“Luisa?” she asked, craning her head away to look at me with wide eyes. “Luisa loves Javier. I know this. She would never go for Esteban.”
“I’m not saying that she would. But it looked like that might be the next step. Take out the sister, take over the wife, take over the cartel.”
“But why me?”
“Because,” I told her gravely, “whether you believe it or not, you mean more to your brother than you think. The man I saw today was a destroyed man.”
She closed her eyes and shook her head slightly. “I can’t stand him to feel that way, to think that I’m dead.”
“But it’s the only way. You said so yourself.”
“I know,” she said, her voice choked up. “I know I did and it’s true. If I show my face, if I even give him a hint that I’m still alive, I’ll never be free. Not as long as Esteban is in the picture. I can’t risk it. I can’t risk us. What we might have.”
“What we
will
have,” I corrected her.
There was a pause and then she asked, quieter now, “And Luz and Dominga?”
I squeezed her to me. “They were there. They were taking it pretty hard.”
She sniffed and a tear rolled down her cheek before she buried her head back against me. “They were everything to me. I can’t imagine how they must be feeling.”
“I know,” I said.
“It doesn’t seem fair. To just let people hurt when they don’t have to.”
“It’s not fair. And it’s not fair that you have to leave them too. But I would rather you be alive, living a life unfair than be dead and not living at all.”
“Maybe one day I can let them know the truth.”
“Maybe,” I said. “Until that day comes though, they must believe that the body in the coffin is you.”
“Whose body is it anyway?”
“I’m not sure,” I admitted. “Someone else. One of the prostitutes on the boat, I’m guessing. Whoever the body is though, it fooled the police.”
And it had fooled me. When the boat exploded and I saw Esteban disappear in the distance, I really thought Alana was dead. There was no way she would have survived that and it was all my fault. I was the one who put the bombs there. I had let my emotions get in the way and in a moment of weakness, I messed up. I should have made sure Esteban was dead before I did anything else. I still can’t believe I didn’t.
I lay back on the zodiac for some time as the debris rained down on me and smoke and flames filled the air. I was so close to jumping off and letting myself sinking to the bottom of the sea with her. So damn close to dying.
But then, in the middle of the cold, dark night, something bumped into the boat repeatedly and when I finally found the strength to see who it was, I discovered Alana, hanging onto a life ring in a state of semi-consciousness. She had listened to me in the end. She made sure she had something that floated to hold onto and then she jumped before the boat exploded.
It was still a miracle but it was one I would gladly believe in.
“And Esteban escaped into the night, wiping his hands clean of everything,” she said bitterly.
“Yes, he did. But so did we.”
“Our hands aren’t clean.”
“No,” I smoothed my palm over her head. “But in time they will be.”
That night she fell asleep in my arms as Anna Bardem. When we woke up the next morning to a beautiful sunny day, we started our new life together.
EPILOGUE
Utila, Honduras – one year later
Alana (Anna)
It’s funny growing up in a place like La Cruz or Puerto Vallarta, a land of sand and palm trees, margaritas and blue waves. It’s where so many people come to vacation, to forget their troubles, their cares, their everyday lives. It’s paradise.
But it’s never been my paradise. Home never really is. At least, that’s what I had thought. When you have the fucked up childhood that I had, home becomes a scary place and paradise has no business mixing with fear. While tourists – whether they be Americans, Canadians, even Mexicans – came to Puerto Vallarta and the Bay of Banderas to relax and have fun, I lived their paradise like I was trapped in a cage. A cage built of violence and terror and that looming threat that at any minute, I will be taken from this world in a horrific way, just as it happened to my family.
Throughout all that though, the years of promoting paradise through Aeromexico, or watching foreigners get drunk on the sandy beaches, I always dreamed of my own slice of heaven. It wouldn’t look like Mexico though. It would never be Mexico.
I had finally found it.
We
had finally found it.
After my fake funeral, Derek and I (I still can’t call him Dalton), headed through Guatemala, up to Belize for a bit and down through Honduras. We were thinking we would head to Costa Rica or Panama, perhaps even set our sights on Chile. We were looking for a place we could be safe, free, and live a long and happy life, one that didn’t rely on large sums of money or guns or lies.
We really meant to keep going but as we were going through Honduras – a place where Derek had been before – checking out the beaches, we stumbled across a place that could only be called paradise.
The tiny island of Utila.
There, with its talcum powder beaches, golf-cart transportation, tiny towns and a vibrant mix of Spanish and English, Derek and I were able to put down roots, to find ourselves.
With the money Derek had saved in his account, we bought a large beach house on half an acre. It’s waterfront with its own dock where we have a fishing boat. On weekends we use it to go diving – I’m certified now and of course Derek always was – and on fishing trips. In the evenings we grill up the fish on our deck and watch the sunset bloom on the horizon. Sometimes we even have friends over too – it’s easy to make them in a place where everyone is smiling.
During the week, we both have jobs. I work as a barista of sorts at a local café and juice bar. It’s really low-key and most of the week it’s just me by myself. I get paid in cash and I’m often tipped quite well. It’s nice honest work and a hell of a lot easier than being a flight attendant.
Derek works as personal trainer at one of the gyms. Sometimes he drives our golf cart around the island – gas is expensive, roads are narrow, cars are rare – and trains people at their homes. He likes his job a lot. I can see it in his face when he comes home, the feeling that he helped someone today instead of, well, murdering someone.
Of course, no one here knows who we are, what we did. The past is behind us, hidden beneath many layers I hope no one ever uncovers. It’s not easy to forget the life I led. I miss Luz and Dominga dearly and often spend my nights staring at the star-spilled sky, wishing they could hear my thoughts, saying a little prayer for them. Maybe, somehow, they know I’m still alive.
I miss my brother too. But more than that, I feel sorry for him. It sounds silly to want to protect someone like him but I feel like someone has to. He’s suffering, I know it, from my death and he’s probably leaning on all the wrong people. But Javier has wronged so many people in his lifetime, perhaps this is just the way the world works. It’s unfair but sometimes it can still be just.
Derek is almost like a different man. Almost. He still gets moody every now and then, becomes quiet and withdrawn. I see this spark in his eyes and they harden, become menacing. I know then to leave him alone. He’s atoning for his sins. He’s thinking of the wife he once lost because of the violence that controlled him. He’s thinking about the war and the things he saw and how futile it was to think he could ever escape it.
But he did escape it. He broke that life, that cycle. He’s still a tough man and he can seem emotionless even when I know he’s not, but he’s a better man.
He’s my man. I love him and he loves me. Without a doubt, that man loves me.
“How was your week?” Alison asked me.
I looked over at her, snapping out of my wayward thoughts. We were sitting on the roof deck of our house, watching yet another unbelievable sunset as the sun slipped in an orange and pink path toward the distant shoreline of mainland Honduras.
Alison was one of the first people we’d met on the island. Actually, she was the realtor who sold us the beach house and got us a screaming deal. Though she and her partner Dwayne were a bit older than us, we fast became good friends. Dwayne and Derek often played golf together, although Derek usually returned from those games embarrassed. For a man with a lot of steely reserve, he seemed to lose his shit when he played golf. I found it adorable.
“It was good, you know, the usual,” I told her with a smile, reaching for my wine. Derek and Dwayne were downstairs in the kitchen, preparing some fish we’d caught yesterday.
She looked pleased, her freckly cheeks beaming at me, as if she’d been part of our integration. In some ways she had – aside from the house, she’d introduced us to a circle of friends who were fun and easy-going, embracing the island lifestyle.
“I’m so glad, Anna,” she said. I still found it jarring every time someone called me by my fake name, but at least I was good at hiding it. It hadn’t been in the same with Derek. After I’d called him that a few times last year, we decided to just tell everyone that Derek was his middle name and that he was used to that. It’s not that Derek Conway really existed out there in any form except for an ex-military solider who went off the grid.
At least, that’s what we hoped.
Soon, Derek and Dwayne brought up the platters of steamed fish with lemon dressing, Caribbean rice and sautéed vegetables that I picked from our garden out front. Another bottle of wine was uncorked. Local acoustic music from the bar down the street wafted up over the azaleas and palm trees, catching a ride on the sea breeze.
This was paradise. I was home.
Later that night, Derek and I settled into bed. Well, we didn’t so much settle as collapse, drunk and exhausted. The two of us had two much wine at dinner, which, after our guests left, led to hot monkey sex in the kitchen, on the couch, in the shower, before we finally succumbed, wet but sated, to sleep.
It must have been the middle of the night – the moon was working its way across the sky and filtering in through the window in silver beams – when I heard the noise. Despite my aching head, I stiffened immediately, my senses flaring up. Derek was already out of bed and by the door. In the moonlight I could see the gun in his hand.
He motioned for me to stay put, stay quiet, but I couldn’t. I never could. As he eased our bedroom door open and eyed the dark hallway, I quietly crept out of bed, holding my breath, afraid that the hardwood floors would creak.
While he stealthily entered the hallway, I brought out my own gun from the bottom dresser drawer. I hadn’t looked at it since I put it there, the day we moved in. There hadn’t been a need.
Now, I was afraid that our past had finally come for us. We were so careful but someone else was probably even more so. We had really started to believe that we left all of that behind, that the people who we were couldn’t touch us anymore.
It was worth it, though. If I hadn’t touched the gun for a year, that meant it was worth it. Paradise, Derek, freedom – they were worth everything.
I cautiously followed Derek out the door, seeing him go down the stairs at the end. We had made a plan, an escape route, if things went terribly wrong one day. I was to head to the office at the end of the hall way and go through the sliding glass doors that lead to the deck. From there I could go up toward the roof, or down toward the ground.
But even though it was the plan, I couldn’t go. I couldn’t stand the thought of leaving Derek behind. I knew he could more than take care of himself but even then, dark, horrific thoughts teased at me. I could almost hear a gunshot going off, imagining Derek gunned down, his life seeping out through his blood while I escaped to freedom. That didn’t seem fair and my life has had its own share of injustice.
So I followed him down the teak stairs, even though he was shooting me a hard, intimidating look over his shoulder, telling me to stay put. I wasn’t listening.
Now that we were on the main floor, the sound had stopped. Upstairs in the bedroom, it sounded like someone trying to open a door, or perhaps someone accidently banging into something. There was nothing now.
Then the motion detector outside went on near the backdoor, which looks onto the beach. If anyone were to break in, there was no fence or real property lines in the back to deter them. Plus it was darker back there, just the garden, sand and sea, and no one to witness a thing.
I looked at Derek, the cold light showcasing the hard, masculine planes of his face as he edged toward the back door, his hand out for the handle. I wanted to yell out for him, to tell him not to open it, to keep us locked in our ignorance, but my voice choked in my throat.
It all happened so fast. Derek took in a deep breath and then the door flew open and he jumped out in a low crouch, gun drawn, eyes focused dead ahead.
There was a terrible thud just out of reach, like something hit the side of the house and then a hoarse, vibrating cry that reminded me of a cornered animal, or a dying donkey.
Derek froze, not pulling the trigger. Then his face contorted in shock before breaking into a smile. What the hell?
“Alana,” he said, turning to look at me.
I was already at the door and stepping out beside him.
On the back patio there were two donkeys. One of them was looking mildly surprised at our intrusion, the other one was busy eating out of the compost bin they knocked over.
Donkeys. Motherfucking donkeys.
I looked at Derek with wide eyes.
We both burst out laughing.
Not just the giggles, but full-on gut-bursting laughs that were sure to wake the neighbors. We were keeled over, holding our stomachs, our faces growing red, tears streaming down our cheeks. I nearly fell over.
Meanwhile, the donkeys paid us no attention and went back to eating and occasionally stomping their hooves on the deck.
Derek came over to me, his smile as big as the moon, and pulled me into his arms.
“Talk about paranoid,” he said, kissing the top of my head. He let out another laugh. “In all my years, I’ve never pulled a gun on a donkey before.”