Javi frowned at the camera as a screw popped loose from the siding. “Wait… Has that wire been cu—?”
The camera broke away from the wall. Vero and I gasped as Javi fell.
Vero was pacing the length of the living room five hours later when Javi and I returned from the hospital. I held the door open wide, careful not to let it bump against his heavy cast as he maneuvered into the house on two shiny metal crutches. Vero looked torn between throwing her arms around him or hiding in her room as he hobbled to the recliner. He sat down gingerly and pushed the seat back, closing his eyes and sighing audibly as the footrest popped out, taking the weight off his cast.
I handed Vero the bags from the pharmacy containing his painkillers and the ointment the ER doctor had prescribed for his skinned knees and elbows. He hadn’t been wearing pants when we’d shown up at the hospital, so the attending physician had sent him home in the T-shirt he’d been wearing when he’d arrived and a hospital gown to cover his boxers.
Vero had insisted on going with us to the hospital. I had argued that it was a bad idea. Emergency rooms could be full of first responders, and some of them were likely to be cops. Javi had beenthe deciding vote when he’d told her flat-out he didn’t want her to come, and I could have sworn I heard her heart crack the minute we’d driven off.
She had texted me every half hour from Cam’s phone for updates. When I told her Javi’s leg was broken, she’d asked me how angry he was on a scale of one to ten. I hadn’t had the heart to answer her.
“Come here,” he said gently, gesturing for her to come closer. She walked to the recliner, hangdog and contrite, her eyes red and her nose stuffy, as if she’d been crying. He reached for her hand and pulled her down sideways onto his lap. She brushed his hair back from his face and pressed her lips to his forehead, his cheek, and the corner of his mouth.
Javi’s smile was a little loopy around the edges. “When I suggested you get me naked and kiss me all over, this is not what I was imagining, Veronica. I’m pretty sure you’re going to kill me someday.”
She sniffled. “I’m not trying, Javi. I swear.”
“I know,” he said, resting his chin on her head as she burrowed into his side. “You want to hear something crazy? When I fell, I saw my life flash before my eyes, and I saw our wedding night.”
“That was not our wedding night.”
“I remembered everything, V. It was beautiful.” His eyes were glassy, his focus a little fuzzy.
“Are you sure you didn’t hit your head?”
“I’m serious. I promised to love and cherish you until you accidentally murder me. And you promised to try not to kill me, but only if I swore to take you on a real honeymoon. We can still do that, you know. We can leave right now. But you might have to drive,” he teased, rubbing the fog of painkillers from his eyes.
“Those drugs they gave you must be pretty powerful stuff.”
His blinks became slow and heavy. “They’re not so bad. I’m clearheaded enough to know what I’m suggesting, V, and you don’t have to stay here. Not if you don’t want to. I would take you away from all this, and we can start over someplace else.”
“I can’t leave, Javi. I have to stay here and prove to them all I didn’t do this.”
He tipped her chin up to look her in the eyes. “It doesn’t matter if they don’t believe you.Ido.” He kissed her softly. She kissed him back.
I busied myself in the kitchen, offering them a moment of privacy while I looked for some way to help around the house. But Vero had already cleaned, and the whole place was spotless. The carpets were vacuumed, the floors were mopped, a load of clothes was humming in the dryer, and the trash and recycling had been taken out. A salad was already made for dinner, the rice cooker was on warm, and a pan of chicken thighs was roasting in the oven. I peeped back into the living room to see if Javi wanted something to eat, but his head was resting against the recliner, his eyes closing slowly against their will.
“We’ll discuss our honeymoon when you wake up. Get some rest,” Vero said, kissing him on the cheek. He was asleep before she reached the kitchen.
“What time are your mother and Gloria getting home?” I asked as I began setting the table.
“I’m not sure. They said something this morning about working late, so I cooked.”
I nearly dropped a plate. “You didn’t call them?”
She winced. “Not exactly.”
“You said you would tell them about Javi’s accident when I took him to the hospital!”
“What was I supposed to say, Finlay? That I cut the wires toall of Ramón’s cameras and Javi nearly fell to his death trying to fix them? My mother would have left work just to come home and strangle us both, and Gloria would have called my cousin to come back to babysit me. The last thing we need is one more hiccup in our plan. I texted them and told them everything was fine. I told them I handled dinner and they can work as late as they want.”
“What are we supposed to do with Javi?” I whispered. “We can’t leave him alone while we go sneaking all over town to solve Theo’s murder.”
Vero nibbled her thumbnail as she paced to the front window. I could practically see the wheels turning in her head. She peeled back the curtain and peered outside. “Javi won’t be alone. I have an idea.”
CHAPTER 25
Thirty minutes later, Javi was still passed out in the recliner. Vero covered him with one of her mother’s knitted blankets, put a pillow under his cast, and made a phone call to Lenore, offering her a handsome reward to keep an eye on Javi for the next few hours.
