Aurelia normally never considered herself an insomniac in any way – she was a night owl, granted, but she never had trouble falling asleep when she felt compelled to. It was fortunate that this was the case, as anyone else may have had some misgivings sleeping in an unfamiliar bed, in an unfamiliar house, in an unfamiliar country. But the guest bedroom in the Herrera estate was amazing, she conceded, and she had no misgivings about occupying it for the time being.

She did have misgivings, however, when she stirred in the middle of the night and smelled something very out of place wafting under the doorway.

Smoke.

She drew in a deep, gasping breath and stumbled out of bed, frantically looking around to decide if she wanted to climb out of a second-story window, or take her chances running towards the fire. However, because she could make a decision either way, she felt a large sack slip over her head, and an arm wrap around her, dragging her to the door – someone had been in the room. She flailed and attempted to get free, but whoever had her was maintaining too strong of a hold. She tried to scream out for the only person she trusted to help her – Dìaz – but her voice was muffled by the bag over her head. Her captor seemed to be stumbling through the smoke as well, occasional bumping her or himself into pillars and walls until she finally felt the cool rush of wind on her bare shoulders when they made it outside. Wearing only the thin-strapped black cotton dress she'd arrived in and the pair of ballet flats she was too tired to take off, it felt cooler than it should have. Whoever was holding her seemed to be dragging her along wordlessly, despite her protests until, after what felt like it had to have been about half a mile, they came to a halt and the sack was pulled off of her head.

It was still dark out, but the glow from a lone street lamp illuminated her captor's face. He had somewhat long, dark hair – and he was wearing sunglasses. At night. Aurelia sneered and wrenched her hands away, looking back at the Herrera estate in flames.

"Who are you?" she hissed. "You burned their fucking house down!"

"That, dollface, is what you call distraction." He said in a calm voice that made her hackles raise immediately. "How else was I supposed to get you out of there without them seeing?"

Smack!

The palm of Aurelia's hand collided with the side of his face in an act that seemed to catch him by surprise, as it knocked his shades off with a clatter. Aurelia made to run off, but the man regained his composure too quickly. In seconds, he had a hand clasped around her wrist again, yanking her back towards him.

"If you run off, I'll have the cops hunt you down, and I don't think you want to seek refuge in a Mexican jail," he said smugly. "By the feel of your wimpy little wrist, you don't exactly seem like a sumo wrestler –"

"You couldn't send the cops after me!" Aurelia said, attempting to pry her wrist from his hold as he yanked her along down the roadside. "You have glass eyes, you can't see me! How the hell did you even get me out here?"

"Oh, I forgot. I'm supposed to give little speech right about now – Sorenson mentioned that," he said dismissively, reaching into the chest pocket of his dark blazer and presenting a badge. "Agent Sands, C.I.A. I tracked you darling daddy and sister for two fucking years. I've seen your entire file, Miss Barillo, and let me tell you – if I wanted to get the cops to track you down, I could tell them the exact weight that you probably shave a couple pounds off of when anyone asks, your height, your blood type, the scar on your nose from a stray Mexican firecracker…"

Aurelia froze. He did know her – and if he was the one who had been tracking her family, he was the one who killed them too.

"I could track you down in a heartbeat, sugar, blind or not. So, let's play nicely, alright?" he said, flashing an incongruously chipper smile. Aurelia was struck dumb, and despite their situation, was dumbfounded enough to follow.

Agent Sands seemed to be muttering to himself as though counting something before abruptly turning back and looking at Aurelia. "This the motel?"

He had been counting steps.

"Yeah…" Aurelia said hesitantly, glancing around and realizing she had no idea where they were anymore. Only he did. He let go of her wrist, and she wrapped her arms around her bare shoulders consciously. His hand clapped onto her shoulder and pushed her towards a room, opening the door and pushing her inside. "If you think you're going to… to ravage me in a dirty Mexican motel –"

"I don't need to resort to coercion, sugar, believe me," he smirked, pushing her further into the room so that she tripped a bit and landed on the bed with a grimace. He himself took a seat at the table by the door, groping around slightly until his hand closed on a bottle of whiskey, throwing it towards the bed, where it landed next to her. "Drink up and go the fuck to sleep. You're too flustered to understand what the hell is going on."

Perhaps it was the fact that he hadn't hurt her this entire time. Perhaps it was the fact that even though she didn't understand what was going on, she never really had when it came to her father, or to Mexico. Whatever the reason, she obliged.

Aurelia stirred the next morning and gingerly opened her eyes, feeling around with her hands on the bed until she hit something – a juice box? She squinted slightly and realized that in the bed next to her was a banana, and a juice box of some kind. She wasn't entirely familiar with Mexican snacks or drinks, though perhaps she should have been. She was already seven years old when she left, after all.

"Don't tell me you're a picky eater," came Sands' voice from the chair he'd settled himself in the previous night. "That's breakfast."

"What'd you eat?"

"You're nosy."

"I know."

Sands picked up the stool he was sitting on and moved it closer to the bed so he could kick his feet up – as he got closer, Aurelia realized that he had picked up a new pair of sunglasses somewhere; she also noticed for someone that couldn't see a damn thing, he was fairly adept in getting around the room. Suddenly realizing also that all of these observations meant that she was staring, she quickly looked down, picking up the juice box and jabbing the attached straw inside. At the sound of the tiny pop that accompanied her motion, Sands nodded.

"Alright. No hunger strike. You're more cooperative than I expected already," he smirked. "Now, to discuss the terms of our little partnership in this endeavor –"

"Partnership?" Aurelia nearly spat, her eyebrows leaping upward. "How are we partners? You just burned down the house I was staying in, and you kidnapped me!"

"And yet here we are, having a nice conversation over breakfast," he retorted smugly. "You're free to go if you like, sweetcheeks."

Aurelia scoffed, rolling her eyes. "Worst bluff I've ever heard. I'm spoiled, but I'm not an idiot," she admitted before caving and taking a sip from the juice box – she truly was thirsty. "I walk out there, I get lost, and I'm dead meat anyway."

"Very astute, sugar, have you been here before?" he laughed, pretending to be surprised before showing genuine amusement at the huff of exasperation which escaped Aurelia's mouth. His laugh was quickly halted, however, when in his distraction, he let his guard down enough for him not to hear her movements until her palm collided with his cheek – this was now the second time.

"Bastard."

"Again. Well-deserved," he conceded, raising a hand to rub his face absently – she certainly didn't hit very hard, though considering she had never had to lift a hand to defend herself in her life, he couldn't say he was surprised. "But the fact still stands that right now, you need me to keep you from getting passed around every barrio from here to Tijuana, and I have no qualms admitting that I need a thing or two from you," he said smoothly. Aurelia was momentarily astonished at how quickly Sands seemed able to string his thoughts together in a situation like this. She muttered her concession under her breath, so quietly that had Sands' hearing not become sharper since losing his sight, he might have missed it altogether. "So, the Sparknotes version of our situation –"

"Why don't I get to hear the whole thing?"

"Because," Sands retorted with a slight lilt of annoyance at being interrupted, "your spoiled little brain will only take so much information before you start sniffling and tuning out and getting emotional about something or other. So, Sparknotes item number one – you are clearly Daddy's favorite –"

"Was," she interrupted again, though this time seemed to be more because she had seen it garner a reaction the first time. "I have you to thank for that."

"You're welcome."

"I was being facetious."

"You're also being obvious. I know you're reaching for my gun," he said, calmly catching her wrist which, as he had figured, was slowly creeping towards the pistol tucked into his waistband as she tried to distract him. "You get a freebie because I think it's cute that you think you can get one past me, sugar. Now, if you'll let me continue…"

Aurelia yanked her hand away from him and, for lack of anything else to do with them, clasped her hands in her lap with a sour expression on her face.

"Ajedrez left quite a mess for everyone to clean up, not leaving a contingency plan for your dear father's little henchmen –"

"No." Aurelia said sternly. "You don't get to talk about my sister. You have no right."

"Oh. I've hit a sore spot," Sands said, his amused smile twisting into a smirk at the prospect of having the younger sister of the woman responsible for nothing short of ruining his life squirming in from of him. "Loving, dedicated big sister A.J. who you adored until she dropped you like cold shit, the instant she decided to become a cop –"

"If you know all of that, then you knew her. She must have talked about me, then," she said with a tiny glimmer of something in her voice that Sands was, admittedly, not entirely sure how to deal with. Hope.

"Nope," he said abruptly. "She never said a peep about you, sweetcheeks. I didn't even know who she was until—" he gestured to his own face, and relished in the gasp that came from the young woman in front of him when she realized what he meant. "On paper – in our files – you were the only Barillo daughter. She was the well-hidden pawn. Which is why she hated you."

Aurelia gulped. Ajedrez hated her? She knew that they had somehow, somewhere through the years grown apart – but the idea of being hated by her sister sent a squirm through her body, even more than the discovery that her sister had played a part in something as terrible as taking a man's eyes. What was this?

"Anyway. I say that you were obviously Daddy's favorite, because he sent you off to safety in the States rather than involving you in his extracurriculars –"

"What do you—"

"For fuck's sake, your father was the leader of a drug cartel, I had no idea I was gonna need to write you a whole prequel!" Sands snapped in exasperation – he heard a rustle of the sheets on the bed and realized he had made the girl flinch.

Ajedrez, she certainly was not.

"Look, you don't need to be scared of me. You need to be scared of the people out there," Sands said, gesturing dismissively at the window that had its blinds shut so to keep anyone from seeing inside. "It is not my job to be nice to you. It is my job to keep you not dead, and not in the wrong hands. I'm not going to hurt you."

The statement seemed to take a short while to sink in – for a minute, Sands tensed in preparation for her to get up and try to run after all, until he realized that she simply wouldn't. She had been raised like that old song about a bird in some kind of gold cage or something… she was used to being trapped. She didn't know any better. She was actually a little bit pathetic.

And something about being pathetic conjured the closest emotion Sands would feel to guilt.

"Alright." He continued, interpreting her silence as complacence. "Item number two, you are not a U.S. citizen. You've been hidden in the States all your life with doctored papers, and that's all been dug up. So, if you try to go back there on your own, you will still be dragged right back here to Mexico kicking and screaming –"

"Díaz explained that to me on the way here," Aurelia interrupted again. "Anselmo already said they were going to help me –"

"Anselmo Herrera," Sands said, raising his eyebrows questioningly. "I'll let you figure out how big of a lie that was on your own." He smirked a little. "But moving on. I can bring you back to States and save you the trouble of seeing just how wrong you are about Herrera, if you help me."

"But how can you—"

"No skipping ahead on the agenda, sugar," he interrupted, holding a hand up, effectively silencing her. He grinned as he realized it had worked. "First, you will help me. I know you're a fancy little art major. Degree in visual arts," he said, the scoff in his voice not masked in the slightest. "So you're going to put your talent to good use. I've heard rave reviews about you." He reached behind him and groped around the table until his hands closed around the edge of a pad of paper and a pencil which he dropped onto Aurelia's lap. "Pick something in this room and draw it – nice and dark," he directed.

Slightly confused, Aurelia picked up the pencil. Sands nodded when he heard the sound of her pencil etching on the paper and leaned back calmly. In a couple of minutes, the sound stopped, and Sands felt her push against his hand with the pad of paper. Pulling it from her hands and laying it on his own lap, he ran his fingers over the dark lines, following the contours and angles with an expression of intense concentration. The absence of snark and derision on his face was probably what drew Aurelia's eyes to actually look at him for the first time during this entire ordeal, a glance she maintained until he finally spoke up.

"It's a lamp," he said finally. "And it has flowers on it. Ugly ones – either that, or they greatly exaggerated your skill."

"They're hideous."

"Fantastic," he said, surprisingly not sarcastic in tone. "Now, right now, you and I are in Juarez. Cute little border town," he added, donning his smirk again in the knowledge that this cute little town was indeed a crime hub and no place for a girl like Aurelia who clearly knew very little about the world in general. "And these are not my stomping grounds. Nowhere we're going to be falls into the category of the grounds upon which I am accustomed to stomping. So, you're going to be my eyes. My scout, if you will."

Aurelia rolled her eyes a bit at how amused he seemed to be with himself, but grudgingly chuckled as she added, "So, I'm your six."

He grinned.

"Top Gun. Cute," he said, immediately catching the movie reference. "You may possibly even be tolerable to be around once the Stockholm Syndrome sets in."

"How are you getting me back to California?"

Before answering her question, Sands' smile morphed into an unsettling Cheshire Cat grin. "We're getting' hitched, sugar."

Fully expecting her reaction this time, Sands was prepared when her hand shot out to slap him again, catching her thin wrist in his hand and nearly closing his hand entirely around it. "On paper. No need to get all hot and bothered. It's a cover."

"They do interviews for this kind of thing. They'll think I'm some kind of mail order bride."

"I'm in the C.I. fucking-A. sweetcheeks, I can pull the strings."

Aurelia eyed the man in front of her warily. She was used to not having a choice about where she was meant to go, or who she was meant to be around, just as he had surmised, but this was different. Marriage was…

What was it?

Honestly, Aurelia wasn't entirely sure what to make of it. In a way, she agreed – it was just paper, and he clearly thought of it that way too. If it got her back home, what was the problem? But on the other hand, it was still… marriage.

"This'll get me back home?" she asked hesitantly.

"Eventually, yes."

"And being married to you doesn't mean anything? It won't interfere with my life?"

"I sure as hell won't let it interfere with mine," he said matter-of-factly. "We're relocating. You're borrowing a last name. It's business arrangement that is resolved once this mess with Herrera is cleared up."

"But I –"

"Don't understand why any of this is happening to you." Sands finished for her. "Or why you're involved at all. That's simple. See, I'm usually the man behind the curtain. I orchestrate. I follow through. And I was doing a fucking amazing job of it with Barillo until your sister came into the mix. Now, some very bad people have set up their own dominoes, and you –" he raised his index finger, pointing directly at Aurelia. "—were the one little piece that they didn't place quite right. So, we – more specifically, I – need to spirit you away before they have a chance to reposition you and knock you down."

Aurelia gulped back a flood of nausea that seemed to have hit her over the course of his explanation, and she made a noise that was something like a whimper. Sands groaned a little, feeling more exasperated than sympathetic at this point at having to deal with her reaction, but managed to continue goading her.

"You're either a pawn for them, or you're a pawn for us." He said frankly, not willing to make her situation sound any more appealing than it really was – a rude awakening later on would probably just bite him in the ass, and he was pretty sure his cheeks were still sore from the last time. "You pick them, you're stuck in Mexico forever at their mercy. You pick us, and you get to go back to the good ol' U.S. of A."

The final statement seemed to be a turning point for the young woman, as her breaths steadied at that point. Sands knew he'd made the sale – he just needed to close. "So whose hand are you eating out of, little bird? The one that'll put you back in your cage, or the one that'll eventually set you free?"

He held out his hand and cocked his head questioningly. There was a moment of quiet until he felt her hand hesitantly close around his, shaking it with a shudder. Sands grinned disarmingly.

"Atta girl."