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A Jeresa AH One Shot

The worst part of working for Camila Vargas was the spectacle of it all. James didn't mind the ugliness, the avarice, the violence, or even the danger of the drug trafficking world. In fact, sometimes, he thought it was all he knew, all he deserved. But there was another side of the Mexican cartels that wasn't just business. They called la familia, but it was all a bunch of bullshit. Family meant as much to el jefe as it did to his wife… who was currently negotiating her personal separation and her professional independence from her cartel boss of a husband.

Just like it was ridiculous that Epifanio threw around the term family in regards to his sicarios and runners, so too was the party they were all at that evening, proclaiming peace on earth and goodwill towards men when every single one of them would be out the next day, scheming and killing to get one up on the next guy. James took no issue with the guests' ruthlessness. He just hated that it was wrapped up in twinkle lights, champagne, and holiday pageantry.

Luckily, with Camila packing rather than hosting, James could stay in the shadows - close by should she need him and always vigilante but exempt from the required fake smiles and even more fake pleasantries of the party downstairs. Camila wanted nothing from anyone there except a steady flow of product, and James wasn't needed for those talks. Securing Epifanio's cooperation might require some strong-arming but not the kind that James provided for Camila Vargas.

So, he roamed the upstairs hallways, keeping an eye out for his boss and his ears open should anyone feel so inclined as to drop some valuable information in his lap, but really all James expected of his evening was further knowledge of who couldn't hold their liquor (or cocaine), who was physically screwing who as guests snuck off to get off in one of Don Epifanio's bedrooms, and a whole hell of a lot of boredom and annoyance that, rather than sending him ahead to Dallas to start setting up their operations, Camila had ordered him to remain in Mexico by her side. Yes, James protected her, but he was also supposed to be her second, and he had ideas, too.

As it turned out, he was only right about two of those three things.

The woman didn't see him coming, though surprisingly she did hear him. James was light on his feet, quick and silent. Not only did he have military training, but he was the one who Camila Vargas trusted with her life. There should have been no way that some random piece of arm candy in a silver jumpsuit should have noticed his approach, but she did. That was the first thing that night that intrigued James about the woman, and it wouldn't be the last.

She might have heard him approaching her, but she didn't react fast enough to even attempt to get away from him. Wrapping one hand around her mouth and the other around her middle, James leaned down and murmured against the brunette's ear, "don't scream, and don't fight me, and I'll let you go," before dragging her back down the hallway and far enough away that Epifanio and Camila would not notice them. The woman listened to his instructions, but she was by no means docile. She held herself as stiffly as she could, making her slight weight seem more as she forced him to all but carry her.

As soon as they were out of range, James let her go, and she stumbled away from him on her tall, thin heels, putting the width of the hallway between them, though she didn't try to run. Without giving her a chance to adjust or adapt, he demanded to know, "you want to tell me what the hell you were doing there just now?"

Although her eyes were wide - he couldn't tell if it was fear, adrenaline, or maybe some sort of heady combination of the two, the woman's voice never wavered when she said, "I was looking for a bathroom."

James smirked, shaking his head slowly in rejection. "Try that again. But this time, don't lie to me, or if you do, at least come up with something a little more original. And believable."

Stubbornly, she asserted, "my friend is using the bathroom."

"I'm not asking about your friend; I'm asking about you - the woman I found lurking outside of Camila Vargas' bedroom. Now, I'm only going to ask you this one more time: what were you doing there?"

She didn't answer him right away. Instead, she seemed to examine him, her eyes narrowing as she took him in. James felt weighed and measured by her, and it was only once she started talking that he realized, whatever she saw when she looked at him, it couldn't have been all bad. Because she was unflinchingly honest. "I've never been anywhere this grand and beautiful before. I was just a money-changer from Culiacán before Güero. The house he bought us is nice, but it's not… this." James could only imagine just how tacky a home owned by a man who showed up to a holiday party in a yellow Hummer would be. He might not have been participating in the festivities, but that didn't mean he wasn't aware of everything and everyone around him, around Camila. "I was curious."

Sarcastically, he quipped, "yes, the design of the dark hallway outside of the Vargas' bedroom is, I'm sure, fascinating."

"Like I said," she hardened her voice, "I was curious."

Deciding to take a different approach with her, James lightened his tone and asked, "what's your name?"

But she didn't bite. "Why do you want to know?"

"Maybe I'm the curious one now." When she still didn't respond, he flashed her a small, crooked smile. "I'm James."

Hesitantly, she admitted, "Teresa."

"Okay, now, Teresa, do you want to tell me what you overheard being discussed by my employer and…"

"My boyfriend works for Epifanio, too," she interrupted him. Her words were terse and clipped, like she was choosing them carefully. "I know how things are, so don't worry. I didn't hear anything."

"Actually, I work for Camila, not Epifanio."

At her surprised look, James smiled once again, but his amusement wasn't just at her expense. Astonishingly, he was actually enjoying himself. The girl was green in every way, but she was also observant and quick on her feet, and it wasn't like she was unpleasant to look at either. Getting more comfortable, James folded his arms over his chest - his leather jacket creaking in the otherwise quiet hallway - and leaned back against the wall.

"I didn't know she… employed people like you."

The confession was less about James and more about the fact that Teresa, up until that evening, had been unaware of Camila's involvement in the business. "That's one of the reasons why we're both good at our jobs. You're not supposed to know about us." It also said a lot about just how much her boyfriend was keeping from her about the world she was now a part of… even if just tangentially. If shit went sideways, no one would care that she was completely naive. Her lack of awareness wasn't keeping her safe; it was putting her at even greater risk.

But that wasn't James' problem.

She didn't step closer to him, yet she felt nearer nonetheless when she wondered, "are there other women… in this line of work?"

In James' opinion, she seemed a little too keen on the idea, a little too interested, so rather than answer her, he gave her a piece of advice. "The next time you or your friend need to use the bathroom at one of these events, stick to the downstairs powder room."

James went to walk away when she said, "I'm not going to say anything, okay?"

"About what? Because if you actually heard something, we'd need to be having a much different conversation."

James himself had been purposefully blocking out Camila's discussion with Epifanio. He already knew why they were there, and that was enough for him. He didn't want to know the details of their marriage - at least, not those that didn't directly impact the business. But he could imagine what Teresa might have overheard. After talking with her and finding out who she was and why she was there, he wasn't worried about what she might do with that information.

He had only managed to take three steps away from her when his feet suddenly refused to move any further. James hated how the people he worked with mixed their personal and professional lives. To be successful at both, they should be kept separate at any and all costs. That was the one aspect of how Camila ran her business that James disagreed with, though he kept his disapproval to himself. Yet, here he was - about to cross that line himself, and for what - a pretty face that proved herself an even better, albeit temporary, distraction?

"Are you sure about Güero?"

She wasn't hostile or even defensive when she queried, "what's that supposed to mean?"

It meant, he might have worked for Camila and not Epifanio, but their world was a tiny and incestuous cesspool with players constantly changing sides and where rumors flew almost as fast and abundantly as the bullets. So, James, even if he had been unaware of who Teresa was until that evening, knew all about Güero Dávila, and he had heard the rumblings about the pilot and his best friend, Chino. And if James had heard those stories, it was only a matter of time before Epifanio did as well… if he hadn't already. Even if the rumors weren't true, as soon as guys in their business were even suspected of being disloyal, their lives… and those of their loved ones… were over.

But even if James could tell Teresa any of that, would she even believe him? Still with his back to her, he eventually replied, "you seem like a sweet girl. Maybe you shouldn't be with a guy who takes you to parties where you can't admire dark hallways."

"This is Sinaloa. Is there any other kind?"

James' chuckle was his only acknowledgement of her astute remark. "Alright. How about this: you seem smart as well - too smart to be Güero Dávila's kept woman." Because a guy like that in a world like theirs? There were only three places for a woman in a cartel: by her man's side, at the very bottom and working the ugliest aspects of the business - prostiution and muling, or at the top, and Camila Vargas wasn't going to give up her crown anytime soon. Plus, James didn't think Dávila could handle his girl being more powerful than him either.

"And what," she scoffed, finally sounding properly annoyed, "I should be yours instead?"

No, James already had one of those, not that he was going to admit that to Teresa. Instead, what he told her was, "if you were a money-changer, then you're good with numbers, right?" Without waiting for confirmation, he continued, "see if you can remember this one, then: 469-377-2081."

"Why are you giving me your phone number?" God, James didn't even know the answer to that himself. He just… had a feeling that she was going to need it. Not that she would actually remember or use it, but at least he could tell himself that he tried. It was more than he could say about almost everyone else he had ever encountered. "Are you… hitting on me?"

He wasn't not flirting with her. But, no, that wasn't the point of giving Teresa his number. "When Güero puts you in danger someday, call me."

"And you'll save me," she all but taunted him.

When trouble inevitably found her because of her boyfriend, if she made it long enough to call him, then she would have already saved herself. "No, I'll just tell you 'I told you so.'"

And with those ominous words heavy between them, James was finally able to walk away from her.

!

When the call came in, it wasn't like he had forgotten about her. That didn't seem possible, considering the fact that he saw her face in every petite brunette he even caught the slightest glimpse of out of the corner of his eye. It was just that he was dealing with a shit show of a mess concerning the new chemist at the warehouse, and James didn't recognize the number. The only reason he even answered his cell was because he knew the country code for Mexico and figured, whoever was calling him, it had something to do with Camila and the business, seeing as how, at least for James, those two things were one and the same.

He answered the phone with a distracted, "yeah?"

For a few seconds, there was just the quiet of someone trying not to even breathe. Just as he was about to hang up, though, she tentatively said his name. "James?" He recognized her voice instantaneously, and it was all he needed to hear for everything else to quickly disappear.

"Holy shit, Teresa?" When he had given her his number, it was one of those empty gestures, because he did it when she had no means of writing it down or saving it in her own phone. He had even mocked her memory, teasing her, like the asshole he was, about her past as a money-changer by challenging her to recall the random ten digits carelessly thrown at her just once. But here she was - actually calling him, and he didn't need her to say anything else to know that she was in danger. Just by saying his name, he could hear how terrified she was, just how devastated, which only made the fact that she remembered his number that much more impressive.

"If I say the words," she spoke brokenly - not because she was crying but because whatever had happened had shattered her spirit, "will you help me? Because you did tell me so, and Güero's dead, and I… I don't want to die."

James was outside before he even realized that he had moved. "Where are you," he demanded from her while climbing inside of his SUV.

"I'm still at the house. I was… taking a bath when I got the call. As soon as I'm dressed, I'm going to get Brenda and Tony, and then we'll go to…"

"No!," James cut her off, driving away from the warehouse so fast that his tires squealed. "Forget about Brenda and Tony." Whoever they were. "You need to get somewhere safe and then lay low."

"Brenda is my best friend, and Tony is my godson. I'm not leaving them behind," Teresa argued vehemently.

"They and you will have a better chance of surviving this if you're not with them," he argued. James had no idea if this Brenda and Tony could take care of themselves, but what he did know was that if Epifanio was after all three of them, if they were together, then that would make it that much easier for his sicarios to find and take care of them. "Better yet, get to the border if you can. But whatever you do, you need to stay off of Epifanio's men's radar."

"Epifanio is running for governor. Batman's in charge now."

"Please don't tell me you're that naive, Teresa," James groaned into his phone. "At best, Batman is a figurehead for Epifanio, but in all likelihood, he's his patsy. Epifanio wants the people of Sinaloa to think that he's just a farmer and a businessman, while Batman keeps his cocaine running north. If someone has to take the fall for the drugs in order for Epifanio to get elected, then so be it, but don't think for one second that Epifanio isn't the one who ordered Güero's death. And yours."

He could practically hear her digging in her heels. "But Güero said, if anything happened to him, that I should go to Epifanio, that he'd help me."

"Yet your instinct was to call me instead - a stranger you spent no more than ten minutes with months ago."

She sighed, sniffled, but didn't break down. James admired her composure, respected it. While others might consider her cold, he saw her as pragmatic, and if she could hold onto that poise… at least for the next twenty-four hours, then they both had a chance of making it out of the mess Güero Dávila had created and then bailed on in death. James couldn't help but compare Teresa's reaction to what he assumed the other two women in his life would do in her situation.

Kim would just fall apart - become incoherent and incompetent with fear and grief, and Camila would burn with fury and wrath, desperate for revenge. While polar opposite responses, they would both inevitably lead to distraction and destruction. Yet, somehow, here was this poor, uneducated girl from Culicán, holding her own against a Mexican cartel. He was impressed, and not many things or people impressed James Valdez.

"There's a safe house in the barrio that I need to go to. Güero stashed a bag there for me. It has money, coke, a passport."

"Teresa, I smuggle drugs for the cartel. I think I can get you across the border without a passport. If there's even a chance that this safehouse has been burned, whatever is in that bag? It's not worth it."

"No, I…," she started to argue with him only to change course, saying instead, "meet me there. I'll send you the address. I can't use any of Güero's cars. They'll be watching them." At least, she was learning - and quickly, too. "But I won't put anyone else at risk by taking the bus to the border or stealing a car."

"You do realize that I'm at least twenty hours out, don't you," he informed her as gently as he could. It'd be a hell of a lot faster if he could fly down to Mexico from Dallas, but it was one thing for James to anonymously get her past a border agent, especially if he flashed his old military ID. There was no way she could get on a plane without catching the attention of the US government and Epifanio. He didn't know how he was going to explain his sudden, two day absence to Camila, but it would be a hell of a lot easier if her estranged husband never found out that James had gone down to Sinaloa to rescue a woman Epifanio had marked for death. "Can you stay alive that long, because I don't want to waste my time or the gas money only for you to get yourself killed before I can even get there."

"I walked away without a scratch, the only survivor, from the bloodbath that was my first communion, and I will make it through this, too."

There was one more thing that James needed to know. "Do you have a gun?"

"It's in the go-bag at the safehouse."

Make that two things. "And do you know how to use it?"

"Güero taught me."

Even though Teresa couldn't see him, James found himself nodding in approval. "Good. Shoot anyone but me who comes through the safehouse's door. And shoot to kill, Teresa, not to disarm." He didn't give her a chance to argue with him before he finished their conversation with, "send me your location, and then immediately turn off your cell, so they can't track it. I'll be there as soon as I can."

Not thirty seconds after he hung up the phone, a text came through with an address. James could only hope that she listened to the rest of his instructions. Because if not, there was a good chance they'd both be dead before sunrise.

The drive was both the fastest of his life but also the longest, and James had driven through landmine and sniper ridden warzones too many times to count. By the time he pulled up outside of the tenement building, James had spun so many different horrible outcomes in his head that he didn't just fear walking inside only to find Teresa's lifeless body; he practically expected it. But the woman whose memory had traveled the 1,200 miles back to Dallas with him all those months ago despite Kim, despite Camila, despite even James himself wasn't dead in a pool of her own sticky, dark, metallic smelling blood. Instead, there was a dead sicario with his pants down around his hips and another cartel soldier zip tied to the stair railing. And between them both stood a shaking Teresa with a tear soaked face yet a steady arm and hand holding the gun which had obviously taken one life that night and threatened to take another.

It took James several moments to coax her into lowering the weapon. "Why don't you head out to the car while I finish up here," he suggested kindly.

Teresa was shaking her head even before she was arguing with him. "No, he's coming with us. We need him to translate."

"But we both speak English and Spanish. What's there to translate?"

"Neither of us speak Epifanio." It was only then that he noticed that, in her other hand, she clutched a notebook so tightly that her usually delicate fingers were cramped and stuck in some grotesque approximation of a gnarled claw. "But he does," she finished, nodding towards the scowling but completely silent henchman.

James could see it in her eyes - the burning determination for revenge, for power, for the chance to makeover her world into a place where no one would ever be able to put her in such a position again. But he needed to hear her say it. "Why does that even matter, Teresa?"

"Because I'm going to use the information in this notebook to take away the thing in this world that Epifanio loves the most… just like he did to me by killing Güero: his success. And you're going to help me do it by taking me to Camila Vargas."

Clenching his jaw, he contested, "that wasn't our deal."

"We didn't have a deal beyond me remembering your phone number and you promising to rub it in my face when I used it. Well, we did that already," she needlessly pointed out to him. It didn't need to be said, because they both knew exactly what his assistance meant. James wasn't there to save her necessarily - not beyond how saving her could benefit him. "Now, I take down Epifanio. For Güero."

He had to try at least one more time to talk her out of her set course of action, because once that line was crossed, there was no walking it back. "You should be getting out, not in so deep that you'll never make your way out again."

"I've been in this since I was eight years old. It doesn't matter how many different pairs of shoes I wear, that blood is on all of them, and it is never coming off. The question is: are you going to help me or not?"

Except… that really wasn't in doubt, because since the moment he had first caught her eavesdropping at the Vargas' Christmas party, James had been helping her - even, in small ways, putting her before Camila. He'd never told his boss about the woman he found snooping around outside of her bedroom on the night when she left her husband and demanded a share of their business to call her own, and he'd taken off for Mexico to rescue a woman he barely knew anything about without so much as even a word to anyone else in the organization, waiting until he was too far along on his trip before giving notice that he would be out of town for a couple of days. Even helping Teresa stay alive against Epifanio's orders was a betrayal to Camila, because James should have allowed Camila to decide if Teresa lived or died. Camila could directly screw with Epifanio and his business all she wanted, but that policy did not extend to anyone else who worked for her, not even to James.

But James didn't say any of that. Instead, he snapped, "I'm here, aren't I?"

"You are," she confirmed, shocking him when, after clicking on the gun's safety and putting it in her bag, she oh so briefly clasped his hand, squeezing it, as she walked by him and then up the stairs, skirting, in contrast, as far away from the now curious sicario as she possibly could.

Once she was outside, James muttered to himself, "now what the hell am I going to do with you, Teresa?"

He had a little more than twenty hours to figure that out.