From the directions Lazaro had given her, Sadie expected to find herself in a seedier part of town. Nothing prepared her for the actual house when she pulled up. The foundation looked like it had cracked down the center, threatening to dump the house into the basement. Boarded windows. Cracked and buckled siding. An overgrown lot that barely camouflaged the split and vomiting garbage bags tossed out on it indiscriminately.
Sadie's skin crawled.
She pushed her disgust aside, parked the car in the driveway behind a Ford Taurus, and got out. Whatever remained of the cement approach to the house had long been swallowed by weeds. She thought she felt the cracked pavement under her feet as she crossed to the porch, but couldn't see it through the overgrowth.
Lazaro answered her knock wearing a smirk and smelling of tobacco and sweat. Sadie reeled at the stink. This apparently amused Lazaro. He broke into a breathy laugh that reminded Sadie of those cartoon deadbeats, Bevis and Butthead.
“Thanks for coming,” he said, as if this was a social visit.
“Where's Ethan?”
Lazaro scooped his hand lazily toward himself. “Come on in.”
The house's smell managed to overpower Lazaro's. Something had seeped into the dirty drywall, a mix of cigarette smoke, spoiled food, and sex. The stagnant aroma radiated through the house like air trapped in an old tomb. After only a minute standing in the house, Sadie could feel the stink clinging to her hair and clothes. Once she left, she would have to shower and change before going anywhere else in public.
Halfway through the front room, Lazaro turned, the smirk on his face confirming her fears that it was a mistake coming here. But she couldn't leave Graham in this kind of environment.
“You like the digs?” Lazaro asked.
“What do you think?”
“I seen places a lot worse.” He said it with grinning pride, as if trying to impress her.
“Is Ethan still here or not?”
“You mean, has he left for Mexico yet?”
Sadie took a deep breath to calm herself, making sure to breathe through her mouth to avoid suffering the house's stench any more than she had to.
“Let me see him . . . and Graham.”
He tucked a lock of his greasy hair behind an ear in an eerily feminine way. “You're in luck, you know. He kinda got distracted and decided to stay.”
Sadie shook her head. “He never was going to run off, was he?”
“Why would I lie?”
“That's a good question.”
“You want to see him or not?”
Sadie swallowed. She was being set up for something, that much she knew.
“That's why I'm here.”
He smiled and bowed dramatically.
“Right this way.”
Around a corner and down a short hall, Lazaro stopped in front of an open door that probably led into a bedroom (or what used to be a bedroom before the house had become whatever you would call it now). He gestured for her to look inside.
A thick and cold feeling rolled through Sadie. She hesitated, not sure what she would find. Her imagination tried offering up some grim possibilities, but she shoved the images aside. Sadie wasn't one to dwell on dark thoughts. Her best bet was to push herself to the doorway and look inside, face the reality rather than the possibilities.
She stepped forward and peered through the doorway.
Ethan lay curled on a mattress on the floor, an arm draped over the waist of a thin, dark-haired woman. The woman looked asleep and her flushed cheeks suggested she had recently been crying. The yellowish bruise on her face did little to disturb the woman's natural beauty. While her face looked a bit drawn, as if she hadn't eaten much in a while, she still possessed a fashion-model quality, as if she had once posed for the cover of Vogue before letting her health slip.
And while Sadie had never met nor even seen a photograph of the woman before, she knew that it must be Ethan's ex-wife, Rain.
Her stomach seemed to drop. She could feel Lazaro staring at her, waiting for a reaction. If he expected her to shout or cry, she wouldn't give him the pleasure. Seeing Ethan with his body spooned along the back of another woman may have normally heated her blood, but she couldn't muster a hint of anger. And crying was out of the question. Not here. Not under these circumstances.
She did, however, feel small enough to slip through one of the cracks in the floorboards.
Ethan raised his head and peered over Rain. His brow wrinkled above his sleepy eyes. His lips parted slightly.
“Sadie?”
She swallowed, tensing her throat to keep her voice from quivering. “I feel like the biggest fool right now.”
“No. Wait.” He began to sit up, but froze when Rain stirred.
“Don't bother getting up. I'm leaving.” She turned and ran into Lazaro, who had slipped directly behind her at some point. “Get out of my way.”
Lazaro put a gentle hand on her left forearm. “Look, I'm sorry about this. I didn't realize—”
“Like hell you didn't. You brought me all the way out here to make a fool of me.”
“No way. This isn't why I had you come out. This was just . . . funny.”
Even with him ten times her size, Sadie felt tempted to slap him. The absent look in his eyes kept her hand at her side. She had no doubt he would hurt her a lot worse in return.
Ethan came up behind her. “Sadie, wait.”
She tried to side-step Lazaro. He moved to block her.
“What are you doing? Let me out of here.”
“Ethan wants to talk to you.”
Ethan said, “Lazaro, get the hell out of the way and let us through.”
Lazaro's response, a snicker.
Sadie's stomach dropped. Something far worse than a juvenile joke was going on here, and she had walked right into it. Ethan tugged at her arm to pull her back into the room. His intentions were probably just to clear the doorway to get at Lazaro, but the touch made Sadie's skin ripple. How did she know he wasn't part of this ruse to get her to the house? In all likelihood, he had orchestrated it himself since she wouldn't come willingly when he'd asked.
She ripped her arm free from his grasp.
“Don't touch me.”
“Would you take it easy.” Then shouting over her shoulder. “Laz, move it already.”
Lazaro took a single step backward. “Take her into the kitchen.”
The sudden pain in Sadie's jaw made her realize how hard she clenched her teeth together. When she forced her jaw to relax, her heartbeat took the brunt of her fear, kicking into a fast rhythm that knocked at the inside of her chest like an angry captive.
She finally turned to face Ethan. “So I'm a prisoner now?”
“What? No.”
“Well, if you aren't running off to Mexico, why am I here?”
“I don't know why you're here. I don't even know how you got here.” His gaze lifted from her to look beyond her at Lazaro. “What the hell are you doing?”
Sadie felt Lazaro's breath on the back of her neck. The tobacco stink wrapped around her throat like a pair of hands. Then a pair of real hands rested on her shoulders. She shrank under Lazaro's touch, but his firm grip told her not to pull away.
“I thought,” Lazaro said, pushing more of his wretched breath around her, “we should all hang here together.”