Landslide (66 page)

She only had a few seconds of life left before I put the bullet in her heart.

I got out of the car, moving like a ghost, gun down at my side. In three strides I would make it over to the fence where I would take quick aim and shoot. She would go down and I would be gone.

I was one stride away when it happened.

A golden sedan pulled out of a parking space in a hurry and slammed right into Alana, knocking her to the ground. She screamed as she went down, tires screeching to a halt, and people started shouting from the shuttle.

The sedan reversed then sped around Alana’s crumpled body, not stopping to check on the woman they had just hit.

I’ve been in a lot of situations before that smack you square in the face—abrupt and brutal scenes that change the course of the day, the course of a life. They come out of nowhere, but you adapt, you roll with them. You refuse to be shocked. I should have been able to collect myself better than I did.

But seeing that car speeding away toward the parking gates and crashing through them as it fled the scene, well I seemed to lose all logic. Before I knew what I was doing, I was getting back into my car and driving after the hit-and-run sedan.

As I passed the broken gates to the parking lot I could see people—employees—emerging from the shuttle, one of them pointing at me. I had been spotted. Maybe as a witness, maybe as someone that was a part of the crime.

Only it wasn’t the crime they thought it was, but the one I didn’t get to commit.

I was fucking everything up for myself and I knew it. But seeing that car gun her down then keep going, as if the driver thought they could get away with it, brought back every debilitating moment from Afghanistan. I watched a lot of people get killed before I became the killer.

I would like to tell myself that I was going after them because they fucked up my potentially perfect assassination. That would make more sense than the truth—that I felt like a helpless soldier again, watching the world around him crumble from senseless acts. I was angry, angrier than I had been in a long time.

I’d snapped. I guess I had it coming.

I drove the beat up car I’d rented from a cheap agency right on his ass, following him in heated pursuit. I wasn’t thinking, I wasn’t even breathing, I was just reacting to some long-forgotten, deep-seated need for vengeance.

The sedan screamed down the road, tires burning on hot asphalt, heading for the highway. I was going to stop him before that. I didn’t know what I was going to do after that, but I had an idea.

I pressed the gas pedal down as far as it would go and willed it to catch up, muttering expletives as it shuddered beneath me. The rental car was a pile of shit to look at, but it turned out the engine worked well enough to let me catch up with the sedan that was sputtering erratically, a tire having blown out as it fought for control on the rough road.

 
I couldn’t get a good look at the driver, but through the dust I could see him thrashing around in his seat, panicking at the wheel. He wasn’t a professional by any means. Then again, I was supposed to be one and I was trying to kill his fucking ass for no reason at all.

No reason except that it felt one hundred percent right.

His car suddenly shifted right and I took that moment to gun it until my front end clipped his back. The headlights shattered, and with a screech of metal, the car went spinning to a stop.

Before I could comprehend what was going on, I was jumping out of the car, gun at my side, and running to his door. I threw it open and aimed it right at the man’s head.

The dust blew around us, and through the haze he looked at me, mouth open, the whites of his eyes shining as they stared at me with fear or shock or regret.

I didn’t care.

He raised his hands, screaming out in Spanish, “It was an accident, please, it was an accident!”

“Who are you?” I asked, my voice more steady than I felt.

“It was an accident,” he cried again. For a brief moment he took his frightened eyes off the gun and looked behind him, at the parking lot in the distance and the commotion that was gathering there. Soon they would be heading our way. “Is she all right? Please, please, the girl, is she all right?”

“No,” I told him, and pulled the trigger.

Because of the silencer, the sound of his brains and skull splattering on the window—a bright burst of red—was louder than the gun.

I quickly got back in my car and drove away. There was no time to stand around and figure out who the man was, if it was truly an accident or something else. Questions would come later, as they always did, only this time I’d be the one doing the asking.

***

I spent the rest of the day inside my hotel room, cleaning my guns and watching the local Puerto Vallarta news, trying to see if the accident would be mentioned. It was at the end of the segment when they finally reported on it. It was the usual shoddy shot of the serious reporter standing in front of the smashed gates to the parking lot. Alana, as it turns out, wasn’t killed or even critically injured. She had been airlifted to the nearest hospital. The bigger part of the story was the part that had my hand all over it. It was that someone had caught up with the driver and shot him in the head. The news wasn’t sure whether this was a botched hit-and-run or vigilante justice.

I didn’t know what to think of it myself. One minute everything was going to plan, the next minute I was putting a bullet in the head of someone else, acting out of pure, untrustworthy instinct. That lack of control scared me. I hadn’t responded like that, so loosely, so foolishly, since my wife had been killed.

It was just after nightfall when my phone rang. I waited a beat, trying to read my gut before it got compromised by the voice on the phone. My gut was telling me to back out.

“Hello,” I answered.

“Hola,” the man said in that light tone of his. “I think we may have gotten our wires crossed here. I heard you were the best in the business. I’m a bit confused as to why you killed someone else instead of the woman you were paid to kill.”

“No time for pleasantries,” I noted.

“No,” the man said. “Not when she’s in the hospital and you’ve jeopardized this whole operation.”

I cleared my throat. “It was all lined up. Before I was even able to take my shot, she was hit by a fucking car. Everyone saw it. What was I supposed to do, still go through with it with everyone watching me?”

“That still doesn’t explain why you shot the driver.”

No, not really
, I thought.

“I guess I lost my cool,” I told him.

“I didn’t think that was possible with you.”

“Maybe you’ve heard wrong about me.”

“They’ve called you soulless.”

“Maybe I’m getting tired of this game.”

“Ah,” he said. “The game, but not the money.”

“Maybe money gets you killed in the end.”

“No, no,” he said. “Money is what gets other people killed. By you.” He sighed long and hard, and I tried to picture who this man could be. So, so familiar. And so, so wrong.

“Listen,” he went on, “I know things are more complicated now, but the job still has to go through.”

“I don’t think so.”

“No?”

“It’s more than complicated. There were witnesses there that could have seen me.”

“No one has come forward.”

“How would you know that?”

“Don’t you worry about it. Just trust me when I tell you that you are clean. The only real complication is the fact that you’ll have to get into the hospital. She’s being guarded, will be for some time. But I know you’ve handled dicier situations than that before.”

I frowned. “How much
do
you know about me?”

“Enough,” was his dry answer. “The price is now two hundred thousand dollars. You can keep that fifty we gave you. This is on top of that.”

Fucking hell. Two hundred and fifty thousand dollars would end all my problems forever. But that was way too much money for just a girl, unless she was more than just a girl. She was a death sentence.
 

Something was terribly fucking wrong here, and I would be an idiot to stick my nose in it for one minute longer.

“No,” I told him. “I haven’t survived this long to know when there’s something more at stake. I’ll meet your people somewhere, give you your deposit back if you want, but this is where we part ways.”

There was a heavy pause on the line. “Don’t be foolish.”

“I’m being smart,” I told him. “Whatever game this is, I don’t want any part of it.”

“I suppose raising the price wouldn’t help.”

“No. This is a job I don’t want to touch.”

“But you’ve already had your hand in it,” he said, and finally there was an edge to his voice, a warning. “It’s too late for you to back out now. You accepted the job, and now you have to finish it.”

“You’re telling me that the fact that the target was hit by a seemingly random car isn’t a warning sign to you? Right before I pulled the trigger? The fact that the dead body of a fucking flight attendant has a two hundred thousand dollar price tag on it? If you want her out so bad, there are plenty of other people you can pay to do your dirty work. This one though, I’m no longer a part of.”

More silence. I could hear his breathing. “Have you ever backed out of a job before?”

I swallowed. “No,” I said thickly. “I haven’t. But there have been jobs that I shouldn’t have taken, only I didn’t listen to my instincts. I’m listening to them now. This isn’t the job for me, and this is where we part ways.” I took a deep breath, feeling the monetary sting already. “Just tell me where to meet your people. I’ll give you the deposit back, I haven’t touched a single bill. I don’t want any trouble, we’ll just forget it all and move on.”

“Oh, you’ll be moving on,” the man said. “And so will she.”

The line went dead.

I stared at my phone for a good minute, feeling absolute dread coursing through me. I was trusting my gut on this one—I had made the right decision, hadn’t I?

Within an hour, I was out of the hotel room and booked into one of the swankier all-inclusive resorts close to downtown. I used my fake Canadian passport—Derrin Calway—and credit card. I tossed my phone and got a new one at a street-side kiosk. I still had an email address and a pager number that most people knew, and though many of the cartels didn’t possess the same high-tech tracking systems and surveillance the movies would lead you to believe, it never hurt to be careful. I was constantly getting cheap new phones, constantly changing names, constantly on the move.

Most people just called me the American. They never really knew my name was Derek, and the ones that did, they assumed it was a fake name. But my name was really the only real thing about me.

I tried to fall asleep that night, but the sound of people partying it up at the sprawling hotel pools was too much for me. Sometimes, only sometimes, the normalcy of the world around me hurt. This was one of those times.

When dawn finally colored the sky tangerine pink, and the only sound was the crashing of the Pacific outside my balcony, I finally fell asleep. My last thought was of Alana, lying on the pavement, her body broken by intent or circumstance.

I wanted to find her.

Chapter Two

Alana

“Alana.” I heard a voice cut through the darkness. A firm hand shook my shoulder as the screams and cries started to fade away and only the fear, that deep, desperate fear, was a film left behind.

I blinked slowly, the white light filtering in through my eyelashes. The nightmare was hanging around in the back of my pounding head, and the living nightmare was before me.

Fuck my fucking life. I couldn’t believe I got hit by a goddamn car.

“Alana,” the voice said again, and I knew it was the nurse, Penelope. “Are you all right, dear? You were crying in your sleep.”

I brought my eyes over to her without moving my head. I’d gotten pretty good at that over the last few days. If I moved my head at all, I’d be hit with a wave of nausea. The doctors assured me that I probably wouldn’t have a concussion, but I didn’t believe them. I felt like my brain had been demolished.

The nurse had a kindly face, full-cheeked like a chipmunk. So far she was the only one in the hospital who had been doting on me. The doctors and surgeons were so brusque and professional. I was used to that being with the airlines and all, but it was nice to have someone that acted as if they really cared.

“Sometimes I do that,” I said carefully. “I . . . have nightmares.”

She gave me a sympathetic smile. “I can tell.” Luckily she didn’t press it any further. My childhood wasn’t something I liked to talk about.

“How are you feeling, otherwise?” she asked, trying to adjust my pillow. I winced at the movement but was relieved that it didn’t hurt as much as it usually did.

“I still get dizzy when I move my head,” I told her. “But it’s getting better now. Thank god. My arm is really itchy.” I looked down to the cast around my wrist, going from palm to mid-forearm.

“It will get better as your skin gets used to it,” Penelope said. “You were incredibly lucky, Alana. Not many people walk away from a hit-and-run accident with only a fractured ankle and a broken wrist.”

“And the bruising and the pain and the head that feels like it is going to explode,” I filled in.

“That, too, will go away,” she said. “All you need to do is rest.”

I swallowed hard. It felt like I had a lump of coal in my throat. “Have they caught the guy yet, the guy who did this to me?”

A funny look passed over her eyes, and I knew she knew something.

“Tell me, please,” I told her. “I hate being kept in the dark.”

She sighed and cast a quick glance over to the open door leading out into the rest of the hospital. The bed next to me in the semi-private room was thankfully unoccupied the whole time I had been there.

“I haven’t talked to the police,” she said in a low voice. “It’s just what I’ve been hearing. But the guy who hit you, he’s dead.”

My eyes widened. “Dead?”

“Someone killed him . . . he was murdered. Not too far from where you were hit.”