Chapter 26
THOMAS
EIGHT YEARS AGO
Thomas stood at the base of the staircase to James’s studio, nursing the worst hangover in distant memory.
He drank himself into a stupor after Aimee had left the bar, and he hadn’t slept in almost thirty-six hours.
Confessing to Aimee some of what he’d done, at least the parts that had affected her where James was concerned, had come with a certain amount of relief.
It was out in the open, at least among their circle of friends.
Now came the hard part.
Thomas climbed the stairs and reached for the door only to hesitate. James was in there, or so Imelda had told him when he’d asked where he could find him. Ironic how he’d threatened her to never call him anything but Carlos but he hadn’t been able to stop thinking of him as James.
A breeze inside the studio fluttered the papers taped to the window.
They looked to be finger paintings, and he caught the name of one of them.
Julian Dominguez. James’s adopted son. Bright yellow, five-pointed stars stood out against a dark blue sky.
Oddly, the painting reminded him of the telescope he’d gifted James for his ninth birthday.
He’d been as fascinated with the night sky then as he was with painting now.
Edgar had destroyed that telescope. It hadn’t been intentional.
Rather, it had been the closest thing available for Edgar to use to smash his and Claire’s own wedding china.
That year hadn’t been a good one for their family.
Phil’s true parentage had been exposed and the humiliation often sent Edgar into fits of rage.
Thomas saved his money and bought James another telescope.
But it hadn’t been James’s utter devastation upon discovering their dad had broken the telescope and refused to replace it that had compelled Thomas to fix what their dad had destroyed.
It had been James’s quiet resignation and unsettling impassivity about the whole situation.
He’d just accepted it as normal because that hadn’t been the first time Edgar had taken his anger out on either of them or their things.
It hadn’t been the last either. And everything about any of those instances had been so wrong.
He guessed that was his downfall when it came to James. He’d think of that emotionless little boy and a fierce protectiveness rose inside him like a red tide.
“Arrrgghhhhh!!!”
A loud, anguished bellow came from inside the studio, followed by a crash.
Then another crash. Thomas threw open the door and hurried to the back room just in time to witness James destroy one of the canvases Thomas had shipped here from California, and he couldn’t move.
He’d only seen James once in the hospital when Kane had brought him to him, and a few times since from afar.
But never close up, not since his face had been reconstructed.
He hadn’t spoken to him either. He never met his wife, or his nephews. And he was speechless.
James was different, but the same. But different. James became Carlos became James, and back and forth and back again, his mind trying to make sense of the man he was seeing.
James lunged for another canvas, snapping him out of his stupor.
“James!” Thomas roared.
He whirled around, teeth bared. He glared at Thomas in the doorway. They were both breathless.
“Don’t destroy your paintings. You’ll regret it, James.”
“That’s not my name. I’m not him.”
He was right. The man before him wasn’t his brother.
He didn’t look like him and wasn’t acting like him.
Thomas had known he wouldn’t be the man he remembered.
He’d accepted that. But remembering someone as one person and finding them as another tends to throw one off-balance. No wonder his head was spinning.
“Fine. Carlos. I don’t care what name you go by. You’re still my brother.”
James stabbed a finger in the air and crossed the small room to him. “You’re no brother of mine.”
The room exploded in white-hot pain, Thomas’s head snapping to the left. A bone-jarring ache reverberated through his skull, his teeth slamming together with an audible click. He staggered back a few steps, grabbing at the door casing before he fell on his ass.
James and his left hook. He hadn’t seen that coming.
Thomas pressed fingers to his chin and worked his jaw. A metallic tang filled his mouth. “Damn. Guess I deserved that.”
Color creeped up James’s neck and into his ears. His nose scrunched up, the bridge wrinkling, his nostrils slightly flaring. He pointed at the entrance behind him. “Get out.”
Turning back to the room, he picked a canvas off the floor, the wooden frame damaged, and tossed the ruined painting on the table.
Thomas wasn’t one to be easily dismissed.
And neither were the Hidalgos. James needed to understand how serious his situation was.
He needed to lie low. But the DEA was breathing down Thomas’s neck.
They wanted to know what James remembered about the Hidalgos.
What exactly had they and Phil done to him and where?
He entered the room, edging the table, and stopped opposite him. “We need to talk.”
James sneered at him. “No, we don’t. I’ve heard all I can take from Imelda and Aimee.”
“You’ve only heard what they know. There’s a lot more—”
“I don’t want to hear a damn thing, especially from you.”
“I don’t care what you want,” Thomas barked.
“Obviously. That’s why I’m here.” James gestured at their surroundings.
Thomas grimaced. One thing sure hadn’t changed. Carlos was as stubborn as James had been.
“Goddammit.” He pounded the table. “Would you just hear me out?”
“Why now? Why not nineteen months ago when I was flat on my back in a hospital bed? Why not when my face was swollen and shoulder busted and I was going out of my mind crazy wondering who the hell I was?” He stopped, going eerily silent. His eyes narrowed. “You were there, in the hospital.”
An electric jolt shot through Thomas at his shock that James remembered. But he wouldn’t lie to him anymore, not about this.
“Yes, I was there.”
“You gave Imelda the envelope with all my documents.”
They’d been standing in the hallway. He didn’t think James could have seen them.
“I did.”
“You didn’t say a damn thing to me and you paid her to lie!”
If Thomas knew it would help his case, he would tell him the hardest thing he’d done in his life hadn’t been faking his death.
It was walking away from him while he lay in that hospital bed, wondering if he’d make it out alive.
He’d allowed himself one liberty while he was there.
James had been in a drugged sleep when he entered his room.
“They’ll burn in hell for what they did to you,” he’d whispered to him.
His fingertips grazed the back of James’s motionless hand then he’d left the room.
James grabbed a jar of paint and lobbed it at Thomas’s head.
Shit.
Thomas ducked. The jar shattered against the wall behind him.
Turquoise paint smeared the wall, dripping onto the floor by his shoes.
He stepped aside, feeling something against his back, and looked over his shoulder.
Paint stained his shirt, speckled the back of his pants.
His clothes were ruined. He could feel the stuff in his hair.
He shot James a what-the-hell glare.
James’s chest heaved. He ran his hand over his hair. “Go. Just go away.”
“I kept you hidden to keep you safe. Phil tried to kill you.”
“The same guy who attacked Aimee? Where’s he now?”
“Prison.”
“Then I don’t need to worry about him.”
“There’s more—”
He held up a hand and Thomas stopped, debating to push his point. But his gaze had turned inward. He wasn’t going to listen to him, not today anyway.
Thomas pulled a business card from his pocket and left it on the table between them.
“Call me when you’re ready to talk. But for now, it’s best you remain in Puerto Escondido.
” He didn’t want him attracting attention.
The media back home was still hungry for info about the Hidalgos.
They’d descend on this beachside community like shadows swallowing the light if word got out that James was still alive.
“I never intended to leave.”
“I figured,” Thomas said, walking to the door. He bent to retrieve his jacket that had been spared from James’s outburst and folded it over his arm. He looked back at him one last time. “But if you change your mind—”
“I won’t.”
“Call me,” he said, studying James like it would be the last time in a long while. “Take care of yourself and watch your back.”
Thomas went to the beach after he’d left James. He stood on the sand, the water lapping the toes of his ruined loafers. When a fisherman walked past him, Thomas gave him his jacket. The local shot Thomas a perplexed look but took it anyway. Thomas didn’t need it. The matching pants were ruined.
He lit a cigar and watched the sun set on this disaster of a day. The irony of it all. He’d done everything within his power to save James only to lose him in the end. But he’d do it again. The lies, the deception. James might never be himself, but he was still breathing.
He and Thomas also weren’t through. The feds needed what was in James’s head, anything to help capture Fernando Ruiz, and he was already strategizing how he could make James remember.
But not yet.
He was needed at home.
It was time to face his mother and tell her what he’d done, which wasn’t the hard part.
It was everything he’d have to keep doing to move forward.