time to panic or worry about the man; this isn’t his first time at the rodeo. He can take care of himself; I know that from experience. That knowledge doesn’t stem the pure rage I feel, though. That I have to grab hold of with both hands and shove down inside me. I’ll have to deal with that later. I smirk, raising one eyebrow at Andreas still standing with his itchy trigger finger begging to be set loose on the gun at his hip. “No se te puso dura, Andreas. They say a guy who can’t get a hard-on has to make himself feel like a man in other ways.”
“What the fuck you implying, puto?” he snaps, stepping forward. Julio holds up an impatient hand, stopping him in his tracks.
“I really wish you would play nice, boys,” he says tiredly. “Andreas, go see if this guy’s ready to tell us what he’s doing here please. Zeth, I know you said you were going to collect a friend, but perhaps you’d do me the honor of spending this afternoon with me? I thought maybe some entertainment from the girls perhaps and a few beers in the sunshine?”
For fuck’s sake. He wants to keep me close. He may not believe Andreas right now, but he also doesn’t necessarily believe me either. I arrange my face into my best imitation of an apology. “Sorry, Julio. I really do need to grab this chick. Maybe tomor—”
“You wouldn’t leave me to drink alone, would you?” he breaks in. He places a firm hand on my shoulder, pushing me back into the sun lounger. “No, Zeth, man. I don’t drink alone. I’m afraid I really must insist.”
When I finally wake up, Lacey isn’t in the motel room. The place, dilapidated and threadbare, has an aura of abandonment that gives me chills. Feels as though I’ve been on my own here for a long time. I instantly panic, wondering where the hell the girl has gotten to. Straightening off the bed and hurrying barefoot across the darkly stained, slightly tacky carpet, I fling the bathroom door open fully expecting to find the girl floating in a dark red bathtub full of her own blood. The overhead lighting is stark as it lights up the off-white tiles and yellowing sink basin, but there’s no red in here. No blood. My heart rate drops a little. That is, until I realize the motel is right on the side of a busy road and there’s more than one way to kill yourself besides slitting your wrists in a tub of lukewarm water.
“Lacey? Lace!” I dash out of the room, surprised to find the sky overhead a glorious wash of pale blue instead of grey and weighty with rain clouds. The blonde girl stands thirty feet away, back to me, at a payphone cemented into the concrete of the parking lot. The handset is pressed to her ear. I make sure she hears me as I approach behind her.
“…night. Two of them.” Her large, intensely dark eyes widen as they register me standing to her left. She gives me a brief nod. “Yes,” she says into the phone. “I know. I will, I promise. But right now I just need the address.” She bites on her lip, her body tense as she apparently waits for whoever is on the other end of the phone to respond. The rigid stance evaporates a second later; she closes her eyes for a scant moment, exhaling a long breath, and then rummages for a piece of paper in her pocket. She quickly scribbles down a set of numbers using a Rest Eezy pen she must have found inside the motel room. “Thank you, Georgio. I’ll come and see you, I promise.” She slams down the handset, holding the screwed-up piece of paper in her hand triumphantly. “I got it. I got the address of the compound where Zeth is right now.”
I stare doubtfully at the paper, which Lacey’s currently waving in front of my face. “That’s just numbers, Lacey.” I’m screaming in my head, though. Compound? Fucking compound? That sounds dangerous and frankly very scary. And why the hell is it that Lacey knows where he’s gone but I didn’t get told? It’s an irrational, stupid thing to be pissed about given that she’s been living with him for six months now, and they clearly share a strong tie, but still. It sucks, and I’m clearly an irrational creature. I push all of that aside,