Emergency Contact - Part Twenty-Three
Pairing: Javi x Reader x Joel.
Plot summary: Divorce is meant to be final, when two people stop caring about each other. But not when one of you forgets to update your emergency contact.
Chapter summary: You and Javi make a bid for freedom, before a planned exit from Colombia leaves you shaken.
A/N: 18+only. I’m going on holiday on Monday so I’m not sure if I’ll be able to update again before then, but I’ll try my best 🥰
Masterlist
🔫🔫🔫🔫🔫🔫🔫🔫🔫🔫🔫🔫🔫🔫🔫🔫🔫
“Rabbit!”
Joel's hand clamps over your mouth and you bite down hard enough to draw blood. He hisses in pain, his grip convulsing, and you drive your elbow back into his ribs and feel him fold. Then you’re moving, stumbling towards the door, grabbing the handle and pulling it all the way open, Joel’s preoccupation with the injury you’ve inflicted giving you the precious seconds you need.
You run, your hand on the iron banister, using it to take the first four steps in two strides, your feet finding the worn stone. Behind you, Joel yells your name, but you keep running forwards, towards the courtyard and Javi, who’s already moving, his face coming up as you descend, reading you before you've reached him.
You hit the courtyard at speed, and his hands catch you by the arms, absorbing the momentum.
"We have to go,” you pant. "Right now, we have to get out of here!"
"What…?"
"It's a setup, all of it. Marco, this building…they're coming for you. Joel said there are men in the passage…” You turn, reading the courtyard with its three doors, the colonnade shadow and the single entrance of the passage behind you. "I don't know where Joel and Marco…they were trying to get me out the back and I…"
His hand goes to the gun at his hip with specific practiced movement, the draw and the check, his eyes already off you and on the passage entrance.
The sound comes from there first, not voices, but rather movement, the specific quality of multiple bodies moving fast through a confined space, the echo of the passage amplifying and multiplying the footsteps.
His hand finds your arm. "Behind me.”
"I have a gun," you reply, pulling the weapon out, pushing the phone into your back pocket and then discarding your bag on the ground.
"Behind me,” he says again, in a tone that suggests it’s not up for discussion. "Stay on my left and stay close.”
“Just like the old days,” you breathe, as the first man comes through the passage entrance.
Javi fires before he’s fully cleared the threshold, the single shot ringing out in the enclosed space, and the man goes down, his compatriot requiring to adjust his position long enough for Javi to move, pulling you with him towards the colonnade on the left.
The shadow of it swallows you both and Javi gestures to the door – the one on your left, the one Marco went through earlier. You twist the handle, find it unlocked and hurry through, Javi bringing up the rear, pulling it mostly closed and putting his back to the wall beside the frame.
As your eyes adjust, you see a corridor in front of you, running deeper into the building's interior, with offices on both sides. At the far end, there’s a junction with options of left or right, the building's internal geography opening up. Behind the door, in the courtyard, you can hear voices now, talking fast and low in Spanish.
"How many came through?" you whisper.
"I saw two," he replies, "but there were more behind."
"Okay…” you breathe, counting to ten quickly in your head, allowing the familiarity of the past settle in your chest and help clear your thinking. “Left or right?”
He looks at the junction, calculating. "Right runs back toward the passage. Left should take us toward the rear of the buildin’."
“The back exit.” He nods. “Okay, let’s go.”
You start moving along the corridor, taking the left turn and it opens into another narrower passage, the commercial premises of the upper floors accessible by a secondary stair that rises on your right. The ceilings are lower here, the smell of stone, old timber and salt-coast damp almost overwhelming.
Javi moves fast and low, you behind him and to the left, close enough to communicate, far enough that a single burst won’t take you both. Above you, you hear the sound of boots on stone and you both slam to a halt at the realisation that someone has come in through the upper level and is descending, the footsteps deliberate. A single person, moving carefully.
You both press yourselves back against the wall, guns up, and as the man comes around the corner, Javi moves, slamming his body into the opposite wall, pressing his gun to the man’s throat. The man – younger than you imagined, goes still immediately, the whites of his eyes enormous in the dim light.
"Cuántos?" Javi says against his ear. The man says nothing and he presses harder.
"Seis," the man says finally.
Javi looks at you over his shoulder and you can see him running the math in his head. Then he hits the man with the butt of the gun in one specific efficient movement, finding the precise location through years of practice, and the man folds without drama, sliding to the floor.
"There has to be a door at the end of this passage," you say.
He nods, and you keep moving forwards, slower now, listening for the sounds of others, until the door appears in front of you, heavy and iron banded. He reaches for the handle, twists it and it shakes against its hinges. He presses against it, and you join him, only for it to remain immoveable.
"Mierda," he swears quietly and you stare at the wood, the terrible realisation that Joel has locked you inside settling in your chest and fighting for recognition that you don’t have time to give it right now.
“The stair,” you say, thinking quickly. “We go up and over. The gallery above looks like it runs the full perimeter, so there has to be an exterior stair on the rear elevation." He hesitates. "It’s an old building. There has to be a secondary way down in case of fire."
"You're guessin’.”
"Yes, but I don’t think we have many other options right now. If we go back the way we came…” You trail off at the sudden sound of voices behind you, the decision seemingly made with no time for any further considerations.
The secondary stair going up is narrow and dark and your shoulder hits the wall twice on the turns. Javi’s hand presses against your back through the tight sections, encouraging you onwards and, eventually, the upper floor arrives in a sliver of light, and you exit through a door at the top onto a landing, then into a corridor that runs perpendicular to the gallery.
Javi takes your arm, holding you at his side whilst you both listen to the sound of footsteps distributed across multiple levels of the building in the coordinated sound of people closing a net.
"The gallery," he says quietly. "If we can reach the rear corner…"
A door opens to your left before he completes the sentence, the man who emerges experiencing a fraction of a second of surprise before Javi pulls you out of the way and subdues him. Stepping over the body, you press your back to the wall beside the open door and sweep the interior of the room. It’s empty and when you cross to the window on the far wall, you see the external stair – iron, bolted to the stonework and running from the first-floor gallery level down to the alley below.
"Here," you say, Javi joining you at the window. “If we get out onto the ledge we can drop down.”
"You first," he says, nodding when you hesitate. “Go – I’m right behind you.”
The window opens inward and you slide through it, feet first, your toes reaching, then finally gaining purchase on the ledge, before you drop down to the gallery rail below and move toward the external stair. It’s old and steep, ringing like a bell with every footfall – the specific resonant clang of iron announcing you and Javi to the alley below, to every window above and to anyone who happens to be waiting.
Halfway down, there’s a shot from above, the bullet striking the iron rail two feet from your hand. Pressing flat against the stair you turn and return fire upward – two shots, the angles wrong, suppressive rather than accurate – hear Javi firing above you and then the sound of someone falling heavily.
"Move," Javi says as he reaches you and, seconds later, the two of you hit the alley and start running, feet slapping against the concrete, breath tearing from your throat, chest burning and eyes streaming.
A block from the building, he shoves his gun into the waistband of his jeans, and you follow suit. The transition is seamless, borne from countless similar encounters, the shift from one mode to the other, walking replacing the running. To the casual observer, you’re simply two people moving with purpose through a street. The tourists with their cameras and their morning coffee part around you with complete indifference to everything that has just happened.
"They'll have the main road covered," you say, when you’ve recovered breath enough to talk.
"Yes." His hand finds its way to the small of your back again. “This way.”
You let him guide you, second left, right at a church with a blue door, through a covered market passage that smells of fish and cut flowers and the particular sweetness of overripe mango, then left into a street that runs along the inside of the old wall. A car slows in front of you and you both slide into a doorway simultaneously with the coordination of two people who know each other's rhythms. The car passes without stopping and you keep moving.
You take the next right, then left, the buildings changing register, the Colonial giving way to the early twentieth century, and when an alley appears to your right, Javi pulls you into it. It’s too narrow for cars and too dark for tourists. You follow him deep into the shadows, then you both stop for breath, allowing your bodies to honestly account for the last half hour, your lungs asserting themselves with considerable conviction. Javi rests beside you, his shoulder against yours, his chest doing the same frank admission of effort.
You bend forward and put your hands on your knees, inhaling and exhaling for you’re not sure how long, the alley around you quiet and staying quiet – no footsteps, no voices, the street beyond it going about its business.
“You okay?” he asks, and you clearly take too long to answer as you feel his hands on you before you can utter a word. They move quickly, taking rapid inventory, checking, accounting, reading you for damage.
"I'm fine," you manage finally, but his hands don’t stop.
They move to your face, tilting it towards whatever light the alley has, his eyes doing their own inventory, reading the evidence of the morning in your expression, in the flush of exertion, in whatever else is written there.
"Javi, I'm fine…"
"Let me see," he says and so you hold still whilst his hands move through your hair looking for blood, for impact, for the evidence of things that might have happened in the building or on the stairs or in the moments when you were separated by the width of a corridor or the turn of a landing. "Nothin’," he says, more to himself than to you.
"I'm fine," you say again as his hands still in your hair while he looks at you "Are you hurt?"
"No,” he replies softly. "I'm fine."
You look at him as your hand moves over his heart, feeling the hammer of it through his shirt. His hand covers yours and with the touch of it, something breaks in his expression, the specific fracturing of the operational face, the thing underneath it surfacing fast and complete.
"Dios…when I heard you…" his voice cracks. "When I heard rabbit and I didn't know…"
You kiss him hard, your hands fisting in his shirt and pulling him to you, your mouth finding his with the specific violence of relief, of fear finding its other side, of countless minutes of not knowing resolving into this.
He makes a sound against your lips, broken and raw, and kisses you back like he’s trying to crawl inside you, like the only proof that matters is this, his tongue in your mouth and his hands shaking against your jaw and the full weight of him pressing you back into the alley wall.
You pull him harder against you – no space, no air, nothing between you but the morning and what it’s been and the specific desperate need to confirm that you’re both on the other side of it. His thigh moves between yours, his hand sliding into your hair and gripping, pulling your head back, his mouth moving over yours.
Your teeth catch his bottom lip, and he groans your name into your mouth, the sound vibrating through both of you, his hand tightening in your hair hard enough to hurt and you don’t care because you want it, want the hurt of it, want the proof of his hands on you.
You kiss him harder, his hand leaving your hair to grab your thigh, operating purely on the desperate arithmetic of skin and breath and the need to be closer even though closer isn’t possible. Then his mouth moves to your neck, teeth scraping against your throat, his hand gripping hard enough to bruise, his breath coming in harsh bursts against your skin.
“Javi…” you gasp, and he suddenly pulls back, just far enough to look at you, his eyes completely black, mouth swollen, chest heaving.
"Mierda…" he swears, forehead dropping to yours, both of you breathing like you've run another mile. “I thought…I thought…”
“I know.” You cup his face gently and drop a soft kiss on his lips, practicality winning through. “How far are we from the hotel?”
He moves away from you, pulls out his gun and checks it, his eyes on the alley entrance. “Three blocks.”
“How long?” You ask, the look he gives you in response indicative of the fact that he knows exactly why you’re asking.
Ava.
“Ten minutes – give or take.”
“Okay,” you nod, pushing off the wall and quickly checking your own weapon before following him out of the alley and back onto the streets where ten minutes quickly become more like fifteen – not because of distance, but because of the doing of it correctly.
The route you take to avoid arterials adds four hundred metres, then you have to pause at the corner where a dark saloon sits idling outside a café and stand inside a hardware store pretending to examine paint until it moves.
Your heart surges as the hotel finally appears in front of you and you move quickly through the lobby, noticing the complete absence of evidence that anything untoward has happened, knowing you should feel relief, but unable to allow yourself to feel it until you’ve seen the proof.
You take the stairs two at a time, Javi at your back, then run along the corridor to the room, stopping yourself short from banging on the door and instead knock as calmly as your body will allow.
There’s a pause that seems to last an eternity and then Elena opens the door, her face rapidly assessing the two people standing in front of you.
“Dios mío” she says quietly, then steps back to allow you inside.
The first thing you see is Ava, sat on the rug with the blocks, her back to the door. For a second, you simply watch her, your body a beat behind your heart, then she hears you and turns, her eyes lighting up at the sight, a wide smile crossing her face as she instantly pulls herself to her feet and toddles towards you.
“Mama!”
The sound of her voice causes your body to go limp and you drop to the floor in front of her, throwing your arms around her and pulling her to you, her face going into your neck and her hands gripping your shirt with the fierce grip of a person who knows exactly how to hold on. You inhale deeply, holding onto the specific irreplaceable smell of her and press your face into her hair.
Then, you start to cry – not gradually, not in a dignified way with a single tear and a composed expression and the quiet management of it, but rather with emotion that arrives without permission and without warning, the kind that has been waiting in your body since you first locked eyes with Joel and is now arriving at its purpose.
Your shoulders are shaking before you know it’s happening. You feel Ava register the change and her hands tighten in your shirt. Elena's voice sounds at your ear – quietly, words you don’t understand – and then she takes Ava from you and moves towards the window with her.
Javi’s hands land on your shoulders, drawing you gently upwards from the floor towards him before steering you towards the bathroom, where he sits you gently on the edge of the tub and closes the door. Then he sits beside you and says nothing, his hand moving slowly on your back, not telling you to stop or to quieten, but just moving gently, aware that some things need to run their course and that the most useful thing is to be present while they do.
You let yourself sob whilst his hand stays on your back and when the worst of it has passed, he reaches past you and pulls a towel from the rail, putting it in your hands without comment. You press it to your face and take a deep breath.
“Can you…” his voice shakes slightly and you hear him pause to correct it. “Can you tell me what happened in that room?”
You lower the towel and stare at the while hotel tiles in front of you, deliberately avoiding his gaze.
“Querida,” he says, voice lower. “Did he…did he touch you?”
You shake your head dumbly. “Not…not like that, not like you’re imagining. He…I kissed him, he held me, but…it was all lies, Javi, all of it. He never cared about me, never loved me – not the way that I loved him. It was…it was like looking at someone else, someone I didn’t recognise.”
He waits, and you feel the weight of the waiting like a present entity in the room with you.
“He told me the truth – about himself,” you say slowly. “Told me that Sarah was real, but she didn’t die because of a car bomb. He shot and killed her by accident during a drive-by shooting and the cartel…erased her. That’s why you couldn’t find any records on her.”
He exhales.
“After she died, he left and moved to Austin. Only he didn’t leave, not really. The cartel reactivated him shortly after I moved to Cedar Park and…and that’s when he started targeting me.”
You put your hands over your face.
“The whole thing was a ploy. It was all to get to you. The plan was to abduct me, bring me to Colombia and torture me to reel you in. He said they knew you’d come if you thought I was in danger and, when you did, they’d torture and kill you. He said…he said he didn’t know why but…I don’t believe him. I think…I think he knows but he just didn’t want to tell me.”
“Maldito,” Javi swears softly, his arm coming around your shoulder, pulling you gently into him, his lips finding your hair.
“Do you know?” You ask softly. “Do you know why? I mean – you’re just one agent, but you told me before that this has been going on for years and you must have asked yourself why.” He tenses, his arm tightening around you and after a few seconds, you pull back and look up into his face. “Javi?”
You wait for him to deflect, to shrug, to claim he has no idea – to wear the look of dishonesty that you saw so many times during your marriage. But, instead, he meets your gaze and nods.
“I know why.”
You move slightly away from him.
“In the beginnin’ it was because I was prominent in the investigation. Speakin’ Spanish, being able to move around easier than those who didn’t…my name got out there, got back to the people in the cartel who obviously thought I’d have useful information. Latterly, when I came back to Bogotá after Escobar escaped…” he pauses, but his eyes never leave yours. “It was because I was feedin’ information to Los Pepes.”
Your jaw drops fractionally, the substance of what he’s saying landing hard. Los Pepes – the vigilante death squad formed in the months before Escobar’s death with the sole purpose of destroying him. Los Pepes – who brought violence and murder to the streets.
“It wasn’t official. I did it on my own, no-one knew, no-one sanctioned it.” He pauses. “Was it the right thing to do, I don’t know. All I know is, I thought my time in the DEA was up after Escobar died because it got back to the top brass and so…I resigned before they could fire me. I never thought, in a million years, that they would ask me to come back. But when I did…I guess the cartel Joel operates with now saw me as some kind of threat. Or maybe it’s Cali, worried that I know too much, I…” he looks away. “I’m sorry – I should’ve told you all this.”
You blink, your brain running rapidly over what he’s saying, thinking about dates, timelines, what makes sense and what doesn’t.
“But Los Pepes was only formed after Joel left me – and from then until now, nobody's tried to get close to me or…”
“Maybe they figured, after Joel left, it would look too suspicious.”
“But they could have just taken me, abducted me, like he said they were planning to. I don’t understand…”
“What is there to understand about this fucked up country, this fucked up world?” He says softly. “You could try to analyse it a hundred different ways and still end up with no answers – not real ones anyway.” He reaches out and cups your face again, your eyes closing, head automatically turning into his touch. “I love you, querida.”
“I love you too,” you whisper, saying the words for the first time in more years than you can remember, and meaning them. When you open your eyes, you see him looking at you with an expression that’s part devastation, part relief and part something else you can’t name.
“The first thing we need to do is get you and Ava the hell out of here. There’s a direct flight from Cartagena to Miami and I want you both on it – this afternoon.”
You look at him, the heat of his hand still warm against your cheek. "Come with us.”
"I can’t.”
"Please.”
"I can't,” he says again, his voice wavering slightly. "I have to go back to Bogotá. There’s gonna be chatter about this and fallout and I’m gonna have to explain…” he breaks off and exhales. “What happened this mornin’ needs to be accounted for. Joel, Marco, whoever sent those men… if I disappear with you tonight then none of it gets…"
“I don’t care about any of that,” you interrupt, tears welling in your eyes again. “I want you to come with us, Javi, I need…”
“I know and I want to, but I have to do this, and you and Ava can’t be in Colombia while I’m doin’ it," he says firmly and you feel the non-negotiable weight of his words. "I need you both back safe on American soil. You’ll fly to Miami tonight, then get a connection back to Austin."
"Javi, please,” you beg, panic rising in your chest. “You said you’d leave, you said…"
He turns on the edge of the tub to look at you, both hands coming to your face now, warm and gentle against your skin, his gaze holding yours. "I’ll come to you when it’s done. When I’ve done what I need to do, I’ll hand in my resignation, get on a plane and I’ll come to you, querida, I promise." His thumbs move at your cheekbones. "But I need you there to come to. I need to know you're there – you and Ava."
You look at him, at his earnest expression, entirely present, entirely here, entirely not lying to you.
"How long?" you whisper.
"I don't know."
"But…"
"I don't know," he repeats. “A month, maybe two."
“That’s too long,” you inhale sharply, the tears spilling down your cheeks again. “I don’t want to be without you. Ava needs you – I need you…”
He leans forward, the gentle pressure of his mouth on yours silencing whatever words are destined to come next, his thumbs wiping at the salty liquid on your skin.
Eventually, he pulls back and rests his forehead against yours. “I love you, querida, and I swear – on my own life, on my father’s life, even on Ava’s life – I’ll come to you. If you want me to, if you’ll have me, I’ll come.”
“I want you to,” you breathe and you close your eyes and kiss him again until Ava’s protests from the bedroom force the two of you apart and back into the present moment.
You pack fast, folding yours and Ava’s things together with both a desperation and a reluctance. Desperation to get out of Colombia, away from Joel and the sourness he’s left in your gut, but also reluctance to leave Javi to face whatever’s going to come next. Glancing up, you see him on the phone, talking low and fast in Spanish, moving the pieces that need to be moved in order to get you and Ava to relative safety.
"The flight's at three-thirty," he says when he hangs up the call. "I have you both booked on it and you’ll be back in the States by tonight. Go to the airport hotel in Miami and then take the connectin' flight to Austin in the mornin’. Elena and I will travel back to Bogotá.”
You nod wordlessly.
“You call me when you land in Miami and again when you get back to Austin, okay?”
“Okay,” you manage.
He nods and exhales, the plan imperfect but at least real. “Okay.”
****
The journey to the airport takes thirty-five minutes.
Javi drives in a way that exudes hyper-vigilance. You see it in the watchfulness of the simple act, the additional layer that isn’t visible in the hands on the wheel or the set of his shoulders but that you can feel in the car, in the particular way his eyes move between the mirrors and the road and the mirrors again. The route takes you through the secondary streets, the long way around.
You watch his profile – the jaw, the eyes moving through their pattern and see beyond that, to the other thing, the thing that isn’t the drive or the mirrors or the route.
"Don't," he says, voice low.
"I'm not doing anything.”
"You're lookin’ at me like you're memorisin’ me.”
You turn to look out the windscreen. “Maybe I am,” you reply and his hand comes across to your lap, warm fingers folding around yours, Ava babbling in the backseat as though the sight has stirred something inside her.
You don’t speak again until you reach the terminal, Javi pushing the trolley through the crowds whilst you follow with Ava on your hip. At the check-in desk, you watch the bags disappear, then retrieve your passports and boarding passes, smiling weakly as you’re told to have a pleasant flight.
"Gate fourteen," Javi says, reading over your shoulder, then glancing up at the board. "You’ve got an hour, but you should go through security now. Don't wait."
You look at him and nod, stomach clenching. "I need to say something.”
He blinks.
"I know you have a list of things you need to do, and I know that list is real, and I know this isn't the place to talk about it but…" you take a breath. "I don’t care about the reasons why people want you dead, Javi. I don’t care about Los Pepes or whether it’s Cali or whether it’s another group of fuckin’ psychos who…I just…I need you to come home for good. I need this to be real.”
"It is real," he says.
You nod, feeling your throat start to thicken. “We didn’t make it to the finca.”
“There’s still time,” he nods. “We’ll get there – or somewhere else.”
“If I didn’t have Ava,” you say, voice breaking on the words. “If I didn’t have Ava, I would stay. I would stay with you, I would…”
He steps forward and kisses you, firm, gentle and tender, and you kiss him back, because you don’t care who might be around to witness it.
"I love you," he says, when you pull back.
"I love you too,” you sniff, “and I need you to come home."
"I will.”
"Say it again – properly.”
"I will come home," he says, emphasising each word. "I promise you."
He presses his mouth to your forehead and holds it there for a beat, before turning to Ava and taking her from your arms. Lifting her gently, he brings her against his chest, holds her and looks at her face.
She looks back at him, quietly assessing, then grins. “Ha-vee.”
“Cuídate pequeña," he says quietly, closing his eyes and kissing the top of her head. Then he passes her back to you, steps back and looks at you. "Go.”
You nod, too full of emotion for further words, hoist Ava and your carry-on in your arms and turn towards security without looking back.
Tears blur your eyes as you move through the motions, queuing, dropping metal items into trays, and negotiating Ava through the metal detector in a way that’s acceptable to both. On the other side, you look at the departures board again.
Gate fourteen.
You start to walk slowly, Ava insisting on being put down so she can toddle beside you, her hand firmly in yours, watching the people around her with critical attention. You pass gates twelve and thirteen and see gate fourteen ahead – the seating area beginning to populate with families arranging themselves among the plastic chairs, a man asleep with his mouth open across three seats and a child working through a packet of crisps with mechanical focus.
You let out a breath.
"Excuse me."
You keep walking.
"Señora."
You suddenly feel a hand on your arm and stop dead, turning to see two people in suits standing to your left, a man and a woman, their expressions neutral.
"Agent Peña,” the woman says.
“I’m sorry, I think you have the wrong…"
"Agent Peña," she says again, as though she hasn’t heard you. "We need you to come with us, please."
"I'm not…" you look down at your boarding pass, your fingers curling tighter around Ava’s. "My name is not Peña, and I have a flight that boards in…"
"We're aware of your flight," the woman says with professional pleasantness – not unkind or aggressive, but simply a voice that indicates things will go much smoother if you simply cooperate. "This won't take long. If you'll come with us, please."
"My daughter…"
"Your daughter is welcome to come," the man says, stepping forward and raising his arm. “This way, please.”
You swallow hard, considering your options. Running will only draw attention to yourself and where would you and Ava run to? The gate isn’t open, the flight not yet ready for boarding and, besides, you can tell both the people in front of you are armed. You turn and look back the way you came, as if by some magic Javi will appear and whatever misunderstanding there is will be cleared up.
"Can I see your identification?"
“I promise that you’re in no danger,” the woman says, smiling down at Ava, who’s now looking up with curiosity and barely contained patience.
"I asked for..."
"Come now, please," she repeats, looking at you with the same smile.
“Okay,” you say after a beat, your heart hammering wildly as you follow them through the throngs of people over towards a door clearly only accessible with a key card. As you move, you reach into the pocket of you bag, the one containing the phone with Javi’s number still programmed in, fingers closing around it gratefully.
The man swipes, punches in a code and then pushes it open, gesturing for you and Ava to go first. Slowly, you walk through, the sounds of the departure lounge swallowed up as it closes behind you. The woman moves in front, and you follow her along a long corridor to another door that she swipes and opens.
Inside the room there’s a table with four chairs and no windows.
"Someone will be with you shortly," the man says and he and the woman leave, closing the door behind them before you can ask any questions.
“Mama,” Ava says as you set your bag down in the corner and stare at the chairs as though they might somehow not be real. Slowly, you pull one out and sit down gingerly, pulling her onto your lap and giving her your boarding card to inspect.
Five minutes pass and then ten, the room silent around you, the boarding pass now slightly damp and partially destroyed by Ava’s fingers. You take a breath and think about the two of you on the plane, Ava at the window watching Cartagena change and morph into Miami below you. You think about Javi, the look on his face and the feel of him against you, until you can’t think about him anymore. You reach into your bag and pull out the phone, noticing with dismay that there's no signal.
After another few moments, the door in front of you opens, and your eyes fly to it, your body bracing for whatever interrogation is about to follow.
And then you see who’s standing at the threshold.
Joel.
He comes through the door, looks at you and Ava, then closes it behind him.
You get to your feet quickly, pulling Ava close to you, moving away from the table until your back hits the far wall. Your fingers fumble over the useless phone and it drops to the floor with a crack.
“I’m not gonna hurt you,” Joel says, voice low, one hand reaching towards you.
“Get the fuck away from us,” you say in a voice that wants to be a shout but comes out merely as a whisper.
"We don’t have much time, and I need you to hear me.”
"I've heard you," you say, voice shaking. "I heard you this morning telling me what you built around me and what you used me for and then you tried to have me and Javi killed…!”
“No.”
“…and there is nothing more that I want to hear from you." You tremble, holding Ava so close that she starts to protest. "I don’t know why you’re here, or why you’ve brought us here like this, but I have a flight to catch that I’m going to miss if you don't let me out of this room."
"You're not gonna miss your flight.”
"How would you…?"
"Because I have someone holdin’ the gate," he says, “I promise you won’t miss it.”
You look at him and he looks at Ava – the brown eyes finding the brown eyes – and you see something moving through his face, returning to the moment when you said she has your eyes and your mouth and your curls.
"I need two minutes," he says, eyes lingering on Ava before moving back to you. "Two minutes and then you get on your flight and I'll never…" he takes a breath. "Two minutes."
"Joel…"
He reaches towards the back pocket of his jeans, and you tense with a sharp inhale that he recognises. “It’s not a weapon. I’m not…please, it’s…” He continues with the motion, then draws his hand back and you see him holding what looks like a small white card.
Slowly, he places it on the table, and, for a moment, you just hold his gaze, not trusting yourself to look, not wanting to see. After a beat, he motions with his head, encouraging you, and you take a small step forwards, then another, your eyes eventually dropping down.
It’s the emblem that hits you first. The blue circle, edged in yellow. The eagle, the shield and the rose.
Then you read the words printed underneath and your knees threaten to give out.
Joel Miller - Central Intelligence Agency
🔫🔫🔫🔫🔫🔫🔫🔫🔫🔫🔫🔫🔫🔫🔫🔫🔫
Part Twenty-Four
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