“The other men are at the crossing. They won’t be noticeable, but they’ll be on the bridge as we walk it.”
“Bueno,” Juan answers.
I watch as the enormous structure comes into full view. It’s all hard surfaces, angular planes, blinding light. No landscaping, no windows. It’s a bleak symbol of a bleak culture—immigration with all of its pent-up hopes, frustrations, complications. This bridge is a passage to people’s deepest dreams and their worst fears, including mine. A dream of Juan and me safe and happy together, a fear of some other outcome, too horrible to name or visualize.
We park the car in a lot at the base of the bridge and climb a set of stairs several flights high until we reach the pedestrian walkway that leads from the side labeled ‘Mexico’ to the one labeled ‘United States of America.’ Miguel’s men walk in front of and behind us, in pairs, keeping us surrounded at all times.
The walkways go through covered tunnels on both sides of the border, and in between is an open sidewalk that runs parallel to the car lanes that also cross. The air is full of carbon monoxide, diesel smoke, and despair. As we enter the tunnel, Juan squeezes my hand tighter and I hear his voice, low and forced.
“Promise me you’ll do what we tell you, linda,” he says.
I look at his profile in the weak light of the covered passage. His jaw is set, his lips tightly pinched together.
“What do you mean?” I ask, my heart racing like I’ve run a marathon. Foreboding is thick in the air, and I feel some part of me start to claw to get free.
“Just promise. You’re going to go to your family like you’re supposed to. They’re waiting for you, and they love you.”
I look ahead, and we have just a few more feet before the tunnel opens up. Everything starts to spin around me, and I can’t breathe. No. No. No. The realization of what’s about to happen hits me and I try to stop, but Juan has my hand and Miguel’s men are moving us along like a tide that can’t be stopped. Desperation takes hold. He can’t. He won’t. Dear God, tell me this isn’t happening.
“Juan,” I gasp out. “Slow down. I don’t understand what you mean.”
He doesn’t look at me, and he doesn’t slow down.
“Juan?” I say louder, the panic building inside of my chest until it feels like something might explode out of me.
He doesn’t answer, and we’re out of the tunnel now. I see my brother David up ahead in the open part of the walkway. I start to struggle against Juan’s grip on my hand. Please no. Please don’t do this to me. You said you loved me, you said we would be together. You can’t do this. My heart beats the refrain over and over. I’m pulling, but his grip is like steel, my hand is locked in his, and he’s stopped listening to what I want. Stopped caring about what I feel.
By the time we reach David, my feet are nearly skidding along the concrete as I try to fight the forward momentum Juan and Miguel’s men have created. We reach David, he looks at me, and the sympathy in his eyes, the understanding of what I’m about to endure, breaks whatever self-control I have left.
“No!” I scream as Juan puts a hand on my back and pushes me at David. He releases me now, leaving me floating in this purgatory where he exists, but not for me. He turns away as David puts an arm around my shoulders.
“Come on, Beth. Let’s go,” David says.
At the same time, I hear Juan quietly rasp out, “I love you, but it was never going to work.” Then, he starts to walk back toward the Mexican side of the bridge.
I lunge for him, my chest is breaking open, my blood is spilling on the cold, hard ground beneath me, and my screams sound like they come from something inhuman, some creature being tortured.
“Juan!” I wail as David wraps both arms around my waist to keep me from pursuing the man who’s just deceived me in the coldest, harshest way. “Don’t do this, Juan. Please don’t do this,” I sob uncontrollably, my voice becoming hoarse as I shake and struggle against the gentle but firm restraints my brother places on me. I have never felt anything like this in my life. It hurts beyond what I ever could have imagined it would. If this is what becomes of love, I will never love again.
People along the sidewalk and even in their cars are slowing to look at me now. Juan is almost concealed by his men who’ve closed in around him as he briskly walks farther and farther from me.
“Beth,” David says in my ear. “It’s time to go.”
“No!” I scream at him, kicking and hitting wildly, my insides crumbling like a day-old sandcastle left to dry in the unrelenting sun. “Let me go! Let me go! Juan! Oh, oh God, no. Juan.”
He disappears into the tunnel, and something deep inside of me breaks. He never once looks back. He never slows. He leaves me standing on the sidewalk between two countries, my brother’s arms the only ones to hold me.
And as I fall into a million pieces, my big brother picks me up and takes me away from the heart I’ve just handed to a man who doesn’t want it.
“YOU okay, Señor Juan?” Ryan asks me as I climb into the car for the drive back to my father’s house in Leon.
“Yes, I’m fine,” I tell him with a voice so cold I don’t even recognize it. “Let’s go home.”
“Yes, sir,” the driver says as he starts up the engine.
Beth’s screams echo in my ears, and I feel a sharp pain in my chest. I rub at it as I lean back against the heavily padded leather seats and close my eyes under my sunglasses. The image of her eyes as she begged me not to leave her dances in front of me. The look of sorrow on David’s face mixes with it, and I suddenly feel sick. I remember his voice on the phone when I called him to explain how it would go down.
“You’ll break her heart,” he told me.
“This is the agreement,” I answered.
I could hear him take a deep breath in and then release it. I felt the moment he realized what I’d done, what I’d traded for Beth’s freedom. My compliance for her release—my life for hers.
“Thank you,” he said simply.
“I love her.”
“I know you do, hermano. I know you do.”
“Stop the car,” I demand as I yank at the door handle.
The driver pulls to the side and slams on the brakes, blocking part of a lane of traffic because we’re in town and there’s no real shoulder.
I throw open the door, stumbling out as I bend over and vomit, my stomach heaving and roiling over and over. I stay there, hands on my knees, dry heaving when there’s no food left. All three of the cars in my entourage have stopped, and one of Miguel’s men—one of my men—has gotten out to direct traffic past us while the others take up stations around me and the vehicles to keep anyone from approaching. Ryan stands nearby, staring stoically ahead, while I choke and gasp in the gutter.
When I finally quit retching, I run my arm across my lips and stand up shakily.
“Are you ready to go, sir?” Ryan asks.
“Yeah,” I mutter.
He raises his arm in a gesture to indicate to the rest of the troops that we’re loading up then waits as I get into the car. He gets in after me, sitting in the front passenger’s seat. “We’ll get you some water, sir, and maybe a little dinner. There’s a place on the edge of town that will work well. The owner is an old friend of your father.”
“Okay,” I answer. I look at him gratefully, and he tips his head just a fraction to indicate that he understands.
I lean back against the leather seat once more and close my eyes. This time, I can’t see Beth’s face at all, and that might make this the saddest moment of my life.
When I return to Leon, where my father’s compound is, I throw myself into the work immediately. I learn every detail of my father’s business. I study, I listen, I observe. I sit in on meetings with distributors. I sign off on arrangements with port officials we have on our payroll. I become the perfect heir apparent. I dress the part, I talk the part, I live the part.
Until I get back to my suite in the evenings after dinner.
At night
, I strip my clothes off, my cartel clothes—fitted dress shirts, custom-tailored pants, gold watches, wingtip shoes, silk ties. Then I crawl into the bed I shared with Beth, the sheets I haven’t allowed the staff to change. I bury my face in the pillow she slept on and breathe in her scent, the cinnamon that drifted from her hair, the fresh tanginess of her skin. I close my eyes and I dream. Her eyes. Her lips. Her breasts. Her legs. Her slick, hot center. Being next to her. Being on her. Being in her.
And in those moments at night, in the tropical paradise my father has created—the cold, distant, cruel paradise—I feel like my heart can’t possibly beat one more day. But in the morning, I wake, still alive, and I do it all over again.
AFTER David gets me through customs at the border, he loads me into his car, against my parents’ objections. My mother is adamant that I need to come home with them. I know she thinks I was harmed at Miguel’s, given my state of mind. I see her surreptitiously looking me over from head to toe, searching for some signs of physical harm. What she can’t understand is that what Miguel and Juan have done to me is so much worse than bruises or cuts or broken bones. They’ve taken my trust, my self-determination, my love, and destroyed it all like I was disposable, something to be tossed aside when used up.
I stare out the window of David’s car as south Texas rushes by in a blur of brown turning to green, agriculture turning to buildings. I quit crying an hour ago, and now I’m just empty, void of anything except a sick ache in the pit of my chest.
“He did it because he loves you,” David says softly.
“Don’t,” I warn.
“Beth. You need to listen to reason here. He didn’t have a choice. It was the only way to get Ybarra to agree.”
“Fuck that, David. And fuck Ybarra. Fuck Juan, and while we’re at it, fuck you.”
He shakes his head but keeps his mouth clamped shut.
“How could you have done that to me?” I turn to him, so angry, so powerless that my breath is coming in gasps. “How could you have agreed to that when you knew damn well it would kill me? The two of you treated me like I was a fucking child, like I don’t get any say in what happens to me. Like I’m some sort of Barbie doll to be manipulated and arranged and tossed from place to place without a thought as to what I might want. Such typical alpha male bullshit.”
“Seriously, Beth? You’re going to pull the damn feminism card right now? This was your life we were dealing with. What the hell was I supposed to do when Juan told me the arrangements? He said it was what had already been agreed to. I told him it would break you, but he said there was no other way. I couldn’t just leave you there. Tell me, what the hell would you have done if it was Alexis down there and you were the one up here negotiating for her life?”
I pause, my younger sister’s face floating in my mind. Her sweet smile and sparkling eyes. The times I tended her cuts and scrapes as children even though I was hardly any older than her. The times I held her while she sobbed her heart out as she struggled to come to terms with the choice between my parents’ approval or Gabe, the love of her life. I think of the way I felt when she was missing in Afghanistan during a military operation. I would have agreed to anything at that moment. Anything to get her home where I could see that she was alive and safe. That she hadn’t been changed in some fundamental way.
I swallow, look down at my hands in my lap. “Okay. You’re right. I would have done the same thing, but that doesn’t mean I like it.”
“I know, and if it’s any consolation, I hate it. I hate seeing you hurt like this, Beth. It tears me up inside to know what you’re going through right now. But I had to get you home safely. I just had to.”
I feel the tears start up again, spilling down my cheeks like tiny pieces of my soul rolling out of me.
David reaches over and takes my hand in his, rubbing his thumb across my knuckles as he steers with his other hand. “I’m so sorry, hermanita.”
“I know,” I whisper.
“What can I do?”
“Find a way to get Juan back,” I tell him, looking him in the eyes. “Please help me get him back.”
David sighs, defeat masking his features. “Jesus, you’re stubborn. It’s Miguel Ybarra, Beth. International crime syndicates, the federal justice system. Juan’s wanted in the US right now. And working for his father, he’ll be wanted in Mexico and half of Central America in no time. You’re asking the impossible.”
I give him a watery smile.
“God, I know I’ll regret this,” he says, shaking his head. He rubs a hand across the stubble on his chin and groans. “Fine. We’ll get him back, all right?”
“Thank you, David. Te amo.”
“I love you too.”
When I get back to Austin, my sister and Jill are waiting for me. They gently send David away, bundling me up in cozy clothes and putting me in bed with a movie playing on my laptop. Alexis climbs in on one side of me, a tray of tea and ice cream on her lap, and Jill climbs in on the other, a hairbrush in hand so she can braid my hair out of my face.
Alexis starts in on the ice cream, shoving a spoonful into my mouth every other time she dips into the carton. When we’ve finished it off, she pours me a cup of warm tea and we sit and watch Hugh Grant stammer his way into some woman’s heart.
As the movie ends, Jill shuts the laptop off, puts an arm around me, and says, “Okay, time to talk it out.”
I lay my head on her shoulder as I reach for Alexis’s hand. After a big sigh, I tell them the story, the story of Juan and Beth. The story of how we fell in love and why I can’t let him go, even now, even after he left me on a bridge in the middle of two countries, in the middle of two families, two hearts.
“So, what are you going to do?” Alexis asks, concern oozing from her very pores.
“I’m going to go to Uncle Max, and if he can’t help me, I’m going to go to another attorney, and if they can’t help me, I’m going to go to the Mexican consulate, and if they can’t help me, I’m going to go to the American consulate, and if they can’t help me—”
“Okay, okay,” Jill says, patting me on the shoulder. “We get it. Let’s slow down though and think this through carefully before you go off half-cocked”—she laughs—“or in your case, I guess no-cocked, right? I mean, that’s part of the problem. You’ve lost your favorite cock.” She giggles hysterically.
Alexis snorts and then shrugs when I glare at her.
“Sorry,” Jill gasps. “Sorry. Anyway, I think you have to be really careful about this. Juan is wanted here. You don’t want to alert the authorities to where he is and wind up getting him put back in prison. But his dad isn’t going to want to hear that you’ve been talking to people and telling them his personal business either. He knows where to find you and your whole family. You need to be careful, Bethy.”
Her nonjudgmental calm helps balance me. “You’re right. You’re absolutely right. I’ll go to Uncle Max and talk to him. Then we’ll see what needs to be done next. How does that sound?”
Alexis nods. “Like a good plan. Do you want me and Gabe to go with you?”
“No, I got this, but I have a feeling I’m going to need you. All of you.” I look at Jill. “This isn’t going to be easy.”
“Nothing in life worth having ever is,” Alexis says. “He must be worth it because my big sister would never fall so hard for someone who isn’t.”
I smile at her and close my eyes, suddenly exhausted.
I wake in the middle of the night, moonlight filtering through the curtainless windows in my room. Jill is gone, probably at work, but I look to my other side and there’s my little sister, sound asleep, her head tucked into my shoulder, her hair a jumble around her face. I think about how much I love her, and even though it hurts, I understand why they did it—David and Juan. They love me, and they were scared—scared that my life was in danger.
I’m angry at Juan, and I probably will be for a very long time, but love makes us all crazy. It’s made me crazy, and the crazy isn’t ov
er yet. If I ever needed proof that Juan loves me unconditionally, yesterday’s display provided it. He loves me, and he would rather live without me than see any harm come to me.
So I’ll get him back, I’ll kick his mafia prince ass, and then I’ll forgive him.
I march into Uncle Max’s office at eight a.m. because I can’t wait another minute. I’m so agitated that I feel like my skin is crawling with the anticipation. I haven’t slept in two nights, waiting until Monday morning so I could ambush Max.
“Well, good morning,” Isabella calls out to me as I stride across the lobby of Max’s office suite.
“Hi, Isabella.”
“We sure were happy to hear you were home safe and sound, mija.” She stands to grasp my hand and squeeze it before she pulls me into a hug. “Are you okay?”
“Yeah, I’m going to be fine,” I say. “But I need to see Max. Any chance you could slip me in?”
She sits down and moves her computer mouse around to turn the screen on. “He’s free until staff meeting at nine, and we’d love nothing more than to skip his weekly lecture about cleaning out the coffee pot and not rounding up on billable hours.”
I laugh. “Okay. I’ll let him know.” I head down the hall, stopping when I get to Max’s door and taking a deep breath to prepare myself for a battle. I knock twice like I always do. “Max?” I call out as I stick my head into his office.
“Oh, thank God!” he exclaims as he jumps up from his desk and comes over to grab me in a big bear hug. “You scared the shit out of me, mija.”
I breathe in his familiar aftershave. It’s so comforting. “I’m sorry, Max. I really am. It all happened fast and we didn’t have much choice about it, you know?”
Buried (Hiding From Love #3) Page 15