Revenge (21 page)

She’s followed by a man who can only be described as a younger version of Mark. He gives Mark a brotherly embrace.

All three of them look at me.

“I’m Allie!” chirps the young woman. She has
rich, dark ginger
hair, long and flowing, and her face is tanned.
Her eyes are a deep chocolate color.
She wears a tank top and is cradling one arm, holding it around her waist. She reaches forward with her other arm to shake my hand.

The grip is strong. Her face is friendly. I feel myself smiling.

“Hi. Carrie,” I say.

“And this is Chase. My brother,” Mark says with a smile. Chase shakes my hand, too. I can’t stop looking at him. He’s shorter than
M
ark and more serious. His hair is darker, too. He has tattoos pe
e
king out from under his tank top. One looks like it has a wing on it.

If I didn’t know they were brothers, I’d assume it anyhow.

“Hi Carrie. Nice to meet you. We don’t know a damn thing about you,” Chase says slowly, giving Mark a questioning look. “Mark called out of the blue and said he needed for you to come see me.” Chase glowers. “Said it has to do with some unfinished business from our past.”

Allie’s face suddenly goes from friendly to worried.

“
I
t’s not...this isn’t about El Brujo, is it?” She gives me a compassionate look. “He’s not out for you, is he? Are you a virgin?”

C
hase gives her a look and Mark snickers. She claps her hands over her mouth in horror.

“Oh,
no!
That sounded awful, didn’t it!
T
hat’s....Carrie, I’m so sorry. I mean, it’s just, El Brujo wants virgins to cure his AIDS, and I—”

My turn to look at her like she’s crazy.

“
B
elieve it or not, this actually makes sense,” Mark whispers in my ear as Chase starts laughing and Allie continues to stammer and try to explain the weird sentences coming out of her mouth.

“Okay?” I say,
dragging out the word
.

“I’m just going to stop talking and let Mark explain,” Allie says in a high voice.

“And maybe back off those beers we were drinking, sweetie,” Chase says to her.

She punches him, but in jest.

“C’mon over,” she says. “Can I get you a beer? A wine cooler? Are you guys hungry? We can grill something.”

“I’m fine,” I say,
b
ut my stomach betrays me, growling.

Chase gives me a look, one eyebrow raised. “I think your stomach answered for you. We’ve got some burgers and dogs.”

At the word “dog” I shudder.

“And corn!
Plus a watermelon.
Let’s do a cookout, Chase!” Allie says, her face splitting with a grin. She’s so sweet. So nice. So normal.

And so...
something
. I
walk towards
the ca
m
per as she waves me to
follow
her.

“Are you okay?” she asks, her hands on my elbows, like we’re old friends. “Mark wouldn’t bring you here if it w
as
n’t really bad. I j
u
st want you to know that no matter what, you’re safe here. You can fal
l
apart here. You can just
be
.”

T
ears fill my eyes. No stranger has ever said anything like t
h
is to me before.

“Thank you.”

“
Mark saved my life about a year ago. I owe him everything. Any friend of his is a friend of ours.” She hands me a small watermelon from the tiny kitchen counter. “Here. We just got this at a farm stand this morning. Fresh!”
 

She’s full of light and air, happiness and smiles.

I like her instantly.

“
How did he save your life?” I ask as she assembles meat from a tiny little refrigerator. I hear Mark and Chase outside, talking in low voices.
 

“
H
e helped me escape from Chase’s dad’s motorcycle gang compound after my stepfather sold
my virginity
to El Brujo to get out of a drug debt.”

I nearly drop the watermelon.

“Huh?”
Mark told me all this, and yet hearing it from her directly drives it home.
 

She laughs. “I know. Sounds crazy. But I’ll bet whatever brought you and Mark here today sounds crazy, too.”

She’s got me there.

“
I got set up by a dean at the university in my town, who also set up my dad to take the fall for a drug network he never ran. My dad died in prison and now I’m back to clear his name. My best friend has been kidnapped and women who look like her are turning up with arms and legs cut off. And they all look like the dean’s dead wife.”
 

She stares at me with wide, brown eyes.

“Crazy, huh?”

She shakes her head. “I wish I didn’t believe it.
I believe pretty much anything these days, though.
”

We exit the little pop-up and Allie hands Chase the plate of burgers and hot dogs she’s made.

“
You got matches?” he asks.
 

Her hands are full. She looks at me. “Carrie, there are a bunch of matches in the camper to the left, on a little shelf. Can you grab some?”

“Sure.” I walk up the steps and spot a small dish filled with a bunch of match books. I grab one and hand it to Chase.

“Take more!” she urges. “I get them from the diner where I work. Do you collect them?”

Nostalgia hits me between the eyes. “Actually, my dad used to,”
I say.

I remember the cork wall on the bar, and how he’
d
pin them to it. He encouraged people to bring them and pin them there, too. At one point he must have had thousands of match books. I wonder what happened to them all.

“
I remember that,” Mark says quietly. When our eyes meet, his are filled with regret.
 

Chase hands the match
book
back to me after using one to fire up the grill. “Here,” he says.

I take it and shove it in my back pocket. “Thanks.”

Allie
points to a cutting board and a tackle box. I open the tackle box. It’s filled with utensils and sharp knives.

“Clever,” I say.

She shrugs. “Small spaces. You learn to be creative. P
l
us we move every few weeks, so...”

T
he back of my neck begins to tingle.

“You move every few
weeks
?”

All three of them suddenly lo
o
k very, very uncom
for
table.

“
Yeah,” Chase says. He frowns and looks away. “It’s not ideal.” He seems like a man of few words.
 

Allie bites the inside of her cheek and inhales slowly. “We’re trying to stay under the radar.”

Mark looks pained.

“Not for much longer. Just until Galt calls off his guys and I get my director to u
n
derstand that we’re so close to El Brujo. So damn close,”
he says.
 

“How close are you?” Allie asks. The hiss of burgers on the grill and the instant scent makes my mouth water.

Mark looks at me. “Carrie. Tell them the name of the guy who was training the dogs at the dean’s house.” He looks at me pointedly.

“You mean Frenchie?”

Allie goes pale. Chase threads his arm around her waist and pulls her to him.

“That close, huh?” he says to Mark. His chest expands with the kind of righteous anger a man shows when he’s defending someone.

I sense something’s changed. They’re all so serious. “
Why is Frenchie so important?
He was creepy. Kept looking at me like he wanted to...” My voice fades out as Mark’s expression changes.

He looks murderous.

“He what? Like he wanted to
what
?”

“Nothing,” I say in a small voice.

Allie’s head is tipped down, but her eyes lift up as she looks at me. “It runs in the family,” she whispers. Chase just shakes his head and breaks away from her to tend to the grill.

“
What
r
uns in the family?” I ask.

She looks at Mark, then me. “You’ll fin
d
out.”
She shakes her head.
 

“Carrie,” Mark growls, pinning his hands on his hips like he’s holding himself back from ru
n
ning away to kill someone. “What did Frenchie say to you?”

“He called me ‘Girlie Girl’, and—”

Allie drops into a chair, eyes as wide as saucers as she watches me.

“And he
talked about my sweet ass.”
 

Now Chase looks angry and moves closer to Mark.

“And just,” I shudder. “Just looked at me like, well, like if no one else had been around....”

Allie makes a compassionate face, stands up, and gives me a hug. “Sounds like Frenchie,” she says.

“Who is he?”

“My dad’s right-hand man,” Chase says in a bitter tone. “And nothing but bad news.”

“He was also Chase’s friend,” Allie adds.

“But not any more,” Chase interjects. “No way.”

I look at Mark, who has calmed down slightly.

He stares at me. “Frenchie is the nickname for
Antonio Michael Thibeau. He’s a serial killer and a coyote. We’ve been trying to get our hands on him for years.”
 

“A coyote?” I ask, my head hurting.

“Yea
h
, coyote. He smuggles people across the Mexican border,” Mark answers. “Mostly women for the sex trade. He’s also the major enforcer for Galt.”

“Your dad.”

“Yes,” Chase and Mark say in unison.

“What’s Frenchie doing with some university dean?” Allie asks. She has a huge knife in her hand and is cutting the watermelon.

Her entire forearm is one big, angry scar. It looks like someone stuck dirty pink bubble gum all over her, from wrist to elbow.

She looks up and catches me staring at her. “Oh, my scar?”

Mark and Chase immediately wince. It’s like watching twins react at the same time.

Her eyes flicker over to Chase nervously, then back to me. “I got that when
M
ark and Chase helped me escape from El Brujo. I fell off a moving motorcycle and my leg got caught. Burned my arm on a piece of the engine.”

“Oh, God.” I can’t help but gasp. “That must hurt so much.”

She shrugs. “
I
t did. Not any more.
Now it’s just tight and, well, ugly.
”
She gives a self-deprecating laugh that makes my heart hurt.
 

“Four skin grafts,” Chase grinds out through a clenched jaw. “Fucking Frenchie. And El Brujo. A
l
l of them.
T
hey all did that to Allie.”

“And us,” Mark adds, quiet. “If we’d been more careful—”

“No!” Allie insists. “You two saved me. By the time you got me out of the motorcycle club compound, it was almost too late.” She looks at me with troubled eyes. “My stepdad and Mark and Chase’s dad were rival drug dealers. My
s
tepdad sold me to El Brujo to pay off a drug debt. Frenchie and Galt were about to deliver me to El Brujo when Mark and Chase saved me.”

“And your mom,” Mark adds with a tight smile. “She’s pretty amazing.
She helped, too.
”

“Yeah,” Allie adds with her own smile.

“It sounds like there’s a huge story behind all this,” I say, sitting down. I’m suddenly exhausted.

“Isn’t there always? Most of us live lives that are way more complex than they appear from the outside,” Mark says, popping open another beer.

Chase snorts.

Allie giggles.

I just steal the beer out of Mark’s hand and start drinking.
He’s right, but that’s a truth that takes a lot out of you.
 

Fifteen minutes later we’re digging in to a great, simple meal. Chase and Allie are clearly in love. Mark’s
more relaxed than I’ve seen him in a while. As we eat, I think about all the unresolved issues between us.
 

I was talking to Eric by the side of the road.

I went to the Landau house alone.

And yet...we’re fine. He giving me these little looks that make it clear. We are
fine
. We may have some issues between us, but in the end, everything is okay.

Everything between us is better than okay, even if the rest of our world is falling apart.

I just got fired. I’ve been accused of nearly killing a dog that had
illegal
drugs in it. Mark’s under suspicion for Eric’s mysterious disappearance. His director at the DEA is about to take him off this deep undercover case he’s worked on for four years.

Dean Landau may be El Brujo and he just lied about me to the chief of police.

Who believed him.

The bite of burger in my mouth suddenly tastes like dirt. I feel the blood run down, down, down, my body moving slowly. Allie and Chase are telling Mark some story about Chase’s nursing classes. Something about learning Spanish so he can work in hospitals.

It feels like they’re talking underwater.

“What’s wrong?” Allie asks. She reaches for my hand and squeezes it.

“I just—I’m realizing how much trouble we’re in.” I give Mark a helpless look.

“We’ll be
okay
,” he says, putting his arm around me. I lean into him, wanting his words to be true.

“I can’t believe he set me up for what happened with Wizard,” I say, turning my face into his shoulder. He’s so warm and big.

“Wizard?” Chase asks, popping a piece of watermelon in Allie’s mouth. She giggles. Some of t
h
e juice runs down her chin and he licks it off. She gi
g
gles even harder. They share a look that makes me snuggle even more with Mark.

“Wizard’s the name of the dog that the dean adopted from the shelter where I volunteer,” I explain.

Chase freezes and gives Mark a pointed look.

“You’re joking.”

Mark frowns. “No, she’s not. Why?”

“You speak Spanish?”
Chase’s entire body is rigid. He’s rising off his seat, like he’s about to dash off into battle.
 

We both shake our heads.