When they both just stared at me, I rolled my eyes. “I said I’m fine. Really. Hit and run aside, I’m fine.”
Luz raised a brow but didn’t say anything. I took out a few pesos from my wallet and plunked them down on the table. “I’d go up and buy the next round myself, but I don’t exactly feel like crawling on my hands and knees in this place. Do you mind getting me a refill?”
She got up but left my money on the table. It was true, every time we went out I was usually the one paying for their drinks and food and little gifts. It’s not that I made more money than them, both Luz and I were paid the same, I just liked to do nice things for them. Who else would I spend my money on?
“Are you really okay?” Dominga asked quietly after a moment.
I gave her a look. “Is this just about the accident or is there something else?”
She rubbed her lips together in thought before saying, “I’m worried about you. About … who did this.”
“The police said it was a random event … shit like this happens.”
“First of all,” she said, “the police can’t be trusted. Second, shit like this does happen, but it rarely ends up with the driver being shot in the head. Don’t you think that’s weird? It has to be connected.”
Of course I thought it was weird, but I’d spent the last week in the hospital thinking about it, and I wanted to put it to rest.
“Even if it is connected, the guy who hit me is dead. Don’t you think that means someone is looking out for me? If anything.” I caught her eye and quickly added, “It’s not Javier. Believe me.”
Luz and Dominga knew all about my brother. I mean, everyone in Mexico knew about him, but only they knew that we were related. I didn’t talk about him much, mainly because I didn’t have much to say – Javier kept his life very separate from mine and for good reason. They weren’t exactly happy that I was connected to someone so notorious and regarded him with constant suspicion and disdain, even though they had never met him. Though, for all his charm, I think they’d be even more scornful if they had met him.
“So then who?” Dominga went on. “It just can’t be an accident. And if it is, why would this other person shoot him? It makes no sense and you are being way too cavalier about all of this.”
“I’m not being cavalier,” I told her. Suddenly I felt very tired. “I’m worried, very worried. But for tonight, I don’t want to be worried.”
“Yeah, Dominga,” Luz said, giving her the stink-eye as she appeared at the table, placing our drinks down. “Give her a break.” Luz grinned at me and slid my beer over. “You’ve got us both tonight. You’re safe. Let loose.”
“Oh, so now I’m allowed to let loose?”
She looked me up and down. “You can’t get too loose with the way you are.”
I took a big gulp of beer, challenged. “We’ll see.”
An hour later, I was feeling a lot looser. Two more beers had helped with that as well. They also tipped my bladder over to the breaking point.
I pushed back my chair and attempted to stand up, but suddenly Luz was beside me, holding me by the arms.
“Where do you think you’re going?” she asked.
“I’m trying to go to the bathroom,” I told her. “You don’t need to come with me.”
The two of them exchanged a look. “I won’t go with you into the stall, but you should probably have some help getting across the room.”
The bar at this point was completely packed, and people were being rowdy, drunken idiots. I nodded and leaned on her, not willing to risk it on my own. I’d probably be bounced against the wall and stepped on by dancing jackasses.
Eventually we made it to the washroom. It was dirty with wet floors and no paper towels, and had a line of slurring girls with smudged makeup waiting to use the two stalls. Luckily someone took pity on me and let me use it ahead of the line, even though there were a few disgruntled murmurs in the crowd. Even totally beat-up and obviously injured didn’t mean I got a free pass.
When I was done, Luz was still in line, so I washed my hands and told her I’d wait outside the bathroom. No way in hell did I want to be in there, especially now as some chick was puking her brains out. I went out into the dark hallway and leaned against the wall. I was drunk, but my body was slowly starting to ache, and I wondered if the pain medication was beginning to wear off.
Suddenly some loud morons rounded the corner from the men’s washroom and bumped into me hard. I let out a cry and flew to the side, the ground rushing up to meet my face, when an arm came out of nowhere and caught me.
Before I knew what was happening, I was pulled back up by someone who was very strong. I looked at the large, muscular forearm around me then followed it up to the fitted white t-shirt which belonged to a tall, insanely built guy. His blue eyes were sharp and filled with concern, his jaw wide and stern, his stance fierce.
He was Caucasian. Ripped. And hot as hell.
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.