“Take the next exit,” she said determinedly. “If someone is following us, we don’t want to lead them straight to your apartment.”
Jesus. So much for thinking all my paranoia was put past me.
Luz put her signal on for the next exit, one that led to an outdoor market permanently set-up in a parking lot. We both held our breath as the car turned off and soon after the truck followed.
Shit. Shit. Shit.
We exchanged a nervous glance.
“It’s going to be fine,” she told me, though she didn’t look like she believed it. For once I found myself wishing I had a gun. I’d always told myself the minute I had one was the minute I was closer to become my brother, but considering everything, it made a lot of sense. Maybe Derrin knew something about them and could help me out. He was a Canadian but he had been in the army, so he at least knew how to handle one.
Luz kept driving past the market stalls and finally pulled into a parking spot right beside a bunch of other people. Safety in numbers and all that.
We waited, still as ice and with baited breath as the truck slowly crept past us. There was some older man driving – Mexican – with a thick mustache but no real discernable features. He didn’t even look our way and kept driving until he parked further down.
I let out the largest puff of air and nearly laughed from relief. “Luz, you are crazy.”
“You thought he was following us too!”
“Only because you told me. Besides he was following us but not in the way you thought.” I shook my head and sank further into the seat, my heart beat slowing. “I think I’ve had enough excitement for one day.”
“Agreed,” Luz said. She started the car and we drove back onto the highway. We never saw the white truck again.
CHAPTER SIX
Derek
Her name was Carmen. She had been the love of my life.
When I first came to Mexico, all those years ago, I wasn’t sure what I was looking for. I had grown disillusioned with the American government, destroyed by the war. My leg still hurt from the explosion in Afghanistan and I hurt somewhere deep inside. It was so needless, so senseless. I had lost too much, we all had, over something that was never meant for our benefit, just to pad the pockets of those in the country that mattered most. I’d seen villages burned, young children dead and torn up on the streets, parents wailing, grandparents dying. All for nothing, not really.
The day the Humvee blew up was the day that everything changed. I guess that’s the sort of day that should change a person. I was one of the lucky ones – one of my buddies lost both his legs, another had half his body burned to a gruesome crisp. But I would never consider myself lucky because then I was burdened with survivor guilt. More than that, I was burdened with guilt, pure and simple.
When I returned home to Minnesota and finally healed up, I said goodbye to an ice hockey career – or at least the promise of one – I said good bye to friends and family. Both of those were easy. My father, a cruel, terrible man, had died while I was overseas. My mother, weak and helpless, couldn’t seem to exist without his cruelty. She barely noticed I was gone.
As for my friends, they’d all pulled away once they got to know the new me. I barely spoke. I stopped drinking with them, going out, finding chicks, playing hockey. It was all over. I just worked out and hated every single minute I had to be a veteran, a survivor, a pawn.
One day something in me snapped. I’m not sure what it was, maybe someone cut me off driving or perhaps I saw an advertisement for Mexico somewhere. But the next morning my bags were packed. I got in my car and drove for the border.
It took days to get there and once I crossed over through Texas, time seemed to stop. Though I would never completely fade into the background, there was anonymity here that seemed to shake loose what little soul I had left. I felt free from everything – who I was, where I came from, the baggage I carried.
For a year I bounced around from place to place. I started with the resort towns on the Caribbean side before heading to the ones on the Pacific side. Veracruz, Cancun, Tulum, Mazatlan, Puerto Vallarta, Acapulco. When I got tired of the tourists, I moved inland and stayed in different cities, then towns, then villages. Each place had something special about it and in each place I met people who seemed to think I was some use to them.
It wasn’t until I started running out of money that I found myself reaching for these people. It was also then when I met Carmen.
I was in a town just south of Manzanillo. It was a small resort-town, a bit down at its heels but popular with Mexican tourists, which suited me just fine. I’d met a man once called Carlos and, of all the people I’d met, he not only was the most genuine but also the most ambitious. Though cordial and generous, he was also a realist and made things happen. He had connections – none of which he held lightly – and success in his sights.
When I first met him I was sitting a bar in a rustic but authentic establishment, sipping tequila, which the bartender gave me on the house for no real reason, and reading a book. Some John Grisham thriller, something to pass the time. I read a lot that first year in Mexico.
Carlos was there with two buddies of his, conducting business in the corner. At least I assumed it was business because when I would look over there, their faces weren’t laughing and no one except Carlos was touching their drinks.
Suddenly there was a yelp and a fight broke out. Before I knew what I was doing, I was in the middle of it, holding one man back, the man who sneered like a dog and seemed hell-bent on ripping Carlos’s face off with his own veneers.
I don’t know why I got involved – instinct I guess. But after the two gentlemen were escorted out of the bar, Carlos bought me a drink. He wanted to know where I was from, what I was doing there. He wanted to know where I learned to move like that, if I knew how to handle a gun, if I knew how to fight.
I didn’t tell him much beyond the fact that I had been in the American military. He seemed happy with that. He said there was a lot of work here for someone like me, and then he gave me his card, patted me on the back, and left.
I’d kept in touch with him via email after that. Just a few messages here and there. Advice. Where I should go next. Every time he told me I should look him up if I’m in the area. And sometimes his area moved around too.
One day, I was out of money and in the same place that he was.
We met up at a bar. A casual deal was made. I’d accompany him on a few transactions, sort of a bodyguard. It was easy work and he paid me well. He trusted me and I trusted him.
But soon I did more than just stand around and give people the stink-eye. I started doing him favors. Nothing terrible. But I knew Carlos was a drug lord and whatever package I was delivering, dropping off, handing over, to numerous nondescript people either contained drugs, weapons, money, instructions or a combination of the four.
And still I did my job.
And when I discovered Carlos’s sister was moving back to town and I first laid my eyes on Carmen Hernandez, I realized I had more than this job keeping me in Mexico.
I fell in love and fell in love hard. I don’t know if I ever picked myself off the ground.
We married. We made plans. We talked babies.
We had a blissful year together.
And then she was dead.
And I lost the last parts of me that were human.
***
Alana Bernal was doing something to me and I wasn’t sure if I liked it. Actually, if I was being honest with myself, I was loving it but that reaction in itself spurred on one of the opposite nature. I wasn’t used to being excited, to being intrigued, to feeling remotely good. I was used to the cold dead inside of me, to the life of monotony and that growing numbness that reached into everything I did.
Change was frightening. Change made you weak. And I didn’t want any part of it.
But I wanted part of her. That was a problem.
Of course, when I met her for coffee yesterday, I had to act like I hadn’t been following her for days. It wasn’t so much that I was interested in what she was doing with her time the moment she was discharged from the hospital – because let’s face it, I was – but that I wanted to make sure that I hadn’t been replaced.
Thankfully, from watching her apartment I came to the same conclusion as I had when watching the hospital. There was no one else still, only me. It was wishful thinking that whoever ordered her assassination had just forgotten about her. They hadn’t. Not for the price on her head. They were just biding their time. But there was no one else on the job, not that I could see.
I told myself that’s why I was hanging around, that I was watching out for her. And I was. I was curious and after talking to her over coffee, I was even more confused as to what she could have done in her life to warrant such a thing. Such death. Such money.
As a result, I was more or less honest with her questions, hoping that if I opened up a bit she would do the same for me. So far though, that didn’t seem to be the case.
When she invited me back to her place afterward, my first thought was to obviously say yes. All while my mind was trying to figure out her mystery, my body was responding to her gorgeous face and slim limbs like any hot-blooded male would. Plus there was the chance at some answers, as well as sex, if I got a chance to look at her surroundings.
But I couldn’t do it. My instincts were telling to wait, till I was in control of the situation. At her place, there were too many variables. In my hotel room, we were safe.
My plan was pretty simple. I didn’t need to impress her, so it seemed, but a little wining and dining wouldn’t hurt. The emphasis would be on the wining. I know it’s pretty backwoods to get information out of someone by getting them drunk – I’ve done a hell of a lot worse to get what I needed – but it would still be affective.
And, because of the company, somewhat fun.
I couldn’t remember the last time fun had ever entered the picture.
I had called Alana in the morning, telling her our reservation at Coconut Joes was at seven and that the cab and I would come get her at six. I thought about using the new rental car I just picked up but thought better of it. I’d already driven past her place too many times in it.
Even the sound of her voice over the line – how buoyant it was, despite all the shit and pain she still had to be going through – did something peculiar to me. I tried not to dwell on it but it was there, lodged in my chest and growing. I wondered if she was becoming more than a curiosity to me, a mystery to unsolved. I wondered if she was someone I was actually starting to care for.
Was it possible to care for someone you didn’t know?
God, I hoped not.
The hotel called up the cab and made sure the driver agreed on the price and the return trip before we started out – cabbies were known for ripping you off and Alana didn’t live near the downtown area – and soon I was knocking at the door of her first floor apartment.
That was one thing I didn’t like about her living situation. Though the apartment building was fairly new, Mission-style with white paint and a red-tiled roof, her apartment was ground floor, opening to a small gravel yard that you accessed through an iron-wrought gate. There were bars on her windows, which was the norm here, but that didn’t mean it was hard to get inside. All the apartments also seemed to back into an inner courtyard, probably with a pool, which meant there might be another door and easy access point into her place. It never slipped my mind that while I had been watching the front, someone could have been slipping through the back.
It was taking her awhile to get to the door, so I tried to look in through her barred windows, to get an idea up close without seeing too suspicious about it. But when the door flung open, I was caught somewhat red-handed.
“Hola,” she said, leaning against the doorframe. “Wasn’t sure if I was home?”
She looked absolutely stunning in a white halter neck dress that showed off her perfect breasts, thin waist and full thighs. I barely even noticed her leg and arm in their casts.
“Just noticing your bars on the windows,” I said evenly. I frowned. “Is this a bad neighborhood?”
She smiled at me like I was a little boy. “It’s not the best but it’s not the worst. Most places worth anything have bars. Mexico has more crime than you would think.”
I nodded not letting on what I knew. “Well then it’s good you’re well-protected.”
“Yup,” she said, placing her clutch purse under one arm and reaching for something against the wall. I heard the electronic beep of buttons being pressed. “I’m all alarmed here. Just in case.”
I looked over her shoulder to the back of the apartment but it looked like there was no entry from the back. That gave me a bit of peace.
I took her arm and most of her weight and helped her out of her small yard and to the waiting cab. She smelled like flowers and hot sunshine and I was tempted to kiss her bare shoulders and see if they tasted like the tropics. As usual, though, I brushed the urges away and kept myself in control.
Once in the back of the cab, she was sitting with her thigh flush against mine. I was somewhat dressed up – dark jeans, white and blue pinstriped dress shirt – and yet I could feel her heat through my clothing. That and her smell and the way her hair fell across her face, highlighting the coy glimpses of her eyes and smile, was driving me borderline insane. Though we made small chat throughout the ride, my mind was elsewhere, concentrating on keeping that well-earned control I had. I had to focus on the task at hand, which of course was her. But not in that way. I needed in deep, for her own safety and my own sanity.
It took a long time to finally get to the restaurant, located in the old town of Puerto Vallarta, despite the driver cutting everyone off along the way. You either drove aggressively around here or you didn’t drive at all.
“Thank you,” she said to me as I took her arm and helped her out of the cab. When she straightened up she looked at the place and made an impressed face. “Wow. You know, I’ve never been here before and I’ve lived in PV for a long time.”