Sands slept for most of the journey, the normal effect of injury and drugs. When he was awake, he said nothing, just wound down the window and smoked those tightly wrapped cigarettes.
El wished he wouldn't. It made him want to smoke too, and he hadn't done that since before Loída was born. His mind reeled him back through the fierce arguments and then the apologies and the laughter as he and Carolina had quit together.
Part way through the afternoon, Sands took out the pill bottles, shifting in his seat and reaching into his pocket with clenched teeth and inaudible muttering. He tipped out two capsules, swore in clipped tones, and put one back, dry-swallowing the other.
El had been there in the past, balancing pain against the dulling of his reflexes, and felt a quick flare of sympathy.
He drove on, squinting beneath the visor into the lowering sun as he tried to work out what he was actually going to do with Sands.
When he had set out to track him, he hadn't anticipated finding a blind man. His plans had gone no further than trying to get the information he wanted, since he would have been lucky to get this far at all. There had always been a good chance their meeting would end in him shooting Sands dead, and a somewhat lesser chance that Sands would have killed him.
When he heard the stories about the mad gringo with the bleeding eyes, he amended his expectations to Sands either telling him things or not. More likely not. He had never considered trading Sands' safety for his help.
He found himself travelling now with an amoral murderer who suffered from mostly justifiable paranoia, and the problems started at the most basic of levels.
They would have to stay overnight in Tepic, a city with enough of a tourist trade that another tasteless American wouldn't stand out too badly. He had no trust for Sands, and was reluctant to let the man out of his sight. At the same time, he didn't much like the alternative of sharing a room with him.
He considered pausing in Tepic and kicking Sands from the car, driving away and forgetting the whole plan. As he would have had to do if Sands had simply refused to talk to him.
The only thing that stopped him was having no more idea what he would do then.
But if he wasn't going to rid himself of Sands, he would need to learn to read him. Difficult with a man he had met only twice, and who had been changed between.
Sands' speech was one of the more obvious differences, altered with stress and pain. He still used language to attack, deliberately aimed words spoken in the most casual of tones and disguised by a kind of eloquence; but the constant cursing was new, the giveaway of failing control. There were cracks in the image now.
He wondered whether that would work more to his advantage or against him. Sands so far off balance, besides being a satisfying experience, was possibly more likely to cooperate with him. But he had been dangerous even when everything around him moved to his planning, and now that his world was unpredictable, the man might become even more so.
He was no closer to any real conclusions when they reached Tepic. He drove into the main tourist area near the cathedral, and booked them into one of the cheaper hotels and a shared room. That would fit with the image Sands was wearing, and the staff would simply assume he was showing his idiot American friend around.
Sands followed him from the car, that same taut, wary silence strung out between them. The stairs were around the back, out of view of the desk, which was useful. Sands cautiously felt his way up them, leaning heavily on the handrail, pale and sweating. El made no offer to help.
He unlocked the door of the room, and stood to one side as he switched on the light, letting Sands follow him in and the door close behind them.
Sands took one step into the room and stopped.
He thought fast. "The foot of the first bed is four steps ahead and two to your right. The second is two steps the other side of it. The left wall is here beside me, the door to the bathroom a metre in front of me. There's a small table against the right wall between the beds, and another beyond the bathroom door with a television." He paused, frowning. What else?
Sands turned away from him, edging forwards, slowing until his shin caught on the bedframe. "Fuck," he said quietly. He reached out his hand to check the height, letting the bag drop to the floor as he sat on the bed, lips pressed and moulded into wax. He felt again for his differently-sized pill bottles, swallowing one from each. "Floor?" he asked.
El looked down at his feet. Sands would have heard and felt the tiles. What...?
"Mats, trash cans, broken tiles," Sands said with exaggerated patience. "What else am I going to fall over in this cockroach pit?"
El swept his eyes over the room. It was cheap, and a little worn, yes, but still aimed at tourists. "This isn't such a cockroach pit. I know, I've slept in those."
"Oh, I just bet you have." Sands smiled wide for a moment. He didn't have the teeth for it, smoke-tainted and uneven. "But as entertaining as tales of your charming lifestyle may be, for now I'd prefer it if you'd answer the fucking question."
He stuck his head briefly into the bathroom - small, barely enough room for the shower, the toilet and the basin. "There's nothing like that." He laid his guitar case alongside the other bed, by the window, and pushed his shotgun beneath the pillow before he lay back. "The garbage can's in the bathroom below the washbasin."
"That's nice, since I don't know where the basin is."
"You'll find it."
Sands was already starting to look better, not so pale, and his breathing had steadied. "While you're being so informative, care to tell me where the ashtray is?" He was digging through his clothes for cigarettes again.
El's eyes swivelled to the table between them, and the large round metal ashtray sitting there. "It's a non-smoking room." He didn't know if this place even had such a concept.
Sands lit the cigarette anyway. "Given how it smells, I won't be the first to ignore that."
Smoke drifted his way within seconds, heavy and enticing, tugging at something old within his soul, reluctant to let him go.
He opened the window, but it didn't help much. Being around Sands would make anyone tense enough to smoke.
He lay back on his bed again, determined to ignore it.
Sands pulled off the sunglasses and the hat as he worked his way through the cigarette, once again bared into someone wounded, instead of merely stupid and drunk. His dressings were clean still, no giveaway ooze of blood or infection.
He was holding his breath longer now, the smoke seeping slower from his lungs.
He flicked the ash carelessly onto the floor, and when it had burned right down, he trod the butt methodically into the tiles under his boot. And then he got to his feet and began exploring the room.
El had expected him to start from the door, but he didn't. He trailed his fingers along the bed to the corner, standing thoughtfully with his hand on the frame, then turned a few degrees and walked, his hand held ahead of him at waist height. He missed the bathroom door by less than half a metre, and when he found the wall, he instantly turned the right way.
Sands had a good sense of direction, at least. He would need it if he was going to live much more than a week.
The basin was right by the door, set low. Sands found it by catching the edge on his thigh, and swore several times with variations. "Okay, taps," he muttered, and ran both with his hands beneath until it was obvious which he wanted. He began swallowing water fast, drinking messily from his hands because he didn't know about the glass on the counter.
He drank for a long time. El remembered the side-effects of opiates too, and cringed inwardly.
Sands turned off the tap and groped for the door, shutting it with a bang.
He stayed in there quite some time. The toilet flushed at one point, and later there was a short, harsh rattle of water as Sands worked out the shower controls. When he came out, the ends of his hair were damp, curling a little where it had hung forwards as he drank.
He was walking much more easily than when they'd left the car. The pills would be helping him now.
He worked his way over the hotel room systematically, clockwise from the bathroom. He didn't just examine the obvious, running his hands right up the walls to the ceiling and down to floor level. El wondered vaguely what he was expecting to find in a place like this.
He wondered less when he remembered the 'mace' he owed his life to all those years ago in Acuña.
He reached down and pushed the guitar case beneath his bed as Sands investigated the window locks.
Sands established the edges of his bed, and otherwise avoided it. The section of wall above El's head was the one part left unexamined.
He ran his hands over the table, finding the lamp first, setting it wobbling, and then the ashtray. "Fuck you too, El," he said, taking the ashtray and positioning it deliberately on the corner of the table nearest his own bed. He put the bottles of pills beside it, just back from the edge.
He finished his circuit of the room, spending a considerable time with the door handles and locks, and then carefully stretched himself out along the length of his bed. The creaking cut off as he settled, and the room fell into not-silence, the noise of arguing carrying clearly through the walls from the next room.
Sands was reaching into his pocket for cigarettes again. "Well, a day as fascinating as this one always makes me hungry. I hope your plans include feeding me, El, even if you won't offer to hold my dick."
El stared up at the yellow-tinged ceiling of the room he shared with a murderer he despised, and he could almost have laughed.
They ordered in to eat. That way, Sands wasn't seen by any more people, and El didn't have to take his eyes off him for long. He paid at the door, while Sands stayed out of sight.
Sands complained at length about the food - not hot enough, too bland, wrong spices – and about the absence of a bottle of tequila to drown it in.
"You shouldn't drink with the pills," El said mildly.
That changed the direction of the tirade predictably, but Sands was tiresome company. He reached for the remote, clicking on the room's small TV, and Sands tensed instantly at the sounds, falling silent.
He flicked idly through the channels. Too many soap operas, and nothing he would normally watch, but it was an improvement on listening to Sands. He left it finally on a hospital drama, a badly dubbed American show that at least provided the distraction of trying to work out what the English had been.
He had expected Sands to ease once he realised what El was doing, but he didn't. He lay stretched out across the other bed, the muscles in his neck drawn into ropes and his fingers hooking at the covers.
El puzzled over it vaguely as he half-watched the dramatics of the TV patients. Sands had been relaxed while they ate, and had done nothing to trigger a sudden pain that wouldn't die down again.
When he saw it, it was obvious; appallingly so. The television was obscuring the sounds of the real world, flooding everything in useless, false signals. Sands could no longer know what was going on around him, could no longer follow what El was doing.
In something so simple as turning on the television, he had completely shattered Sands' remaining confidence.
It was an interesting thing to know.
He left the show running, but he was watching Sands now instead, all his attention bent and tied to his reactions. He knew he wouldn't ask him to switch it off, and risk him knowing that it bothered him.
The Sands from before would have countered uncertainty and disadvantage by finding some secure ground from which he could attack. He wondered what this man would do.
Sands shattered the rigid stillness with a sudden clawing at his clothes, reaching for and lighting another cigarette with untrustworthy fingers. The cigarette trembled in his grip, and the smoke left his lungs in broken ripples.
He smoked deliberately, taking short, hard pulls and holding, the exhales lengthening and slowly losing the shiver. His teeth and lips parted slightly, the sharp definition fading from the muscle by his jaw.
He reached out confidently enough for the ashtray when the cigarette was burned through, only a light scrape of metal across wood as his fingers found it. He shifted himself into an upright position on the bed, pushing with his right hand and a little with his feet until his back rested against the headboard, and then he turned his face deliberately towards El.
He stayed that way, completely still, expressionless, a parody of staring. He knew El would be watching, and he was going for an effect.
El was perfectly happy to wait.
When Sands finally spoke, his voice was normal, his body curved casually, no hint of the man who had quivered taut just minutes before. "I've got to say, El, it kind of surprised me when you showed up today. I thought you would have bolted right back to hiding away in your little backwater hovel."
"I did," he said simply.
He had stayed for three days, but he had found no peace there. He had sat on the roof and played, and it was hollow, unreal, the tension strumming along his spine and through his fingers as he stared out at the horizons.
Sands tipped his head to one side, the quirk of his mouth barely visible over the curve of the lamp on the table between them. "And it all felt so horribly wrong, didn't it?"
El's fingers tightened around the remote, flash-memory of sitting at a table as this man he had never met told him so casually who he was and how he thought.
It had taken him those three days to realise it wasn't going to change. This time, he was unable to convince himself that he could simply live. He had been reminded once too often that the violence always sought him out, that more people died when it found him.
He trusted his instincts, every time.
So he had decided to seek the violence out first. And to seek out the man who had brought it back into his life, if he was still in Mexico, and repay the gift.
That last had turned out to be an unnecessary revenge.
"You can forget about taking the fifth, I'm hearing silence as a guilty plea right down the line." The satisfaction rolled into a purr all through Sands' voice. "So here you are, back to fulfilling your self-appointed role as the modern-day Zorro, hero of the people. You know, that's terribly noble of you, El. Sacrificing your own quiet life to kill for your country - it has such a streak of Latin romance." He stretched himself against the bed, headboard creaking like pain at the shift in his weight. "You should write your own songs about it, I'm sure they'd be a big hit around here."
El breathed in long and slow, controlling the urge to simply punch Sands and shut him up. He had anticipated this. Sands had been vicious before, and pain and maiming weren't likely to improve him.
He could deal with Sands if it was the fastest way to get the information he needed.
"And what of you, Agent Sands?" His voice was calculated, steady, stressing the last two words with the slight and precise level of venom. Some reaction there, yes, a flicker along the muscle of his jaw. "Is that why you joined the CIA? Because you wanted to serve your country? Or just to kill for it?"
Sands laughed, ringing like chords with the fifth tones far too high to be natural. "Oh, the Company isn't a place to go looking for idealists. Everyone's running their own little agenda, watching and waiting to grab the next thing on their list, and not caring a rat's balls who they fuck over to get it."
"Just like you," El said, distaste open and pouring.
Sands didn't react this time, a hint of a shrug quickly cut short by pain, or its memory. "Well, maybe not exactly like me, but I won't argue the principle."
"So it was all for your own personal sense of fun," El pressed. "Become a spy, and gain a legitimate way for you to torment and to kill."
Sands' lips parted, his face still. Surprise? The expression was gone after a moment, slipping into genuine amusement. "Really, El, not everyone's like you, twisting murder into a higher calling, a life's devoted work. For some of us, bodies are just an incidental by-product, not the reason for the opening night party."
He froze into immobility, locking his muscles down until his instinctive response could be checked and reasoned with.
He wanted to hit him, wanted to beat him until he admitted the truth. That this murdering American bastard could suggest that his way was better, that El was worse than someone who killed for convenience with no thought, who looked on it as casual -
It was many things to him, but never that.
The not-quiet jolted and broke, yet another person dying among the chatter from the television, a woman screaming hysterically at the doctors who were trying to save her sister, and being restrained, sedated.
He wondered what the normal response to death really was. He no longer remembered. Not his own, not even when he had lost Carolina and Loída, and certainly not Sands'.
Sands' reactions to many things were bizarre, and sometimes seemed to run almost counter to his own ends. But Sands had a reason for everything, just not one always easy to see.
Sands was blind, injured, and for the moment, largely reliant on El. So what did he have to gain by deliberately antagonising him?
He looked over at Sands again, able to do so now without the urge to slide his arm around his throat and wrench.
Sands was no longer so relaxed, something of that earlier tension creeping back through, there in the line along his jaw and the too-straight fingers on his thigh that fought the urge to curl. He was losing that control again, losing what he had clawed back with so much effort, and he realised then that Sands needed him to talk.
As long as he was talking, Sands knew where he was over the television, could gauge a better idea of his mood and what he was doing. What they discussed wasn't actually the point of it, but he had guessed right - the Sands of before would have countered disadvantage by attack, angled to unbalance his opponent down to his own level, and it seemed he was not so much changed.
There were obvious drawbacks to that, but overall El decided that it leaned in his favour. The man still worked to a pattern, and a pattern he could learn to read.
For now, he only had to resist Sands' more deliberate remarks, and he'd learned some control over his temper with the years. Mostly it flashed fast and sharp, and retreated again the same way. If Sands thought he could confuse and distract him with words, he was going to learn differently.
Sands was the one flawed here, weakened, and that wasn't going to change.
He thumbed the power button on the remote he held, letting the room drop back into the almost-quiet of a cardboard hotel. He wasn't prepared to answer to Sands' style of conversation, and he didn't like being deliberately cruel.
He was aware of Sands unwinding again, the slope of his body against the headboard easing into something more natural as the muscles of his spine loosened and flexed.
It was probably a good thing Sands had so many of those opiate pills - if he went on locking himself up tight that way, he would need them for more than gunshot wounds and mutilated eyes.
Sands was lighting yet another cigarette, his fingers once again smooth as they flowed over paper and plastic, aligning everything neatly, precisely. The flick of a thumb into flame and the soft hiss of burning, familiar, and if El didn't know it was impossible, he would have thought Sands had chosen it deliberately, another thing designed to drag at his nerves.
"Well, I guess if I ever want to shut you up, I've found just the way to do it," Sands said, almost amused. "Not that I really suspected that was going to be a problem, but who knows? Maybe you'll turn out to be the chatty type when you get to know me better."
El already knew Sands far too well for his own taste. He knew enough not to answer.
Without the added pressure of the television, Sands didn't have the same urge to get him to talk; that was his last attempt at driving some response from him. He smoked through the rest of his cigarette in silence, not calm, but near enough to fake it passably.
Sands swallowed more of the painkiller and fell asleep soon afterwards, his body finally relaxing into true rest among the sheets instead of a facsimile.
El lay on his own bed, the stink of tobacco clawing at his throat and the knowledge of a murderer beside him crawling through his bones.
He wouldn't sleep, even if he tried. So he didn't try.