“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.”