Growing and Kissing (40 page)

“Well, now don’t they have coffee in LA?” the cop shook his head. “You get yourself off the road at the next gas station and don’t get back on it until you’ve had a bellyful of joe—you hear me?”

The wind died a little, then came back stronger, tickling my hair against my neck. I willed it to keep going, thinking of hurricanes and tornadoes, gusts strong enough to lift you off your feet. “Yessir. I will. I promise.”

The cop sighed, straightened up and turned to walk away. “You drive careful, y’hear?”

The wind died. And then gave one solitary gust—just a tiny little breath—in the wrong direction.

The cop took a single step away. And sniffed.

He could have a cold. He could be wearing so much cheap cologne it drowns out the smell. He could have been doing lines of coke for years and lost his sense of smell.

Just a little bit of luck. Please!

The cop put his hands on the roof and leaned right in through the window. He took a big lungful of air, his chest swelling.

“That there is weed,” he said, his voice hardening. “Ma’am, step out of the vehicle.”

Louise

I had to put one hand on the top of the door and the other on my seatback in order to climb down. My legs were shaking so hard I couldn’t stand up on my own. I automatically faced the truck and put my palms on the window sill where someone had once served ice cream.
I drifted out of my lane.
It kept going through my head.
I drifted out of my lane one lousy time and now I’m going to jail and Kayley’s going to die.
And Sean: his life was over, too. He might not have been happy before, smashing stuff and playing guitar on the rooftop, but at least he’d been free.

A single tear fell from my eyes and landed in the dust beneath me. I didn’t want to cry and tried to take a slow, calming breath. But...we were in Texas. Did that mean we’d be put in jail in Texas? There was no one who could post bail for us.

I wasn’t going to see Kayley again, before she died.

My shoulders shook and then I was off: choking sobs that burned and ached in my chest. With my head down, the tears couldn’t run down my cheeks properly: they hung from my eyelashes and then dropped to the dust, making dark little splodges.

“Aw, for cryin’ out loud…” said the cop behind me. “There ain’t no need to cry about it.” There was a rasping sound, like sandpaper. When I looked at his shadow on the ground, I saw that he’d taken off his hat and was scratching at the stubble on the back of his neck. “What the hell did you think was gonna happen, driving through my state like this?”

I nodded, gulping. It had been a stupid plan.

He sighed. “Well...it should be a DUI. But...level with me: how stoned are you?”

I blinked through my tears.
Stoned?
He thought I was
stoned?
I swallowed, still sniffing and blinking back tears, and thought fast. “N—Not at all, sir,” I croaked. “It was last night, before we set out. We smoked a joint in the back of the truck: that’s why it smells in there. I swear, I’m fine. I really was just tired.”

“Turn around.”

I turned to face him.

He studied my face. “Really?”

“Yessir.”

He stared at my tear-red eyes for another few seconds and then said, “Walk that white line for me. One foot in front of the other.”

I looked down and put my sneakers on the line. Then I walked along it, willing my legs not to shake. When I dared to look round, he was staring at me. “Just tired, huh?” he said thoughtfully.

“Yes sir! I was stupid. And smoking the joint was stupid. I swear I’ll never do it again.”

He sighed. “You said you smoked it in the truck. If I go in there and search it, am I gonna find any drugs?”

Six months ago, I hadn’t been able to lie at all. Even now, it took every last shred of ability I possessed...but I kept my voice level. “No sir. We left all that stuff in LA. This is a fresh start for us.” I stared into his eyes,
begging,
and that part I didn’t have to fake.

“Fresh start, huh?”

I nodded. “We’re going to sell ice cream at fairs and...and rodeos and things. That’s what the truck’s for. We’re going to do it up, paint it and everything. Vintage. Traditional.”

The cop stepped closer. “You seem like a sweet girl,” he said. “So this one time, I’m going to let this go. But you promise me you’ll behave.” He nodded to the truck and lowered his voice. “I’ve seen your boyfriend, all muscles and attitude. He probably persuaded you to smoke that joint, didn’t he? Guys like that ain’t nothin’ but trouble.”

I nodded solemnly. “I’ll be careful.”

“And stay away from the drugs!”

“That’s absolutely my intention, sir.”

He gave one last long-suffering sigh. “You drive careful.” And then he was ambling back to his car.

I went around to the passenger side and climbed in, motioning Sean to move over. “You drive,” I said weakly. “I can’t—I can’t even….”

I collapsed into the passenger seat as the cop pulled away and drove off into the distance. I let my head tip back against the headrest and just melted into the seat, nothing but a floppy bag of twitching nerves.

“What the fuck happened?” asked Sean as started the truck.

“Karma,” I whispered, closing my eyes. “That was every speed limit I’ve ever stuck to, every empty intersection I’ve ever waited at. It finally paid off.”

Louise

The meet was at an old, abandoned airfield way out in the boonies. We got there with only twenty minutes to spare and pulled up alongside the runway, the ice cream truck sitting incongruously next to a couple of rusted aircraft carcasses. Even in September at nearly eight in the evening, the Texas sun was hot, bleaching the tufts of grass that had grown up through the cracks in the concrete and gleaming off the broken panes of glass in what had once been the tiny passenger terminal.

The door to the control tower had long since been broken open, so we climbed up to the top and stood looking out over the airfield. Some local teens must have discovered the place, because there were empty beer cans and graffiti all over the inside. “You think we can pull this off?” I asked, nudging a can with my foot.

Sean wrapped his arms around me from behind. “Just remember,” he said. “It’s all about attitude.”

The sun glinted off a speck in the distance, a speck that slowly grew bigger and bigger in the clear blue sky. Then, with a roar of engines that shook the tower, the private jet was throttling back and sweeping in to land right in front of us. Sean led the way down the stairs.

The first three people out of the plane were men in suits, all carrying machine guns. The fourth was an older guy in slacks and a shirt. He removed his big, gold-rimmed sunglasses as he approached us. “Sean? And Louise?”

They’d demanded our full names on the phone. With the cartel, you didn’t fuck around with false ones. We nodded.

“I am Francisco.” He sounded cautious, but not unkind. “These men will search you.” It wasn’t a request.

Two of the men stepped up to us while the third kept his gun pointed right at us. Hands swept up my legs and over my ass, up my sides and across my back. Having a man do it should have felt uncomfortable—awkward, at least. But the men were as clinically professional as doctors, far from Malone’s heavies or Murray’s leering thugs. It made it even scarier: I suspected they’d be just as clinical if they were ordered to drag our bodies into shallow graves.

The men stepped back and nodded that we were clean. “The weed is in the truck?” asked Francisco. Sean nodded. Francisco spoke in rapid-fire Spanish to two of the men, and they hurried off to the ice cream truck. “We’ll try some samples,” he told us as an afterthought. Again, not a request.

We spent an agonizing ten minutes standing there while the packets of weed were unloaded, counted and stacked up on the runway. Packets were selected at random to be sliced open and tested. Francisco sniffed the weed, rubbed it between his fingers and finally smoked joints of it, just one slow inhalation of each sample before he crushed the joint underfoot. It was impossible to read his expression. At last, he pulled out his cell phone and made a call. Just one word:
Sí.
Then he crossed his arms and just stared at us as if waiting for something.

“So?” Sean asked at last. “Are we making a deal?”

“Not with me,” said Francisco. “With her.”

Behind him, a woman emerged from the plane. Her long, coal-black hair blew in the wind, as did the long, gauzy layers of her exquisite white dress. Everything about her was coolly elegant and
off-the-scale
confident. One of those people who’ve held so much power for so long that they’ve become accustomed to it, like a president. The men with guns stepped back respectfully as she approached.

I’d seen her in photos, but only grainy black and white ones shot with a long lens. This was Isabella Gallego. The head of the entire Gallego cartel.

It was very difficult to gauge her age. She could have been anywhere between mid-thirties and mid-fifties. Her skin was soft and barely lined, her hair still completely black—natural or dyed, I wasn’t sure. She was
incredibly
beautiful.

She looked both of us up and down, speaking to Francisco without turning to him. “So it’s good?” she asked in heavily-accented English.

“It’s really good,” said Francisco. “Smooth. Strong.”

“And consistent?” asked Isabella.

“Very.”

Isabella drew in a long, slow breath. “Okay,” she said. “Two hundred and fifty thousand, as agreed.”

I took a deep breath and glanced at Sean. He nodded at me.
You can do this.

“No,” I said.

Isabella slowly took off her sunglasses. Her eyes were a beautiful deep brown, but they were utterly without warmth. “Excuse me?”

“I have a counter-offer,” I told her.

“That isn’t how this works. We agreed a price.”

I looked nervously at Sean. “We said two-fifty on the phone to get you here. But the weed is worth six hundred thousand. You know that. We know that.”

Isabella stared at me...and then laughed out loud. “In
Texas,
maybe. But we’re not from Texas. We’ll sell it
to our dealers for seven hundred thousand...maybe eight. If we pay you six, it’s barely worth the trouble.” She shook her head. “Two-fifty. Take it.”

I wanted to take it. I was terrified. But two hundred and fifty thousand wouldn’t pay for Kayley’s treatment. I shook my head again.

There was a tiny noise, barely audible, from off to my left. The men with guns, readying themselves in case they were told to fire. Isabella was looking at me pityingly, urging me to do the smart thing. I felt myself weakening.
This is not me. This is not my life.
I was a freaking botany geek, for God’s sake! I just wanted to run and let someone else deal with this.

And then Sean put his hand on my back. Just a gentle touch, but I could feel the whole strength of him throbbing through me, letting me know he was there, that he was beside me in every possible way, forever. My legs stopped shaking.