Falling With Grace

I hunched my shoulders and cast my gaze to the floor. “I do. Every night…”

The room bled with eerie silence despite the TV playing in the background with a woman crying next to a tombstone, her black mourning lace covering her hair and face.

How fitting.

Grimaldo placed his hands on his hips. His men stood around the smaller office and leered with palpable appetites. The pinkish-red walls were a traditional color, along with a Mexico retro poster of a woman with flowers in her arms.

Ximén moved around the room, stopping beside Grimaldo as I took three more steps backward.

There was no chance of escape…

There was no chance at Andrés…

My pulse quickened, and my skin prickled with sweat.

The doors opened, and Javier walked back inside. “Seems you nearly made a grave mistake, Grimaldo.” His hand wrapped around my upper arm, his fingers squeezing into my flesh.

“How’s that?” Grimaldo crossed his arms over his chest.

“He wants to meet her.”

“Well, now you have her. Without my men, she’d be in the wind.”

I swallowed my thick saliva, my throat clenching as Javier moved us towards the door.

He shook his head. “I thought you were smarter than that.”

“Over a simple oversight?” He tossed his hands to his sides, then slapped them on his legs.

Javier walked us back into the room, and I stumbled as I stared at the tattooed, muscled man who had his fingers pressed into my bruised flesh, my rib flexing as I tiptoed beside him.

“A simple oversight,” he said in Spanish. “You could have killed the only source we needed to find the bastard.” Javier jerked me back toward the door as though I were a Raggedy Anne doll. “She’s the closest we’ve come to finding him.”

To finding Andrés?

What did they want with him?

“That’s being a bit much. What makes you think she knows anything?”

Javier threw his head back and laughed as he pushed open the door. We marched back outside toward a shiny G-Wagon, along with two smaller men in tow.

Chills danced down my spine in waves of ice-cold dread, his sinister laugh like a nail in my coffin.

He tossed open the back door and pushed me inside, my sore shoulder hitting the back seat.

I grunted and held my arm closer to my chest, hissing from the ache in my rib. One of his men slid into the space beside me and another in the driver’s side. Javier shut my door and climbed into the front passenger.

“Where are you taking me?” I asked as the vehicle moved down the driveway and turned onto a road.

He tossed a tissue my way. “Clean yourself off. We have a long drive ahead.”

I snatched up the tissue and dabbed at my nose. “But that doesn’t answer my—”

Javier turned in his seat and faced me in a blur, his fingers digging into my cheeks as he pushed my head into the headrest. “Shhh.” He pressed his finger to his lips as darkness crept into his eyes. “You’re in no position to ask questions.”

I nodded rapidly, my stomach swirling.

Javier’s narrowed gaze flicked across my face and down my frame, only to meet my eyes again. “Get some rest. You look like you could use it.” He released my cheeks and turned back in his seat as the men snickered.