Staring in the mirror at someone she hardly recognized, it became clear what they were looking at…a hot mess. Quick to get out of her expensive couture, she found a pair of black yoga leggings and jacket to change into. The dress that was bought with hopes and dreams went into the trash where it belonged since becoming a nightmare full of bad memories. After splashing water on her face to remove the residual sludge-like makeup, she ran a brush through her hair, tossing it into a simple ponytail for the day.
She still didn’t recognize the fresh-faced girl staring back at her in the mirror. She looked tired, sad, and maybe even frightened. It occurred to her in that moment that she probably wouldn’t recognize herself for a while, not until she discovered who she was now, this new life that she was supposed to adopt. Life was starting over, and she didn’t deal well with change. It had been less than 24 hours since her world tilted on its axis, but it felt like a lifetime ago.
Slipping on her sneakers so she could get back to the car before the cavalry came looking for her, she couldn’t help but laugh. Jason had said they were on the run, and here she was, tying up her running shoes. There was a little more of that irony crap that kept happening.
With her black duffle bag slung over her shoulder, she headed out the door. She remembered seeing a payphone attached to the wall when she was going in. For some odd reason, she felt the need to lift the receiver and see if it worked as she passed back by. It was dead, of course, probably for the best. Who would she call anyway? She was trapped in her own little world, cut off from everyone and everything she knew. A victim of her own circumstance.
Catching Jason’s intent stare, she shifted where she stood, feeling equal parts uneasy and something she couldn’t quite identify. That look made her nervous – he made her nervous. She chalked it up to their current circumstance. Before, he was more a fixture who went nearly everywhere she did. Now, her life depended on him.
A rolling door, coming from her left, startled her from her thoughts and caught her attention. The spikey haired man with muscles for days, from the car behind them, had put the car she exited only moments before in the stall and locked it up. Looking back to Jason, she noticed that their car was now an SUV. How had she missed that, and why were they using another car? Part of being on the run meant car swapping apparently.
The spikey haired man rejoined the others, and she noticed he looked much like his less edgy partner. Where the one had spikey hair, the other had a slightly longer style that was clean cut and combed back. Spike – she didn’t know his name – wore a nearly too tight t-shirt that hugged his physique and low hanging jeans, where the guy, who looked more like a Ken doll, wore an appropriately fitting athletic shirt with matching shorts. Spike had tattoos, whereas Ken doll didn’t seem to have any. Both were easy on the eyes, but the obvious physical contradiction was like that of a dive bar versus the country club.
After a quick nod from yin and yang, they were back in their car, pulling back onto the highway to a destination unknown. Not very chatty, she thought. Perhaps all muscle and lacking in intellect. It was no matter; Jason had said it was just the two of them on the road, on the run. There were those nerves again.
Jason stood at the rear of the new vehicle they were to leave in, hatch up, waiting for her bag. He had a brown bakery box in one hand, while eating something from the other.
“Donut?” he asked. “You’ve got to be hungry by now. You slept clear through the morning.”
“Slept through the morning?” She was surprised by the statement, sure she heard him wrong. “What time is it?”
“It’s well after noon. Hungry?” He held the box out so she could see its contents.
“Um, I don’t know. Are they vegan?” she questioned with her nose turned slightly up and a judgy tone.
“Vegan? What the…sure, yeah, vegan. You need to eat something. We’ll stop later for actual food, so take a few of these for now. We won’t be to our destination until tomorrow night. You need to eat when you can.”
“If they’re not vegan…” the sight and smell went right to her senses, and they sounded the alarm in a loud belly growl. So much for playing it cool and waiting for something vegan. Her body was betraying her over some sugary donuts. “Fine, since they’re vegan…I guess I’ll have one; I’m not that hungry.”
“Uh huh.” He chuckled at the sound of her rumbling stomach and handed her a second donut. “Why don’t you hold this one, too…for me. I might get hungry.”
“Okay, fine.” She reluctantly took the second donut and got into the passenger side of the vehicle without another word.
He closed the back and got behind the wheel, pulling back onto the highway, driving the opposite direction of the men who just left.
“Well that answers that,” she said under her breath.
He gave her a strange side-eye glance. “What answers…what?”
Finishing the first donut and eyeing the second, she went on to ask what she really wanted to know. “Oh, I was just wondering if we were still being guarded by yin and yang or going on our merry way. They went left; we went right…question answered.”
“Yin and yang?” he chuckled at her deadpan response.
Raised eyebrows and an amused smirk looked good on him, she thought – better than his typical steely stare. “Yeah, yin and yang. The two guys who have been traveling with us? They look almost exactly alike other than the bad boy, good boy, opposite thing they have going on. You know them – personally, I mean.”
Nodding, he was impressed with her observation. That kind of attention to detail would benefit them while they ran and come trial time. “Yeah, I know them pretty well. Why?”
“You smiled at one of them – the one who looks like a Ken Doll. You never smile, not like that.”
His smirk faded to bewilderment. “Yeah, he was telling me about his kid. She’s pretty…cute. Wait, Ken Doll? Are you serious?”
With a mouth full of the second donut that she didn’t want, she replied, “Yeah, the pretty one. Looks like a Ken doll or something…especially next to the other one.”
A sound that startled her as much as it brought her joy escaped him…laughter. “So, if the pretty one is a Ken doll, what’s the other one? Please let this be good.”
“Oh, Spike? He needs bigger shirts. He doesn’t have to shop at Baby Gap. They have clothes for adults, too.” She shrugged at the thought, surprised Jason hadn’t noticed.
“Yeah, his shirts are a little tight. He works out a lot.” He paused, his expression falling to one of serious emotion. “They are 2 of the only men we can trust right now; the other two are with your sister and Jax.”
When it was apparent that he wasn’t going to elaborate, she dug a little deeper. It was curious to her how mention of them evoked emotion of any kind – he didn’t do emotions. “So, I don’t get to know who they are? Why they’re important to you and the only people we can trust?”
“It’s better if you don’t know, the less you…” her disappointed sigh let him know that she already knew what he was going to say. Though he thought better of it, he decided to give her something more than just, you don’t need to know. “Look, they’re from my team, personal team. Not the…agency I work for. We’re in the wind – off the grid for now – my agency doesn’t even know where we are, and they’re ultimately the group taking Esteban down.
“We can’t trust whatever government, military something or other agency you were undercover for, but we can trust a couple no name blondes with muscles?” A little unease crept in. “Is that even safe? Isn’t that going rogue or something?”
“I suppose it is rogue, and yes, it’s safe. Esteban’s reach is massive, and his pockets deep. I don’t know who I can trust. Highest military and government clearance doesn’t make a person honest; it just makes them in the know about a lot of big stuff. Money and blackmail can make people do things they never thought they would or could. We’ll stick with my personal team and worry about the agency later.”
/> “I suddenly don’t feel very…safe.” She pulled her legs up under her in her seat and took another bite out of that donut. “Can we call Trin and Jax, make sure they’re okay? You said they were parting ways with their team at some point, too, right? She’ll be alone.”
“No. We can’t call them. They are never entirely alone. They’re always being watched and people are nearby. If something goes wrong, I’ll know.” He took one look at her and realized that his words offered little to no comfort – he would know probably didn’t offer much comfort. “Look, I check in at my office, just like the others do. I use a burner phone then dump it in the mail to a random address. If it’s traced by someone we don’t want on our trail…they’ll follow it to an undeliverable address far from where we will be. The whole team operates this way when we are this deep. I’ll know if something happens. They’re safe.”
With each no and sliver of information, she became more and more aware of the danger she was in. She should be grateful to have this man protecting her, but truth be told, the more she learned about him, the more she feared him, too. He’s the guy you want on your side when murder and mayhem ensue, but he’s also the guy who you don’t want to cross or meet on the wrong side of a deal gone bad. She didn’t find comfort in either scenario…just anxiety and a lot of new questions that she would never get answers to.
She turned to him, studied him; there was something big staring her right in the face, and she was finally putting it together. He was undercover, with a fake identity working for a non-existent branch of what was probably government, and the means to disappear altogether, even from them because he had his own team who could do so. The more she learned about the stranger beside her, the more she realized she knew less and less about who he really was. He was exactly who he wanted her to believe he was, real or not, and that was it. That didn’t sit well with her at all.
“Your name,” she started, “it isn’t Jason Carmichael, is it?”
His jaw tensed, and his grip on the steering wheel tightened when he shook his head no. He wouldn’t look at her.
“What do you really do; who are you?”
His answer wasn’t immediate. There was a lot on the line, and he had to be careful how much he shared. He felt like he could trust her, wanted to tell her everything. He wanted to gain her complete trust and tell her why he was really there – why he stayed undercover so long and that it was for her. Letting her in, however, would be breaking the cardinal rule in his line of work. It was too personal and dangerous. There was too much at stake, with everything on the proverbial line. He found himself conflicted. The professional in him was losing to personal desire. He caved.
“My name is Declan O’Reilly.”
HOURS HAD PASSED before they finally rolled into a blink-and-you-miss-it town with its only local drive-thru on the corner of the one light in town intersection. Declan went inside to order while she freshened up in the restroom that was accessed from the outside of the building.
“Hey, what do you want to eat?” he hollered, just before going inside.
With a dismissive shrug, she replied, “Just, whatever is fine.”
Despite the hours of consistent silence, she was overwhelmed by him and needed space. To clear her head. His presence was heavy and exhausting, and she didn’t know why. Sitting so close to him for so long through whatever emotion it evoked required a minute to reconcile whatever it was that he did to her. It wasn’t tension, certainly not desire or even fear – just something in the air between them. Maybe it had something to do with the secret op’s, undercover, undisclosed military for hire, mercenary thing he had going on.
It didn’t take conversation for her to learn who Declan O’Reilly was – his silence actually spoke volumes. He was determined and confident. His focus was like none other. Though gritty and rigid socially, there had to be something deeper that was more emotional.
He cared for some reason, or he wouldn’t be there, protecting her and her family the way he did. That made him selfless and fearless. Not to mention big, bold, and brawny with all the right bulges and valleys carved into his perfect physique. Then, there were his eyes – those deep emerald green eyes that you could swim in for hours. She shook herself from her wandering thoughts and scolded herself for trailing down such an inappropriate path. She splashed cold water on her face and got the hell out of her own head.
Small town, slow service – this place was anything but fast food. Lydia was leaning against the car when he finally made his way out of the joint. She greeted him with an eyeroll when she noticed not one but two milkshakes and that the bags were already soaked in grease.
“Milkshakes and burgers. I wasn’t sure if you wanted fries or onion rings, so I got both. I’ll eat whatever you don’t, or we can share. Your call.” He extended the drink carrier within her reach so she could grab her shake but was met with an offended look of disgust.
“Are you serious?” she shot back, catching him off guard.
Not sure what he had done wrong, he looked down at the bags and shakes to make sure there wasn’t a fly in her food or something of the like. “Chocolate. Thought everyone liked chocolate.”
“Declan, I can’t eat any of…” she scoffed, waving her arms around, indicating the source of her fit was that which rested in his full hands, “that. Milkshakes? I bet there’s cheese on those burgers and plenty of saucy stuff, too?”
A baffled look followed by concern led to more questions. He hadn’t a clue what he did wrong. “Well…yeah! It’s a burger; it needs the cheese. Oh geez! Are you lactose intolerant or something? How did I not know that?”
“Lactose intolerant? NO! It’s…animals! I don’t eat animals – I’m vegan!” Her spoiled fit had escalated to a full-blown toddler tantrum, complete with tears threatening to spill over. “I may as well start drinking hard alcohol and…and…smoking those marijuana drugs and…and…get on with this early death you’re offering me!”
“Early death? It’s a burger. Can’t you just peel off the cheese or something?” Still baffled, he decided he better school himself on veganism because his lack of understanding was driving her beat red with white knuckled fists.
“Peel off the…” Lydia tossed her hands in the air, completely defeated. Grabbing her bag of food from his hand, she marched off, but not before stopping short, turning around, and grabbing her milkshake.
She left him where he stood and took a seat on top of a nearby picnic table that overlooked a small duck pond. She picked at her food, feeding most of it to the ducks and geese that were surrounding her while she dug back into that ugly place in her head. Only a day or so before – she couldn’t remember because it was all such a big blur – she had been living her normal life, shopping, doing yoga, eating non-animal anything all prepared by her live-in chef.
Now her life had been reduced to this – a bag of greasy dead animal that tasted like cardboard in the middle of nowhere with a guy she thought she knew, but didn’t, whose muscles had muscles and who had only one expression…smug. She missed her son. That was what this was really about. Being uprooted, on the run, and away from him was killing her inside and the real source of her tears. Not the milkshake. She’d never admit it, but that milkshake was so fucking good, she wanted another one. She wondered why she gave those up to begin with – there was something to be said about chocolate and sugar.
Declan joined her at the picnic table after hanging up his phone, milkshake in hand. He was silent for a moment, obviously testing the waters before he spoke – he didn’t like the tears – they made him uncomfortable. Spoiled or not, he knew her outburst was about more than cheeseburgers and milkshakes. Lydia wasn’t shallow, rude, or ungrateful. He didn’t even think she was really vegan. Though it seemed to be a spoiled rant, it was much more than that, nothing but a façade to mask her broken heart.
“Trinity and Jax are safe,” he began, keeping his eyes fixed anywhere but on her in fear of tears. “They’re on their own now. They should arrive at
their new home tomorrow.”
Lydia nodded slowly. “That’s good, right?”
“Yeah, they said she is handling things really well – taking it seriously. She asked a lot of questions, took notes even. Jax has her busy. They’re going to be fine.”
She wasn’t sure if she should be proud or jealous because she was anything but handling things well. “Trin was always the strong one, and tough, too. She’ll figure it out – too stubborn not to.”
“So are you. Don’t sell yourself short,” he encouraged.
Running her hands through her hair, she took a moment and tried to absorb what he had said. As much as she wanted to believe him, he was wrong. She was selling herself short because she fell short…she couldn’t do this; she wasn’t that strong.
In a near whisper, she confessed to what was really driving her anger and fears – Esteban. “He’ll come for me you know.”
Declan dropped his head and played with the straw in his milkshake cup, searching for the words he could give her to put her at ease. They eluded him because he knew, if there was such a way to bring her peace, that the truth itself would be enough to take her to her knees. That the truth was just as painful as being away from her son, sister, and everything she knew life to be. But she deserved to be free of the fear she confessed, even if it meant she would never be Lydia Valdez again.
“He isn’t going to come for you. He won’t have a reason to,” he began, trying to be as gentle as possible. “By Friday, he will think you’re dead. The plan is already in motion.”
“Dead? That’s day after tomorrow. Why…why would he think I’m dead?” Her body went rigid, and her voice began to shake. “What…what are you going to do to me?”
It pained him that once again she feared him. That she assumed this ruse to throw Esteban off her trail meant something more sinister than what she had already been through would take place and at his hands. He didn’t blame her for being afraid. It was a real and justified emotion, but believing that didn’t make the sting any less. He was here to protect her and would lay his own life on the line to do so, and he wanted nothing more than for her to know and believe that as his truth.
Brother's Keeper I: Declan Page 4