Asshole.

My body is sore from the sex we just had, sorer in some places than others. I strip off again, considering burning my clothes when I catch the smell of him all over them, and I take the hottest shower in the history of showers. The door starts hammering not long after I’m finished cleaning up, but I’m damned if I’m gonna come running out of the bathroom just because he’s decided he wants to see me now. I pointedly ignore the hammering until I hear the heavily accented voice hollering through the door.

“Hawthorne! Ms Hawthorne!”

Hawthorne? Oh, yeah right. That’s the dentist title I gave to myself when Julio asked my name. Naomi Hawthorne. The door rattles on its hinges, sounding like it’s going to come off them any second. What the hell is going on out there? I clamber out of the shower, wrap myself in a towel and open it up.

A short, overweight Mexican guy stands on the other side, chest heaving, with a gun in his hand. I begin to slam the door closed—I’m not getting shot to death in the bathroom of a Mexican brothel—but the guy jams his foot into the gap.

“Ms Hawthorne! Come, please! Help. Your help!”

My help? Adrenalin suddenly kicks in. Crap. Zeth did want to beat that guy to death after all. He must have attacked him or something. I let go of the door, shoving past the little Mexican man, and grabbing at the fresh clothes I put out on the bed. “Out! Get out!” I point to the door, glaringly furiously at the man; he takes the hint and hovers in the half-open door with his back to me while I get dressed.

“Okay, where is he? Show me.” He’s probably already killed that other guy by now. I don’t know why they think I can possibly stop him, but still…he’s been saying this whole time how we need to keep our heads down. How we need to not cause a disturbance, and now he’s gone and done—

I stop dead in my tracks. The fat little Mexican guy hasn’t been leading me to Zeth. He’s lead me out into the front courtyard in front of the villa, where a number of the girls from the other house are standing a circle, holding onto each other and crying, while a man on his knees is performing CPR on a body on the ground. It’s a girl. She’s wearing white sneakers and tight blue jeans, and her shirt is red. No, no her shirt’s not red. It’s white, but the front of it is saturated in blood. Absolutely drenched in it. The guy performing CPR stops, gasping, looking down at his hands like he doesn’t know what to do, why the girl’s not waking up when he presses down on her chest. Instinct kicks in, then. I hurry forward and shove him out of the way, not paying any attention to the startled gasps that escape the onlookers as he falls sideways. I drop to my knees and grab hold of the girl’s shirt, lifting it up.

The source of all the blood is instantly visible. A gunshot wound, just below the underwire of her bra. I roll her toward me, craning over her to check the back—is there an exit wound? No. No exit wound. Shit. And she’s been shot in the worst place possible. These days, bullets are designed to shatter inside a person, breaking into pieces to cause maximum damage to internal organs. And the internal organs close to this wound are the most fragile and most important of them all: The heart. The lungs.

“We need to get her inside. On a table.” I look up to find a dozen strained faces watching my every move. On the outskirts, I see a familiar face; it’s Michael. He’s lost in the bustle as three of the men, members of the same biker gang as Cade, hurry forward to get the girl inside. I still haven’t ascertained whether the woman’s even alive; I grab hold of her lolling arm and walk with them as they take her inside. With my index and middle fingers, I search for a pulse, find it, weak and tachycardic but there, and then—

A strangled gasp slips free from my mouth.

Oh, no. Oh, no, no... The small star-shaped birthmark on the inside of her wrist is more than familiar to me. It’s engrained in nearly every childhood memory I have. I’ve seen it a thousand times before. I’d recognize it anywhere.

I never looked at the girl’s face, but I know it’s her.

I know it’s Alexis.

They’ve laid Alexis out on the massive kitchen table, and there are maids running everywhere squealing and crying and speaking in Spanish. The guy from before, the one who was performing CPR on her, stands beside the table, hands prepared and ready to begin compressing again.

“Get the fuck away from her!” I bulldoze my way through the people who have followed us in and shove the guy away. “She has a pulse, you idiot!”

“She isn’t breathing, though!”

“She is fucking breathing. She’s unconscious because she’s lost too much blood.”

The guy staggers back, running his hands through his hair, smearing blood all over his face. “Jamie’s gonna kill me. Jamie’s gonna murder me,” is all he says, over and over again. He’s distracting the shit out of me.

“I need….” Fuck, I have nothing that I need here. I left my medical bag at my parent’s place. I didn’t think for a second I was going to be doing any medical work here. In hindsight, that was really dumb, but there’s nothing to be done about it now.

“What? What do you need?” The guy’s gone ghostly white, his hands shaking like crazy. “Tell me and I’ll get it for you. Come on!” He’s panicking, just like me.

“I need a plastic bag, duct tape and a sewing kit. I need alcohol, prescription drugs, boiling water, towels, tweezers. The sharpest knife you can find. Go.”