J Roars (6 page)

I opened my mouth to tell her what I thought a soldier would say to the woman he loved, and she chose the same moment to speak.

"Go ahead," she told me.

"I love you." It's the only thing that seemed appropriate to say.

She clutched her hair, her tell that she was struggling. I knew she pulled it to feel the pain. I'd done it before, dulled the pain inside with physical pain. Redirected the pain in my heart to the burn in my muscles from lifting weights a few too many reps. "I love you, too." She spoke with pain lacing her voice.

"You'll wait?" I knew she declared it while I was buried inside her, and she coming all over my dick, but I needed to hear it when she wasn't in a sex induced mind-set.

She shrugged. “There’s no other option for me. Just come back alive.”

I took her in my arms, exhaling the breath I didn't know I'd been holding. She'd wait. I'd fight to the death for her, and she'd wait for me to come back, which meant death wasn't an option. Winning was the only option. I wanted Burns' head
to melt in the fire pit outside the clubhouse. As messed up as that seemed, it was my overwhelming love for Elle that made such depraved thoughts enter my mind. I'd do just about anything for her. I knew it. There was nothing she could ask me that I would say
no
to.

She melted into me, her body forming to my own. “That’s the plan. That’s the only plan, baby.” I lay my forehead against hers and declared, “I’ll love you until the sun ceases to shine.” I kissed her, pouring my love into her, and feeling her light
flow into me. It was a perfect moment, and I left, leaving us suspended in that utterly flawless moment.

I hopped on my bike and took off for
Little Rock.

******

Son came up with a system of communicating our whereabouts to one another. It's not like we could pick up the iPhone and text an address to each other. Son had taken old smartphones, loaded them with a program he created containing millions of addresses matched up to latitude and longitude coordinates, and then killed all tractability on the phones. They were merely a tool to find the nearest waypoint we could communicate to each other. He'd even set up a search function so you could enter a zip code or any identifying landmark if an address wasn't possible. Once we had the coordinates, we sent them to one another. Upon receiving the coordinates, we'd punch them into the devices Son had rigged up for us, and it worked backwards to spit out the exact or nearest location the other person was at.

I knew something about technology, but Dig was still living in the dark ages. I think this is why Son made sure to go over everything with his dad almost daily, to make sure he understood how to use it, and to use it to
its fullest potential to keep us safe and the plan running smoothly. Or maybe he did it daily because it drove his dad crazy. Eh, either way, Son hooked us up. This was how I was able to have my empty burner phone with Elle's pictures. It was my untraceable photo album.

Son
came up with the idea the first night I'd met up with him and Dig to talk about Dig's plan. Elle was still in the hospital, and I was carrying around Gram's ring. I had it on my pinky finger, twirling it around, wallowing in remorse. Fucker used my pain to come up with a brilliant idea. Guess I couldn't hate on him for it. Especially since it allowed me to locate them in Little Rock, where I headed straight to after leaving Elle at Chris' house.

We met up in a gas station, pissed, and hit the road for San Antonio. We'd stop off there for a
few nights and then stay in Monterrey, Mexico until after the first of the month when Burns' drugs didn't get delivered to him. The Zetas kept residence outside of Ciudad Victoria, a city just south of Monterrey, but felt it safer and less conspicuous for us to stay in Monterrey due to its massive size and population. It's not like we blended in exactly, but we were less obvious in a bustling metropolis than a smaller city like Ciudad Victoria.

The drive was just what I needed. There was nothing like the open road to help clear your head. Though my time with Elle had been brief, I'd felt a sliver of hope that we'd be OK. She said she'd wait, that she couldn't love anyone else.  I wanted to ask her about
José, to grill her for every detail of what happened on that dance floor. I didn't though, knowing that whatever happened, she'd chosen me in the end. I was going to give her Gram's ring, do it soldier style, before Chris arrived. I guess it's what the universe wanted or else my plan wouldn't have been cut short, or at least that's what Gramps would say. It wasn't time for Elle to have the ring.

We met up with Jorge and Beto in San Antonio.
They would head to Missouri to handle things once shit popped off—when Burns didn't get his drugs. Dig had Fret come to San Antonio at one point to meet the Zetas he'd be working with. Everyone was skeptical of everyone, so in-person introductions became routine. I forgot when Dig had Fret down to San Antonio, probably on a day I was wallowing hard enough to not remember their meet-up. Those days had been frequent, but I hoped I could get through this next leg of the plan with my head in the game a bit better, if nothing else than for Dig. He saw the distance I put up, not wanting to let anyone too close to my pain. No reason for everyone to be pulled into the pit of despair I'd been existing in. Maybe knowing Elle loved me and was willing to hang in there until I returned would allow me to be a better right hand man to Dig.

We
eventually left San Antonio and the English language behind, and headed to Mexico. Jorge had hooked us up with a
quinta
—what I interpreted to be a cabin-like summer house, on the east side of the city, more so on the outskirts of Monterrey. It wasn't far from the heart of the city, yet it was isolated enough to keep us under the radar. The first few days in Mexico, Dig forbade Son from going out trolling for women, instead telling him he needed to stay on top of our technological situation. I wasn't sure what our "technological situation" was, instead assuming Dig was just trying to keep Son's ass off the streets and out of random women's beds. Son wasn't stupid. I'd seen him in action and he knew how to fuck under the radar, but in this instance, I sided with Dig. We were too deep in this plan and too close to seeing its finish to be fucking it up with pussy.

It didn't take long for Son to get irritated with
his dad, yelling matches ensued, and fights that only a father and son could have. As annoying as it was, it made me miss Gramps and my dad, even if my own father wasn't much of a father at all.  Dig wasn't willing to let Son loose on the town, but he did call in a favor from the Zetas. One day Dig and Son were at each other's throats, the next day we were being given Spanish lessons by a woman the Zetas sent over and told us we could trust. Not that we were divulging our deep dark secrets to her, but the fact that she knew where we were and who we might be was putting a lot of trust in her. She was a petite woman with dark shiny hair. She had this accent on her English, one that was sexy as fuck, like she could read the phone book out loud in English and her accent would have you nutting before she got through the A's.

She came each day just after lunch time, teaching the three of us some basic Spanish to make ou
r stay in Monterrey more enjoyable. It also was an opportunity for us to enjoy TV again. I'd never been much of a TV person, always on the move, but with nothing to do I'd found myself surfing the channels more often than usual. Only thing—I didn't have a clue what was going on. I wasn't a soccer fan, but was quickly becoming one as that was one of the few things I could watch and not need to understand Spanish. I flipped through the Spanish soap operas, remembering how dramatic Elle always joked about them being. Again, I had no idea what they were saying, but Elle wasn't lying when she said you could tell they were dramatic as all hell, putting Maury to shame.

Dig knew what he was doing when he hired this little firecracker to teach us Spanish. If my thoughts hadn't been filled with a leggy, curly haired, golden goddess, I would have been thinking nasty thoughts about Isabel, our tutor. I think we were on day three of her lessons when I heard her screaming from the back room.

"
Más. Más duro. Si. Si. Ahí mero. Ay, que rico cogen los gringos
."

I was sitting on the couch only half watching a soccer game, the other half of me listening to a very vocal Isabel in the bedroom with Son. Dig was next to me reading an American newspaper he'd gotten a
hold of, acting like he didn't hear the screams and moans.

"You did this on purpose, didn't you?" I asked him.

He looked up from the newspaper, his face blank. "Did what?"

"Did you hire
a prostitute or a Spanish tutor?"

"I hired a tutor," he said, going back to his newspaper.

"So what's all that going on back there?" I nodded towards the back of the house.

Dig didn't look up when he told me, "That is a boy taking after his father."

I broke out into a full gut laugh. "You knew Son would get in her pants one way or another?"

Dig peered over the paper for a moment. "It's what I would do." He left me with
these words and went back to reading, acting as if it didn't sound like a porno was being filmed in the back room.

If it hadn't been Son, if I wasn't so tied up in Elle, if I wasn't watching Dig pretend nothing was going on—I might have been turned on.
As it was, I was more weirded out than anything.

"I'm gonna step outside until you're pimperific offspring is finished. Come and get me when it's time for dinner." Dig nodded without looking up.

I wandered the property, going back and forth between running though the plan in my head, and planning how I would put Gram's ring on Elle's finger. I wasn't going to get down on one knee.  Hell, I wasn't even sure if I was asking her to marry me. I saw the ring as a symbol of loyalty, dedication, love, adoration, and above all, a promise to exist for one another until we took our last breaths. Fuck what the pope, the president, or anyone else had to say about the ring or what it was supposed to mean. Most women would probably be appalled at my idea, but I was pretty sure Elle would be onboard. Although if she wanted the white wedding, I'd give it to her. I'd give her anything.

This is how the next week passed. You'd think the biggest drug trafficking changeover of the century would be more exciting. Watch what you wish for, right? Because as soon as you get comfortable, that's when life takes a turn and suddenly ain't nothing boring. I think I jinxed myself...

******

Son was fucking, Dig was making lunch, and I was outside reading one of Dig's newspapers when a car pulled up. Jorge got out of the beat up Mazda.

"What's up man?" I asked him as he came towards me.

"Just got word there might be a problem."

"Should I go get Dig?" Jorge handed me a photo. "I was told to show this to you."

I was silent, incapable of forming words. It was Elle.  I looked at Jorge, a million questions playing through my mind, the main one being what the hell she was doing in
Mexico. Did she find out I was here? And if so, why would she come? I couldn't see any reason why she would up and leave Missouri to come hide out in Mexico with me. Shit, as great as that sounded, it didn't make any sense nor was it safe for her.

Sensing my lack of coherent speech, Jorge filled in some gaps. "Someone from the states told Ernesto. He knows her. Said you do too. Thought you might like to know she was spotted in a park not far from a university earlier today."

I thanked him. Clutching the picture of her in a park I recognized, I ran into the house. Ignoring the sounds of Isabel, who we'd learned was a very vocal fucker, I grabbed the keys to the Crown Victoria Dig had gotten for us to use, not that we'd used it much. We weren't exactly going sight seeing, but since we'd left our bikes in the states, Dig had hooked up the fuckin' cop car. It was ironic, and I may have laughed at the irony of it, but as it was, I was a man on a mission.

"Where ya going, brother?" Dig asked, eating a sandwich at
the kitchen table and ignoring the moans coming from his son in the back room.

I shoved the picture in front of him, unable to form words, and ran back out the door. I heard his footsteps behind me as I raced to where the car was parked.

"J! This is dangerous shit, brother. Let's talk about it for a minute, make a plan."

He might as well have been talking to the dust blowing around because I was unable to hear anything but the roaring in my head. Nothing good could come from Elle being in Monterrey. I had to get to her, make her safe. I heard José's words ringing in my ears.
What if I had to let the monster out to save Elle? Would I lose her because of the monster, even if I did save her? I didn't even know what I was saving her from, but a million thoughts were racing through my brain so fast I was unable to focus on a single one at a time. There was a frenzy of
what if's
bouncing around inside my head.

I raced through traffic, something no American can understand until they've driven in Mexico. There is a sort of lawlessness on the streets. I'm sure there are laws, I just wasn't sure what they were, and if anyone was following them. An
other interesting thing to ponder at a later time, but not now, not when the love of my life was wandering around unprotected in a city crawling with bad people, people who could connect her to me. Oh fuck, how could they connect her? And what happened if they did? Shit. I needed to get to her.