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.
My problem was, it wasn’t easy getting a good look at their meeting. The place was crawling with Javier’s men, some of them I actually recognized and could have recognized me if they saw me. If that happened, that could have put Alana’s life in more danger and considering I knew now what Javier and her discussed, I had no doubt that’s what would have happened.
So I had to stick to the outskirts and trust that she was going to be okay. I loitered around the outside of the store, the parking lot, the parking garage, trying not to pace, to seem suspicious. I was in the parking garage, about to head to the car to wait in there when I heard the screams and saw the stampede of people.
At first I didn’t know what had happened to cause all of this yet all I could think of was that Alana was dead. I had failed her and had failed myself. There would be no redemption here, no second chance at life or at love. There would be only cold, hard failure and a chain attaching me to a life I could never escape.
But then I saw her face, her beautiful, scared but strong face above the masses and I knew we would get through this. She was better than I thought, braver, harder.
She ended up proving it time and time again in that garage. We escaped because of her. Because she shot her killer. She shot the man who hired me to kill her. She shot the man behind it all. The highest bidder.
Scarface was none other than Javier’s right hand man, Esteban Mendoza. It was something I should have seen coming. I had considered him, of course, but my mistake was in immediately dismissing him. I had greatly underestimated that man. Not in his skill necessarily. The man is certainly no assassin. But I had underestimated his resolve and ambition. This was a man that wanted to destroy Javier one step at a time. He had patience and he had time and he knew taking Alana out would accomplish that.
And, I was sure, if it didn’t, there would be no harm, no foul. Este would try something else to move up the ranks. The man was always a weasel and his driving force was pure old-fashioned jealousy. Funny how that’s always what it came down to, wasn’t it? The envy, the desire to have something, a life, a love, a car, a career, that someone else has that they’ll do anything to possess it.
My problem now was that Esteban knew I had seen him and recognized him. We had worked together a lot, so it was almost like seeing an old friend, albeit an old friend who you never liked, you would thought was annoying as hell. He knew, as I am sure he did before, that I was helping Alana now. I wasn’t in it to kill her. He knew very well who he was up against now and was going to play his cards accordingly.
The other problem I had was that I couldn’t exactly tell Alana this. She didn’t know who Esteban was and I would have no explanation how I would know, unless I came clean. That was my only option. If I could somehow come clean and tell her most of the truth, it might be enough for her to call her brother and tell him. Javier would have Este’s balls in a hog’s mouth before the end of the day. He never took betrayal lightly. That was one of the few good things about him.