My god he was a fine man. Even now, or maybe even more so, he was everything I’d ever wanted. Each sculpted muscle on his back, from the dimples near his waistband to the ripples that planed off his spine, spoke of what a tireless, tough, well-oiled machine he was. He was so big, so strong, and my protector. But it never made the fear go completely away because when it came down to it, he was an ex-soldier. He wasn’t Rambo. He wasn’t even David Caruso. He was a Canadian with some muscles, training and I suppose a lot of luck. He had determination and he was much, much smarter than his appearance led you on to believe. But he wasn’t part of the cartels. He didn’t know this game or the way things worked, as much as he thought he did.
He was so confident he knew how things were going to go that I started to believe him too. But unless there was something about him that I didn’t know, I had to keep my guard up. I couldn’t rely on him for everything. I had to go on what I knew.
He didn’t know my brother at all, just from what he had heard on the news. And while drug lords usually couldn’t be trusted, it didn’t mean they were all bad people. Javier was bad – he didn’t get to where he was without being so – but he wasn’t as bad as people thought. He’d certainly never hurt me, let alone put me in jeopardy. Me and Marguerite were all he had left and though I hadn’t talked to him a lot lately – he seemed to be increasingly busy, which I understood, considering – we had a good relationship. I helped him out when he needed it and he helped me financially when I did.
And now, I had no doubt he would come through when my life was on the line.
I was thinking that and blinking the fuzzy sleep out of my eyes, while Derrin took what was in his hands, the Ace bandage, and began to wrap it around his stomach. Third pass around, he slipped a small handgun in there and then wrapped it again, securing it tight.
When he turned around he wasn’t surprised to see me staring at him. I was starting to think he had eyes at the back of his head.
“What’s the plan?” I asked, not wanting to mention the gun. That gun came in handy.
He slipped on a t-shirt, poured a cup of tar-like coffee in a styrofoam cup and handed it to me before sitting on the side of the bed. I drew my knees up to my chest and took a sip.
Disgusting. I loved coffee but I wasn’t about to drink motor oil. I handed it back to him, making a face.
He held in his hands but didn’t drink it and looked ahead at a spot on the wall, totally focused.
“We’ll check out of here and go up the road for a bit. Find a big public area, like a mall. Find a payphone there and tell him that you need to meet him right where you are at a certain time. Where does he live?”
“About three hours from here. It’s remote but he can get here faster than that. I think he has a helicopter now.”
He took in this information. “Okay. We’ll give him three hours. Then we find another hotel. Check in, under my name only again, and wait there. With two hours left, we split up. I’ll be watching you the whole time.”
I rubbed my lips together feeling so damn nervous. “Then what?”
“What?”
“What happens to me?”
“I don’t know. I guess that depends what you’re going to ask of him. Do you want to walk off with him, to his compound? Do you seriously believe you’ll be safe there?”
“Of course I’ll be safe there. I’d have to be. He’s safe there.”
“Yes,” he said with a nod. “It would seem.”
“He has people everywhere protecting him, the whole state is behind him. Most of the other states too. He practically owns half of the country. I’ll be safe with him.”
Derrin didn’t look convinced but he sighed. “You’re a free woman. I’ll do whatever you want me to do as long as you’re certain it needs to be done. But the question is, do you want to go with him?”
I pursed my lips and reached back for the coffee. Maybe I did need a hit of that stuff.
Twenty minutes later we were on the road and looking for the perfect meeting place. I felt somewhat safe. No one was following us – in reality, how could they? We had been so careful. Plus not only did Derrin have the gun strapped to his waist, he also had a knife in boot and another gun strapped around his leg in a holster.
Yet for all his guns, he didn’t seem to be enjoying himself. This wasn’t a cops and robbers game to him. It wasn’t a game at all. He took this all very, very seriously. As I guess one should when you were being trailed by Mexican assassins. Again I had that feeling that was far more to Derrin’s story than I knew and I wondered if the truth would ever come out. I wondered if I wanted it to.
While we searched for big, public spaces through the dry countryside and graveyards of empty roadside stores, I thought about what I would do. If Javier offered me protection, I would have to go. But that didn’t mean I wanted to. To be honest, I didn’t at all. Being at his compound wouldn’t make me feel safe, even if I was safe. All those bad, bad men walking around, owning the place. I’m sure they would treat me with false respect but I’d be the first one thrown under a bus. I could never sleep knowing who those men were, what they orchestrated. Though I’d never been to Javier’s place, I had heard the rumors, of the twisted doctor and the torture shed in the back. Prostitutes that were killed in the house after sex or shot for fun.
Now Javier was married – a quick ceremony somewhere that I hadn’t been invited to – but I wasn’t too sure that having a woman around was changing him for the better. If anything, I think he was making her worse.
I guess I’d find out soon, if Javier wanted anything to do with me at all.
And, of course, at the heart of it, I didn’t want to leave Derrin behind. Who knows how long I’d have to hide out, the direction that my life would take. I wanted my life to take whatever direction Derrin was heading in.
I was falling in love with this man. Fast and hard, just the way he lived and fucked. I wondered if he would love the same way too.
I wanted to be the woman that healed him.
“Bingo,” Derrin said, smacking the dashboard.
I looked to the left and saw a giant, brand new Wal-Mart on the side of the road. The parking lot was packed and there were a few half-finished office buildings and shops flanking it.
“Wal-Mart?” I said incredulously. “You think Javier is going to come meet me in a Wal-Mart?”
Derrin grinned beautifully. “He’ll have no choice.”
Soon I was at a payphone located just outside the washrooms inside. Wal-Mart was a living hell full of bad lighting, sad faces and screaming children. We had only started getting them everywhere in Mexico a few years ago, but it’s like all the American stereotypes followed them down here. This was one of the supercenters that had a McDonald’s in it and a produce section that pissed off all our farmers. It reeked like everything I hated.
I dialed Javier’s number, not knowing if he would pick up. He wouldn’t recognize the number and my own phone had been in my bag when we drove into the ocean. It was now somewhere, lost at sea.
“Hello?” someone answered. It wasn’t Javier. Could I have gotten the wrong number? He always answers his cell. Unless he had his number changed recently, which was possible.
“Uh, hello. Is Javier there?”
“Who is this?” asked the voice, amused. It didn’t seem familiar to me.
I didn’t want to tell him anything yet. “Is he there? Is this his phone?”
“I’ll tell you what you want to know once you tell me who you are.”
“If Javier is there just tell him it’s his sister.”
Silence. Was it possible this person didn’t know he had sisters?
“Hello?” I repeated.
“What’s your name?” he asked slowly.
“Alana Bernal.”
“I see. And you say you’re his sister, hey?”
“Last I checked,” I said, getting annoyed now.
“Interesting. Can you hold on a moment?”
“What’s
your name?” I quickly asked.
“Please hold.” I could hear muffled speaking like a hand was going over a receiver.
After a long minute, Javier answered. “Alana?”
I breathed out a sigh of relief and put my hand against my forehead. “Javier. Thank god.”
“Where are you calling from? This isn’t your number.” He sounded ruffled. He usually sounded as cool as a cucumber.
“Sorry,” I told him. “I didn’t have a choice. My phone is gone. I’m calling from a payphone.”
“Where?” he asked.
“I don’t know,” I said. “Outside of Durango I think.”
“What the hell are you doing there?”
“I’m in trouble.”
For a moment I thought he was going to ask me what I did, maybe scold me for some money problem. “I saw something in the news,” he said carefully. “Gunshots in Puerto Vallarta.”
I took in a deep breath. “The gun shots were for me.”
I heard him inhale sharply. “Are you sure?”
“Yes. We were walking through the square-”
“Who is we?”
“Me and my boyfriend,” I said, on the spot. I didn’t know what else to call Derrin and I knew if I made him sound more casual than that, Javier would grill me about it.
“Boyfriend? What boyfriend? What’s his name?”
“Derrin.”
“What the hell kind of name is that?”
“He’s Canadian.”
“Oh, that figures. Go on.”
“We were walking through the square. Someone in the clocktower took a shot at me. We ran, got on a motorbike and ended up outrunning them.”
He didn’t say anything for a moment. “Alana, Alana, Alana … if you what you’re saying is true, you don’t just outrun someone who is trying to kill you. Not here. Not you. That’s impossible.”
“We outran them,” I said, raising my voice. “Look, we got away.”
“Just like that?”
“Yes. We got back to the hotel room, packed up our shit and fled.”
I heard him groan to himself.
“What?” I asked. “What is it? What do I do?”
“What do you do?”
“Javier … people are after me. The same people no doubt who murdered Beatriz.”
His voice grew cold. “That was Travis Raines. He is dead.”
“And there are others just like him trying to teach you the same message. I wasn’t hit by a car by accident, that had to be on purpose. And now there were actual bullets aimed for my head.”
“Are you sure they weren’t for the Canadian? He does have a stupid name.”
“Javier, please,” I begged him, my voice cracking. “Help me.”
He exhaled hard. “Fine. Where should I meet you?”
“Where?” I asked. “Can’t I go where you are?”
“No. But I’ll tell you where we can meet.”
I didn’t expect this. I had to think fast.
“No, I’ll tell you where,” I said, trying to sound strong. “I’m safe here. You’re coming to me. I’m at a Wal-Mart.”
“Wal-Mart?” he asked incredulously.
“Yes.”
He sounded like he choked on something. “You can’t be serious.”
I could feel my face going red. I was fed up, I didn’t care who he was. He was still my brother. “I am serious. Come to the Wal-Mart outside of Durango or wherever you manage to trace this call to. I’ll be sitting on the corner of a water fountain between Wal-Mart and an office building. Bring Luisa.”
“Luisa, why?”
“I want to talk to her too.”
I hung up the phone before he could protest anymore and then left the madness of the store. As I took the stairs down to the parking garage underneath the main lot, I grumbled to myself. After everything that happened – the accident, the fact that he heard about the gunshots on the news – he still wasn’t acting like this was a big deal. I had almost died, several times. Why was that so hard for him to believe? Why didn’t he care?”
I walked through the garage, which was only half-filled with cars since most people had parked up top, and found the Camry. Derrin was in the driver’s seat, his face taught. His eyes quickly flew to me and he leaned over to open the passenger door.
“How did it go?” he asked as I sat down and closed the door after me.
“It could have gone better,” I said, trying to not sound as resentful as I felt. In a petty way, I didn’t want Derrin to think he was right about him.
He was watching me, his eyes unreadable yet they seemed to be reading me. “Tell me what he said.”
“Well, first of all he didn’t answer, it was some other guy. From the way he questioned me, it was like he didn’t know I existed.”
This piqued Derrin’s interest. “Is that so? Did you get his name?”
“He wouldn’t say.”
“But he got yours.”
“Yes.”
“Javier was probably trying to protect you and Marguerite, keep you a secret.”
“Well I kind of went and messed that all up didn’t I?’ I scratched angrily at the skin around the top of my cast. I wanted this fucking thing off. “Anyway Javier told me heard about the shootings on the news but obviously he didn’t know I was involved. In fact … it really sounded like he didn’t believe me.”
Derrin only grunted.
“I told him where I was. He wanted me to go meet him somewhere else but I told him no.”
“Good girl.”
I managed a smile. “It didn’t feel right otherwise.”
“Did you mention me?”
I paused. “Yes.”
He cocked his head. “And what did you tell him?”
“I told him I had a Canadian boyfriend named Derrin.”
“Oh? And what did he say to that?”
“Well he was surprised because I never really have boyfriends. And he thinks you have a stupid name.”
“Charming brother you have there.”
I shrugged.
“So is that what I am?” he asked, leaning closer to me. His fingers traced the skin on my shoulder and a subtle shiver shot down my spine.
“If you want to be,” I said quietly, suddenly feeling so shy. So not like myself. What was I, twelve?
He reached out and cupped my face in his hand, his sky blue eyes searching mine, trying to overturn every buried stone. “I want to be. If you’ll have me around.”
“I’ve kept you around so far,” I joked.
His brow furrowed. “I want to be important to you.”
I know he was being serious – when wasn’t Derrin being serious? But my default reaction was always to make a joke when things got too heavy. I had to rein that in, swallow it down, even though I was too afraid to take what he was saying as truth. At some point, Derrin and I would part ways. It would have to be that way. He was just a tourist here in a foreign land. He couldn’t live in Mexico forever. Why would he even want to?
“Alana,” he said. “No matter what happens with your brother, you have someone here that has your back, all the way, to the end.”
“To what end?”
“To the end of it all,” he said, his voice grave. “And I’m not going to let you go so easily. I want you to figure it out with Javier, see what he knows, see if he can help. But if he has no ideas, if he doesn’t seem to care, you’ll be better off with me.”
“How can you say that?”
“Trust me.”
“I want to,” I automatically said. I corrected myself. “I do trust you.”
“You don’t. And I don’t blame you. But if you stay with me, I can make a better life for you. It doesn’t have to be with me but … I can get you out of here.”
“How?”
“Come up north with me.”
I curled my lip. “Too cold.”
“The west coast isn’t cold at all, you’d love it,” he said. “But if not, then Europe. Some small isla
nd in the Caribbean. South America.”
It was sounding tempting. But then the whole thing was absurd. “I barely know you.”
“I know. And I barely know you. But this is what is going to keep you alive.” Now he was cupping my face with both hands. “Alana, unless the men who are after you are killed, unless the person who wants you dead is found out and then taken out, this isn’t going to stop. There is a lot of money on your head.”
I frowned, feeling icky at that assumption. “How do you know that?”
“I just do.”
“Like you know how to kill a person and ride a motorbike at the same time?”
“Yes.” His grip tightened, his gaze more intense. I felt like he was going to devour me. “Your life as you’ve known it is now over.”
I swallowed the lump in my throat. “You said that I could talk to Luz –”
“I did say that. And I meant it. But I also said not now. They’ll be in danger too if they talk to you, so leave them out of it. Send them a postcard from a random place. Alana, you’re going to need to say goodbye to the person you were. Alana Bernal ended when she was hit by a car.”
I felt like a force field went up around me. I wasn’t feeling any of this. It wasn’t sinking in. No. This wasn’t the way. My brother would fix everything.
I looked away and pulled out of Derrin’s grasp. “I need to talk to Javier.”
“And you’re going to. And I’m going to watch the whole thing,” he said, straightening up. He started the car. “Let’s go find us a place to stay for the night before he gets here and everything changes.”
CHAPTER TWELVE
Derek
Being Derrin Calway was becoming harder and harder. I messed up once, telling her about Minnesota when I should have said Winnipeg, but I don’t think she thought anything of it. But other than that, it was getting increasingly hard to pretend I was just an ex-soldier. She knew I was something more and I knew in the future I was going to have to tell her the truth.
The question was, how much truth. It’s one thing to say you have experience in “getting shit done” for people. It’s another to say you’re a professional assassin, one that put a bullet in Travis Raines’ head at the request of her brother. It’s another to say you were the vigilante who shot the driver in the head, only after you failed to kill her to begin with.