to live in brothels. Several of them are mothers, and all of them have been abused. Most of them are terrified of men.
“In the favela, it wasn’t so bad,” she says. “We could wear our Tears of God symbols and no one would touch us. We could go get things we needed. We could see a midwife that wasn’t in the favela or bring her to us. But here on the island, we’re isolated. And we’re not sure how to ask.” She smiles. “That’s why we’re happy that you’re here. That the boss has a lady now. Because we can come to you and talk.”
I give Fernanda a soft smile and then look out at the ocean again. “I would stay if he wanted me here. But he doesn’t.”
“Did he say that?” She looks skeptical. “These men, they’re good with guns, but they’re not good with women. Maybe you need to tell hi
m why he needs you. Show him what he’d be missing if he let you go.”
I think of my dream again. Of Godzilla, pounding away in the distant surf. Not the penis, but the monster from the Japanese movies. I think of my conversation with Rose.
Oh, Ava. I’ve always done what I wanted.
You should marry him. He seems nice.
Even in death, Rose is trying to prod me in the right direction. Maybe . . . maybe Rafe’s not good with feelings, like he wasn’t good with sex. Maybe I do need to show him that he needs me.
Not just because the women on this island need someone to talk to, but because he needs me and I need him.
I lift my chin and look over at Fernanda. “You know what? I think I’m going to stay after all.”
“Good,” she says. “Tell ’em we need real tampons. Not that cheap cardboard shit.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
RAFAEL
Virginia is cold. Living on an island in the Bahamas and traipsing through a Peruvian jungle don’t prepare you for the ball-freezing weather of Northern Virginia in October.
“Fucking winter, man,” Norse complains as we watch the tourists take pictures of the remnants of the docked Apollo Command Module. The chrome is polished to a mirror finish, but I don’t see anything in the surface that tips me off to Davidson’s arrival. “I would’ve joined your little band of mercenaries just to get out of this damn cold.”
“Aren’t your bones supposed to be made out of ice?”
“If they were, it’s all been melted away and replaced with sand and margaritas.”
“Sounds uncomfortable.” I check my watch. The exchange is supposed to be happening right now and my government contact is late. “Has Rodrigo checked in yet?” I sent Rodrigo back for what was left of Garcia’s body. If it was safe, he could pick up Rose—for Ava’s sake. After Duval’s death, it looked like Pucallpa emptied out pretty damn quick.
“Not since you asked me five minutes ago,” Norse replies with deceptive laziness. He’s just as keyed up as I am. The death of Garcia has hit us all hard. I’m anxious and Norse is cracking jokes about his balls, but it’s all a disguise for our gut-sick feelings of loss.
A lot of the men that come to the island are there because they want to forget. In the sand and sun, it’s easy to pretend that there aren’t any worries. Make that easier. You can’t ever fully let go of the past. All those gaps in your life are carved out by a rough, dull blade, and they don’t ever heal over properly.
Norse knows that as well as any. His perfect Viking visage and easy smile masks a hell of a past.
But I keep his secrets as I keep the secrets of everyone who is on the island. It’s why Ava doesn’t belong there. Her life is wide open, full of pretty things and pretty smiles. She doesn’t need—or want—to be surrounded by a bunch of hard-ass mercenaries and run-down whores.
“How do you think Davidson is going to take the news?” Norse asks.
“About Garcia?” Davidson’s handler had given us a couple of choices—the National Mall, a coffeehouse near the Pentagon, and an airport hangar. All of those seemed like a perfect place for them to execute us and run off with the goods. I told them the exchange would happen in broad daylight at the Air and Space Museum. We might not have been able to bring in our weapons, but there’s no way that they can kill us here without creating a massive unexplainable incident. “About as well as you think.”
“Right.” He grimaces.
“That’s why he doesn’t get a gun until we are on our way back.”
“Right. You going to tell him about Ava?”
I pin Norse’s ears back with a glare. “Not her fault, man. She is responsible for getting us this information. Without it we wouldn’t have a donkey’s chance in hell of getting Davidson back.”
There is no question in my mind that had we failed, Davidson would’ve gotten a bullet to his brain. Garcia’s death is mine alone to own. He was my man and those blows are mine to take, but we’ll all mourn him.
“Maybe we should stop in Miami? Get him laid, liquored up before we let him loose on the island.”
“Your call.” If Ava was waiting for me, I would’ve said fuck that noise and been on the first plane home. But she’s not waiting. I’ve given Bennito instructions to charter her out of there at her first request—whenever she feels ready. I’m not sure whether I want her to be gone when I get back.
“Don’t want to get back home?” Norse eyes me appraisingly.
“Nothing there for me,” I manage to lie with a straight face. Truth is, if Ava’s gone, I might have to head to New York City. Even if she doesn’t want me there, it’d be enough just to be near her. To see her on the street. To watch her from afar and know that she’s safe.
She’s it for me, even if I’m not it for her.
Norse’s raised eyebrow indicates that he doesn’t believe me for a second, but the time for more questions is over. “Incoming,” I murmur.
Norse straightens and his hand goes into his jacket. We share a grimace when he comes up empty. Not being armed is hard on us.
Davidson looks good. Pale, as if he hasn’t seen the sun in three weeks, but he’s walking without a limp and has no visible wounds.
On either side of him walk a pair of khaki-clad goons wearing windbreakers. I don’t make the mistake of believing that they are unarmed like Norse and me. “The guy on the left is wearing a Nationals hat. He’s my contact,” I mention quietly to Norse. He nods and slips to the side, making sure that Davidson’s two guards have to split up to keep an eye on us.
“Rafe, good to see you.” Agent Parker holds out his hand and flashes a wide, fake grin. Parker is a hair under six feet, the top of his head coming up to my eyes. He’s a wiry guy—more wrestler than bruiser. He’d be no match for either Davidson or me.
“Good to see you too, Parker.” His eyes widen in surprise that I know his name. “Yeah, I know your name, the blonde you like seeing on Tuesdays that your wife doesn’t know about, and the woman you took to bed last night who is neither blond nor your wife. I might hate spy shit, but you should know that your government came to me because there isn’t a mission that exists that I can’t carry out, including finding out everything about your punk-ass self down to the fact you like to eat ice cream with a fork.”
“That shit is weird,” Davidson pipes up from beside Parker.
I grip his outstretched hand and pull him toward me. A couple of hard slaps on the back reveals the holster hanging under his left arm. With a strong arm around his back, I hold him tight against me with one hand and slip the gun out of the holster with the other. Davidson steps close and takes the weapon from me, slipping it under his shirt. I stick the receiver, USB sticks, and the roll of papers into the holster. Davidson steps back, does the hand-off to Parker, and then we’re done.
Almost.
When we turn to leave, I don’t. I shove Agent Parker backward, a hard steel-booted toe on his soft leather one. He doesn’t go far.
“We’re going now,” I inform him. He gasps like a beached fish, his mouth opening and closing without saying any real words. “You’ve got what you wanted.”
With a nod to Davidson, we start toward the entrance, when Parker grabs my arm. “Did you read the information?”
“We’re not paid for that, are we?” He shakes his head. I give him a little pat on the side of his face, the anger toward Garcia’s death making me a little reckless. “Then take your motherfucking hand off me before I rip it off.”
• • •
Davidson waits until we are clear of the museum and at the edge of the National Mall before he asks, “Where’s Garcia?”
The bleak expression in his eyes shows he knows already. He is just waiting for confirmation.
“Didn’t make it out of Peru,” I say brusquely. “We took gunfire in the middle of the night. Sniper had night-vision goggles. We had none.” Garcia had planned for every contingency but that one.
“What were you chasing after?”
>
“A hit list. It’s a list of people that heads of state have had killed for the last few years.”
“Jesus.” Davidson shakes his head. He turns away to stare out at the glass-like surface of the reflection pool. “Don’t suppose you’d be okay with me going back and beating the ever-loving shit out of those federal agents?”
“Nope.” I wonder what memories Davidson is seeing in the water. The three of us getting shitfaced in Berlin after taking out a terrorist cell or the time when we were in Thailand dragging Garcia out of a lady-boy brothel. Or maybe it was all the way back when we were prisoners in the desert, left to die and determined that if we ever made it to safety, we were going to be the captains of our own destinies. I roll around the last memory I have of Garcia—the one where he tells me of his lost love and that he’s ready to be with her again. I offer that small solace to Davidson. “He told me he was ready to go. That the Tears of God held no comfort for him.”
Still seemingly mesmerized by the water, Davidson answers, “The girl, right?”
I nod in confirmation but Norse, who doesn’t know Garcia’s story, interjects, “What girl? Ava?”
“Who’s Ava?” Davidson is confused.
“His Ava?” Norse jerks a thumb in my direction.
“Your Ava,” he says in disbelief. “Since when do you have an Ava?”
“Picked her up in the jungle,” Norse explains. “Old man here can’t keep his hands off her.”
To my surprise I feel heat on my cheeks at Davidson’s sudden inspection. “It’s time to go.” I start walking toward the Metro stop to flag a cab.
“I’m going to need to know a lot more about this Ava girl,” Davidson says as he catches up to me.
“They treat you okay?” I ask, trying desperately to change the subject. “I don’t see any wounds.”
“It was just boring as hell.”
“How’d you get caught anyway?”
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