I felt shredded up inside and my own heart was afraid to repair itself.

I sighed and looked down at my dress. It was dirty, brown from mud, and I quickly shimmied out of it and into a pair of jeans and a tee-shirt I brought out of one of the spare bags from the trunk before Javier came out of the bathroom. I was tempted to go out to Camden, but even then I wouldn’t know what to say. And, he was right. Someone had to make sure that Javier wasn’t about to screw us over, especially now that I’d slighted him. He was extra volatile.

I was sitting cross-legged on the makeshift bed when Javier came out of the bathroom, ruffling his now wet hair, with a towel. A shower would have been nice considering I had dried patches of dirt on my arms but I’d get by without it. I couldn’t risk leaving Javier alone right now.

“You’re still here?” he asked, tossing the towel across the room. He walked barefoot, just a towel around his waist, to the bed. “I would have thought you’d left after what you’d said to me.”

“Sorry, you’re stuck with me,” I told him, turning my head away before he dropped his towel like I knew he would.

“Or perhaps you’re the one stuck with me,” he said. He climbed in under the shawl-like blanket I’d left on the bed and rolled over to his side.

“You’re not going to turn off the light?” I asked.

He laughed quietly, facing the wall. “Believe me, angel, you don’t want to see what comes out in the dark.”

I gradually lay back down, keeping my arms close to my chest. Within moments he was snoring and I did my best to stay awake. Even with the light on, it wasn’t too long before I fell asleep.

I was awakened the next morning by Camden’s warm and strong hands on my face. I smiled into his touch, still half-asleep and delirious with dreams.

“See, she’s alive,” Javier’s voice broke through the clouds. I blinked a few times and looked beyond Camden’s chiseled face. Javier was standing behind Camden’s crouched body, fully clothed and ready to face the day.

“Then why is she on the floor?” Camden asked, looking behind him in annoyance.

Javier turned around and left my vision. “Because she wanted to sleep there.”

Camden looked back at me, shaking his head as Javier left the room. “Asshole. Like he couldn’t have taken the floor himself.” But I could tell he was relieved that I hadn’t shared Javier’s bed. I was relieved too. I fell asleep and slept all the way through the night. I was still exhausted and groggy-headed, though, but I felt more prepared to face the day, to face North America’s largest metropolis, Mexico City.

“What time is it?” I groaned, wishing Camden would keep his hands on me for as long as he could. My eyes drifted over to his shoulder where the blood had dried and I winced at the sight.

“It’s eight,” Camden said. “We slept in a bit.”

“Your shoulder.”

He eyed it. “Yeah. I took the pills last night, okay Nurse Ellie? New bandage too from Jose’s first aid kit. I’ll be okay. Need a change of clothes though.”

I smiled despite myself, feeling strength returning, and slowly sat up. He grabbed underneath my arms and pulled me to my feet. There was a second or two where he was holding onto me, my chest against his chest, my head positioned just below his lips. I stared forward at his battered collar, at the bright tattoos – snake heads – that were coming through. I breathed in deeply, taking in his familiar smell and making it my fuel.

Don’t ever leave my side again, I thought. I wanted to say. I missed you. I still love you.

I looked up at his eyes, hoping he could see far enough in, see how I was really feeling.

I love you.

He stared back at me, eyes so perfect, so blue. Then he cleared his throat and looked away. “Are you ready to go?”

I took a second to compose myself and shot him a weak smile. “I just need to use the bathroom. I’ll be quick.”

Within minutes I was slipping a bra underneath my tee-shirt and heading out to Jose. The poor car looked even worse in the daylight. I was amazed it had even gotten us this far.

Javier was standing by the driver’s door and noted my expression. “At least the car will blend in with the city. Every car looks like this. Such a shame.”

I made my way to the trunk. “We should at least put on new plates.” I opened it, throwing my overnight bag back in and started rifling through the large Ziplock bag where I kept all the spare plates. There were about ten of them and two of them were foreign, one from British Columbia in Canada and the other from Tijuana state in Mexico. I took the Mexican plate out and waved it at them.

“This should help a bit,” I said and fished out my screwdriver from my spare toolkit. Man, it was nice to have my stuff again. I quickly took off the old Cali plates and put the news ones on, already feeling the heat of the morning sun beating down on me. With any luck, Jose would blend in with any old Mexican car now.

I brought out a pair of black shit-kicker boots that were extra wide at the top and had a leather belt around them that I’d added to them. They were perfect for stuffing a gun and strapping a knife to you. I brought out my Colt from the box in the truck and shoved it down my right boot, making sure it was secure. It looked awfully pretty next to the cherry blossoms on my shin.

I straightened up and looked over the trunk at Camden. “Hey where did you get the gun you were using last night?’

“Gus,” he said and my heart was immediately crushed at the thought of him. He’d come all this way with Camden for me and could be very well dead, if not tortured, by now. Every second we spent trying to get to Javier’s sister, the more Gus slipped away. But we needed Javier’s help, his knowledge of Travis, of the cartels, of Mexico. We had to help him before he could help us, even though I had a feeling all of us were equally wanted now.

I looked over at Camden and Javier, the wheels in my head turning.

“Javier,” I said, “do you think we need to change our appearances?” As it was I had a blonde wig in the trunk too and brought it out before he could say anything. I plopped it on my head and turned to look at them.

With Javier on one side of the car and Camden on the other, they both looked at me with a speechless expression on their faces. I guess with the blonde hair, I looked to Camden like I did in high school and I looked to Javier like I did when we were living together.

“Take it off,” they both said in unison then exchanged furtive glances with each other.

All right, so no disguises. I took the wig off, my scalp already sweating from it and threw it back in the trunk. I was okay with being who I was.

Camden pulled his seat forward and let me squeeze in to the back of the car. I hated being back there. I missed being in the front, I missed fucking driving, but knew Camden would feel slighted if I asked to change places and that was the last thing I wanted him to feel. More than he already did, anyway.

Javier pulled out of the dusty motel parking lot and drove steadily until we reached the first gas station. After we filled up, it was only about two hours before we reached the city.

I wasn’t prepared for the sprawl. I mean, I knew how large Mexico City was especially since it was the one of the largest cities in the world. I knew how far it was spread out, how many people lived there. But I still wasn’t prepared to see block after block of shanty houses reaching as far as the eye could see. There was no land, just houses. Just city. Just people. No wonder Javier vetoed our disguises – if you couldn’t get lost in Mexico City, you couldn’t get lost anywhere.

“Do you even know where to find your sister?” I asked him as he took the car down a busy thoroughfare off of one of the many intersecting highways. Traffic was thick enough to cut with a butter knife. The humanity was spilling out the city’s pores, leaking everywhere with poor beggars sitting roadside and skinny-limbed children playing in black exhaust fumes.

“Of course I know where to find her,” he snapped. “She’s family.”

I bit my lip feeling slightly chagrined, then said, “When was the last time you were here?”

He didn’t say anything for a few moments, just laid on the horn at a car that had cut him off with no apology. “Violetta doesn’t live in the slums. She lives like she should. I’ll find her soon.”

Camden looked back at me and I raised my brows. I wasn’t going to argue with Javier about his sister, it just all seemed a bit impossible, especially without GPS.

“Camden could use his GPS,” I offered and was immediately shut down with an icy glare in the rear view mirror.

“Camden can go fuck himself,” Javier said, still looking at me. Camden didn’t bother reacting, only looked back out the window at the never-ending hills of buildings. There were a few skyscrapers in the middle of the city but beyond that it was just house after house after house. Shack after shack after shack. It took a lot of effort to keep another panic attack from coming on, that’s how … engulfing … the city was. It went on forever yet made you feel like you were trapped in a box.

We drove for quite a bit, never really making it anywhere, before he begrudgingly told Camden to enter in “301-1250 Calle Burnaby” into his GPS on his phone. To his credit, Camden did it without saying anything, though it was at least another forty-five minutes before we got to the place.

Javier might have said that his sister didn’t live in the slums, but she was at least surrounded by the slums. Or maybe that was the case everywhere in Mexico City. Her apartment building was white-washed and fairly clean-looking with underground parking and a concierge-type person I could see lurking behind the barred windows of the lobby. But on either side of the building were slum houses, mostly one-story, some two, rising up around it like weeds.