Dirty Deeds(68)

“No,” the man said. “Juanito couldn’t be here so I decided to help him out today with this little chore.” He fully turned his head my way and I found myself looking into the very eyes of the man I had shot. “I’m Esteban. Esteban Mendoza. And I believe we’ve met before.”

Without thinking I made a move for my bag but Benny was fast. I felt a heavy crack on the back of my neck and the world went dark.





CHAPTER SIXTEEN


Derek





I was a stupid man. A stupid, broken man.

I should have seen it coming. I should have known the lies would be exposed and I would lose her. I just didn’t think it would happen now, before she had a chance to be saved. I figured it would happen down the line, maybe a few weeks, maybe months or years, when my heart would be shattered but at least her life wouldn’t be.

But I was a fool. Fooled by love, of all things. And now it has cost us everything.

I wanted to stop her from leaving. I tried. But when she started to cry underneath me, it absolutely wrecked whatever resolve I had. That reserve of sorrow, that darkness that hid deep inside her, the one that came out when she cried in her sleep, lost to nightmares that were once real, it was taking over. She was ruined and utterly devastated by my lies, by the things I have done and the person I wasn’t supposed to be and while I saw her heart break open before my eyes, mine was doing the same.

There is no pain like heartache. I thought I had forgotten all about it, left in those aimless dusty days after Carmen had died. But it came back with a vengeance, as bright as day. It was merciless and brutal and cut you from the inside out, making it feel like you never had a heart, that you’ve always just had this cold black space in your chest. You can almost feel the wind whistling through you when it gets really bad, carving through those hollow places.

Losing love is lonely. Losing it because of something you did is deathly.

And to see it happening to the person who had your heart, there’s nothing worse than that. We were both hurting and hurting so badly. So when it came down to it, I had to let her go. I couldn’t make her suffer anymore, and to be more selfish, I couldn’t bear to witness it.

What I needed though was for her to believe me. Believe that after everything, I had her best interests at heart – I always had. And that we had a common enemy, one that could never be trusted. Esteban would be after her the second she stepped out of here, so even though I knew I couldn’t protect her where she could see it, I still would try to protect her all the same.

I would protect her to the end, just like I promised, or die trying.

See, even though I knew that I was stupid man, blindsided like a fool in love, I had still planned for something. A few days ago when Alana was on the beach, I went through her clothes and made tiny insertions in the inner side of all her cups, near the underwire. There I placed a tracking device that was hooked up to an app on my phone. The device could be activated remotely and when I was pleading with her earlier, trying to mend us back together, I noted she was wearing her black bra with her grey tank top.

The moment she left the room, I started tracking her. I tracked the blinking red dot downstairs into the lobby and then to the hotel next store. By then I was already stealing a Mazda around the corner and waiting for her next move.

It was obvious she had been picked up in a car by her speed on the app and I assumed it was probably bad news. She probably called Javier from the lobby and he sent someone to pick her up. My money was that Esteban somehow intercepted or got wind of the call and stepped in. This theory was only confirmed once I saw her location move away from the highway that would lead toward Cualican and head toward the marina instead.

Though there were a lot of marinas in Mazatlan, as well as ports for ferries and cruiseships, her blinking red dot went all the way to a large yacht club on the south shore near the lighthouse hill.

Even though Javier did have a yacht, I could bet all my money on that she was being taken by Esteban and away from Javier’s compound. Out on the seas, a lot of things could happen and considering Este was frustrated now, I feared that whatever he had planned for Alana was far worse than me being hired to shoot her in the head.

And so this became a suicide mission.

I drove the Mazda all the way to the marina in time to see a large superyacht leaving beyond the jetty. I looked through my binoculars and saw it was indeed Javier’s, ironically named Beatriz. The sailboat was massive mega-ketch, a 187-foot, 550-ton Royal Huisman. The two masts stuck high into the sky while the navy body glistened above the waves. I couldn’t see any crew on board at all except someone at the controls. That’s how I knew it wasn’t Javier at all. He liked to travel with large crew, complete with their own uniform. He was the king of flaunting everything he had.