Yesterday when she met Javier, I thought I’d lost her. The moment she walked off with Luisa I was certain she would be put in a black SUV and I would never see her again. To my surprise though, they went into Wal-Mart, which was an unpredictable move on Javier’s part. No one would have ever guessed a man like him would set foot in a place like that.
My problem was, it wasn’t easy getting a good look at their meeting. The place was crawling with Javier’s men, some of them I actually recognized and could have recognized me if they saw me. If that happened, that could have put Alana’s life in more danger and considering I knew now what Javier and her discussed, I had no doubt that’s what would have happened.
So I had to stick to the outskirts and trust that she was going to be okay. I loitered around the outside of the store, the parking lot, the parking garage, trying not to pace, to seem suspicious. I was in the parking garage, about to head to the car to wait in there when I heard the screams and saw the stampede of people.
At first I didn’t know what had happened to cause all of this yet all I could think of was that Alana was dead. I had failed her and had failed myself. There would be no redemption here, no second chance at life or at love. There would be only cold, hard failure and a chain attaching me to a life I could never escape.
But then I saw her face, her beautiful, scared but strong face above the masses and I knew we would get through this. She was better than I thought, braver, harder.
She ended up proving it time and time again in that garage. We escaped because of her. Because she shot her killer. She shot the man who hired me to kill her. She shot the man behind it all. The highest bidder.
Scarface was none other than Javier’s right hand man, Esteban Mendoza. It was something I should have seen coming. I had considered him, of course, but my mistake was in immediately dismissing him. I had greatly underestimated that man. Not in his skill necessarily. The man is certainly no assassin. But I had underestimated his resolve and ambition. This was a man that wanted to destroy Javier one step at a time. He had patience and he had time and he knew taking Alana out would accomplish that.
And, I was sure, if it didn’t, there would be no harm, no foul. Este would try something else to move up the ranks. The man was always a weasel and his driving force was pure old-fashioned jealousy. Funny how that’s always what it came down to, wasn’t it? The envy, the desire to have something, a life, a love, a car, a career, that someone else has that they’ll do anything to possess it.
My problem now was that Esteban knew I had seen him and recognized him. We had worked together a lot, so it was almost like seeing an old friend, albeit an old friend who you never liked, you would thought was annoying as hell. He knew, as I am sure he did before, that I was helping Alana now. I wasn’t in it to kill her. He knew very well who he was up against now and was going to play his cards accordingly.
The other problem I had was that I couldn’t exactly tell Alana this. She didn’t know who Esteban was and I would have no explanation how I would know, unless I came clean. That was my only option. If I could somehow come clean and tell her most of the truth, it might be enough for her to call her brother and tell him. Javier would have Este’s balls in a hog’s mouth before the end of the day. He never took betrayal lightly. That was one of the few good things about him.
But then of course there was yet another problem. What if Este was acting on behalf of Javier? Then none of this would do any good and our plans to get out of the country just got a whole lot more complicated. Este could only have a certain amount of power on his own, but Javier practically had the country.
“Have a nice stay Mr. Curran,” the front desk girl said to me with a big, gap-toothed smile. I snapped out of it, took the room key and credit card back from her and went to find Alana.
***
“So, how
did
you manage to get this hotel room?”
We’d been staying at the hotel in Mazatlan for five days now and this was the first time this had come up. I knew it was coming. There was too much silence humming between us these last few days, too much tension and furtive looks. Sometimes I worried she was pulling away from me. Even the sex was feeling more distant when all I wanted was to feel closer to her.
These secrets and lies were becoming too much to ignore. I could only hope that the little slice of the truth I would tell her would be enough to satisfy her and heal the rift. Once that was dealt with, we could fully concentrate on our next steps. Now, like we had done in the hotel in Puerto Vallarta, we were stuck in some kind of limbo. We were waiting for something and I didn’t know what. Perhaps this was it. Perhaps we were waiting on my honesty.
We were lying on the bed and she was flipping through the TV channels aimlessly. It was pouring rain outside, which was nice for a change but it kept us inside instead of at the pool or on the private beach. We never went into the town. We stayed as close to the hotel as possible, not risking it.
“Do you really want to know?” I asked, my hand trailing up and down her thigh, pausing at her cast. I know she needed to see a doctor soon to get this thing off but something told me we needed it done sooner rather than later.
She nodded and then looked over her shoulder at me. “Do you have a fake credit card?”
“Yup,” I told her. “Fake ID too. Driver’s license, passport … you name it.”
“Why?”
I shrugged, trying to play it all down. “I got into some bad things …”
“Drugs?”
I shook my head. “No. I made some mistakes with the wrong people, let’s put it at that. I have some fake identities to use, depending where I am.”
“Where were the mistakes made?”
“Canada,” I said but it pained me to stick with the original lie.
“Are you a wanted criminal there?”
“You could say that,” I told her and her face fell a bit. “I was a bodyguard for some shady people.”
“So that’s how you know how to do all that stuff,” she mused.
I nodded even though there’s never been a mere bodyguard who can do what I do.
“Anyway,” I said quickly, “I wanted out and they wouldn’t let me out. I stole some money and ran. I made it down to Mexico and here I am.”
She pursed her lips. “This is making sense now. How long have you lived here for?”
“Two years,” I told her. Again, lying through my teeth.
She straightened up, swinging her legs out so they were crossed over mine. “And that’s the whole truth?” she asked, looking me dead in the eye. “You’re Derrin Calway?”
Derek Conway. I’m Derek Conway and I’m a mercenary for hire, a trained assassin for the highest bidder. I was ordered to take you out by Esteban Mendoza, your brother’s righthand man, and I was going to, if only you weren’t hit by that car.
But I only nodded, cool as ice.
“So all the stuff you have with you, the guns,” she said. “And the other stuff.”
“Other stuff?”
“I know about your other bag.”
I guess I’d been sloppy with that. I tried not to look sheepish.
“Oh.”
“So the other stuff and everything, are you hoping to become a bodyguard down here? Is that why you have it?”
“Yes,” I said. “It’s really the only thing I know how to do.”
“Were you ever a personal trainer? A soldier?”
“Yes to both those things.” Finally, something that wasn’t a lie.
She seemed satisfied with that but sadness threaded her brow.
“What is it?” I asked.
“I guess I’m just trying to take it all in,” she said. “I’m glad you told me the truth, but it adjusts some things, that’s all.”
“Please don’t let it adjust the way you feel about me. Or the way you think I feel about you.” I ran my fingers over her soft cheek. She closed her eyes to my touch as I brushed a strand of hair back behind her ear.
“How do you feel about me?” she whispered.
“Like I’d do anything for you,” I told her softly. “And I would.”
“But what about here,” she said, reaching forward and placing her hand on my heart. I swear I could feel it grow in size, hot like the sun, just from her touch. “Do you feel anything here? For me? For anyone?”
From the way she said anyone, I could tell she meant Carmen.
I took in a deep breath. “I do. For you. It’s complicated.”
She nodded, looking away. “I know it is. I can tell. You don’t even know me.”
“Stop saying that,” I told her, grabbing her hand. “Stop. I know you. I
know
you Alana. I’ve seen you at your worst and I’ve seen you at your best. And all I want is more. More you, more everything. I want a chance to have you where we can be free and be us and not have to look over our shoulder.” I paused. “I’m just … this is new. It’s different. It’s beautiful.”
“Even though we’re on the lam and running for our lives?” she said with a crooked smile.
“Yes, even with that. I would rather this than the life I was living before I met you and there is no lie in that. Even with death at our door, I’ve never been happier.”
I was shocked to hear the words leave my mouth. I’d never even considered what happiness was, that it was a thing that could still affect me and my life. I thought happiness died with Carmen and I guess it had. But now it was here, it was with her. Despite everything, I was happy and that was fueled by knowing it could only get better. Once we made it out of here, once the coast was clear and we could settle somewhere free from fear, my happiness had no bounds.
“I can’t say I’m happy,” she said and for a brief moment it stung. She went on, trying to smile. “I can’t say it because it’s hard to feel it when I’m worried about so many things. But when I’m with you … when it’s just you and me, like this, I think I am. I just feel so much and I wish we could just enjoy it because I think it would be larger than life. The way I feel about you … it almost overcomes what’s happening. And it’s something I have never ever had.” She looked down at her hands, her cheeks growing pink. There was something so vulnerable about her that took my breath away. “I just want to be born anew, start again. Free from this. I want to do that with you.”
I couldn’t help but smile. I was going to give her that, everything she wanted from me, if it’s the last thing I did.
“We could start by taking this god damn thing off,” I said, bumping my knuckles along the cast.
“How?” she asked, making a face. “Is it safe to go to a doctor here? Maybe they know it’s something I’d do and they’ve got spies out there in all the hospitals.”
I wasn’t too sure Este could arrange such a large operation, especially without Javier knowing, but I couldn’t tell her that.
“I’ve got two hands,” I told her. “They can do a lot of things.”
She smirked at me, her eyes sparkling. “Oh, I know that.” She bit her lip for a moment. “Could you seriously take it off? Don’t you need a saw?”
“Well, since you discovered that little bag of mine, I actually have a saw in there. I could cut halfway and then rip the rest off.”
Actually, I didn’t know that for sure but I was sure going to try.
She was considering this. “And it wouldn’t hurt?”
“I will never hurt you,” I told her.
Minutes later she was lying on the bed underneath a bunch of towels, her cast propped up under a couch cushion. Being as precise as possible, I cut a line through the cast on the inside of her leg, from the top beneath her knee all the way to her toes. The saw worked hard, whining loudly, as plaster dust rose and a sickly burning smell mingled in the air.
She winced the whole time, I’m sure certain I was going to cut right into her bone. But somehow I managed to do a pretty clean job.
“This might feel funny,” I told her as I put the saw to the side and poised my hands at the top of her cast. Near the knee was the closest cut, pretty much all the way through and I hoped it was enough to get a nice tear going throughout the whole thing.
“If you could not re-break my bones, that would be great,” she said, doing an impression of the boss from
Office Space
, only with a Mexican office.
I grinned at her. “Uno, dos, tres,” I said and then tried to tear the cast apart with all my might. My muscles strained, my hands wanted to slip but with a satisfying crack the black cast split open into a puff of dust.
“Oh my god,” she exclaimed as she stared down at her leg. “My leg is so hairy.”
I looked down and smiled. Her leg looked fine. She barely had a tanline. It looked a bit skinny and weak but considering this was the second cast, it hadn’t stunted her all that much. It’s not like she’d been even close to following the doctor’s orders and not used it all. The girl had been running marathons.
“It looks great.” I said, slipping the rest of the cast away. “Sexy, even.”
She snorted caustically. “I’ll give you sexy.” Then she went into the bathroom and ran the shower while I cleaned up the remains of the surgery.
She came out twenty minutes later, smelling like coconut soap and dressed only in a towel.
“Ta-da,” she said, leaning against the bathroom doorway, her hips swung saucily to the side.
“Feel better?” I asked, not bothering to hide my roaming eyes.
“I feel like a new person,” she said earnestly, coming over to me. She grabbed the collar of my shirt and pulled me in, kissing me on the lips. “Thank you.”
I crouched down and ran my hands down over her thighs and calves, both of her legs now bare and smooth and golden. “You’re perfect,” I told her quietly, running my fingers up the inside of her thighs till they met the silky cleft of her pussy. “In every fucking way.”
I tugged at the end of her towel until it fell to the ground, exposing her naked body. I leaned forward onto my knees and grabbed her hard at the back of thighs, where the soft skin cupped into the curves of her ass. She shuffled forward, her hands resting on the top of my head, massaging it slightly. I groaned at that and groaned more as I pressed my face between her legs and ran my tongue up the insides of her thighs. She was still so damp and fragrant from the shower, it was like licking raw coconut.