They were here, and I was prepared for exactly this.
I took my position in the darkest corner of the lawn — the blind spot I had identified the morning I installed the lights, the one place the floodlights didn’t fully reach. I had the baseball bat in one hand and my own gun in the other, and I had been waiting for this since the moment Scarlett called me at nine-fourteen on a Tuesday night and told me she knew where Camila was.
The two men crossed the lawn toward the tent. One signaled the other —there, look there— and they both lowered their weapons and bent toward the tent flap, which was exactly what I had been hoping for.
I came out of the dark.
The first man went down hard, crashing into the tent with his full weight, bringing the poles and the equipment inside down with him in a cascade of noise. I had the baseball bat across the second man’s shoulders before he could turn —and I hit him once, twice — and then I had Pablo by the collar with one hand, and dragged him up to standing.
“If you come near Camila again,” I said, very quietly, right into his face, “I will kill you.”
I let him go.
The first man had already scrambled to his feet and was over the wall and gone, moving fast. Pablo — wounded, one hand pressed to his side — backed toward the wall without taking his eyes off me. His gun was on the grass where it had landed when I pulled him up. I set my foot on it.
He went over the wall.
From the street outside, I heard Scarlett’s voice — sharp and demanding, calling his name.Pablo. Pablo, come back here.Then a car door shut hard, an engine came to life, and they drove away.
I stood in Camila’s demolished garden in the sudden deadly quiet, and looked up.
She was at the window, completely naked, yet making no effort to cover herself up, perfectly still, watching me.
Her face was unreadable.
I held her gaze for a moment.
In the background, I could see Noah scrambling to get dressed.
I looked away and bent down to pick up Pablo’s gun.
Within minutes, Noah came across the lawn at a speed that suggested he had dressed entirely while running. He had his shoes in one hand and his car keys in the other, and he was moving with a committed urgency.
Camila came running after him, wearing a short night robe. She looked distraught.
“Noah, Noah, listen to me. Where are you going?”
He reached the driveway and turned back to look at Camila. “Sorry, babe.” He looked genuinely apologetic and terrified in roughly equal measure. “I don’t know what this is, or who these people are, or what’s happening. But I don’t think—” He stopped. Shook his head. “I’m not cut out for a life on the edge. I’m really not.”
He looked at me over her shoulder and nodded — a quick, sincere, man-to-man acknowledgment. “Thanks, man.”
Then he got in his car and drove away.
The sound of his engine faded down the quiet lane until there was nothing left of it.
Camila stood in the driveway in her robe in the warm night air, watching the empty road where his taillights had been.
I stayed where I was.
After a moment, without turning around, she said: “Don’t say anything.”
“I wasn’t going to,” I said.
The floodlights clicked off on their timer. The garden went back to dark and quiet, the bougainvillea moving faintly against the wall, the stars very bright overhead.
Camila stood in the driveway for another long moment.
Then she went inside.
