License Notes

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Copyright © 2018 by Aitana Moore

All rights reserved.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events or locales is entirely coincidental.

Without limiting the rights under copyright(s) reserved, no part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law. Making or distributing copies of this book constitutes copyright infringement and could subject the infringer to criminal and civil liability

CONTENTS

ONE

TWO

THREE

FOUR

FIVE

SIX

SEVEN

EIGHT

NINE

TEN

ELEVEN

TWELVE

THIRTEEN

FOURTEEN

FIFTEEN

SIXTEEN

SEVENTEEN

EIGHTEEN

NINETEEN

TWENTY

TWENTY-ONE

TWENTY-TWO

TWENTY-THREE

TWENTY-FOUR

TWENTY-FIVE

TWENTY-SIX

TWENTY-SEVEN

TWENTY-EIGHT

TWENTY-NINE

Other books by the same author:

Historical romance as Lara Blunte:

The Last Earl

The Abyss

True Born

To Be King

(Winner of the Wattys 2015)

Contemporary romance as Lara Blunte:

A Man in Africa

ONE

“Martin!”

Lee’s false surname was French, but it was being pronounced in English. The call was followed by a sharp knock on the door that made her jump from the bench of the holding cell.

She had been waiting for that knock. The cell had held her for half the night and all the morning, and she now expected to be taken to an interrogation room, where the police would throw her French passport at her, aware that no such person as Lydie Martin existed, and read her charges of theft and grand larceny — or however they called her crimes in the UK.

They had found her the previous night, sitting in a bus with about twenty million dollars in precious jewels. She had run away from Deerholt two days ago, taking one of the estate’s cars from the garage. Fifty miles later, she had abandoned the car and cut through woods to a town where, wearing a beanie and dark contact lenses, she had boarded a bus to another small town. There she had worn sun glasses, a dark scarf around her head and shapeless long garments to buy hair dye at the drugstore. She had used a foreign accent; perhaps they would think she was Muslim.

Another disguise, another bus and she had ended up at a small hotel in Winchester, where she checked in with her French passport. In her room she had cut her hair, dyed it dark brown and destroyed all her other documents, including the American passport.

She had been on the bus to Portsmouth when she spotted the police moving toward her. They had appeared out of nowhere, weaving through the crowds at the station. There were several cops, but only two had entered the bus, without weapons, and asked her to step out. They had opened her bag, felt for the diamonds and found them; they had handcuffed her and asked the driver to take her luggage out of the hold.

Lee had watched the people watching her from the bus window. They had gaped at the policemen and then let their curious gazes rest on her. Who was that young woman, and what had she done?

By that time, she had made too many mistakes. James had been fast and she much slower than usual. She could imagine him telling the police to watch out for foreigners arriving in small towns, or women with hats and glasses. He would have told them to look at the footage in bus stations, because she couldn’t rent a car or call a taxi or Uber, at least not until she changed her appearance. He would have known she needed to dye her hair.

A job ought not to be handled like that. She ought to have run away from James in London, a big city where she could easily vanish. She ought to have calmly arranged the exit strategy with Quinn and handed the diamonds to him in an efficient and clandestine exchange. She ought to have been out of the country in six hours maximum — before the man she had robbed even woke up.

But one’s potential couldn’t exclude one’s weaknesses. Lee had the potential to be a multi-million-dollar thief, but she had also had the potential to fall in love with James. She might have gotten away, if she hadn’t hoped that he would catch her. When her instinct of survival kicked in by the second day, it had been too late.

Now she ran a hand over her short dark hair and smoothed her black T-shirt as the policeman opened the door. "Someone’s here for you," he said, motioning with his head for her to walk ahead of him.

"Who is it?" she asked. “The attorney?”

“It would be a solicitor.”

The night before, Lee had refused to talk and asked for representation, and today the policeman was non-committal as he escorted her out of the cell and down a corridor. Voices drifted out to her. A woman hadn’t stopped cursing for hours.

They reached a battered door and the policeman opened it. Lee was surprised, because she had not expected to find James there. He stood behind a table, wearing a dark suit, a crisp white shirt and looking rich and well-born, as he was.

"All right, sir, when you're done just knock," the policeman said.

"Thank you," James replied.

Once the man left, James politely motioned toward the chair across from his. "Sit down, please."

"James—”

He interrupted her by going around the table and pulling the chair for her, as he always did. She obeyed, and he took his seat. He looked her up and down; in her short hair, T-shirt, jeans and trainers she looked quite different from "Vivien."

"Is that the real color of your hair?" he wondered, not really expecting an answer. "I knew you were a brunette, of course. Your being blonde was the thing that added up the least.”

She tugged at her hair as if it could cover her.

“You became three or four different women in two days, I’ve heard. Not an amateur, then, at the theft thing?”

Lee didn't say anything; what could she say? He was angry beneath the surface — not beast-angry, but ice-cold furious.

"What’s your real name?”

"Lee," she said through stiff lips.

"That’s not Lee for Lydie, I’m guessing.”

She looked at the ground again.

“Probably it’s not even Lee, but it will do. That French passport is fake, of course.”

Lee nodded; there would be no use lying to him anymore. She would have to beg him not to prosecute her, because she couldn’t go to jail or Cora would have to return to their mother. That could not happen.

But James clicked his tongue and said lightly, “Crikey, you’re in trouble. Caught with millions of pounds in stolen jewels and a fake EU passport, no less.”

Gathering courage, Lee looked at him. "James, I’m sorry—"

He scoffed. "I'll get the diamonds back — no great harm has been done. You need to feel sorry for yourself now.”

Having found out what she was, he probably cared nothing for her. Then why was he there? To gloat?

“I don’t know if you know,” he said, “but in the UK we have what is called ‘theft with breach of trust.’ Have you heard of it?”

Lee shook her head.

“Well, it’s self-explanatory. Then there are degrees. The person who plans and executes such a theft is found to have high culpability, which would be your case.” He leaned back in his chair. “I’m sure some other victims of yours can be found. Always men?”

Again, she nodded.

“How could it be otherwise? They have run your prints and not found any trace of you, so I guess it was your debut in this country?”

“Yes.”

“I’m honored. But even if I don’t go to the trouble of unearthing a few fellow victims, just with my charges you would be behind bars a while."

This time her eyes flew to his. "Would?"

He gazed at her for a long moment, then said slowly, "I find that you are absolutely essential to me."

Lee had been in confusion for days, and she could not, at first, understand what he meant. Had he found her because he wanted her back?

Except that his eyes were flat as he added, "I'm in dire need of a thief."

TWO

A thief.

Well, that was what she was.

It was still difficult for her to speak, but she looked at her trainers and said, "I understand why you're angry. I lied the whole time, so I could steal from you.”

“In spite of being slow, I had gathered that much.”

By avoiding his eyes, she managed to say in a rush, “I’m sorry that I did it right after you found out about Imogen. Everyone lied to you, but I thought it would only be worse if I waited.”

“Oh, I agree there’s never a good time to open a man’s safe and steal from him,” James said airily. “You might as well do it on Tuesday as on Saturday.”

“James, I didn’t want—"

Changing his tone, he interrupted her. "I think you know men, Lee. We're vain — it would be embarrassing for me if we had to hash the whole obvious thing out."

"I was—"

"It would also be reckless of you, really," he added, his eyes narrowing. "You’d be provoking me when I’m here to propose something that will get you out of jail. You're a businesswoman of sorts, I’m sure you want to listen to a deal?"

James seemed reasonable as he sat with legs crossed, elegantly holding a plastic cup of water, but it was fruitless for her to talk; he wouldn’t listen.

"All right, then,” she said. “What am I supposed to steal?"

"It seems that a bloke has gotten Caitlin into trouble.”

Lee’s head snapped up. "Caitlin?"

He gave her another forbidding look, as if warning her not to show a regard for Caitlin which he didn't believe was real.

"She dated a young man from Mexico a little while ago," James continued. "According to what she told me, she was more than turned off when he acted like a bit of a freak. I didn't want to know the details, and neither did she want to tell me. She broke up with him not long before her birthday party. The point is that the dickhead recorded Caitlin without her knowledge in ways she would not want to be seen. I would definitely not want her to be seen like that. He wasn't happy about being dumped and is now threatening to release the film on internet."

"I can’t believe anyone would do that to Caitlin!”

James smiled. "Don't people do the strangest things, though? Of course what I’d like is to get hold of the wanker and split his skull like a melon. But I've often been told I should never follow my first impulse."

Lee dreaded what was coming. "Why do you think I can do something about any of this?”

"I only realized what your real occupation is a couple of days ago, but I have to consider it serendipity. Here am I, in need of someone who can lie and infiltrate a man’s life, and abracadabra, there you are.”

A look of real delight animated him. He was going to make light of things to save his pride.

"How am I expected to steal a feed from this guy?” she asked. “He might have uploaded it in the cloud. It could be anywhere and everywhere."

"I am aware we are no longer at the age of the 8-millimeter film," James said. "We can't burn all the copies of this abomination. What I expect is for you to encourage the something horrible he likes to do and film it."

"Something horrible?" Lee felt that her breathing had become shallow, but her voice didn't falter as she went on, "Do you mean—?"

He waved a hand. "Like I said, I don't know any details, but I am fairly certain that a woman of your experience can encourage his tendencies. His family is powerful but conservative, and from what Caitlin tells me, Diego — that’s the idiot's name — lives in terror of his father."

"Why can't you ask the father to make his son stop?"

"Who goes begging to someone they don't know?" he wondered with a laugh. "And it wouldn't be enough assurance that what Diego has on Caitlin won't see the light of day sometime or another.” His tone changed again, to a decisive one, “My sister has been through enough, and I want this nipped in the bud."

"I see. You want me to encourage something bad—”

“As bad as possible.”

“And record it. With me in it.”

James shrugged. "You don't even look like the woman I knew, and I'm sure you'll change again. Your name changes. What would be the problem, exactly?"

How can you not know what it would cost me to go to someone else?

"It’s your profession,” he insisted. “You must have had weird rich victims before. You’ll know what to do.”

She flushed at the implication in his words as he steadily continued, "A honeytrap — I think that's the expression — like you can't be squeamish, surely?"

"I want to help Caitlin, but not like that."

"There is no other way, and I am not really interested in what you want." His voice sounded like velvet now, something that only happened at very intimate or very angry moments. "Unless what you want is to stay in jail for a long time."

Lee was used to controlling her own emotions, at least in front of others, but James’ eyes would not leave her. He wanted to drink in all her misery and discomfort; he wanted her pinned to the wall, and there she was, wriggling. 

She couldn't help wishing that he was acting out of vindictiveness and not from the realization that she was worthless, except for this one thing that she could do. The pain of having become a mere instrument to him was sharp. It was going to be written all over her face, so she turned to look out the barred windows, as if she were considering his proposal.

It's my fault. I did this. But she couldn't help feeling angry when she looked back at him and found a blank face. He was so perceptive; how could he not know what she felt? How could he not know that she had run away because she had been terrified?

James waited for her answer. She drank some water and finally managed to say, "Would I be able to walk away from this without a record?”

"I’d put the whole thing down to a misunderstanding between us. And if we do it quickly, they won’t check your passport."

"You don’t care about what I tried to do, then?”

"Don't flatter yourself. You're just a thief. What do I care if some other idiot falls for you and loses his jewelry?"

"You trusted me—"

"And I was even about to propose matching tattoos. I'd say you did your running away in the nick of time. But, back to business,” he insisted. “Is it jail for the foreseeable future or just a bit of work you're used to?"

Don't do this to me.

He had retreated behind the wall of his irony and lifted both eyebrows, expecting her reply. She hated him for it, even though she deserved everything he was heaping on her.

"I'll do the work, of course," she said, speaking like the tough-as-nails businesswoman she was meant to be. "You can count on me to get something really disgusting on him."

There was still no expression on his face, not even a flicker of anger, regret or victory as he stood and moved to the door, knocking on it. "I just knew I could."

THREE

"GUESS IT’S TRUE that he wasn't like the others," said Quinn.

"I guess."

Lee had rented a house in the hills of Lisbon, a quiet place to meet Quinn and prepare for what would come next. It was mid-August, but an unusual cold front was sweeping through Portugal, and she huddled inside her sweater as they sipped bourbon outside. Quinn, as usual, reclined in a patch of sun that kept shifting with the clouds.

"I don’t mean to rub it in,” he said, stretching. "Just reminding you, because I have the small suspicion that you're not done with the man."

She ignored him. "What's my name this time?"

Quinn was jealous, but he could control the feeling; he wasn't too angry at her because although she had made a mess, she had assured him that James was no snitch. Besides, Lee was going to need Quinn and the money she had in her accounts to help Caitlin.

James had left her Quinn, her stolen money and three other things that had been restored to her when she was released from the holding cell in England, soon after their conversation: a white gold chain, a medal and a brooch with diamonds that mimicked drops of rain.

"They're not..."

... mine, she had wanted to say. But they were hers, unlike everything she had taken from his safe. He had given them to her.

She hadn’t finished the sentence, but she had been equally unable to put the chain around her neck. It had hardly ever been anywhere else until she had run away. After she was released, she kept it in a box inside the zipper of her bag, with the brooch in another box.

Sentimental idiot. Things must have a purpose; those things had none. They had useless feelings attached to them, that was all. And James had left the jewels to her as a rebuke, or as the proof of his indifference; or perhaps because it would be uncouth to take back presents, even from a thief.

Quinn threw an American passport in the air and she caught it. "Ashley Elizabeth Clark,” he announced.

"You're always so old fashioned."

"What do you want me to call you, Shakira or something? I’ve gotten you a new French passport, just in case the Lydie one has been compromised. That’s what you need to use when you get into Mexico. Then use the American documents when you’re with the mark. But don’t cross into the States—”

“I’m not going there. You know that.”

The photo in the US passport was of her as she really was. She wasn’t going to steal anything in Mexico; she was going to blackmail a blackmailer, so it didn’t matter what she looked like. There wasn't much she could do to change her hair, as it was already short, and she had no heart for the usual dyeing, or for sculpting her lips or for anything at all. She was only turning her green eyes to brown through contact lenses so that she felt less exposed.

"You’ve changed again?" Cora had exclaimed over a video call the day before.

At least she hadn't said, “You look sad, Lee.” Sometimes the biggest effort Lee had to make was for Cora to believe that all was fine, that she was happy and busy, working toward a future where they would be able to live together.

“You were right, sweetheart. That hair was high maintenance.”

“You look tired.”

“A little bit. Demanding boss.”

“Oh!” Cora widened her eyes. “Was he an asshole?”

“Cora, language!”

“Was he?”

“Not exactly. I’m just glad it’s over.”

I’m glad it’s over. I’m glad I won’t ever see him again.

Now Lee took a deep breath and asked Quinn, "So, what about the boy?"

"Diego is twenty-five. That's older than you. Did Bryce call him boy?"

"Tell me about Diego," Lee insisted.

"All right, intro to Diego."

Quinn jumped out of the sun bed with sudden agility, and they sat next to each other at a small round table as he opened his laptop. Lee had already seen images of Diego Aguirre de Ayala. He was the first thing she had googled, as soon as she had access to internet. Caitlin wouldn't have gone around with a man who looked like a brute, even if he turned out to be one in spirit: Diego was a handsome young man with tidy dark hair and eyes that seemed sweet for a blackmailer.

Scrolling through more photos, Quinn said, "Comes from high political stock — a great-great uncle on his mother’s side was president of Mexico and his grandfather is still a senator, although he’s almost eighty."

A man in his fifties appeared on screen as Quinn continued, "His father Miguel is the head of Index, the family conglomerate. Stands for Industrias Mexicanas. Market value is at $9.5 billion."

Lee let out a low whistle.

"Right?" Quinn asked with a wry smile. "We've done nothing but roll around in a silly playground all our lives, Lee. Through Index the Aguirres have a finger in every pie, basically: oil, steel, tourism, transport, construction. And they've been rich for generations."

He clicked the mouse again to show her a man in his early thirties. His hair was lighter than Diego's and his eyes blue, but their features were almost identical.

"Diego's older brother, David. He’s already on the board of directors of the holding. Diego, on the other hand, is just returning to Mexico from business courses in Europe, which I suppose is how he met Caitlin. He will be entering the board soon."

"Hobbies?"

Again, images succeeded each other. "Skiing, jet skiing, bungee jumping, hunting, you name it. Your average imbecile billionaire who can't sit still."

"I hate the hunters most of all," Lee mumbled. “At least the ones who hunt with guns.”

"Killing Bambi and the Lion King and whatnot. I hate the jet-skiing idiots most of all, they keep me from falling asleep on beautiful beaches. Oh, he loves this."

The image Quinn produced was of a game being played by white-clad men holding baskets.

"I've seen that," Lee said. "Has two short names?"

"Jai Alai," Quinn said, pronouncing it carefully. "Basque game. Lots of old Basque families in Mexico, they went there hundreds of years ago to massacre the natives and did very well."

"Well, we can't hold that against Diego. Haven't you found any scandals?"

Quinn reached backwards for his glass of bourbon and sounded regretful as he said, "It won't be that easy, Lee. If it were, wouldn't your brilliant victim-or-tormentor, don't know which, Señor Bryce have figured it out?"

She shrugged. "I guess."

"In a family like the Aguirres, there have to be whole cemeteries of dirt and populations of skeletons hiding. There must be walking dead coming out of every closet. The point, though, is that they have enough money to avoid anything sticking to them."

Lee stood and moved to the edge of the terrace, looking down at the red roofs of Lisbon, which undulated all the way to the Tagus. "I only need something on Diego. Something he desperately wants to hide from his family."

"I know. How will you meet him?"

"Señor Bryce has given me an intro point. A Mexican artist he knows, who moves in the right circles. The Aguirres are her patrons and she can introduce me to Diego." Lee added, “The rest is up to my skills as a honeytrap.”

“Is that what Bryce called you?”

She didn’t answer.

“We have to have thick skin, I guess,” Quinn said. “At least when we’re caught.”

Turning, she motioned toward the laptop. "All of Diego’s known history's in there?"

"I'm thorough, my sweet."

Lee smiled. "You're the best."

Was it the right time for Lee to tell Quinn that she wouldn’t go back to their old tricks? He was highly intelligent, and he probably already knew. It would feel like a goodbye to talk about it, and she didn’t ever want to say goodbye to Quinn.

"Need to give you this," he said with another sigh.

He opened the false bottom of a cream jar, revealing different kinds of tiny cameras, as usual. She had ditched the previous ones when she ran from Deerholt. Unfolding a kit with make-up brushes, he showed her the hidden reverse side, which held instruments she could use to open doors or duplicate keys.

“And I’ll be a call or text away for any hacking you need,” he told her.

She took his hand. “Quinn — I screwed up really badly. If James were a different kind of man, he’d have people out looking for you. He knew I wasn’t doing this alone.”

“It was stupid of you to run like that, Lee. But I believe you when you say this isn’t the kind of man who would bother about me. I’m more worried about you, actually.”

“Why?”

He shrugged. “Can feel something. It’s because I’m Irish.”

“Oh, and the Irish are special.”

“We have special powers, we do. I feel that …”

“What?”

He gazed at her for a moment. "That this man is dangerous to you.”

Scoffing, she poured herself a drink. “You haven’t even met him.”

“The Irish trick wouldn’t be so impressive, if I had.”

“You must have powers, then, because he was dangerous. I did get caught. The job was a bit too big, he was smart, and I guess I got nervous.”

She was forced to look up when he didn’t say anything.

“There’s something else I should tell you,” Quinn said softly. “In case you don't realize that others can see it."

Her expression became detached. "What?”

"You're madly in love with Bryce.” Swirling the bourbon, he continued, "And you've annihilated his trust and wounded his pride. He just found a horrible way to keep you close to him, that's all."

"I've told you," she said, almost impatiently, "he'd do anything for his sister, and this is the only thing he can do to make sure she's safe."

Quinn shook his head slowly. “I want you to understand: you're going into Diego's life as a fake, and you're used to doing that — but you're doing it for a different reason now. What doesn't change is that you have a mission, and you have to keep a cool head at all times. Get what you need, get out. Don’t act like you did with Bryce, because that's how you got caught."

“I’m not dawdling again, if that’s what you mean.”

“What I mean is that I have a big feeling Bryce will appear in Mexico. He will go to you, and when he does you have to get rid of him or the cool head is gone, and you'll make mistakes. You can't afford that, not a second time."

Lee said nothing, and his eyes bored into hers to drive the point home. "Do you hear me, Lee?"

"I hear you."

She didn't think Quinn knew what he was talking about. She was never going to see James again.

FOUR

As Lee shopped for “Ashley” and packed her suitcase, she felt no butterflies in her stomach, no obsessive curiosity over Diego, no anticipation or excitement.

She had been found out, and she didn’t think stealing would ever give her the same rush again. Even if James felt the indifference he professed for her criminal activities, even if she never saw him again, she would feel watched. It wasn’t her secret anymore, a secret she could only have shared with Quinn. It was out in the open, subject to the judgment of a man whose opinion mattered to her, much as she told herself otherwise.

You’re just a thief …

It had hurt to hear him say that. James was a man of principles; even if his beliefs were unconventional at times, he had the grace of standing by them and bearing the consequences. A thief was a weathervane, changing with every wind. A thief was nothing and no one, which was what Lee had often longed to be.

Lost as a light is lost in light.

It felt sordid to put away the cameras and instruments Quinn had given her, to hide the American documents so that she could go through immigration with her French ones. She had almost no imagination for Ashley’s story and hoped that Diego would turn out like many spoiled young men: incapable of listening. She hoped he would boast every time he opened his mouth, and never hear a word she uttered.

Unlike James.

As she crossed the Atlantic toward Mexico, Lee swatted away thoughts of James as if she were in a jungle infested with disease-carrying mosquitoes — but the memories slipped inside her head anyway, as persistent as a delirium: she thought of how it had felt to be filled with him, how it had felt when he was savage and when he was tender, how pleasure had been something much greater than it was meant to be.

She had often been told that pleasure was for animals, and yet pleasure had made her more human.

I find it hard to forgive, James had written in one of his notebooks, a long time ago. He would never forgive her, but he might have had pity and turned her loose — or let her rot in prison. Instead, he had chosen to humiliate her.

Shaking her head to clear it, she took her iPad and looked at the information she had saved about James’ friend, Soledad Díaz Romero. The images showed a woman in her mid-forties, with hair, lips and nails an outrageous shade of red. Sol Díaz’s work had been exhibited in some of the world’s most sacred halls of art. There were photos of her with Damien Hirst, Ai Weiwei and Louise Bourgeois, among other luminaries. Her work included a provocative installation depicting Mexican politicians being tortured by giant aliens, but it had still turned her into a status symbol for the very rich.

In his brief phone call to Lee, James had explained that Sol knew about Lee’s “career” and was aware that her name wasn’t Ashley.

“She’s not that curious about people’s lives,” James had said. “You don’t have to worry.”

Still, Lee was about to stay at Sol’s for a week before she ever met Diego. She hoped the woman was pleasant, at least, and not some sort of gruff artist.

As the plane moved in the void, Lee didn’t recline her chair or try to sleep; she knew it would be futile. She stared at the darkness outside and let an action film play through her earphones. If she slept she would dream, and she wanted no good dreams — and no bad ones either.

It was in a state of alertness mixed with exhaustion that she went through immigration at Benito Juarez International Airport the next morning. Her French passport was as good as the one before, and outside she got a special taxi to take her to Sol’s house. 

The Federal District or DF, as the locals called Mexico’s capital, was enormous. The plane had crossed it for a good quarter of an hour or more before landing, while smog hovered over the city like a Biblical pestilence. The taxi driver explained to her in bad English that private cars were not allowed to circulate on certain days, according to their license plate numbers.

“La contaminación bajó, pero no lo bastante,” he said.

The pollution had decreased, but not enough.

Traffic was certainly a bitch in the DF, and a good ninety minutes passed before they had to stop at a gate for her to identify herself. Once she was cleared, the driver dropped her down the street before a charming pink façade with white stucco decoration around doors and windows. As she paid him and rolled her luggage over cobblestones, the front door was thrown open and Sol appeared in an elaborate Chinese robe and heeled slippers.

“Welcome, welcome, welcome! How was your terrible flight?” she asked dramatically. She spoke good English with a slight British accent; her biography stated that she had lived in London for a decade.

Sol advanced to help Lee with the luggage, not before putting an arm around her guest’s neck and giving her a resounding kiss on each cheek.

“Terrible but all right,” Lee said.

“It’s all can we hope for, my dear. But I’m making it up to you con un desayuno extraordinario.” An extraordinary breakfast. She pulled back to look at Lee’s face. “No hablas español?”

“Entiendo mucho, hablo un poquito,” Lee said. I understand a lot and speak a little.

Sol pulled her by the hand into the house. “Well, you’ll pretend that you entiende muy poco and no habla nada. I mean, you’re a spy, right?”

She gave a big, delighted, generous laugh. Lee already liked Sol; if she could concentrate on that fact, perhaps she wouldn’t have to think that she had to seduce a man when she couldn’t stop thinking of another.

“What’s the deal between you two?” Sol asked her two days later. “You and James?”

Lee gave a wry smile as she looked up from a gossip magazine. “And he said you weren’t curious about people ...”

It was easy to feel close to Sol, who demolished the barriers of politeness with intrusive but good-natured questions that didn’t offend Lee.

“What does he know?” Sol wondered with a comical grimace. “Besides, he sold me some bullshit when he asked me to introduce you to Diego Aguirre.”

“He didn’t tell you—?”

“He told me about Caitlin and the blackmail. And that you’re some sort of Mata Hari who will make it right. He didn’t tell me you two were involved.”

Her eyes returning to the magazine in a show of indifference, Lee said, “We’re not.”

“Then what’s that smutty film playing all over your face every time he’s mentioned?” Sol asked. “Well, it’s either a smutty film or painful longing. Or you jump like you’ve been hit by lightning.”

“You’re imagining stuff,” Lee insisted in a small voice.

Sol snorted. “Sure. Two people this attractive get together and it’s all a business deal. Unless you’re gay?”

Taking a deep breath, Lee put down the magazine and let her eyes meet Sol’s. There wasn’t sarcasm in the older woman’s; there was understanding. Lee shrugged.

“I’m not gay. Something went wrong, and it was my fault.”

“And it can’t be put right?”

“No.”

“Hmmm.” Sol held up the skirt she had been making: it was white, and she had painted men with sombreros, cacti, churches, hearts and skeletons on it. “Do you like all these Mexican clichés?”

“The skirt looks wonderful.”

Sol held it against her own wiry body. “It’s for you.”

“Is it?”

“Yes. I need to glitter it up, though.”

“It’s an expensive gift!”

“A bit of fabric, paint and some sequins?”

“From Sol Díaz, though.”

“To Mata Hari.”

They laughed, but when Lee’s eyes fell on the magazine again, she became serious. “Am I his type?”

Knowing she meant Diego, Sol said, “He likes foreign girls. If it were David, the brother, you’d have less of a chance.”

Lee looked at the photo of David Aguirre and a beautiful girl with brown skin, oblique eyes and black hair. “Is she his type?”

“Very much so. And the parents don’t like it one bit.”

Lee scoffed. “At this day and age! Who cares—?”

“Oh, my dear,” Sol said as she threaded a needle. She looked at Lee over her glasses. “Really?”

“Well, all right.” Lee let the magazine fall on her lap. “People are racists, what else is new?”

“Here it’s even more about class,” Sol explained. “We might all find a bit of Aztec or Mayan in us, if we were to bother with DNA tests. But a girl who looks like that comes from the wrong side of the tracks, as the Americans say. Perhaps a liberal family might accept her — not the Aguirres.”

“But David is all over the press with her.”

“And other girls like her. He’ll never marry them, though. He’ll act wild and he’ll upset his parents for a bit, then he’ll marry someone like him.”

Lee’s eyes returned to the magazine, this time to Diego’s smiling face as he posed with his family. He looked young, clean-cut and harmless, and he meant hell to her.

“I hope there’s something horribly wrong with Diego,” she said.

Sol looked up from the skirt, and now there was regret on her face.

“And I hope he shows it really fast.”

“Querida,” said Sol. “Can’t you call the whole thing off?”

“No,” Lee said, and managed a smile. “But I’ve done it before. It’s just that it’s boring, and I hope it won’t take long. I’ll have paid my debt to James, and I’ll be free. That’s all I want.”

This time it was Sol who kept her head down as she sewed a sequin onto the skirt. She might be frank, but she would never be so rude as to call her guest a liar.

FIVE

Two months later, a friend of James’ wasn’t sure of his motives, any more than Sol had been convinced of Lee’s.

"Silly of me not to realize what you wanted with bullfighting,” Pete Hadley said.

James' eyes left Lee against their will and switched to the enormous ring in Mexico City’s Plaza de Toros, where a matador circled the bull.

Pete continued, "Do you think by stalking Diego Aguirre you'll get him to give up the video?"

James had told Pete, an old friend from Oxford, about Diego's blackmail of Caitlin. In his capacity as first secretary at the British Embassy, Pete knew quite a bit about the Aguirre family, but had only offered unhelpful suggestions; one of his ideas had been to hire a private investigator.

"But you should get one from the US," he had said. "If you get a Mexican he'd only go warn Aguirre you’re investigating him to gain favor with the bloody family. You'll just pass through Mexico; they'll stay. And stay."

Despite trusting Pete, James hadn’t mentioned that he knew Lee. Pete assumed that James was in Mexico to stalk Diego, which was the same thing James had told himself.

"Watching a bullfight was on my bucket list," James said.

"Your bucket list would be tremendously interesting, I think, but I very much doubt sitting here would be one of the items. You've come to watch that prat, though I don't see what you'll gain by it."

"You never know."

Leaning over two men to his left with a muttered excuse, James asked a third if he could borrow his binoculars. It wasn't Diego he wanted to inspect.

Lee had changed from the last time he had seen her at a police station in Winchester. Her dark hair had grown fast and now reached her shoulders; she wore large sunglasses and an emerald-green dress.

Something around her face had flashed even in the distance, and that's what James wanted to see through the binoculars. Just as he had thought, she was wearing small diamond earrings.

Diego was giving her things.

"He’s such a man-doll," Pete added, scanning the expensive seating area below, where Diego and Lee sat. “The woman with him, I think her name is Ashley, is beautiful. Different.”

“Looks like a gold-digging bitch to me,” James said.

Pete gave a philosophical shrug. "Well, women around millionaires generally are.”

“Useful to know.”

“I didn’t mean in your case.”

“Why not? Am I not fed with the same food and hurt with the same weapons?”

“Listen, Shylock, if you keep watching Aguirre his security people are going to rough us up in a while."

James returned the binoculars to the owner with a nod of thanks. "No one is looking this way, don't get your knickers in a twist."

They had bought cheap seats in the shade, among a large crowd. That bullring was the biggest in the world, and James had decided it was as good a place as any to watch Lee at work. It would have been wise to stay away not only from the bullring but from the country, yet no one could accuse him of being wise.

The fact that Lee had been Aguirre's girlfriend for about a month was well documented on gossip sites, since Diego was one of the most desired young bachelors in Mexico. But what had happened to her discretion? She was sitting in a public place with photo after photo of her being snapped and published. Would none of her other international victims recognize her?

Well, he hardly did.

"True, the rich never look at the mob," Pete said, "but watching him still seems like a useless thing to do."

There was no need for James to answer. He didn’t doubt that Lee would shut down the Diego problem for Caitlin; she was good at what she did, as he had reason to know.

Except that wasn't the only point. Yes, he needed something on Diego and yes, Lee was bound to get it more quickly than a private investigator. But the point had been to punish her, and now he was punishing himself by studying how she worked, how she smiled and leaned against Diego, how she put a hand on his arm when there was a moment of danger in the arena so that he whispered a word of reassurance, how she wore the jewels the boy had given her.

That was how she had acted with him, in Rome, in Sicily, at Deerholt.

Vivien smiling, Vivien frowning, Vivien singing. Vivien full of contradictions and secrets and full of truth sometimes.

Vivien who wasn't Vivien, wasn't even Lee.

Lee’s body, Lee’s face bathed in tears of pleasure, the way Lee murmured, sighed and begged in bed. Had it all been a lie? No, there were certain things no one could fake. Her distress, the first time she felt pleasure, had been real. The pleasure had been real, and she had struggled against it.

There had been something there, other than her greed for diamonds; he was an idiot, but he had good instincts. Sometimes.

James looked at the arena and felt like the bull, stuck full of sharp darts as Lee smiled at Diego, and he gave her a peck on the lips.

"I think they're grooming him to be president of the country one day," Pete said, lazily observing Diego.

"And I thought we weren't supposed to look over there."

"You've convinced me there is no danger."

"That idiot couldn't even be president of the horticultural society."

"In any case, he'd just be a puppet for the father and the grandfather. You have to meet the father, and worst of all the mother. You'll feel sorry for Aguirre."

"Don’t think I will.”

"True, my sympathy is gone now that he tried blackmailing Cat. Wish he'd hang. But he hasn't gone ahead with the threat, and he's in love."

This time James didn't look as Pete stared at Lee and continued, "The horrible father and mother must be a bit relieved at the American girl, considering what the older brother gets up to.”

James had stopped listening, lost in the happy contemplation of what it would feel like to take off Diego’s head with a blow of his fist and strangle Lee.

Pete got him out of his reverie by saying, "Still, you look a lot angry, which I don't blame you for, but you're on Aguirre's turf. You need to go easy. You’ve been here before; have you never heard the expression, ‘Te mato por nada’?"

"To kill someone over nothing or for little money?"

"In Mexico it could actually be both."

"Isn't civilization a funny thing?" James wondered as a way of response, motioning toward the bull. "I've lived among so-called savages and they wouldn't taunt an animal for no reason."

The colorful flags sticking out of the bull looked childish, although the poor creature was weak from bleeding and had begun to move uncertainly.

"It’s the only sport where a man faces a beast, just like in olden times,” Pete said. “In Britain we get our dogs to tear foxes apart, and here they can be much more civilized than us. They can be exquisite, really. But there is more impunity, so they can also be extremely brutal. Even people like the Aguirres. Especially a family like theirs."

"I think I got the message. As you see, I haven't done anything and am not planning to. Too risky for Cat."

"We have to hope Diego is happy with the American girl and will forget about the blackmail." Pete glanced at his friend. "It could all blow over by itself. Taking it easy is a good idea in most situations."

Pete was no fool; he could sense James’ cold rage.

"Somehow I don't see myself letting the ponce keep a video of my sister,” James remarked.

A cry went up as the bull's front legs buckled.

"Let's go," he added with a grimace. "I don't feel like watching this bull die. I was actually hoping it would go the opposite way."

"Thought you'd never ask," Pete said, promptly standing in relief, as if he were being let out of hell. "Let's go have a long drink. Or ten."

James didn't look at Lee as they headed for the exit; he didn't want to see any more that day, although he couldn't answer for what he might want another day.

SIX

There was something that Lee could always sense: an air full of secrets.

The secrets were there, between the Aguirre brothers as they sat by the pool — although David’s girlfriend, Luz, kept chatting without giving signs that she noticed anything amiss.

That was probably the difference between Lee and Luz, as far as the Aguirres were concerned. Luz understood nothing; “Ashley” accepted her place in the scheme of things. Luz thought that David was in love with her, and David let her think it. Diego thought that Ashley was there to have a good time and enjoy his money: a feckless American girl passing through and grabbing what she could while his interest lasted. It made Ashley dependable and Luz a wild card.

One of David’s eyebrows moved in an unspoken invitation to Diego.

“We have to work a bit,” Diego announced.

The pool was at his apartment. David had an identical ten-million-dollar apartment and pool next door, and that’s where they were going. The homes had been gifts from their parents when each turned eighteen. Eventually they would inherit other properties: a historic mansion in Lomas de Chapultepec; an old hacienda in Puebla; a ranch in the northern state of Sonora, where their grandfather kept cattle. There were properties abroad, too.

“See you later,” Lee said, like the accommodating girlfriend she was meant to be.

Diego bent and kissed her lips. David idly caressed the back of Luz’s thighs as if fascinated by her brown skin.

“He likes me to be in the sun,” Luz said in heavily accented English after they left. She lifted a corner of her bikini bottom. “See, that’s actually me.”

She had said that before; a few times in fact. It was a point of pride for Luz that she might have been pale, if David let her. Her dream was to be a model. She had a pile of magazines by her sun bed and flipped through them, looking for a girl like her.

Most of the top models in Mexico were of European descent. Very few were part Indian, as Luz was. She was a beautiful girl, with long slim limbs, high cheekbones and intense black eyes. Her straight hair fell almost to her waist, but David would not let her fool around with the color.

Poor Luz wanted to escape her heritage so that she could grace the cover of a magazine, but the man she loved had a fetish, and he wanted her to stay exactly as she was. Ironies never ceased.

“I need to go abroad, look,” Luz turned a magazine toward Lee to show a girl not unlike herself in an editorial.

Yes, she might have been a sensation abroad — in Europe, or even in the United States — if she were a good model. But the portfolio David had funded revealed a girl who couldn’t pose and who didn’t look as pretty in photos as she did in real life.

“I just can’t leave David,” Luz sighed, swinging her legs and leafing through more pages. “Though yesterday he said he might take me to Paris in summer.”

“Do you want more wine?” Lee asked.

Luz glanced at her glass. “Yes, but they will come soon. They always come.”

She meant the house staff. It was true that they were everywhere, ready to step in when their ice melted or their glasses needed refilling.

“I have to go to the bathroom anyway,” Lee added, donning a sarong over her bikini. “I’ll ask someone to come out and refresh our drinks.”

“Thank yo-o-oou,” Luz sang.

The girl’s smile tugged at Lee’s heart. Luz was only eighteen; she believed in so many silly things. But the young ought to believe in fairy tales, or life would seem all made up of trouble to them, as it did to their elders. Luz had been born in a hut near the border with Texas — how could she not dream of marrying the scion of one of Mexico’s great families?

“Run, Luz, go away,” Lee said under her breath as she stepped into the apartment. “You don’t want to be here.”

Lee crossed the smooth marble floors barefoot, knowing that she would pick up no dirt. The servants were constantly cleaning and polishing every surface until the apartment looked like an uninhabited showroom.

A maid in uniform materialized next to Lee. "Necesita Ud. algo?”

“Vino? Un poquito, afuera?”

The maid nodded and went to tell the waiter that they wanted more wine. At Diego’s there was a waiter, a cook, an undercook, two cleaning women and a maid. There was also Jorge, the driver. Seven people attending on a bachelor and his girlfriend.

Lee had heard the servants talking to each other when they thought she couldn’t hear. They called the Aguirres “españoles”, as if they hadn’t been in Mexico for the past five hundred years. To the working classes, the white Mexicans were still the invaders. She watched the members of the staff standing behind tables, opening doors, driving or going about their chores. They weren’t used to being watched, and they didn’t like it. A few times they had frowned at her for a second. She wasn’t supposed to care what they were thinking. She wasn’t supposed to see them.

Diego was out, and Luz would probably not move from the pool — but there were servants all over the house, even on a Sunday. In Latin America, the rich didn’t have to give their employees much of a break. There were so many, in any case, that they just rotated to cover the weekends. Diego wasn’t like James, who liked the house to be empty sometimes; he liked to be waited on, hand and foot.

As she passed the office, Lee eyed the painting that hid his safe. She had managed to leave a camera above it and already knew the combination. Still, there were eyes on her at that moment; she would have to wait for a rare good moment to see what Diego kept in there.

In the bedroom, she changed into jeans and a long-sleeved shirt. The day was a crisp blue, but in Mexico City temperatures fell as soon as the sun was gone. Lee took a cashmere robe and threw it over Luz at the poolside.

“I’m not cold,” Luz protested. “I’m from the desert. I’m used to it.”

Lee smiled. “I’m jealous of how beautiful you look.”

Luz grabbed her hand and held it for a moment. She was like a child; sweet, like a child. Grateful for affection, like a child.

“Muchachas!”

David’s voice reached them before he joined them on the terrace. He smiled from ear to ear, running both hands through thick, dirty-blond hair.

“Back already?” Lee asked Diego.

He kissed her shoulder. “Not happy to see me?”

“You know I am.”

“Not much business today,” David said, lying next to Luz and slinging a leg over her. “It’s Sunday.”

Diego’s lips stayed on Lee’s shoulder as if he had forgotten what he was doing. His stubble scraped her, but Lee didn’t have to worry; his pupils were tiny black pinpricks inside light-brown irises. He was high again.

The “business” he had with David next door was drugs. They were sniffing heroin, not injecting it. Lee had looked for needle holes in his body when he was fast asleep and found none. The brothers probably thought they had their addiction under control, like a lot of rich kids. Just playing, just getting a little high, just feeling good.

Heroin made Diego pretty much unable to have sex with her.

The first time he had tried, in that very apartment, he had torn off her dress and rubbed against her so desperately she had thought they would catch fire from attrition. His face had turned dark red as he squeezed her breasts and bit her lips.

Lee had understood he had a problem. If she had shown eagerness, as she usually did with her marks, he wouldn’t have become any more excited.

“I don’t know what’s wrong,” he had said after a while.

“We’ve drunk a bit too much. Can you just hold me?”

The next morning, he had managed to push his half-soft sex inside her.

“You’re beautiful,” he had told her when he was done. "You turn me on so much."

People said the opposite of the truth all the time. Diego didn’t have a sexual deviancy, he had difficulty getting an erection. Two days later Lee had seen his pupils as he returned from David’s apartment and understood: he was an addict, and his libido was low.

Diego needed to have a girlfriend, perhaps as a cover for the drugs, and like one of the servants in the house, Ashley was meant to perform the function of a ghost. In Ashley he had found something like an accomplice, someone who — he must think — was interested in the lifestyle he could provide and didn’t mind the lack of sex. It was not by chance that he had chosen a foreign woman; he wouldn’t want anyone who belonged in Mexico to find out he was no stallion.

Perhaps that was why David chose Luz and other girlfriends he had plucked from the working classes — except that David and Luz had a lot of sex; their moans and grunts had drifted to Lee from the terrace that united the apartments more often than she cared to recall.

Caitlin wasn’t as experienced as Ashley in the ways of the world. She might have tried to excite him by different means or asked him too many questions. In any case, the video he was using as blackmail might not even exist, or he might have made it to keep her quiet about his lack of performance in bed.

Lee and Diego slept in the same bed, holding hands. Sometimes he asked her to scratch his back — it must itch because of the heroin. Sometimes she ran her hands through his hair until he fell asleep. After the weeks they had spent together, Lee knew she wouldn’t be able to film him in a compromising sex situation. Diego wasn’t a freak; he was an addict. Many rich kids were on drugs, and even if she filmed him getting high, his family would probably squash the scandal.

But the air was still thick with secrets, and they weren’t only about drugs. She might yet get something on him if she managed to look inside his safe, or if she listened to his conversations. She might get something that would pacify James and free Caitlin.

“Did you buy your dress?” Luz asked.

“Yes.”

A fundraiser organized by the Aguirres was taking place the next day. Ashley was invited, and Luz was not. David frowned as Luz pulled at the ends of her hair almost violently.

“You wouldn’t like it at the party, cariño,” he told her in Spanish. “It’s for old people. Very boring stuff.”

Luz shrugged. She would have liked to go to a party with David. But some things were not and would never be for her.

SEVEN

Luz offered to help Lee get ready for the party, partly out of generosity and partly to wallow in the misery of seeing her friend go off with Diego while she stayed behind.

Lee didn’t like anyone to do her face, but it was a good opportunity for her to be at David’s without either of the brothers. They were helping their parents oversee last-minute details for the event and would soon return to get dressed.

She hadn’t stopped thinking of her objective, and she had already managed to recover her camera and open Diego’s safe that afternoon, finding his iPad inside. It was locked with a password. His computer hadn’t revealed anything interesting: there were no films, photographs or emails of any sort that she could use to blackmail him, or that would hint at some important vice of his. There was no file with a feed of Caitlin or of any other girl.

Now Lee needed to place a camera at David’s. It would have to be a micro digital video recorder. The DVR would capture the images directly onto a memory card, and she would be able to remove the camera and watch the video at leisure. As she didn’t live in the apartment, the camera had to be motion-activated, which made it bigger than the ones she normally used.

She would just have to hope that David didn’t find it.

“You have great skin,” Luz said as she dabbed make up onto Lee’s face.

Lee disliked foundation, but Luz insisted that she would look terrible in photos if she didn’t wear it.

“Do you want strong eyes or lips?” Luz asked.

“Eyes, please.”

“You’re right. You have the most beautiful eyes. The shape.”

“Thank you.”

“David has beautiful eyes.”

Luz hardly spent ten minutes without mentioning David, even in a non sequitur. Lee longed to be the more mature woman dispensing advice: This isn’t love, Luz. Being attracted to a man, dazzled by his money and his position, by the fact that he wants you — it isn’t love. And he doesn’t love you either.

Love is something else.

But who, exactly, was she to lecture anyone about love?

As Luz leaned forward to brush Lee’s eyebrows, a gold medal swung from a chain around her neck. Lee missed her own medal, although she wouldn’t wear it near Diego. Maybe she would never wear it again. She took Luz’s and looked at the depiction of a Virgin.

“You never take this off.”

“It’s the Madre Santisima de la Luz,” the girl explained. “The Virgin of Light. Like my name, you know? My father bought me this when he went to Guanajuato. He told me the Virgen de la Luz is always happy, and that’s what he wanted for me.”

Her black eyes filled with tears, but she pressed her lips together and managed to keep them from spilling.

“Where are your parents?” Lee asked.

“Up north, at home.” Luz sniffled as she rummaged for brushes. “My father is a really serious man, you know. He didn’t like it when I came here to be a model. He wanted me to be a virgin like the virgin till I got married. When he found out about David, he told me never to go back home.”

“How long has it been since you’ve seen him?”

“Almost a year. I haven’t spoken to my mother either, because he doesn’t like her to, and she does what he says. I just hear from people up there that they’re all right.” Luz shrugged. “I know he’ll forgive me one day, when I’m married. If I take a little grandson or granddaughter to him, he’ll just melt. There, what do you think?”

The mirror showed a stranger to Lee, a woman with smoky dark eyes and cheeks sculpted by blush. But she had worn make up at other jobs, and she didn’t want to disappoint Luz.

“Wonderful.” Lee smiled, feeling the foundation stretch with the movement. She already longed to wash her face.

“I’ll do your nails,” Luz cried with the sudden enthusiasm a makeover could inspire.

The nails were still drying when Luz went to the bathroom and gave Lee a moment to run into David’s office, push aside the painting and plant the camera. He would have to bend and look up at the shelf above the safe to find it; nevertheless, she needed to recover it soon. A collection of Montblanc pens of varying sizes lay in a perfect line on top of the desk, next to a stack of paper. That prat, David, must measure everything with a ruler, and he might notice something even if it was small and hidden.

Prat, she thought later at Diego’s, as she waited for him to get ready. She was using James’ expressions now. David would definitely qualify as a sod, a twat and a tosser, as far as James was concerned. Lee couldn’t help smiling as she thought of all the words he might use for the Aguirre brothers.

Two bloody wankers. Whingers.

“Wow!”

The exclamation came from Diego, who stood at the door. They had separate bathrooms, and Lee had taken less time to shower and step into her long red dress. She wiped the smile off her face as he looked her up and down and whistled.

“Just one thing missing,” he said.

It was only then that she noticed the long blue case in his hand. Her smile was as bright as the leaf-shaped diamond necklace Diego had bought her. It had not put him too much out of pocket; it might cost about twenty thousand dollars, and he must think it a fair price to buy her company at a fundraiser, or anywhere he needed. She — the thief, the liar, the woman who had just escaped going to prison — gave him legitimacy.

After standing still so that he could place his gift around her neck, Lee thought that she might jump out of her skin when he kissed her shoulder. An impulse made her rush toward the walk-in wardrobe where all her things were tidily laid out. She found one of the boxes inside the zipper of her bag. The drops in the brooch James had given her flashed even in the subdued light as she fastened it on her dress.

"I thought they’d go well together," she told Diego in the living room.

He frowned at the brooch. It was an insult for her to wear better diamonds when he expected her to be impressed by his gift, but she could not, she would not walk out wearing only his payment for her conformity. James' diamonds had been given to her for a different reason, at least.

"My mother's," she said, caressing the brooch. She laid her hand on the necklace. "Two things to love."

He would believe any platitude, she supposed, since he kissed her and gave her his arm.

It was time for yet another show.

EIGHT

"We finally get to meet you in person!"

Like his sons, Miguel Aguirre spoke English with hardly any accent. The corners of his genial dark eyes crinkled as he took Lee's hand in the old palace where their fundraiser for nature conservation was taking place.

Large paper lamps representing Mexico's endangered flora and fauna floated in modern contrast to the polished floors, gleaming chandeliers and gilded walls from the time of Maximilian, the doomed Austrian who ruled Mexico before Benito Juárez put an end to him.

"What a beautiful girl, Diego," Paloma Aguirre told her son as she kissed the air on either side of Lee's face.

Her voice was flat as her eyes inspected every inch of Diego’s girlfriend, seeming to both approve and disapprove of what she saw. Lee stood under Paloma's scrutiny as the older woman's gaze moved from the necklace to the brooch. The Aguirre matriarch frowned, perhaps believing that both had been gifts from Diego, and that he was overdoing things.

However, as the hostess she had other things to worry about and turned away, dismissing the whole subject of Lee for the evening.

And as she left, Lee had a much greater reason to regret wearing the brooch. The man who had given it to her was across the room.

James.

Some films did a good job of showing how a person in shock reacted. It was as if the whole room had become blurry for Lee, the noises in it distorted, and her legs felt like stiff crutches that might slide on the polished floor if she budged.

"Isn't that—?"

The half question had been asked by Diego under his breath. A tall, bony man next to James waved, and Diego returned the gesture.

No, no! Lee thought as the man and James approached.

There he was, a mere foot from her. His eyes flicked down at the brooch, which she desperately wanted to hide, then at the necklace, as Paloma's had done.

The man with James smiled. He looked alert, as if he were always looking forward to something entertaining or surprising. He might not be disappointed.

"Peter!" Diego said a little too brightly. Lee could feel his heart beating fast against her arm. "Do you know Ashley? This is Peter Hadley from the British Embassy, mi amor."

Diego clutched her as if she were a buoy and he in deep, troubled waters. He was terrified of James, as well he should be. Lee almost laughed out loud, realizing that she felt pride in a man who was determined to humiliate her.

"I—I think you're James Bryce?" Diego managed to say with a quickly masked stammer.

"Yes," James said. "Have we met?"

"I met your sister Caitlin this summer."

James’ smile hid the fact, obvious to Lee, that he longed to make Cat’s blackmailer swallow all his teeth; but at times he exhibited exceptional control, and there was only a polite but slightly disinterested look on his face. "At Oxford?"

"Yes. She is a great girl."

"She is.”

The arm around Lee's waist relaxed as she understood that Pete Hadley was aware of his friend's interest in Diego and the reason for it; he looked like he had enjoyed the tense moment. She had forgotten herself for that moment too, but now James’ eyes and his cold smile were turned onto her.

"Nice to meet you," he said without extending his hand, while briskly adding to Diego, "Congratulations on the event."

"I can't take any credit; my parents organized this."

"Still," James insisted. "Worthy cause."

"Oh, of course — the environment is a big cause for you, isn't it?"

James looked around. "Depends which environment."

Diego laughed. "Probably not this one, right?"

"On the contrary, I'm eating and drinking for free and looking at beautiful people." He stared at Lee for the barest second, then smiled at Diego again. "What else can a man hope for?"

And as if there were not much more to say once pleasantries were exchanged, he moved on with his friend.

"Isn't he that English explorer guy?" David asked. His sudden appearance made his brother start. "And didn't you go out with his sister?"

"Que elegante eres siempre," Diego told him in Spanish. How elegant you are.

David covered his mouth with an apologetic look at Lee and giggled. He was not at the stage where he would attend an event high on heroin, especially if it involved his parents. He might never get to that point; some people were eternal low burners. David was only tipsy.

"Mamá is calling," he said. "Time for speeches."

He rolled his eyes and made a snoring sound for Lee's benefit, and she pretended to find it amusing. Paloma was already at the podium in her designer dress, sparkling jewels framing her tight face. The painted claws at the end of her toned arms moved, asking for silence and the guests converged around her, holding on to their glasses of champagne.

"Who can doubt that our Mexico is one of the most beautiful places in the world?" Paloma began in a soulful tone.

"I hope you don't mind missing the speeches.”

James had appeared next to Lee. She managed to sound calm as she asked, "What do you mean?"

He handed her a card. "Room 1005 in the hotel next door. Easier to get there through the parking lot. See you in a few minutes."

She meant to protest, but he was gone. The attention of the large hall was on Miguel Aguirre now, who made jokes that apparently delighted the guests. Lee moved slowly out of the center of the crowd until she dodged through the door. She pretended to look for the rest rooms and found her way to a small parking lot.

The hotel next door shone in the borrowed light of the Aguirres' party, and no one stopped her as she walked through the foyer; in her red evening gown and diamonds, she looked like she belonged anywhere expensive. Making her way upstairs in an empty elevator, she reached the tenth floor and walked swiftly to James's room. The door beeped as she inserted the card and pushed it open.

A soft breeze made the sheer white curtains billow. On the terrace, James turned in profile as Lee advanced to the center of the large bedroom. There was a heavy crystal glass in his hand as he stepped inside; he had taken off his jacket and tie.

"Drink?" he asked, lifting the glass.

"No, thanks. I can't stay here long."

"Of course not. You're part of the committee."

"Not really."

"I mean that if you go missing, your mark will get anxious."

"Why are you here?"

He drained the glass and set it down. "Wondering how things are going."

"You could have asked Sol to ask me."

"I guess I didn't."

She shrugged. "I don't have anything yet."

"No?" He put his hands in his pockets. "You’ve been with Aguirre for weeks and nada?"

"Sometimes it takes a bit of time to get something incriminating enough—"

James interrupted her. "So the dickhead does something weird to my sister right away, but with you he takes his time?"

Lee’s face burned. His disbelief was meant to be offensive, although it was his fault that she was with Diego in the first place.

"He hasn't done anything weird."

"Maybe it's just not weird enough to make you run when you can get something out of him."

"What are you talking about?"

She should have remembered how quickly he could change. He struck out, fast as a cobra, and grabbed the diamond necklace, pulling on it. Lee was dragged by the movement until the fastening broke.

"I'm talking about this," he said, throwing the necklace at her.

Despite being taken by surprise, she slapped his face as hard as she could. She had seen him lose his head before, and when he stepped forward, she took a ceramic lamp on the night table and hurled it. It was still connected to the socket and bounced back, breaking on the floor without touching him.

He pushed her against the wall, her wrists pinned above her head and his body between her legs so that she couldn't kick him, although she tried.

"Let me go, you pig!"

It infuriated her that he should be so much stronger than she was; she struggled with all her might.

"You wear that thing for him and what I gave you too? Don't you have any shame at all?"

"You know I don't!" she shouted in his face. "Why have you come here? You'll just ruin everything."

He took her by the chin. "You're the one who did that."

They breathed together in fury, until his lips fell on hers like a blow. His mouth and his body were hard, and he had let go of her hands. She would tell herself later that he hadn't given her time to think; instead of pushing him away, she buried her fingers in his hair. They pulled at each other until it hurt. There was probably nothing for them to say except insults — nothing that needed to be said. Their lips were still locked as he lifted her and threw her on the bed, pushing her dress aside.

You'll regret it, a voice told her, but it was much fainter than the blood pounding in her ears.

Three knocks on the door sounded like explosions, and their startled bodies broke apart.

"Por favor?" a man said from outside. "Necesito que abra la puerta."

"Quién es?" James asked.

"Seguridad."

James didn’t look at her. He ran a hand over his hair as he walked to the door. Although the security guard could not see her, Lee stood and smoothed her dress.

"There have been complaints about the noise here," the man told James in Spanish. "Shouting and things breaking.”

James gave a small, embarrassed laugh. "I have to apologize. There was a little accident — demasiado entusiasmo.” Too much enthusiasm.

"Oh!" the guard's exclamation also held a laugh in it. "I see."

"Darling, tell the man you're all right," James asked in English.

"I'm all right," Lee said without moving. "So sorry!"

"I'll pay for the lamp, of course," James continued.

"No, no, no—"

The man pretended not to want a large tip, but he must have taken it, because he thanked James and chuckled. Lee waited with the broken lamp at her feet, but James didn't join her when he returned — he looked at the carpet and stooped to pick up the necklace as he moved to the desk by the window instead.

"It's just as well,” he said.

Lee had already begun to feel angry, even before he wiped the back of his hand across his lip and looked at it. His gesture said: It's just as well, because I don't want to be where Diego Aguirre has been. When he raised his eyes, they were full of disgust, and that was the last drop for her.

"You're right," she said. "There is only so much acting I can do in a night."

Sitting on the edge of the desk, he let his body slouch a little as he fixed the fastening on her necklace. His insolent masculinity enraged her; he had gone there just to prove that he could take her whenever he chose. That was all he had been doing: saving his pride and showing her who was boss.

"You despise someone like Diego, don't you?" she asked. "Call him a boy. Do you think you're a man, James?"

He scoffed. "Really, Lee? You're going to lecture me on what it is to be a man?"

"Looks like you need a lecture.”

"Not from you."

"I know what it means when a person hides behind irony all the time."

"Psychology 101, is it?"

"Does it need to be more advanced psychology with you? You’re like a teenager pretending nothing ever gets to him, that everything's water off a duck's back. Pretending that you're some alpha male getting all righteous and angry, when you just throw temper tantrums like a little boy."

His eyes went to the window. The lights from the party next door moved across his still face.

"Why are you here?" she insisted. "Did you want me to tell you that I didn't lie to you?"

"You did lie to me."

"That it wasn't all lies?"

He took a deep breath. "It doesn't really matter, does it?"

"No. Some people don't hold honesty in high regard as you do. Sometimes you'll be fooled by them, and that's life."

"True. That's life."

"I've tried to say I'm sorry, but it isn't worth your getting so worked up about it. As you said, you got the diamonds back."

"Also true.” He looked at her. “Losing gracefully must be one of the big differences between a man and a boy."

"Exactly, and here's the thing: I'm doing a job for you, right?"

"Correct."

"And if you pull a stunt like you did today, everything I've done will go down the drain."

Had his eyes flinched at the word "done”? She had stopped halfway across the room, and he tapped his fingers on the desk behind him as he listened to her, as if he might decide to become violent again, or as if he might decide not to care about anything she said or did. It was a funny thing to stand there, afraid of him — and not afraid.

He was right, what did it matter? There was no way of getting his trust or his affection back, and that had been her decision.

"When I have something bad enough on Diego, I'll let you know," she added. "Until then, go away and let me do my work."

"Well ..." He looked toward the door. "This happens to be my room, but I'll let you tidy up. And I'll stay away from you. Just try to hurry things up, will you? I think we'll both be glad when this is over."

He had fixed the fastening and set the necklace down on the desk before he left, as if he couldn’t even bear to hand it to her.

NINE

November was around the corner, and Diego and David would travel north for the Day of the Dead holiday. Lee hadn't been asked to their grandfather’s ranch and Luz had been crying all afternoon, which must mean she had also been snubbed.

"I'm going to take that phone away," David told Luz as Diego and Lee joined them. The brothers wore the white Jai Alai outfit and were on the way to their club.

As obsessed with her phone as any teen, Luz looked up with red eyes. "No!"

"Deja de mirar estas pendejadas!" David said, sounding as if he were reaching the limits of his patience.

Luz was looking at her Instagram account, but she ignored his plea to stop reading “stupid stuff” and kept scrolling.

"What's upsetting you?" Lee asked.

"What they say about me."

"Who is 'they'?"

Behind Luz, Diego grimaced and shook his head, urging Lee to change the subject.

" 'Is David Aguirre so in need of a maid all the time so he needs to sleep with one?’ ” Luz read in Spanish. " 'What is she doing out of the kitchen?' 'She must make his bed nicely.' "

Lee always pretended to understand less Spanish than she did, and the brothers didn't help with the translation; David only shrugged. "Let haters hate."

What a stupid sentence, worthy of him and his indifference. He meant to convince Luz that she was envied by nobodies, while in fact she was suffering systemic and vitriolic discrimination.

"Do you want to give people a reason to say this kind of crap?" David asked as Luz ran a sleeve over her nose. "And use a tissue, for God's sake."

Lee couldn't help the furious look she shot at David. He looked embarrassed for a moment but jerked his chin in frustration. "Come on, Diego. Luz, if you don't stop looking through that thing and bawling, I'll close your cell phone account."

A belated tear made its way down Luz's cheek after they left. She scrolled more slowly. "I have to get used to it." Dropping the phone on her lap, she turned a wet face to Lee. "Do you think it will ever stop?"

"I don't know, sweetheart."

The girl swallowed a sob. "Why are people so mean?"

Lee shrugged. It was a question as old and as impossible to fathom as humanity itself.

"When I marry David, there will always be someone saying something, no matter where we are," Luz said. "Even if we live abroad, a pendejo from here will write something."

Lee tried to hide her surprise. "Marry David? Has he asked you?"

"Not yet."

"But you think he will?"

Luz nodded. "He talks about the babies we'll have all the time, and how beautiful they'll be. How their skin will be golden like mine but their eyes blue like his."

"His family will make it hard for the two of you,” Lee said gently. “You know that, don’t you?”

"Do you think he cares about what his family says? Then he wouldn't be with me at all, would he? He would be with an American girl like you, or some pinche fresa."

Smiling at the slang for a stuck-up girl — a strawberry — Lee pointed out, "Diego wouldn't be able to marry me either, you know."

"Then it's because he doesn't want to," Luz said stubbornly, a little angry that Lee should doubt her. "I think David wants to marry me. You got to meet his parents the other day, but I'm meeting his grandfather now, for the holidays."

"You've been invited to the ranch?"

“Yes! The old man's not a racist like that mother — she is the worst. I swear she is the one writing on Instagram that I’m just a maid. And the father, he does what the mother says. But the grandfather is different. He told David to invite me, because the stupid parents won’t be there."

"That's nice. I hope it's fun."

"The Day of the Dead is not as good up north, but why don't you come? I'm sure the old man would invite you."

"I'm going to see a friend. The artist, Sol. She lives in Cuernavaca."

"Oh, she introduced you to Diego, didn't she? I don't understand the stuff she does, but David says she is very good. And in Cuernavaca the fiesta is amazing, but I'm still glad I'm going to the ranch." Luz huddled closer and put her head on Lee's shoulder. "Sorry if I sounded upset. I'll call you from there, and I'll let you know how it's going."

When Diego came back, just before midnight, Lee pretended to be asleep. He was already in his sweatpants and got into bed carefully. After a few moments, however, he reached out to take her hand. She left it in his, her eyes opening as his closed.

Then, as if a shameful thought had only been waiting for the darkness to come out, it did. It was the same thought that had hounded her since she had seen James — of how it had felt to be kissed by him, even in anger. The memory made her ache and didn't leave her alone for most of the night.

The next day was Halloween, and Diego said goodbye before dawn. "Don't get up. We're off to the airport. Julio will be ready for you whenever you want to go. I’ll call you."

Lee waited to leap out of bed. There were no servants about yet, and she first ran to the safe: the iPad wasn’t there. But she was free, and she wanted to forget the Aguirres and their secrets for a few days; Sol would do her a world of good. Besides, by all accounts the Day of the Dead festivities were something to behold.

After a quick fruit shake and a shower, she met Julio in the garage of the building. The road to Cuernavaca was good, and Lee enjoyed the meandering paths on the way: the changing vegetation, the people in old trucks or new cars, and the young moving in droves for the holiday. Their screaming, laughing and waving announced that the fiesta had already begun.

She got hungry by nine o'clock and asked Julio to stop anywhere on the way. He glanced at her in the rearview mirror.

"Anywhere?"

"Somewhere you would eat."

His shoulders shook as he laughed, and soon he parked outside a cantina, where she sat at a rickety table with a plastic cover and had eggs, tortillas and a coffee. The place was already decorated with cut-out flags in the form of skulls and virgins, and a few paper skeletons hung from the ceiling. A woman sitting on a stool at the counter braided bright yellow marigolds into a crown.

"Cempasúchil," Julio said, indicating the flowers. "How do you say in English?"

"Marigold."

"It's to attract the dead, so they find their way back to us. They put it all over the place.”

The rest of the way was as pleasant; there was little traffic and Lee asked Julio to turn off the air conditioning and open the window. She wanted to smell the trees, the earth, the smoke and the baking coming from the towns they passed. Julio drove with his elbow sticking out, and the air stirred Lee's hair as the car moved under the sun towards Popocatepetl, the volcano with snowy peaks.

Sol's place was right outside the city proper, and Julio negotiated streets that were already full of people until he found it. Lee was glad to see the turquoise house; she opened the gate, hastened toward the door and knocked. Inside there was laughter, and high heels clacked before Sol opened the door. Her extravagant costume jewelry jangled when she embraced Lee.

"You've made it!" she cried almost in triumph, as if Lee had had to cross oceans in an old ship to get there. She added to Julio, "Oh, just drop it all where you can."

Julio put Lee's bag in the foyer, next to a table with a large vase of flowers.

"Will you text me, Miss Ashley, when you want me to pick you up?” Julio asked.

"I think it will be on the third — but I'll text you the night before, if that's all right."

"You don't want a glass of lemonade, dear, some tequila, anything before you go off?" Sol offered the driver.

He smiled, shook his head and walked back to the car as Sol closed the door.

"I’m so glad to see you, Sol!” Lee said. “If you only knew ...”

Sol embraced her again, and Lee closed her eyes for a moment. “I heard you laughing. You’re not alone?"

Taking her arm, Sol patted it. "There is someone here."

Lee's eyes flew to the half open door that led into another room. She couldn't see him, but she knew it was James. "You should have told me!"

"He begged me not to say anything or you wouldn't come. Speak to him, sweetie, he is very contrite. And if you don't like what he says, I'm nearby."

I don't want to, Lee thought, even as she moved toward the living room with Sol. He shouldn't be here.

"Lee has arrived." Sol wagged her finger at James. "And you'll behave, like you said you would."

He stood from the sofa, where he had been studying sketches laid out on a coffee table. Sol sized up the situation and seemed to think it safe to leave. "I will let you two talk things out while I make a pitcher of something that will get us all drunk as soon as possible."

Lee opened her mouth to ask Sol not to leave them alone, but snapped it shut. She shouldn't be a coward, and, in any case, Sol was gone.

"You promised to stay away," Lee said.

"I couldn't," he said simply.

So simply that it disarmed her. He looked ashamed, and suddenly young.

"I had to apologize, and it had to be in person," he said. "I'm—I'm less than proud of what happened the other day, as you can imagine. I thought that necklace would open more easily, I guess."

"You’re a bully if you use your physical strength—”

He held up his hands. "I know. You could brain me with a lamp, and I would not touch you again, I swear."

"I've told you before, I'm sorry for what I did.”

"Lee, I don't want an apology from you."

"What do you want, then?"

James lowered his arms. "Tomorrow is the Day of the Innocents. Some people will be mourning their dead children, and that’s the serious stuff. There are more awful things in life than what happened between us." As she said nothing, he went on, more earnestly, "I feel bad, Lee. About giving myself so much importance. About how I treated you, what I asked you to do. I know it's hard to forgive, and I suppose it has been hard for me — but can you try?"

She raised her face, wanting to say that she had piled her betrayal over Mia's, over Robert's and Imogen's because she had been afraid to tell him the truth and to stay with him; because she didn’t think she deserved him, not even now. But he might turn cruel again at any moment, and she was tired. It was hard to feel forgiven as well.

"You've put up with a lot in your life, I think, and you were right to say that I acted like a child,” James continued. “I’m supposed to have learned not to have tantrums, yet I fail all the time. All I can say is that I'll try to do better."

He stretched out his hand, and she took it. His touch was firm and dry, but her heart sank as he added, "There, we're friends now."

They let go of each other and Lee stepped back a little awkwardly. "Thank you."

The clinking of bracelets announced that Sol was returning. She carried a tray with glasses and a large jug of margaritas. "Well, are you on talking terms again?”

"Of course." James took the tray from her and set it on the table. "We're civilized."

Sol sat and lit a cigarette, watching them. "Wrong day for that. These aren't Christian feasts we're having, you know. They're pagan."

"All Saint's Day?" Lee asked, also taking a seat. "I thought it was as Catholic as it got."

"Not in Mexico. You should read about how it all started, ages and ages ago. The Spaniards just changed the dates, made it theirs and put a veneer on it, like they did to so many things here.” Sol blew out some smoke and added, “The dead will start returning at midnight, and the children will come first."

Lee couldn't help shivering. She had always been impressionable.

"It's two days of excess, like any festival," Sol added. "So be civilized some other time."

"But we've just agreed," James said.

His voice, deep and never without a little irony, increased the shivers running through Lee. James wasn't looking at her but at the flame of the match Sol used to light his cigarette.

Did he really mean to be her friend? She already missed his eyes on her, all hot and cold. What an idiot she was.

"We'll go to the graveyard in Ocotepec at midnight," Sol said. "It's not far, and it's something to see. Tomorrow you kids will be on your own — I have work to do."

TEN

Cuernavaca was like a piece of Spain that had broken off and drifted to Mexico, with its great cathedral and large square, the zócalo, its straight streets and the forbidding palace built for Cortés.

There were round domes to some churches, which would have been difficult to find in Castile, that kingdom of hard lines. There was color too, since Mexico couldn't exist without it: buildings in faded red, dark pink, green and blue. There was exuberance in the roots of old trees lifting stones from the ground, and in the vines twisting around the front of houses and bursting into flower.

It was said that Cuernavaca was the city of eternal spring, and the day was warm but not hot. The streets were filled with the smell of things being baked for the Day of the Dead: pan de muerto, or dead man's bread, sugar skulls and other cakes and sweets. It was a delicious smell.

James glanced at Lee as she walked next to him in a dress of blue fabric with tiny pink flowers. She kept up with him in flat sandals, her long legs almost matching his strides. Her hair was tied by a scarf that floated down her back and she had her sunglasses on, but her eyes were green again. She was as beautiful as the day and smelled better than the baking.

Lust was an indiscriminate instinct, an ancient beast barking in one’s ear; he had been able to deal with that beast. Desire was a different matter altogether. It persisted in the memory and in the imagination. It was a human thing.

It tormented him now. He wasn't supposed to think of Lee naked in bed; wasn’t supposed to remember how absolute her abandon had been once she had lowered her defenses. He hadn’t expected that a woman could give him everything and yet leave him wanting more — or that a woman could be so perfect in her contradictions.

He wanted to slam Lee against one of those colorful walls, lift her dress and take her right there, under the surprised hollow-eyed stare of floating skeletons. He wanted to feel her breasts and kiss her lips so hard their teeth would crack. Instead, he looked at the churches on their way and prayed to be good.

That was his first thought. The one that came after, a little while after, told him that he had been a brute. In that hotel room, he had suggested that she was nothing but a whore. His pride had insisted on the insult, but after leaving he had walked to a bar with the determination of drinking himself into amnesia, just so that the image of the pain on her face wouldn’t keep playing in his mind.

Today, the first of November, was the Day of the Innocents. But, as Sol had warned them, in the center of Cuernavaca there was only celebration. There was the strong yellow of marigolds everywhere, adorning altars in the corner of streets and at the entrance of cafés and restaurants. There were paper cut-outs hanging between buildings, depicting skeletons, virgins and flowers.

A group of young people wearing expensive costumes and elaborate ghoulish makeup walked the streets pretending to weep as they followed a fake coffin. Stands selling food, confetti and masks shaped like skulls, crows and devils did brisk business.

As Lee and James went through side streets, farther from the zócalo and the center of town, there were more modest houses. Open doors revealed private altars.

A lady saw them glance inside her house."Pasen, pasen," she invited.

Taking James by the arm, she led him to her colorful altar. It was covered by a cloth with a dark red cross carefully embroidered and filled with offerings for a child: pan de muerto, chocolates, and sweets. There were toys as well, and a name spelled with bright marigolds: Hernán.

The lady touched the marigolds tenderly. "It's so my boy can see the way. He has been walking around since midnight." She pointed to a photograph at the center of the altar. "This was Hernán."

Lee asked in halting Spanish, "How old would he be today?"

"He would be forty now," the woman said.

Spotting James' camera, she asked him if he wanted to take a photo of her. As he opened his lens, she posed without any self-consciousness in front of her pink, purple and yellow altar, next to her long-dead child.

"Your son is very handsome," Lee said, touching the woman's shoulder.

Lee had used the present tense on purpose; she wanted to comfort the old lady and let her know that her son was among them that day.

"They must find solace in these rituals," Lee said as they walked out.

"That's what rituals are for, I've been told."

"Even after thirty years, I imagine she always does that."

The most skillful con-woman in the world could not have feigned the tenderness in her eyes; it was as if she would have protected the old woman from grief if she could. He had seen that tenderness before; it was a side of her she wanted to hide.

It’s in our contradictions that we are most ourselves, James thought. Lee’s contradictions kept him returning to her as someone might return to an intriguing book, not wanting to read it too fast but unable to leave it aside.

They went to a garden cantina for lunch. The men at other tables turned to look at Lee, and he couldn't blame them. She looked especially beautiful with her dark hair, eyes that were brighter than any jewel and lips that needed no enhancing. Lee was more woman than artifice.

The waiter deposited dish after dish on the table: huitlacoche, the black, delicious fungus that grew on corn, blue flour tortilla, nopales and squash flowers.

“It’s all so good,” she said after eating a couple of forkfuls.

James smiled. She couldn’t fake the delight she had in simple things either. It was as if she were a child discovering the world, ready to believe it was good. He was sure she had once been just such a child, before others ruined life for her.

"I had no idea I was so hungry," she said when they were finished, stretching her legs before her.

He got up, looked away from her legs and moved toward the kitchen. The women inside laughed as he leaned against the threshold, joking with them and asking for coffee.

"You seem to feel at home in Mexico," Lee said when he returned to their table.

"I love Mexico, but I don't know if I can feel at home here," he said. "There’s a lot that’s mysterious and can't be talked about. A lot that’s unsaid."

Her elbows were on the table and she moved her arms toward her body, as if creating a shield between them — but a wry expression took over her face. "Very unlike your homeland."

He laughed. "I'm used to the British way of not saying anything."

"Liar."

"All right, it's true that I like things out in the open where I can see them. It used to be important in the wild. You couldn't just look at tall grass and think it was pretty, there could be something lurking there. Or up a tree, or behind a dune."

She cocked her head, deep in thought, and asked after a moment, "Do people in tribes keep secrets?”

"The thing about secrets is that we can never tell if they exist or not. But someone living in a relatively small group would find it hard to keep important ones.”

"Then there are never psychopaths in these groups?”

"Never sociopaths. They can’t act against the community, they’d be thrown out. There is running amok, though. All the control drives people crazy sometimes, and they don't know what to do with their aggressiveness. A man may go through his village killing as many people as he can before he is put down."

"Did you ever run amok?"

"I think you know the answer to that, but I never did it in a tribe that wasn't mine. And for your information, some groups highly respect the man who goes haywire. They think that the spirit of a tiger or some noble beast possessed him."

She laughed. "Tiger spirit, that's what I'm going to call you."

“Sounds like a beer commercial. Just call me arsehole."

"Asshole, in any case."

He clicked his tongue. “A Southern lady, swearing like that."

"What makes you think—?"

James interrupted her, "Here's a parlor trick. I'll tell you what I think I know about you, since we're talking of secrets. Come on, might be liberating."

"All right," she said slowly.

"You said you were from Arizona, but you're not. You're from somewhere wet in the South."

Lee poured him a small shot of tequila with a steady hand. "Will you reveal how you came to these conclusions?"

"Fine, here is the Sherlock Holmes version: there's the way you used to say my name at certain times when you couldn't help it. Ja-ymes, Ja-ymes!”

She blushed. He liked it when she did that. "I sounded like a donkey?"

"You sounded like you were from the South. It had to be somewhere marshy, because at Deerholt you mentioned that you were used to mud. I thought it might be Louisiana, but you also mentioned horses running free on the beach, so — aha, a North Carolina girl."

She drank her shot and didn't deny it. He considered her for a moment, before adding. "A North Carolina girl from around Dismal Swamp?"

"Very good."

"And you grew up poor. Very poor. But not all the time."

“Good trick, James."

"Don't worry, it stops there."

"Why?" She shrugged. "Keep going."

"Want to know why I think you have a liking for shiny things?"

"That would be a stab at Psychology 101, wouldn't it?"

"A bit, and you’re more complicated than that. Besides, knowing why you have a fetish doesn't really change anything."

"My father used to call me Magpie," she said, tracing the flower on the tablecloth with a fork. "I liked bits of rock and glass that sparkled."

James remained still. Having her talk of her past was like getting some bird of paradise in his sights; something hard to capture that stood in the light for a moment, opening its feathers.

But the moment was gone as she shrugged once more. "That's all it is, really. That, and needing to make money fast."

Her eyes looked hard and defiant as they held his, but their coffee arrived, and Lee blinked. She smiled at the woman who brought it; she always thanked people who did anything for them. The defiance, not the tenderness, was the ruse.

"Don't they say there are only a few stories in the world?" he asked as he ran his hand over the steam rising out of his coffee cup. "Rags to riches, the hero's quest, Big Lizard versus Freud?"

"I think mine is definitely the last one. Especially coming from a swamp."

"I like 'Magpie,' though."

"No, you're not giving me another nickname!"

"Why not?" It was his turn to shrug. "I don't know your real name."

She became serious again. "Looks like you could find out, if you wanted."

"I won't do that, I promise. I may be an unbearable little boy, but I'm no liar. Not when I swear."

He held out his pinky and she wrapped hers around it. That was as far as he could touch her.

In the evening they once more visited a cemetery, where hundreds if not thousands of candles had been lit for the souls of the children. They walked among the graves, looking at the flames shimmering in their nooks, at the crowns of flowers, at the movement of the families. Lee was silent by his side and he liked that; he liked that they could talk or be quiet together. It was, at times, so easy to be with her.

When they returned to Sol's, they found her in the shed where she worked. Lee went into the house to have a shower, and James sat with his friend, who was slapping plaster on iron rods.

"This is a great room," he said, looking around at her unfinished sculptures, her metals, pots, brushes, hammers and spatulas.

"Yes, I like it."

He pointed at some forms scratched on the wall. "What's that?"

"Oh, an idea I had when I was out of paper, out of everything, so I drew it on the wall with a nail."

He stopped before a canvas with just a few strokes of black paint that unequivocally represented Sol. "Did Lee do this?"

Sol glanced behind her. "Yes, isn't it great?" She turned around on the stool, crossing dirty hands over her apron. "It’s a pity that a girl like her, with talent for real things, can waste it on spying and stealing."

"Art is not necessarily a 'real thing' for most people," James said.

"Oh, don't be a snob."

"I'm being all the opposite. Some people have to worry about other problems.”

Sitting down, he began cleaning her instruments as she watched him.

"What's going on, Jim Tony?"

He groaned. "Can't you leave my name alone?"

"No. What’s going on between you two?”

"We’re friends."

"Ha!" She stood and took his face in her hands, lifting it up. "What bones you've got. If I were into something more figurative, I'd beg to sculpt your face."

She moved to the sink and washed her hands, grabbing a wet cloth. She returned to James and scrubbed away the plaster she had left on his cheeks. "Here's the thing, Jim: you're like two pyromaniacs in the making, ready to set everything on fire. And passion, God bless it, is one of the great things life gives to us miserable human beings. Feels better than anything for a while. I'm retired now, but I know."

"You make me want to grab your bum when you talk about being retired, with your boobs in my face, too."

"Don't run away from the subject, Jim. What's it going to be?"

"I don't even know what you're talking about."

"Lo sabes perfectamente.”

"No, but you apparently have the answer to whatever question you're asking."

"Is there a reason, apart from her being on the wrong side of the law sometimes, why you wouldn't grab Lee’s bum, as you're clearly dying to?"

James gave her his widest and most innocent smile. "I made a promise."

Sol cocked her head at him. "Ah! Trust issues."

He snorted. "Now that you put it like that ..."

"You were one of her victims?"

Pulling his face away he stood and walked through the room as if he hadn't just inspected it. "It's like this, she might be the hardest nail that ever closed a coffin, the biggest con, the mother of all self-obsessed bitches. Or she could be ..." he stopped in front of Lee's painting.

"I see. And you can't decide which."

" 'By the world, I think she be honest, and I think she is not,' " he said in a low voice.

"Ay, ay, ay, when an Englishman quotes Shakespeare ..."

The black strokes of Lee's painting became blurry the more James stared at it. "Once I found her in a hotel room, nearly destroyed. And I say nearly, because she would have picked herself up — but it touched me more than I can say that she believed that she had to do it alone. That day, and other days, I realized how many times she had had to do it, and I wanted to say—"

Sol didn't speak, and he thought he might as well try to put his thoughts into words.

"You know the vows people make, when they stand at the altar, or on some beach in Fiji or in some shaman ceremony in a cave? They say some variation of 'I will be there, I'll help you — you'll help me.' I think most of the time they have no idea what's coming. But I had some idea. I knew she wasn't going to be easy, and I didn't mind."

"You just didn't expect her to be lying about everything?"

"Even that I could take. But her job is to become what men want so she can rob them. And the problem with hearing lies is that you never know what the truth sounds like again.”

Across the garden, the door of the house opened and closed. Sol was at the window, looking out. "I just see a girl, James. She has a lot inside, true, but a lot that's good. Do we ever get anything exceptional without effort?”

He didn't answer; he walked past Sol and joined Lee at the table outside. She had made more margaritas and poured three glasses as Sol took her place.

"Will you give me a cigarette?" Lee asked.

Sol handed her a leather case and a lighter. "I thought you didn't smoke.”

"Sometimes I do. Only sometimes, like James."

James sat back and watched as Lee took a deep drag of the cigarette. With parted lips he inhaled the smoke that she exhaled and let it envelop them both.

ELEVEN

As Lee walked to James’ hotel in the morning, the streets were being swept clean. She liked the scratching sound of the brooms against stone, the rhythmic movement of the women wielding them, the colorful debris of the previous night's festivities.

She wore the skirt Sol had made for her with “Mexican clichés” enhanced by beads and a few sequins. Her blouse was white and the same flat sandals that had served her well the day before were back on her feet.

A woman with long black braids was selling masks made of cloth over hard papier maché. Lee bought half a skull and a laughing devil.

Her heart began to beat a little too hard and fast at the thought that she was about to see James. When she spotted him sitting at his window on the second floor, eyes closed as he enjoyed the sun, she realized that the day hadn't started, and already she didn't want it to end.

Lee put on her skull mask, stood under his window and whistled.

His eyes opened, and he smiled down at her. "Señora Muerte, cinco minutos por favor."

Lady Death, give me five minutes ...

"Thinco minutos?"

He laughed at her attempt to mimic his Castilian lisp.

"I need a pan de muerto and a coffee," he told her as he came out of the hotel. His eyes had swept quickly over her before he looked away. Either he was being good, or she was firmly in the friend zone.

"I'll have one with you,” she said.

They stopped at a counter and stood drinking their coffee and biting a femur-shaped bread. Lee looked out at the empty square. "I think today it will be less sad. It won't be the dead children anymore."

"No, today it will be all the old people who were tired of life."

She smiled. "That’s better."

He took a picture of her in her beautiful skirt against the dark counter. Outside the bar, he photographed the debris on the street, and she stepped forward on her toes to look at the images, their faces close together.

James moved easily, like in Rome, holding his camera and yet forgetting about it for stretches of time as he talked to a stall holder, a policeman or a woman preparing an altar on the street.

Women loved him. They laughed as he talked to them, raising their eyes and covering their mouths; it didn't matter if they were old wizened ladies or little girls. A baby in her mother's arms reached out, and James picked her up. He showed her to Lee, laughing as if the baby were something extraordinary.

When he turned away she saw the mask, pushed to the back of his head. The devil leered at her.

Lee began to feel something like nausea. She shouldn't go around with him anymore; not when she watched all the women in love with him, and he in love with a baby girl.

She couldn't see him; it was like torture.

Fanning herself with the mask, Lee thought of excuses to leave, but didn’t give any and didn’t budge. Six girls had arrived with a cart full to the brim with marigolds, white chrysanthemums, red gladiolas and many other flowers. They were setting up their stalls and James placed Lee among them. She smiled with all the radiance she couldn't show when James looked at her without his lens. He snapped the photograph and lowered the camera, staring at her for a moment. One of the girls put a marigold behind her ear before they moved on.

The day was otherwise easy again: they strolled and met people; they ate and visited the cathedral, where they lit candles for the dead.

"Sometimes I like to walk into churches," James said. "They’re always cool inside when it's warm outside, and they’re always quiet."

Lee looked around at the simple stone walls, at the ladies with black lace mantillas on their heads — mumbling, crying, whispering with rosaries wrapped around stiff fingers.

"I just don't like how much they like to suffer," he remarked dryly, touching her elbow so they would leave.

That evening the streets were even fuller than the night before. There was a lot more music too, and dancing in the squares. They ended up in an out-of-the-way cantina having tequila. The walls of the place were decorated with colorful paper skeletons; the patrons sat in costumes, drinking or talking.

"You need to go slowly," James said, setting a small glass of tequila in front of her.

Lee swallowed the whole shot.

"That's slow for you, is it?" he asked.

She coughed. "It seems wrong to sip it."

Fortified by the first shot, she got up and walked to the counter. She asked the barman for a bottle of his best tequila as two men with masks on top of their heads stared.

"Que guapa," the man with a skull mask told his friend.

"Madre mía!"

Ignoring them, Lee returned to the table with the bottle. James narrowed his eyes at her admirers, but they smiled, making apologetic faces.

The cantina filled with people, voices, laughter and music. Three men started plucking at their guitars, a short woman with a strong voice began singing boleros, and couples got up to dance.

Lee's hair waved over her forehead and she left it there. “Can we dance?"

He considered her for a moment. "Should we?"

"Everyone is doing it," she said, standing.

On the floor, he put his arm around her waist but kept a respectable distance between them. His eyes were never hot or cold now, only cool. As they moved to the sound of the bolero, he started to sing along. El Día Que Me Quieras.

The Day You Love Me. She had heard it before, but nevertheless asked, "What does it mean?"

He glanced down at her. "Something-something."

"Come on, what does it say?" She was tipsy and daring; she felt at home in the rundown cantina, among the skeletons and the other couples.

"It says the day you love me, the rose will dress in her best color, and the wind will tell the bells that you are mine—"

The singer continued, and she inched closer to him. "And?"

"You know what it says."

She hummed under her breath and listened. "The night you love me, the jealous stars will watch us go by—"

James interrupted her, "I've never understood why people who have been unhappy in love sit listening to this kind of thing." He glanced around the room. "Look at those poor devils, they're just feeling worse."

Men and women nursed their drinks and mouthed the lyrics, some with tears running down their cheeks.

"Maybe they think that if they listen and cry, they'll forget."

"Let's get out of here," he said suddenly.

She didn't want to leave, because then he wouldn't hold her anymore, and she wouldn't see the pulse beating on his neck or feel the heat of his skin ─ but she smiled and nodded. She was in danger of doing something crazy, and it was better to go back to Sol's.

However, when they walked out into the street the men who had been exclaiming over her in the cantina followed them. James took her arm, his face closing in a scowl.

"Estoy enamorado!" the skull man from the bar cried after Lee. I am in love!

"Enamorado de tu puta madre," James said between gritted teeth.

"Give up that stupid gringo," the second man called out in Spanish.

The two men were gaining upon them. As the bigger one got closer and reached for Lee, he got James' elbow to the mouth. Blood gushed from his lips.

"A ver si la tocas de nuevo, imbécil," James told him. Let's see if you touch her again.

"Hijo de puta!" the friend cried, taking a step back.

"What's going on?" a man asked from the end of the street.

James was willing to stand there and get into a fight, but Lee pulled him by the hand and started to run. He ran with her, until they began to laugh. Reaching his hotel, they stepped into the threshold. She leaned against the wall and he placed his hands on either side of her in a protective gesture. Sticking his head out slightly, he checked if the coast was clear.

She turned her face up to his; she wasn’t going to look away. It was the tequila, the song, the wanting him.

"I'll take you to Sol's,” he said, but his eyes hadn’t left her either.

Lee shook her head.

"I made a promise, remember?"

"It's the Day of the Dead,” Lee said. “The world is upside down and inside out."

She pulled the mask over her face, then pulled his down. After a long moment, he lowered his head and kissed her. Her lips opened readily, and he brought her body closer to his by the waist. Lee's head whirled.

They broke away to run through the people standing in the hall of the hotel as if they were ghosts. In a matter of seconds, they were in his room.

And, although they had just been laughing, he now looked solemn and feral, almost angry. But when he lifted her, just as he had done in that other hotel room, she latched on to his neck and they fell on the bed together. His mouth tasted of tequila, of him, and he didn’t caress her — he gripped her thigh and pulled the shoulder of her blouse aside.

His lips wrapped around her breast as her hands remained suspended in the air. James pulled at her panties, his body moved over hers and she felt him slip inside her, easily — because she had longed for him.

Lee hissed and lifted her hips, so that she could take him deep inside.

"I'm not your friend," he whispered as he moved, and just before the abyss took her, she felt a savage joy.

TWELVE

The morning found them still kissing. She lifted her lips from his long enough to say, "My face hurts."

Still inside her, he rocked from side to side. "I hurt all over."

But they couldn't stop until they finally collapsed, rather than slept. When the sun was halfway into the room, Lee awoke with a start, waking James.

"The driver! I was supposed to text him last night."

"Don't worry, he won't move until you say so,” he told her in a gravelly voice.

Nevertheless, she got out of bed and looked for her phone.

"Damn..." she mumbled as she looked at the screen. There were twelve messages, one from Julio and eleven from Diego. The last one said, WHERE ARE YOU?!!!

She shrugged into James' shirt as she texted Julio first, then Diego: Sorry, got so drunk with Sol! How are things?

The reply came quickly: Can't call now, at mass with family. Not very good reception at the ranch. Glad you're all right.

Don't worry if you don't manage to call, I'll be home tomorrow.

The silence was heavy in the room when she hit “send.” James was watching her, his head against the wall as the sheet covered his lap. She knew that expression; he was about to get angry.

"What's the matter?” she asked.

"Trying not to get up and throw that phone out the window."

Her arms dropped. "And I'm trying to avoid a problem. The driver has been postponed till tomorrow."

"Is that when your boy doll comes back?"

She frowned. "He is not 'my' anything and you know it."

"Is that when he comes back?" James insisted.

"Yes." She looked at the phone again.

"I swear I'll smash that thing."

"It's something else. A girl — the brother's girlfriend."

"What about her?"

"She was supposed to text me and say how things were going at the grandfather's, and she hasn't."

"Probably forgot."

"You don't understand—"

"Not sure I need to."

"It was a big deal for her to be invited up there,” Lee insisted.

His eyes had become detached again. She hesitated for a moment, then approached the bed and sat by him. "James, you should know—"

"I don't want to know."

Her hand covered his mouth. "Please listen! When I told you I didn't have anything on Diego, I meant I didn't have anything that I think is bad enough, not yet."

He snatched his face away and turned his back on her. "Why would you start talking about this?"

"He doesn't touch me," she cried.

For a moment he was still, then half turned. "What do you mean? Not at all?"

"He's using heroin. Both brothers are. I think he wants me there to avoid questions, or to seem like some sort of stud when he can’t—”

There was a mixture of relief and puzzlement on James’ face as he processed the implications of what she had just said. "That's not what happened with Caitlin, or she would have told me."

"He probably did something awkward — failed at the right time and then tried to make up for it."

"Did he do that to you?"

"He hardly managed even that. The video on Caitlin is probably some sort of insurance to stop her from going around saying that he can't do it. I wonder if he even has a video."

"I hate weak people even more than bullies. They make the biggest messes.” He looked at her over his shoulder. “Time for you to get out of there."

"I can handle things with Diego, but there is some bad secret there, I know it. If I find out, we’ll be able to rest easy about Caitlin."

He said nothing again; once his anger started, it tended to simmer for a bit. She crawled over the bed and straddled his lap. "Cat got your tongue?"

The tip of his tongue appeared between his lips. She bent, put her mouth over his and sneaked her hand under the sheet to touch his body.

"I'm willing to continue, as you can tell," he said, "but I need some sustenance."

She reached for the phone and passed it to him. He caressed the small of her back as he ordered a large breakfast and she felt the deep contentment of a woman who could touch the man she loved and make him laugh as she nuzzled him.

When breakfast arrived, James was in no state to open the door. He ran into the bathroom while the waiter laid out the dishes and later emerged with a towel around his waist. Lee uncovered the plates and fed him pieces of fruit as he caressed her thigh.

"You're a maniac," she remarked. "I can't imagine you trying to learn Eastern disciplines."

"Where do you think I learned to bear the pain of lovemaking?” he asked. “Just to give you pleasure, too.”

“Yes, you’re very altruistic.”

"Besides, haven't you ever heard the saying, 'God make me good, but not yet'?"

"That's called cheating."

"Why would you say that, Magpie?"

"Stop calling me that before you start."

"I know mind control is the only path, but it's for when I'm older. Now I want to sit here and look at your legs, and at your breasts moving inside that shirt and remember how they feel. I want to think of your down there all red and wet ..."

"Stop," she said softly, because she wanted him to continue.

"If I followed the wise path I'd have to think that you're a precious soul but otherwise just a hunk of matter in a certain shape, that pleasure is illusion, that every word we utter is full of error."

"The first version is more fun."

"Thought you'd agree."

He picked her up from the chair and she didn't protest. In bed he opened her shirt to kiss her breasts and she threw his towel backwards in the air.

By evening, they had a pile of dishes in the room and hadn't worn clothes all day. James lifted the sheet to look at himself and grimaced. "It's crimson. How's yours?"

"Hurts like a million knives."

They had a bath together, hissing and wincing when water or soap touched them. Once clean, they got dressed and went out, moving as if in a slow dream.

"Look, Magpie, we could find an antidote to our pain here," James said when they passed a pharmacy.

He walked in first and she followed, pretending to look at the bottles of cold cream with the skull mask over her face. A girl of about sixteen appeared round a curtain, smiling. James muttered, "Oh, for God’s sake ..."

Lee snorted.

"Is your father here, perhaps?" James asked the girl in Spanish.

"No, but I can get mi mamá."

Lee ran out laughing.

At the next pharmacy there was an old woman and no one else, and James leaned his elbows on the counter but couldn't muster the strength to explain anything as she stared at him with heavy-lidded eyes. He bought toothpaste.

People roamed the streets in their costumes, unwilling to let the festival end as flowers were sold at half price. James put his arm around Lee's shoulder and held her hand over his heart. They didn't know why people were looking at them, until a woman and her husband stopped them with a vague smile. They were American.

"You two are beautiful,” the woman said. “I just thought I'd tell you that."

She would have moved away, but James handed her his camera. "Would you take our photo?"

He would never just take a selfie with his phone, of course. They stood against the wall as the woman snapped their photograph and returned the camera. "Very beautiful," she repeated.

At nightfall they found another cantina and danced cheek to cheek. Lee couldn’t make out all the words in the bolero. It was something about loving only once in one’s life.

"What does the song say?"

He sighed. "Something sad."

Back in his room they made love with their tongues, as anything else hurt too much.

“You’re shivering,” he said afterwards.

“It’s a good kind of shivering.”

“You coo like a dove, you know that?” he said against her lips. “You go ‘Ooooooooh, ooooooh.’ ”

“You barely make a noise — and then you go, ‘Ah!’ Or you go, ‘Ah … Ah … AH!’ Sometimes ‘Ah … Ah … Aaaaaaaaaaah!’ ”

“We like different vowels.” He lay over her, looking closely at her face as he caressed her breast. His expression became more serious. "And what is it going to be like now?"

"I'll find something on Diego—"

"I mean after that."

“James — you need to know that what I did—”

He frowned. “I don’t care—”

“Please, listen,” she begged. “I stole because I didn’t want to feel poor and powerless anymore.”

“I understood that much.”

“But I also liked it. You need to know that.”

“I understood that as well. It doesn’t matter.” He stroked her cheek with the back of his fingers. “What now?”

She said nothing.

His eyes turned sad. "You have so much courage, Lee — but none for me?"

Moments passed without her answering him, because there was no answer she could give. She was more afraid than ever. He pushed himself off the bed and walked to the window. He was there, just a few steps away, and yet she could feel his absence already.

"I'll take you to Sol's," he said.

They didn't talk much as they crossed the town. The morning was cool and pink, but they didn't hold hands as they had done only the night before. Everything was clean, as if the holiday had never taken place; as if the dead had stayed in their graves.

At Sol's James stopped and slightly shook his head. He would go no farther. He pushed the gate open for Lee, and when she stepped through it, he walked away without looking back.

THIRTEEN

"You have been frowning so hard you'll get a bad wrinkle here.”

Diego touched the space between Lee’s eyebrows. She had been pensively tapping an eggshell with a small spoon, making no effort to break it. He reached over to take her hand, giving it a small shake, "Come on, what is it?"

"Just the whole thing with Luz."

"Mi amor, do we have to go over it again? You're an adult, not a girl like Luz. Couldn't you see it was going to happen?"

"It's just a lot sudden."

He shook his head. "It's not. It was coming, believe me. She lasted longer than she should."

"So David told her it was over in the middle of a holiday?"

Joining the tips of his fingers together, Diego gesticulated in near exasperation. "That is exactly it. Why do you think it's so strange? Doesn't it happen every day? Don't people break up?"

"She was so happy to be invited ..."

"Yes, she was happy to be invited, and my grandfather was an angel to her. Then she kept posting photos and getting people to say nasty things and crying about it. David finally lost his head and told her to go home."

"You mean he told her it was over."

"Yes. He told her it was over and sent her off to her parents, in a nice car with a driver, OK?"

"Oh, I guess that makes it all better, then."

He sighed. "What do you want me to do, Ashley? It's over now. David isn't the kindest guy when it comes to break-ups. But as he says, there isn't a right way to do it. The other person will hate you and feel hurt no matter what."

"I guess she will recover." Lee glanced at her phone. "It's just weird that she hasn't answered a single text of mine."

"Pero que sé yo." Diego clearly wished she would change the subject. "Maybe she is mad at you too, because you're still here."

Going on about Luz would only alienate Diego, and Lee didn't want to do that; not when she was about to get something on him and leave, knowing that he could never harm Caitlin. Luz was most likely somewhere in the north, angry that she had been dumped — or David had shut down her cell phone account, as he had threatened to do. Perhaps she would soon text Lee; perhaps she never would. In any case, it wouldn’t be long before David appeared with another girl who looked like her.

Diego stood, grabbed Lee's face and kissed her twice on the lips. "Gotta go to work. Promise you'll stop being mad?"

Lee wrinkled her nose. "I'm not mad, silly."

"What will you do all day?"

Look through your things.

"I'm so tired." She stretched. "I feel like an old lady, and I was only in Cuernavaca for three days."

"It's Sol. Can she talk! And drink." He kissed her again. "Stay at home, swim, sleep in the sun. I'll be home a bit late today. We have a board meeting."

"Fun." She returned his kiss. "See you."

After he left, she sat sipping her coffee and watching the movement in the apartment. She needed to find a moment to get to his safe, and it would normally be after the maids had made the bed, tidied the room and polished the floors. They tended to be done by end of morning, when they retired to the other side of the house until lunchtime, unless Diego was at home and in need of their constant attention.

Lee had a swim and waited by the pool. When she saw the women going back toward the kitchen with their buckets and mops, she walked swiftly into the house in her bikini, slipping into Diego's office.

It was always dangerous to shut the door while doing a job. She wouldn’t be able to hear or see people coming, and once they entered the room, it would be too late. But the maids might go through the corridor to put freshly ironed clothes in their closets or change flowers in the vases, and she couldn't let them catch a glimpse of her. She had no good reason to be in that room, but neither did they, once they had cleaned it.

There was the added risk of being seen from the terrace through the glass doors, but a sheer white curtain was drawn over them. She wasted no time pushing aside the painting that hid the safe. The machine whirred and clicked after she typed the combination. She rummaged inside with light fingers, observing how everything was laid out so that she could put it all back the same way.

There were contracts, property deeds, Diego's diplomas and his expensive cuff links. Lee could find nothing that would incriminate him: no photographs, no USBs or other devices that might hold videos of Caitlin or anyone else. People Diego's age — or hers — no longer kept physical copies of things. If there were digital files, they must be securely stored in a server neither she nor Quinn had found.

His iPad was pushed to the back. He used it to read, sometimes, and she had been dying to get her hands on it — but voices outside made her freeze. The maids had finished eating and were going to start their chores in the house again. She could take the tablet, but she might not have the opportunity to return it to the safe before Diego got home.

Something compromising was in that tablet, and the hair rose on the back of her neck to think that she was close to the end of her job but had to let it go for the moment.

The contents of the safe looked untouched; she shut it and pushed the painting back to its place. Steps approached the office, and she quickly ducked behind the curtain, opening the glass door that led to the terrace. After shutting it, she ran through the terrace to the bedroom. She would have to go back into the office to flip the glass door locked again. If the staff noticed anything in the meantime, it would be the first strike against her.

A thief wasn't allowed more than two strikes.

She felt a familiar excitement rushing through her. She wasn't done with her old life; she wasn't any better, although the shiny things in Diego's safe hadn't quickened her heart.

The possibility of finding out his secrets had. She wanted to find out for James.

Lying on the soft coverlet, Lee allowed the withdrawal symptoms she had been repressing since Cuernavaca to take hold of her. She had had James for two days and then none of him for over twenty-four hours. Her body was awake, bothering her. A pulse beat on her lips when she thought of him kissing her — for a long time when he made slow love to her, roughly when he took her fast. There was a throbbing almost all the way to her stomach and she lay on her face, pressing against the perfectly made, chaste bed she shared with Diego.

How different from the bed in James' hotel room with its knotted sheets full of his semen and their sweat. Her insides hurt when she thought about that bed.

Why did her desire for James feel like torture? If she could find him she would probably go to him, and there were just two words for what she wanted him to do to her; one of those words would have gotten her a mouth full of soap once.

She could ask Sol where he lived or call Pete Hadley at the embassy. She could do something crazy.

She did nothing at all. When Diego returned from work, Lee’s hair was freshly-washed, and she sat in designer sweatpants and a T-shirt in front of the TV. She had managed to lock the door between the office and the terrace, but she hadn't had another opportunity to look at his tablet.

"Didn't go out?" he asked.

"Took your advice and just stayed by the pool."

"Estás guapisima, a little bit tanned like that. But go easy on the sun, we're high up. You can get burnt and not even notice.”

He went to have a shower before dinner and returned with the tablet. Lee wasn’t aware of anything else but the device in his hands, until the maid announced that dinner was served. Having downed a couple of beers, Diego set down the iPad and went to the bathroom. Lee leapt onto his place. Safari was open on a sports page, and she pressed History.

All empty.

There was no email account on the tablet, and there were no images. In fact, there were almost no apps apart from Kindle, iBooks and Zinio for magazines.

She left Safari back on the sports page and went to the dining room. He found her there.

"Que bueno!” he said when he saw the food. "You like mole, don't you? Did you have it in Cuernavaca?"

"It's a bit heavy for me at night."

He motioned toward another dish. "Have some chicken, then."

Lee took a sip of wine, trying to look as if she weren't toying with her food. When her phone beeped, she jumped. For a mad second, she believed it to be a message from James.

"It's Luz," she said, picking it up.

Diego nodded at the phone. "Go ahead, I don't mind. I know you've been worried."

Opening WhatsApp, Lee read: Hola Ashley. im sorry I didntt call. am very upset will call you when I can talk. I will just rest in my parents for a little bit.

The mistakes in English and the typos ought to be Luz's, yet Lee had the distinct feeling that the girl had never written a single letter of those messages.

"Is she OK?" Diego asked.

"She's upset."

"Well, that's normal. But like you said she's young. She will get over it."

"Doesn't your brother worry?"

"About what?"

"Things these girls might know about him. In case they decide to get revengeful."

His eyes searched hers for a long moment before his lips made a curve of dismissal. "What could they know that would hurt him?"

She shrugged, and he stared at her for another second before he also shrugged. "I can't think of anything.”

"You're probably right," Lee said.

After he fell asleep, she tiptoed back to the TV room and texted Luz: I'm so sorry about what happened. I hope we can speak soon.

The reply came almost immediately. I hope so. Thanks. Going to sleep now.

Lee exited the chat and texted Quinn. I know I haven’t written in a while, but pls find this phone for me. She gave him the number.

"OK, I'm your bitch," he texted back after a few moments.

She sat looking at the screen until the next message appeared: That phone seems to be a few yards away from yours.

Like in a horror film. It's inside the house ...

Except that, in this case, she was quite sure that Luz's phone was inside the apartment next door.

FOURTEEN

An envelope was waiting by Lee’s dish at breakfast the next day, and she recognized Sol's handwriting. It must be an invitation to one of her openings.

But when she tore the envelope, a photograph fell out. There Lee was, standing in the middle of six flower girls in Cuernavaca. Although everything in the photograph was interesting — the girls and their black braids, the flowers, the cart behind them ─ she knew that she looked better than she ever had on any image. The colors of her skirt and the white of her blouse were dazzling, her eyes were shining and her lips, wanting so badly to be kissed by James, were blood red.

It was the photograph of a woman in love.

She turned it around and it said: Cuernavaca, Día de mi inocente.

“My innocent”: as if James were absolving her of all her crimes.

There was something else in the envelope, and she got up from the table, hastening toward the bedroom to see it in private. She fished out a sheet of paper with a childish drawing of a house and an address in Condesa, the city's most bohemian neighborhood.

James must have asked Sol to address the envelope; he wanted Lee to go to him without creating suspicion. There was no way to call him, since she didn't have his number: she only had a map and an address.

She couldn't get dressed fast enough.

It would be strange for her not to be driven by Julio. She asked him to leave her at a spa she frequented sometimes, mentioning that she had a long treatment booked. Walking right through reception, she reached the back of the building, where there was a line of taxis.

The driver weaved through busy avenues to Condesa, turned into a quiet, leafy street and stopped before a semi-detached house with an Art Deco façade. "I think it's here."

"I know it is," Lee said, paying him.

The gate squeaked as she pushed it, and when she tried the front door she found it open. She locked it behind her. The house was full of light and surrounded by a garden, but Lee barely stopped to look out the windows. She walked through a room full of antiques into a library, but James wasn't anywhere. A wooden staircase spiraled like a seashell and she ran up the steps, still unable to call his name.

There was only one door and she rushed through it, screaming when he grabbed her by the waist.

"There you are," she said, breathless.

"There you are."

They kissed where they stood, as if both were dying of thirst and both were water. Lee vaguely heard something ripping as he took off her clothes. His skin was hot and smooth, and the muscle of his belly flat as he entered her.

"Feels so good," she whispered.

They didn't speak another word for the next half hour.

"Sorry," he said then, sounding British and polite. He rolled on his back. "That was a bit of a trap."

She turned on her stomach. "I didn't know where you were, or I'd have tried your hospitality before."

His eyes were warm as he smiled. "Would you? Well, now you know where I live. I did think that we needed time to heal." He picked up a tube from the bed table and wriggled it. "This pretty much glues everything back together, so now we can make love until we die."

Lee fell back, laughing. "Shall we try?"

"Don't mind if I do."

She let him look at all of her in the bright light of the room until he was the one who shut his eyes. He held out until she was done, and then came. Out of breath, she watched him bite his lip and groan with his head thrown back, as if he couldn’t help it; he opened his eyes as he lowered himself onto her body, his heart thumping next to hers.

They lay entangled, lips to lips, and felt too weak to move — or perhaps just happy to stay like that. It was as if Lee had spent her life in a parched land, and he were water; and water was life.

Lee finally looked around. The windows of the large bedroom looked out onto a garden and at the red spires of a church. The floor was black and white ceramic, and his bed was wide and old, with an antique headboard that featured hand-painted images of saints.

James' eyes followed hers and he said, "Ooops," as he threw a blanket over the saints.

“A bit too late,” Lee said.

“I know, don’t they look pop-eyed to you?”

“They’re thinking, ‘That’s what I missed?’ ”

“Poor buggers.”

“So glad you took the ‘Saint’ out of your name …”

After another half hour, he ran downstairs to get them something to drink. Lee wrapped the bedsheet around her body, moving to his desk. The photographs he had taken in Cuernavaca were tacked to the wall. They showed people dressed like death, the skulls, the red devils, the flowers and the graves. There was the old woman with the altar to her son, Hernán, a man with a big hat and the volcano behind him, beautiful girls in their expensive costumes. There was the photograph of her having a coffee — a burst of white against the dark background of the bar — the doors of cantinas, the debris of the fiesta in the street.

"The photos are beautiful," she said when he returned with two glasses of iced tea. She wanted to say that it felt strange not to want anything from the room, except more of him; it was strange not to have to look for any object or any information, for once.

He sat and pulled her onto his lap. "In Mexico you just point the camera and it's all there."

The ice cubes tinkled as she sipped the tea. "True. It isn't an easy place, though."

He nuzzled her shoulder. "Is anything that's good ever easy?"

Nothing worth possessing can be quite possessed …

Among the prints on the table, Lee found the image the American tourist had taken of them, laughing as they stood against a red wall. She understood why the woman had to tell them they were beautiful. "Can I have this one?"

He nodded.

"We seem so happy,” she said.

"Seem, madam? Nay, we were. We are." He made her turn around and straddle him. "What's not to be happy about? The day is blue, the clouds are fat, you have the greatest arse in Christendom. And beyond, I’m sure."

She touched the corner of the photograph. "Did you develop these?"

"I made a darkroom downstairs."

"You really are a man from another time, aren't you?"

"Yes, I should wear one of those loose white shirts, polished boots and call you 'darling'."

"You called me 'darling' once.” She glanced at him. “When we were in that hotel room and the security man knocked. You so didn't mean it, but I still liked it."

"No, that day I was possessed by a devil and wanted to call you something else." He considered her for a moment. "That same day the fuckhead called you his 'amor'."

She scoffed. "Diego would call a pet hamster that."

"Still, that's a big word, wouldn't you say?” James asked. “Love?”

"I think so."

"Then punch him in the mouth for me next time he calls you that."

Lee took a deep breath before she said, "I got into his safe."

"Oh? And?"

"He keeps his iPad in there, but I had no time to look through it. Later he had it in the living room and I managed to open Safari — he had erased the history."

"I see — so he is looking at things and doesn't want anyone to know?"

"Could be porn."

"I thought you said he was on heroin and had no interest in sex?"

"He's not interested in me, anyway."

"Wouldn't he know about that thing, whatsit, where you go in through a hidden page?"

"Incognito?"

"Yes."

"You truly are from another century."

He plucked the photo from her hand and set it down. "Talking of people finding out other people’s secrets, you'll leave this here for safekeeping. And now I'll show you how we used to do things back in my century ..."

When it was time for her to go, she discovered that the shoulder of her dress was torn. James rummaged inside a couple of drawers, found a needle, threaded it and darned the dress.

Lee brushed the hair away from his eyes. "I can't believe you know how to do that.”

He shrugged. "Had to learn. Couldn't take a lot of clothes with me when I traveled. I sew wounds too."

"Would you leave a nice scar?"

"Wouldn't swear to it." He helped her put on the dress and closed the zipper, and they went downstairs together.

“You have a pretty garden,” she said, looking through the glass doors.

"You’ll get to see it. Shall I drive you?"

"Not a good idea."

"I'll run out and get you a safe taxi, then. There's a stop down the road." He put his back to the door before he opened it. "But the rules of the house are that you can't leave until you book the next appointment."

"Tomorrow,” she said, and the word sounded wonderful and distant at the same time.

James ran out and came back with a taxi, but he kissed her behind the door for a few minutes before he let her go. Then he watched her leave, leaning against the threshold. He didn’t wave. He never did.

FIFTEEN

James awoke with a start the next morning.

He had dreamt of Lee, that much he knew. It was rare for him to remember a dream, but he couldn't help feeling haunted. His subconscious might have been trying to warn him about something.

What had he dreamt?

Before breakfast he sat in the garden to meditate and let his mind wander where it willed. To get lost was often the way to find things.

Mi amor.

Diego called Lee "my love" to make up for the fact that he couldn't sleep with her.

How was it possible? Even when Lee had been cold to the touch, apparently inaccessible, she had been irresistibly sensual. Diego might not be able to discern the special fascination she held, but he must see the obvious: she was beautiful.

Was Diego so addicted to heroin that he couldn’t muster any desire for her, or the remote ability to function? Wouldn’t he then look less healthy than he did and show other signs of his habit?

James meditated until his mind was clear of thoughts — but while he was having breakfast, he called Pete. "Didn't you say the Aguirre boys go to your club?"

"Indeed, indeed. They play Jai Alai every Saturday, come rain or come shine."

"Invite me tomorrow."

"Seriously? What are you going to do, brain Diego with the ball? Suffocate him with the basket?"

"Perhaps."

"All right, then. Just don't make me play with them. They're competitive bastards."

The next morning, Pete considered James as they sat in the veranda of the club. "You're such a ponce!"

James looked down at his white uniform. "I'm in disguise."

"I dearly wish you'd let me into your plan for—"

"There isn't a plan. Just want to talk to that villain.”

"—Diego!"

"Yes, that arrant villain, Diego."

"I mean he is behind you."

Pete was already standing, and James turned in time to see Diego bearing down on them with a smile and an outstretched hand. He stood as well.

"Pete. And Mr. Bryce. How are you?"

James shook his hand. "Call me James, please."

Diego seemed calmer than the first time they met, having probably arrived at the conclusion that Caitlin hadn’t told James about his blackmail.

"Never seen you here before," Diego said.

"I'm Pete's guest. He was going to teach me to play Jai Alai, as you see, but he hurt himself like a fool."

Pete touched his ribcage. “Made the tiniest movement and I'm in terrible pain."

Stepping back, Diego motioned toward his Jai Alai outfit. "Then we can do each other a favor. I was supposed to play with my brother, but he dropped out this morning. I'm looking for a partner."

"What a coincidence," Pete said brightly.

"I'm not sure I'll be worth your game, but I'm willing to give it a try,” James added.

"There's a court just for two people — it won't be a real match, but we will break a sweat and exercise a little. Come on."

Diego walked ahead of them to get the keys to the court.

"You're not going to show off, are you?" Pete asked James.

"How can I show off if I don't know the game? He'll trounce me."

"You can pick up this physical stuff in three minutes."

"I'm not here to win a stupid game."

"You can't stand to lose. And I could be of more help if you'd tell me the plan."

"It's a blind mission," James insisted. "Just trying out a couple of things."

"Wouldn't you love it if civilization didn't exist and you could just beat him within an inch of his life for what he did to Cat?"

"Civilization doesn't exist," James said. "Jail makes me think twice, though. Most of the time."

The court consisted of three walls, and a box full of balls had been placed right outside; it was a sign of how violent Jai Alai could get. Diego handed James a narrow, curved basket whose lower extremity held a glove for his right hand. Pete took James' bag and sat in the gallery behind them, protected by a net.

"So, the only important rule is that you can let the ball hit the ground only once, or not at all, and you can't hold it for any length of time," Diego explained. "It has to be a continuous movement, catching and throwing."

"Sounds simple enough. And these lines here?"

"Don't worry about them for now. In a real game the court is divided into areas and all that. Just be careful — the ball can come at you really hard."

"According to physics, if we don't throw it hard, it won't come back that hard,” James observed.

Diego only smiled with something of a glint in his eyes before he served. The ball sounded like a gunshot as it hit the wall and flew at James. His instinct took over, and he caught it with the basket, throwing it back.

"Good," Diego said. He caught the ball on the rebound and threw it again with greater force.

James was able to catch it and return it to the wall more softly. Diego, however, increased the force with which he played, belying his assurance that this was just an exercise. At that speed, the ball acquired an almost deadly power.

Diego threw it against the side walls, stepping in front of James. After twenty minutes, the leather on the ball burst and Diego tossed it aside, getting a new one from the box outside. James glanced back at the gallery, and Pete made a motion with his arm, urging him to be more aggressive.

Hadn't Pete just told him not to show off?

But Diego had returned and already thrown a ball against the wall with full force. It came hurtling toward James, who had to duck.

"Point for me," Diego said.

Is that how you want to play, you little shit?

In the wilderness, small victories or defeats often meant the difference between life and death. One didn't climb a frozen mountain, run in a desert for days looking for food or fight off predators without entering survival mode. It was an instinct that was hard to turn off.

Or perhaps Pete was right, and James just didn't like to lose.

The serve was his, and he threw the ball with all his might against the wall. It hit Diego's basket with a dry thud, pushing his arm backwards. Diego hurled it back fast, but James' blood was up, and he now matched every one of his opponent's pitches with equal or superior force.

Diego tried to block him, so that he couldn't catch the ball or had to throw it with little room to maneuver, but James slipped out of the way, leaving Diego breathless and confused until he began losing. His smile had disappeared by match point: James had the advantage.

It was Diego's serve, and James sidestepped him, touching the wall to their left with his foot and catching a ball that Diego had sent flying high. He threw it back with an added push from his body.

The ball returned to Diego with the speed of a bullet. He moved away, flattening himself against the wall. Game over.

Pete clapped, and Diego wiped the sweat from his brow with a sleeve. "Well done." He wagged his finger at James. "Are you sure you haven't played before?"

James wished he had a more gracious expression to glue on his face; he couldn’t help a bit of a gloat. They shook hands before moving on to the changing room.

"Go England!" Pete muttered, joining James outside. "I enjoyed that after all. And I'm leaving."

He handed the bag to James and waved to Diego.

In the changing room Diego seemed to have recovered from his loss and told the attendant, "Dale dos toallas al señor."

Taking the towels the man offered, James undressed and walked to the showers. He stepped under a jet of water, letting it run over him. Diego opened the nozzle two showers away, but James realized that he was turning one way and another to throw quick looks at him; not the glances a man might throw at another to measure himself against a potential rival; not the frank stare of men who could stand naked and uninterested in each other's body. These were greedy, furtive looks.

James stood naked, facing Diego, as he rubbed himself dry.

"It was a good game," Diego said, staring at the tiles in front of him. "The ball almost never touched the floor, did you notice?"

"Isn't it supposed to go like that?”

Diego's gaze swept over James' chest and belly before he averted his eyes. "I need to bring you into the team, you will do even better when you’ve played with us a while."

Smiling, James wiped his neck. Diego's dark eyes flickered like a fire being lit. He averted them again. Wrapping the towel around his waist, James walked back to the bench to get clean clothes from his bag.

Diego followed, and as James put on his jeans, he pointed at a scar on his side. "That wasn't appendicitis, was it?"

"Knife."

"Really?" Diego laughed in disbelief. "Did it hurt?"

"Burned a bit."

"A bit? Wow. And this?"

He took a step forward and his finger hovered above another scar on James' shoulder.

"That was just a thorn. Big one."

Diego’s hand wavered, then retreated. "I have to get the clothes in my locker. See you outside for a drink?" He squeezed James’ shoulder as he walked away. "You did incredibly well. Me tienes que dar la revancha!"

James waited for him outside; Diego emerged with his hair smoothly brushed, wearing sunglasses. "Come and meet my father and my grandfather."

I might as well, James thought. I might as well meet the whole damned family.

The two Aguirres, Eduardo the grandfather and Miguel the father, were sitting in the manicured garden beneath a tree in flower. Eduardo's round belly was moving in laughter at something his son had said. He was a small man with a passing resemblance to a garden gnome. Miguel was more than a head taller than his father and sat in expensive lounge trousers and a spotless striped shirt. He stood as they approached while the old man, who had a cane next to him, stayed in his seat.

Diego spoke in Spanish. "This is James St. Bryce, papá, abuelo."

Miguel shook James' hand. "I went to the estate of a St. Bryce family once, in the south of England," Miguel said as they took their seats. "Any relation to you?”

"Deerholt, maybe?"

"That's it."

"That's home."

"We could only walk around the woods, but it was very nice," Miguel told his father. "There were lots of deer there still."

"I like your country," Eduardo told James politely. "But I'm glad your Spanish is good, because I have a terrible accent in English. I get tired when I have to speak it.”

"James speaks Castilian,” Diego observed.

"People are scared of that lisp here," Miguel said affably.

"Five hundred years later?" James asked.

"Los españoles son muy tajantes," Eduardo said, widening his eyes. "The Spaniards sound forceful, and we Mexicans are always so sweet. Ahorita, ahoritita, mañanita ..."

"I think I've already shocked some people by not being formal enough."

"In Mexico extreme formality usually hides a desire for violence," Miguel said. "Have you heard the expression, 'Te matan por nada'?"

They'll kill you for nothing. James had heard it from Pete, in a bullring — as Lee sat next to the man who kept throwing him looks. He didn't like hearing the phrase again from Miguel in that well-groomed garden.

"James lived part of his life in the wilderness, abuelo. With tribes."

Diego spoke loudly and slowly, as if his grandfather were a child. Eduardo, however, didn't seem to mind. He put his lips together to give a whistle of surprise, "Oh, really? In the wild, just like that?"

"Part of the time."

"Have you ever lived with a tribe that has cows?"

Miguel laughed. "My father only cares about cattle."

"I lived with the Maasai for a while," James said. "They're cattle breeders. They don’t have as much cattle as they used to, though."

"Why not?"

"They don't have as much land anymore. And not the right land."

"That's a pity." Eduardo looked around at the other tables and shook his head at the people staring at their phones. "Sometimes all this progress is nothing, you know."

It was Diego's turn to laugh. "Abuelo, your grandfather also thought the world was ending when you were my age."

"The world was ending when I was your age. That's when the Beatles showed up."

The men around the table had a good laugh at this and Eduardo leaned toward James. "I will be eighty years old next week. Then I will retire from the senate, and I'll only stay up in my ranch." His old eyes lit up. "The Maasai, aren't they the ones that make a hole in the neck of the cow to drink the blood?"

"Yes, they do that."

Eduardo laughed once more, patting James' hand. "You're invited to my party. Diego, put him on the list. Then you'll see my cattle, and you'll tell me if I'm doing better than the Maasai."

James wondered what the old man would think of the modern world, if he knew the truth about his grandson. What would Miguel Aguirre think, as he smiled with steel behind urbane eyes?

You poor bastard, James thought, looking at Diego.

SIXTEEN

The terrace wrapped around the two apartments, and it was divided by a fence. The brothers had put a gate on the fence to be able to go back and forth more freely.

Lee was not often invited over to David’s, not even when Luz was there. She had, however, used a clay mold to make a copy of the key to the gate, and could move between the two terraces. David wanted a lot less servants at his apartment than Diego — probably so that he could prepare his heroin hits, enjoy the highs and ride out the lows without being observed.

But since Quinn had told her that Luz’s phone was next door, Lee had been more interested in David's safe than in Diego's. Perhaps David had only taken the phone away, as he had threatened to do — it was the latest iPhone, and Luz's bill had been connected to his account. He was such a little shit, it wouldn't be surprising if he hadn’t even left her a phone as a present.

But why was he answering her messages?

To keep Lee (and maybe others) from bothering him about the way he had dumped Luz? To keep anyone from judging him?

David wouldn't care about being judged for dumping a girl like Luz. Then why was he answering her messages? It could only be to stop people from asking where she was.

Lee hadn't told James anything else about Luz because she only had budding suspicions, not facts. He had never met Luz; he might dismiss the story of her disappearance until Lee had more proof. And maybe there was nothing fishy at all, but Lee’s gut still nagged her.

It nagged her until Diego went next door. It was less risky for her to slip into David's apartment through the terrace when they were there, stoned. David’s apartment would fill with staff cleaning and preparing food for him whenever he wasn’t there.

The brothers were asleep on David’s bed with a lamp forming star-shaped lights on the wall. A rectangle of burnt aluminum paper and a silver tube lay between them. Lee moved silently to David's office and plucked the camera from its hiding place. She had already watched him type the combination and now used it to open the safe: there were four iPhones inside.

She grabbed the first one and turned it on. It was locked by a password. She did the same to all the other phones, and all were locked.

Damn, if she could only take them away with her, Quinn would break the codes — but David might immediately notice they were gone, just as Diego would have noticed the absence of his iPad.

They were iPhones for women, all the cases in the same champagne color. Nothing else inside the safe was of any interest, except a dose of heroin that could kill an elephant and would probably last them a while.

Shutting the safe, Lee moved back toward the bedroom on naked feet and again watched the brothers. David slept with his mouth open, his face as rosy as a kid's. Why did he have those phones?

Was he answering all the messages they received?

Back at Diego's apartment, Lee thought of the careful way he had lined up the phones inside the safe and shuddered. Her own phone, which she had left in silent mode, lit up with a message and she almost jumped. It was from James: Can you come? Need to talk to you. Not over the phone.

Will be there in half an hour, she texted back.

When she got to the house in Condesa, James was in the garden. Mexico was the country of surprises: one could cross a narrow house and find a breathtaking garden like his, stuck between high walls. James waited for her among exotic plants and wildflowers, framed by two palm trees.

"What is it?" she asked.

He motioned for her to sit next to him. By his expression, it was obvious that he hadn't asked her there to play.

"I know what's up with Diego and his iPad," he said. "He's probably looking at photos of men."

Lee blinked. "He's gay?"

"Yes. He’s covering it up with you."

She sat back. "How do you know?"

"Met him at his club and was in the shower with him."

"What?"

"That came out wrong. We played Jai Alai at his club, and in the locker room it was clear that he was looking at me."

"Are you sure?"

"I provoked him to almost make a move, but he backed away at the last moment. I'm not sure he has ever crossed the line and actually been with another man, but I'm beyond sure that he wants to."

“Do you think it would be such a shock here?”

"It’s a shock to conservative parents anywhere. There are gays who are out and proud in Mexico, but I don't think that poor bloke would in a million years admit it to his family." James shrugged. "It's horrible to have to lie your whole life — but Diego will probably stay in denial.”

Lee sat back, thinking of all the signs she had ignored that would confirm that Diego’s secret was nothing beyond homosexuality. "He should go live somewhere else, away from his parents."

"Can you imagine him telling that father or mother that he's giving up the family business? I think they'd figure out the truth and cut him off."

"You're right.” She scoffed. “His brother is a disgusting piece of crap, but I’m sure even he would be horrified at the thought that Diego likes men.”

“He’s looking at gay porn on his iPad, erasing the history all the time and keeping it in the safe anyway. That's how paranoid he is.”

“Will you tell him what you know?"

"I think he knows I know. And I need no proof, because he's a coward."

"He's a coward but there is something remotely decent about him," Lee said pensively. "I think that even if he has a video of Caitlin, he wouldn't use it."

"OK, no need to become a fan." James leaned forward and placed his hands on her waist, caressing it. "The point is, the horrible thing I asked you to do is over."

"Are you sure?"

"Yes. Will you forgive me?"

"I forgave you long ago, James, if you've forgiven me."

"You know I have. I only want you not to run away again without telling me." His eyes searched her face for a moment, and he smiled. "Actually, I don't care if you do. You know I'll find you, and I'll make you sorry."

There was an icy feeling in her belly, about different things. About four phones lined up in a safe, about Diego, about James.

"What is it?" he asked.

"You'd get tired."

"Of what? Finding you?"

She nodded, and his gaze sharpened.

"You're thinking of bolting, are you?"

Lee looked at his hands, which had fallen on her thighs. "No."

"Then go break up with Diego and get your things. I love Mexico, but it's time we got out."

"Not yet.” She looked up. "There's something I haven't told you — about the girl, David's girlfriend."

"The one you were trying to text in Cuernavaca?"

"Yes. She disappeared."

"What do you mean 'disappeared'?"

"She went north to the grandfather's ranch with them and never came back."

He frowned. "And what did they say?"

"Diego told me David dumped her."

"Well, there you go."

"But he has her phone."

"How do you know that?"

"Because he has been answering the messages I sent to her."

It was his turn to sit back. "And how do you know that?"

"Quinn — my … friend, you know — told me the phone was right next door while I was receiving texts from her."

"Still relying on your friend? Anyway, Maybe David was trying not to seem like an insensitive shit who dumps girls?"

"There's more."

"Ah,” he said tonelessly. “I thought there might be."

"He has a bunch of iPhones, different models but all for women, in his safe. And you'll say that he's an insensitive shit who takes back the presents he gives, but then why not recycle the phone and give it to the next girl?"

James was strangely still. "I'm sure you have a theory."

"He's answering messages in all of them. For all the girls."

"But that would mean he did something to them."

She nodded. "I think he has."

"So you think several girls could disappear and no one would be looking for them — knowing that they were all David's girlfriends?"

"Four girls like them could disappear, and no one would care."

"What do you mean?"

"Four poor girls."

Standing abruptly, James walked away from her toward the edge of the garden. It was as if he were gathering patience enough to say, "Lee, try not to let your experience cloud your vision. David is a rich wanker who dumps his girlfriends and keeps the phones he gave them, that's all.”

"Keeps them in a safe — why?" Lee also stood. "Answers the messages from one of them — why? Don't you see, he's been answering them all, to keep the families at bay. To keep them thinking the girls are somewhere when they're actually—”

"Dead? Oh, come on!" James cried. "He’s not a serial killer!”

Lee shook her head slowly, crossing her arms. "If even one white, middle-class girl had disappeared like Luz did, there would be police all over this. Instead, there has been nothing in the press, even though the magazines are constantly writing about David and Diego."

"Do you know for a fact that she didn't go home to her family?"

"She didn't. She would have called me, texted me from her real new phone."

"I think you're not considering how difficult it would be for someone like David Aguirre to go around murdering girls. He'd have a lot to lose."

"He doesn't think anyone can touch him,” Lee insisted passionately. “He doesn't think anyone will ever care about these girls or find out. He is stupid, vain and on heroin — which tends to distort reality even more."

James motioned toward the chairs. "Can we sit down and go back to how you don't know whether Luz is with her parents at this very moment?”

"She would have called me!"

"Because you're bffs?"

Lee wouldn’t sit, so he pinched the bridge of his nose, looking at the ground. She began to get angry; why was he treating her as if she made no sense? Only because he wanted things to be over, and for them to go back to having a good time together. He didn’t know Luz, he didn’t have to care about her.

"All right, Lee, we'll bring this to the attention of the right people, once you get your things and you're out of Diego's."

"Who are the right people?"

"The police."

She scoffed. "You're going to the police with no proof, expecting them to investigate someone in that family?"

"And what are we supposed to do, if not?"

"I don't know what you will do, but I'll find out the truth."

"What's this sudden division?" he asked almost angrily. "You'll do this, and you don't know what I'll do?"

"Because, James, your sister — a beautiful rich girl — was threatened with a video and you were all over the case. You'd have walked to hell and back to make sure nothing even touched her. But these girls—"

He clicked his tongue in annoyance. "Oh, for fuck's sake ..."

"These girls, who are nothing and no one, can be buried under six feet of dirt and nobody needs to give a damn."

"You think I don't give a shit if girls are murdered?"

"Let's go to the Mexican police on the way to the airport and have a conversation with them about how a rich guy is killing his no-name girlfriends. Let's do it."

"I guess you can see how crazy it looks."

She stared at him for a moment. "I can see way more than that."

As she turned inside and marched through the library, he was right behind her. She opened the front door and he slammed it shut, turning her around by the shoulder.

"Stop this habit of running away when things don't go the way you'd like. You called me a child — what about you? We were talking, and you just storm off?"

Lee felt a lifetime of fury rise in her. How had she not seen that James, born of privilege, would never understand what it was to be helpless? James was like the Aguirres, a man who had always had the attention of the world — who would always have it.

"There's nothing I want to talk about."

"Fine,” he said, “but you're not going back to that house and you're not going north."

"Do you really think you can tell me what to do?”

"They could put you in jail just for looking through their things. Or they might think you could start babbling about their stupid secrets."

"And if I found out some stupid secrets, what would they do, according to you? Take my phone away, maybe? Cancel my spa membership?"

A white rage which she had seen before fell over his face. "I don't want you to go back there," he said, almost between gritted teeth.

She wasn't intimidated. "No, James? And do you know how much of a damn I give about what you want?"

"Really? Is that how things are?"

"That's how they are."

He moved aside and opened the door so violently that the knob hit the wall and plaster fell to the floor. "Then by all means, have at it." He gestured outside. “Off you go, since you always want to leave.”

Lee brushed by him and walked quickly toward the gate, although the sound of the slamming door rang like thunder in her ears.

SEVENTEEN

"Again?"

James threw Sol a pained look. "This is serious."

Sol motioned towards a waiter, "Un otro mojito," she asked, before she turned back to her lunch companion. "You really can't keep your temper, huh?"

"Lee drives me insane."

"Sure, must be her fault.”

James leaned forward. "I want her out of Diego's house."

"Really? She told me she's going north with him tomorrow."

"What?"

"To the grandfather's party."

Rubbing a hand over his face, James cursed for a while.

"What, Jim Tony? If he's not touching her and she wants to go to a party, let her. She might be doing it just to upset you, since you've acted like a Cro Magnon yet again." The mojitos arrived, and Sol took a sip of hers. "Mind you, not that women don't like a touch of the caveman, especially if he has a smooth brow and knows poetry, like you."

"Look, it's a bit more complicated than I am able to tell you at the moment," James said. "She's not taking my calls and I desperately need to speak to her. Will you please dial, because otherwise I'll have to go the Paleolithic route and get into Diego's house to drag her out by the hair. I'd rather not do that."

"Would you really do it?" Sol asked, her eyes wide with interest. His face, however, made her quickly add, "Oh, all right. I'm like your pinche phone service. Or maybe I'm Hermes, messenger of lovers?"

Her eyes twinkled as she put the phone to her ear after speed dialing Lee. "Queridisima, are you alone? ... Just a couple of mojitos, as usual. Listen, I have a triply-contrite gentleman here ... No, my sweetheart, just listen to him for a moment ... Will you do it as a favor to me?"

Sol handed James the phone with a wry whisper: "Try and be nice."

He stood and moved away as Sol sucked her drink through a straw and strained to listen.

"Lee."

"James, leave me alone."

"I can't do that."

"I don’t care.”

He took a deep breath, counting to seven. She was going to try to push him away and he couldn't let her. "Please meet me."

"No. I know you want to talk me out of what I need to do."

"Lee, please. I swear on Caitlin that I'll be calm. I won't touch you, I won't try to keep you from leaving, and I'll accept whatever you decide to do."

She gasped in mock surprise. "Do you mean treat me as if I weren’t an idiot?"

"Lee, I beg you."

There was silence, as if she had finally decided to pay attention to the earnestness of his tone.

"Not at your house. Somewhere public."

"All right. A restaurant?"

"No. The museum. The anthropology one."

"I'll meet you at the Mayan section." James moved back to the table, handing the phone to Sol. "Going toward Paseo de la Reforma. Can I give you a ride?"

"Is all fine between the love birds?" Sol asked.

"I don't think 'fine' is a word in Lee's vocabulary."

Sol arched an eyebrow. "Is it in yours?"

"At least I try." He kissed her and walked out, repeating. "I fucking try."

The museum was one of James' favorite places in a city where he liked many places. It housed the precious artifacts of native Mexican culture, things so interesting that one could come back to look at them again and again, as he had. It was always particularly empty on weekdays before lunch. Today there was a group of noisy school children ambling about, and a few tourists dwarfed by the twelve halls on the lower floor.

When Lee entered the Mayan section, James was studying a large terracotta panel. The room was full of shadows as she stood next to him.

"It's beautiful," she said. "What is it?"

"Xibalba. The underworld — or hell, according to the Mayans. It's supposed to have nine levels. People who died expected to find trials at each level, like a game the gods were playing with them."

She moved around the model as he looked at her in the dim light of the display.

"I don't want you to be angry at me,” he said.

Lee stayed silent as she walked on to the jade mask of a long-dead man of importance.

"Did you come here to say nothing?" he insisted as he followed her.

"You want to keep me from what I have to do," she repeated.

"Why do you have to do it?"

"What's the point? You don't want to understand."

The drawing before her showed a pyramid depicting the classes in Mayan society, with the slaves at the bottom.

"Very apt," James said, nodding at it. "You think I'm one of the people sitting at the top and not giving a damn for the ones below, is that it?”

"If some at the bottom go missing, who cares?"

"You are right, the world is like that — but does it make me a caveman to say that I don't want you to go north with these people?"

She faced him, her eyes hard and dark instead of green. It was as if she had become someone else again. "You said there was no danger, so you make no sense."

Visitors had entered the hall, and he beckoned with his head for her to walk the opposite way. "I didn't say there was no danger."

"If the Aguirres are so civilized that they can't harm a girl, then there is no danger to me, right?"

"You have a way of finding trouble."

"If there is no trouble, there is no trouble I can find," she insisted.

He took her by the elbow to stop her, and she pulled away. James held up his hands. "Can you stand still for one second?"

Again, she crossed her arms as she faced him. God, she was pushing every single one of his buttons, when he had so few. But he sounded calm as he said, "Maybe something happened to Luz. But how will it help her for you to go up there on your own?"

"I'll try to find out where her parents live, where she went. Maybe someone at the ranch knows something."

"How will you find out?"

"I'll talk to people."

He gave a wry nod. "Great idea."

"I have done things infinitely more dangerous than this."

"Yes, I saw the result of one of them — you, buried alive."

"This is different."

"This could be even worse."

"Really, James? Being buried alive among the flowers in England is fine, but God forbid that in Mexico—"

He interrupted her, "Robert was a bumbling idiot. The Aguirres are cool-headed people. I can't imagine what they'd do to you if you gave them a reason. You wouldn't even be found."

"How do you know?”

"I know people," he cried.

She gave a small laugh. “You didn’t seem to know me.”

Her words seemed to startle her. She stopped short and looked away, flushing.

“If you mean that I didn’t figure out that you were a thief, you’re right,” he said. “But I’m glad I didn’t, because I’d have thrown you out, or called the police — and I was a lot more interested in what was beyond all the stupid secrets. The thing that’s making you care about a girl. That.”

“You just don’t want to understand what I’m like …”

"On the contrary. I think I have a better idea than you, at this point. And I understand you care about Luz, but there is cruelty in that father, in that brother. There is a coldness beyond ice in that mother — and Diego is a weak man with a secret. Things could get out of hand, so please don't go there."

For a moment he thought she might relent, but instead she said, "What I do is none of your business."

"It is absolutely all of my business."

"Why?"

James said nothing, and Lee walked away once more. With a muttered curse, he caught up with her and motioned toward a large carved wheel in the center of the hall. "Do you know what this is?"

She peered at the tag. "The Stone of Tizoc?"

"It was for human sacrifice. They'd carve out people's hearts on that thing."

"What are you trying to say, that I'm breaking your heart?" she sneered.

"Don't be hateful, Lee.”

It seemed like the whole of her body had begun trembling as she stood there. It made him want to step forward and hold her, but her fake eyes had filled with venom.

"You are hateful," she spat. "You, you sacrificed me. You made me feel things I didn't want to feel, then you sent me here so that I would suffer in someone else's bed."

James was speechless for a moment, but he managed to say, "I was angry. I thought all your feelings were lies—"

"You thought I was a whore.” She stopped and covered her mouth until she was able to continue. "And I was.”

“Lee, no!”

“Yes, a woman who exchanges sex for money or jewels is a whore. I did what I did before because I couldn't feel anything. But then you sent me off to Diego like someone who was worth nothing." She pointed to the stone. "You made me the sacrifice, James, to your pride."

"I thought you forgave me.”

"There you go then, I haven't. And I don't care if you forgive me."

She would have walked away, and James thought he might go around breaking glass cases in fury, but he blocked her way without touching her. "Do you know what I think? That you're sabotaging things."

"What are you even talking about?"

"It's time now, isn't it, to make a choice? You want to find a reason not to leave Mexico with me.” He nodded. “You're afraid."

"Afraid of you?"

"Afraid of being with me. Afraid of being happy.”

"There's no happiness in—"

"In what?" he took a step toward her as she took one back. "In what, Lee?"

Her face was naked, devoid of a plan as she lifted it to him. "In wanting so much."

"You're wrong,” he said softly.

"Didn't you learn from wise people that things are just hunks of matter and there is only error in human exchange? Look around." She gestured toward the sculptures. "It's always misery that's immortalized because—"

"Are you really going to say that it's because it's all there is? There can be happiness in life. It doesn't have to be this grim loneliness of yours."

The guard sitting on a stool by the big doors watched them with narrow eyes that didn't blink. James took Lee's hand and moved her toward a nook in the wall. "I will help you find out what happened to Luz because it’s important to you.”

“You’ll only try to show me that my fears are silly. Why do you care if I take time to find out?”

“Because you’re planning to run again,” he said. “I know that you ran away to make me mad, so I’d forget about you. You were afraid, Lee, but you didn’t know how to admit it.”

She didn’t say anything, but she looked miserable; it made him miserable that she wouldn’t trust him.

“I heard one of those bloody boleros the other day,” he went on. “A man was singing that he didn't know where a woman was anymore and never would again. And then I thought, why am I feeling sad, Lee's here.” He stepped closer to her, carefully so as not to scare her away. “Why should we be unhappy, Lee? Why won't you let me not let you go back to the Aguirres? Why do you mind that I mind?"

"I don't know how to live like that," she said in a voice so low he almost didn't hear her.

"What is it that scares you? Stop sacrificing yourself. Does he look happy to you?" James pointed at a huge round depiction of a man falling to his death while the sun above him burned.

Lee smiled, then gave a small shake of the head. He moved to touch her, but she shrank away.

"Don't, don't,” she said. “It will be awful of you to convince me that way."

His hands dropped. "How did we get to this? I only wanted to stop you from going north. I only want you to be safe."

"It will be like that forever.” She looked fierce, like a cornered animal. "You butting in, telling me what to do. I don't want you to."

"Who's talking about forever?" he asked. She was being hateful, and he didn't have the patience of a saint — not nearly. He knew how to be horrible as well.

The pain in her eyes was gone as soon as it appeared. Things hurtle the wrong way so fast, he thought. And once they did, there was no putting them right.

"Get away from me, James," she hissed. "Go to hell."

She moved past him and this time he didn’t follow. He only said, in spite of the guard still looking at them, "You go to hell, Lee. To all fucking nine of them."

EIGHTEEN

Luz Guadalupe, María Jimena, María Rosa, Susana Araceli.

The names of the four girls rang in Lee's mind as she held the reins of her horse in a gloved grip and narrowed her eyes against the sun.

Eduardo Aguirre's ranch, Los Felices, was not far from the desert between Sonora state and Arizona. The land was flat but rimmed by blue hills, and the cattle grazed on yellow grass as high as a person's knees. The colors seemed to come from a roll of old film that had spoiled but achieved an interesting effect.

It was convenient that James should have taught Lee how to ride, as she had earned the old man's good graces for waking up at dawn and getting on a horse to visit his estate.

Eduardo was pleasant, but he was a politician, and she wasn’t interested in his explanations about the importance of ecology and sustainability for Sonora. She wanted to find a shed somewhere on the property, or any construction where Luz and the other girls might be kept by David. Her sight became blurry at the thought that Luz might be gone forever.

"Is the sun hurting you?" Eduardo asked. "Ay, I should have given you a hat!"

Lee touched the corner of her eye and wiped away a tear. "It's the dust."

He cackled. "Oh, we have lots of that."

They were riding with one of Eduardo's foremen, and the old man sometimes turned to ask his employee a question, point out something he wanted fixed or something else he was happy about.

Luz Guadalupe, María Jimena, María Rosa, Susana Araceli. The internet had told Lee that those four girls had come and gone in David's life since he had returned to Mexico from Harvard: all poor, all estranged from their families.

Rosa, as she had apparently liked to be called, might be the key to catching David. She was the daughter of legal immigrants to the United States but had left her family behind to return with the older Aguirre brother. More to the point, Rosa was an American citizen, and if Lee could get proof of her disappearance, the FBI might get involved. The Americans might not think twice about taking on the Aguirres, especially if James were the one bearing the information to them.

Lee just needed to convince James of what she already knew in her heart: that something had happened to those girls.

Why hadn't the magazines that covered their affairs with David gloated about their downfall or photographed their distress? The business of gossip was democratic: it would record anyone's misery for the delight of others.

"Tienes hambre?" Eduardo asked. "We'll have a good breakfast now that we've breathed some fresh air."

Los Felices had sheds, but all the ones they passed seemed busy, with workers going in and out; the servant quarters were equally busy. It was hard to imagine that Luz and the other girls could be kept in them. Lee was losing the last of her hope.

The ranch also had three houses in different spots. The main house, where Eduardo lived, looked colonial with curved arches, a pink façade and a red porch. Another house had an air of rustic luxury and was currently occupied by Miguel and Paloma. David, Diego and Lee were staying in a contemporary construction of wood and glass, ten minutes away from the pink house.

"Are those boys still sleeping?" Eduardo asked a maid as they rode by the glass house.

The woman was hanging sheets in the sun and said, "Sí, están dormidos."

"Pendejitos perezosos," Eduardo said affably. Lazy little bastards. The maid laughed with him.

When they reached his house, a boy ran out and set a stool before the horse, helping the old man off. Another boy handed him his cane.

"Now I'm going to look a lot older." He winked at Lee. "The horse is a good trick, isn't it?"

"It's amazing how well you ride."

He gave a laugh like a bark as they climbed the tiled steps to the porch. "At my age, you mean. I love to ride too much to give it up, even if it hurts like hell."

A lavish table had been set for them in a corner. The linen and china were impeccable, as were the silver dishes with food and the pots with long snouts bearing fragrant coffee.

"We can sit in the sun," Eduardo said. "Always a good thing to do in winter. In summer you can hardly walk through this porch."

Lee sipped her coffee, fighting the layer of nausea over her appetite. Eduardo’s birthday party would take place the next evening, and Los Felices would fill with guests who might make it more difficult for her to get the proof she needed. There would be young cousins staying with David and Diego in the glass house, and more servants moving about, although she might find a way to profit from the overall confusion.

One thing was clear: this was the only chance for her to discover what had happened to Luz. She only had two and a half days.

"Tomorrow will be a big, big party," Eduardo said with another cackle. "My next important birthday will be ninety. I'll be a wreck by then. Tomorrow I want fireworks, piñatas, mariachis and the works. Isn't that what you say, 'the works'?"

She nodded. "That's right. Or you can say, 'the whole enchilada'."

His laughter rang out again. "For sure we'll have enchiladas too." He leaned a little toward her to make a confession. "Do you know, if everything had gone right in my life, I would have married a girl from Philadelphia."

"Really?"

"Beautiful girl — I learned English to speak to her. But her family didn't like the idea and mine liked it even less. Romeo and Juliet, eh?"

"You met your wife after her?"

"Yes, but I didn't love her like the Philadelphia girl. It's what we did, at those times: we married the right people. Even Miguel did, and that wasn't so long ago." He threw her a glance. "Do you think that Paloma is lovable? She's like the Catrina Skeleton."

Eduardo laughed with such childish mirth that Lee couldn't help laughing with him.

“Maybe the boys will find someone they really like. Times are different. I'd be happy if my grandson Diego el pendejito married a girl as beautiful as you. You're brave too, I can tell by your eyes, and he needs that." Looking away, he sighed. "Every man should have a brave woman by his side."

After breakfast, Lee walked around the house and took the phone from the pocket of her trousers. Reception was only good near the pink house, but not very good even there. Eduardo wanted his family to stop looking at their screens when they were with him.

No messages. Nothing from James. She almost shook her phone; instead, she shook her head at her own inconstancy. What did she expect from him? She had pushed him away as hard as she could, and he had shoved her back.

She hadn't meant to say forever; nothing lasted that long. He had mocked her because she had made him angry, and she was ashamed. She was always ashamed of wanting him.

Sticking the phone in her pocket again, she got into the jeep she had been given to shuttle around the estate. At the glass house the brothers were having their breakfast on their more modern porch.

"Mi amor, you're a redhead!" Diego cried.

Lee ran a hand over her hair. "I went riding with your grandfather. There was a lot of dirt."

"What did he show you?" David asked her with a wide smile.

It was almost as if he were provoking her; or it would be, if he knew what she suspected.

"The cattle and—"

David laughed into his coffee cup. "Cows, dirt, rocks, grass, dirt, rocks."

"Going to wash my hair," Lee snapped. It was rare that she should dislike someone as intensely as she disliked David.

Diego grabbed her hand as she went by him and squeezed it. The brothers looked like two lazy dogs in the sun, and inside the house Lee took long strides toward the den that contained the most interesting thing about the whole ranch: another safe.

The night before she had dared to place another motion-activated DVR camera above it. She took the camera and locked herself in the bathroom of their suite, connecting it to her phone to watch the feed it had recorded: and there was David opening the safe. His movements in the feed were quick, and she couldn’t see inside the safe, but now she knew the combination and bid her time until she could open it.

She had to wait all day. The family did everything together, from lunch to afternoon coffee to evening drinks and dinner. Like a flock of testy birds, they often bickered, yet seemed not to tire of each other's company.

"You're not wearing black tomorrow, are you dear?" Paloma asked suddenly, arching perfect eyebrows at Lee.

"Blue,” Lee said.

"Ah, good. It's not a funeral."

Eduardo let out a guffaw. "I hope not mine, anyway."

The men laughed with him. Paloma frowned slightly, as if the men bothered her, and wrapped the pashmina more tightly around her bony shoulders.

David became expansive after a few beers, and Lee’s eyes followed him when he left the table. He stood on the porch helping a girl hang lanterns from the arches.

"Warn David that she's off limits," Eduardo told Diego in Spanish.

Diego joined his brother. The old man looked upset for the first time that day, but Miguel kept talking and sipping his wine, as if he were unconcerned by what his eldest son might get up to, and Paloma seemed oblivious to the whole exchange.

Did they suspect that their golden boy, David, was a monster?

Wouldn't David know better than to play with the girls at Los Felices? Lee watched him jerk his chin at his brother as he threw a resentful look toward his grandfather. He shrugged and turned away, but Diego followed him.

Eduardo had switched his eyes to her. He gave something like a small sigh, then smiled at whatever his son was saying. Lee shouldn’t let even a funny old man know that she was interested in his uncontrollable grandson. Eduardo was no fool; neither were Miguel and Paloma.

Blood was thicker than water. Those people would protect each other, and they would protect the family from scandal.

"She's sleepy, Miguel," the old man said. "She woke up before dawn to ride.”

Lee realized they were talking about her and smiled. "I'm fine."

"The boys have walked off somewhere. Jorge will drive you back," Miguel said.

They wanted her gone, perhaps to discuss family things, or to reprimand David. She wished them goodnight and climbed into the jeep with Jorge.

In ten minutes, she was at the safe again, in the dark, because even though the den faced the mountains at the back, a light through the glass of the house could betray her to a passing servant or to David, if he returned sooner than she expected.

She typed the combination. A long howl outside made her start as the door clicked open. It must be a coyote, and it probably sounded closer than it was. They wouldn't let coyotes roam free in the ranch with Eduardo's prized cattle there. The sound gave her the creeps.

Lee pulled at the door of the safe. There was one single phone inside — probably Luz's; but it was something else that called her attention, something that gleamed even in the dark. She shone the light from her cell phone on a row of jewelry neatly arranged on the bottom shelf of the safe.

There was no need to pull it all out and risk messing with David's precision. A large gold medal was right on the center of the shelf, and the light from her phone showed her the Virgen de la Luz etched on it.

David might be a shit who took back the phones he gave to his girlfriends; he might carry them around to answer messages and toy with people. But there was absolutely no reason for him to have a necklace from which Luz would never have been parted.

Not if she were alive.

NINETEEN

Lee moved through the house, crying.

"I lost them," she said. "I don't know where they are."

"But they've never been here," James told her.

"Where are they?"

The house multiplied into many other rooms, and they got bigger and bigger as she reached them. They looked like the rooms in Deerholt, but different.

"There are more than nine rooms," she said. "Please, help me look!"

All the rooms were empty, and when he reached the last one, it was full of sand and she was standing on a stone wheel, scratching at her own face. The flesh came out in her nails. Her skull had started to show, teeth first, in a mad smile.

"Lee!"

He opened his eyes.

This time the dream had been vivid. James could still feel his pain at her pain and, unlike the bad feeling left by other dreams, this one didn't dissipate as the minutes went by. It only increased.

"What can happen?" he wondered as he sat up in bed.

Lee was no fool; she knew what precautions to take when looking through people's things. She had done this before, many times.

She hadn’t known with Robert.

What can happen? he wondered again. She can take care of herself.

But the image of her distress wouldn't leave him. She had been on a search by herself. She had asked for his help in the dream, although she would never ask in real life. She would never think it was his business, if he didn't want it to be.

It struck him that she had gone north to make sure a girl was safe — and that if she could not find Luz, she would try to catch the man who had hurt her so that other girls would be safe.

Her thieving, conniving persona was the lie; the truth was infinitely more complicated, and it was the truth that had fascinated him. She had been buried alive because she had wanted to find out the truth about Mia so that he would stop feeling guilty.

Then, as now, she had thought that he wouldn’t believe her, and she had gone ahead on her own.

She’s doing the right thing, and I’m not with her.

James made himself a cup of tea, took his laptop and opened it in the garden. It wasn't hard to google David and find the names of his girlfriends: Luz Guadalupe Flores, María Jimena Hernandez, María Rosa Morales, Susana Araceli Sanchez. Their trail on internet, however, disappeared after David broke up with them.

Lee had said that Luz spent time looking at her posts on Instagram and at some of the hateful reactions to them. James was not on social media, but the only way to look for the disappeared girls would be to track them on Facebook and Instagram. He opened accounts, swearing at every step.

Once he was inside Facebook, he wondered how many people in the world could have the same name, even compounded names like "Luz Guadalupe" and "Susana Araceli.” There was a basketball player called James St. Brice, and many James Bryces. He scrolled through faces until he found the four girls.

María Jimena Hernandez had last posted thirteen months ago.

María Rosa Morales: eight months ago.

Susana Araceli Sanchez: five months ago.

Luz Guadalupe Flores: November 2nd.

All of them had stopped posting around the time David had left them, although they had been prolific with their messages and photos before. Their last posts were all about being in Los Felices, the grandfather's ranch in the north.

Only Luz and María Rosa had Instagram accounts, at least under anything resembling their names. Rosa's last image had been posted around the same time as her last Facebook message. It was a photo of her booted feet on rocky ground with a lizard next to them. Found life in the Sonora Desert. Don't worry, I don't plan to cross it! she had written in English.

Luz had taken a selfie with blue hills as a background: Open space, open hearts! There were emojis of hearts, stars and moons to accompany the message. Lee was right: Luz was just a girl; she was almost a child.

The hair on the back of James' neck started to rise.

Too many coincidences. David Aguirre was doing something to those girls, and the last place any of them had been seen was Los Felices — probably because if he killed them there, he could easily dispose of their bodies in the desert.

And Lee was at the ranch with him.

James stood so fast that he almost overturned the table. He dialed her number. El teléfono marcado está fuera de cobertura ...

Her phone was out of coverage area. Lee was in a ranch in the middle of nowhere, and her damned phone didn't work, at least not all the time. He texted: I know you found the truth. I'm coming — but if you see this, PLEASE get out of there NOW.

He dialed Pete as he ran up the stairs. "Can you get me a gun?"

"Can I get you a what?"

"A gun."

"What the hell, James?"

Throwing a duffel bag on the bed, James began filling it with clothes. "I don't have time to explain, but it's not about Diego anymore. This is something else."

"What, for example? What have you done?"

Te matan por nada. They kill you for nothing. Or you killed them, if you had to.

"Will you please trust me for a second, Pete? Can you get me a gun? I'll buy it, loan it, whatever."

"Of course I don’t trust you, everyone knows you’re mad. I've got one for self-defense but—"

"Am coming by to get it."

James hung up despite Pete's protests and rummaged through his desk. Where was that thing again? Running down to the kitchen, he looked through the papers on the counter until he found an envelope he had tossed aside when it arrived: a gilded invitation to a party that he had never meant to attend.

Until now.

TWENTY

Faces in Mexico could seem sculpted into stillness, as inscrutable as the masks in the museum.

All Lee had to do was mention Luz, and the faces of the employees at the ranch shut down. Jorge, the foreman, the maids: they didn't look scared, worried or guilty when Luz was mentioned. They answered Lee politely, but they didn't remember where she had gone when she left the ranch; it was better to ask Señor David. Didn't Señor Diego know where she was from? She had never spoken of her family. She hadn’t spoken to the staff much.

Beyond a certain number of questions, Lee's inquiry would cease being casual. If she kept interrogating people, she would begin to sound like a detective in hot pursuit of a criminal. The staff might lie to avoid the wrath of the Aguirre family, and perhaps it was true that Luz would have kept to herself and to the big houses, distancing herself from the workers at the ranch.

It was Eduardo's birthday and the glass house had filled with Diego's cousins the night before. Nevertheless, Lee had gone out to ride with her host in the morning and paid closer attention to what he showed her: the garden, the watermelon patches and the corn Eduardo grew to feed his animals. Agriculture in Sonora sometimes meant using too much water in a place that had too little, but it was still the most important economic activity in the state.

Lee looked at the beds of disturbed earth and thought that if girls had been killed, David would most likely use the vast desert beyond Los Felices to bury them where they would never be found. Why would he hide them in his grandfather's garden or plantations — except that he was a sick bastard who liked to play pranks on people? He would probably enjoy sitting with his family and gazing at the graves of four girls. The cruel Aztec forefathers that were not even his had sacrificed human beings five hundred years before; it must make David feel like a god to do the same, and the heroin would increase his certainty that he would never be caught.

You're going to get caught, you shit, Lee thought as she watched him during breakfast at the pink house.

The phone pinged in her pocket as soon as the meal was over. She took it out and read: Sorry ive been quiet. Did you go to the abuelo party?

David's feet were within Lee’s field of vision as she looked down at her phone. He had just been texting and was standing right there. She couldn't make the mistake of looking up at him — he would probably laugh at her and she would throw a pot of hot coffee in his face. She moved away a little as she texted back: Yes, I am at the ranch. Wish you were here.

She hit "send" and heard the beep coming from David's phone. You bastard, I'm going to nail you to the wall so hard you'll never laugh again.

"Aren't you going to look at your damned message?" Eduardo asked his grandson in Spanish, pointing at his pocket with the cane.

Lee turned in time to catch David shrugging. "It's such a pain, abuelo. I feel like burying this phone in the desert."

At lunch the family was together again, having incorporated the recently arrived members to the table, and Lee could only think of the jewels inside the safe. They were the proof she needed, but when could she get them? David might still open the safe and find the jewels gone, and he might try to silence her then.

Lee would have to leave the party in full swing to get the jewels and hide them; she would have to find a way to make her escape from the ranch, knowing that even with the jewels, it would be her word against the Aguirre's.

Her word or James’. He would believe her if she showed him the girls’ personal items. There had been foul play, and the authorities or the press would listen to James; people would always listen to someone like him.

Luz was gone. Little Luz, full of dreams and hopes, was dead. She would never be reunited with her father; she would never see her mother again; her parents would spend the rest of their lives wishing they hadn’t sent her away. She hadn’t even been buried with the medal she loved so much.

Lee couldn’t grieve, because her anger was too great. David, you piece of shit. You monster. You don’t know me. You don’t know what I’m willing to do to catch you.

Eduardo invited her to meet him early, while his grandchildren napped, and have the first glass of champagne with him. She needed to text James and enlist his help, so she went to the pink house at six o'clock in her long blue dress, her hair gathered in a chignon and Diego's leaf-shaped diamond necklace around her neck. Her cell phone was strapped to her thigh, and it vibrated as soon as she crossed the heavy oak doors. It could be a message from David to torment her.

"Vaya, por Dios!" Dressed in an expensive black tuxedo that did its best to make him look more dashing, Eduardo motioned at her in admiration from the top of the stairs. "It's a Greek goddess who has decided to come to my party!"

Lee ran up the steps and kissed him on the cheek. "Happy birthday, Eduardo."

She handed him the present she had brought with her from Mexico City, and he chuckled. "You know, I am like a child. I love presents."

He led her down the corridor and crossed so many doors that when they reached a small drawing room she supposed they were in his inner sanctum. He sat on the sofa, inviting her to take the place next to him as he tore the wrapping paper and opened the box with his gift.

Lee shrugged. "For the man who has everything."

"Muchas gracias!" he cried, revealing a scarf that was made of silk on one side and cashmere on the other. He patted her leg quickly. "I love my present, because you have very good taste — and I love that you call me Eduardo. Only an American would do something like that. Here in Mexico girls would call me señor and abuelo — and even viejo if they thought I wasn't listening."

"You don’t act like an old man.”

"Ah, let me get the champagne started. Where are people when you need them?"

Lee made a movement as if to get up and find someone, but he shook his head and stood, walking out. She put her hand up the slit of the dress and found the phone, keeping an eye out for Eduardo.

Typing in her code quickly, she read James' message, which appeared as coming from "Spa": I know you found the truth. I'm coming — but if you see this, PLEASE get out of there NOW.

The message was from that morning and Lee smiled. He was coming; he must be on his way already. He had believed her. She quickly texted back, I have found proof and will get it. Not in any danger, will see you soon. She erased both messages.

Eduardo's cane echoed in the hall and she only had time to put the phone back in the thigh strap and pull the dress over it, although she felt another message vibrating. James was probably telling her in no uncertain terms to get out. She needed to lock herself in the bathroom and talk to him; she would do it in a few minutes.

"Here we go," Eduardo said as he sat next to her again.

Two waiters followed in his wake. One carried a bucket from which a bottle of Veuve Clicquot and two crystal champagne flutes emerged; the other had a tray with a bottle of wine, the opener and two wine glasses. They set the drinks down on the coffee table before the sofa, and one of them uncorked the champagne.

Eduardo laughed. "Hop!"

He handed a glass to Lee and raised his own.

"Happy birthday," she said again.

The glasses sounded like bells as they clinked against each other.

"Would you like the wine to be uncorked?" the second waiter asked.

The old man shook his head. "I'll open it, if we want wine. You can go and close the doors.”

The two waiters nodded as they pulled the double doors shut.

"Haven't any guests arrived yet?" Lee asked.

"Yes, in different houses, like the pendejito cousins in yours. Some rich people are over at Miguel's. I'll have all the old politicians staying over here, but they come at the last minute. To each his own, eh?"

"You'll have a full house, or houses, then."

"Yes, but they won't bother us for a while. They'll arrive and be taken to their rooms to get washed and ready, and the party will only start after eight. When you say eight in Mexico, you mean nine. We have time."

Lee's smile wavered. That was a lot of time to spend alone with him. She would have a couple of drinks, talk to James and invent an excuse to return to the glass house until the guests were due.

"I like parties, and I like presents — but I don't want to feel old," Eduardo said with something like a pout. "And I don't feel old with you."

His hand fell more heavily on her thigh and stayed there.

Oh God, no. What an idiot she was. Why had she thought that Eduardo would see her as a girl, his grandson's girl, not to be flirted with, and certainly not to be touched? And what should she do now? With hours ahead of them, it would get awkward to keep giving him the slip.

"You look so sweet," Eduardo continued. "I'll bet you taste sweet as well."

A puritanical streak in Lee would always make her misjudge certain situations. This had happened before with old men, yet she hadn't suspected that Eduardo would get her alone when his house was filling with some of the most important people in Mexico to make such a decided move. It just wasn’t done.

Eduardo opened his lips as he stared at her cleavage; saliva gathered in front of his uneven yellow teeth and began to dribble down his chin. Lee watched him with horrified fascination, but she hadn't expected him to put his hand between her legs, his middle finger trying to burrow through her dress and panties. The glass dropped from her fingers and rolled on the carpet as she shrank away from his touch.

"That's disgusting, stop it!" she cried.

It was the wrong choice of words. His face crumpled with fury and he gripped her wrist with surprising strength. Lee was slow; had he been a younger man, she would have grabbed the bottle of champagne and struck him with it, but she still thought him a frail old man. She would shake her arm free and run until she was out of the house — he wouldn't be able to follow her.

But the wrinkled eyes, which now held a malignant glint, read her thoughts. Eduardo’s arm moved, and suddenly she was falling to her knees and then sideways on the floor. The pain was so great that she couldn't breathe for a moment. No air reached her lungs, and she started to panic.

Eduardo's black leather shoes stood in front of her eyes. They were perfectly polished.

If she didn't breathe, she was going to die, but the pain was too sharp.

Finally, she pulled with all her might, and air rushed into her with a harsh sound.

It was only then that she realized he had hit her in the stomach with his cane.

TWENTY-ONE

It had been a brutal thing for the old man do — a disproportionate response to her rejection. He was mad, and Lee understood that she needed to fight him savagely. She needed to move past the pain and the shock and throw him on the ground, even if she broke all his bones.

Even if she killed him, she needed to throw him down.

Get out of there NOW.

James' words swam in front of her eyes as if she could still see them on the screen of her cell phone. He will be so angry. He told me this would happen, and I didn't listen.

She pulled herself up with one hand, ready to run, but with a grimace of hatred Eduardo lifted the cane again. Protecting her head with her forearm, Lee heard the wood rap her skull before she felt the blow. Her hand found the fabric of the sofa and she clutched it.

If she fell again, he would keep hitting her.

She managed to get into a sitting position and tried to scuttle backwards, but her new shoes slid on the carpet and then on the ceramic floor as he moved toward her.

"I'm disgusting?" he said in Spanish. "And I have to hear that from a puta like you on my birthday?"

When he leaned on the cane, she grabbed it — but he wouldn't let go. He was strong for an old man, but he wasn't firm on his feet. She tugged at the cane until he fell to his knees, crying out in pain. Now she could run, although she needed to find a way out the back. His employees might help catch her. Who knew what went on in that place?

Lee stood, swaying, but Eduardo grasped the wine opener from the tray and buried it into the side of her knee. She howled in pain.

"Let's see what you do now, puta," he hissed.

Don't hold back! Lee took the bottle of champagne by the neck, but Eduardo did what she ought to have done to him and pulled both her ankles. She fell, and the back of her head hit the floor. Don’t pass out, she told herself as her eyes rolled in their sockets.

He'll kill you.

Instead, he crawled forward on his buttocks and one of his hands lodged between her legs again. The other twisted the wine opener further into her knee, and Lee screamed as he pulled her dress aside.

"What's this?" he asked, momentarily distracted from her body by the phone strapped to her thigh.

"Papá!"

Eduardo turned. Miguel stood at the door, his eyes bulging. Even in her state, Lee realized that he hadn’t thought his father capable of hurting anyone.

"Get out!" Eduardo cried. "Get the hell out of here, this is none of your business."

"Papá, what the hell are you doing?" Miguel asked, closing the door behind him and rushing to grasp his father by the shoulders.

The old man struggled, trying to get the cane so he could hit his son, but Miguel dragged him on the ground like a child until he was in the middle of the room. This only infuriated Eduardo further.

"How dare you?" he screamed at Miguel. "How dare you touch me like that? Help me up right now!"

Lee tried to sit, but her head was swimming. Blood ran into her right eye from a cut on her head, and she felt a stickiness between her legs. The vicious blow of the cane to her stomach had perhaps caused an internal injury, but Miguel didn't rush to help her. He stared at her torn dress, at the metal sticking out of her knee and at the blood as if contemplating a problem.

Turning, he went to the door and called to someone on the other side, "Go get my sons. Don't let my wife see you doing it."

Eduardo grabbed fistfuls of carpet and began pulling himself toward Lee again, but Miguel closed the door and slowly walked to stand between him and the woman on the ground.

"Why have you done this, papá?" he asked, as if speaking to a child who had pulled the dog's tail.

"What business is it of yours?"

"The house will be full of people in a little while," Miguel said reasonably. "And they'll see that you hurt a woman."

"She has a phone hidden on her body. She has been spying on me, on us. Go and look!"

It was hard to say whether Miguel obeyed his father as an accomplice or simply to try and get all the information about what was happening like the cautious, cold-blooded man he was. He pulled Lee’s dress aside almost respectfully, taking the phone and covering her again.

The phone was set to lock after a quarter of an hour because Lee was never away from it, and she always deleted James' texts as soon as she read them, but Miguel read the last message she had received and hadn’t yet read. He went pale, staring at her with a furrow between his brows.

"What does this mean? Why is someone under 'Spa' telling you to get out?”

"Oh..." Eduardo said. "She was asking people about Luz today. I think she came here to find out what happened to that desgraciada."

"What does that have to do with anything?" Miguel asked, still puzzled.

A knock on the door interrupted Miguel, who unlocked it. It was David. His father closed the door behind him, and David's blue eyes widened as he looked from Lee to Eduardo and back at Miguel. There was guilt written all over his face, but also a kind of excitement.

"That one is after you, pendejito," his grandfather said. "She knows what you've done."

"What have you done?" Miguel was a little taller than his son, his shoulders massive. As he stepped forward, David stepped back. "What the hell have you done?"

On the floor still, Eduardo giggled until he coughed. "Ask him about the girls."

Seeing that David hadn't reacted, Miguel grabbed him by the lapels of his tuxedo. "What does he mean, what girls?" He slapped his son. "Tell me!"

David protected his face, red from the blow, and blurted out, "Abuelo killed the girls. My girlfriends. Las indias."

Lee's breath caught in her throat. Their crimes were more horrible than she had imagined, and he had called the girls "the Indians," as if the family referred to them like that. You animal, you scum! The cuts on Lee’s face stung as tears of rage ran down her cheeks.

Miguel, however, was working through a shock of his own. "What are you talking about?"

"Ay, tell the story right," the old man said, still chuckling. "You brought the morenitas to me because you liked to see them hurt."

Miguel's face was pale as he looked from his father to his son. "I just don't get what you're saying."

"It's like this, Miguelito. This woman," Eduardo pointed at Lee with a bent finger, "knows about the dead girls and came to find out more. If we don't do something about her, we are all screwed. David is screwed." Eduardo crossed his arms. "I'm not going down alone."

"It was an accident, like this one," David pointed at Lee. "I left María Jimena with him and when I came back, he was beating her, and I couldn't stop him."

"You didn't want to," Eduardo said. "You brought me three more girls just to watch me beat them. You liked it, enfermo."

"You're calling him sick?" Miguel narrowed his eyes at his father. "What about you? Why would you do this?"

"Because they think I'm old. I can see it in their eyes, so I show them I’m still strong."

"He's sick, he's sick," David mumbled under his breath, as if only Miguel could hear him.

His father turned, hissing, "But his brain is half eaten. What's your excuse?"

Lee's eyes opened and closed as the men accused each other. Clearly, she was the last thing on anyone's mind, until Miguel held up the phone, asking her, "Who has been texting you?"

She didn't answer, and Miguel's attention returned to his father. Motioning with his head, he got David's help to raise Eduardo from the floor but set him on a chair on the other side of the room.

"What are we going to do?" David asked his father in despair. "I can't go to jail, I can't."

Miguel turned to Eduardo. "The minister of foreign affairs is here. Others are on the way from the airport. Clean yourself up — there's blood on your shirt. Go receive your guests."

"I told them eight o'clock," Eduardo said peevishly.

Miguel ignored him, handing him the cane so he could stand up and walk to the door.

"If you try to frame me, David is going down as well," Eduardo said as he left. "You need to kill that bitch."

Cold beads of sweat gathered on Lee’s forehead as Miguel approached her. "Help me pick her up," he told David.

"Don't touch me," she said, shrinking away as both men took her by the arms and legs. They opened the door behind the sofa where she had been attacked and carried her into a room, setting her down on the bed.

"Abuelo is right," David said with a furtive glance at his father. "If she lives she'll talk."

Miguel's fury was contained. "Not everyone enjoys killing women. I want to understand what is going on here."

"I told you, abuelo—"

"Shut up, you'll only tell me lies. Go to the glass house and ask Diego to put her things in a bag and bring everything here."

David hesitated for a second, but it was obvious that he would always obey a direct order from his father. "Just don't listen to her. She'll try to poison your mind."

Once he was gone, Miguel said with apparent calm, "I'm sorry about all this, believe me. But you need to tell me who is on the other end of this phone. I need to control what is happening — because if I manage, you might be able to get out of here."

On the bed, Lee shook her head. “Your father may have some advanced form of Alzheimer’s, but your son is a psychopath. You’re too smart not to know that when gangrene sets in, you cut off the rotten limb to survive."

It had taken her quite a bit of effort to speak. Miguel walked back to the room next door, which looked like a battlefield, to dial the number that had texted her: James' number. Even from the bed she heard his voice: "Hello?"

Miguel listened. James was too clever to say anything if he didn't hear her on the other side, and both men waited for each other to speak until Miguel ended the call. With any luck, he had only alerted James to the fact that someone else had her phone.

Miguel didn't approach her again. When Diego walked in, carrying her small suitcase, he gasped at seeing her all bloodied on the bed. David had perhaps told him their crazy grandfather had hurt her.

Miguel stopped Diego from going to Lee.

"Papá," Diego protested with a frown. "She's hurt!"

Shaking his head, Miguel opened her suitcase and rummaged through it. "Are all her things here?"

"I think so, but what the hell is going on?" Diego stepped into the bedroom. "What's that in her knee, for God's sake? Ashley?"

Seeing her hurt without understanding what had happened made him hesitate, but Lee read the innocence in his eyes. Miguel, on the other hand, had found her bag of creams and opened it. He held up the jars and stopped when one of them rattled. After shaking it, he turned it around and tried unscrewing the bottom. The cameras fell in the palm of his hand.

"What’s that?" Diego asked.

David rubbed a desperate hand over his face. "La madre que la parió!"

It was almost worth being hurt, to see David so scared. Lee made a superhuman effort and sat up, removing her contact lenses.

With her real eyes she looked as levelly as possible at Miguel. "I'm FBI. And I've been watching your son for a while. If you kill me—" she cocked her head at him and smiled, as she gathered enough breath to add, "Well, you'll have murdered an American federal agent. How is that for scandal, Mr. Aguirre?"

TWENTY-TWO

The Aguirres must have a coterie of henchmen in different professions to do their bidding and dirty work. Miguel sent an order to Eduardo’s security people: they were to carefully vet the guests arriving and ask to see an invitation. Lookouts were to be posted on the road, in case caravans with law enforcement agents approached, and he was to be told at once if there was even the distant sound of a helicopter.

However, he also summoned a doctor for Lee, and the man didn't betray any surprise at seeing her on a bed with a wine opener stuck in her leg. He gave her an injection of morphine, and the pain abated. It was now more like the dull phantom of an ache than the feeling that she was being turned inside out.

Presumably the Aguirres would want to interrogate her — or keep her alive so that if the FBI descended on them, Miguel could avoid the worst of the trouble that would follow.

His decision would depend on plausible deniability. What should he do to contain the fallout from the murders and from Eduardo’s attack on an alleged FBI agent?

Paloma arrived and was apprised of the whole situation, but she looked at Lee with an icier intention.

"This is the work of your blue-eyed boy there," Miguel said, nodding at David.

"He didn't get the craziness from my side of the family," she snapped back. "This was your father's doing. That sick old goat."

"My father has a degenerative brain disease. Can you say the same for your son?"

"My son? As if he weren't yours?"

Their conversation took place in the room where Lee had been attacked and in Spanish. However, they had left the connecting door open, perhaps to watch her. Lee had pretended often enough not to understand the language, but the fact that they didn’t stop to consider that she might have been lying didn’t bode well for her.

David was silent, looking at the ground as if hoping it would swallow him, but Diego shook his head at his parents. "What does any of this matter? You don't seem to understand what has been happening here — four girls were murdered! Girls we knew! They were killed for no reason, and now Ashley is hurt and you're still wondering what to do?”

"Calm down, Diego," Miguel said. "There are a lot of important people at the party right now. This could ruin us all if we don't discuss it carefully."

"What is there to discuss?" Diego walked to the door in distress and looked at Lee. "She needs to go to a hospital!”

"Be quiet," Paloma said, "and let us think things through."

An expression of disgust filled Diego's face as he looked from his father to his mother; he wouldn't look at his brother. Perhaps he had finally understood that he ought not to have been ashamed of his own secret when there was real evil in his family.

"She needs to tell us who is coming," Paloma said. "We need to know what we're up against."

"Well, she isn't speaking," Miguel pointed out.

"That wine opener should have stayed where it was. We could have made her talk."

"Paloma!" Miguel cried. "Don't be so tasteless."

Tasteless. Lee almost laughed, but Diego had walked in to sit at the foot of the bed.

"I'm so sorry, Ashley. I didn't know, I didn't know!"

"Diego, be quiet or get out," Paloma ordered.

"You're all insane," Diego said, shaking his head again. He had tears in his eyes. "I'm not leaving her with you. The house is full of people, they will know if you try to do anything to her."

"They are our people," Paloma said. "Do you think anyone will believe her? She's just an American slut."

It was clear that Paloma was in favor of a swift and final solution: she wanted “Ashley” gone. She didn't mind a confrontation with the FBI; they would deny everything, and she seemed sure they would get away with murder.

Miguel wasn't as sure. He was Lee's best chance of survival, at least until James got there. She could see different scenarios shuffling behind his cyborg eyes. He wanted no scandal; he might keep his father under watch in Los Felices and send David somewhere, and no one would ever know what had happened at the ranch. But, unlike his wife, he suspected that might not be an alternative any longer.

"Just let things take their course, if you're so squeamish," Paloma told him. "You heard the doctor."

The doctor had said that Lee was hemorrhaging, and that he could not tell how bad her internal injury was. Her knee could also get infected, and she might die if she were not taken to a hospital.

"If she gets out of here alive, I’ll go to jail," David whispered.

"Shut up!" Miguel said with a threatening glare at him.

David rocked back and forth, as Diego watched him in shock.

Lee addressed Diego in English: "I'm not going to die. They'll have to shoot me or smother me. Or beat me like they did the other girls. They beat Luz to death, only a few days ago, probably in that room."

Miguel stepped in and pulled his son away. "Get out, Diego. You need to let us handle this."

"I said I'm not going anywhere." He was a slight man compared to Miguel, but he stood between his father and Lee.

It would be more efficient if he walked out and called for help, but who could he call? Paloma was probably right, and the governor of the state, the chief of police and other members of government at the party might just help the Aguirres.

Diego was just too used to the notion of the close-knit clan that would go through the doors of hell and beyond for each other. It was the lesson of a lifetime which he would need to forget in the space of an evening for a relative stranger. He struggled with a decision, unwilling to fully believe that the brother he loved was a psychopath, or that his parents were capable of cold-blooded murder.

"You have to take her to hospital!" he repeated.

"This can all go away," Miguel told Lee, approaching the bed once more. "We just need to know who you’ve been in touch with. Tell us that, and you'll be cared for. You'll be safe."

He didn't know that his eyes betrayed him; that the possibilities were still running there, in the background, and that Lee could see them. Her only chance was to leave them in doubt until James appeared. If too much time passed, she would die, but James was closer to her at every second — she could feel it.

Lee began to laugh, looking at the Aguirres with eyes that felt hot because of the morphine. She cackled at them like a witch.

He is coming. And he will make you sorry.

TWENTY-THREE

A great many cars had been arriving at Los Felices as Lee fought for her life. They were stopped by guards who politely but firmly asked to see invitations.

James watched men and women in evening dress walk to the entrance of the sprawling pink house ahead. It only had one level, probably to minimize the heat during the long summer months. When the guards stopped him, he handed them the envelope with a smile.

"And you've come alone?" a man asked him.

"Yes, my plus one never made it," James said. "But this is such a big car, may I park it on the side there?"

The guard nodded, motioning him forward. James had no idea where Lee was. Someone had called him from her phone and said nothing, and that had made him drive all the faster to the ranch in a Hummer he had rented at the airport.

The coverage at the ranch wasn't good, and it might have been Lee, trying to let him know all was fine. It might also have been someone else, and James had known better than to say anything when he had met with silence on the other side.

Thankfully, people who lived at the mouth of deserts were used to big vehicles and their space requirements, and the lot had already filled with cars. He had permission to park the massive Hummer on the side of the house, where there seemed to be no one.

As he got out, he discreetly tucked Pete's gun inside the waistband of his trousers, under the elegant tuxedo jacket that he buttoned as he ran up the steps into the party. He hoped that the Aguirres had not understood that he and Lee knew each other; he meant to attend the celebration as a guest to see if she was there on Diego's arm, perfectly healthy and able to get away with him.

There was a chill in the night air as he moved around the inner courtyard, refusing the drinks offered to him by silent waiters. Women wore furs around their necks or shoulders. This was the desert, and the change in temperature from day to night could be extreme.

Lee wasn't outside, so he went on to the foyer of the house. Guests gathered in drawing rooms to either side of him, and he spotted Paloma Aguirre with a group of women to his right. He didn't have to stop and greet her, since they had never been formally introduced. To his left there was a room full of men, many of whom he recognized from the newspapers. A little further on, young people gathered, laughing and flirting. Diego was among them, but he stood in a corner, staring moodily into his drink; Lee wasn’t with him.

"I didn't expect you to come,” Diego said, widening his eyes in surprise as James approached.

"I thought I might as well see the Mexico I don't know," James said. "Haven't been north much."

Looking around, Diego remarked, "There are only rattlesnakes here."

James hadn't seen the Aguirre boy look as bitter before. He tried to ignore the sick feeling in his stomach as he observed, "You don't seem to be having much fun. Isn't your girlfriend here?"

Diego threw a quick glance toward the back of the house, and another glance at James that held a world of guilt in it. "She—she's not feeling well."

Fuck. What have you done to her, you miserable shit?

There was the slim chance that Lee had used an excuse to stay away from the main house and spy on the brothers, but James no longer believed in slim chances. And Diego's guilty eyes had shown him where to look for her.

"Well, I hope she gets better," James said.

He had begun to feel savage as he moved down the hall, where more people gathered.

"A-ha!"

Eduardo had appeared behind James. "So, you've come to my party!"

"I have.”

"You've come to look at my cattle, to see if it's better than the Maasai's?" The old man's eyes twinkled as he shook his guest’s hand. "Come to drink some blood?"

James nodded slowly. "Probably."

"And you've come alone? Ah, the ladies of Sonora are beautiful. Don't get lost, but get a little lost — you know what I mean?"

The old man patted his arm and moved away to greet other arrivals.

Grabbing a drink he didn’t want, James made his way down the corridor, looking at the artwork on the walls. He showed interest in the food he was offered, taking petit-fours but wrapping them in a napkin which he left behind.

A massive double door that led to another corridor was guarded by two men who were turning people away. What was so worth guarding?

It didn’t look like a ruse would get him past them, and James wasn't used to wasting time. Spotting a side door, he left through it. There was no one outside, just the silent, chilly night, and he moved quickly to the back of the house. When he turned the corner, he faced a long row of windows. The pink house appeared to never end, like the house that kept multiplying in his dream, but at least there were no forbidding-looking men standing under the windows.

If Lee were indisposed inside one of the rooms, or even if she were a prisoner, she would most probably not be in the dark; he needed to look inside the rooms that were lit.

A door opened, and two men came out. They were dressed like waiters and had stepped outside the kitchen to smoke. James waited till they walked back in, then ran beneath the windows.

One of the lit rooms turned out to be a library. He recognized Miguel's profile as he held the attention of a small group of men. The next windows were dark, and at the end of the row there was a dimly lit room. Inside it, a bespectacled man was buttoning his dinner jacket; he opened the door onto a bright corridor, closing it behind him. Another door led to the next room.

James’ eyes fell on a side table: there were bottles and syringes lined on it, as well as towels. But it was the waste-paper basket that made his insides freeze: it was full of bloody gauze. He knew it was Lee’s blood.

There was no time to think of anything but getting her out of the ranch. James tried the window, found that it was unlatched and lifted it, jumping inside. Silently he moved across the floor toward the bedroom. The doors were ajar, and there was a thug sitting on a chair by the light of a lamp. Lee lay on the bed with eyes closed. James waited to see if anyone else might appear from the bathroom beyond, then flipped a plastic bottle onto the floor.

"Quién está ahí?" the thug asked, after waiting for a moment. "Doctor?"

Thugs were usually stupid, or they’d be something else. The man walked out unarmed to investigate, and James hit him on the head with the butt of his gun and again more violently when the man staggered but didn't fall. Once he was on the ground, James controlled the urge to keep hitting him until he was dead. He unplugged a lamp and cut the cable with the scalpel lying on the table. As he tied the man's arms and legs, he told himself not to ask Lee too many questions because he would get angry, and anger would slow him down.

Stuffing a napkin into the thug's mouth, he rushed to the bed. "Lee? Lee, it's me."

At the sound of his voice, she opened her eyes; the irises were a lighter green than usual, and the pupils tiny. "Are you really here?" she asked after a moment.

"I am.” He smiled at her. "My sweet, can you get up?"

When he pushed aside the bed covers, he found her wearing a long woolen gown that probably did not belong to her. He looked around for shoes but could see none. There was clotted blood on her forehead. "Are you in pain?"

"No," she said, "because of the morphine. I feel a bit dizzy."

"It's all right. Take my hand."

He tried to make his request sound normal and urgent at the same time. She nodded to show she understood that they had to move fast.

The back of the house had filled with staff in the meantime, and some of them looked like guards. James couldn't take them all on. The corridor had become their only escape route. Holding Lee by the waist, he maneuvered her toward it.

They moved over the terracotta tiles without making a sound, but they might soon meet a waiter, a guard or one of the guests in their way. The library was just ahead, and Miguel's voice drifted out of the open doors. They would have to pass that door, and James was already reaching for his gun when Diego appeared. He stared at them with his mouth open.

There was no other choice but to start a racket. James had to shout as loudly as possible that the owners of the house were murderers, and that they had hurt the woman in his arms. He and Lee might be whisked away before anyone believed them, with some apology and false explanation given to the guests by the hosts.

But instead of sounding the alarm, Diego rushed toward them. "She needs to go to the hospital. Are you helping her?"

"What does it look like I'm bloody doing?" James asked between gritted teeth.

Diego's face revealed his relief. "Do you have a car? Where is it?"

"Right side of the house."

"This way, then."

Diego opened the door to a dining room and led them around a long table. The men outside the French windows stood between the house and the Hummer.

“We have to try,” James said.

Diego nodded and walked out first, ignoring the guards who stared at the three of them as they moved to the car. There was confused murmuring, until one of them called out. "Señor?"

"Get in the car," Diego told James. "If they come, I won't be able to help you."

James knew that "they" meant Miguel, perhaps David — and even Eduardo.

"It's all right," Diego told the guards. "I'm with them."

James put a discreet but firm hand on the butt of his gun and helped Lee climb inside the Hummer. Once he was in the driver’s seat and started the engine, the jeep gave a loud growl. He waited a bare moment before driving away, leaving Diego and Eduardo’s staff behind in a cloud of dust.

As he drove past the gates to Los Felices, James doubted that it would be that easy for them to escape. The family inside the pink house would know that he could make scandal finally stick to them.

He had become their enemy, and they no longer needed to hide their true nature. Neither did he.

TWENTY-FOUR

James had to drive north, to the United States. It would be insane to go further down into Mexico. Sonora was a big state, but the Aguirres must have a lot of people who counted in their pocket — people who could get the word out that the two foreigners were wanted, and that a big, fat reward was waiting.

Any sexual scandal would be bad enough for a conservative family like theirs; James didn't want to think of what they might do to keep the world from knowing their golden heir was a serial killer. On a dark night, out where they were, he and Lee could simply disappear without a trace.

Lee gasped, but she was only laughing. "They'll be shittin’ their pants right about now."

That was his Lee, finally sounding as Southern as she was, but they had done something bad to her.

"How hurt are you?" he asked, afraid of the answer.

"I'll survive."

"Do you have your passport?"

She sat up with some effort. "Where are we going?"

"To Arizona. I'll just drive there like a bat out of hell. We might make it in a little over an hour.”

"I don't have my passport."

It sounded like a bad thing to go to Arizona. "I need to get you to a hospital, and it can't be in Mexico. The Aguirres have a long reach.”

"I think they'll kill us if they can,” she agreed, but she didn’t sound scared.

He handed his phone to her. "Will you try to get Pete?"

Lee had slumped but sat up again. Her fingers were ice-cold as she took the phone from him. She stared at the screen for a moment, rallied and found the right buttons. There was no ringing noise.

"No coverage.”

"Can you text him?" James asked, looking in the rearview mirror. "Text that we are in danger from the Aguirres and driving north to the Arizona border."

A voice message would be quicker for her, in the state she was, and more complete — but it would also be heavier to send; a text might go through if they passed a faint signal. But Lee seemed alert, and she texted quickly.

"I'll keep trying to call," she said.

James clutched the steering wheel and drove in silence for a quarter of an hour before a light appeared in the mirror. It was followed by two other lights. These must be more thugs from the ranch — or something worse.

As the road rolled down and James lost sight of them, he swerved onto the dirt, rode for a while and cut off his engine. If the dust settled in the minutes that would take their pursuers to catch up, they wouldn't know where the Hummer had turned.

When the lights passed them, James saw they were police vehicles. It was as he had suspected: if the Aguirres were not scared to involve the law, it was because someone quite high up was in their pocket. The police would soon realize they had left the highway and turn back to hunt them like beasts. After the cars disappeared over the next upward curve, James started the engine. He couldn't return to the main road or ride on the path; he would need to continue into the darkness and hope that he didn't hit any bad spots.

It wasn't a giant leap to assume the border patrol would be on the lookout for them as well, to stop them before they crossed to safety. But the Hummer was sturdy, and they would have to keep going north through some other route than the main roads.

New lights blinded James for a second. He must be raising a good deal of dust, and several cars with spotlights were after them. The jeep bumped up and down, its metal scraping against the rocks beneath it as he avoided trees, large cacti and clumps of brambles. Lee clutched the handle on the door and pressed her lips.

A beeping followed by a red light on the dashboard alerted him to a more urgent problem: the Hummer was running out of fuel too quickly. The tank had probably been perforated by a rock, and the police were gaining on them.

There was a group of boulders to the right; James stopped the car and told Lee to run toward them. She did as she was told without protesting. Reaching for his duffel bag in the back seat, he climbed out and hid.

The cars after them stopped a few yards away and several policemen emerged, using the doors as shields and aiming their spotlights and guns at the Hummer. One of them called out, asking them to surrender and promising they'd be safe.

"No se lo cree ni tu madre," James muttered. Not even your mother would believe you.

The spotlight showed him what he needed to see: the wet trail of gasoline meandering toward the policemen which the Hummer had left in its wake. Grabbing a T-shirt from his bag, James twisted it and lit it on fire, softly throwing it in the air. It landed on a patch of gasoline, and for a moment he thought the flame might be snuffed out, or that there wasn't enough gasoline on the ground; but an eager orange tongue took, grew and whooshed forward.

In a second, the fire engulfed some of the policemen standing on the gasoline and they screamed, spinning wildly or throwing themselves on the ground. That would keep everyone busy for a while, James thought without mercy. He ran on light feet around the boulder and found Lee, taking her hand. She gained new energy as she ran with him.

Temperatures were falling. They might freeze at night, but there was no way of turning back toward any town or of getting help. Their only chance was the deep desert. James didn't know the Sonoran landscape, but he had lived in the Kalahari and in arid savannahs for years. At least he was sure they wouldn't get lost; he could guide himself north by the stars. In any case, he would choose the wilderness over people every time. It was Lee, out of breath from running but trying not to show it, who worried him. He might be leading her to her death.

The men after them knew how to kill, and they would probably not hesitate to do so. But what else did they know? They were after a man who was used to hunting for days, whose eyes were keen in the dark and who could use any rock as a weapon. His ears could already make out the faint voices behind them. It was a good thing that the police hadn't brought dogs. They had probably thought this would be a straightforward job: find the gringos on the road, kill them, dump the bodies.

Not so, hijos de puta, he thought. I am going to chingar all of you.

He helped Lee into a crevice under large flat stones and motioned for her to stay there.

Climbing the boulder allowed him to circle back to the policemen. James crouched, watching his enemies from above and deciding that he would first divide them. He took a stone, weighed it in his palm and threw it hard toward the opposite side. The policemen looked that way, half of them running in the direction of the sound.

James took another stone. In Africa he had been taught to stun antelopes before trying to catch them. He aimed carefully and threw the stone with all his might, hitting one of the policemen on the temple. The man fell sideways, and the others cried out, confused. One of the policemen knelt to see what had happened to his colleague as the other flashed his light around, following it with the muzzle of his gun. Taking another stone, James struck the second man on the forehead.

The third man stood up and started running. James missed him with the first stone but hit him on the back of the neck with the second.

Chingados de mierda.

The lights of the other policemen moved farther and farther away. James climbed down to the men on the ground, taking their flashlights, two big knives, guns and ammunition.

Now he would have time to move with Lee, and he could shoot the remaining men, if they followed. When they found their friends, however, they would probably give up, go back and try to get a helicopter. James didn't plan to follow the paths these men knew; he was going to lead Lee through the rocks, so they could hide as needed.

To reach Arizona, they might have to walk for two days or more. He was thankful that it was winter, since a trek during the hot summer months would have killed Lee.

It was winter, and they had a chance of making it.

TWENTY-FIVE

As soon as they stopped moving, they felt the cold.

James was satisfied they weren't being followed. It would be better to move at night and rest during the day, as he could find his way more easily by reading the stars, but he first had to determine whether Lee could walk at all.

It took a moment for him to gather twigs. The fire he lit needed to stay small and easy to stomp out if the police returned in helicopters.

"Lee, how bad is it?" he asked her.

She was pale even in the dim light, but she was brave. "I can keep going."

"What did they do to you?"

"It was the old man, James. He hit me with his cane — he would have killed me, I think, but Miguel stopped him."

James sat back on his heels. "It was the old man who hurt the girls?"

"Killed them. They're all dead. Even Luz."

Her eyes swam with tears and he put a hand on her cheek.

"I'm sorry, my sweet. You couldn't have saved her, then."

"It was David too. He was in it with his grandfather. I found the girls' jewelry in his safe, at the ranch."

"Christ. They're regular psychos, then?"

She nodded. "Not Diego, though; he didn’t know. And you were right, Miguel might be the worst of them, because he isn't sick, he just has no scruples. His wife is even worse."

James kissed her hand. "We'll make them pay, Lee. But to do that, we'll have to keep on going. If we sit here, we'll freeze, but I can get us to Arizona. Can you bear to walk?"

"It’s just that I have no shoes."

She stuck out her naked feet, and James rummaged in his bag, finding a pair of his own trekking boots and thick socks. Once he put them on her feet, he helped her up and asked her to walk a bit.

"They'll do," she said eagerly. "We can go."

"If the boots chafe, you have to tell me. Anything that becomes a wound, even a small one, could make it impossible for you to continue.”

Doubt flashed across her face; or perhaps it was just the fire playing on it. She had lost blood, that much was clear, and there was the clotted wound on her head, but she began walking.

"I'll win no fashion competitions in this outfit, that's for sure."

He laughed and took her hand, showing her the ground with the flashlight.

After two hours, he saw that she needed to rest. The effect of the morphine they had given her would last until the next day, but the pain would eventually return, and she was exhausted. It wasn’t wise to light another fire. Only their body heat could fight the cold; he took off his shirt and stripped her to the waist, layering all the clothes from his bag on top of them and holding her close.

"You'll do anything to get me naked," she said.

"True. But I won't take advantage of you here. A scorpion could get up my arse."

"You’re obsessed with your arse."

“So are you.”

Lee giggled against his chest. “Conceited.”

The next morning, he opened his eyes before dawn, when the sky was still gray and pink. Lee slept deeply out in the open, and that was a bad sign. She was frail, and her lips were dry, as were his; they needed water. He dressed and went to look for some, leaving her a note scribbled on the sand: Stay here.

James climbed a rock and looked around at the unforgiving landscape of brambles and rocks. One had to look at any land with love; one had to think that whether it looked lush and green or dry and lifeless, it would give sustenance somehow.

He began by considering the cacti. One of the varieties that grew low on the ground, with stems coming out in a clump, must have water. He peeled the top of one of the stems with the knife he had stolen and put his finger on it to hold it into place while he shaved the sides. When the stem was free of thorns, it looked like a cucumber. The core was stringy, but the sides were watery and fresh.

He peeled several of them and put them inside his shirt, which he wore like a sling around his naked torso.

The candelabra cacti were as tall as a small tree, and there might be interesting things inside them. When he cut into one, birds flew out as squirrels and lizards scuttled. He caught two squirrels and decided to kill and skin them there, away from Lee. Used as he had become to see his food arrive on a plate and not have to kill it, he felt sorry for the animals, but he couldn’t get squeamish.

As he walked back, the sun had climbed higher and the cool temperatures of the night and early morning were changing. It would get hot under that cloudless sky, and they needed to stay hydrated.

Lee was awake. When he showed her what he had brought, she smiled.

"It's like a feast."

He gasped. "You mustn't say that."

"Why not? Will it bring bad luck?"

"No, but it will make me arrogant," he explained, sitting down next to her. "Among the bushmen in the Kalahari, you have to go back to the tribe pretending you didn't find anything, so that they jeer at you ─ and then when you finally reveal that you were successful, you have to attribute it to something else, like the arrow that was made for you, or the path that someone showed you. Though mind you," he looked at her over his brows, “if I went back to them with two tiny squirrels, they would actually be jeering."

As she bit into the cactus stem for water, he made another fire and roasted the squirrels. She grimaced but obediently ate when he fed her small pieces of meat.

He didn't notice that he was humming until she said, "What are you singing?"

" ‘A good man is hard to find—so if your man is nice, take my advice, hug him in the morning, kiss him every night, give him plenty lovin'—' "

"Propaganda in your favor, even out here?"

"Can't let you forget what a good deal you're getting." He put on an exasperated Southern accent, " 'Why James, you do think you're the cat's pajamas!' "

She laughed again. "You do think that!”

Stretching out next to her, he leaned on one elbow, and gave her a cheeky smile. "I was all ready to be your friend — then I walked around with you for less than two days and you begged me to—"

Lee’s chest moved as she laughed. "You are vile."

"You can’t handle the heat, and you can’t get out of the kitchen." He touched his lips to hers. "And you are as prickly as a cactus."

"Haven’t you got that cream you bought for our down theres in your bag?"

They laughed, lying back on the sand. A woman who could laugh in the face of adversity: what man wouldn't keep her like a jewel?

After a while they set out again, walking slowly. He helped her over patches of sand and rocks. When it became too much of an encumbrance to carry things, James got rid of the bag but fashioned a little shelf with brambles. He placed the coats on it and pulled it behind him.

Lee never complained, although she was limping, and it was obvious that the morphine had begun to wear off. He stopped when he thought she needed rest, brought her more cacti and winked at her. "We'll get there."

The desert didn't scare him, but he feared for Lee — so pale and so determined. They were walking to save each other, and there couldn’t be a stronger feeling between two people. It was the feeling that bound a man to a woman, and that bound them both to life.

We will get there, he thought, because we need to be together. And in this life.

The helicopter eventually came, but they were near rocks and hid under them until it flew past. It wasn't a silent machine; it would make itself known before it spotted them, and James would try to keep to the rocky parts until the police gave up. Or he would shoot at their fuel tanks, he didn't mind which.

They walked, eager to get to Arizona, eager to be safe. When James thought that Lee should rest, they stopped and slept for a few hours in the shade. At night a fox appeared, running ahead of them but slowing down and looking back sometimes, as if it were showing them the way.

At dawn, Lee stopped and said, "James, I can't go on."

He helped her sit down; she looked like a ghost.

"We'll rest here a while," he said.

She shook her head. Don't do that, Lee.

"I'm sorry James. It's my knee ..."

He lifted her nightgown and looked. There was a bandage soaked with blood around her knee. The flesh above and below it had become swollen and purple.

"What's this?" he asked through stiff lips.

"The old man, he stuck a metal corkscrew there."

She must have been under torture the whole time they had been walking.

"Why didn't you tell me?"

"We had to keep going," she said. "There was no other way. I'm so sorry, I wanted to make it, but it hurts too much."

"Who says you won't make it?"

She shook her head again. "You can see it isn't possible. My feet are swelling already."

It was true that her feet and ankles had swollen to twice their size. She had such slender ankles ... Lee needed a hospital, or septicemia would set in. He couldn't even remove the bandage from her wound in that place, as he had no means of cleaning it. And no, she couldn't walk anymore.

"Put your hands around my neck," he told her.

She did, not understanding why. He stood with her in his arms and began to walk.

"James—James, this is madness! Put me down, we won't get anywhere this way."

"Yes," he said. "We'll get to Arizona."

"James, it's impossible!"

"How would you know," he asked, "until we’ve tried it?"

TWENTY-SIX

James didn't know how long he had walked. He had only stopped to rest and eat twice. Lee couldn’t eat anything except a little of the cactus for its water, and some cactus fruit.

Her face was burnt dark red and her lips peeling. There hadn't been any shade for a while, and the helicopters had flown by three times, but they hadn’t returned for hours. The police must have thought they had died or become hopelessly lost.

"James," Lee said feebly, her face against his neck.

"Yes?"

"James, put me down. Put me down for a moment."

He stopped and laid her on the ground, using the makeshift shelf to create a small tent over her head.

"What is it, my sweet?"

She spoke in a low, halting voice: she was at the end of her strength. "You must leave me here."

He shook his head. "That's just not possible, you know."

"It's no good. I won't make it, but you have to." She took his hand. "James, there is something you must do for me. I have a sister."

"Do you, my darling?"

"Darling?” Lee smiled. “I thought you had to mean that to say it."

"I mean it," he said, kissing her dusty wrist. “I mean it like hell.”

She smiled again, but went on, "My sister — her name is Cora. She is in a school called Surval Montreux, in Switzerland. She doesn't have anybody but me — so James, please, you must help her. You know how it is, to love your sister."

"Yes, I know. We'll help her together, when we get home."

Her chest rattled like a snake. "I won't make it, and you have to promise me. There is someone else as well, but Cora knows. She can tell Quinn. He can get my money.”

He scowled. "I don't like this talk of yours, as if you were giving up."

It almost broke his heart to say such a thing to her. She would never have given up, because there was a sister she loved more than herself. Lee would always have fought, but she was choosing to die so that he could live.

His heart would have broken into as many pieces as there were grains of sand in the desert, except that he knew what the mind could do. It was the mind that convinced you that you ought to be dead, all things being equal. He couldn't allow it.

"Tell her—"

"No, Lee, you'll tell her yourself."

"James, please. You won't make it if you try to carry me!"

"I've told you, I never controlled my temper, but I did well at the stamina type of thing. I’m used to surviving in places like this. We'll make it."

There was a small tear at the corner of her eye; she probably had no water left in her body for more than that. "You will, but I—"

"We're on our way out of this." He motioned ahead with his chin and lied, "It's just there, just beyond that part."

"James, you have to make it. I didn't mean to put you in this trouble."

"Don’t be so polite. You didn't put me anywhere, and there is no sense in my making it without you."

"Why?"

He hesitated, looking at her flushed face. "Because you're the best person I know, Lee. The best I've ever known. And the best should always make it, or the world is just a fucking toilet."

Her chest shook as she laughed and mouthed. "Toilet ..."

"You'll be in a hospital soon," he said, "they'll take care of your knee, and we'll call your sister together. Then I will have the Aguirres' guts for garters for ever having touched you, or any other girl. But especially you."

Lee managed to smile again. "I know you'll do that."

"Don't you want to be there to see it?" He stood, holding her. "No more talk of dying."

Lee was too tired to protest anymore. She let her head fall on his shoulder and closed her eyes.

In the afternoon, the sun beat down on them like a hammer, even if it was winter. As James walked, he could hear the rattlesnakes; there must be dozens of them, but if they didn't chance upon one on the path, they wouldn't be attacked. There were bloated lizards standing motionless, looking ready to explode.

The sun was a pale iris hiding behind red rocks, and clouds like spaceships raced across the hard sky. The desert had turned all shades between yellow and brown, and the hills in the distance had become dark blue.

Lee’s breath was faint, and her calf and foot more swollen than before. Her head still lay against his neck, and her hand on his chest.

James walked and carried Lee, and it would have been good to know that Arizona was just round the next bend, and that she would be saved. When the big rocks ended he felt hopeful, but there was just more land stretching out in front of them. He walked knowing that it was wrong to hope there should be justice in the world, and that a woman who had cared about the life of another shouldn't die for it. Such things happened all the time to the best people.

The Maasai had believed in Engai Narok, the black god who was good, and Engai Na-niokle, the cruel red god. You had to be careful what you asked for, as you never knew whose attention you were going to get. Engai Narok could give you good things, and Engai Na-niokle could take all you had in a second.

But even if there were no justice, a woman like Lee shouldn't be dying in his arms. James thought of Lee as a child, of her probable poverty, of the bad things she must have suffered to make her lie and steal to survive. He thought of how clever she must have been; how resourceful she must have been to survive whatever had made her run away, to take care of her sister, to fool men who were rich.

She had always done everything alone.

“Come on, darling,” he said out loud, without looking at her. “Stay with me. You are my darling. You are.”

He thought of her as she ran up the stairs of his house in Condesa and into his bedroom. The desire to be happy had been written all over her face; the belief that on that day, meeting him, she would be happy. She was so brave, but she was scared of happiness; yet it was still possible.

There was no justice in this, that a woman with so much love in her should die a few miles away from redemption.

No, it wouldn't happen, not while his legs could walk, and his arms could carry her.

James walked, and he was tired, he was in pain, he was hungry and thirsty, but he knew they were close to the border; he knew it. If he had been more successful at training his body than his mind, it had been for this. It had been to save Lee. All the training, all the meditations, all the physical agony, all the boiling days hunting in the desert: it had all been for this.

As he walked, he thought of Lee as part of himself, just as his arms or his head were. She weighed no more than them and was no greater burden. The ground beneath his feet was also part of him, as was the sky above his head. Everything was good, everything was the same, everything helped him forward. Nothing held him back.

He forgot that he was walking and must have fallen asleep on his feet at some point. He felt knuckles rapping sharply on his head and laughed: it was his training, telling him to be aware.

He walked, and he felt no more pain.

James was a stubborn man. He wouldn't stop walking — and he would never leave Lee behind.

TWENTY-SEVEN

Ahead, there were dust devils — or was it dust being raised by cars?

The harsh sound of wheels against sand and gravel made James curse under his breath. Patrol cars were riding their way. Had he doubled back and gone the wrong way, and were they in Sonora again?

He was sure he hadn't. He couldn't have.

Instinctively he moved his arm so that Lee's head wouldn't hang over the emptiness. He wanted it to lie against his neck, as it had done for a while. He hadn't looked at her in a long time because he hadn't needed to know anything; he had needed to believe.

The cars came to a halt, and two big men with red faces came out, their hands hovering over their guns. James could only imagine what he and Lee looked like to them.

"Sir, we need you to stay where you are," one of them said in American English. "Are you all right? Where have you come from?"

Swallowing hard, James managed to say, "We've come out of the desert. Where are we?"

"You're in Arizona, sir, in the United States of America."

It was annoying that the man should add "of America." He had some notion of geography.

"I'm a British citizen. My passport is in my back pocket. She's American."

He finally fell to his knees, still holding Lee, and the two men, as well as others that climbed out of the SUVs, ran toward them.

"She needs help," James said, and his voice cracked as he added, "She's dying."

James let the men take Lee from his arms; he let them help him stand up and walk to one of the cars. They made soothing noises and gave him assurances: they would be driving to a hospital now, Lee would be treated, everything would be all right.

He got into the back seat where they had put Lee and pulled her toward him.

"We've made it, my darling," he said with his lips against her hair. "We've made it."

TWENTY-EIGHT

"Darling."

"It's a good word," Lee whispered.

James' lips were on her face, her cheeks, her lips. "Open your eyes."

"No, I like it like this ..."

She wrapped her legs around him, keeping her eyes closed. Sometimes it was too much to look at him. She let him look at her; he felt so good.

"It's complicated," she whispered.

He moved, his tongue teasing hers. "It's really simple."

They had been in that bed for a long time and she never wanted to leave it — but when he leapt out and opened the windows, the sky was silver blue, and the sea sparkled more than diamonds.

Smiling, James looked back at her, opened the door and ran outside. She ran after him — and past him. She could hear him laughing; he was almost catching her. Her legs were long, and her feet barely touched the sand as she ran.

She reached the water first and dived in. They had so longed for water in the desert that she would never forget what a wonderful thing it was. Even salty water that you could not drink was life.

His head emerged next to hers and they laughed. Paradise must have been like this. What else would there have been for a man and a woman to do but make love, jump in a sea that sparkled, eat fish and fruit?

How could an apple have spoiled such happiness?

Tell me what's forbidden and I'll never do it, so we can always be this happy.

James kissed her again and put his cheek against hers as they looked at the sea. The water went on and on, still as a lake, till it met the sky.

But he broke away and dived; she followed. Lee marveled at the life under the surface, at the purple coral fans swaying as the sand formed shapes. There were gentle turtles and colorful parrot fish, squid flying in formation, and barracuda quietly watching her.

She found it hard to follow James all the way to the bottom of the water, but if he wanted to show her something — a cuttlefish hiding under a rock or a nurse shark sleeping — he would pull her down with him. But now he was swimming away without looking back at her. She moved her hands and arms, trying to get his attention.

Come and get me! I want to see what you're seeing.

He swam so fast.

Lee took a deep breath and slowly expelled the air from her lips so that she would sink. James had disappeared amidst a coral garden ahead. Her lungs began to hurt a little. Soon she would have to go up. But where was he? The water was so clear, she would have seen him if he were right ahead. How could he be gone?

If she stuck her head out of the sea, she would no longer find him.

Something like a sob escaped her; why did she feel so desolate, as if he were gone forever? What a terrible ache, to think that he might be gone, and that she wouldn't find him again.

The corals around her swirled, lay flat or curved like big heads. There were rocks too, and underneath them unblinking yellow eyes followed her. A movement made her turn — a black and white snake, sinuous and quick, moved away from her and toward James.

"James!" she cried underwater.

A bubble left her lips and returned to enter her throat. She couldn't breathe, and there was a lot of water above her. She needed to reach the surface.

It's too far up!

There was a platform floating there, if only she could reach it. She needed to get her breath back and find James. He was in danger!

She swam, but her lungs hurt, and she wasn't going to make it. The water was clear, and the sky seemed so close — but it wasn’t.

Yet James was already outside, looking down. He was smiling; he hadn't been hurt. He was just waiting for her.

Lee shook her head. She wasn't going to make it. She was running out of air.

The water moved, and his body entered halfway into the sea, hanging from the platform. His arms reached for her.

Take my hand, he must be saying. She stretched but couldn't grasp it. Lee closed her eyes and began to sink.

The grip on her wrists was sudden and strong, and she was pulled up, up, up. She was pulled up, out of the water and into the sun. She took a raucous breath.

"Open your eyes, my heart," he said, his face against hers.

She did.

TWENTY-NINE

"Open your eyes, my heart," James said.

She did, and in the bright light of the hospital her eyes were clear and green as spring.

James smiled. "There you are.”

Lee blinked a few times, her throat moving, and said in a low, raspy voice, "There you are."

He laughed out loud and stole a kiss from her before he went to get the nurse.

The doctors came, examined her and pronounced her vitals stable. She was a miracle, but he had known that.

Lying next to her as she rested, he thought of her being whisked away on a gurney as soon as they arrived at the hospital. He had found the strength to push away doctors and nurses bent on taking him somewhere else to see to his own dehydration.

“I’m not budging,” he had said as he took a seat outside the operating room where Lee had disappeared.

A doctor said, “You’re not allowed to—”

“What are you going to do about it?”

He must have looked insane with dust coating him from head to foot and a sunburn. But perhaps the knowledge — whispered by the border guards who had driven them there — that he had carried a woman in the desert for two days had stopped the medical staff from calling security, or from trying to remove him.

It wasn’t easy for the Americans to make exceptions, but they would have had to manhandle him to get him out; the hospital was small, and maybe they weren’t as concerned by lawsuits as other places might be. The nurses brought him an IV, tended to his burns, blisters and cuts and left him alone, until a doctor emerged from the operating room and joined him.

“She has renal and splenic lacerations and three of her lower left ribs were fractured.”

James stood. “Does she have to be taken somewhere else?”

“We can deal with all that and we shouldn’t waste time.”

“But?”

"About the leg — are you her next of kin?"

"How bad is it?"

"We don't know. We are trying to save it, but if it doesn't work—"

"It will work," James said.

"I need options here," the doctor insisted.

“Her body will rally. Save the leg and save her.”

Strange that he had been so calm, so sure that Lee would make it when he didn’t believe in fate or any divine agency. Some people got close to being saved only to die, but it wouldn't happen to her. She had gone through so much pain in that desert; worse than he had even imagined. Lee was strong, and she wanted to live for Cora. Perhaps for him.

But it had been touch-and-go for a while. Staff had run in and out of the operating room, bumping doors open with their shoulders, and James had waited in absolute stillness for them to do their job.

When the door opened again, the doctor took off a cap soaked in sweat and smiled. Lee had undergone five hours of surgery and had needed a generous blood transfusion, but she had survived. That night would be crucial, but James had managed to sit by her side in the small ICU, holding her hand and whispering for her not to go anywhere.

Hers were the most luminous eyes he had ever seen, and she opened them again now, or half opened them as she lay in the crook of his arm. She wasn’t meant to speak, but she wanted to know whether he had sent anyone after the Aguirres.

While she rested, he had apprised Pete of what had happened. The attempted murder of a renowned British citizen had become an international scandal in half a day, and the Prime Minister himself had contacted Washington and Mexico City. An investigation would, nevertheless, have moved at a much slower pace than James would have liked, leaving time for the Aguirres to close ranks and mount a defense.

So James had called Miguel.

"It's like this," he had said, pacing the corridor of the hospital, "Give up your father and claim insanity for him. Give up your son and don't try to claim the same. I won’t allow him to be out in the streets through some ruse of your lawyers. Do this, and you won't get hit by the shitload of bricks I'm otherwise prepared to drop on you. The woman you know as Ashley is with me — and people will listen to me. At the very least, there won’t be any point to all your money, because I swear your reputation won’t be worth fuck anywhere in this world.”

Miguel Aguirre was an intelligent man, and James had counted on that. That morning he had turned in both his father and his son, displaying disbelief, horror and grief at the crimes.

"They get away with it?" Lee mouthed.

"David is going to stay in jail for serial murders, and Eduardo in a loony bin. If we don’t let Miguel and Paloma off, we risk losing that.” James took her hand. "You stopped the murders, and you got justice for those girls. There are other girls who will be safe because of you."

After a moment, Lee nodded. She knew as well as he that not too far in the future they would see the announcement of Diego's betrothal on the internet, or in some newspaper. David was the monster, but Diego was all that was left of the family now. His secret would stay buried, like the girls in the desert.

"I suppose the ties that bind us the closest aren't always kind," James said. "Which doesn't mean they aren't strong."

Lee’s gaze seemed lost. He had spoken of close ties, and she was home — where she hadn’t wanted to be.

“It’s a problem, isn’t it?” he asked. “Coming here.”

She raised her right hand with difficulty, as it had a needle stuck in it, and touched a fingertip on her left hand.

“You want to know if they took your fingerprints?”

Slowly, she nodded.

“Not yet. The doctors wouldn’t let them, and I wouldn’t either. But you have no documents, so they’ll do that soon.”

Her eyes went to the door. She was thinking of running away.

“What is it, Lee?” he turned her face up to his. “Is it very bad, what they’ll find?”

She seemed to sigh before she mouthed, “No.”

“Promise?”

She nodded.

“Well, then we’ll face whatever comes together. Let’s end the problem, once and for all. People you’ve robbed can be pacified, you know, with enough money. And I don’t care about scandal.” He bent his head to kiss her lips. “Time to stop running.”

Smiling, she managed to caress his cheek. “Yes,” she said, and this time he heard her voice.

We hope you’ve enjoyed Lives Undone.

Lesser Crimes, the last book of the trilogy, is on Amazon!

Lesser Crimes is Lee’s story. She will have to face the mysteries in her past — but this time she’s not alone …

If you are enjoying the trilogy, please spend a few minutes leaving a quick review on Amazon!

The Kindle file will take you there as you turn the pages to the end. Thanks!

Other books by the same author:

Historical romance as Lara Blunte:

The Last Earl

The Abyss

True Born

To Be King

(Winner of the Wattys 2015)

Contemporary romance as Lara Blunte:

A Man in Africa