Complete Corruption (Corruption #1-3) (60 page)

He dropped to a crouch, pulling me with him. “The street.”

He had soot across one cheek, and his face glistened with sweat. I couldn’t change his mind about sending me away from danger, I knew that. I also knew I couldn’t stand being away from him for a second.

He curled his fist and held it up as if keeping his patience inside him. His voice held a tension between uncontrollable rage and forced peace. “I’ll be right out. I swear it.”

I nodded. Took one step backward. The hostel was five steps away. The water heater was set away from it by ten feet, so the building hadn’t caught fire, but it was only a matter of time before that escape route was closed off.

“Go!” He pointed at the hostel then took off at a run in the other direction.

The flames and the space around him squeezed him tight as he got smaller, and I couldn’t stand it. I followed him.

Antonio stood by the boulder, looking down. A man crawled from the other side in a dark zip-up jacket and jeans, leaving a trail of blood in the sand. I knew him but couldn’t place him. Young. Goatee. With the way the desert sun lit his face, I almost lost the memory, but the goatee jogged it. I remembered a night on Mulholland
[→6]
when I brandished an outdated car security device. I’d been ready to kill this man, and Antonio dragged me away, promising to do it himself. Antonio had obviously let him live so I wouldn’t have his death on my conscience. And there he was, armed and ready to return the favor with murder.

“Bruno Uvoli,” I whispered.

Antonio made a
tsk
sound and shook his head. “His brother. Domenico.”

Domenico pointed his gun at Antonio, and my spine turned to ice, but I didn’t hear any shots. Out of bullets? Maybe. Antonio took three steps toward him and pulled the gun away, standing over Domenico with his own gun pointed.

“Antonio,” I said.

He looked at me then at my ripped sleeve where the bullet had almost hit me. “Go back.”

Domenico had his hand up to fend off death. His leg was bleeding where he’d been shot. Had I done that? I hadn’t seen Antonio shoot at the man behind the boulder. It could have only been me.

“You fucking bitch,” he said.

Antonio cocked the hammer.

“Don’t,” I said. I had followed him intending to do no more than close the space between us. I hadn’t intended to stop him from killing the second man. “It doesn’t do us any good. And we’re on foreign soil.”

He was going to shoot, or so I thought. Instead he lowered his gun and licked his lower lip. He took a single step back as he put the weapon away. “You’re right.”

My eyes met his with an emotional click. He’d heard me and acted accordingly, as if I’d had the thought for him. Everything in that moment was right.

He took my hand and guided me toward the hostel, which had already cleared out, and through to the street. We ran across. Traffic had stopped, and dozens of people watched the flames.

I slowed. I didn’t see anyone hurt but wanted to check, just to be sure. Antonio yanked me down the block toward our white Toyota. A Cadillac with the size and paint wear of a cruise ship pulled out from behind our car. Antonio ran to it and leaned into the driver’s side window, where a straw-hatted man in his fifties turned the wheel.

“I’ll trade you this car for mine,” Antonio said as sirens got louder in the distance. He pointed the Toyota’s key fob at the nondescript car we’d come in. He pressed a button, and the car squeaked. “Title’s in the glove compartment.”

Smoke rose from the desert behind the hostel, lighting the evening sky orange. A woman cried out behind me, bolting across the street. Two teenagers brought out a man with a bloodied shoulder, and she kneeled in front of him.

Guilt. There it was. I felt it for the innocent people I’d hurt. No more explosions. That guy was in pain because of me, and I didn’t like it one bit.

Caddy Man shifted his hat, looked at Antonio, then past him at me. I smiled coyly, as if this was no more than the act of a crazy-ass boyfriend.

“Transmission’s no good,” the man said in a thick accent. “Bad.” He laid his hands flat and wiped the air with them.

“It’s okay.”

The exchange of titles and keys was made in fifteen seconds, and our bags were removed from the Toyota in another five. Antonio drove away in a beat-up boat of a Cadillac with me in the passenger seat. An ancient fire engine pulled up behind us, and four police cars passed us coming from the other direction, sirens blaring and lights flashing red and blue.

Antonio put real weight on the gas pedal when the police cars passed. He pulled onto a scraggly highway, going in a direction I couldn’t figure out. The car went into fourth gear and stayed there no matter what speed we went, lurching and jerking.

He looked ahead with an intensity that couldn’t be attributed to the dark of night, one hand tight on the top of the steering wheel and the other draped out the window. The highway was mostly empty.

“Antonio?” I said.

No answer. Nothing moved but the small adjustments of the steering wheel.

“Antonio. Are you all right?”

Nothing.

“Antonio!”

He jerked the wheel, swerving to the side of the road in a crunch of sand and rock. The car pitched, flopping gears as the sheer length of the thing kept inertia from throwing us overboard. He slammed it in park and, in the same motion, reached for me. I didn’t like the look in his eye. It looked like murder.

When his hand went around my throat, I liked it less.

“You did
what
?” He was stuck on some old conversation, as if rewinding a tape and playing it randomly.

“What are you talking about?” I asked, grabbing his wrist with my hands. He was holding me still, not choking me, but it was uncomfortable.

He thrust himself across the seat. Nothing stopped him. No armrest. No brake. Just a leather surface he put his knee on to get leverage. He was livid. Spitting mad. Hair in front of his face, beautiful mouth curved into a snarl.

“You drew fire to yourself?”

“It was—”

“
Basta!
” He put his face an inch from mine until I smelled bullets on his breath. “You do this again, and I’ll…” He gritted his teeth so hard he couldn’t speak.

“What?” I croaked. “What will you do?”

He pulled me toward him, fingertips digging into the space behind my jaw. I leaned into him, taking my hands off his wrist so I could push closer. I wasn’t afraid.

“You do not—”

“What are you going to do, Capo?”

He didn’t soften. Not a millimeter. He did not waver. He pushed me back against the door, and with his other hand, he twisted me around until I lay sprawled across the front seat.

“This is a fact, and it’s a threat. You get killed, and I am as good as dead. Kill me first. If you die, you should just kill me.”

I put my hands on the sides of his face. “It was the right thing.”

His thumb stroked under my chin, and he lowered his head to put his lips to my cheek. “No. Don’t… ever… do that again.”

“I’ll do what I have to.”

He let me go and got as far up on his knees as possible under the car ceiling. I gasped as he reached for his waistband.

“There is one thing you have to do.” He popped his button and held up a finger. “Stay still while I fuck you. That’s your job. Spread your legs. That’s all.”

“You’re so fucking backward.” I tried to get up, but it was cramped in the car, and Antonio pushed me down. “Get off me.”

He didn’t get off me. He yanked my pants down with one hand and pressed on my breast with the other. He ripped off my jeans, stripping me of my shoes. “I’m going to fuck sense into you.”

I had arguments on top of wisdom. I had logic and strategy on my side, but he pinned me like an animal and pulled my leg up until my knee was at my ear.

He slapped my ass and paused.

I groaned. “I’ll do it again if I want.”

“And I’ll spank you for it if I want.”

He slapped my bottom three more times. God, I should have been humiliated, but it woke my skin, sending a fire of pleasure through me. I couldn’t move. Bone to skin, I was made viscous from the intimacy of indignity.

He pulled my legs farther apart, and I let him. He was hard with me. Merciless. His roughness silenced me into short breaths.

“Who’s backward?” he growled. “Who has her legs open? It took me nothing to get you naked with your pussy out.” He jerked up my shirt. “Now your tits. I can do anything to you. You’re going to take my cock, and when you do, I want you to know I’m never letting you alone again. I own you, and you’ll do what I tell you.”

Before I had a chance to erase the thought, he rammed into me. My head was bent into the door handle, and one leg leaned on the dashboard as he took me without regard to my pleasure or pain. Outside, cars blew by so fast, I felt the air pressure change. I reached for him.

He swatted my hands away and pressed them to the window. “Look at me.”

And I did, because he was still the most beautiful man I’d ever met.

“Never again. Say it.” He pressed into me, deeper than deep, rubbing my clit with his body. “Look at me.”

“Always, always.”

“Never look away again.”

He thrust into me again and again, and the fullness between my legs grew like a balloon ready to burst. I could have looked at the intensity in his eyes forever. There, I could believe he’d always be by my side, that I’d never be afraid again, that the safety he promised was real not just for me, but for us.

I believed it. In my heart I did, for just a moment, and the orgasm that came in that moment became tangible, with its own weight and mass. He let my wrists go and leaned on me. For those few moments, his roughness was gone, and he made love to me while I came, clawing his back as if that would get me inside him.

He buried his face in my neck and stiffened, releasing into me. He groaned again and again, then he was done.

He whispered my name. “Drawing fire can get you killed. There is no world without you in it. Nothing. I’m not talking about despair. I’ve lost people. This isn’t me being a child. There is one universe. Just one. And it’s between us. If you destroy that universe, you destroy me. Do you understand what I’m saying? You cannot do that again. Ever. For me.”

“I was scared,” I whispered. I could barely hear myself over the cicadas.

“I know.” He dragged his lips over my cheek and to my throat.

“I was scared you were gone. That you’d be hit while I couldn’t reach you.”

“I know.” He picked his head up and looked me in the eye. “I don’t want you to be scared ever again. I’m going to teach you how to survive without me.”

I pushed his chest so I could look him in the eye. “Enough of that.”

I took his hair in my fists, I was so angry at him. How could he even consider that nonsense? Some idea that he was mentoring me for a life of misery?

Cars had been blowing past us sporadically, so the presence of another car on the highway didn’t surprise me until it slowed down, and a car door slammed.

“Oh, crap,” I said, pulling myself away.

Antonio picked his head up while holding me down. “Stay.”

“I’m naked.”

“That’s why I’m staying here.”

I heard the crunch of footsteps outside, and my door opened. Upside down, the man in the dark brown shirt looked ten feet tall, with a cowboy hat and a silver star like a sheriff in the old west.

Just above me, the underside of Antonio’s chin cut a triangle into my view of the night sky.

“Spinelli,” the Tijuana cop said with a tinge of annoyance.

“Oscar.”

“Hotel rooms too expensive for you?”

“We couldn’t find parking.”

“Get dressed, fucking gringos.”

He slammed the door, and Antonio and I wiggled back into our clothes.

“You know him?” I looked behind us. Looked like that cop and another, shorter guy.

“His daughter.”

I stopped what I was doing and looked at him.

“She got into trouble with a guy.” He buttoned his pants. “Some drugs. The guy ran to LA, and I brought him back to TJ.”

I jerked my legs through my jeans. “So he owes you?”

He buttoned the last button of his shirt. “Why?” A smile stretched across his face as if he knew what I thought but let me meet him there.

“How fast does this thing go?”

“In fourth gear all the way? Even this shit American car can hit a hundred fifty.”

I made the rest of the journey in my imagination. He’d start the car and take off. We’d be followed for a time so the cop could say he did his best, but they’d give up, report us, and move on. We’d have nowhere to go. No passports. No way back. Then for sure we’d never get back to Jonathan.

Antonio caught my train of thought. “I don’t think he’ll chase us far.”

I put my hand on his knee. “I have a better idea. There’re no passports coming, right? If the forger sold us out? There’s only one way out of here.”

***

When we got out of the car, Oscar held out his hand to shake Antonio’s. Oscar looked older, early fifties, when I was right side up, and his deputy looked to be a couple of decades younger. We made introductions in the middle of the desert, the afternoon wind forcing us to shout.

“You’re in the shit, my friend,” Oscar said.

“Keeps life interesting.”

“Okay, I get it, but letting you walk’s gonna cost you. You get outta LA with any cash?”

“I did,” I interjected. I had a few hundreds in my pocket and no more. “But not to let us walk. We need to get back over.”

Oscar looked at his deputy, then at Antonio. Tipping his head to me, he said, “Live one you got here. She know she’s jumping into the lion’s mouth?”

“You can do it.” Antonio waved as if it was nothing. “You got a badge. You can do anything.”

Oscar laughed. “How? Tell them not to look at you?”

“Yes.”

Oscar looped his thumbs in his belt as if they were too heavy for his shoulders to carry without support.

“People see what they want to,” I said. “If they trust you, we can get across.”

He laughed so hard his elbows shook. “You want me to be your coyote?”

I didn’t want to look at Antonio. I didn’t want to see his disapproval or disdain. Didn’t want to see the thousand reasons this wouldn’t work. But I did look at him, and he was fixed on Oscar, steady and strong.