Every dress, every beach cover-up, the white linen shirt, the sandals — all of it gone. The suitcase gone. The small canvas tote she used as a beach bag, gone. Her toiletry bag from the bathroom, the glasses she wore at night while reading.
Gone. All of it gone.
The only trace of her that remained was on the dresser — the half-eaten breakfast tray, and on the pillow, still exactly where I had placed them before dawn this morning, the flowers.
Pink petunias, slightly wilted now from the hours.
And beside them, catching the afternoon light from the open deck doors, her wedding ring.
I crossed the room and stood over it without touching it for a long moment. Such a small thing. Such an ordinary, everyday thing — I had watched her put it on and take it off a thousand times without thinking about it, had seen it on her hand across dinner tables and in the car and while she was reaching for things on high shelves and while she slept. It had simply been part of her, the way her voice was part of her.
I picked it up.
It sat in my palm, weightless.
I intend to spend the rest of my life making sure you never regret choosing me.
I had written those words this morning. I had meant them completely, in the way I meant everything that had to do with Camila — with my whole chest, without reservation.
And then I walked out of this stateroom and made them a lie.
I should have told her. From the very first day Scarlett called. I should have told Camila, and decided along with her what we had to do. I should have let her decide with full information. She had deserved that.
Instead I had decided to lie to her. It was cowardice dressed up as love.
My knees hit the floor.
I don’t know if I chose it or if my legs simply gave way. Either way I was on the floor of our stateroom, the ring in my fist, the wilted flowers on the pillow above me, and I was sobbing in the way I hadn’t sobbed since I was a boy — ugly and uncontrolled and without any dignity whatsoever.
No, I kept saying, to no one. To the empty room. To the ring in my hand.No, no, no.
CHAPTER 11
JASON
I should have told her the first day we met.
I’ve thought about that moment so many times in the past three years that I’ve worn it smooth — that afternoon at the shelter, when Camila was on her knees in the puppy enclosure with her hair coming loose from its clip, I could have said it then. Or when we sat across from each other at the cafe, and she had asked about me, I could have said it then:before this goes any further, there is something you need to know about me.
I should have told her when I proposed. When she said yes. On our wedding day, watching her walk toward me in white, looking like everything I hadn’t believed I was allowed to have.
I should have told her a hundred times, in a hundred ordinary moments over three years of marriage. And I never did.
Because I am, at my core, a coward. And because I loved her too much to watch her look at me differently.
Seven years ago, I was Mateo Gomez.
I was thirty-one years old and I worked in logistics for a mid-sized import company in Miami — legitimate work, mostly, the kind of job that paid the bills and asked no interesting questions.I was unremarkable in the ways that mattered and careful in the ways that counted, and I had learned early that the city I lived in had layers, and that certain layers were better left unexamined.
I was unremarkable right up until the night I was in the wrong parking garage at the wrong time.
I won’t linger on the details. Three civilians — a woman in her forties, a young man who couldn’t have been more than twenty-two, and an older man in a delivery uniform. And a police officer, off-duty, who had apparently seen something he wasn’t meant to see. Four people. Four lives that ended in the space of approximately ninety seconds, on the third level of a parking structure in downtown Miami, while I stood frozen behind a concrete pillar with my keys in my hand.
The man who gave the orders was named Ernesto Quintero. Head of the Quintero cartel, whose reach extended from South Florida to the Pacific coast and whose name was spoken, in certain circles, only and always in whispers.
I saw his face clearly. He saw mine, briefly, before his people moved and I ran.
The FBI found me three days later. I cooperated completely, because the alternative was being found by someone else first, and I had seen what Ernesto Quintero did to people he wanted to find.
