Love Inc: Taming Cross Part 8

I hear shots, and then I'm on the ground. Evan's knee is on my back, and he's firing over me, BAM BAM BAM. I strain my neck in time to I see Juan crumple to the ground. I guess I scream. I don't know. I hear a woman screaming, and I'm on my feet. "No don't, no don't." I'm crying, bullets are whizzing by, and BAM BAM, Malcolm is down. Oh my G.o.d, there's so much blood.

My body trembles violently as I hang onto the angel.

"What are you doing? I don't know what's going on!" This isn't even Thursday...

He shoves me behind him and runs a few paces forward, firing again and again. All my senses are sluggish. I hear tires screech, and look up in time to see a familiar silver Escalade crash into a telephone pole.

A second later, I hear a woman's wail. Katrina's wail.

Angel is back, pus.h.i.+ng me again, toward the clinic parking lot. Katrina is wailing like a mad woman, and like a frame from a disjointed film reel, I see her tall, round form stumbling toward us.

"You killed him! You killed him you stupid b.i.t.c.h!" She fires a .22 right at my face, and I can feel the heat of the bullet as it travels just to the left of my ear.

Whoosh, whoosh. Whoosh. The bullets wiz by, but none of them hit. Katrina is a lousy shot. She does fingernails.

We're out of town before I hear the roaring engines of Jesus's crew, on our tail. They're not right up on us yet, but it doesn't matter. We'll still be dead by morning. My only prayer is that my angel didn't really kill Jesus. Katrina wouldn't know. She probably over-reacted. Once before, Jesus got shot and came home bleeding, and she had to be sedated more than he did before Dr. Marino dug the bullet out.

As I hang onto my angel's waist and clutch the bike-and the angel's b.u.t.t-with my thighs, I think of how weird it is that I'm this calm. Someone from the United States came here to take me back. Then he killed Juan. And Malcolm. And probably Guapo. And maybe Jesus. And Katrina, my old BFF, tried to kill me. And now the Cientos Cartel is coming after us. Me.

I spin through my mental, cartel rolodex, wondering who's in charge. If Jesus is really indisposed and Guapo is as dead as I think he is, who will be behind the wheel of Jesus's battered Escalade?

Probably Christina, his twenty-year-old sister.

I close my eyes against the sting of the dry wind and wonder why Jesus was at the clinic anyway. It's not his style to come in person. But he was coming for me. Maybe he thought it was something a lover would do.

For some reason, I picture the nightgown-clad body of a young girl who got caught one time in Jesus's crossfire as he tried to kill her father. Then I picture Juan and Emanuel, in their slouchy blue jeans and designer s.h.i.+rts and boots. How I would ride with them to school in the back of one of Jesus' many cars. How I used to think of myself as their subst.i.tute mom.

I'm so stupid.

I'm so very, very stupid.

The engines roar behind us, and the guy who rescued me-probably not an angel, after all-juices the bike. I wonder how long till they catch up. I haven't moved my body in miles; it feels cemented to the bike seat. But now I lean around the guy's arm to see the road in front of us. We're on 490, heading north toward Torreon; it's one of the largest roads around, probably one the cartel would expect us to take. I frown as I peek out at the dark, cracked road again. My angel isn't holding the handlebar with his left arm. I can't tell how he's driving, but I know I don't see fingers around the handlebar. Did he get hurt?

Lots of people got hurt...

One of them was Juan.

How can a kid that young be dead?

It's disgusting. It's horrible, a shame, and I wish it wasn't real. I start to cry, and I'm ashamed because I'm crying for myself. I'm going to be lying in a pool of blood, too. So will my "rescuer." I wonder if he has any idea what they'll do to us. Especially if he killed Jesus. Gory images fill my head, and it's everything I can do to raise my arm and tug his shoulder.

I lean closer to his ear and suck in the dusty air so I can yell, "Pull over!"

"WHAT?" The wind carries his deep voice, slaps it against my ears.

"Pull over, now!"

It's a long shot, but it just might work. In the world of the cartels, you don't turn tail and run-ever. And by the logic of this hot, dry, barren place, you definitely don't pull off on the side of a highway in the middle of nowhere and hunker down with a big, s.h.i.+ny motorcycle. But that doesn't mean we can't try.

I see a farm house up on the right and jab his back.

"PULL OVER NOW!"

He veers sharply off the road, kicking up a cloud of dust as we fly behind a quaint brown house.

c.r.a.p, the dust cloud! I'm praying for a strong wind to blow it away when the sound of roaring engines explodes behind us and we go toppling off the bike.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN.

I come around lying on my back, staring at the moon, which has a triple halo that smears and stretches in time with my pulse. I blink a few times to clear my vision and realize my mouth is stuffed with gra.s.s and dirt. There's something hot and wet on my lips. d.a.m.n. I bring my shaking hand up to wipe at a hot smear of blood.

I roll over, push up on my elbow, and look around the junk-strewn, dirt lawn, but I don't see her. "Merri!" I'm on my feet fast enough to make my head spin, striding toward the house. There's not a light inside it anywhere; everything is quiet. Where the h.e.l.l is she?

"Merri!"

She hits me from behind. Hits me so hard she knocks me down, and I realize as we land in a heap of tangled limbs that the buzzing sound I thought was ringing in my ears is really the cartel catching up to us.

I see their headlights and Meredith jerks me toward the back porch.

"Come on," she hisses. "Hurry!"

I glance at the Mach, dusty and scuffed-up, lying on its side beside the porch stairs, and I wish I could run and grab it, push it up the stairs and out of sight-but I can't. Not with one hand.

Merri jerks me along behind her, leading me through a sea of broken children's toys and rusted car parts, and I wonder what the odds are that she knows the people who live here. I've got my mouth open to ask her what the plan is when she drops to her knees on the wooden porch. As the motors roar closer to us, she lifts a hatch door. I'm thinking it's not even big enough for a dog to climb inside when she jabs me in the abs with her elbow.

"Get in there!"

"You first."

I watch her a.s.s disappear into the darkness and see her hand jut out. "Come on!" she hisses.

I'm not sure I can fit, but I'm leaner than I used to be, and anyway, it sounds like our pursuers are in the driveway now, so I don't have much choice. I go in feet first, giving Merri a front-seat view of my a.s.s. When I'm in up to my armpits, I feel her arms yank around my waist and I topple back against her. She mutters something.

"Sorry," I hiss.

I'm clawing at the boards that make up part of the porch and also our little shelter's walls, trying to take some of my weight off her, when I hear a car's motor yards away.

Motherf.u.c.k. I pull the gun out of my pants with my right hand. I feel Merri move behind me and I want to tell her I've got this, but I'm too afraid to break the silence.

The motor dies. It sounds like just one car. The rest of the cartel has driven on; once their noise fades, a deathly quiet settles. Then I hear a man's voice. He sounds winded. I figure he's excited about spotting my bike, but instead I realize he's talking into a phone.

"Yes, he is really dead. Yes." There's a brief pause, during which I hear the click of a cigarette lighter. With the gun still in my hand, I train my eyes on the boards to my right, the part of the porch that separates us from our pursuer, but I can't see him. Can only hear him. "Yes, we are hunting them like dogs." Another pause. The man laughs. I smell cigarette smoke. "I don't know about the clinic. It's supposed to be the Virgin's place."

I'm going cross-eyed trying to look through the boards when all of a sudden, I feel Meredith's body shaking against mine. I wish so badly that I could reach my arm back and hold her hand-or something-but it would be stupid to let go of the gun. I turn my body slightly sideways, trying to lean into her, but it doesn't work. We're too cramped. I can't move.

d.a.m.nit, she's starting to cry. I can hear her small, wet breaths.

"I got to do a walk around this house," the guy is saying. Pause. "Oh, you want to blow me instead? How about I come over as soon as I'm done here and bring some of my tar?" Another pause. Merri's body is shaking so much now I decide to tuck the gun into my boot. "Then we plot how we will get the power." The man laughs as I turn, with effort, to face Meredith.

"From my c.o.c.k," I hear the guy say with a chuckle.

With a final glance above me, at the hatch door, and just a breath of nervous hesitation, I wrap my right arm around the woman crouching behind me and bring her head to my shoulder.

She's still shaking. I lean against her, just a little, and she wraps an arm around my waist and buries her face in my throat.

It's okay, Merri. It's okay.

Beneath my concern for the woman I'm supposed to be saving, I'm tense with wondering if the dude will come and find us, but then I hear him say "f.u.c.k it," and I hear a stomp that I a.s.sume is hombre putting out his cigarette.

Hail Mary, that would be some f-ing awesome luck.

And then his car door slams, the engine purrs, and he drives off.

I'm still shaking minutes after t.i.to drives away, and my savior's arm is still around my back. I squeeze my eyes shut and take a big, deep breath, grateful that I'm not alone in this. I'm grateful for all of half a minute, and then I shove the stranger away.

I reach around him to throw the trap door open, and as soon as the moonlight beams down on us, my terror and fear bubble up, and all of a sudden I'm furious.

"Do you know what you did tonight? You killed Jesus!"

The guy frowns, looking pensive as he holds onto the walls to keep his balance in the cramped s.p.a.ce. "It's been mentioned."

"Do you know what this means for me? It means I'll never, ever, ever get out of this country in one piece! Neither will you! We're f.u.c.ked! I'm sorry I don't curse usually, but when there's only one word that works you have to use that word and we are f.u.c.ked! Royally f.u.c.ked!" I storm up through the trap door and fall onto the porch, belatedly realizing that I'm crying again.

The guy is right behind me. His hand is on my back. I swat it off and stumble to my feet.

"What's your big plan? I hope it involves a helicopter or a tank because otherwise we're going in an unmarked grave!" I cover my face, crying again, almost hysterical. "And the clinic..."

It's my fault. It's all my stupid, selfish fault.

I shove him in the chest. "What's your plan?" Before he can answer, I throw up my hands. "What's your fracking name?"

"You said fracking." His eyebrow arches.

"Yes, I did. So the frack what?"

"I love Battlestar."

"I don't see how that matters."

I turn away from him, because all I can think about in this second is that if I'd just gone with Jesus, probably no one would be dead. There's a chance he might have killed me just to make a point, but there's a chance he might not have. Jesus liked me. He might have forgiven me, and there would have been no blood shed. No dead kids. No one in danger.

"It doesn't matter," the guy says with a shrug of his shoulder. "But it's cool."

"Who are you?" I put my hand on my hip. "I want to know, for real this time."

He reaches down into his boot to get the gun, pointing it at the ground as he raises up to face me again. "Evan. Does that help?"

"Not at all." I slump down on the stairs. "Who do you work for, Evan?"

"I already told you-a company that finds missing people."

And at that, he turns away, scanning the yard for something, then cursing. He lopes down the stairs and through the mess of junk, and I realize as he reaches the bike that the metal piece that holds the front wheel onto the rest of the frame is bent.

"Motherf.u.c.king h.e.l.l."

I'm right behind him, not sure if I'll cry this time or sock him in the nose.

"Can you fix that?" I snap.

I want him to say 'no', to tell me that we're screwed. That we're fracked. I want to give up hope, because it would be so much easier to just give up when I know there really isn't any hope.

Instead, he crouches beside it, running his hand along the metal rod. He flicks a glance at me. "I'm sure I can."

"Of course. What can't you do?"

He grins a little. "Nothing. Actually," he says, as he stands the bike up, "I couldn't slow us down a little while ago without knocking us both off. I'm sorry about that." He looks like he might say something else, but instead he opens a big, leather pack attached to the back of the bike and starts to pull out tools.

That's when I notice something: he doesn't use his left hand-at all. He spreads his tools out on the ground, laying each one down with his right.

The night breeze plays through my hair and my eyes fill up with tears again. How long has it been since I've felt a breeze? Since I've seen the moon without the barrier of a window? I look up at it, feeling so many things, and wondering how long do I have to see it now, before the cartel finds us?

"They'll find us, you know." My voice is barely loud enough to be a whisper. "With Jesus dead, Christina will take over. His sister. She doesn't like me very much anyway, and she won't like you."

"That right?" He glances over his shoulder, holding a tool between his teeth, and I nod.

"You think I'm not likable?"

"You think this is a joke?"

He doesn't answer me. Instead, he looks over his shoulder, at the house. "How did you know about the porch?"

I zip my lips. I know about it because the elderly woman and teenage boy who used to live here were gunned down by Jesus. The teenager robbed one of Jesus's country homes, and the old woman tried to protect him when Jesus came. I was in the back seat of his car at the time, and we'd just been to eat in Torreon. I'm not sure why he decided to stop on that sunny afternoon-maybe because he saw the kid's car or something-but I watched them try to open the trap door as Jesus shot them.

I'm not telling angel that.

Non-angel.

Evan.

I wipe my face and try to sound composed. "Just a lucky guess. Some houses in Mexico have those," I say.