And he was holding on to me like he wasn’t about to let go.
CHAPTER THREE
Derek
It was probably a big mistake. In fact, I’d been making nothing but big mistakes since the moment I answered my phone in Cancun. I should have listened to my instincts then but this god damn need to escape this life loomed larger than I thought. I never knew how badly I needed that chance and how much money could buy it, until I heard it offered.
But no amount of money, no amount of change, is worth it if you end up dead in the end. If I’ve learned anything from the people I’ve killed, it’s that.
Now, I was certain that whoever had been on the other line, the one giving the orders, wouldn’t let me go so easily. It’s not unheard of to back out of a job. Usually the
sicario
gets to keep the deposit and then fucks off somewhere. Usually that
sicario
is not hunted down but they also aren’t used again.
For sure, I would have a black mark against me. But that was better than ending up dead. The money, the persistence to have this girl killed even after being hit by a car, the heightened stakes – it wasn’t worth it. I’m never told the whole story when it comes to my job. It isn’t my business. I carry out the orders for the right price. But when the orders don’t add up and things don’t make sense, you’re a fool if you don’t get out of it.
As far as I know, I’ve never been on anyone’s hitlist myself. It doesn’t work that way. Revenge is never taken on the assassin but on the one who pays the money. But you still have to watch the ground beneath you for traps.
After the phone call and when I woke up the next day after a fitful sleep, I tried to write everything off. If they wanted the deposit back they could get it – the guy knew my email – but if they didn’t, I was going wipe my hands clear of this. Normally I’d get out of dodge as a second safety measure – switching hotels was the first one – but the last place anyone would expect me to stay would be in Puerto Vallarta.
The truth was, I wanted to see Alana. There was a voice in the back of my head, one that I’ve tried to ignore over the years, that told me if she was valuable dead to someone she might be even more valuable alive to someone. She meant
something
and those were the people I usually had to kill. No one pays a
sicario
to assassinate the worthless.
For the first time in years, I was intrigued, curious, interested in the world before me. I was fascinated by this mystery woman, this flight attendant with the big smile. Why her? Who was she and what had she done?
And so it was probably a big fucking mistake that I slipped a gun down my cargo shorts before slipping on shades and a wifebeater. I looked like your typical tourist down here to party – no one would look twice at me. Then I headed out the door, taking the bus to the hospital I knew she was at.
It’s funny how much I stick out like a sore thumb in Mexico. Though I’m as tanned as a motherfucker after being here for so long, I’m obviously not a local. My Spanish is excellent, though I dumb it down more often than not. It’s better that way. When you speak the language too well you raise questions and even though everyone always noticed me, they never noticed what I was doing. That was the big difference.
On the bus, for example, I was just another tourist trying to go somewhere. People looked, an older gentleman gave me a discerning glare, but then they forgot about me. I was different but not interesting. They would never in a million years know what I really did, how my trigger had time and time again changed the course of the cartels, and as a result, the citizens’ lives.
But though normally I would be cool and calm, this time I wasn’t. On that bus, I was nervous. Just enough to make the palms of my hands damp. I have no fucking idea why I was nervous, except that I was doing something I shouldn’t be.
I didn’t
know
what I was doing. That was a first.
When the bus finally let me off at the hospital, though, I didn’t waste any time. Even without a plan, I knew it was best to keep moving. I waited by the side doors to the building until a nurse went back inside from her smoke break and then followed her in. I got looks in the hall, but again I looked like someone just visiting their sister that got roofied at one of the downtown clubs or broke a leg in a parasailing accident.
One doctor ended up stopping me, asking me what I was doing and after I quickly explained, in English, that I was visiting family, he let me go. When an orderly on the second floor asked me the same, but in Spanish, I answered back in rapid fire English. That was enough for me to confuse him and he let me walk past. My size and strength probably had something to do with it as well.
Finally I found her floor. It was a big hospital and slightly chaotic. I used the disorder – the bustling staff, the patients wheeled to and fro, the opening and shutting of doors – to my advantage as I walked down the hall with purpose. Few stop a man with purpose.
I knew her room because there was a plain-clothed policeman standing outside of it. It wasn’t very subtle but I guess that was the point. To scare away people like myself, people who wanted to harm her.
I still couldn’t be certain what she was to me yet, what direction I would go.
I slowly went past and quickly glanced through her open door when the cop wasn’t looking. It was a fast look but I had been trained to look for the details. I saw her, lying down all bandaged up with a leg in a cast, a nurse talking over her at a doctor. Even though I could only see a bruised cheekbone, she looked to be asleep.
I kept walking.
Over the next week, I kept a close eye on her. Sometimes I was parked in a new rental car across the street, watching the people coming and going. Other times I walked down the hall, stealing glances when I could. Any time someone asked me where I was going, I explained the same story about my sister. To the hospital staff, I was harmless. Frequent, but harmless.
While I watched over her, I toyed with my options. What was I going to do with her? So far there had been no one else around her watching her and waiting. Not like I did. Every day it become more and more obvious that the hit and run was just that – no one else was coming by to finish the job.
Unless that meant that I was still the only one on the job.
Perhaps my clock was still ticking.
The buyer was still waiting.
There was a bit of comfort in that. If they thought I would still go through with it, I was buying her some time. Even though her time consisted of lying in a hospital bed, wondering what happened.
But after a few days, her spirits lifted. I could hear her laughter in the halls sometimes, so bright and infectious, as her friends visited her. It was always the same women. A pensive looking thing with long hair and tall one that was about as subtle as a battering ram.
That was it, though. There was no man – no husband, no boyfriend, no father, no brother. There was no mother. There were those two friends and that was it.
I don’t know why I found myself relating to her, this woman I was supposed to kill, but I was. Maybe I always had. Maybe that’s why I watched and waited, unsure of what to do but feeling like I eventually had to do something.
Then one night I saw her and her friends leave the hospital. I ducked down in the car but they weren’t even paying attention. I was in the dark, just a shadow, and they were giggling as they helped her to a Toyota, having fun. This was the first time I saw Alana fully dressed since the day I was supposed to kill her. Though she was limping and needed help, she looked beautiful.
That was something else that surprised me. The rush of blood to my heart and my dick. Feelings were rare, unwarranted and unwanted. I swallowed them down like acid.
When their car started, I waited until they left the parking lot and then followed. They didn’t get very far. A tacky-looking dive bar a few blocks away pulled them in like a siren.
So, Alana was escaping for a night of drinking. Part of me thought this wasn’t very wise and that her friends should know better, not just because of her injuries but because I was there, I was watching, and I was the man who had been hired to kill her. Didn’t they know just what kind of danger she was in? The fact that they had no clue made the whole thing even more puzzling.
But part of me was impressed. Car accident or no car accident, assassination attempt or no assassination attempt, she wasn’t going to let anything hold her back.
I waited in the car outside for an hour, listening to the rhythmic thumps of the music and the drunken laughter float through the humid air, before I decided I had enough. I wanted to watch her up close. I wanted to get to the bottom of everything and that included her.
Once in the bar, I ordered a beer and quickly surveyed the room. It was a riotous mess of people having fun in ways I never really could. Once upon a time, when I was eighteen, before I had been deployed, before I lost everything again and again, I had the same sense of naivety and immortality, like the world really wasn’t that bad and it was waiting at my feet. I laughed at all my options. Now I was older, I knew the truth. There were no options. There never was.
The world was bad.
Alana and her friends had secured a table and were drinking, laughing, looking like everyone else. I tried to study her as subtly as I could but from the way she kept looking around the room, I was too afraid to get caught. The thing was, she wasn’t looking around, eyeing people as if they meant to harm her. She was sizing up the men like she wanted to eat them for dinner.
Eventually I removed myself from the bar and went to hide in the shadows. It was safer this way, even though a small part of me was tempted to see her face when she saw me. I knew the affect I had on most women. That’s not even my ego talking, that’s just fact. I don’t really take a lot of pleasure in the fact that women seem to gravitate toward me. Being good-looking meant nothing. They just want a hard fuck and big muscles. They wouldn’t feel the same way if they got to know me.
The more I stared at Alana, the more I was struck by how familiar she looked. I knew that was nothing to ignore – there was a chance that I’d seen her somewhere before. But I couldn’t place when or where. Though she looked familiar, something about her amber eyes or her smile, which alternated between fun and feminine carnality, she possessed this kind of life to her that I know would have made a permanent impression on me if we had happened to have met before.
It was later in the night when she got up to use the washroom. Her friend had to help her navigate the rowdy crowd and before I knew what I was doing, I was walking after them. I waited by the men’s washroom, staring at my phone, pretending to be occupied.
All I could think about was
why
? Why was I doing this? Why didn’t I just get the fuck away and go live out the rest of my life? Why was I here? The gun burned in my pocket but I already knew I wasn’t going to use it on her.
Then, there was movement. I looked up to see her come out of the washroom, alone, and lean back against the wall. She shut her eyes and seemed to wince. Time seemed to stretch as we both stood in this dirty hallway. If she looked my way she would catch me staring at her.
Do it
, I thought.
Look.
But she didn’t. She seemed like she was in pain and all the carefree vestiges on her face slipped away like water. Now she was the accident victim, broken and bruised. Vulnerable.
It was almost enough to make me move toward her. I don’t know what I’d say, if I’d even say anything. I just wondered if I could tell who she was by her looking at me, if her gaze would show me why this all happened. Why had I been sent to kill her.
I barely noticed the two douchebags who barged out of the men’s bathroom, bumping against the walls as they passed me, slurring and laughing. I could see they were about to collide with Alana and before I knew what I was really doing, I was right there beside her. One guy’s shoulder collided with hers and she let out a yelp of pain as she fell forward.
My instincts were quick and probably wrong.
I grabbed hold of her arm and then quickly brought her up toward me and from the moment she looked into my eyes, hers wide with shock and pain, I could tell who she was.
A wildcat.
I swallowed hard and immediately forgot about wanting to ram my fists through the two drunk boys’ heads. She was staring at me so intently that I knew I could never fade into the background after this. I could never observe her from a distance again. I could never watch from the shadows. From now on, this all had to be out in the open.
“Thank you,” she said to me in perfect English, her voice lightly accented. I guess it came with the territory of being a flight attendant.
“You’re welcome,” I said, immediately relaxing into my role. Without fail, this was the role I’d always fall back in. Dumb tourist jock, Derrin Calway.
However I failed to relax my fingers. I slowly released them from her arm before I made her uncomfortable.
From the slight pout to her lips, I could have sworn she wanted my hands to stay where they were.
A long, heavy moment passed between us as we stared at each other. I tried to take her all in – her hair as it stuck in places to her damp forehead, the faint bruising still evident around her eyes, the stiff way she held her battered limbs, the soft swell of her cleavage – not knowing if I would get the chance again.
Then the door to the bathroom swung open and the tall friend came out. “What a mess in there,” the woman said to Alana in Spanish. When she didn’t get Alana’s attention, her eyes swung over to me.
“Who is this?” she asked, an edge of suspicion to her voice. That actually made me feel relieved. Alana needed protective friends.
“I don’t know,” Alana mumbled briefly in English. She gave me a crooked smile. “Who are you?”
I tried on an easy grin but I wasn’t sure if it was sitting right. I wasn’t used to smiling. “Derrin Calway,” I told her, extending my hand.