Crossing The Line

At first she thought he did not hear her. There was no reaction, nothing. He stared at her, scrutinizing her. But then his shoulders drooped and his head fell to his hands. His body shook as silent sobs tore threw him.

A coldness settled in her core. She should feel something. Her arms should want to encircle him. His body was representing every emotion Beth had felt in the last thirty days, shock and anguish…despair. But she felt nothing now, except maybe jealousy that he still had tears left in him.

Beth had not cried in over a week. They were gone, her tears all used up. Maybe people were given a finite amount and she had gone through her ration. Or maybe her pain had hardened her. That is what she wanted to think. That her grief had fortified her, given her strength she never knew.

But what it was, what she feared, was that the bitterness had consumed her compassion. It was gone, her empathy, her compassion, maybe even her morality. It was gone now, burned away like flesh scorched by acid.

She watched as his body shook. She counted the seconds between sobs and noted how his skin went from ruddy to near purple and he struggled to get enough air into his body.

And the whole time she felt nothing.

Minutes past. She had nothing left to say. She stood up. “I’m sorry. I didn’t want you to hear from a guard.” She handed him the funeral program she had brought. On the cover was Paige smiling, holding Alejandra on a trip to the beach. It was her favorite picture of her sister. She had tried to find one of Paige on her own, but none of them captured Paige, her goofy smile and her carefree spirit. This was Paige, the Paige she remembered.

Beth pointed to the photo. “That is my daughter. Paige was helping me raise her. She was a good mom. She was the fun one who gave Ally sugar like she was trying to put her into a diabetic coma and I was the one who worried and nagged. We were a good team.” And now it was just Beth.

Beth handed her dad the rest of the photos. Prison policy meant that she could only bring in ten so she had had to be merciless in her cull, picking only the ten that most perfectly captured her sister. She shuffled through until she found the one of Paige at her graduation. “She was top of her class at UC Davis.” Her sister would not have mentioned it. It was Beth’s turn to be proud. She had paid for Paige to go to vet school, made it possible for her to live her dream. And she had…for a while… “And here is Paige with Morningside Mac. He is a Grand Champion. He had paralysis of the larynx or something. Paige could have explained it better. But basically she saved his life. He would have had to be put down. That operation paid her mortgage.” Beth smiled again as she remembered her sister. Every night, without fail, she waited for Paige to come in, say something outrageous and then plop herself in front of Beth’s television to watch mind-numbing reality TV. But she never came, and every night Beth went to bed with a boulder in her stomach that wouldn’t shift. She would give anything to speak to her again, to hug her and hear her laugh.

Beth pulled out another picture. “Here is one of us at Disney World. That was a fun trip. I like Florida. Shame it doesn’t have a border with Mexico or I could have been transferred there.” Her job with the task force meant she needed to be in Texas.

She handed the rest of the photos to her dad and watched silently as he made his way through them. He smiled a few times and then cried again. This time Beth placed her hand on his arm. She felt nothing but it seemed the humane thing to do.

“Do you have a picture of your husband?” he asked.

Beth’s eyes widened. “Torres?” she asked as if there was another husband her father could be asking about. She patted her pockets. She had left her phone in the rental car. “Umm…Torres is…I told you he is Mexican. And we worked together. Not a lot else to say.”

“Is he a good man?”

The question took her aback. Was Torres a good man? Depends on who you were asking and if your definition of good precluded murder. “Umm…yeah…he is a good man. He has always had my back.” That much was true. With Torres she always had someone on her side. That is why she married him. She probably shouldn’t have, he had only asked her out of a misplaced sense of loyalty. It wasn’t particularly fair to him, to saddle him with her and her daughter. If she was a better person, she would have said no, for his sake, but she wasn’t, and she wasn’t proud. She would take whatever he offered because he was all she had left, the only person on her side.

And he would take care of Alejandra. Beth wouldn’t let her be orphaned again. When things went downhill with Torres, when he finally realized who she was, he would still be there for Alejandra, and that was all that really mattered. She might be a shitty person but she was a devoted mom.

Her dad nodded. “You said he worked with you. What does he do now?”

Beth sighed. The truth was too complicated to contemplate retelling. “He is a carpenter.” Again that much wasn’t a lie. He was also a soldier and a special agent and a drug runner and the head of a hit man squad, but she left those details out.

“Does he earn a good living?”

Joe Cummings was acting the part of a father, making sure his daughter was well looked after.

Surreal: this attempt at family normality. He didn’t have the right to know about her life. Why would he even care? He hadn’t even seen her in over twenty-five years. They were strangers. “We do OK.” The truth was they were more than comfortable now. The Department of Justice had offered Torres a settlement. They were more than happy to throw money at him in return for him keeping his mouth shut about Patterson setting him up. He would never need to work again if he didn’t want to. Torres couldn’t not work; it went against everything he was. He had returned to carpentry, starting with a playhouse for Alejandra that was about the size of the apartment Beth had grown up in. The playhouse had polished wooden floors and granite worktops. News of the tiny garden mansion spread through the neighbourhood and in a week, Torres had orders for three more. One person even requested a house with running water. As Paige always said, “Thank God for people with more money than sense.”

He wiped at his face. “Thank you for coming, Beth, for telling me in person. I can’t believe she’s gone.” He squeezed his eyes together.

“I know. I pick up the phone to call her at least once a day. Every time I hear something funny I want to call her and tell her. She liked to laugh.” It was a stupid thing to say. Who didn’t like to laugh? Paige laughed a lot, that is what she meant. She laughed at everything. She could make a joke out of anything. Even when Torres was gone and their mom’s disease was getting worse, Paige found things to laugh about. She missed that, the levity that Paige brought to her life. Would she laugh again the way she did with Paige? She hoped she could, for Alejandra.

Beth sat down again. She could spare a few more minutes with him, it was after all the last time he would spend with his only family. That is what she was; begrudgingly she admitted it to herself, she was his family. For this one moment she would be that for him.

She spent another hour talking with her father, answering questions and talking about her mom and sister. They both knew this would be the last time Beth came to see him. She didn’t say it, but they both knew. They would go back to being strangers again. Eventually he would die and Beth would think about him for a few minutes or a few days and then he would be gone again like he never existed. She should be sad about that, but it would be like missing something she never had.

Eventually she stood up. “Take care…Dad.” She reached out and embraced him. It wasn’t for her, or even for him, it was for Paige and her mom. They loved him, and Beth loved them.

Her dad began to cry again. His arms tightened around her. He didn’t want to let her go. She understood that feeling better than most. This was the moment, the one before he lost everything in his life. She closed her eyes and willed it to last a little longer because she knew the sting that would follow…and the darkness. God she wished she could go back to the moments before she lost Paige.

“I’m sorry,” he managed to say between sobs.

Beth’s legs went slack; muscles that she didn’t know were tight, loosened. They were words she didn’t know she needed to hear. “Thank you.”

With those two words, the pain and bitterness she had carried for thirty years, washed away.

Chapter Two

Beth couldn’t remember where she had parked but then she realized she was looking for her SUV not the small red Prius she had rented at the airport. She took a deep breath and looked around at the bare trees. The leaves had already turned and most had fallen. This was California, her home; the place she had worked so hard to come back to. But it didn’t feel right. It wasn’t the same. This wasn’t her home. For over a decade every decision she made was about getting back here. But now all she wanted to do was get back to Texas to her sassy five-year-old and her scary-looking tattooed husband. They were her home now, for as long as Torres chose to be there, he would be her safe place.

As she slid the key into the lock, there was a sharp tug on her ponytail. Her head snapped back.

In an instant Beth spun around, just in time to see the peroxide blonde from inside swing at her.

Without having to think, Beth stepped to the side, preventing the punch from landing on her face. She used the momentum of the swing to spin the woman around. Beth slammed her hard against the side of the car. She still had a hold of her arm; that alone was enough leverage to keep the woman in place. Suddenly she saw the little girl staring up at her.

Beth shook her head. “Seriously? You attack me in front of your kid? Some people really should not be parents. I told you not to mess with me. You really should have listened.”

“Fuck you, bitch.”

Beth pulled up on her arm. It was a small movement designed to inflict maximum pain.

“Ouch, you mother fucker,” the woman howled.

“Please stop swearing in front of your child.” Beth turned and smiled down at the little girl. She reminded her so much of her own daughter. “Mommy is having a hard time remembering her manners. But I’m helping her remember. That is nice of me, isn’t it? Good manners are very important.”

The little girl’s dark brows knit together, not sure what to make of Beth.

Beth lowered her voice to a whisper so the little girl could not hear her. “You’re not very tough now without your gang. Bet you wish you had a gun right now or a baseball bat.” Beth gave her arm another small pull upward. “Did I forget to tell you I have a black belt in karate? Yep I did. Must have slipped my mind. Also forgot to mention I am a special agent with the DEA. So you just assaulted an officer of the law. Never a good idea. The court frowns on that. Do you have anything sharp in your pocket I could cut myself on?”

The woman didn’t answer.

“You really need to learn to play nice.” Beth pulled up on her arm again, not stopping until the woman bellowed. She hated that she had to do this in front of the little girl. Life would be so much easier if parents put their children before their need to be assholes.

“No, no I don’t have anything.”

Beth loosened the pressure on her arm. “Good. See how much easier things are when you play nice. It’s all about human decency.” Beth reached into the woman’s pocket, finding a California State driver’s license. “Pleasure to meet you, Tasha Baker. I will be sure to tell your parole agent how we became acquainted.”

“Bitch, I don’t got no parole officer.”

“Really? Because that ugly tattoo on your neck tells me you’re with the Crips. And the one on your wrist told me you served time. So don’t lie to me. You have a parole officer. Chances are you just got your kid back. So right after I speak to your parole officer I’m going to speak to your kid’s social worker. All this because you couldn’t listen. Next time when someone says don’t mess with them, don’t mess with them. Or better yet just don’t mess with people. It’s all about human decency. Get some, Tasha.”

Beth turned to the little girl. “Baby Girl, listen to me. Make better choices. Your mama has a hard time. She will probably let you down a lot along the way. Be strong and make better choices.” Beth could only sigh. The cards were stacked high against this poor kid. But she could still make it. She had to tell herself that.

Beth returned her stare to Tasha. “I am going to let you go now. You are going to take your child and walk back to your car. If you try anything stupid, like say trying to hit me again, I will hit you back. Hard. And that would be embarrassing. In front of your kid and all. And then I will take you to the ground and I will sit with my knee in your spine until the police send someone to arrest you. All very embarrassing for you, Tash. Can I call you Tash? I feel like we are at that level now. Since you’ve pulled my hair and I’ve made you scream. So Tash, walk away and don’t look back. And buy your kid a clean pacifier. I personally think she is old enough to do without but you’re her mama, so I’m going to cut her some slack.”

Beth sighed as she settled into the driver’s seat. She sat and just stared out at the bare trees. God this had been a shit day. But still nothing, she felt nothing. No that was a lie, she felt like the trees, bare, stripped down to the point where life was merely nominal. But the leaves would be back. There would be a spring and the flowers would bloom.

She would too. She had to believe that, the same way she believed the little girl had a chance.

She shook her head. Once upon a time she had been better at lying to herself. Maybe it was this place; it was hard to believe in a happy ever after when you were sitting in a prison parking lot.

She really wasn’t going to miss California any more.

Beth reached into the glove compartment and pulled out a bag of M&Ms. This day called from M&M therapy. She knew it would and had planned ahead and bought a family size bag. There was no way four ounces was going to cover it this time. She remembered there being a time when half a dozen pieces would do the trick. She sucked on them one at a time, never biting into them, letting them dissolve on her tongue. The combination of slow breathing and the spike in her blood sugar always lifted her mood, at least temporarily. Like any drug, the effects were short-lived and she needed more and more to get her fix…but they would do until she could get home and see Torres. He was a far more powerful opiate. The withdrawal from him would be a bitch…

It was just after 9pm when Beth arrived home. She was still having a hard time adjusting to calling her new house home. She knew it would take a while before she stopped thinking of her small bungalow as home. They had moved to a nicer house, a bigger house in a gated community. The move made sense, Torres barely fit in her bungalow and the new house had the security they needed. There was a protective detail assigned to Alejandra around the clock. After what happened to Paige, she was taking no chances. Alejandra would grow up shadowed by a bodyguard until Beth brought down El Escorpion.

Beth tiptoed up the stairs to Alejandra’s bedroom. She was lying on her tummy, arms above her head, fast asleep. Beth pulled the blanket up over her shoulders and leaned down and pressed a small kiss to her cheek. “I’ve missed you, Pretty Girl,” she said to her sleeping form. She had been gone less than twenty-four hours but it was too long. Beth stood and stared at her child for a while, watching the slow rise and fall of her chest.

She is safe. The tight knot in Beth’s stomach loosened a little. She is safe. Beth repeated the words to herself over and over until she almost believed them. She never fully would, and that was OK, because that meant she would never let her guard down again. She couldn’t save Paige, but she would protect Alejandra.

Eventually she kissed her cheek again and then went to look for Torres. She knew where he would be. Where he always was, in the garage working, cutting or sanding. A rush of anticipation shot through her when she thought of her husband. That was one emotion that has not been dulled, the thrill she got when she was with Torres. Sometimes it was the only way she felt alive.

Beth held on to the cold wrought-iron banister as she rushed down the steps.

“Hey,” Beth said when she reached him. He was bent over a workbench. His shirt stretched taut over his biceps. His skin looked darker from the contrast of his white shirt.

He looked up and gave her his trademark half smile. Her heart faltered. He was so perfect, scars and all. She didn’t even notice the slash on his cheek any more. It wasn’t until people reacted to his appearance, that she remembered. Objectively he was a terrifying sight, he was six feet of scars and muscles and tattoos. But to her, he was just Torres, her gorgeous husband; the one who held her when she cried, and kissed her until she was breathless. He was hers for now and that was all that mattered tonight.

“Hola, Mami.”

Beth crossed to him wordlessly. She stood on her tiptoes and pressed her mouth against his. His lips opened to her, returning the same urgency. His hands dropped to her hips, pulling her hard against him. She reached between them, pulling up his shirt. She needed to feel him, the smooth knotted scars of his burned chest.

She pulled back just enough to speak. “Take off your shirt.”

“Giving orders now, Gatita?”

Once upon a time she did give him orders. He was her recruit; she had trained him. And now he was her husband. “I just want to see you.” She didn’t wait for him to lift his arms before she started pulling up.

“Hard day?”

Beth didn’t look at him; instead she studied the think black lines of his Santa Muerte tattoo and the scar it covered. She hadn’t told him she was going to Folsom to see her dad. She told him she was in the office catching up on paperwork. “Yeah,” she murmured. That much wasn’t a lie; it had been a hard day.

She had lied to him and she did not regret it even a little. Torres knew about her dad, that he was in prison. That was more than she had ever told another man. He didn’t need to know that she went to see him today. That would make it too real. It was done now, that was all that mattered.

Beth circled her index finger trough a loop in his belt and pulled him closer to her. She needed him. It wasn’t lust or desire, though they were there, it was something deeper; she needed him to feel alive, to feel anything that wasn’t wrapped up in fear and anxiety.

With Torres, everything else disappeared. There was no room for anything else.

“Let’s go to bed,” she murmured against his lips, pulling him towards the door.

Torres never slept more than four hours a night. Every night after she was asleep, he got up again to work in his shop until 2:00 or 3:00. Sleep had never come easily to him, but it was worse now since he escaped from Colombia. He never said anything. She just knew. She could feel it in the tautness of his muscles, never relaxing, always ready to move, to strike. He always waited until he thought she was asleep, and returned before she woke, but she knew, they just didn’t talk about it. They both had their secrets. And they both knew not to push.

What they had now was good. It was solid and passionate and fulfilling, but it was also delicate and new and most likely unsustainable. They had known each other for six years, but this, the new permutation of Beth and Torres as a couple, was new, born out of necessity and devastation, formed from their broken pieces. Eventually they would crack, everything did. But right now they were in the moment before everything turned to shit. She couldn’t go back to that moment with Paige, or with her mom, but she was living in that moment now with Torres, and she would enjoy it until it was gone.

The Torres that came back from the jungle wasn’t the same man that left. And what he returned to was more different than he could have imagined. There was no warm welcome, just resentment and regret.

But they found their way back together. It was inevitable. The pull was too strong, their connection too intense, so they were together, scars and all. Was it love or addiction? The answer didn’t really matter, because he made her feel good and quitting him now wasn’t a choice.

She had waited for the “I love you” when he came back, but it never happened, not even when he proposed. After Paige died, when she was at her lowest point, he was there for her. He told her that she was going to marry him and he was going to take care of her. That was the closest to a declaration she was going to get and it was more than she deserved.

They had loved each other once. She truly believed that. But now, what they had now, what was it? Could it still be called love after so much pain had been inflicted? Torres leaving, Beth turning to Patterson, the abandonment and the betrayal… So much had happened, but still Torres was the one who made her forget.

Beth pulled his hand and led him to their bedroom. She had more to forget tonight than usual. She pulled him closer and ran a hand over the raised skin of the slash on his face and then lower to the Santa Muerte tattoo that covered the left side of his chest. His muscles grew taut under her touch. Her hands dropped lower still, to his wrists, which were now wrapped around her waist. They were encased in thick scar tissue, a remnant from his imprisonment. His whole body told his story, it was written in the scars and tattoos. He looked like he could be an inmate; that is why she had picked him. She needed someone who could infiltrate a drug cartel, but his looks alone had not done it, his ruthlessness had.

He was a killer and a drug runner and a gang member and he was the only person who could make her forget all of that.

Torres pulled her hard against him. His body was a solid wall of muscle. Physically he could overpower her without even trying. If he wanted, he could break her; snap her in two. And she liked that; there was nothing to fight against with Torres, because she would lose. All the control was his. She didn’t have to think or fight or rationalize, all she had to do was feel.

She was already wet and ready for him. A shot of desire ran through her as she traced the deep lines that defined the muscles of his chest. She licked her lips. There were so many places her mouth wanted to be: his full lips, the flat plane of his belly; the thick end of his cock. She couldn’t decide which she wanted first but in the end the decision was taken from her. Torres pushed her down against the mattress, his solid body creating a cage around her. And then his mouth captured hers, hot and exploring, his tongue slid between her lips.

Her body clamped in anticipation. She felt so empty, only he could fill the need in her. She was ready, she didn’t need kissing or foreplay, she just needed him, his cock buried deep inside her, the connection: the fullness.

Frantically she pulled at his jeans, trying and failing to pull them over his hips. She pulled her mouth away so she could concentrate on the buttons keeping her from her goal.

Torres pushed his hips against hers, effectively pinning her to the bed. “Why the hurry, Gatita?” he asked. His voice was thick with his own controlled desire. He held her wrists hard against the mattress.

She could not verbalize it. The words didn’t make sense, even to her, but she was in a hurry. She was always in a hurry with Torres, desperate to have every moment with him, before it ended.

She pulled against him, trying to free her hands so she could reach him. She needed to feel him.

Torres lifted himself off her. His dark eyes hooded with desire. “Stop fighting me, or I’ll tie you up,” he warned. His tone was neutral but there was no doubt that he was deadly serious. Torres had the control here, he always did, and she willingly gave it.