Joyride (27 page)

Sure enough, Julio's number lights up my screen. “Hello?”

“Carly?” Julio sounds stuffy, like he's got a cold. “Carly, what have you done?”

“Huh? What do you mean?” I take a seat at Miss May's kitchen table, bracing my forearm on the cold surface of it.

“Carly.” Julio's voice sounds so full of heartache now. “What have you done to make
El Libertador
break his promise to us?” He takes a moment to sniffle. I've never heard my brother cry before. “When Mama and Papi got to Austin, immigration was at the bus station checking everyone who came through. They were taken into custody, Carlotta. Mama said she had to beg the officer to call me.”

“Ohmigod.” This earns me a worried look from Miss May. I'm envisioning a raid. Guns being pointed at my parents, and my brother and sister. The unimaginable terror they must have felt. Maybe it wasn't like that. Maybe they just boarded the buses and asked for documentation. “Are … were they hurt?”

I assume they weren't, because Julio ignores my question altogether. “Some kind of protection he offered us, eh? But he took our money. All that money. And now what? We're just supposed to start from scratch?”

Cold steals through me. I've never seen Julio panic over anything.

He sniffles again. “So I want to know, Carlotta Jasmine Vega, what you have done.”

The hospital,
is all I can think. “I didn't do anything.” I offer Miss May a fragile smile and motion to excuse myself from the room. She nods.

“Calm down,” I say casually in Spanish, walking down the hallway to my bedroom. I shut the door behind me and sit on the bed, bringing my voice down to a whisper. “He saw me at the hospital, and Arden was there. But I wasn't there with him. I'm serious, Julio. I stayed away from Arden. I did what I was supposed to do.” Except for the part where I ended up in his arms. But I'm not about to tell Julio that. Guilt settles on me like weighted dust.

“All I know is that Mama and Papi are on their way back to Mexico, Carlotta. How can I trust you? How do I know you tell the truth anymore?”

“That's not fair. I came to you about the sheriff.” I lower my voice further, as if the word “sheriff” were cursed with the promise of unspeakable death. Nervously, I glance at the door. Would I be able to hear Miss May approach? “I told you what he said to me. I tried to tell you this might happen, that this is the kind of man he is. You didn't want to listen to me.” Oh, but Julio is having none of it.

“You fix this, you hear me? You fix this!”

I close my eyes against the raw torment in his voice. Out of everyone, Julio had the most to lose. And it's technically my fault, all of it. “I … I don't know how to fix it.” The feeling of helplessness feeds the hysteria fermenting deep within me.

“Not good enough, Carlotta.”

“Julio, please.” But I don't know what I'm asking for. Forgiveness? Support? A comforting word? I deserve none of those things.

“What about your boyfriend?” Julio's voice gains about two octaves. I knew he felt more betrayed than he let on about Arden. Not only that I was dating someone without his knowledge; that would be bad enough in its own right. But it's
who
I was dating that's the real clincher for him. And why shouldn't it be?

“What about this Arden?” he says, his voice more subdued. “He can talk to his father.” There is the sound of small hope in his words, and it sickens me.

I shake my head, but the action is lost over the phone. “He's not close with his dad, Julio. They don't like each other.” Understatement of a handful of millennium.

“You better talk sweet to him then,” he snaps.

Of all the things I would predict about my future, my older brother encouraging me to talk sweet to a boy wasn't one of them. Julio is truly desperate. “I'm not supposed to talk to him at all, remember?”

“What does that matter now?
El Libertador
has already gone back on his word.”

Oh. Well. That's a good point. All deals with the sheriff are officially off. I hate myself for feeling a tinge of relief. I can see Arden now—at the cost of my family. “Arden isn't the answer.”

“What about this Shackleford man? The one you were staying with? Can he help us?”

The seed of an idea sprouts inside my head, germinating as I talk it out. “Cletus? Hmmm. Maybe he can…” Probably not in the way Julio wants, though. I doubt even wise, all-knowing Cletus could rescue our parents from the jaws of deportation, even with his connections. Saving my family is a lost cause and I know it. But retribution isn't. “Let me call you back, okay? You work tonight?”

“Of course I do.”

“Call in sick.” Then I hang up and dial Arden.

 

Thirty

Arden perseveres down Cletus's driveway, so awash with anger that if the moonlight was bright enough, his knuckles would show tighty whitey on the steering wheel. He's thankful though that the moonlight is held at bay by low-hovering clouds; this meeting needs all the secrecy it can get.

Instead of pulling under the carport, he drives straight beside the house, around to the back. Putting the truck into park, he notices two bicycles leaning against the house by the back screen door. His anger fades slightly to nervousness.

Julio is here.

Julio, Carly's older brother, but more importantly—and admittedly more scary—is that Julio is as close to a father figure for Carly as Arden is going to meet any time soon. He's never met a girl's father before, but he always thought he would handle it well if the time ever came. He would be charming and suave and somehow appear completely innocent under the scrutiny of a fatherly radar.

Self-doubt rises in his stomach like a helium balloon, pressing against his diaphragm and making it hard for him to breathe.

It's not like these are normal circumstances either
, he tells himself, grasping at self-pity.
This meeting is anything but normal.

Arden lets himself in the back door, letting the screen ease shut slowly, as opposed to letting it slap the house if left unchecked—and possibly alerting Cletus's nurse to the fact that he has visitors.

He strides down the short empty hallway and comes to a halt when he enters the kitchen. Everyone heard his entrance. Everyone is waiting for him, seated on barstools at the long kitchen island engulfing the middle of the room. From all the faces it looks like a poker game gone sour. One face stands out more than the others, and for once it's not Carly's.

Julio is shorter than Arden imagined he would be—though to Arden, his presence takes up the room—standing only a bit taller than Carly. He looks like her too, but with a wider face and more prominent, masculine jaw. The resentment in his eyes when he assesses Arden is unmistakable.

I guess I had my chance at first impressions when I got his sister arrested
.

“Sorry I'm late,” Arden says, even though he's not actually late at all. “Sorry” just seems to be the right thing to say at this point. Anything else might be deemed as unworthy in Julio's eyes.

And unworthy is exactly what Arden doesn't want to be.

Carly offers a small, anxious smile. She looks exhausted, and like she's been crying. But then, why wouldn't she look rough? She almost had her parents back, and then lost them all over again. How she can hold her head up now is beyond Arden.

She turns to Julio and says something in Spanish, something that ends with “Arden.” Julio nods at him, tight-lipped.

Arden reciprocates, swallowing a lump in his throat.

“Arden,” Carly says, “this is my brother Julio.”

“Tell him it's nice to meet him.” It sounds generic, Arden knows.

“He understands you. He speaks English.” Julio simply nods at this.

“Cletus was just telling us that the best bet would be to send Julio,” Carly says. Arden can tell by her expression she's not comfortable with this.

Arden raises a brow. This wasn't the plan. He looks at Cletus. “And that's a good idea because…?”

“Because none of my connections would be willing to go up against your pa,” Cletus says. He sounds winded. He probably shouldn't be exerting himself this much so soon. “And if the wrong people catch wind of it, they'll rat us out.”

“Cop code?” Carly says.

Arden and Cletus nod.

“But why Julio?” Arden says. “Surely there's someone else.”
Anyone
else. If Carly were to lose Julio … Arden can't imagine what it would do to her.

Carly stares into her mug of hot chocolate. “He volunteered. He
wants
to do it.”

“He's a man, Carly,” Cletus says gently. “A man has to do what he thinks is best.”

Carly rolls her eyes, tears threatening the rims of them. “I get it. Manly revenge or whatever. But it's so … dangerous.”

“I know it's hard. But we really can't trust anyone else to get the job done,” Cletus says.

“It's a big risk,” Arden says, hoping to come to Carly's defense. “Surely there's someone else who can do it besides Julio.”

“Trust me, if there was, I'd be all over it,” Cletus says grimly.

Julio taps Carly on the forearm and says something to her in Spanish. When she responds, he shakes his head vehemently. “No,” he says clearly. “Me.” Then more words spill from his mouth, angry words that Arden wished he understood. Words that upset Carly.

“He says it should be no one but him,” Carly says quietly. “That it's his problem.”

“
Our
problem,” Cletus says, pounding a fist against the table with less-than-convincing bluster. “Your problem is my problem.”

“Agreed,” Arden says, pulling up one of the metal barstools next to Carly. He stifles the urge to plant even the smallest of kisses on her lips, especially under Julio's glare. “We're in this together.” He nods at Cletus. “What else did I miss?”

“We'll need cash. I've got plenty of that,” Cletus says to Carly, as if Arden hadn't spoken. He raises a shaky finger at Carly when it looks like she'll argue. “Not another word about it, hmm? I can't think of a better investment than this operation right here.”

“He's right,” Arden says, nudging Carly. “The old man may not have manners or all of his teeth or his health, but cash is something he's got loads of.”

Carly shakes her head. “Fine. But we'll need a story.”

“What's wrong with trying for your parents again?” Arden says.

“It's too soon,” Cletus says. “And it's a lot of cash for Julio to get together again in such a short amount of time. It'll make your pa suspicious. He's a lot of things, but stupid isn't one of them.”

“Then we'll need a story for the cash too,” Carly says. She keeps twirling the mug around and around in her hands. Arden wishes he could comfort her somehow, pull her to him. Tell her everything is going to be alright. But Julio watches them closely. And Julio is not a happy camper.

Arden clears his throat. “Maybe he could just try for your father, then,” he tells Carly. “It would be more believable if he were trying to just get one over here at a time, right?”

“That could work,” she says.

“Do we know if they've made it back to Mexico yet?” Cletus says. “If Dwayne had a hand in their deportation, you can bet he'll be tracing them all the way back home.”

“We haven't talked to them yet,” Carly says. “All we know is what Mama told Julio when she was still at the bus station.”

Cletus adjusts the nose piece on his oxygen line, tucking the connecting tubing back behind his ears. He looks at Julio. “Who else would you want to bring over? Do you have a girlfriend?”

“No,” says Julio solemnly.

“Well, you do now,” Cletus says. “Something else, though. Moss is a careful son of a gun. Might pat you down. We'll have to be ready for that.”

“I'll be ready,” Julio says. Arden feels slightly jealous that Julio actually acknowledges when Cletus speaks to him.
Clearly I've got to do
something
to impress Carly's brother
. He makes a mental note to learn some Spanish when this is all over.

If this is ever over
.

“You'll be in danger,” Arden says quietly. “Real danger.” To say the least. He wants to put a stop to this right now, to talk them out of it, but at the same time, this could work. And if it does, it means that he wouldn't have to worry about getting caught spending time with Carly ever again.

It's just that he's not the one risking it all. Julio is.

But Julio is a grown man. He can make the decision for himself.
He's already seen what my dad can do. He already knows the extent of his power.

Carly looks at Julio. He fires back instantly, only in Spanish. She purses her lips. “He says ‘Lay a hand on my sister and find out what danger really means.'”

Cletus snickers into his sweet tea.

Awesome
.

 

Thirty-One

Arden offers to make me a cup of coffee in what I assume is his mother's fancy coffeemaker (Arden is too manly to have a fancy coffeemaker). I refuse, because I'm too wired as it is, and because something feels weird about sitting back and enjoying a potentially luxurious cup of coffee while watching my brother put his life on the line.

I'll already be watching from the comfort of Arden's room on his computer, which leaves an exotic swirl in my stomach. Our first kiss happened in this house. Also, I pulled a knife on his father here.

This house is full of all things unexpected. Which is not a good thing at the moment. I need everything to go down just as we planned. Or I might pass out.

“Are you ready to go up?” he says. He slips his hand in mine, lacing our fingers together. I've missed his touch, the assurance behind it.