Chapter Two

Letty was not asleep. She lay on her side in the morning light streaming through the nearby curtains, eyes tightly shut, pretending, unwilling to admit she was awake and thereby be forced to face the day.

She knew without looking, without reaching behind her, that Javier had not returned from last night's meeting. She would have awoken immediately when he came in, when his weight shifted the mattress beneath her, no matter the time, no matter how deeply asleep she had been the moment before. She could feel the empty bed behind her, the frigid absence of his warm body against her back, his strong arms which should have been encircling her, their legs entangled below, his beard tickling her neck.

Something was dreadfully wrong.

Her phone rang on the bedside table, and her eyes flew open with a gasp, but she knew before she reached for it that it wasn't Javi – it wasn't his ringtone. (She didn't normally go in for individualized tones; but hadn't been able to resist the opening bars of the song that always made her think of her lover.) She snatched it up anyway – perhaps he was calling from a different phone?

No such luck – it was only an acquaintance asking if they had any more "snow". Letty told the woman "No, we're out right now," and the caller hung up without another word. "Bitch," Letty muttered as she set the phone back down – only to grab it back up a moment later and cycle through calls and messages, making sure she hadn't slept through any. She hadn't.

They had a rule not to disturb each other at "work", but surely he couldn't still be busy? She dialed his number, holding her breath – but the call went immediately to voice mail. She left no message this time; none was needed.

Sighing, she set the phone down again and sat up, bunching the pillows behind her back. "OK, Mister Pereira, where the fuck are you?" she said to the empty room.

Washing her hands after using the bathroom a few minutes later, Letty smiled down at the diamond-and-sapphire ring on her left hand. Although it had been a few weeks now, the sight or the weight of it still sometimes caught her by surprise, spinning her back to Las Vegas with a thrill coursing through her veins.

The pair had been ironically amused to discover that neither of them had ever been to Sin City, so they immediately agreed to stop for a few days. A couple quick sales of blow had set them up in a nice hotel not too far off the strip – they didn't want to blast through their funds too quickly, so they stayed away from the really swanky names.

A day after their arrival, Letty had sent Javi out to wander by himself; she had a job to do, which she was dreading, but the conviction had been slowly growing in her mind all the way across the country. She wrote three letters, to Jacob, Estelle, and Rob, and sent them all off in the same envelope, all repeating variations on the same theme: goodbye forever. She had finally gotten it through her ultra-thick, ultra-stubborn, piece of shit brain, she said, that the only way to give Jacob any chance at a normal childhood, a normal life, was if she simply disappeared from their lives for good and stopped fucking him up. "I will always love each of you, and will forever have three holes in my heart, but I know now that this is for the best." Javi had returned to find her in a puddle of tears, and finally got her to 'fess up – but the letter had already been posted, and she would never change her mind. He knew that stubborn glint in her eyes well enough by now to take her at her word for that.

Of course he had been extra attentive, and extra loving, in the days after that; taking her to day spas and fine restaurants and buying her flowers and trinkets that caught his eye. (He stayed away from clothes after his first disastrous attempt, acknowledging out loud that their tastes just didn't mesh.) So it was no surprise to her when he walked into their hotel room with his hands behind his back, knelt in front of her chair, and told her with a grin to close her eyes and hold out her hands. The shock of her life came a moment later, when he slipped a ring onto her third left finger.

"Marry me," he said simply.

"Are you joking?" was her instinctive response, immediately wished back, but he wasn't insulted.

"No, I am not joking. Letty..." He took a breath. "I want to spend the rest of my life with you. That's no surprise – or it shouldn't surprise you by now. And I want to do it the right way, with you as my wife. Legally."

"You've never even said..." she trailed off.

"What? That I love you?" He grimaced ruefully. "I thought I had shown it. But you need to hear it, don't you?" His hands had been on her knees, now he moved them to the back of her chair on either side of her waist, and leaned over to whisper in her ear, "Then hear this. I love you, Letitia Raines. And I want to tack Pereira on the end of that."

Letty snorted. "Oh, that's so romantic. Remind me to engrave that on your tombstone."

His sexy grin was inches away from her mouth. "Is that a yes?"

"Yes." Her eyes widened a moment later as she seemed to realize what she'd said, but it was too late to take it back, as Javier claimed her mouth with his own. And after that, she didn't want to.

Some time later, Letty rolled over in the big bed and reached for her ever-present phone. "What in the world are you doing now?" he whined, only half playfully.

"Looking for the closest wedding chapel, before you change your mind."

"Change your mind, don't you mean?"

Shooting him a sideways glare, she didn't deign to answer. "Oh, look! Here's one run by an Elvis impersonator, only a block away!"

"No."

"But – "

"NO." His angry expression suddenly reminded her of other times, when he'd been about to tear her a new one. She stared back, frozen, waiting.

Suddenly jerking upright, Javier made himself take a deep breath before turning to face her again. "Our marriage isn't a joke – not to me. And I don't want to start it with one. Find another chapel, one that's... serious. No..." He searched for a word, and came up with "... silliness, please."

"Check," she replied deadpan and turned back to the screen. "Elvis, nope. Roller coaster, nope. Mob museum, gun store... nah. Too close to reality." She glanced sideways in time to see him roll his eyes, and stifled a smile.

Javier was getting more and more bewildered. "Aren't there any serious places here?"

"Here we go," she said, done teasing. " 'The Little Flower Chapel'. Look," turning the phone so he could see the pictures. "No cherubs, choirs, or neon hearts. And the officiant even looks the part." He did, too: an almost stereotypically kindly, beaming, white-haired gentleman, that practically begged to be called "parson".

"Okay," Javier relented. "That'll do."

Later, although Letty would never confess it, she never quite remembered the exact words they spoke (so they must have been simply the standard vows), but only Javier standing before her, holding her hands in his own slightly shaking ones, gazing so intently into her eyes that she thought she might drown in his and disappear that way. They'd stopped to buy him a ring, too, an engraved sterling silver band – but she said she loved the one he picked out, tiny diamonds surrounding a large oval sapphire, far too much detract from it with a separate wedding band; the one would do double duty. It still made her catch her breath every time she found it on her finger.

Several hours had passed since she woke, and Letty was getting hungry. She'd blown through the snacks they'd collected for breakfast, not wanting to leave the room in case he returned, but now her complaining belly drove her down the elevator and across to an In-N-Out. She even got a burger for Javier, just in case, bringing both meals back to the empty room to eat.

Hours after that, having made several more calls to his phone and starting to leave increasingly frantic messages, she guiltily consumed his burger.

She'd left the TV on most of the day for noise, attempting periodically to distract herself with old movies or the Food Network. Finally, late in the afternoon, she turned it to some local LA news.

And froze.

"Police are still investigating the massive shoot-out last night at the Long Beach docks which left more than a dozen wounded, and seven dead, including two still-unidentified males," the female announcer was saying over long-distance video of the scene, police tape everywhere and dozens of investigators combing every inch between and around stacks of shipping containers. "Police spokesperson John Andreas says it strongly suggests an armed battle between two rival street gangs," she named the two, which meant nothing to Letty, "although other possibilities have not been ruled out. Citizens with any information are requested to call the hotline which has been set up."

The report ended with morgue shots of the two unidentified men lingering on the screen above the hotline number. Letty stared, and then shakily began to breathe again. Neither man was Javier.

So where the fuck was he?