Dirty Angels 02 Dirty Deeds (23 page)

“Then let me die by choice and let me die alone,” I said. He relented and I managed to quickly slip out from under him. Actually I was surprised that he let me go so easily. Perhaps he had been telling the truth all along.

I stood there, breathing hard and watching him on the bed. For once he looked absolutely fragile, this big beast of a man who seemed seconds from breaking down.

But I couldn’t care about that. He was an assassin, a liar and it didn’t matter if he had kept me alive this long. I would have to figure out the rest on my own, with someone I could trust.

I grabbed my duffel bag that had fallen off the bed then quickly reached into his bag, taking out a small handgun. I aimed it at him. “You know I can shoot this thing now.”

He swallowed thickly but nodded.

“Let me leave as is and I won’t pull the trigger. I won’t scream. I won’t get you locked away. I know that even though you were hired to kill me, that you have protected me so far. You’ve at least kept me alive.” At that my voice started to shake. So did my hand. I took in a deep breath to steady myself, blinking fast. “I don’t wish you any harm.” Now my lower lip was trembling. Damn it. “I don’t wish you any harm, but I can’t be with you anymore. I can’t trust you. I’m sorry.”

Derek slowly shook his head. “Please, Alana. I’m sorry. I’m sorry.”

And, oh god, I could see that he was. Tears spilled down my cheeks. “Let me get away.”

He stared at me, his jaw clenched, his whole body tense. Then he nodded. “Okay. Okay. Keep the gun. Use it well, all right? If you can go to –”

“No,” I said quickly. “Don’t tell me anything. Let me do this on my own. You stay in here for twenty minutes. Don’t come out or I will go straight to security, you understand.”

“Yes.”

“Good-bye Derrin. Good-bye Derek.”

He didn’t say anything back, he just stared at me like he was watching me die. I suppose he was.

With the gun still on him, I left the room. The door shut behind me with a heavy click and I was out in the hallway. I waited by the door for a moment, prepared for him to come straight after me. But he didn’t. Not yet, anyway.

I couldn’t chance it. I hurried to the elevator and once inside, stuck the gun in my bag. Once I hit the lobby, I glanced around for anyone suspicious, anyone who could have sent the photographs, and when I didn’t see anyone, I ran over to a courtesy phone by a bunch of couches.

I picked it up and fished the business card out of my jeans. I dialed the number on it as per Javier’s instructions and then I waited.

“Hello,” a man answered. He sounded kind of young. “Who is this?”

“Who is this?” I hoped I didn’t have to get sucked into another one of these stupid games over the phone. There was absolutely no time for that.

“Juanito,” the guy said and I sighed with relief.

“Juanito, this is Alana Bernal.”

“Ah, Alana,” Juanito said. “Oh Javier will be happy, he was very worried about you. He thought you were going to call last week.”

“Something came up. I need to see him now.”

“I will go tell him, can you hold?”

“Yes.”

I waited about two nerve-wracking minutes while Juanito was gone. I kept looking around the lobby, staring at everyone. People were staring right back at me, probably because I looked scared shitless and my eyes were puffy from crying. But those were just ordinary people. They weren’t assassins. And they weren’t Derek.

Finally he came back on the line. “Alana, where are you?”

“I’m at the Crowne Plaza in Mazatlan.”

“Okay, good,” he said. “Hold on.” I waited while I could hear him typing in the background. “Listen I’m going to come pick you up but you have to meet me, all right? Just go to the corner of Marina Mazatlan and Sabalo Cerritos. It’s a few blocks away. Stay where you are, around people, in the lobby of the hotel. Don’t talk to anyone, don’t go with anyone. We’ll be there in an hour.”

“Okay,” I said, feeling panicked all over again. What about Esteban? Was Derek right about that? “Will it be you picking me up?”

“Yes,” he said.

“Where is Javier?”

“He’s not here right now.”

“Okay,” I said quietly.

“I’ll be driving a white SUV. We’ll stop and get you. I’ll have men with me to watch over you and make sure you’re coming alone. These were Javier’s instructions if you were to call. We’ll take you back here and you’ll be safe, understand?”

“Yes, I understand.”

“Be safe,” Juanito said and hung up.

I sighed and when I tried to return the phone to the cradle, I dropped it. My hands were shaking. I didn’t know if I could wait for an hour in the hotel, even if I was around people, knowing that Derek was upstairs.

He hadn’t come for me yet and to be honest, it worried me. I was torn up inside, knowing deep down that Derek would never harm me, not now, but also knowing he once was paid to. Our relationship, my love for him, was built on lies. How could I be sure that the good, brave man I saw was the real him. What if that was the lie? What if all the wonderful things I saw in his soul was nothing but an illusion and I was duped into it by big muscles and hot sex?

My heart told me it was real. But your heart is what got people killed. I knew I would die at some point for some reason or another, but I would never let it be over my heart.

I stepped away from the phone and walked out of the lobby and into the sunshine. I decided to wait at the hotel next door instead, which wasn’t as nice. Finally when the time was ready, I headed across the road. I was still surprised to see that Derek hadn’t followed me but then again, it had been his livelihood to be invisible.

There was barely any traffic on the road so it was quite obvious when the big white SUV came barreling toward me. Aside from some people at the beach across the street, there were no other pedestrians either so it was quite obvious who I was.

The driver of the SUV rolled down his window. He had a full face, maybe even younger than me, but I could tell he was a bit of a heavyweight.

“Get in,” he said.

“Are you Juanito?”

I think he nodded. He jerked his head at the back door which then popped open. “Get in,” he repeated.

I took in a deep breath, put all my faith in my brother and got in the SUV.

There was a man in the back, staring out the window and another man in the passenger seat doing the same.

I gingerly sat down beside him and the man turned to look at me. He had bright brown eyes and a narrow face, almost lupine in its quality.

“Shut the door, if you please,” he said to me.

I leaned over and shut it. The locks immediately came on and the SUV sped away. I studied the guy more closely.

“Are you Juanito?” I asked.

“Put on your seatbelt,” he said. “And no, I’m Benny.”

“Benny,” I repeated. Meanwhile Benny was looking behind him. “Are you sure you weren’t followed?”

I didn’t know what to say to that. “Well, I’m not sure but I don’t think I was.”

“And the man you’re with, you told Javier you had a boyfriend. Where is he?”

I shrugged. “I don’t know. Not with me. I left him.”

“Why?”

“Because I couldn’t trust him.”

He seemed to mull that over. Then he sat back in his seat and stared out the window again.

Silence choked the car.

I had a bad feeling. I eyed the bag I brought with me, thinking about the gun inside. If something went wrong, would I have enough time to grab it? Would I even stand a chance against these three men?

“Where’s Juanito?” I asked, trying not to sound as nervous as I felt. I nodded at the man in the front seat. He still hadn’t turned around and I couldn’t see his face in the mirrors. “Are you Juanito?” I asked him, raising my voice so he knew I was talking to him.

He turned his head just enough for me to see a scar on the side of his cheek, made all the more prominent by the fact that he was smiling.

My blood ran cold.

“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.

This was an undercover operation. Javier may or may not have known about Este taking the boat but in the end it didn’t really matter. Este had and he was heading out to see with his sister.

A part of me wanted to throw caution to the wind and tell Javier that Este had her. But aside from the fact that Javier probably wanted me dead and would never believe me, I had no real way of contacting her. I had to do something and I had to do it now. I was the only one who could save her.

I grabbed my bag and made it through the locked marina door with ease, strolling through as if I had a proper key and I wasn’t just good at picking locks. I continued to walk purposefully down the docks until I saw the right boat. I needed something that was fast enough but inconspicuous, like a fishing boat. Mazatlan was such a major fishing town that even the bigshots at the marina kept fishing boats docked there.

I carefully looked around, making sure no one was particularly watching, and jumped down into an 18-foot Double Eagle. This one even had the keys tucked inside the nearest cup-holder.

It purred to life and I brought it out of the marina with ease.

In the distance, Beatriz was disappearing over the horizon line, heading in the direction of San Jose del Cabo and the tip of the Baja.

I kept at my speed, not too slow, not too fast, my eyes on the boat and on the blinking red dot on my app.