“I don’t know.”
“What are we going to do?”
“Take the next exit,” she said determinedly. “If someone is following us, we don’t want to lead them straight to your apartment.”
Jesus. So much for thinking all my paranoia was put past me.
Luz put her signal on for the next exit, one that led to an outdoor market permanently set-up in a parking lot. We both held our breath as the car turned off and soon after the truck followed.
Shit. Shit. Shit.
We exchanged a nervous glance.
“It’s going to be fine,” she told me, though she didn’t look like she believed it. For once I found myself wishing I had a gun. I’d always told myself the minute I had one was the minute I was closer to become my brother, but considering everything, it made a lot of sense. Maybe Derrin knew something about them and could help me out. He was a Canadian but he had been in the army, so he at least knew how to handle one.
Luz kept driving past the market stalls and finally pulled into a parking spot right beside a bunch of other people. Safety in numbers and all that.
We waited, still as ice and with baited breath as the truck slowly crept past us. There was some older man driving – Mexican – with a thick mustache but no real discernable features. He didn’t even look our way and kept driving until he parked further down.
I let out the largest puff of air and nearly laughed from relief. “Luz, you are crazy.”
“You thought he was following us too!”
“Only because you told me. Besides he was following us but not in the way you thought.” I shook my head and sank further into the seat, my heart beat slowing. “I think I’ve had enough excitement for one day.”
“Agreed,” Luz said. She started the car and we drove back onto the highway. We never saw the white truck again.
CHAPTER SIX
Derek
Her name was Carmen. She had been the love of my life.
When I first came to Mexico, all those years ago, I wasn’t sure what I was looking for. I had grown disillusioned with the American government, destroyed by the war. My leg still hurt from the explosion in Afghanistan and I hurt somewhere deep inside. It was so needless, so senseless. I had lost too much, we all had, over something that was never meant for our benefit, just to pad the pockets of those in the country that mattered most. I’d seen villages burned, young children dead and torn up on the streets, parents wailing, grandparents dying. All for nothing, not really.
The day the Humvee blew up was the day that everything changed. I guess that’s the sort of day that should change a person. I was one of the lucky ones – one of my buddies lost both his legs, another had half his body burned to a gruesome crisp. But I would never consider myself lucky because then I was burdened with survivor guilt. More than that, I was burdened with guilt, pure and simple.
When I returned home to Minnesota and finally healed up, I said goodbye to an ice hockey career – or at least the promise of one – I said good bye to friends and family. Both of those were easy. My father, a cruel, terrible man, had died while I was overseas. My mother, weak and helpless, couldn’t seem to exist without his cruelty. She barely noticed I was gone.
As for my friends, they’d all pulled away once they got to know the new me. I barely spoke. I stopped drinking with them, going out, finding chicks, playing hockey. It was all over. I just worked out and hated every single minute I had to be a veteran, a survivor, a pawn.
One day something in me snapped. I’m not sure what it was, maybe someone cut me off driving or perhaps I saw an advertisement for Mexico somewhere. But the next morning my bags were packed. I got in my car and drove for the border.
It took days to get there and once I crossed over through Texas, time seemed to stop. Though I would never completely fade into the background, there was anonymity here that seemed to shake loose what little soul I had left. I felt free from everything – who I was, where I came from, the baggage I carried.
For a year I bounced around from place to place. I started with the resort towns on the Caribbean side before heading to the ones on the Pacific side. Veracruz, Cancun, Tulum, Mazatlan, Puerto Vallarta, Acapulco. When I got tired of the tourists, I moved inland and stayed in different cities, then towns, then villages. Each place had something special about it and in each place I met people who seemed to think I was some use to them.
It wasn’t until I started running out of money that I found myself reaching for these people. It was also then when I met Carmen.
I was in a town just south of Manzanillo. It was a small resort-town, a bit down at its heels but popular with Mexican tourists, which suited me just fine. I’d met a man once called Carlos and, of all the people I’d met, he not only was the most genuine but also the most ambitious. Though cordial and generous, he was also a realist and made things happen. He had connections – none of which he held lightly – and success in his sights.
When I first met him I was sitting a bar in a rustic but authentic establishment, sipping tequila, which the bartender gave me on the house for no real reason, and reading a book. Some John Grisham thriller, something to pass the time. I read a lot that first year in Mexico.
Carlos was there with two buddies of his, conducting business in the corner. At least I assumed it was business because when I would look over there, their faces weren’t laughing and no one except Carlos was touching their drinks.
Suddenly there was a yelp and a fight broke out. Before I knew what I was doing, I was in the middle of it, holding one man back, the man who sneered like a dog and seemed hell-bent on ripping Carlos’s face off with his own veneers.
I don’t know why I got involved – instinct I guess. But after the two gentlemen were escorted out of the bar, Carlos bought me a drink. He wanted to know where I was from, what I was doing there. He wanted to know where I learned to move like that, if I knew how to handle a gun, if I knew how to fight.
I didn’t tell him much beyond the fact that I had been in the American military. He seemed happy with that. He said there was a lot of work here for someone like me, and then he gave me his card, patted me on the back, and left.
I’d kept in touch with him via email after that. Just a few messages here and there. Advice. Where I should go next. Every time he told me I should look him up if I’m in the area. And sometimes his area moved around too.
One day, I was out of money and in the same place that he was.