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“You could hear her?”
I nod. “A little.”
“Then you must have heard her talk about the shot to your leg.”
I look down and see an especially large bandage across my thigh. I’m still wearing pants, but the right leg has been cut up to my hip.
“Kari thinks she got the fragments out, but it could be fractured. She doesn’t know.”
“I feel fine,” I lie, shifting slightly on the bed. The slight movement sends a burst of pain shooting up my leg and through my core. I tense and Eve sees it.
“You filthy liar.”
I smile and then lift her chin with my finger, bringing her towards me. “Why did you lie for me?”
She leans forward until her nose touches mine, shaking her head to brush them together. “Because I love you.”
Our lips press together softly as though it is the first time. I reach out and cup her face, curling my fingers behind her ear. When I drag my hand down her neck and across her waist, she winces.
I pull back and look at her. The bruising is even worse than I thought.
“What did he do to you?” I growl, tracing the swollen purple bruises down her ribs and across her back.
Eve relays the torture, explaining in minimal detail how Edgar abused her. Every slap she narrates is like I’m getting shot all over again. Before she’s finished, I’m shaking all over with bloodlust.
I’m going to kill the motherfucker who hurt my wife.
“I’m sorry.” I close my eyes and shake my head. “I should have been there.”
She grabs my face and kisses me. “You tried to be. That is what matters.”
I try to believe her, but my failures seem to be stacking up. Time and time again, I have let my family be hurt, and I can’t help but feel like I’m not doing my job.
“You need to rest,” she says, lying down on the small bed next to me and draping her arm across my chest. “I don’t know when they’ll come for us, and we both need to be as strong as we can.”
I try to imagine fighting with this broken, battered body, and I can’t imagine it. I’m terrified that, once again, I’m going to have to sit uselessly by while my wife is pulled from my arms and dragged away.
Eve sits up, her hand over my heart. “Calm down. Rest.”
“Are we going to get out of here?” Perhaps if I was stronger I wouldn’t ask the question, but I’m not, so I do.
Eve’s eyes flutter, going glassy, and she nods. “Of course we are. We are going to get out of here, get our daughter, and go home. I am going to make steak au poivre with pommes frites while you fill the glasses with our best wine.”
She explains the perfect night together, and I can see it all clearly in my head as I drift off to sleep.
Once sleep has me, however, the images shift.
Instead of steak, there is human flesh. Instead of pommes frites, there are bones.
One by one, I’m taking out the Cartel members, all the while recounting everything they’ve done to my family.
Every horrible thing they’ve done to deserve this punishment.
I save Rian Morrison for last. I laugh as she screams.
* * *
There is no way to know what time it is when I wake up, but I feel better.
