I’d never heard that panic before.
I nodded. Fear had a net above my head.
We both jumped out of the car and he ran over to me, grabbing my hand and leading me down the parking lane toward the stairs at the end, going against the flow of traffic and people who were leaving. I guess he figured the fastest way out of here was to just get above ground first.
We were almost at the end when the man appeared, the scarred surfer dude with the gun was at the top of the stairwell, a throng of people on either side of him.
“Shit!” Derrin yelled and the same time I said, “That’s him!”
The man smiled when he saw us and began to push people out of his way.
Derrin pulled me to the left, darting between cars and then down the lane on the other side in the opposite direction. Suddenly a man appeared at the end, tall and formidable, a stiff face in a stiff suit. He had a gun at his side.
He wasn’t here for Wal-Mart’s savings.
He fired at us just as Derrin pulled me behind another car. We fell to the ground beside the car, glass shattering around us as I covered my head, leaning back against the rear door.
“Stay here,” Derrin commanded, pulling out his gun. He got up into a crouch, both hands on the gun. Even throughout all the violence and action, I had to stare at him in awe for a minute. In his boots, cargo pants and white t-shirt, his buzz cut, steely eyes and sheen of sweat on his face and muscles, he looked every inch the man who was going to get me out of here.
My man.
Then the window on the car beside us exploded, glass raining down on us, and I screamed, forced back into this deadly game.
Still at a low crouch, Derrin pivoted around the corner of the back of the car and fired at the person behind us. There were two shots and then nothing. With all the noise around us I couldn’t tell if he had hit the guy.
Then there was another shot in the opposite direction, the bullet zinging off the fender of the car on the other side of us.
Derrin looked at me and jerked his head to the right of me. “Stay down as low as you can go, hide behind the cars and go as fast as you can to the exit ramp. The other guy is down, I’ll take this guy.”
And with that he suddenly sprang up and fired off a few rounds of carefully aimed shots. He swore, obviously having missed, and looked back down at me. He was angry now. “Go, damnit! I’ve got this.”
I shook my head, paralyzed by fear. “My cast, I can’t crouch like that.”
“Fuck,” he swore. “I’m sorry.”
Then he quickly fired off two more shots. “Reach for my other gun, it’s strapped around my calf,” he said.
I could at least do that. I quickly pulled up his pant leg and took another handgun out of his holster. I held it up to him and he placed the one he was carrying into my hand.
“There are two bullets left, use them wisely,” he told me.
The gun didn’t feel as heavy as I expected it to and fingers wrapped around it like a lifeline. I had no idea how to shoot one of these but I wasn’t afraid of it. I would gladly use to it protect our lives.
Derrin quickly dropped to a crouch beside me as he slid the hammer back on the other gun. “The guy is still out there, scarface,” he said, his voice rough and low. “He’s hiding behind the concrete pillar. His aim isn’t the best and that’s what’s saving us right now.”
“I’m pretty sure you’re what’s saving us right now,” I said breathlessly.
His lips twisted into a grim smile. “We’ll see. We have to make a move or he won’t come out and we’ll be stuck here.”
“Someone has to come and stop him, security.”
“I think the security has run with everybody else.”
“What about Javier?”
He sighed and quickly wiped the sweat off his brow. “If your brother is still here, he’s hiding in his car behind bulletproof glass. I’m sorry Alana, but he would not come back in here to get you.”
I had a feeling that was true. It still hurt though.
“Are you ready?” he asked, leaning in closer. “Go left and left again. You run as low as you can and I’ll stay up as your shield, all right? When I yell, we’ll dart across the lane and then keep going till the end. We’ll hit the stairwell to the offices. I can open it and lock it from the inside. The place is empty. It’s our way out.” He took in a deep breath. “Ready?”
I managed a nod, my grip tightening on my gun.
“Now,” he said and he popped back up. Shots were fired in both directions but I ran hunched over as low and fast as was possible with my injuries. I could feel Derrin right behind me as I turned to left at the hood of the car, running flush along the lane. I couldn’t help but scream every time a shot was fired off, whether it was from Derrin or scarface. Everything was so much louder down here, so much deadlier. I felt like a rat caught in a maze with several big cats on the loose.
“Head across!” Derrin yelled, now at my side, though in a second he was pivoting around again to take another shot. I darted across the lane, nearly getting hit by a car that suddenly had to slam on its breaks. The person honked, yelling but the minute they must have seen Derrin with the gun, they shut up.
We slipped in between cars, ran across another lane and then finally reached the door to the office stairwell. I was practically flat against it, Derek pressing me against the door and shielding me as he quickly stuck a makeshift key into the lock with one hand while aiming his gun behind us with the other.
“Hurry,” I couldn’t help but whimper. The lock didn’t seem as easy for him now as it was earlier. Then he dropped the key, which clattered loudly on the concrete.
“Fuck,” he swore. He gave me a look like he expected me to drop down to get it but I couldn’t do that quickly with my cast. So he rapidly ducked down and it was at that moment that I saw scarface appear.
He was dead ahead of us, standing between cars on the other side of lane, gun being raised, aimed right at me.
There was no time for Derrin to stand back up and protect us.
Before I knew what I was doing, I was aiming the gun at scarface, holding it with shaking hands.
I pulled the trigger.
The first fire had a bit of kickback and I missed so as soon as I could, panic and adrenaline coursing through my veins, I pulled the trigger again just as he was about to pull his.
My gun fired, the last bullet sailing through the air and suddenly scarface howled, lilting to the side. His own gun went off but at an angle, hitting the roof above the lane and then bouncing back down to the concrete.
I fucking shot him in the leg.
“We’re in!” Derrin yelled, now at the lock again and opening the handle. I was too stunned at what I had done – I’d actually hit the guy! – that I couldn’t help but be frozen in place, watching as scarface grabbed hold of his leg, grunting down his pain. Derrin grabbed my arm and jerked me inside the stairwell, the door quickly closing behind us. He immediately locked it, then turned to look at me, the light dim from only one bulb near the top of the stairs that led to another door.
“You’re full of surprises,” he said, looking joyous before kissing me quickly on the lips.
“Must run in the family,” I said blankly.
He nodded and said, “Come on, we aren’t out of the clear yet. You got his leg but that’s only going to make him angry. Leg wounds are like that.”
He grabbed my hand and we jogged up the stairs to the top. I held my breath and Derrin put his hand on the door knob but to my relief it opened into an empty marble-tiled office lobby. We ran to the front doors and suddenly we were outside, bathed in the brilliant orange of a slowly setting sun, the sky periwinkle and sprinkled with early stars.
Derrin took me down along the back of the building, away from the direction of Wal-Mart and the chaos, and toward the back fences of residential properties. He opened a back gate and cut through someone’s backyard before we found ourselves on a suburban road.
We st
opped by a dark green 80’s Nissan that was parked by some shrubs and Derrin, with just a quick glance around to see if any neighbors were watching, opened the door the driver’s door. It wasn’t even locked.
I guess we were stealing this car. I couldn’t even protest at this point. I’d just shot somebody.
I got in my side and it took two seconds for Derrin to quickly cross some wires underneath. The car started without a problem and we were off, bolting down the road in a stolen car before pulling onto the highway and getting lost in a sea of traffic. We headed away from Wal-Mart, which was now covered in a sea of red and blue police lights, and toward the direction of our hotel.
“You all right?” he asked me as the sun slipped below the horizon. The car reeked of cigarette smoke, which was giving me a headache. I rolled down my window. I wanted to puke.
“I don’t know,” I said, my eyes trained to the dying light in the sky. It was the truth. I didn’t know if I was all right. I mean, I couldn’t be. How could anyone be? But at the moment it was all very numb. My heart was still drumming along in my chest, my pulse and breathe racing. I felt wired and alive but dead at the same time, like everything happened to someone else and I was just feeling the after affects.
I wasn’t as stunned as I was the other day though.
“I’m not about to slip into a coma,” I told him. “But I don’t think I’m a hundred per cent.”
He nodded, his grip massaging the wheel. “You’re doing good. You’re doing real good. We’re going to get us to the hotel, get our stuff and leave. We’re going to hole up somewhere with a lot of people, maybe Mazatlan. Find a nice beach hotel and hunker down for a few days. We’re going to work through what happened. We’re going to fix this.”
“I don’t think we can fix anything,” I said, almost to myself.
“We will,” he said, in pure confidence. “We’ve seen the enemy now.”
“And he’s seen us.”
“Alana, he’s always seen us.”
He was right about that.
It wasn’t long before we were at the small hotel and quickly packing up our stuff. We were in and out in minutes.
We threw our bags into the back of the Nissan and drove west.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Derek
It was a blindingly hot day, one of the ones that make you curse the country to the ground. The sun was so strong, so merciless, that it made you wonder how anyone or anything could survive here at all. It was like living on the sun and everywhere you looked, the glare of the sun burned right through your eyes. On those kinds of days, everyone was partially blind.
I had driven Carlos into town, knowing full-well what was going to happen. He was exchanging money with Matice Marquez, one of the most powerful men in the Gulf cartel. I knew the money wasn’t real. I also knew the drugs that Marquez was passing over wasn’t real either.
Both sides were screwing each other and they knew it. More than that, they welcomed it. This way, someone could be taken out with good reason. Even though the cartels were beyond the law, some of them had still run on an odd set of morals. There was a lot of pride and a lot of honor in the way that transactions were made, in the way businesses were taken over, in the way people were killed. No one was above a bit of torture but there had to be a good reason for the torture. They would tell themselves anything to make it seem like they were better than everyone else and still pure in the grace of God.
Bunch of delusional pussies, that’s what I had thought at the time. It’s what I still thought. But I still didn’t think anything of it. If Carlos died, it didn’t mean I was going to die with him and it didn’t mean he wouldn’t have it coming. Carmen and I had discussed for a while now what we would do if I got out from Carlos’ clutches. Originally when I had started working for him, I thought it would be easy to leave. But I got too close and in getting close, he demanded my loyalty. I would only work for him, forever, or until he let me go. And since being let go usually ended with a bullet in the head, Carmen and I had to bide our time.
When I drove Carlos into the town, I didn’t expect to see so many people. Not just from the cartel, who were loitering very noticeably on the side of the road outside a barber shop, but all the townfolk in general seemed to be out and about. I remembered something Carmen had said about some Mexican Saint Day earlier that morning, which seemed to explain why everyone seemed dressed up in their Sunday best, even though it was a Tuesday.
“Stay here,” Carlos said without even looking at me. I had parked a few yards away from where this was taking place. There was a gun in the glove compartment that I could use if anything went wrong, but I know he wanted me to be the getaway car.
I sat there, waiting and watching as more people gathered. They all looked the same – high-waisted pale jeans, cowboy or Timberland boots, pastel dress shirts. Some had hats. Some had lariat ties of skinny leather. Their wrists gleamed with gold watches and their faces bore large aviator shades that reflected that killer sun.
Suddenly, Carlos and Marquez were meeting. I had only taken my eyes away for a second. The exchange went down in the middle of the street, like an old Western and just like the damn Old West, guns were already drawn on either side. They weren’t visible, but I could see them. I could see the blood in their eyes, even beneath their shades.
Usually at this part in the dream Carmen appeared, as she had done in real life. But this time something was wrong. I could see her from faraway, walking over to Carlos. But her hair was different. It wasn’t this long black mess of curls but now this wavy, sunlightened hair. The dress wasn’t red and white and long but black and short.
This time it wasn’t Carmen at all.
It was Alana.
And she was about to be gunned down.
Before I knew what I was doing, I was grabbing the gun from the glove compartment and running out of the car.
I screamed her name like a banshee and she froze, a deer in the headlights, all long legs and curves and watched as I ran toward her. Like Carmen, she had no idea what was about to happen. Neither Carlos or I had ever told Carmen what was going on that day. We liked to keep her in the dark as much as possible. Carlos, I’m sure, because he didn’t trust her and me, well I wanted to protect her the best I could. But this time I couldn’t. For reasons I’ll never understand, Carmen was there that day. Sometimes I wonder if it was to show her a lesson. Sometimes I wonder if it was to show me a lesson.
In this dream, Alana was just as stunned until she realized what she was caught between. Like Carmen, she started to run toward me, when she should have run away from me. She was running toward me because I was her man, the one she loved, the one she wanted to have children with. I was her safety, her solid ground and her light. I was supposed to protect her.
Alana ran toward me, arms outstretched, seeking my protection from the big bad world.
And as I failed Carmen, I failed her.
The gunfire erupted like fireworks.
Alana screamed as the bullets tore into her from all sides. And yet she wouldn’t fall. She was stronger than that. She ran until there was barely anything left to her, skin hanging off in shreds, blood covering her bullet-ridden body from head to toe. Yet she was still beautiful. Still so beautiful, even in the hands of death.
She collapsed at my feet, clawing onto my legs in a vain attempt to reach me, in a vain attempt to live.
I couldn’t move. I could only stare at her as she looked at me for one last time.
“Te amo,” she whispered, blood spilling out of her mouth before she collapsed dead.
With a start, I woke up from the dream, covered in a sweat. Alana was alive, in my bed in this dark, hot hotel room and sleeping soundly in my arms.
I love you too, I thought.
***
“I like this place,” Alana said as she peered through her sunglasses at the hotel in front of us. We’d just arrived in Mazatlan and had been driving around the beach hotels looking for something simple yet po
pular. Not too fancy, not too shabby, but someplace that we could lay low in for a week. People were obviously looking for us, but now that I knew who was doing the looking, I knew we at least had a chance here.
He wasn’t as powerful as I originally thought. Not yet, anyway. That was probably the whole point of it all.
“Then this is the place,” I told her, taking the Nissan down the street and around the corner where I found a place to park. We were going to leave the car here, make sure there was no trace of us inside and then never see it again. It was too risky. When it was time to leave, we’d just take another car, though from where we were there was always the possibility of taking the ferry across the Sea of Cortez to La Paz, or even a boat. The more options, the better.
We got out of the car with our gear and as she smoothed a strand of hair off her delicate face, she said, “How are we going to pay for this hotel? This looks like they’d only accept credit cards.”
“You let me worry about that,” I told her. “Why don’t you go around back and hang out by the pool for a bit and I’ll come get you when I have a room.”
She nodded, though she didn’t look too convinced and we crossed the street together.
I had told Alana that we needed to stop being Derrin and Alana for a while and that paying with plastic was the easiest way to be traced. But whipping out another credit card, in another name “Dean Curran,” meant having to explain why I had a fake credit card and ID to begin with. If only she knew how many I actually had.
To be fair though, it was pretty obvious that there was more to me than what I had told her. She knew it, she saw it with her own eyes. Yet she was still staying beside me, still trusting me even though I was living the largest lie. She believed I could protect her and save her and so far I had.
But it wasn’t without luck.
Yesterday when she met Javier, I thought I’d lost her. The moment she walked off with Luisa I was certain she would be put in a black SUV and I would never see her again. To my surprise though, they went into Wal-Mart, which was an unpredictable move on Javier’s part. No one would have ever guessed a man like him would set foot in a place like that.