Conner was having a really good week. First, he'd run into his old friend Alejandro, and after that, things had only gotten better. He laid back against some pillows in the back of the wagon with his feet propped up on the side. It had been so long since he'd been allowed to just relax that he hadn't done a single thing all week. Even better was that the guys didn't even try to make him feel bad about it like his dad and Miles would have. Alejandro and his buddies seemed perfectly fine with letting him sit around while they did all the work. One of Alejandro's buddies, José, seemed to really enjoyed fetching his food.
With his feet still up and his eyes still closed, Conner spoke to the other guys in the wagon bed. "Hey, José, get me some water and a snack or something."
"Sí, Señor." The sound of bags rustling could be heard and then a full canteen and a bag of dried jerky landed in his lap. "Is that all, Señor?"
Conner munched on a piece of jerky and shooed the little guy away without even saying thank you. He figured that now that he was going back to Mexico, there was no need for such pleasantries. Nunez would make sure that everyone knew who he was and there would be no question of his authority. He sighed happily at the thought, he couldn't wait to give orders to people that actually listened again. Miles and Charlie, even his dad, always seemed to think that they knew better than him. He huffed to himself. I'll show them.
XxX
Bass was having a terrible week that was only getting progressively worse. They were only a day out from the Mexican border and they showed no signs of reaching Conner before he was dragged across the line. On top of that, not only was Charlie still lying to him about something, but now she was avoiding him too. He had tried to corner her as they were breaking camp this morning but she'd brushed him off and then went to have a secretive conversation with Jeremy.
Charlie's relationship with Jeremy continued to confuse him. They had been good friends from the moment he had joined their little group, but lately it seemed like they were more than that. They were always close to each other, whispering and talking, and sometimes laughing. Bass would catch them looking at each other with these deep, intense stares. And then the other day, when he'd woken up to find them cuddled together.
He sighed sadly to himself.
The answer was pretty obvious when you put it all together like that. Charlie and Jeremy were clearly together. He had missed his chance.
"Bass, you ready to go?" Jeremy stood just out of sight on his bad side where his blind spot was, which of course didn't help his attitude towards the other man.
"Yeah, I'm coming." He grabbed his bag and stood, ignoring Jeremy as he walked to where their horses were tethered. Miles and Charlie were already saddled and ready to go.
"Is everything alright?" Jeremy asked uncertainly.
"I'm fine." He ignored everyone's concerned faces as he rode off, wanting nothing more than to get away from the happy couple and find his son.
XxX
The four of them stood side by side as they looked out at the Arizona/Mexico border. There were men stationed at regular intervals all along the 'wall' that they had constructed. The wall was just fence posts every ten or so feet with a single line of barbed wire strung through it. The only structure around was the small shack that they assumed must be for the border workers to take a break and get out of the sun in.
"Well this sucks," Miles said flatly.
It was nearing the end of the day, and luckily the patrols were to preoccupied with the crowd at the 'gate' to pay them any attention otherwise they would have noticed the four people watching their routine intently.
"OK, the only way in I can see is we cause some kind of diversion and then run across when nobody's looking." The boys all turned to look at Charlie with varying degrees of disappointment.
"I've seen you infiltrate a mob den with nothing but a sleazy dress and my belt. Is that seriously the best you've got?" Jeremy asked.
"Why does it always have to be my job to figure this shit out? Maybe one of you should come up with the plan for a change."When the boys were all silent, Charlie said, "you two have been to Mexico before. How did you get in when you went to get Conner the first time?" Miles made a pained sort of face while Bass simply glowered at the fence preventing him from rescuing his son.
"Well?" Charlie asked again.
"Your mom got us in," Miles mumbled.
"My mom," Charlie laughed. "What did she do, beat them at Scrabble?" But Miles didn't laugh at her joke, he merely joined Bass' silent hatred of the fence. "Seriously, what did she do Miles?"
He took a deep breath and looked at her out of the corner of his eye. "She may have... offered them some... stuff."
It took a moment for his words to sink in but when they did, Charlie burst out laughing. "Wait a sec," she huffed, getting her breathing under control. "My mother offered herself up as a prostitute just so she could get you guys across the border, so that Bass could find his son?" She laughed again. "I guess I was wrong, maybe she really did love you, Miles."
Miles frowned down at her, his eyes suddenly serious. "I told you, Charlie, me and your mom... it was complicated."
She rolled her eyes at him, not wanting to have that conversation again. "Whatever, let's just get this over with.
They left their horses tethered loosely to a tree just in case they didn't come back and followed Charlie as she sauntered towards the group of people huddled around the gate. With her hips swinging and her tank top pulled down low, she had every man's attention before she even made it to the gate master.
The man's loud voice sounded easily above the others. "Well hello, beautiful. You lookin' to take a trip to Mexico?" His southern accent seemed a little out of place when surrounded by so many Mexicans.
Charlie leaned against a fence post, making sure to showcase her tits spilling out of her shirt, and gave the man a big smile. "Yeah, I thought it sounded like fun. You know, go to the beach, maybe get a tan." She dropped her voice to a husky whisper. "Have a late night swim."
The man's eyes raked over her chest greedily and he grinned down at her. "Sounds like fun, but unfortunately, I can't let people through the gate without papers."
Charlie leaned close to him so that her lips were near his ear. "Oh, come on. Can't you bend the rules, just this once?" She bit her lip and rested her hand on his chest. "Please?"
He took a deep, unsteady breath, clearly affected by Charlie's presence. "I might be able to work something out, but what's in it for me?"
Grinning misheviously, Charlie stood on her tip toes and whispered in his ear. "Why don't you let me show you?"
"Well, alrighty then." He wrapped an arm around Charlie's waist and slapped her ass before pulling her towards the little shack. "Hey Miguel, keep an eye on everything, I'm takin' a break."
The boys all watched Charlie let herself get dragged into the shack. Miles looked about ready to follow until she turned back and gave them a quick wink before disappearing inside.
"I don't like this," Miles said.
"Me either," Bass agreed.
"Don't worry, guys. Charlie's been in worse situations, she'll be fine," Jeremy said.
Bass turned to him with an angry scowl. "You seem pretty calm for a guy whose girl just walked off with some douch bag."
"What?" And Jeremy looked truly shocked by his words. "What the hell are you talking about?"
But Bass misinterpreted his shock for trying to cover up the truth. "I'm not stupid, Baker, I've seen you with her!"
Jeremy stared at him, then looked at Miles to see if he had any idea what was going on, but Miles just shrugged helplessly. "Bass, I really have no idea what you're talking about," he said slowly. "Charlie and I aren't together."
Bass stopped for a moment, his mind replaying the images of Jeremy and Charlie together while he tried to figure out if he'd been wrong. "But... you guys were..."
"Bass, look at me," Jeremy said. When he did, all Bass saw was one of his best friends telling him the truth. "Me and Charlie are friends, that's all. I swear."
Now feeling extremely stupid and childish, Bass turned away from the other two, trying to hide his embarrassment. "I wouldn't do that to you, man. We're friends, remember?"
"I know that, I just..." Bass trailed off, having no idea how to explain the emotions running through him at the moment.
"You just turn into a jealous psycho sometimes," Miles huffed. "We know, we're used to it."
Bass' eyes went wide. "I'm not jealous. What - why would I be jealous?"
Miles groaned up at the sky. "Oh my God, you're kidding right? We're not blind, Bass. We all know that you like her."
"No I don't," he said automatically. Though even he wouldn't have believed himself at that point. "Wait, what do you mean 'we', who else knows?"
Jeremy and Miles both looked very uncomfortable all of a sudden, but they were luckily saved by Charlie reappearing from inside the shack. She stumbled out with her hair tousled and readjusting her belt.
"Hey, Miguel," she called out in a sing song voice. "Luke told me to give you these." She handed him a stack of papers then leaned in close to whisper, "he said to tell you he might be a while." She gave the guy a wink and sauntered back over to the boys to collect her things. They gathered up the horses and met Miguel back at the gate.
He took one look at her stack of papers, shrugged, and let the four of them pass through. "Bienvenido a México."
The four of them lead the horses about a hundred yards on foot before Charlie hopped onto her horse with a new sense of urgency. "We should go, like, now you guys."
"Why, what's wrong?" Miles asked.
"Well, I doubt it'll take them long to find their boss tied up and gagged, so we should get the hell out of here before they come after us."
Miles grinned. "That's my girl." They all jumped onto their horses and followed her away from the border with giant smiles on their faces.
XxX
There was a small town not too far from the border but Miles had suggested that they pass it because it most likely would have been the first place that the border people would look for them. About an hour later, they'd found themselves on the outskirts of a small farming community. It was the middle of the night so obviously no one was up to see them, but Charlie still felt a little guilty as she laid down on a bail of hay in one of the unused barns.
There was no question that a fire wasn't an option so they all soothed their stomachs with jerky and stale bread. After they settled the horses in their own stalls, Miles climbed up into the hay loft to keep watch while the rest of them got ready for bed. Jeremy went all the way down to the end of the line of stalls and disappeared, leaving Bass and Charlie by themselves.
Bass fiddled with the zipper on his jacket awkwardly. "You did a... good job back there. You know, getting us across the border."
She tilted her head and gave him a strange, little smile. "Thanks, I guess."
They both stood silently for a moment while waiting for Bass to work up the courage to say what he needed to say. "I - uh..." He sighed and then patted her shoulder. "Good night, Charlie."
Smiling softly, she squeezed his hand and turned into one of the other stalls. "Night, Bass."
As the stall door slid closed behind her, Bass mentally - and almost physically - kicked himself. All he had to do was say it. Why didn't he just say it? He skipped the stall right next to hers in order to give her some space and was sliding his own door closed when he heard Jeremy sneeze.
"Fail."
Well, if you could call that a sneeze.
XxX
Bass woke them all up well before dawn. They needed to be out of the barn and on their way before the farmers started their day. Miles and Jeremy had gone out to see if the could get some water from a well that they had spotted while keeping watch through the night, leaving Bass alone with Charlie to get the horses ready.
He was starting to suspect that they were doing that on purpose.
She was deep in thought as she saddled her horse, her brow creased in concentration as she went through the movements. Bass watched her out of the corner of his eye, waiting for a good chance to ease himself into her internal conversation.
"Hey, Charlie."
She kept her eyes on the horse. "Mhmm."
"I just wanted to say-"
But he froze as the barrel of a shotgun came poking around the door of the stall they were standing in.
"Down!" There wasn't any time to reach for Charlie and try to protect her, he just had to hope that she heard him and actually listened to what he'd said. The blast rang out in the old barn, making the horses buck and squeal. Bass lifted his head a little to see a pair of dirty, old boots coming his way. He pushed himself to his feet but stayed low as he reached for his gun. Charlie was a few feet away, but laying on her back and clearly preparing to kick the person's feet out from under them. She kicked him hard in the side of the knee and he fell to the ground with a wail of pain. Bass moved to grab the gun out of his hand but was stopped by the five other guys that came rushing in with swords and guns drawn.
"Levanta las manos!"
Bass stopped for a second. "What?"
The man closest to him thrust the barrel of his shotgun in his face. "Levanta las manos!" Two more men joined him while the other two were pulling Charlie roughly to her feet.
"Don't touch her." Bass growled, but the men ignored him and started tying her hands behind her back. Surprisingly, Charlie seemed to have nothing to say, nor did she attempt to fight back when they pushed her face against the wall and started taking her weapons. "I said, don't touch her."
The man in front of him poked him hard in the chest with his gun. "Cállate." Then his two friends started tying him up too.
"Get the hell off me." Bass tried to get away, but one of them grabbed a fistful of his hair and yanked his head back so hard that his eyes watered. They slammed him against the wall next to Charlie and stripped him of his weapons before leading the both of them out of the barn.
"Charlie, are you OK?" Even though she looked perfectly fine, minus the whole hands-tied-behind-her-back thing, he still had to ask.
The group's little leader whacked him on the side of the head. "Cállate."
Bass huffed and tried to turn so he could yell at him. "I don't speak Spanish! Do you hear me? No understand-o you-o. Speak English." The leader muttered something in Spanish and grabbed him by the hair, ignoring his protests as he drug him down the street.
The farmers led them to a small building in the center of town. There weren't any people out on the streets seeing as how early it was, but as they passed by some of the houses Bass saw a few faces peering out from the windows. He and Charlie were taken into the building and shoved unceremoniously into a tiny room, they heard the lock click closed behind them.
"Well isn't this freakin' fantastic. You were really helpful back there Charlie, I could tell that you were really putting up a good fight."
Charlie perched herself on the single crate in the room and gave him an amused look. "Relax, I'm sure Miles and Jeremy are already on their way to rescue us."
"We don't have time for another rescue. For all we know, Conner could already be dead. We can't afford to waste anymore time."
"Alright, alright," she sighed, hopping down from her crate and swinging her arms. "Let's get out of here and go find your brat."
Bass smiled at her, but it quickly turned into a frown. "Wait, how did you get untied?"
Charlie smirked over at him as she dug her fingers into her mass of blonde curls. "Figure it out yourself, I can't do all the work around here." Pulling some pins from her hair, she left him to his ropes while she started to pick the lock on the door.
Getting out of the ropes bound around his wrists turned out to be pretty easy. The guys that had tied them hadn't done a very good job. He was ready to go before Charlie had made any progress with the lock.
"Here, let me do it," he said, reaching for the pins in her hands.
She snatched her hands away from him. "I've got it, just give me a sec."
Bass watched her insert the pins back into the lock and fiddle around trying to get the door open. "You're being to rough. Ease up a little, you have to be gentle."
"Shut up, I've got this."
He watched her for a few more seconds. "Clocks ticking," he sing songed at her.
Charlie sent him a scathing look. "It would be easier if you weren't distracting me." She glared at him and then went back to trying to pick the lock, but Bass was having way too much fun now. He stepped behind her so his chest was brushing against her back.
"Come on, Charlie, you're a trained soldier. You can't let distractions get the best of you." Her only response to that was to growl in the back of her throat and jerk the pins so hard that one of them snapped in half. She tossed the broken one to the ground and reached into her hair to pull out a replacement.
"See? I told you, you were being too rough." But she ignored him and shoved the pins back into the lock. Bass leaned farther over her shoulder, resting his chin on the curve of her neck and placing his hands on the door in front of them, trapping her between his arms.
"You know Charlie," he said softly in her ear. "You're good at a lot of things. Hunting, fighting, killing. But lock picking? It's just not your thing."
Sighing in defeat, Charlie started to move away from the door to give him room, but Bass held her where she was. Pressing himself flush against her back, he took the pins from her hands and started to work the lock while he spoke quietly in her ear.
"Some locks can be really complicated. They can be frustrating and stubborn. They don't want to give into you and let you see what's inside. But I've learned to be patient... I take my time and let her get comfortable, and then... Click." And as he said it, they both heard the lock click open. Charlie turned her head so that their noses were touching and their lips were only a breath apart. "See? All I have to do is be patient and she'll come to me."
Their eyes locked, and whether knowingly or not, Charlie licked her lips. Bass thought for sure that she was going to kiss him but then-
"Showoff." She breathed the word against his lips and pushed herself away from him. Stumbling a bit, Bass stepped back to look at her smirking face. "Can we go now?" She asked.
It took everything in him not to groan out loud but he managed it. Instead, he turned the handle and pulled the door of their little prison cell open, startling the one guy that had been left to watch them. Charlie lunged forward and grabbed the rifle right out of his hands, then whacked him on the head with it. The poor guy slumped forward, unconscious, so Bass caught him and drug him into the room.
Charlie handed him the rifle and took the guy's knife for herself. "Now can we leave?"
Chuckling, Bass held the door open for her. "Ladies first."
A/N For the record, I don't speak Spanish. Any of it that was in this chapter was just stuff that I remember from when I took it in high school. If it's wrong or doesn't make sense, I apologize to anyone that actually can speak Spanish. :-D
Levanta las manos - Put your hands up!
Bienvenido a México - Welcome to Mexico
Cállate - Shut up! (pretty sure I drove my family crazy when I learned that one)