This was a detonation waiting to happen. But it wasn’t my problem to worry about. It was Javier’s. And I had a new life to lead.
When everyone left, I turned and headed back through the jungle about a mile before I came to road where I parked the truck, the dirt stirred up by a hot breeze. The houses here were little more than rustic shacks but the face of the old man staring at me from the overturned bucket on his porch told me they were happy.
That would be me soon. The money I got from Alana’s hired assassination, that deposit, it wouldn’t last forever. But the happiest people seemed to be the ones with less to lose.
I waved to the old man who waved back, content to smoke his cigarette as chickens pecked at the dirt path, and got in the truck.
I didn’t stop driving until I reached Guatemala City in Guatemala. I hadn’t been here for a long time. Not since the last I had been involved with Javier, helping take down Travis.
I had no wish to stay here but it was an easy meeting spot as any.
My blood pumped heatedly in my veins as I handled the busy city streets. The closer I got to the hotel – to the first hiding spot – the more anxious I had become. The darkness here, the scattered city lights, thrummed with promises.
The hotel was right downtown and a rather fancy one at that. It was about being unpredictable, now more than ever. Until the danger was far enough away, you had to be careful, you could never ever let your guard down. Even after death, someone will watch the grave. Someone will always wonder what was.
Was that body lowered into the ground today Alana’s? Had there been anything to bury at all?
Someone out there was asking themselves that. Maybe not about to follow up on it, but it would be simmering at the back of their head, waiting for someone to slip up one day. You couldn’t tempt fate. We had tempted it enough.
I parked the truck a block away and then walked over. I got a few stares as I often did – I’d feel better once my hair started to get long and I looked less like myself – but like I had been before, I was ignored.
I walked into the hotel, glad I had worn a crisp shirt and tailored pants, my watch glinting under the bronze chandeliers that lined the lobby.
“Hola,” I said to the well-padded clerk behind the front desk. “Do you speak English?”
He nodded. “Of course.”
“I have a reservation for Dalton Chalmers,” I told him and when he asked for ID, I pulled out an American passport with the name on it, a perfect forgery I had got from Gus.
“Someone called earlier, asking for you,” the clerk said once he’d run through my credit card, also belonging to Dalton Chalmers.
“Oh?” I asked.
“A woman,” he said, as if he was telling me a secret.
I guess it kind of was. I managed a smile at him. “Well, well,” I said and the clerk grinned in response.
He gave me the key and I went up to the room, my feet light on the velvet-laced stairs. I felt like I was walking on the moon, the skeleton key with the brass sun pendant heavy in my hand. It had been three days.
It had been too long.
I found my room and stuck in the key, opening the door to a simple but brightly-colored room: Polished wood furniture, orange and green bedspread, red walls, a bronze sun with a circular mirror at the center.
It was empty. I knew it would be, but even then my heart sank a little. This is what could have been.
I went and sat on the end of the bed, waiting. There was a marching band in my chest.
Then, a knock at the door.
I took in a deep breath and for a split second I almost dropped my guard. I made sure my gun was loaded, my safety off, my grip on it firm.
I edged toward the door, wishing there was a peephole of some kind.
I waited, my head gently pressed against the wood, listening. I couldn’t hear anything.
“Derek,” she said softly.
Dalton, I thought but at that moment I didn’t care if she’d forgotten.
I unlocked the door and eased it open a crack, looking at Alana’s face.
She barely looked like herself. Her hair was sleek, shoulder-length and light brown, laced with shades of sand. She had lots of makeup on to cover up the bruises that Esteban had left on her but it was pretty seamless. She was wearing all black, even carrying herself a bit differently. But that smile – that gorgeous smile – that was all hers.
“You made it,” I told her, trying to contain myself.
She held her chin at a saucy angle. “I’m a better spy than you thought. I was in the lobby, hiding behind a newspaper, watching you.”
“Won’t you come in, then Anna,” I said, emphasis on her new name, and opening the door wider as I put my gun away.
“Right, Dalton,” she said, remembering her mistake from earlier. “I guess I’m not as good of a spy as I thought.”
She came inside and walked to the middle of the room, looking around. It took all that I had not to throw her on the bed and bury myself deep inside her, feeling that she was finally here with me, that she was real, that she was alive.
Alana was alive.
Everyone else thought she was dead.
We had escaped Mexico.
We were starting over.
She set the leather carry-all bag she had in her hand down on the ground. I locked the door and went straight up to her, wrapping one hand around her waist, the other at the back of her head.
“You’re like the sun returning to me,” I murmured, my grip tightening, so afraid to let go, so happy she was here.
“And you’re my big, powerful sky,” she said back, her golden eyes trailing to my lips.
I kissed her, so hard I thought I’d bring her pain. But her moan was melting into my mouth, wanting more.
I gave her more. I gave her everything I had.
I stripped away her clothes like a child on Christmas morning, feasting on her neck, her shoulders, her breasts, while she took off mine. The way she looked at me made me feel like she was seeing me for the first time.
Maybe this was the first time, for both of us. The first time born new. The first time at a second chance.
This time was forever.
I scooped her up in my arms and placed her on the bed, torn between wanting to take this slow, to feel every inch, to make the seconds stretch and needing to have her quickly and all at once, for this frenzy, these flames, to engulf the both of us.
We compromised. While she was naked beneath me, wet and willing, needy, greedy, I thrust into her. She was tight around me, so beautiful, I had to close my eyes to take it all in. While we skipped the foreplay, I wanted to make sure I could prolong our love-making for as long as possible.
I leaned on my elbows on both sides of her head, my fingers disappearing into her smooth hair, my eyes staring deep into hers as I slowly, tantalizingly pulled out. My breath hitched and I buried my face in the soft, warm crook of her neck. She smelled like flowers and fresh air.
“I was afraid I wouldn’t see you again,” she said, her voice whisper-sweet, caught between moans. “I was afraid …”
“You don’t have to be afraid anymore,” I told her. I pushed in again to the hilt and she breathed in sharply before letting out a strangled cry. I wanted her to believe it. We would always be cautious but we would never be afraid.
Esteban, Javier, everyone had to believe that Alana had died during the explosion, or she would never really be free.
“I love you,” she whispered to me just before she came. Her head went back, her eyes squeezed shut, her back arched, so vulnerable, as if she was offering herself to me.
I took her hungrily. Soon I was coming inside of her, and for once I felt like I wasn’t trying to fuck something out of me, I was trying to take something from her. Love. Her soul. Her everything. Whatever it was, it made me better.
It washed me clean.
I pulled out of her and gently pulled her into my arms, kissing the top of her head. Light from the city fil
tered in through the gauzy lace curtains, creating a kaleidoscope of shadows on the wall.
“Are you going to tell me what happened?” she asked, her voice hushed in the room. “Today. My … my funeral.”
I exhaled, kissing her again. “Do you really want to know?”
She nods against me. “Yes. Did you see Javier? Marguerite?”
“Your brother was there,” I told her. “Marguerite wasn’t. But I assume that was for her own safety.”
“Was he upset?”
“Yes,” I said. “He was.”
“And Esteban?”
“He was there too. Right by his side. I don’t know if we’ll ever really know why he was trying to have you killed, but we know that he wanted the world to think that he didn’t do it. That’s why I was brought in. He needed someone to take the blame, the fall. I think he’s trying to overthrow your brother. I wouldn’t be surprised if he went after his wife next.”
“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 lifetim
e, 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.