“Your life may be, but I have no reason to believe that bullet was ever meant to hit you. Same with the car. Same with the motorcycle chase. These people are fake. They are only making it look like they’re after you. How else could you explain that you got away?”
Because Derrin is way more than you think he is,
I thought to myself.
Even I don’t know what he’s capable of.
At that thought I had to wonder where he was right now. Surely he would have come out of the office and trailed me. He had to be watching but I was too nervous to look around and see.
“So what,” I said, “you think that this is all a ruse for me to trust him.”
He nodded sharply.
“And then what? Wait to kill me?”
“Oh, I’m sure he’s going to wait to kill you,” he said, so casually that it got under my skin. “But that’s not a promise. He’s waiting for you to come to me. Like you just have. He wants me to take you in.”
I shook my head. “No. No, he’s the one who didn’t like this idea. He wants me to stay with him, he told me it’s not safe for me to go off with you.”
He tilted his head, considering. “Well, that might be true. My place is no place for a lady.”
Luisa cleared her throat in annoyance. He flashed a disarming smile at her. “Luisa, love, you are no longer a lady. You’re a queen.”
I wrinkled my nose. “Ugh. Cheesy.”
He looked to me, not amused. “Whatever would I do without my sister acting like a brat?”
My mouth dropped open. “I am not acting like a brat! I’m scared Javier. I thought you would help me.” I looked to Luisa. “Or at least you. I saved your parent’s life, remember. I held onto them for weeks, do you think that was easy? We were all scared shitless.”
Luisa’s face momentarily crumbled. There was still a good, kind woman in there somewhere. She was just getting buried by Javier.
She glanced at him. “We should take her in.”
“No,” Javier said adamantly. “No. This is very clearly a trap. We would take her with us and he would follow. I have no doubt Alana that this man is not who he says he is. He is using you to get to me, to what he really wants.”
I placed my hands in my face in frustration before throwing them out to the sides. “So then what? You’re going to assume something you know nothing about and then you’re just going to leave me here? With someone you think aims to hurt you, hurt me?”
He frowned and ran a hand through his hair with a sigh. “Don’t be so dramatic, Alana. Of course not. I’m just telling you you’re not coming with us. I’ll make sure you’re safe.”
“How?”
He took a step closer to me, eyes boring into mine. He could sure be intimidating, I’d give him that. He slipped his hand into his front pocket and pulled out a business card with his first two fingers. He flicked it out for me.
“This is the number I want you to call. From the payphone you used earlier. There will be instructions. Call the moment you see us leave. Then go into the women’s washroom and wait. Do not leave for anything.”
“But Derrin …” I started.
He gave me a caustic smile. “Obviously he will not know of this. Did you not hear what I just said? He is not your boyfriend, Alana. He is not your friend. He is my enemy. He is your enemy.”
“Who is he?” I asked, my voice coming out in a whisper.
“I have no idea,” he admitted. “But it doesn’t matter, does it?”
But it did. It did so much. And Javier, at the heart of it all, I knew he was wrong.
Wasn’t he?
“We’ll be in touch,” he said, forcing the business card in my hand. When I made a fist around it, he put his hand on my shoulder. He gave it a squeeze and stared at me intently. “I will take care of you, you got that? The only way I know how.”
Before I could be touched by this rare show of affection, his gaze slid to Luisa and he straightened up. “Let’s go,” he said to her.
She nodded, gave me a small smile and then the two of them walked quickly down the aisle of canned goods, the king and queen of Mexico.
I watched until they disappeared around the corner and into the mass of shoppers.
I felt like collapsing to the ground. The business card in my hand felt like lead, a choice I had to take.
Unless I took none at all.
I slipped it into my jean pocket.
I didn’t want to believe what he said of Derrin, even though some of it made sense. But of course Javier had never met him. He didn’t know him. Neither did I, but I’d at least felt like I knew something about him. I knew he was sincere and while he might be lying about some things about his past or who he is, I knew that when he was holding me, kissing me, fucking me, that that was all real.
He did care about me. I had to trust that.
The question was, could I trust that more than I could trust my own brother?
I slowly walked down the aisle, feeling in a daze. Once I would get to the doors, I had the option of going to the payphone or the option of going downstairs to the Camry, to see Derrin. Maybe I even had the option of both.
I was almost at the end when I bumped into someone with a small basket full of groceries.
“Sorry,” I mumbled and looked up.
It was the surfer looking guy I had seen earlier. He had a baseball cap pulled on low over his light brown shoulder-length hair but when he looked down at me I could see his eyes were a very clear hazel, more green than brown. He would have been handsome if it weren’t for an ugly scar on the left side of his face.
I immediately averted my eyes, not wanting to stare, and tried to move past.
“No, I’m sorry,” he said.
The way he said it, so gravely, made my skin prickle. I paused and looked over my shoulder at him.
He was smiling at me in a way a stranger shouldn’t. I was used to men leering at me but this was different. Besides, it was creepy when men leered at a girl in a cast, like the fact that I was vulnerable and broken turned them on even more.
“Do I know you?” he asked, frowning insincerely.
I wasn’t in the mood for pick-up lines, especially from weirdos. “No,” I said, glaring at him. I turned around.
“I think I do,” he said quietly.
I swallowed hard. I wanted to keep walking. I needed to keep walking.
“Alana Bernal,” he added.
Fuck. FUCK.
I should have ran. I should have just ran. But I slowly pivoted around to face him. There was a chance he was with Javier. Luisa said they were all over the store. This was probably one of his men.
“You know my name,” I told him, trying to sound casual, hoping he couldn’t hear my voice shake. “I should know your name then.”
“You probably do,” he said matter-of-factly. His grin widened. “I think many people do. If they don’t, they will.”
He wasn’t going to give me his name.
“Do you work for my brother?”
“I work for no one but myself.” He slowly reached into his basket of groceries. I didn’t wait to see if he was going to pull out a banana. I knew it was a gun.
I turned and leaped to the left, knocking over a display of gravy powder with my cast and got behind the end of the aisle before a gun shot went off.
It missed me but brown gravy powder filled the air. I kept running, thankful that the whole store was erupting into extreme chaos. Everyone was suddenly creaming, shoving, crying, running. I was swept up in the mass of shoppers trying to exit, pushing their carts into everyone and everything.
Whoever the fuck that guy was, he definitely wasn’t an assassin for hire. He did a pretty shitty job of trying to take me out. But he still tried to kill me all the same and I had to get out of this fucking store while I could, if I wasn’t trampled to death by the mass pandemonium.
There were no more shots, just screams, but even then I was frantically searching the stampede of people for Derrin, Javier, somebody to help me. I didn’t know if the man was still behind me, if anyone saw him with the gun, if he was blending into the crowd or being arrested by store security. I didn’t know and I couldn’t know. There was no time.
I did what I could to get through the crowd and eventually just let the swarm push me to the bottleneck of the doors, everyone packed in tight. People kept stepping on my cast and swearing. I didn’t feel a thing.
Finally I was outside and I immediately ran down the stairs as quickly as I could to the underground garage.
Down there, other people were running for their cars. It was just as crazy, people peeling out of spots, swiping parked cars, nearly hitting other shoppers. Then at the end I saw Derrin, running toward me.
My heart swelled with relief at the sight of him. This man would protect me. He would keep me safe.
My brother had to be wrong.
“Alana,” he said, grabbing my face in his hands. His eyes looked wild. “What happened?”
“There’s someone in the store, he looked like a surfer bum. He tried to talk to me, said my name. He knew who I was, Derrin! Then he pulled out a gun. I ran, he fired once and missed. I don’t …” I paused to catch my breath, nearly collapsing into his arms, “I don’t think he’s an assassin, he didn’t have the skill. But he still tried to kill me. No doubt.”
“And your brother? Where is Javier?”
“Gone,” I said just as the sound of screeching tires filled the air. The chaos was growing.
He grabbed my hand and that alone filled me with strength. “Come on, let’s get out of here while we can.”
We ran to the car, Derrin literally sweeping me off my feet as a truck almost backed into me.
We finally made it into the Camry, the doors were unlocked. It didn’t really register as strange, just convenient as we didn’t have to fiddle with the keys.
I jumped in and Derek took the keys from me, sticking them in the ignition.
Suddenly proverbial bells started ringing in my head.
A warning.
Instinct.
“No,” I said just as Derrin turned the keys.
The car stuttered strangely with a loud grinding sound, refusing to start.
“Stop!” I screamed and he immediately took his hand away, eyes wide as he looked at me.
“The doors were unlocked,” I said quickly, barely able to breathe. “I know I locked the doors as I left.”
I’d never seen him look so afraid as the realization dawned on him. If he had tried harder, even pushed the key over just a millimeter more, the car would have exploded.
Someone had put a car bomb inside for us.
Someone already knew we were here.
“We have to run,” he said, a twinge of panic in his voice.
I’d never heard that panic before.
I nodded. Fear had a net above my head.
We both jumped out of the car and he ran over to me, grabbing my hand and leading me down the parking lane toward the stairs at the end, going against the flow of traffic and people who were leaving. I guess he figured the fastest way out of here was to just get above ground first.
We were almost at the end when the man appeared, the scarred surfer dude with the gun was at the top of the stairwell, a throng of people on either side of him.
“Shit!” Derrin yelled and the same time I said, “That’s him!”
The man smiled when he saw us and began to push people out of his way.
Derrin pulled me to the left, darting between cars and then down the lane on the other side in the opposite direction. Suddenly a man appeared at the end, tall and formidable, a stiff face in a stiff suit. He had a gun at his side.
He wasn’t here for Wal-Mart’s savings.
He fired at us just as Derrin pulled me behind another car. We fell to the ground beside the car, glass shattering around us as I covered my head, leaning back against the rear door.
“Stay here,” Derrin commanded, pulling out his gun. He got up into a crouch, both hands on the gun. Even throughout all the violence and action, I had to stare at him in awe for a minute. In his boots, cargo pants and white t-shirt, his buzz cut, steely eyes and sheen of sweat on his face and muscles, he looked every inch the man who was going to get me out of here.
My man.
Then the window on the car beside us exploded, glass raining down on us, and I screamed, forced back into this deadly game.
Still at a low crouch, Derrin pivoted around the corner of the back of the car and fired at the person behind us. There were two shots and then nothing. With all the noise around us I couldn’t tell if he had hit the guy.
Then there was another shot in the opposite direction, the bullet zinging off the fender of the car on the other side of us.
Derrin looked at me and jerked his head to the right of me. “Stay down as low as you can go, hide behind the cars and go as fast as you can to the exit ramp. The other guy is down, I’ll take this guy.”
And with that he suddenly sprang up and fired off a few rounds of carefully aimed shots. He swore, obviously having missed, and looked back down at me. He was angry now. “Go, damnit! I’ve got this.”
I shook my head, paralyzed by fear. “My cast, I can’t crouch like that.”
“Fuck,” he swore. “I’m sorry.”
Then he quickly fired off two more shots. “Reach for my other gun, it’s strapped around my calf,” he said.
I could at least do that. I quickly pulled up his pant leg and took another handgun out of his holster. I held it up to him and he placed the one he was carrying into my hand.
“There are two bullets left, use them wisely,” he told me.
The gun didn’t feel as heavy as I expected it to and fingers wrapped around it like a lifeline. I had no idea how to shoot one of these but I wasn’t afraid of it. I would gladly use to it protect our lives.
Derrin quickly dropped to a crouch beside me as he slid the hammer back on the other gun. “The guy is still out there, scarface,” he said, his voice rough and low. “He’s hiding behind the concrete pillar. His aim isn’t the best and that’s what’s saving us right now.”
“I’m pretty sure you’re what’s saving us right now,” I said breathlessly.
His lips twisted into a grim smile. “We’ll see. We have to make a move or he won’t come out and we’ll be stuck here.”
“Someone has to come and stop him, security.”
“I think the security has run with everybody else.”
“What about Javier?”