Among the Echoes (Wrecked and Ruined #2.5)(57)

"Nope. You know the rules. If she goes out, she wears the contacts," Leo pipes in from behind me, but I ignore him. Yeah, I know the rules, but that doesn’t mean I hate them any less. I’ve gotten used to seeing Erica’s amazing blue eyes every day.

"I just need some fresh air, okay? I’ll be back in less than an hour," she calls over her shoulder.

"I’ll walk you down." I toss an arm around her shoulders and head downstairs. "Johnson," I call to the larger of the two guards standing at the private entrance to the building. "You let any anyone so much as bump into her, I’ll kill you myself." He flashes me a shit-eating grin, revealing not one but two gold teeth. Where the hell Leo found these guys, I’ll never know. But so far, they seem to know what they are doing. "Make it fast." I grab both sides of Erica’s face and pull her in for a hard kiss.

"I love you," she says as she turns to walk away.

Johnson pushes the glass door open, but at the last second, I pull her in for another kiss.

I hate watching her leave, knowing that there is nothing I can do for her once she walks out those doors, but despite how much I would like to, I can’t keep her locked up in my apartment for the rest of her life.

"Love you too, beautiful."

She smiles, dropping her sunglasses down on her face, and walks away.

As I exit the elevator, I run directly into Leo, who is waiting for me. He looks nervous and antsy, and it worries the shit out of me.

"What’s wrong?"

His face is pale and he doesn’t immediately respond. Quickly losing my patience with his lack of speech, I reach out to grab his shirt, but he grabs my wrist first.

"I just got a call. I think there is actually a way out of this mess." He runs a hand through his hair and laughs. "Oh my God, I think this might be almost over."

"What?" I breathe as the mere possibility makes my heart race.

"We need to talk, and quick—before she gets back." He moves over to the couch, where he sits down only to jump right back to his feet and start pacing.

"You’re making me nervous. Start f*cking talking." I stand with my hands on my hips.

"They don’t want Erica. They want me."

"What?" I snap, taking a step forward.

"Just chill out and listen to me. The guy Erica and I testified against, Dom, was the reject of the Rodriguez family. He was a f*cking idiot. Case in point: when he decided to pull a fast one on his entire family and merge with their enemy, Wilkes. Hell, the whole Rodriguez family would probably thank Erica for testifying against Dom after he killed his older brother. It’s Wilkes’s men who are really after us."

"Then why the hell are they coming after her? You’re the one who killed Darren Wilkes."

"Because they have no f*cking idea who the hell I am—but they think she does."

"What the hell?"

"My true identity was a tightly guarded secret as an undercover agent. But the Wilkes family assumes Erica knows since I took her with me when I left. The night everything went down, I killed Darren Wilkes and his top two, but there was a third man who survived his wounds. He ended up in prison on numerous other charges, but he was still able to get word out that I—or, really, Marcus—took her on my way out. And it appeared to him that she trusted me. They decided she was in on it with me from the very beginning. So Wilkes’s brothers have been searching for us ever since. They know everything about Erica Hill and have been able to track her easier than they have me.

"I worked for Rodriguez when I was undercover, specifically Dom. And when he went down, they refused to cooperate and give Wilkes any of their security footage of me. Wilkes doesn’t even have a picture of me. They only have the description given to them by some of the guys who met me—thirty-something, long, brown hair, tattoos, brown eyes, and of Mexican decent." He breaks into a thick accent while speaking smooth Spanish.

"You’re white."

"Yeah, originally from Nebraska actually, but I tan up nice." He smiles. "The tattoos were fake too. But they don’t know any of that. The one time the youngest Wilkes found me with Erica, he shot me in the chest and walked right over me, clueless to the fact that I was the man they were really looking for."

"Wait. Why haven’t you just given them your name then? You could have gone off on your own and lead them away from her. You could have set her free years ago!" I roar.

"Maybe, but being alone made her even more vulnerable. They think she means something to me. Which she does—now. They would have tortured her just to draw me out. At least if we’re together, I could always give up myself if we got into trouble."

"Jesus Christ. So how the hell is this going to be over? Get to that part. I don’t want to hear the rest of this bullshit."

"So some serious shit has been going down, and it appears the last remaining Wilkes brother, Lucas, is f*cking shit up for Rodriguez again. An official hit was just issued on his head. Lucas is the low man on the totem pole these days, but his ego is anything but. If Rodriguez manages to take him down, he will absorb all his men and we could finally be nobodies again. With Wilkes gone, we would be free of all of this once and for all."

"So, what? We just wait for Rodriguez to take out Wilkes?"