Unless Alana did something, even if she didn’t realize it, or knew something she wasn’t supposed to. Though she’d been open last night, she was still playing her cards pretty close to her chest. I had more questions for her but now that it was out in the open that people could be after her, now that she had admitted that her accident might have not been an accident at all, I was confident we would get to the bottom of things, especially now that she would be staying with me.
As soon as I gave the car to the valet, I went up to the room and started rearranging things for her arrival. It was a weird feeling knowing I’d be sharing my space with a woman. Not only on the intimacy level, but because I wasn’t sure how much of “Derek” I could show her. She only knew Derrin and parts of me were hard to hide.
For one, I knew she was a bit suspicious at the way I woke up the other day. I couldn’t help it. My sleep was usually so shallow, except when I was dreaming about Carmen, that instincts always took over. I could be up and ready to shoot or run within seconds.
Obviously I was going to pass it off as military training if it ever came up. But she would want to know how else I was going to protect her and that’s where the guns came in. Time to confess to her that I had a bit of a gun fetish. I didn’t need to hide that anymore.
I opened the door to the closet and lifted the bottom slab of it. I had pried it off when I first checked in and hid all my guns and weaponry in the hollow base. With the bottom back in place, it looked like an empty closet.
I decided to still hide them there – you never knew what the maids were going to think if they stumbled across them – but would give Alana a little show of them both. It sounded like she could handle it. If I were her, I would have invested in a gun a long time ago.
As for the silencers, the Ace bandages that kept the guns tucked to my waist, the knives, the rope, the CF explosives, the tracking devices, the GHB capsules, the duct tape, blindfolds, and handcuffs – well I wasn’t sure if she would buy it if I told her I was into some pretty kinky stuff.
I took out everything but the guns, a four-inch silencer for my .22, and the Ace bandage, and carefully placed them in a small zip bag, and brought them into the washroom. With a small motorized saw I always had with me, I cut away the bottom of the cabinet underneath the sink and stuck them in there. I placed the bottom over top of it and then rearranged towels and extra rolls of toilet paper onto so it wouldn’t attract any attention. I cut clean and any leftover sawdust was cleaned up and flushed away but even so I had to be meticulous. Guns I could explain. Everything else took me to a psychopathic level.
CHAPTER NINE
Alana
“You’ve lost your fucking mind, woman,” Luz swore at me over the phone.
I was sitting on the balcony of the hotel room, watching the waves roll in. “You’ve been saying that for ten days now.”
“And I’m going to keep saying it until you come back home.”
“Do you miss me?”
She sighed. “I just saw you last night.”
“Yeah, exactly,” I told her. In the distance, over the wavering blue line of the Pacific I saw a parasailer gliding down toward the boat. Everything was so bright and glittery and carefree in this part of town. I couldn’t get enough of it. Staying with Derrin seriously made me consider selling my apartment and buying a place on the shore. Unfortunately, my apartment was owned and paid for by Javier and I was pretty sure I couldn’t do anything without asking him for permission. Sometimes I hated that he treated me more like a delinquent kid than his sister but I guess it was better than nothing.
“You saw me last night,” I repeated to Luz, smearing coconut and lime scented sunscreen on my arms. Though the cast was now off my wrist, I had a bandage in place and I was determined not to get any crazy tan lines. “You saw that I was fine. Better than fine. Great.”
“That’s only because of all the sex.”
“You’d be great too if you were getting laid by a solider.”
“Shut up,” she told me. “I’m still allowed to worry about you. And I still don’t trust him.”
I sighed. “I know you don’t.” I didn’t blame Luz. Ever since I told her that I was temporarily moving in with Derrin, she was the one who was acting like they’d lost their mind. She told me all the things I already knew myself – I didn’t know him, we’d only just met, I was still vulnerable, etc. But the thing was, I trusted Derrin. I don’t know why I did but I did. He promised to protect me and I believed him. And then later, when I saw his guns, I believed him even more. He had all the skills he picked up in the war, and affinity and passion for firearms, and the courage and determination unlike anyone I’d met. If anyone was going to get me through this, it would be him.
But the funny thing was, there was nothing to get through. As the days passed and the two of us settled into a routine of drinking, food and sex (rinse and repeat), as our bond grew stronger and my bones healed, there was nobody out there coming to get me.
We were cautious too. Derrin was always watching, like he was born to have this role. But no one approached us. No one was following us. No one was waiting.
Some days I went down to the pool and had daiquiris, other days I went to the beach, all while Derrin stayed on the balcony and watched me. I was right out there in the open, just ripe for the taking. And though the experience had been a bit nerve-wracking, time and time again the only people who bugged me were the hustlers selling their cheap trinkets on the beach. Damn, they were annoying. I would have thought they’d leave their fellow Mexicans alone but they still seemed to think I needed god-awful cornrows weaved into my head.
A few nights a week I met up with Luz. Sometimes Dominga. Because Dominga worked for a sister chain, she had a few friends working at our hotel and she told me they were keeping an eye on me too. It was sweet of her and I knew they were both so nervous. But as time ticked on, I was becoming more and more convinced that no one was after me. It was an accident. It was vigilante justice. No one was coming for me.
Sometimes I almost wished they’d try.
Meanwhile, when I wasn’t pondering my potential death, I was falling deeper and deeper for this steely-eyed man with a heart of gold.
It was wrong. I knew it was. I didn’t fall for men. I never fell in love. It’s not that I didn’t want it but it was never anything I pursued.