“At least they were heading north. Not coming here.”
“I couldn’t give a shit if they were coming here or not. I want them fucking dead so I don’t have to worry about them fucking things up again. They made me look like a damn idiot. The whole cartel, we looked like damn idiots. All of us.”
“If you don’t think they’re coming here, then why don’t you just …”
A pause. “Just what? Kill her? What kind of barbarian do you think I am? She’s my wife.”
The word wife stabbed me. My eyes flew to Camden. He couldn’t have been talking about my mother. Could he?
“I don’t mean any disrespect,” the man said quickly. “I just figured from the way you were … talking … the other night. From what she’s gone through … that it was on the agenda.”
Travis chuckled maliciously. “Agenda? There is no agenda. I will deal with Amelie when I am ready to deal with her. Until then, keep her down there.” He grunted, his footsteps echoing down the hall. “Fix me an omelette, would you? It would be nice if someone here wasn’t completely incompetent.”
Amelie. My mother. A bunch of thoughts flew into my head. My mother was Travis’s wife, even though that made no sense at all. I never saw a wedding ring on her finger and my father had died. But he had mentioned she was “down there” which I had to assume meant someplace in the house like a basement. That at least gave us a direction to go in and I could try and make sense about all the other shit later.
Then there was the fact that he didn’t once mention Gus.
At least Este’s hunch about Javier not being expected here was true. Then again, if he said the last place that we’d been spotted was Aguascalientes, then whatever happened to Javier and the crew out there in the jungle wasn’t orchestrated by Travis.
Which meant … oh fuck.
My eyes widened and judging from the way that Camden narrowed his eyes into a steely gaze, he was realizing the same thing. Nothing had happened to Javier.
We were set up.
They had planned for us to come here.
And here is exactly where we were.
Motherfucker.
I was pretty sure my blood was boiling over. I could feel my veins pulsing at my temples, my face growing hot and red. I was ready to go fucking apeshit. I was ready to lose my fucking mind.
Camden let go of his gun and put his other hand to my face and held me firmly.
“Hey,” he whispered softly. “It’s going to be okay.”
I tried to shake my head but his grip increased.
“Ellie. It’s going to be okay. We know your mother is here. We can get her out.”
“We were set up,” I hissed harshly. “And Gus?”
“We’ll get him too.”
“Where is he?”
“If he’s here, we’ll find him. But we find her first. She can help us.”
“They probably know we’re in here.”
He smiled, briefly, softly. “They probably do. But we don’t know how this will play out. You want your mother and Gus. They want Travis dead. We might be able to have both those things and walk out of here alive. We at least have to try.”
I understood what he was saying but it didn’t stop the burning pain in my gut, that feeling of utter foolishness. I hated myself for not seeing what Javier had been doing. He was spiteful more than anything, spurned by my devotion to Camden, to the death of his sister, the death that I inadvertently caused. He was a loose cannon, mad for power, and I had told myself that when I least suspected him that’s when he’d pull the rug out from under me. And even though I told Camden I wouldn’t put it past Javier to set me up, I still hadn’t believed it. I thought he loved me enough to want what’s best for me. To see me well. I believed in his love without remembering what kind of love it was.
Gus, my dear sweet Gus, had once told me to never mistake obsession for love. He was so right, time and time again.
Javier had set Camden and I up. To come here. Perhaps to walk free or perhaps to fail. He left me in that forest, using me as a pawn, walking blindly forward for Gus and my mother. He was both doing me a favor, leading me to what I wanted, and cementing my doom. Because whatever Javier was after, it wasn’t my happiness. It was his. And at this point in our lives, what made us both happy was very far apart. I wanted family. I wanted love. I wanted Camden.
He wanted power. Just power and only that.
I closed my eyes, trying to escape the humiliation at how wrong I was about everything. I didn’t handle being made a fool of very well. We listened awhile longer to the sounds of the mansion. It sounded like someone was at the other end of the house, perhaps the man in the kitchen, making the omelette. When those sounds quieted down, I could only assume that the breakfast was being delivered to Travis in some other room in the house.
As long as we didn’t stumble across that room, this was our chance.