Dirty Angels 02 Dirty Deeds (22 page)

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 helping 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.

“Please,” he said again. “Don’t cry. Don’t. I know I messed up. I know you think I’m horrible and I am a horrible person. I’m a bad man. I’m no better than the worst. But please, please know that I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t kill you, not for all the money, not for anything. I would never hurt you.”

“You lie!” I cried out, a sob ripping out of me. “You’re hurting me right now, to the bone!” I turned my head away from him, my eyes squeezed tight as tears spilled out of them and onto the pillow. I felt so stupid, so foolish, so fucking alone. I was alone again like I always was.

The man I loved was only here because he tried to kill me. The man I loved never loved me at all.

I had nobody now. I never did. Not my brother, not my friends. I was as good as dead.

“Why didn’t you kill me?” I sobbed. “Why didn’t you kill me?”

“I couldn’t,” he said, his voice ragged. “I couldn’t do it.”

“You should have. You should have pulled the trigger and ended this!” I screamed the last part and then collapsed into sobs. I felt like my body was being torn apart, my lungs and heart and breath all squeezed by the sorrow that was running so violent and deep.

“Alana,” he said, burying his face into my neck. He was shuddering against me, trying to breathe himself. “I fell in love with you.”

“Liar!” I yelled.

“No,” he said, shaking his head. “No. I’m not lying. I love you. I love you and I would have told you the truth but I didn’t know how. I was too afraid to lose you. Alana, please, I can’t lose you.”

I put my hands up to his chest and tried to push him off me. “You’ve already lost me.”

“No.”

I blinked, trying to look through my blurry vision at him. His own eyes looked blurry too.

“Let me go, whatever your name is.”

“It’s Derek,” he repeated, grabbing my arms and holding me tight. “It’s Derek Conway and I am not going to let you go. I’m not going anywhere.”

“I’ll scream,” I warned him, not kidding. “I’ll scream and get you thrown in a Mexican jail and then what the fuck are you going to do, huh?”

Panic shone his eyes, their blue color so hard and cold above me. “Alana, listen to me. You can hate me for lying but don’t hate me for loving you.”

“I hate you because you tried to fucking kill me!”

“But I didn’t!” he roared in my face. “And I’ve been trying to keep you alive ever since! Do you think it’s easy to lie, to worry if the person you love loves you or the lie? Do you think I didn’t wrestle with the truth every fucking day? Well I did, when I wasn’t trying to figure out how to keep us both alive.”

His words meant nothing to me now. None of this meant anything to me. He didn’t kill me but in the end it would still come, whether it was from his gun or someone else’s. In the end I would still die alone, in a dark, sharp place.

I was empty, I was nothing.

I needed to leave.

But his hold was strong. “No,” he said shaking his head. “I will not let you go. The man who sent you those photos knows where we are. He is Esteban Mendoza and he’s the righthand man of your brother. I know him, I’ve worked with him. He’s trying to ruin Javier, bit by bit. Starting with you. When you’re out of the picture, he’ll go after Marguerite maybe, or Luisa. But he’ll get rid of everyone. He’ll do this until Javier is run to the ground.”

That got my attention. I was sure I’d heard Javier mention Esteban a few times but I had never met the guy. If this was true, I had to tell Javier. But Javier would want to know who I heard it from and when that came out …

“Your brother has to know,” Derek said. “And we have to get out of here.”

“I am, without you.”

“Don’t be stupid!” he yelled, his face going red. “You won’t leave here alive if you do so. I promised to protect you.”

“Yeah well promises don’t mean anything coming from someone like you!” I yelled back. “A liar. A killer. A murderer.” I clamped my eyes shut in frustration. “Shit! Shit!” Even though I didn’t trust him, I knew he was right. Someone was setting him up, framing him or exposing the truth. But whatever way you wanted to word it, that someone knew we were here. Whether Esteban was the one behind it or it was a lie that Derek concocted to keep me here, I was fucking screwed.

Then, I remembered the business card Javier gave me. I had one more chance.

I swallowed hard and looked up at Derek with pitiful eyes.

“Please let me go.”

He shook his head. “I can’t.”

“You have to.”

“I will protect you to the every end … Alana, I’d lay down my life for you.”

I narrowed my eyes at him, feeling sorrow and hatred and bitterness choke out whatever love I might have felt. I had to snuff it out before it hurt me. Love was only dangerous now. Love would get me killed. “Your life means nothing to me,” I told him.

He looked like I slapped him. I felt like I slapped myself too.

But he had to let go of me.

“Let me get away, Derek. If you care about me at all, you’ll let me get away.”

“I can’t do that. Please. I have to save you.”

I let out a sour laugh. “Save me? I think you’re still waiting to pull that trigger. Now, let me go or I will scream so loud. And if you try and stop me, I will make you hurt me. You say you don’t want to but I you will if you don’t let me walk out this door right now.”

“If you walk, you’re as good as dead,” he said but there was a resignation coming over his brow. I was wearing him down, ruining him as he once wanted to ruin me.