“And second of all?” I prodded him.

“Second of all, you’re insinuating that I don’t care. Ellie and I never saw each other much over the last few years and I still looked on her like I would a daughter. A very badly behaving daughter that should be permanently grounded, but a daughter nonetheless. Whether I care or not should have nothing to do with whether I’ll help you.”

I looked at the ceiling in exasperation. “What the fuck does that mean?”

“It means,” he said, “that I could take all the information you just gave me and go find her myself.”

“Like it’s that easy,” I scoffed.

“It is when you’ve got connections, firearms, and an idea of where she’s going. Of course, you’re still ignoring the big question here and it’s the only reason why I’m hesitant to involve you in any of this.”

How the fuck did he just do that? He turned something that was my idea, my plan, and made it into his.

And I was biting like a fish on a hook.

“What’s the big question then?”

He rubbed at his beard. “Does Ellie want to be found?”

I thought maybe I was hearing it wrong because that didn’t sound like an actual question. Gus noted the look on my face because he said, “You see. You didn’t think of it.”

“Of course she wants to be found. She went off with a psychopath, a dangerous uncle killer. She did it to save me and my family. She had to.”

He nodded, seemingly to himself. “She probably did have to, you’re right. But that psychopath is also her ex-boyfriend. Ex-love of her life. The man, the catalyst, that made her the person she is today. You should have known the twenty-year-old Ellie. She was different.”

“I knew the fourteen-year-old Ellie. She was already damaged.” I was spitting out the words like shrapnel, appalled by what Gus was suggesting. It created an empty space beneath my ribs that kept threatening to break open. “Ellie hated Javier with a passion. Feared him.”

His eyes softened. “She always feared him, from day one, and that never did her any good. And hate, well we all know love and hate. Hate is the other side of the coin. It takes one good toss to get it facing down. It can happen quicker and easier than you would think.”

“Are you talking Stockholm Syndrome now?” That I could understand a little better. What he was suggesting was beyond my realm of comprehension.

He shrugged. “In a way. It’s just, with someone like Ellie, it’ll be really hard for her not to fall back into old habits. Javier was her biggest habit of all.”

The hole was opening, my heart threatening to sink in. I dug my fingernails into the palms of my hands and wished they were sharper.

“Camden,” he said pointedly. “It would be Stockholm syndrome on steroids.”

And suddenly, somehow, in some sick fucking twisted way, that scenario was a million times worse than the one I had envisioned. I thought the worst thing that could have happened would be Javier killing Ellie. Now I knew, I saw, it could get much, much worse.

She could fall back in love with him. He could seduce her and set that soul free.

And, in the end, still leave her dead.

CHAPTER SEVEN

ELLIE

Pain saturated my dreams. When I woke up the next morning, lying there stiff in our old bed, I realized I really bungled up my ankle when I jumped off the balcony. Looking back, it was a stupid move, leaping away like I was in an action movie. Granted, I was trying to escape a drug lord’s henchman, so desperate times called for desperate measures.

After Javier blackmailed me into agreeing to help him, I went straight to the room and didn’t come out even when he knocked on the door and told me dinner was ready, like we were roommates or some shit. I was this close to opening the door and breaking his perfect teeth, but it seemed the angrier I acted toward him, the more he liked it. He was delusional enough to equate hatred with passion and I’d seen the way he’d been appraising me, like some cocky player who assumes every woman is in love with him.

The thing was, I had been in love with him once. I’d been more than in love with him – it bordered on something between love and obsession, between Romeo and Juliet teenage dramatics and something real. But, it never was real. Over the years, I had convinced myself of that. I had to. It was the only way I could make sense of what he had done and what I needed to do to get over it. What Javier and I shared was a deadly cocktail of intense hormones and lies. True love doesn’t have a sick desperation to it, an undercurrent of doom. People who burn that brightly still get burnt in the end and I’m sure if it hadn’t been for him cheating on me, it would have ended some other way. The whole relationship had been based on deceit and it was only a matter of time before it would have caught up with me.

Now, of course, Javier knew the lie. I hoped it ripped his heart out just a little bit when he found out that all that time Eden White wasn’t who he thought she was. Probably not, though. He was different now, bolder and more exaggerated, all of his flaws magnified and his good side gone. He wouldn’t know the meaning of sentiment, though I had a feeling that it at least ate at his sense of pride, something he had too much of anyway.

I knew I shouldn’t have been lying there thinking about him and the past and the ways things had changed. Giving him all that thought was giving him too much credit. It was a hard thing not to do when you were stuck in his house, the house you shared together. It gave a sense of comfort and familiarity that was all an illusion. If this was six years ago, I could figure out what to do next and how to get out of it. I could escape once again and go find Camden. I would find a way to keep him safe, even if it meant having to watch him start a new life with his family.

The very thought of him and Sophia brought a heavy knot into my stomach. That was another thing I was trying to keep on the back burner, the fact that he was with his family. It shouldn’t have made me feel so … desolate … but it did. And it was partially my fault. I mean, I know I did the right thing, maybe the first right thing I ever did in my life. And yet, it didn’t feel right or good. It only made me feel a bit resigned that we’d even gotten in that position in the first place. If I could go back in time and change things, I would have split with Camden as soon as we left Vegas. I would have sent him up to Gualala on his own and gotten out of there before I fell in love with him. And, since we’re talking about a fictional time machine here, I would have saved Uncle Jim in the process.

The knot in my gut started to twist and bleed, a whole new, less-selfish set of feelings cutting through. Uncle Jim, whose face I still saw in my sleep, the man who’d been so much to me yet was willing to sell me out for a bit of cash. I still didn’t know how to deal with his death, feeling so much anger for what he tried to do to and so much fucking shame that he died on account of me.

And that’s what made things that much more confusing and hard to figure out, like puzzle pieces that never belonged together. The Javier of six years ago would have never killed my dear uncle, no matter how badly he hurt me. That Javier wouldn’t have kidnapped a mother and her child and smacked her around (or even hired his thugs to do it). That Javier, for all his smooth intensity and seemingly blind devotion (seemingly, being the key word), wouldn’t bribe me to help him kill someone. That Javier was the one I knew and the only one I could try and figure out. This Javier was a stranger and a dangerous one at that. I had no sense of affection in his eyes, no hint of remorse or respect in his movements. As much as I pretended I wasn’t, I was afraid of this Javier in a way I couldn’t quite put my finger on.

I’d fallen asleep with my clothes on, Javier, Camden and Uncle Jim on my mind, so when I finally woke up with my buggered ankle, I decided I’d had enough of submitting to my thoughts. I carefully got out of bed and decided a shower would be a good idea after being dusty and dirty for the last three days. Soap and water had a way of clearing my head unlike anything else (except maybe some well-done sex). When I was finished, I searched under the sink for an Ace bandage and found one, making sure my ankle was wrapped well. It probably wasn’t even as bad as a sprain, but I had to make sure that I wasn’t going to make it worse.

After the shower I contemplated putting back on my jeans and stained t-shirt when a morbid thought crossed my mind. I wrapped the towel around tightly lest Javier suddenly burst inside the bedroom and went to the closet I used to use. When I left Javier that one morning, I barely took anything of mine.

I opened up the door and sucked in my breath. All my clothes were still there. Jeans, palazzo pants, tissue thin tank tops, maxi dresses and skirts that reached the floor. A year’s worth of wardrobe belonging to a scar-shy twenty year old. I couldn’t believe they were still there, that he’d saved my clothes all this time. I thought he would have burned them in a beach bonfire the moment he discovered I’d left him without a trace (and stolen his favorite car and a bunch of his money). Maybe he was more sentimental than I gave him credit for.

Or maybe, dangerously obsessed. I couldn’t rule out that one either, considering where I was and how I got there.

I took in a deep breath through my nose and shook out the edginess. It didn’t matter what the answer was because there was no use in figuring him out. For whatever reason, my old clothes were here and they were clean and that’s exactly what I needed to feel even remotely human.

I quickly pulled out a pair of jeans, super soft from years of wear, and tried to shimmy them on. Well, as clean and comfortable as they were, they barely fit over my thighs. I was a thin girl but my legs and ass were always on the gratuitous side and I guess my twenty-year-old body had been a lot more waif-like than I had thought. I was sure it would have bothered any other girl to know she’d gained weight, but since meeting Camden, I’d refused to feel bad about my body anymore. He had loved it, my curves, my scars, the way I was now and that wasn’t something to toss away, especially when his safety wasn’t as concrete as I had originally thought.

I mulled that over, wondering how it was that Javier could get to Camden at any moment – was he being bugged, monitored? Did he have a person on the inside? Was it Sophia? I remembered the way she eyed the briefcase like it held every wish she ever had. Then I pushed those thoughts out of the way, deciding I’d soon get it out of Javier instead, and selected a pair of wide-legged pants, a tight spaghetti strap top and a cropped cardigan with three-quarter-length sleeves. Just long enough to hide the tattoo on my arm, the tattoo that Javier had kept staring at like it still meant something.

I smoothed back my hair, black as ink when it was still wet, and didn’t bother with the makeup I had in my purse. I had no one to impress, not this time. I opened the door and was immediately met with the rich smells of frying bacon and brewing coffee. My stomach growled on impact, turning over on itself, reminding me that I hadn’t eaten a thing so far.

“Good morning,” Javier said from the table, looking like a carbon copy of yesterday. Once again, he was dressed in a suit, albeit this one was sand-colored and had a plain white tee instead of a dress shirt. He was also reading the Los Angeles Times again and shaking his head in amusement at whatever was on the page. “Green mustang? Oh, that hurts my soul.”