Self-doubt rises in his stomach like a helium balloon, pressing against his diaphragm and making it hard for him to breathe.
It’s not like these are normal circumstances either, he tells himself, grasping at self-pity. This meeting is anything but normal.
Arden lets himself in the back door, letting the screen ease shut slowly, as opposed to letting it slap the house if left unchecked—and possibly alerting Cletus’s nurse to the fact that he has visitors.
He strides down the short empty hallway and comes to a halt when he enters the kitchen. Everyone heard his entrance. Everyone is waiting for him, seated on barstools at the long kitchen island engulfing the middle of the room. From all the faces it looks like a poker game gone sour. One face stands out more than the others, and for once it’s not Carly’s.
Julio is shorter than Arden imagined he would be—though to Arden, his presence takes up the room—standing only a bit taller than Carly. He looks like her too, but with a wider face and more prominent, masculine jaw. The resentment in his eyes when he assesses Arden is unmistakable.
I guess I had my chance at first impressions when I got his sister arrested.
“Sorry I’m late,” Arden says, even though he’s not actually late at all. “Sorry” just seems to be the right thing to say at this point. Anything else might be deemed as unworthy in Julio’s eyes.
And unworthy is exactly what Arden doesn’t want to be.
Carly offers a small, anxious smile. She looks exhausted, and like she’s been crying. But then, why wouldn’t she look rough? She almost had her parents back, and then lost them all over again. How she can hold her head up now is beyond Arden.
She turns to Julio and says something in Spanish, something that ends with “Arden.” Julio nods at him, tight-lipped.
Arden reciprocates, swallowing a lump in his throat.
“Arden,” Carly says, “this is my brother Julio.”
“Tell him it’s nice to meet him.” It sounds generic, Arden knows.
“He understands you. He speaks English.” Julio simply nods at this.
“Cletus was just telling us that the best bet would be to send Julio,” Carly says. Arden can tell by her expression she’s not comfortable with this.
Arden raises a brow. This wasn’t the plan. He looks at Cletus. “And that’s a good idea because…?”
“Because none of my connections would be willing to go up against your pa,” Cletus says. He sounds winded. He probably shouldn’t be exerting himself this much so soon. “And if the wrong people catch wind of it, they’ll rat us out.”
“Cop code?” Carly says.
Arden and Cletus nod.
“But why Julio?” Arden says. “Surely there’s someone else.” Anyone else. If Carly were to lose Julio … Arden can’t imagine what it would do to her.
Carly stares into her mug of hot chocolate. “He volunteered. He wants to do it.”
“He’s a man, Carly,” Cletus says gently. “A man has to do what he thinks is best.”
Carly rolls her eyes, tears threatening the rims of them. “I get it. Manly revenge or whatever. But it’s so … dangerous.”
“I know it’s hard. But we really can’t trust anyone else to get the job done,” Cletus says.
“It’s a big risk,” Arden says, hoping to come to Carly’s defense. “Surely there’s someone else who can do it besides Julio.”
“Trust me, if there was, I’d be all over it,” Cletus says grimly.
Julio taps Carly on the forearm and says something to her in Spanish. When she responds, he shakes his head vehemently. “No,” he says clearly. “Me.” Then more words spill from his mouth, angry words that Arden wished he understood. Words that upset Carly.
“He says it should be no one but him,” Carly says quietly. “That it’s his problem.”
“Our problem,” Cletus says, pounding a fist against the table with less-than-convincing bluster. “Your problem is my problem.”
“Agreed,” Arden says, pulling up one of the metal barstools next to Carly. He stifles the urge to plant even the smallest of kisses on her lips, especially under Julio’s glare. “We’re in this together.” He nods at Cletus. “What else did I miss?”
“We’ll need cash. I’ve got plenty of that,” Cletus says to Carly, as if Arden hadn’t spoken. He raises a shaky finger at Carly when it looks like she’ll argue. “Not another word about it, hmm? I can’t think of a better investment than this operation right here.”
“He’s right,” Arden says, nudging Carly. “The old man may not have manners or all of his teeth or his health, but cash is something he’s got loads of.”
Carly shakes her head. “Fine. But we’ll need a story.”
“What’s wrong with trying for your parents again?” Arden says.
“It’s too soon,” Cletus says. “And it’s a lot of cash for Julio to get together again in such a short amount of time. It’ll make your pa suspicious. He’s a lot of things, but stupid isn’t one of them.”
“Then we’ll need a story for the cash too,” Carly says. She keeps twirling the mug around and around in her hands. Arden wishes he could comfort her somehow, pull her to him. Tell her everything is going to be alright. But Julio watches them closely. And Julio is not a happy camper.
Arden clears his throat. “Maybe he could just try for your father, then,” he tells Carly. “It would be more believable if he were trying to just get one over here at a time, right?”
“That could work,” she says.
“Do we know if they’ve made it back to Mexico yet?” Cletus says. “If Dwayne had a hand in their deportation, you can bet he’ll be tracing them all the way back home.”
“We haven’t talked to them yet,” Carly says. “All we know is what Mama told Julio when she was still at the bus station.”
Cletus adjusts the nose piece on his oxygen line, tucking the connecting tubing back behind his ears. He looks at Julio. “Who else would you want to bring over? Do you have a girlfriend?”
“No,” says Julio solemnly.
“Well, you do now,” Cletus says. “Something else, though. Moss is a careful son of a gun. Might pat you down. We’ll have to be ready for that.”
“I’ll be ready,” Julio says. Arden feels slightly jealous that Julio actually acknowledges when Cletus speaks to him. Clearly I’ve got to do something to impress Carly’s brother. He makes a mental note to learn some Spanish when this is all over.
If this is ever over.
“You’ll be in danger,” Arden says quietly. “Real danger.” To say the least. He wants to put a stop to this right now, to talk them out of it, but at the same time, this could work. And if it does, it means that he wouldn’t have to worry about getting caught spending time with Carly ever again.
It’s just that he’s not the one risking it all. Julio is.
But Julio is a grown man. He can make the decision for himself. He’s already seen what my dad can do. He already knows the extent of his power.
Carly looks at Julio. He fires back instantly, only in Spanish. She purses her lips. “He says ‘Lay a hand on my sister and find out what danger really means.’”
Cletus snickers into his sweet tea.
Awesome.
Thirty-One
Arden offers to make me a cup of coffee in what I assume is his mother’s fancy coffeemaker (Arden is too manly to have a fancy coffeemaker). I refuse, because I’m too wired as it is, and because something feels weird about sitting back and enjoying a potentially luxurious cup of coffee while watching my brother put his life on the line.
I’ll already be watching from the comfort of Arden’s room on his computer, which leaves an exotic swirl in my stomach. Our first kiss happened in this house. Also, I pulled a knife on his father here.
This house is full of all things unexpected. Which is not a good thing at the moment. I need everything to go down just as we planned. Or I might pass out.
“Are you ready to go up?” he says. He slip
s his hand in mine, lacing our fingers together. I’ve missed his touch, the assurance behind it.
I follow him up the stairs and into his boring bedroom. He messes with the computer to get Julio’s live stream pulled up on the screen. When it does, it shows that Julio is already in the cab on the way to meet El Libertador. The small camera planted on Julio might go unnoticed by the sheriff, but it stood out like a mangled thumb to me when we placed it on him. Its posing as the single jewel on a gold chain is a gigantic parachute of a red flag to me because Julio is the most frugal person I know, and has never owned anything gold. Not to mention, the jewel/camera is actually the eye of the gold-and-diamond elephant pendant on the chain, which is ridiculous for a man to wear anyway.
But Cletus insists he’s used this necklace with great success in busts, and that it’s the one necklace cam he never showed off to Arden’s father. “It’s a classic,” he explained.
In any case, Julio actually seems to like wearing the hideous thing. I wonder if he would indulge in gold necklaces if he’d been cast a different lot in life.
The room, this whole operation, seems empty without Cletus running it. But he couldn’t steal away from his rent-a-nurse, even for a few hours. Something about him having heart palpitations, which I’m convinced is the direct result from our concocting this kamikaze plan in the first place.
But we went over and over and over it with Julio. He knows what he’s supposed to do. Cletus assured us that the sheriff is predictable, driven by greed and power. I get the power part, but not exactly the greed. What more could he possibly want that he doesn’t already have?
“You think he’s nervous?” Arden says.
I lean back on the headboard of Arden’s bed and cross my legs in front of me. No matter what I do, though, I know I won’t be able to get comfortable until this is over. But in a sense, it is over, isn’t it? I’ve already lost my parents again, right when they were within my grasp. The chance to meet my little brother and sister for the first time. All these things we’ve been working for for so long. In a way, a part of my life is over. And it makes me want to disintegrate into a puddle of tears.
But I can’t. I can’t break down until Julio is safe. Until he does what he feels he needs to do. Please, God, I can’t lose Julio too.
“Yep. He’s about to faint, probably.” Which is pretty much where I’m at right now. Julio knows the situation can escalate in a matter of seconds; Cletus told him over and over how quickly Sheriff Moss can lose his temper. And I know Julio’s worried about it. I saw him praying this morning. I’ve never seen my brother pray.
“You think he can do this?”
“He’s mad enough to.” Which is true. He has a crazed, distant look in his eyes, a look that hasn’t gone away since our family was deported again. Again. I shake my head at the unfairness of it all.
“But can he pull it off?”
“Let’s hope so.”
Arden unplugs the laptop and carries it over to the bed, motioning for me to scoot over. He nestles beside me, placing the laptop between us for optimal viewing displeasure. From Julio’s point of view (the elephant pendant’s point of view), we watch the cab driver make turn after turn, just like he did on our first visit to see El Libertador, though we know from the address that the meeting point is an entirely different place.
Julio fidgets with the nylon handle of the black cash bag beside him. I would too, if I were transporting twenty thousand dollars. Cletus assured Julio it’s mere chump change to him, but I can’t imagine carrying around that kind of cash—someone else’s cash—wouldn’t at least cause a little anxiety.
Finally the cab driver pulls into a parking lot. I suck in a breath. “Here we go.”
Julio extracts himself from the car, hauling the bag with him. Once again, he gives the cab driver a wad of cash and asks him to stay. The driver shrugs. This doesn’t appear to interest him in the least. I wonder how often he does El Libertador’s bidding. We were told to use the same cab company as before. By now they’re probably familiar with the odd, abandoned addresses.
Julio’s steps on the sidewalk seem to coincide with my heartbeat as he lets himself into a lone brick office building, offset by woods behind it. He walks down a long hallway, passing door after closed door. The building is in major disrepair; large hunks of drywall are missing in places, exposing the wood-frame skeleton of the structure. Wires dangle from squares where I imagine light switches used to be.
Julio approaches suite 154—our final destination—shifting the cash bag between his hands. For a second, he clutches at the elephant on the necklace, blocking our view of his world. It feels suffocating, this darkness. This not being able to see what my brother is doing.
Then he uncovers it again, and we can see.
El Libertador sits in the corner of the room in a metal folding chair, wearing his ugly mask. There is no desk. No other chair.
Julio doesn’t appear to know what to do. I don’t think I would either, except to stand there mutely, just as he’s doing now.
El Libertador doesn’t keep him waiting long. “I told you to drop the cash off.” His Spanish is impeccable. I hate him for that.
Julio clears his throat. “I … I didn’t feel comfortable leaving it. It left a bad feeling with me last time.”
“I don’t care about your feelings.”
“I just wanted to make sure you got all your money.”
El Libertador cocks his head. “My people ensure that I get all my money. I don’t like changes to the arrangement.”
Julio’s camera moves down, as if he’s squatting. For a clipped second, I can see that he placed the bag on the floor beside him. The angle moves back to face El Libertador. Julio waits for further instruction.
“Where’s your sister?”
“I couldn’t bring her. She and I are at odds. She’s chosen a path that isn’t wise. I had to kick her out of our house. She has to grow up before she can be involved in anything like this again.” It stings, because this part comes so naturally to Julio; he actually did kick me out and we actually are at odds.
“You’re an interesting man, aren’t you, Julio. I wonder why you would go to the trouble of paying me to bring your girlfriend here when I clearly could not deliver on your parents.”
We prepared for this line of questioning. The thing that bothers me is that the sheriff brought it up so easily. Like he’s baiting Julio. I remember the desperation in Julio’s voice when he called me to tell me about our parents. Can Julio be baited?
I try to push the thought aside though, because he did just supply some vital information for our bust. He basically admitted to the attempted transfer of our parents. That is a good thing. Is this enough?
But I know it’s not. El Libertador tried to smuggle our parents. That’s all we can prove. We can’t prove that El Libertador and the sheriff are one and the same. Not yet.
“I know that sometimes things happen that are beyond your control,” Julio says calmly. But it’s not a peaceful calm. It’s a kind of calm that makes me clench the comforter on Arden’s bed. I hear deep resentment in the inflection of his tone. “It was a risk I was willing to take. So is this. I know your reputation. I know you’ll find a way.”
“How is it that you have a Mexican girlfriend, Julio? My understanding is that you’ve lived here all your life.”
Uh-oh. We did not prepare for this. “I … She’s the daughter of a close friend of the family,” Julio says, recovering so gracefully I give Arden a triumphant nod. I even let go of the comforter. “We e-mail each other, and talk on the phone.” Wow. Even I believe him. And I wish that Julio actually did have a girlfriend. A gold chain, and a girlfriend.
But El Libertador is not satisfied. “Where was she born? How old is she?”
Julio is quiet. I feel my heart hammer against my rib cage. His hesitation is audible. “I don’t mind telling you these things. It’s just that … I’m nervous being here. I’d like to get on with it. Please.”
&
nbsp; “That’s a nice necklace you’re wearing. Must have been pretty expensive.”
I don’t like where the questions are going, what they imply. I feel the room getting smaller and smaller around Julio. I wonder what he’s feeling right now. “It’s fake.”
“How did you come up with this much money so soon? Someone helping you out? How many helpers do you have, Julio?” The questions come like a staccato of shots from a gun.
Again, Julio hesitates for a second too long. “Forgive me, I’m not sure what you mean. I work very much. I also received a bonus from my construction job. Is that what you mean by helper?”
Wow, Julio is a better liar than I am. I scrutinize the mask, wishing I could discern El Libertador’s expression underneath.
“Your answers are very quick, Julio.”
“So are your questions. And you have a lot of them. Why?”
Arden clicks his tongue. “Oooh,” he whispers, as if we’re in the room with them. “Dad doesn’t like to be questioned. Not smart.”
The sheriff proves this fact by standing abruptly. “The questions are mine to ask, not yours.” He reaches behind him and produces a small handgun. I cover my mouth with both hands. Arden places his hand on my leg.
The only thing I’m thankful for is that this view of Dwayne Moss shows the prominent scar on his hand—something we’ll need to prove his identity. It also shows a great view of the barrel of the handgun, and I have to wonder if all this risk is really worth the payoff. “Now, scoot the bag over here with your foot.”
I hope this cures Julio of his smart-mouthing. If I were there, I would be pinching him. Hard. We knew the sheriff would be armed. Arden says he always is. We just didn’t think he’d actually draw his weapon—Arden says he never does. Threatens to, yes. Pulls it, no.