I decided I would email my old friend Gus, someone who owed me a big favor, and see what he could do for her. There were illegal ways into the US that I knew he might help with too but we wanted to do everything as legit as possible. Alana wasn’t even all that keen on the idea of having a fake identity but I wanted to at least make sure her last name was changed. If it got out at all anywhere on the news or in DEA channels that she was Javier Bernal’s sister, there was a chance she wouldn’t be allowed in the US and could even be detained.
While she was out at the pool, determined to tan the shit out of her now-free leg, I sent the email to Gus from the free computer in one of the hotel’s business stations, mentally crossing my fingers. I hadn’t seen the guy since I helped rescue him from Javier’s safehouse, all on behalf of Ellie Watt and her boyfriend Camden McQueen, but I hoped he was okay, and most of all, willing to return favors.
I went and grabbed a beer from the bar and came back to the room, glad that no one had taken my spot. I checked my email, thinking maybe Gus had already responded.
There was a new email in my inbox. But it wasn’t from Gus.
It was from “A friend” and the subject simply said, “Nice to see you again.”
I sucked in my breath. It felt cold in my lungs. I already knew who this was from and what it was about.
I clicked it.
It read:
Hello Derek, or should I say Hola? You’ve been living here in the country for so long now, I guess it doesn’t really matter.
It was nice to see you last week. You haven’t really changed since we last were together, though maybe you’ve lost a few pounds. Still have that meathead look going for you though but I was pleased to see that you knew how to take a shot. Not that you hit me. That was your girlfriend, Alana. Perhaps that explains why you failed to kill her in the first place. Maybe you’re not as good as you used to be. Well, you know what they do with old racehorses, don’t you? Send them to the glue factory. Yes, I wouldn’t mind that happening to you – I’d mail Alana my condolences and use your glue to seal the envelope.
Or perhaps she’s what the problem is. Somewhere between you accepting the job and the money (remember, you still have our deposit), you decided to fall in love with her. Or maybe you fell in love with fucking her. It’s all the same, isn’t it? I know what it’s like. I met a girl once too, nice thing, had a husband. It wasn’t to be but we had our fun. You’re having fun now, aren’t you? So much younger, different, than that wife you once had. Plus there’s that element of danger that gets you all hard. I know all about that. You’re fucking the person you were hired to kill. Don’t you think that might bite you in the ass one day, like one of those mosquitos you just can’t kill? Or maybe not. Maybe this will all blow over. Maybe this will all end and I’ll go away. Just like the mosquito does when you fail to kill it.
Only it doesn’t does it? Derek, Derrin and whatever name you are using right now, I don’t think you quite realize what you’ve done. You think you’re helping this poor girl find her freedom but you’re only bringing her to her death. Doesn’t she know what kind of person you are? Oh right, she doesn’t. Even with Javier’s warnings, she still chooses to believe in you, in the person she wishes you are. Sure, you’re protecting her right now but you dug her grave the moment you signed onto the job. You may not think you’re pulling the trigger anymore but you are. You have been this whole time.
Of course, like last time, I have a backup plan. I was concerned that you wouldn’t do the job I hired you to do, that’s why I had the man in the car on hand. His instructions were to hit her if you didn’t take the obvious shot and then drive away. I would have paid him the remainder of what I owed you.
I suppose the poor soul panicked. That’s what I get for hiring the locals. And I really didn’t see that vigilante side of you coming out. My, that was like something out of a movie. Well done.
Here’s what I want from you. I like you Derek. That’s why I hired you. I knew you were a man who got shit done and I’d still like to believe that, despite all your hesitations. It’s harder now, after all you’ve done, to still trust you, to trust you’re the man you’ve been building up all these years. But I like to believe the best in people. I like to believe that you still can come around and do what you were meant to do.
You have twenty-four hours Derek. Put the bullet in her head or something much, much worse will befall the both of you. You’ll still get your money, after all, I’m the one that’s fair here. You’ll get to walk away and then you can decide if you can be a better person. Though I suspect you’ll end up right where you started. That’s the thing about people like us. The people that do the dirty work, the dirty deeds. We can’t really escape what we are meant to do. All we can do is become better at it. In the end, you can be the best by doing your worse. In the end, I can do the same. In fact, I am.
Kill her and kill her now, like you had promised to do. It will all be over soon.
All my best,
A friend.
It was from one of those email addresses that was just a bunch of numbers. I was sure even if I replied, it wouldn’t go anywhere. There was nothing to say anyway, nothing that even surprised me about this, except that Esteban was even crazier than I thought he was. Of course there was nothing here to prove he sent it but I knew. I knew that face, that scar, that laid-back attitude that apparently harbored the world’s most dangerous grudge. I should have known the voice, too, from when I first talked to him but I’d never even imagined him in that position.
The man had ambition. Too bad I couldn’t find it admirable. I deleted the email and sat there for a moment, stewing over my options. It was an email and I had opened it. It didn’t say anything about where I was. I didn’t really think there was a chance he knew where we were.
I had twenty-four hours to kill her which meant we had twenty-four hours to get out of here.
We had to do better than that. When Alana got back from the pool, I’d tell her we were leaving tonight. Getting a rental car and heading up north. We’d figure out our steps with Gus from there. We couldn’t take any chances here. I didn’t know what kind of technology Este had at his fingertips but if there was even a chance that he could trace where the email was opened, I couldn’t take that risk. I’d obviously underestimated him before. I wasn’t going to do it again.
I went back up to the room and quickly packed all of our bags. Then I hopped in the shower and tried to think about what to do. I had only been there a minute when I heard someone in the room.
“Alana?” I called out cautiously, sticking my head out of the water.
“Yup!” she called back, her voice muffled. “Hey, why are all the bags packed?”
I quickly jumped out of the shower, dripping all over the floor and opened the bathroom door. She was wearing a houserobe over her bikini, a margarita in one hand, staring at the bags with worry.
“I thought we should move on tonight,” I told her with what I hoped was an easy smile.
“Why?”
“Better to be unpredictable.”
She chewed on her lip for a moment before sighing and taking a huge sip of her drink. “And I was just starting to like it here.”
“You’ll like San Diego more,” I told her. “Trust me.”
She smiled at that and I told her I’d be right out.
I went back in the shower and had just rinsed the body wash from me when I thought I heard a knock at the door. “Alana?” I asked again, turning the taps off and listening.
I heard the front door shut and then quickly wrapped a towel around me, heading out into the bedroom.
Alana was standing by the front door, dressed in jeans and a tank top now. She was holding a large envelope in one hand, a stack of what looked like 8x10 photographs in the other. Her hands were shaking.
“Who was that?” I asked, coming over to her. “What is that?”
She looked up at me in absolute horror. After everything we’d been through,
I’d never seen that kind of look on her face. It was of utter destruction, of deepest, darkest fears coming true.
“Who are you?” she whispered.
I took a step toward her but she shrieked. “Get away from me!” The sound ripped so loud out of her throat that I froze to the spot.
I raised my hands, everything inside me growing quiet and still, waiting for the blow. “Alana …”
She held up a photograph.
It was a photograph of me outside the fence to the Aeromexico employee parking lot. My gun was out and aimed in her direction. It was taken from the side and clear as day.
My attempted assassination.
It was all over.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Alana
I couldn’t believe it. Out of all the things that had happened to me recently, this was the one that was about to push me over the edge. This was the one that I could feel was spearing, stabbing me, burning me deep inside. I felt like whatever good things I had inside me were being torched to the ground and in its place only ugly ash could remain.
I was holding in my hands a bunch of photographs that placed Derrin at the scene of my car accident. Worse than that, it placed him there with a gun in his hand. A gun aimed at my fucking head.
When the door knocked and the bellhop handed me an envelope he said had come for this room, I didn’t think nothing of it. I thought maybe it was a package for a local tour or coupons for our stay. Maybe even our bill so far.
But when I opened it, I opened a world of lies and betrayal. I opened the end of us.
I couldn’t tear my eyes away, even when Derrin came around the corner. Though his name wasn’t Derrin, was it? Of course not. Everything, everything had been a lie. My brother had been right.
“Who was that?” he asked. I could feel him pause. “What is that?”
I could barely speak.
I looked up at him and I saw someone totally different. I saw someone who wanted to kill me.
“Who are you?” I asked, my voice weak.
Frustration passed over his eyes and he came toward me.
“Get away from me!” I screamed, panicked, ready to keep screaming, to fight for my life.
He stopped where he was and swallowed hard.
“Alana,” he said.
I held up the photograph that showed just who he was. Then I held up another. And another. All taken from multiple angles, all showing him parking outside the chain-link fence to the lot, taking out his sniper, the very one he was going to use yesterday, waiting. There was a shot of me exiting my car. It felt like so long ago and through the photographs it seemed like fiction but it wasn’t, it was truth. I finally had my truth.
“Why?” I cried out, my hands curling over the photographs in anger. “Why didn’t you just kill me then?”
“Let me explain.”
I gave him a cold smile. “Let you explain? What can you possibly say that would make this better?”
He seemed to think about that for a moment. A moment was all I needed.
I threw the photos at him, whipped around and grabbed the door handle. I ripped the door open, about to slide my body out when suddenly it was slammed shut, nearly taking my arm with it, as Derrin, my assassin, shoved his hands against it.
I opened my mouth to scream for help but his hand went over my mouth, holding tight over my nose as well until I couldn’t breathe, I was just sucking his palm to my mouth, He quickly grabbed me from behind and lifted me up spinning me away from the door.
I tried vainly to fight, to kick, to get out of his grasp. My eyes darted around the room, wondering what I could use as a weapon. There were plenty of guns and even a knife on the dresser. It was a long shot but if I could break free …
I tried to maneuver my mouth under his hand until it had more mobility, then I chomped hard on the heel of his palm, drawing blood.
He grunted but didn’t let go. He pressed his palm harder against my mouth.
“I’m not going to hurt you,” he hissed, “but you can hurt me all you want. I’m not letting go either. I’m going to explain what happened.”
I tried to cry out in frustration, his blood now spilling down my chin, but he picked me up and then put me down on the bed. I kicked beneath him, trying to knee him in the groin, but his thighs gripped mine like a vice.
“I’m not going to hurt you,” he said raggedly and he pushed his hand on my mouth harder, the back of my head being pressed into the pillow. His eyes were wild, crazy. I was afraid of him, I guess as I always should have been. Was he going to rape me? Assault me? Break my neck? I found out the truth now and those who know the truth are always the first to die.
“Alana,” he said, his face above mine. I still tried to move but he kept me firmly in place. There was no escape. “Alana, listen to me.”
He moved his hand further down on my mouth so I could breathe better through my nose. I sucked in the air hard, hoping it would give me clarity even though I didn’t want to hear what he was going to say.
“My name is Derek Conway,” he said and now, now I could see it was real. This was who he was. “I’m from a small town in Minnesota. I grew up playing hockey, had a few chances to make the leagues. Hockey, personal training, those things were my life. Then I decided to join the army. I needed to get away from home, out of the house, out of the life that was slowly killing me. I was shipped to Afghanistan. Everything that I told you happened there is true.” He paused, his eyes searching mine. Beads of sweat dripped off his forehead. I could taste his blood in my mouth. “Are you following?”
I stared at him but didn’t give him any other indication that I was.
“I came back home a changed man. I was disillusioned with my country, with everything. I packed up and left it all behind, came down to Mexico so I could start over. And I did. I fell in love with the place, the people. I fell in love with Carmen. I had run out of money and started working for her brother. He was in a fledging cartel. I was his bodyguard. It was great at first but then I became more than that. One day there was a showdown of sorts between two cartels. Carmen got caught in the middle. She was gunned down, repeatedly. I saw the whole thing.”
His eyes didn’t start to water but I could see the pain reflected in them. I knew he wasn’t lying about this. But I wasn’t about to let this affect me. This man once had a gun to my head. This man had tried to kill me.
“It was like a second war for me. Again I had changed. This time I let it ruin me even further. I became a gun for hire, an assassin, a mercenary. I would do the dirty work for whoever needed it, and I was loyal to whoever paid me the most.”
I felt like an idiot. I should have realized this all along. The fact that he was a white American, and one I was stupidly in love with, had thrown me off.
“And I did the work. I did bad things. Very bad things. I killed many people, most who probably deserved it and some who probably didn’t. None of it mattered as long as I got paid. A lot of the work I did for your brother, Javier.”
My eyes widened, not seeing this coming at all. It also scared me what he might say.
“When he had split from Travis Raines’ cartel,” he continued, “there was a lot of blood that needed to be shed. A lot of retaliation. Do you understand? For things that were done. What was done to Beatriz and her family was one example.”
Oh my god.
“I put the bullet in Travis’s head. It was Javier’s order but I carried it out. Justice aside, that allowed Javier to take over the business. After that, it was the last time I saw your brother. I betrayed him by helping his ex-girlfriend, Ellie, and her boyfriend escape the Raines compound. It was nothing personal, they were paying me well and my job with Javier was over.” He closed his eyes and his body relaxed slightly. I lay still, wondering if I should make a move.
He went on. “After I helped Ellie, her boyfriend, and her father out, I was in Acapulco for a few weeks, trying to figure out what to do with my life. I felt like I had done a good thing in hel
ping them, even with the money, and I wondered if I had the strength to move on. To leave the life behind. To return to the US and find someone else to love, to marry, to raise a family with. I wanted to escape the death. I wanted to kill the person I had become. My own assassination. But I didn’t. I couldn’t. I was sucked back in for a few more years. Every day was another slog through purgatory and one step closer to hell.”
There was so much breaking inside of Derrin’s – Derek’s – eyes that it was making me hard to concentrate, to get away. But I needed to, I needed to. The more I heard from him, the harder this would be.
“So I did what I did. And one day, I was in Cancun, and I got a call from a man I didn’t really recognize. He sounded green, new at the game, though, which made me suspicious. He wanted you dead and for one hundred thousand dollars.” I gasped against his palm. “He didn’t tell me why. They never do. But I agreed to do it. I agreed to kill you.” He licked his lips, his breaths coming heavy now. “But then I saw you. I saw you that day and … I knew it was wrong. Then you were hit by the car and suddenly the job didn’t matter anymore. Only you mattered, Alana, you and justice and making things fair. So I drove after the guy who hit you. I made him pull over and I shot him in the head. I killed him because he tried to kill you and get away with it. I was your so-called angel.”
But if the car hadn’t hit me? If it hadn’t hit me, he would have killed me. The image from the photograph was burned in my mind. That was a picture of a man who aimed to kill.
“Obviously I was set up from the beginning, to be the fall if anything went wrong. And it did go wrong. I got another call and the man wanted to pay me twice the amount. Two hundred thousand dollars. Said I could even keep the deposit. I told him no, though. It was messy, it was wrong and I wanted out. He told me there was no out. Not for me. …” he looked away, “and not for you.”
I could feel my eyes welling up with tears. Suddenly all the fight had drained out of me. It was all true. All of it.
“Alana, please,” he whispered, taking his hand away from my mouth. I couldn’t even scream. My mouth curled up as my lungs hardened, the tears choked deep inside. I couldn’t breath, I couldn’t do anything but try and keep the horrible sadness inside.