“Alana,” he said. “No matter what happens with your brother, you have someone here that has your back, all the way, to the end.”
“To what end?”
“To the end of it all,” he said, his voice grave. “And I’m not going to let you go so easily. I want you to figure it out with Javier, see what he knows, see if he can help. But if he has no ideas, if he doesn’t seem to care, you’ll be better off with me.”
“How can you say that?”
“Trust me.”
“I want to,” I automatically said. I corrected myself. “I
do
trust you.”
“You don’t. And I don’t blame you. But if you stay with me, I can make a better life for you. It doesn’t have to be with me but … I can get you out of here.”
“How?”
“Come up north with me.”
I curled my lip. “Too cold.”
“The west coast isn’t cold at all, you’d love it,” he said. “But if not, then Europe. Some small island in the Caribbean. South America.”
It was sounding tempting. But then the whole thing was absurd. “I barely know you.”
“I know. And I barely know you. But this is what is going to keep you alive.” Now he was cupping my face with both hands. “Alana, unless the men who are after you are killed, unless the person who wants you dead is found out and then taken out, this isn’t going to stop. There is a lot of money on your head.”
I frowned, feeling icky at that assumption. “How do you know that?”
“I just do.”
“Like you know how to kill a person and ride a motorbike at the same time?”
“Yes.” His grip tightened, his gaze more intense. I felt like he was going to devour me. “Your life as you’ve known it is now over.”
I swallowed the lump in my throat. “You said that I could talk to Luz –”
“I did say that. And I meant it. But I also said not now. They’ll be in danger too if they talk to you, so leave them out of it. Send them a postcard from a random place. Alana, you’re going to need to say goodbye to the person you were. Alana Bernal ended when she was hit by a car.”
I felt like a force field went up around me. I wasn’t feeling any of this. It wasn’t sinking in. No. This wasn’t the way. My brother would fix everything.
I looked away and pulled out of Derrin’s grasp. “I need to talk to Javier.”
“And you’re going to. And I’m going to watch the whole thing,” he said, straightening up. He started the car. “Let’s go find us a place to stay for the night before he gets here and everything changes.”
CHAPTER TWELVE
Derek
Being Derrin Calway was becoming harder and harder. I messed up once, telling her about Minnesota when I should have said Winnipeg, but I don’t think she thought anything of it. But other than that, it was getting increasingly hard to pretend I was just an ex-soldier. She knew I was something more and I knew in the future I was going to have to tell her the truth.
The question was, how much truth. It’s one thing to say you have experience in “getting shit done” for people. It’s another to say you’re a professional assassin, one that put a bullet in Travis Raines’ head at the request of her brother. It’s another to say you were the vigilante who shot the driver in the head, only after you failed to kill her to begin with.
Where did the truth end and where did I begin? When did the lie end and I begin?
I’m not sure if I would ever figure it out and not come out even more of a shell than I was going in.
I didn’t trust her brother at all. I knew Javier enough that she did mean something to him but a man changes when he comes into power and I’ve seen him change a lot. I wasn’t even expecting him to show up to meet her. He was the man in charge of the seedy underbelly of half the country, he wouldn’t want to risk anything by going after his sister.
Then again, there was the chance that his marriage had softened him. That’s why I wanted Luisa to be there. Alana would be able to get a better read off of her. She wanted to believe the best of Javier a little too much.
While we drove around looking for a cheap, simple motel that I could pay cash out, I thought about how Javier could be behind any of this. The man who had called me and ordered her hit definitely hadn’t been him. Javier’s voice and mannerisms were far too distinctive. But could it have been someone working on his behalf? Perhaps it was the man Alana had talked to on the phone, even though he pretended not to know who she was.
Who was Javier’s right hand man these days? Esteban Mendoza. Could it have been him on the phone? I wasn’t sure. I never paid too much attention to Este back then because he was a bit of a chump, a surfer dude that didn’t do shit but wanted to weasel up the ranks. He was proficient in survelliance and electronics – when we did the raid on Raines’ house, we were able to all because of him. But Este didn’t seem to have the chops for much more than that.
Then again, being second to Javier meant doing a lot of dirty work. An order was an order. But why would Javier want his own sister assassinated? That’s what didn’t make any sense at all. I didn’t trust him and with good reason and I thought if she went off with him it would do her far more harm than good. But I didn’t know if he’d want to kill her.
I started thinking that even if she did go off with him, maybe I could put myself back in the picture somehow. Ever since I defactoed from him after the Raines’ takeover years ago and helped Ellie Watt out of Honduras to rescue her father – for a price higher than Javier’s of course – I’d never seen Javier again. I couldn’t just stroll up to him and ask if he needed any help. Javier held grudges like nobody’s business, especially those that concerned his ex-lover, and he’d shoot me on the spot.
I guess the problem now was how far I was willing to go for Alana. She’d said again and again how much we didn’t know each other and she was right every time. But even then, I couldn’t stay away. I couldn’t from the moment I saw her in the airport parking lot. Just one real look at her and she’d done something to me, stirred something that had been dormant for so long.
I couldn’t leave her. I just didn’t know how to get her to stay with me.
Eventually we found a nice enough hotel. We had an hour to kill before I drove us back to the Wal-Mart and I wished we had more. On the chance that she would leave with her brother and never see me again, I wanted to remember exactly how she felt to touch, to hold, to kiss, to be deep inside of her.
Once we got inside the room, I locked the door, drew the shades and then pulled her into my arms.
The need to drive my cock inside her suddenly overpowered me, and I grabbed her face, kissing her hard, my hands moving down into her hair, down her back to her ass where I squeezed hard. She let out a cry of pain, but it was good pain from the way she attacked me, hands, lips, teeth, everywhere.
I’d never felt so hungry for her. Apparently she felt the same. So much adrenaline, emotion and futility hung in the air, revving our bones, stirring our blood, making us starved, wild animals.
Death made sex feel much more alive.
I quickly pulled off her shorts and thong and whirled her around. I pinned her up against the wall. The bed wouldn’t do this time. It was too soft, too comforting, too forgiving. I wanted her raw and real. I wanted to feel the pain with the beauty, the harshness of it all.
She wrapped one leg around my waist, her cast on the other was hooked around my thigh, and held me close to her as I fumbled with my fly. Once my dick was free, my pants dropping to my ankles, I wasted no time in guiding the tip into her, just teasing her cleft with her own slickness.
“I need to feel you,” she cried, her head back, her hips trying to thrust closer, to get purchase. Her nails dug into my back.
“You’ll feel every inch, babe,” I groaned, feeling her expanding for my tip, so greedy, hungry, just like me.
“Now, Derrin,
por favor
.”
Her cries were my undoing. I thrust into her, feeling her expand around me, so wet, so tight, so damn beautiful. I was meant to be this deep inside her, pushed into the hilt, like I could stay here forever, like I was supposed to.
I caught my breath, nearly losing it, and pulled out slow, relaxing into the rhythm, trying to hold myself in check. She felt so good and I started rubbing her clit with tiny, round strokes. She started panting, squirming, wanting more.
“Harder,” she pleaded. “Keep going.”
I bit at her neck and sucked beneath her ear, loving how pushy she was. I kept going slow and steady, not ready to give her everything just yet.
“Do you like that?” I whispered, delighting in the primal lust that was spilling out of her mouth in load groans.
I thrust into her deeper, faster, torn between wanting to come and wanting this to go on forever. She held me tighter, her nails sharp and drawing blood as I pounded her, keeping my fingers on her wet clit quick and steady. Her grip around me began to loosen as she was close to the edge.
“Alana,” I cried out breathlessly as the pressure reached the breaking point. Everything tightened, from my balls to my abs, before I came hard and poured into her. This was so raw, beautiful, that I could barely hold her up anymore. I felt like as my seed spilled into her, something was spilling into me and filling up all the caverns inside me, the dark and hollow places. They felt brighter now, warm. Real.
She cried out as she came, loud enough for the room next door to hear. But I didn’t care. I didn’t care about anything except her. My heart was being squeezed in radiance.
I breathed into the hollow of her neck, drowning in her smell, the feel of her as she pulsed around me, the sound of her breathless noises she probably didn’t know she was making. I’d never been in so deep. I knew I wouldn’t walk away from this woman unscarred.
“Shit,” she said smiling, catching her breath. Her legs began to shake around me, worn from the strain and I grabbed hold of her, gently lowering her to the ground. She wiped the sweat from her brow and frowned at the marks her fingernails made on my shoulder.
“I’m sorry,” she said, nodding at them.
“Don’t you ever,” I told her, brushing her wet hair off her face. Everything about her glowed, so hot, so warm, so larger than life.
“You know what you are?” I asked her, leaning in until my lips grazing the rim of her ear.
“What?”
“Sunshine.”
Redemption.
***
Even after the sex and intimacy, the ride back to Wal-Mart was strained. Both of us were locked in our own heads, eaten by our own fear. My fear – the first real fear I had felt in some time – was that I would never see her again. If I never saw her again, I could never protect her. If I could never protect her, she would end up dead.
Her fear … well, I could only imagine. I just hoped it was enough to keep her on her toes but not too much that she would panic. Fear can only work for you if you know how to recognize it and use it.
Our plan was relatively simple, yet as we sat back in the parking garage, now a bit more full thanks to after work shoppers pushing their carts back and forth, it seemed daunting. There was a mild sense of chaos here, which usually helped me think but today wasn’t cutting it.
I had my sniper rifle and silencer with me, as well as my .22. I would go up first by the doors in at the far end of the parking garage, ones that led up to the empty office building. The doors would be locked but that was never a problem for me. I would then secure a spot in an office on the highest floor. I wouldn’t be right at the window overlooking the fountain – that was too obvious – but if I could find one further back with a clear shot that would be perfect. Then I would wait. The moment Alana looked like she was in trouble or being taken against her will was the moment I would pull the trigger.
In some ways, it was phenomenally easy to kill Javier this way. He would know that too. But in this province he had few enemies. What enemies he had I’m sure were ones masquerading as his friends. In fact, I knew for certain he had no friends. I assumed he knew that too.
And Javier would probably travel without telling anyone. Maybe Esteban. No one would expect to see him here, so he would be safe. In Cualican, where he lived, that was a different story. People would expect him. But here, even though he probably felt inconvenienced by the travel, he would actually be fairly safe.
Except for me.
“So,” Alana started, scratching at the top of her cast nervously.
“So. Are you ready?”
She shook her head, her eyes wide and searching. “What happens if I go with him? If he promises me safety? What happens to us?”
I tried to smile but failed. “I’ll be here whenever you need me.”
“You’ll stay in Mexico?”
“Of course.”
“Don’t you have to go home?”
“I don’t have to go anywhere, Alana.”
“What if I want to see you again?”
“You email me.” Even though it was the best way to get a hold of me it still felt so cold, so wrong, to have our contact with each other go from skin to skin to email to email.
“Not call?”
“I’ll probably get a new phone and number to be safe.”
“Oh,” she said, looking panicked.
I put my hand on her leg, relishing the warmth of her skin. “When I get a new phone, I will email you the number. Any time you want to leave, I will come and get you. Your brother won’t hold you there. Remember, this all has to be your choice and your choice alone.”
“But if I choose to go, this is it? I mean, I won’t get to see you before?”
I wiggled my jaw back and forth and breathed out through my nose. “It wouldn’t be safe for him to see me. I’d rather not, you know, be exposed to a notorious drug lord if I can help it.”
She nodded. “I get it. Well, I guess you should probably go take your place.”
Something in me seized but I did what I could to ignore it. “All right. If you don’t go with him, if anything, anything at all seems the slightest bit wrong, change your mind. Just get advice. See what your options are. And come back here to the car. I’ll meet you and we’ll be on our way.”
“Derrin,” she said, adjusting in her seat to face me. She looked so soulful in that moment that I wished to god she was calling me Derek instead. It would only feel real when she used my real name, knew the real me, everything I was, and still stayed.