The Animal Under The Fur

by E. J. Mellow

  The butt of my gun connects with the side of the man’s face as he slumps onto the leaf-covered ground. “I’ll ask you again nicely before I let her have a turn,” I say in Spanish while gesturing to 3, who watches on, arms crossed, behind me. “And trust me when I say that I’m the good cop in this situation. Why are you here?”

  It was almost disappointingly easy to find, corner, and disarm the last gunman.

  Given that he appears no older than eighteen, he’s green with missions such as this, and I have yet to decide if we’ll let him live to chance another. If we don’t put him down, the cartel he’s associated with most likely will. And there’s no denying these men were part of a family. Their weapons, black stealth uniforms, and lack of identification documents were enough to pin them to something nefarious. Now the question is, which one?

  The kid moans on the ground, clutching his buzzed head, which gleams with a

  streak of ruby from where my gun slashed into his skull. We’ve turned on a low-glowing

  lamp that rests by our feet and throws a soft haze on our interrogation, the hiss of bugs in the dense jungle our only witnesses.

  A mumbled grunt escapes the boy’s hunched form, and I lean closer.

  “What was that?” I ask.

  “Jódete!” Fuck you. He spits the words.

  “An entertaining prospect.” I wipe a bit of his flung saliva from my cheek. “But you’re not really my type. Now”—fish hooking his nostrils with my fingers, I pull him toward me—“let’s be more cooperative this time, yes?”

  He grunts in pain.

  “Why. Are. You. Here?”

  His eyes have turned a bit wild as they travel from me to 3, where they stay.

  Peering over my shoulder, I glance at my partner. Encased in black, her features are angular, sharp, under the moonlight as she stares transfixed on our captive, and despite the vibrancy of her hair, she looks every bit like a creature born from the underworld in this moment.

  “Do you have a fascination with my wife?” I return to study the boy. “I can’t blame you. She is quite pretty, no?”

  He remains silent, and I sigh before landing another crack to the side of his face. He groans, blood dripping from his mouth. “Despite what you might think, I don’t enjoy getting information this way,” I say. “So why don’t you help me skip this step and answer us. We all know you will eventually.”

  Still nothing.

  “It’s your pain, kid,” I continue in his native tongue before grasping one of his hands. He tries to wriggle free, but I straddle and pin him more firmly to the ground, taking off one of his gloves. Very slowly I pull his pinky finger back toward his wrist until there’s a snap.

  His howl echoes through the trees.

  “We have nine more tries to get this right.”

  “No, no,” he gasps, tears slipping down his cheek, and I wait. His tough act has quickly vanished. “Yo no sé,” he chokes, his brown eyes wide, desperate.

  “Don’t know what?” I ask.

  The boy begins to shake his head, his whole body seizing in fear. “No puedo. No puedo.” I can’t. I can’t, he keeps mumbling.

  3 steps over and crouches down. “Shh.” She gently lays a hand on his forehead, wiping away a few beads of sweat and dirt. “Don’t work yourself up,” she coos. “It looks like we’ve got a long night ahead of us, and your tears should be saved for what I have planned for you.”

  A wetness seeps out from his pants.

  “Shit.” I jump up. “That better not have gotten on me.” I glance to his now urine-soaked clothes. This kid obviously doesn’t have what it takes for such a life. He probably didn’t even want to be a part of this mission. I’ve seen it many times before. Young boys forced into corrupt roles because of their family’s lineage and made to suffer worse fates.

  It makes me sick, though 3 looks less than affected by our captor’s display of weakness. In fact, she looks completely apathetic to it. To her an enemy is an enemy.

  I’m about to suggest we possibly work out a way to let him go, when something pinned to his black fatigues catches her eye.

  “What’s this?” she asks, reaching for it. “A camera.” Her tone is almost delighted, as if now she’ll have no issues with what she’ll do next. “And who might be on the other end?”

  As I study the small black pin in her hand and the wire that connects from it to the inside of the boy’s pocket, something in me thrums with déjà vu. Where have I seen this before?

  “Whoever it is”—she begins to curl the wire around her fingers, slowly pulling its length from the inside of his jacket—“I hope they saw enough, because while their show is over, yours has only just begun.”

  And with that she snaps the cord, right when I yell, “Wait!”

  There’s a barely audible beep from inside his clothes as I hook an arm around 3 and drag her away as fast as I can. In the next second we’re both thrown to the ground as an explosion fills the jungle, my body covering hers as dirt and wet debris of blood and the young man’s flesh smack across my back.

  In the reverberation of noise that fills my head, the only thought I was too late in getting out hits up against all sides of my mind.

  Oh yeah, the camera, it’s also a bomb.

  39

  3

  CUETZALAN, MEXICO: 0705 HOURS

  The room holds the sharp aroma of electricity and plastic. A combination made by an overabundance of tech equipment that has always wrapped around the base of my skull in a painful twinge. It’s a similar sensation to staring into a flash of a bulb, but more lasting. Akoni sits on one side of his hotel suite, his wicker chair creaking in protest against his large form with every tap of his fingers against his laptop. Jules leans, arm crossed, against their open balcony door that gives way to a view of a tiny cobblestone ally, the cool air rolling in with the mist that always covers the town this early in the morning. Carter, clean shaven, rests on a small love seat beside her, leather jacket over gray T-shirt and dark jeans, chewing on a toothpick while his feet are kicked up on a coffee table whose ornate carvings are as offended as I to see his muddy boots draped across it. I stand on the opposite side of all of them, resting a hip against a wall peppered with a few framed watercolor paintings from local artists.

  As soon as Carter and I gathered ourselves from the explosion, we headed straight back to town, hardly washing the grime from the jungle off, and that poor sod of a man, before coming to Jules and Akoni’s hotel.

  “The area where you were attacked is pretty desolate. The closest town, besides Cuetzalan, is Ecatlán.” Akoni swivels his computer around, showing pictures of a slightly derelict village on a hill. Unlike Cuetzalan, whose buildings stand separate and proud from the surrounding jungle, Ecatlán is almost completely covered in green. Nature threatening to reclaim the territory as it creeps through the streets and climbs over rooftops. “They could have come from there or here or been stationed in the jungle like you were, doing a sweep, and merely happened on you guys.”

  “I don’t think so,” Carter says, dropping his feet to the ground. “They had no camping gear. No car waiting nearby. Their mission had a purpose, and one of those was to keep from being retraced.”

  My grip tightens around my bicep as I glance his way. Ever since returning, I’ve felt on edge, and it’s not because someone tried to kill me.

  People try to kill me all the time.

  No, it’s that someone saved me that has me walking around like I have a permanent wedgie. And not just any someone, but Carter, smug-ass bastard, Smith. It’s almost too painful to accept. He’s of course said nothing about what he did, how he shielded me with his body, leaving me with barely a scratch while he suffered the entirety of the blow. But I know he wants to. I can see it in his twinkling green gaze every time we catch eyes. Can practically hear his voice in my head right now—You’re welcome, sweetheart. It’s enough to make a girl crazy, and though it might be unreasonable, crazy is preferred compared the other emotion that’
s pressing against my chest. The one that feels a hell of a lot like…gratitude.

  Good God, that’s the last thing I want to feel toward Carter.

  Gratitude means owing someone, means being indebted to him. And despite what I overheard him admit to Akoni about being willing to save my life, I refuse to be locked to anyone like that. I hold all the favors, all the cards. No one else, especially not him.

  “3?” Jules’s voice brings me back to the room. “What do you think?”

  Quickly I shift through the last snippet of conversation, them discussing who could have been responsible for last night.

  “Ramie,” I say.

  “Ramie?” Carter frowns. “Why would you think that?”

  “Because I told him I’d be in the mountains the night he walked me home.”

  Silence, before…

  “What?” Carter throws his toothpick onto the coffee table. “You never told—”

  “I was fishing for information.”

  “By giving away your own?”

  I shrug. “Now we have a lead.”

  “How?” Carter rest his elbows on his knees, his leather jacket stretching with the movement. “It makes more sense if it were the men from the lake.”

  “But they were wearing different clothes.”

  “Weird.” Carter raises a brow. “I wonder how they managed that? Oh yeah, they changed.”

  I glower.

  “Think about this for a second,” he goes on. “I get that Ramie is a giant question mark, but just because you told him doesn’t mean it was him. You were under disguise, remember? Why would he send armed men after a doe-eyed college graduate, or better yet, know she was actually a redheaded spy traveling with a dashingly good-looking man?”

  Jules lets out a groaning eye roll before I can.

  “Unless you think you were compromised?” Carter ignores his tech Op while watching me carefully. “Were you?”

  I want to immediately say no, but everything is all backward and upside down now. I want to scream. Carter’s right. Last night’s attack was no random security sweep, the way they ran straight for us, like they knew where we’d be…

  “No, I wasn’t compromised,” I finally say, flexing my fingers on my bicep again. “It just makes no sense. They came at us like they knew exactly where to look. It was fast. But…” I glance to my booted feet. “You’re right. We were much farther out than the waterfall or any tourist trail. Ramie couldn’t have known. But I’m telling you—something doesn’t sit right with that guy.”

  “You said he mentioned his family owning a coffee plantation?” Jules asks, her blond hair glowing around the edges from the slowly rising sun outside.

  I nod and watch her and Akoni share a look. “What?”

  “Well, his alibi might be true,” she says. “On a visit to one of the nearby plantations, Akoni and I are pretty sure we saw him.”

  “What do you mean, pretty sure?” I push up from leaning against the wall.

  “As part of the tour, they take you out to the fields,” Akoni says. “When we were heading back to the main house, we saw a few men walk out and get into cars. One looked similar to Ramie, but we were too far away to be certain.”

  My nerves buzz. “Which plantation? How long ago was this?”

  “Three days, at Viento del Este.” Akoni types quickly on his computer before showing us pictures of a quaint tourist-friendly coffee plantation. Brown villas for guests are constructed next to a main house nestled atop a hill within the edge of the jungle. “It’s an hour east of Cuetzalan, roughly three hours from where you and Carter were attacked.”

  “I’m going there,” I say.

  “Ehem.” Carter clears his throat.

  “We’re going there,” I correct through clenched teeth.

  “What a lovely idea.” Carter leans back into the couch. “I knew I married you for a reason.”

  “Then that makes one of us.”

  “Don’t be too down and out, 3,” he says. “At least there’s one good thing we can take away from all this.”

  “And that is…”

  “Whether it’s Ramie, the men from the lake, or another family, the fact that they’re trying to kill us at all means only one thing.” His lips curve into an annoyingly charming grin. “We’re close.”

  Wind rustles through the flowers in the dark courtyard below as the soft buzz and chirps of the surrounding moonlit mountains filter through our balcony door. The muffled voices of new guests at Flor Tranquila can be heard a few floors below, and I take in the rare peacefulness of it all before my bed squeaks for the fifth time tonight, causing me to bite the inside of my cheek.

  He’s doing it on purpose, but I refuse to acknowledge his sophomoric attempt at getting under my skin. Doesn’t he know he achieves that just by breathing?

  Squeak.

  A trickle of blood oozes across my tongue. I bit down too hard.

  Squeak. Squeak.

  My grip tightens on the tablet that rests on my knees, the glass seconds away from breaking.

  SQUEAK.

  “Stop!” I throw a pillow at him.

  “What?” Carter blocks his face with his forearm. “What was I doing?” He presses his lips together to keep from grinning.

  I don’t know how he’s a successful operative. He can’t act for cat poop.

  “You know exactly what you were doing. If you’re going to read, read, but stop shifting.”

  “Oh, was that bothering you?”

  I don’t respond, merely take a deep breath and go back to looking at my Scrabble game.

  We’re leaving early tomorrow for Viento del Este, with Jules and Akoni following a bit later, and all I wanted after a week of camping and almost getting blown apart was a relaxing, comfortable night in. So when Carter crawled into bed beside me and, instead of immediately passing out like usual, pulled out a worn copy of a Spanish romance novel, I was more than a little annoyed. His book is wrapped in one of those humorously cliché covers featuring a luscious woman draped in a half-torn gown across a bare-chested man. I’m pretty certain he got it from Señora Flores, but the idea that it’s from his personal stash, particularly one that he’s read so many times it looks like it got hit by a truck, has my body clenching in painful fits from resisting to laugh. A reaction, I’m sure, he was going for.

  Even though he won’t get it, his creative effort I can’t help but appreciate.

  In fact, the longer the two of us sit nestled under the covers side by side, me in a tank and shorts, Carter (of course) bare chested, reading, it begins to feel oddly domesticated. Our roles of a married couple couldn’t be more believable in this moment.

  My turn to shift.

  “Ejaculate.”

  “Excuse me?” I snap my eyes to Carter, seeing him peering at my tablet.

  “Ejaculate,” he says again. “Triple word, double letter. Right here.” He points to the lower left corner of my board. “E-J-A-C-U attached to your opponent’s late. Sixty points.”

  I stare at the screen. I’d be able to replace more than half my tiles with that move, take a clear lead…

  “Go on.” Carter nudges me with his elbow. “I won’t judge you for using it.”

  I narrow my gaze, and he laughs softly.

  “Does accepting my help really pain you that much that you’d chance losing?”

  “I won’t lose.”

  “You are right now.”

  I glance at my score, my lips pursing.

  “Who are you playing against anyway?”

  “The computer.”

  He snorts. “Of course.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “Nothing.” He waves a hand. “Go back to playing against your doppelganger.”

  “Clever.” I roll my eyes. “How long have you been waiting to use that one?”

  “An excruciating few seconds.”

  “How fitting, since that’s exactly how I’ve heard women describe having sex with you.”

  Carter
makes a choking sound beside me, and I lean away, wondering if a fly suddenly flew into his mouth, the tiny hero of a bug now jamming his windpipe, but instead of falling over dead, a burst of air barrels out of him as he keels over laughing. I watch, slightly stunned, as he grips the white sheets around his stomach, his tanned muscles rippling under each loud guffaw. The deep sound rumbles through the bed and straight into my chest, a feeling of thawing.

  “Oh…my…Nashville,” he gasps, placing a large hand on my arm. “That was…too perfect.” He lets out a few more chuckles while wiping his eyes. “You win that round. You win.”

  I stare down at his hand still on my wrist, the warmth spreading out, up and down. While we’ve traded blows, kicks, and punches, we’ve never really touched, not like this, not without the facade of being a married couple while in public. After a moment more I realize Carter is looking at it too, his amusement silenced, replaced by the sound of our individual breathing as it tangles in the space between us.

  “You called me Nashville.” It’s not a question or an accusation, only a statement, words to fill the silence.

  “It’s your name.”

  His voice is softer than usual, and I make the mistake of glancing at him, finding his face close, precariously so, those bright flecks of gold dancing across his green irises. A thump thump thump of his pulse against his neck, while his dark, still-damp hair from his recent shower elevates his scent of male and cinnamon. I want to take in a lungful, stay still to see which way this spinning coin will fall, but as his gaze drops to my lips, flashing the telltale signs of what will happen next, what must, is when reality bursts back into the room, a winter’s wind.

  This is Carter.

  We’re on assignment.

  We hate each other.

  Slowly I slip my arm from under his fingers, leaning away while rubbing the skin that now feels sunburned, branded. Carter blinks, pupils shifting from hazy to focused, and with a swallow, carefully returns to his side of the bed.

  I’ve never hated my senses more than in this moment. Carter’s heartbeat is a locomotive in my ears, his pheromones blanketing the sheets like an alluring aroma from a lit candle. How long has it been since I’ve enjoyed the touch of another? Allowed myself to experience pleasure rather than pain? The hairs on the back of my neck stand tall as my muscles tense from the terrifying desire to grab him and pull him back while also wanting to run from the room, escape. Both reactions would only make whatever just happened, is happening, worse. So instead I force myself to remain, to pretend like I can’t hear, see, or smell the man next to me. Which is a lot harder than it used to be.