On Every Street (13 page)

He let go of me and jerked his head in the direction of the hall. Then he brought out his cell phone and dialed a number.

“I
t’s me,” he said into it. “We have a situation. Clean up. Camera needs wiping too. Bring Perez.”

Then he hung up and nod
ded again for me to get moving. “Please, Eden. I’ll handle this. You have nothing to worry about.”

I nodded meekly and staggered over to the washrooms. I looked up at my reflection in the mirror and did not recognize the blood-splattered blonde staring back at me. Ellie Watt was nowhere to be found. This was Eden White. And she had plenty to worry about now.

CHAPTER NINE

It was four in the morning when we returned to Javier’s house – he refused to let me sleep at home
and I couldn’t blame him. After I had cleaned myself up at the bar, I came out of the washroom to find we weren’t alone. Three burly looking Latinos were helping Javier clean up the mess, the bodies nowhere to be found. Javier saw me lurking in the darkness of the hall but didn’t acknowledge me. So I stayed there and watched, knowing that the men must have seen me and didn’t care. They were under Javier’s total command.

And they worked fast. Soon, two other men showed up
and then I was brought into the mess. While some of the men shampooed the carpets where the blood had seeped and repaired the broken door, I showed Perez, a chubby guy with a multitude of earrings and tattoos on his neck, where the electronic equipment was kept. Ten anxious minutes later, he said the security footage was wiped clean and replaced with benign footage. I immediately thought of the movie
Speed
and nearly laughed at the fact that this wasn’t a movie. This was suddenly my life and I was dealing with a whole new reality.

On the drive home, Javier convinced me that there was no way anything would be amiss. Gunshots were common in the
neighborhood, that much I knew, and there was no sign anything had gone down. Everything looked exactly as it did before and he said no one would report those boys missing.

“What about Tom?” I had asked. “He looked like a normal guy, like he went to college.”

Javier narrowed his eyes. “Never trust the men who look normal, Eden. They’re the ones who’ll cut you when you’re not looking. People will be looking for Tom, but they won’t come looking there.”

“But the incident at the bar.
They might come for you.”

He smiled dryly. “No one comes looking for me. I go looking for them.”

Even though I knew a little about what he did for a living, Eden White didn’t. It was time to ask.

“Who were those men?
The ones who helped you.”

His mouth twisted, lips pressed together. I wondered what answer he was going to give me, if it was going to be close to the truth, if he was just as adept as me at keeping stuff hidden.

“I have some friends, connections from Mexico. That’s all. We deal with a lot of…similar problems down south. I knew I could count on them to make things right.”

That was one of the vaguest answers I could get. But I decided Eden White didn’t want to question things. I had her
nod, like it was completely normal to have a murder clean-up team at your disposal. I made her naïve and gullible and happy to accept anything that was coming out of his mouth.

And honestly, it eased the guilt that was forever lingering in my heart, knowing that he was a liar too.

Later that night, as I was falling asleep in his familiar bed, feeling safer in his arms, he whispered into my hair, “I want you to quit your job.”

“What? No.” I couldn’t quit. I was only leaving if they made
me.

“I mean it. I worry about you. I can’t let you go out there without me. What if it happens again? What would I do?”
His voice broke and I wondered how this man turned out to be the way he was. So completely caring yet a killer without a conscience. “I need you, my angel. And I’ll do anything and everything to keep you.”

I let his wonderful words slide into me, melting away my reserves, the scenes of the night that were stained in my head. But I couldn’t quit my job. I needed something real to hold onto. “I can’t quit.”

“I’ll take care of you. I have money. I have the means. I’ve been taking care of my sisters almost my whole life.”

“Javier, please…no,” I said, trying to stay strong.

“Then move in with me. At least give me that much.”

Move in with him? We hadn’t even exchanged I love
you’s yet.

“It’s too soon,” I said feebly.

“Nothing is too soon with us,” he said. He adjusted himself so he was propped up on one elbow, his fingers trailing through my hair. I closed my eyes at his soft touch. “Please, angel. Make me your home.”

Moving in with him would bring me so much closer to what I wanted. That glimpse inside his life, to become a part of it, to become a part of his job. But now that I had a look into what his other life was like, the one that happened when I wasn’t around, I didn’t like it. I had prepared for this but it didn’t mean
anything. Each moment we were making love to each other, murmuring sweet nothings into each other’s ears, that was one life. Each moment that I would be reminded about his job, about my job…that was another life. And the further I sank into his arms, into the growing love I felt for him, I knew I’d have to make a choice. Did I want Javier? Or did I want revenge?

I snuggled my face
into the crook of his shoulder and whispered, “Yes, I’ll move in with you.” That was the only decision I could make for now.

***

Since I had been spending so much time at Javier’s place anyway, I felt at home right away. The only drawback was the thirty minute commute to work each day, but I found that being alone in my truck was the best time to try and distance myself from my new situation and get my life back on track.

Which wasn’t easy.
Javier had been right about the bar—no one suspected anything. Granted, after the incident happened, I didn’t work for another couple of days, but no one had called me saying they found evidence of a few murders, so I figured I was on the safe side.

It was hard being back at work though
, being at the scene of the crime. I’d tried to deal with what happened, what was going to happen to me, but every time I saw those images—Javier with a gun, the half-naked body on the floor, Tom with the gunshot in his head—I nearly blacked out from panic. I found ways to push the thoughts aside, to shove the images deep down. I tricked myself into thinking it had all been a dream, that none of it had really happened. I pretended that I was falling in love with Javier and that was all to the story. I didn’t let myself dwell on who he really was.

And the fact is I
still didn’t know who he really was. I knew he worked for Travis. I now knew people worked for him. He had power. He could kill people in cold blood. He was extremely skilled with a gun. He would do anything to protect me. The years leading up to this, I knew who I was going after and what I was getting involved with. I knew drug cartels were ruthless and violent, breeding people with no mercy. People like Javier. And yet now that I’d uncovered it, now that the blood was on my hands, I wanted to turn a blind eye. I wanted to sleepwalk through the bad and focus on the good.

Love was very good.

There was no point in denying it. I was in love with Javier. I just didn’t realize how bad I had it until Gus called me one day before my shift. I pulled over in the parking lot, eyeing the clock on the dash. I had five minutes and I hoped Gus wouldn’t talk my ear off. Not that it was his style to do so, but because I hadn’t talked to him in weeks.

“Hey
, Gus,” I greeted hastily, hoping he’d catch the urgency in my voice. It was May now and the interior of my car was making me stick to the seats. I missed the dryness of California badly.

“Ellie,” he said
, and for the first time ever, my own name sounded strange to me.

“Eden, please,” I said while attempting to put on mascara in the
rearview mirror.

“Sorry, Eden
.” He grew quiet. “Long time no talk. How ya been?”

“I’m good.”

“You sound good. You sound…busy.”

“I’m just about to start my shift.”

“You’re still working?” He sounded surprised.

“Of course.”

“I thought you’d be all wrapped up with, well, your mark by now. What’s his name again?”

I swallowed hard. “Javier.”
My mark.

“Yeah
, him. So how is that going? Did you get your revenge?”

I nearly jabbed the mascara wand in my eye. I needed to put the pointy objects away. I sat back in my seat, not wanting to talk about this, not wanting to face it. “Not yet.”

“It’s a long con,” he mused.

“This one might take longer than we thought…”

“Have you seen Travis yet?”

I hadn’t, actually. Aside from the night at the bar, I hadn’t
seen anyone that Javier worked with. He was at home with me when I was there. We spent our days eating good food, jogging on the beach in the mornings, making crazy bunny love at night. I rarely saw him take any phone calls. In fact, it was so easy to pretend that he didn’t do anything at all; he just existed and purely for me.

“No. No Travis. Not much of his work, either.” I kept my voice low, paranoid of my surroundings. It was evening and a few patrons were heading into the bar. I only had a few minutes left before I’d have to serve them.

“Well, if this is still what you want, then you keep at it until you see him.”

My stomach turned in abrupt knots. “Why did you say that?”

“What?”

“
If
this is still what I want…”

“Well…people change their mind. They learn to let go of things.”

“They fall in love,” I blurted out.

Silence hugged the airwaves. Did I really say that out loud? I was about to say something else, anything else, when Gus beat me to it.

“Ellie,” he said, using my old name again. “Mistaking obsession for love is one of the greatest mistakes you’ll ever make.”

“What does that even mean?”

“It means that you’re obsessed with your revenge. You’re confusing that feeling for love. You don’t love this man. You couldn’t possibly. You know deep down you couldn’t love the man who’s responsible for what happened to you.”

I gasped, my heart thudding up my throat. “Javier is not responsible for what happened to me!” I hissed, indignation flaring up over my skin, my face turning hot.

“He is by association. And when you’ve been screwed so bad that can be enough. He works for the man you want to ruin. The man you say ruined you.”

“He did ruin me!” I yelled into the phone, shocked at the anger that was pouring out
of me. So much for sliding everything under a rug. “He ruined me,” I said again, my voice lowered.

“Then you can’t possibly look at Javier and think he didn’t have a part in it.”

“He’s only three years older than me. He was in fucking Mexico at the time of the accident!”

“Look, I’m only telling you what you don’t want to hear. Javier might have never even known who Travis was at the time, but you can’t tell me that if Travis ordered him to do the same to someone else, some other little girl, that he wouldn’t
. That’s the kind of person you think you’re in love with, Ellie. I want you to wake up and see the lie. Obsession is not love. He is a bad man.”

“Well maybe I’m a bad woman!” I yelled and promptly hung up the phone. I threw it down onto the seat, watching it bounce in the air. I tried to catch my breath, the truck feeling even hotter, and la
id my head on the steering wheel, watching for the phone to ring, for Gus to call back. But he didn’t.

Suffice
it to say, I had a lousy shift. I was short with the customers and even snippy with Julie. She assumed I had a bad go with Javier, which was almost the case. I couldn’t exactly tell her that I was questioning my own feelings for him, wondering if I was making the right choice, if I was making a huge mistake. I made up some story about us fighting because we were stressed out, and she invited us on a double date to the movies with her and Andrew the following week. Though I had a hard time picturing the new Javier having fun with another couple, I told her I’d ask.

When I got home later that night, I sat in the truck for a few moments, trying to figure out what was what. Gus had never called back and that was fine. I heard enough. I knew the po
int he was trying to make and damn if it didn’t make some sense. Had I actually been falling for Javier? Did I really love him or did I love the lust? Did I love the deception? Did I love the idea that I was getting closer to my goal, as much as I pretended it no longer existed?

For all my questions,
I didn’t have any answers. I got out of the truck and trudged up the stairs to the porch. To my surprise, the table outside was aglow with candlelight and wine and cheese had been set out on a tablecloth which flapped quietly in the Gulf breeze.