Stranger Danger (4 page)

“
Gracias
,”
he said. “I’ll split it with you if you want.”

“No, I’m good.
 
Go ahead.”

After a few brief awkward moments, they talked about
the past.
 
Santiago remembered their
trips to the beach and the day they’d gone to visit Disneyland together.
 
Each word he spoke evoked their shared past.
 
As she answered back with memories, Sara
realized the old bond between them, the powerful emotion and the intense
attraction remained.
 
It lurked just
below the surface.
 

She could easily love him again, she thought
,
if she didn’t now.

The idea pleased her on some levels but most of all,
it terrified her.

Santiago, the man he’d become, remained a stranger
and although she trusted him, she didn’t dare give him her heart or he’d
shatter it.
 
Again.

Chapter
Three

Santiago’s presence loomed so large that it made her
apartment feel small and tight in comparison.
 
She curled up in the armchair beside the window after supper, feet
tucked beneath her body.
 
He sprawled on
the couch, more relaxed than he’d been since he arrived. If she hadn’t known
him well, once, she might’ve missed the small indications he remained edgy.
 
He bounced one foot up and down in a fast
rhythm.
 
Every few moments, Santiago
scratched his face with one finger and he yawned.
 
“Are you still tired?” she asked, curious and
without condemnation.

He nodded. “I didn’t sleep for a long time
today.
 
I cleaned up first but once I
stretched out, I had trouble settling down. Every time somebody came up the
stairs or went down the hall, I jumped.
 
I’m winding down now, thanks to the food and
the beer.”

The walls were thin and sound carried so she wasn’t
surprised. “Would you like another beer?”

His lips curled into a half-smile. “I’d love one,
but I’ll pass.
 
I need to keep my mind
clear, just in case.”

Sara hated to ask but did anyway.
“In
case?”

He shot a hard look her way. “If anyone hot on my
ass figures out I’m here,
la
muñequita
.
 
If they do, it could be ugly.”

She didn’t like the sound of that.
“How ugly?”

Santiago’s grin was more of a grimace. “Worst case,
you could be mopping my blood off your floor or wiping it off the walls after
you watch LEOS zip me into a bag.
 
Or, it
could be someone else’s splatter instead of mine.
 
Or, I could run and you’d be caught.
 
If so, rape would be mild compared to some of
what they’d do to you, but I would never leave you like that.”

Deep within, Sara knew he wouldn’t.
 
But she didn’t like any of those choices.
“Then I’m in as much danger as you are.”

His steely gaze never wavered. “No, you aren’t, because
I’m here to protect you.”

When she glanced down at his duffle bag, open on the
floor at the end of the couch, Sara saw the Glock 17 9 millimeter beside his
discarded clothes. “Is it yours?”

He rolled his eyes. “No, it’s Yosemite Sam’s.
 
Of course it’s mine.”

If she knew him, he had more than one weapon. “I
imagine you have a knife or two, as well.”

“
Si
, I
do.” To demonstrate, Santiago pulled a long, lethal knife from the rear of his
jeans and a switchblade from his front jeans pocket.

Most women, she thought, would be alarmed, but
finding him armed and dangerous reassured her. “I think you need to tell me
what’s going on.”

“It’s not a good idea.” He concealed the knives in
one smooth motion.

“You can trust me.”

“I do or I wouldn’t be here.”

Sara believed him.
 
If he didn’t, he wouldn’t.
 
“I
won’t tell anyone, Santiago.
 
I swear
it.”

This time, he grinned.
“
Chingao
!
You’re gonna pick until
I tell you, aren’t you?”

She smiled back. “Yes, you know I will. So you might
as well get it over with.
 
I’m not
telling whoever you work for, and I won’t turn you in to the law.”

Something flickered in his eyes.
 
He’s
going to tell me.
 
I know he is
.
 
Her certainty faded when he spoke. “You go
first,” he said. “Tell me about your husband, what was his name, Edward…”

“Erik.”

“Erik, then,” he said with a shrug. “I’d like to
hear why you followed him back to Arkansas, why your marriage was no good, and
why you live like this.” One arm swept outward to include her living room and
everything within view.

His words prickled her nerves.
 
“Like what?” She planned to bluff through his
questions with bravado and bullshit.
 
“There’s nothing wrong with the way I live.”

Santiago snorted. “No? Use your eyes,
amiga
.
 
A nun’s cell is more personal than this.
 
You own a florist shop, but you don’t have a single plant or bloom in
the place.
 
I’ve seen motel rooms with
more individual style than this.
 
Your
walls are bare.
 
I don’t see any pictures
of anyone or anything.
 
No posters, no
decorations, hell, not even a calendar on the wall.
 
You own a bare minimum of DVDs and there’s an
inch of dust on the stereo. Some of the CD’s haven’t even been opened.
 
You have a couple of books on your nightstand
but no more than five or six.
 
I looked
in your closet…”

He had no right to pry.
“Asshole!”

“Guilty,” Santiago said with a grin. “Anyway, your
clothes are all brown or navy blue or black.
 
There’s no red or yellow or green or purple.
 
You own multiple pairs of sensible
shoes.
 
Your shampoo is the cut rate
discount store knockoff and the closest thing you have to perfume is lavender
and rose scent.
 
If I didn’t know different,
I’d think you were the one on the run,
la
muñequita
.
 
Or, I’d think you had just moved here and
hadn’t settled in yet.
 
Yet you tell me
you’ve lived here for what, almost seven years.
 
I assumed you meant here, in this antiseptic apartment, but maybe I’m
wrong.
 
Did you just move?”

Sara resisted an urge to slap him or use her nails
as claws.
 
God, but he’d always been able
to bring out the most powerful emotions, good and bad.
 
She ached to hit him but deeper, she wanted
to fuck him more.
 
“You know I haven’t,”
she said.
 
“I’ve lived here for years.”

“No one could tell it,” he replied.
 
“Sara, you were full of life, you loved color
and music.
 
You wore red and other bright
colors.
 
Now you dress like Sister Mary Joseph,
you live like its temporary housing, and you don’t appear to do anything but
work.
 
This isn’t you, not the Sara I
knew and…”

Santiago bit off the last word, but she heard the
echo in her head.
 
He meant to say “loved”, I know he did.
 
And, Lord, he’s right.
 
I have retreated from everything.
 
I don’t have a life, just an existence, but
it worked until he showed up at the door.
“It’s who I am now,” she lied.

His long look penetrated into her soul.
 
Santiago shook his head. “Bullshit.
 
I don’t buy it.
 
What is it? Is this some kind of
self-inflicted penance? Tell me.”

She opened her mouth to refuse, to tell him to shut
up and leave her life alone.
 
For a
moment, she considered telling him to hit the road and take his chances.
 
Her anger swelled,
then
ebbed away.
 
Damn him, but he knew her
too well, and she couldn’t delude him. He’d always been the one person she failed
to fool. “If I do, then you’ll tell me what you’re running from?”

“Try me and find out.” His lips twitched with amusement,
then shifted into a taunting grin.
 
He’d
always snared her this way, pulled her in, caught her, and once he had her,
issued a challenge.
 
Sara had never
refused one and she didn’t plan to begin now.
 
Besides, in their shared past, once she proved she could keep up, he
almost always caved.

“I’ll try,” she said. “I don’t know if I can
explain.”

“Start with Erik.
 
Why in the hell did you trail him to Arkansas?”

An invisible fist squeezed all the air from her
lungs.
 
On occasion, she’d wondered
too.
 
“It’s complicated,” she said and
Santiago laughed. “Well, it is.
 
I guess
I have to start with my senior year.
 
It’s supposed to be the best year of high school but for me, it was the
worst.
 
You had graduated and I was
lonely.
 
I missed you, Santiago.”

He shook his head. “I was still around.”

“You were enrolled at Los Angeles City College as a
day student and you worked nights at General Mills,” she said, remembering.
“You were always at school, working, or sleeping.”

“
La muñequita
,
we went out every weekend, to a movie or to eat or to the beach.”

“Sometimes but you had to work when it was the East
LA Classic,” she said, surprised his absence still stung years later. “You
always had to work and you used to fall asleep at the movies.”

“I worked hard,” he replied. “I knew what I wanted –
to be an officer with the LAPD, but I couldn’t take the test or apply until I
turned twenty-one. So I signed up to get a two-year degree and worked to pay
for the tuition.
 
And I graduated,
then
waited the six months until my birthday to apply with
the department. But, by then, you were gone to Arkansas with Erik.”

Sara remembered and the hurt she thought she’d leached
from her body surged through her, potent and painful. “After I graduated, I got
accepted at University of Southern California.”

Santiago nodded. “You were going to be a teacher,
no?”

“Yes, I thought so, but things changed.”

When he spoke, his voice lacked any emotion.
“Because you met Erik?
Wasn’t he a visiting professor from
the University of Arkansas at Fayetteville?”

He had been. And he’d impressed her the first time
she’d seen him, strolling across campus during the summer session.
 
Sara, in an effort to try to catch up with
Santiago, had enrolled in two classes with a heavier course load scheduled for
the fall semester.
 
Somewhere in the back
of her mind, she had possessed a vague notion maybe she would transfer to City
College after a semester or convince Santiago to change to her campus.
 
Memory poured over her and she went silent,
remembering….

Afternoon sunlight
filtered through the trees as she rushed across campus, finished for the
day.
 
Since it was summer, Santiago worked
full-time days at General Mills and he’d be off work in an hour.
 
Although she hadn’t told him she would come,
she planned to meet him and take him on a beach picnic.
 
Sara figured they could grab something on the
way, then sit on the pier and watch the sun sinking into the Pacific.
 
Head down, backpack in place, she failed to
notice the other pedestrian crossing her path and they collided with enough
force she fell to the ground.

“Oh, shit!” she cried.
Her bare knees below her denim shorts took the brunt of it and she’d managed to
skin one on the sidewalk.
 
A thin thread
of blood trickled down her leg. “Ouch.”

“Let me help you up,”
a male voice said and she peered up, squinting into the sun to see his face. “I
apologize.”

He loomed above her,
more hippie than yuppie with shoulder length sun-streaked light brown hair and
cat-like green eyes.
 
If he hadn’t spoken
with a Southern kind of accent, she would’ve pegged him for a surfer or beach
boy, but his voice established he wasn’t from California.

“Thanks but it was
probably my fault. I was in a hurry.”
 
Sara glanced down at her leg and grimaced.
 
By the time she cleaned up the scrape and
changed, she wouldn’t be able to catch Santiago at the plant.
 
He’d head home, not to his mother’s but to
the apartment he now shared with four other guys.
 
She hated going there, so maybe she’d just go
home and call him.
 
Maybe they could
still go out, but the beach idea wouldn’t work, now.
 
She sighed as she lifted her bag.