I made it past Highland, and on to B Avenue, where the familiar blue and beige French Quarter apartments had stood for as long as I could remember. Sliding into a parking spot, I wondered how my parents would receive me after so many years.
Should I tell them what happened…where I've been?
I took a deep breath and stepped out of the car, heading for the metal security gate, wondering if I even remembered the code to get in. Seeing the keypad, the numbers came back to me in a flash.
2124#
The black gate buzzed, and the lock clicked open, kind of reminding me how prison cell doors were opened. I walked through the hallway which led to the main common area, shared by all the units. Passing by the old pool, which had been filled up with concrete by the owner one summer, I heard the ghostly sounds of me and my cousins swimming during summer break, the smell of barbecue wafting over the entire complex.
Damn, I missed that!
Before I realized it, I was standing in front of my parent's apartment…my old apartment. I rang the bell and waited. There was a shuffling of feet nearing the door, and the sudden turn of the knob. The door creaked open to an old woman holding her cat.
"Yes?" she asked.
I looked around her, and tried to look over her, hoping to catch a glimpse of my parents. None of their furniture was there…at least any of the furniture I remembered.
"Can I help you?" she asked again.
My gaze shifted back to her. "I'm sorry. I'm being rude. I'm looking for Mr. and Mrs. Martinez."
She shook her head. "Shame what happened to them."
"Shame?"
"You're asking about Liz and Jerry?"
"Yes. My parents."
Shocked, she dropped the cat, covering her mouth with both her hands.
"Your parents?"
She motioned me to come in. I shook my head, knowing that once I walked in, I wasn't going to like what I heard.
"I'll stay out here."
"This is not something you want to hear while you're standing up, mìja."
I stepped inside of the familiar apartment, and made my way to the couch directly in front of the door.
She sat next to me. "They were murdered here."
I bolted out of my seat. "What?" I yelled.
She looked up at me. "They think it was a mob hit, the way they were shot. On their knees…like animals."
Tears welled up in my eyes as she continued to describe the horrid event.
"I was living next door at the time, and I'm the one that called the cops when I heard the gun shots."
"Why are you living in their apartment now?"
"The manager couldn't rent it out because of the murder, so he offered it to me for half the rent and I couldn't turn it down."
I shook my head. "So you get a discount because my parents died here?"
She rested her wrinkled hand on my shoulder. "I didn't say it was right, mija."
I shrugged her off. "No, it's not right."
"I can't possibly understand how you must feel, but life goes on for the rest of us. I do know that your parents loved you, and they never stopped searching for you. Matter of fact…" her words trailed as she stood from the couch and rifled through a drawer in the kitchen.
I watched her closely, wondering what she could be looking for.
"Here it is," she said, holding a piece of paper as she walked back to the couch.
"What is it?" I asked, taking the white eight-by-eleven sized sheet of paper with a huge black and white picture of a younger me printed across it.
Across the top, the word 'MISSING' was printed in bold red ink.
"Your parents plastered these all over the neighborhood for years. They never gave up. They loved you, mijita."
My eyes welled up with even more tears. I didn't know one could feel so much sadness and loss in a single moment. This must've been how my parents felt all that time I was missing, and even though I didn't need to hear every sordid detail, I sat down to listen. If they had to go through it, then I should have to as well. In the back of my mind, I knew it was Angelo who killed them. After all, he did all of Rez's dirty work.
That piece of shit!
Angry, I shot up from the couch, and announced, "He killed my parents!"
"Who did?" the woman asked, grabbing for my wrist.
I backed away. "Nothing! Forget I was even here; it might save your life," I said, running out the door, leaving the flyer on the couch.
"Wait!" she yelled.
Wait for what?
There was no one here for me. That asshole had taken away everything I'd ever cared about…my self-respect…my parents. There was nothing left for me.
Making my way out of the apartment complex and back to the car, I headed toward the freeway, wiping the streaming tears from my eyes as I swerved in and out of traffic.
I didn't know where I was going; I just knew I needed to get as far away from the city as I could. Maybe I'd take the drive to Arizona. I had an aunt there who always treated me like a daughter and, right now, I really needed a mother figure in my life.
CALM WATER
HUNTER
The other side of town….
It had been a warm evening and I was sipping on a cold beer watching the eerily calm water dance with the moon from my favorite spot on the sand. There was nothing better than this…not a warm woman in my bed, or a fat wad of cash in my wallet could compare to the freedom I felt at this moment.
I closed my eyes to breathe in the salty sea air, feeling somewhat connected to it; as if it were a childhood friend ready to pick up where we had left off so long ago. When I was a young boy, a current dragged me out further than I had ever been before, and though I tried valiantly, I couldn't swim back.
For hours I treaded water, hoping my parents would see me and send rescue. But rescue never came. My adolescent muscles could no longer muster up the strength to keep moving, so I decided to stop and let the sea take me. She had won and I would concede victory to her.
I stilled my arms and legs and exhaled my last breath as I set my gaze toward the afternoon sky. Sinking quickly into the water, my lungs struggled to pump what little oxygen was left in them. It burned, every cell screaming for air as the sky slowly faded into an abyss of blackness.
My eyes opened to seagulls circling over me as I lay on the gritty sand, my throat burning from the copious amounts of sea water I vomited as a result of the near drowning.
My muscles ached from the hours of treading water, so I lay there, paralyzed with fatigue.
Sometimes I wondered if it all had been a dream; or if the ocean had taken pity on me and released me from her grip, waiting for another day to finish the job. She'd have to wait a little longer.
I was under contract with Citadel, a private security company which only hired ex-SEAL's, and no silly ocean was going to break a contract with them…maybe not even God Himself could.
After gulping down another sip of beer, I inhaled another deep breath, my lungs needed the relaxing air every once in a while. That was the only problem with working for a security company—there was always someone to protect, someone to rescue, but never enough time relax. Too busy to breathe, and definitely too busy for anything more than a one-night-stand in whatever country I happened to be dropped off in.
But that part didn't matter too much to me. Women were trouble anyway. They were always ready to drop you for the next best thing—a man with a bigger paycheck, a bigger house, a faster car, or an extra stripe on his uniform.
"Fuck 'em," I muttered, taking another swig. "Fuck her."
And by her, I was referring to my ex-girlfriend, Stacy. She was about as shady as they came, and the funny thing about it was, I was stupid enough to fall for her charms. She played the game well, and I fell for it, hook, line, and sinker.
She was a pretty little five foot two inches worth of Latin sass, who I had met at a bar in Tijuana one night while out with my friends. She talked me into buying her a beer and I woke up next to her the foll
owing morning. I suppose I should have known we weren't going to work out. We were like oil and water when we were together, the only thing we saw eye to eye on was what position I was going to fuck her in that particular day.
Stacy liked her sex…a little too much. Two months before we were supposed to get married, one of my best friends, Ari, caught her having sex with Drake, one of my teammates, on the beach while I was out on an extended op. When I couldn't get her to answer the phone, I called Ari to go over and check on her. In retrospect, I guess it would've been hard to answer a phone while she was getting her ass pounded into the sand.
I shook my head and took another drink. "What a cunt," I said under my breath.
Guess I wasn't fully over the betrayal since it still made my stomach churn every time I thought about it.
But what hurt most was Drake's backstabbing ass. If I could've killed that son-of-a-bitch I would have, but he wasn't worth going to jail, or losing my job over. Neither of them were. I guess I should've considered myself lucky. He saved me from marrying that cheating bitch. Probably should have sent him a box of chocolates or something.
Or something.
I chuckled to myself.
From behind, the sound of a car door opening and closing pierced through the night air.
Who the fuck is here this late?
I jumped to my feet for a better look, trying to squint, but the lack of light prevented me from gleaning who the nearing shadow belonged to. I pulled my 9 mil from my holster and cocked it, pointing it toward the shadow with my finger readied on the trigger.
"Who the fuck's there?" I shouted to the shadow.
The ominous figure stopped, then began to move toward me again.
"Stop right there," I warned, firing a warning shot into the sand next to the shadow's foot.
"It's me, Hunter," a familiar voice breezed by.
"Me who?" I asked, still aiming my gun.
"Ari. It's me, man. Ari."
I lowered my gun. "Ari, why the fuck are you sneakin' up on a motherfucker like that? I could have shot you."
He chuckled.
"Your ass wouldn't be laughing if you had a bullet lodged in your forehead right now," I said, holstering my gun.
Ari and I had grown up in the same neighborhood. Unfortunately, he had taken up with the wrong crowd and ended up in jail more times than I could remember, and all this before we even turned eighteen. So when we decided to join the Navy together, he was deemed ineligible due to his arrest record. I never judged him for his choices in life, but I made it clear if he ever involved me in anything that would jeopardize my career with Citadel, I would slit his throat.
It was a joke…sort of.
"Man, stop acting so fuckin' scary all the damn time. It's me. I came to see if you wanna go party before you get stuck with another mission out of the country. You might not muthafuckin' come back," he joked.
"I told you…I don't get stuck. I love my job," I said, picking up my beer from the sand.
"Ay. Shut up with that shit. You don't gotta front around me," he whined with his thick Spanish accent.
I shook my head then took another swig of my beer before dropping the empty glass into the bonfire pit, where it shattered into a hundred pieces.
He chuckled. "I ain't frontin'. How many times I gotta say that? I'm about it."
"You ain't about nothing but cheap whores and getting' high."
"And damn proud," he said, pounding his fist to his chest.
I chuckled. "Fine. Fine." Let's get the fuck outta here," I said, following him back to his car, jumping into the passenger seat. "Where we headed?"
"Fuckin' downtown. A lotta bitches out tonight," he yelled out the window.
Halfway down the street, I looked around the car, realizing I hadn't seen him drive this before. "This isn't your mom's car. Whose car's this?"
"Pinche, Hunter, always asking questions. Just sit back and ride Clyde," he said, winking at me with the light hazel eyes he hooked all his women with.
I shook my head and slapped the back of his bald head. "Fuckin' Ari," I said, wiping the sweat from his scalp on my jeans.
"Ay man. I told you to stop slapping me on the back of my head."
"Stop doing dumb shit, and I'll stop." I laughed.
"We can hope, right?" he asked, snickering at his own words.
He zipped up the 5 freeway and headed for the Gaslamp Quarter, taking the 6th and Downtown exit with a hard right, not realizing the light had turned red.
"Red light!" I yelled before a sizeable jolt shook me from my seat.
My head slammed against the passenger glass window as the car screeched to a halt.
"What the fuck was that?" Ari hollered.
I pressed my palm against my forehead; the sharp pain from the head trauma gave me a splitting headache. I looked at my hand, which was covered in blood. Ari turned to me, snapping his fingers in front of my face.
"You okay, Hunter?"
"Yeah, I'm okay."
We both turned to our left as the smoke from the hood of the other car turned to fire.
"Oh fuck!" I yelled, jumping out of the passenger seat toward the crumpled metal that used to be a beautiful Maserati.
I knocked on the driver side window, motioning for the obviously dazed woman to unlock the door. Blood was streaming from her forehead as she slowly looked around. She looked like she had been crying by the looks of the black mascara streaking down her cheeks. I finally got her attention after having banged on the glass for a few seconds.
"Ari, come help!" I yelled to him.
He was looking around in his trunk. "I'm looking for a tire iron. Why does this car not have a tire iron?"
I looked back toward the woman. "Unlock the door," I yelled, motioning to the door handle.
She nodded and pulled the door handle, the lock to the door popping up from the locked position. She shifted her long, smooth slender leg out first, followed by the body of a goddess, still a little wobbly from the accident.
"Are you okay?" I asked, shifting her blonde hair from her forehead, looking at the open wound.
She pushed me away. "I'm fine," she said, trying to walk away from the accident like nothing happened.
"Hey," Ari yelled.
She looked back at Ari, then toward me, sticking her hands in her pockets as she began to run as fast as she could in heels that weren't meant for anything more than decoration.
"Hey, where the fuck is she going?" Ari yelled again.
I ran after her, grabbing on to her jacket, pulling it off to reveal bruises all over her arms.
My jaw dropped. "What the…who did this to you?"
She turned to me, the fright in her face apparent as she tried to cover the bruises the best she could with her hands. I handed the jacket back to her, which she promptly slid back on.
"Are you okay?" I asked.
"It's better if you just leave me alone. You'll be safer," she said, backing away.
"Don't let her leave; she needs to pay me for this car. Who the fuck is gonna pay for this shit?" Ari asked, pointing at his car.
I glanced back at him. "It's not even your car."
"So what? The bitch has a Maserati; she can pay me for mental distress."
The sound of heels clicking away from me against the asphalt quickly caught my attention.
I turned back to her. "Wait."
She glanced back as she ran.
"Get her, Hunter," Ari yelled.
I started for her, jogging slowly at first, but when she disappeared around the corner of a building, I upped my tempo. By the time I made it around the corner she was gone. My eyes panned the unsavory street, knowing just by the car she had crashed that she was ill-prepared for the trouble this particular street would offer. Instead of heading back to Ari, I kept moving, looking down alleyways and through open gates for any sign of her.
There was a rustling behind a set of metal trash cans a few feet away, followed by a slight whimper. Slowly making my way ove
r to the cans, I spied over them to see her crouching down, trembling in fear. She looked up at me. Her soft blue eyes shining with tears that had yet to cascade down her smooth pale cheek.
I held out my hand. "I won't hurt you."
CELESTE
I pored over his strong, clean-shaven jaw, as he spoke, noting the softness in his honey-coated voice. His bright green eyes invited me to trust him unconditionally, but that would be stupid; to escape one man just to fall into the arms of another. But he didn't seem like a monster. I knew a monster. I just left a monster. I took in a deep breath and mustered my courage, resting my hand on his, grasping it as he pulled me up from the ground.
"What's your name?" he asked.
I quickly replied with, "I don't have any insurance."
"How do you have a Maserati and not have insurance?" he chuckled.
"I'm sure the owner has insurance. I'm just saying I don't have any," I said, dusting off the debris from my knees.
He looked over his shoulder. "Did you steal it?"
I didn't reply.
He looked into my eyes. "You don't strike me as the kinda girl that steals cars."
I let go of his hand and clutched onto the lapels of my jacket as I backed away. "I don't look like the kinda girl that would do a lot of things, but that doesn't mean I don't do them."
"What's that supposed to mean?" he asked.
I shook my head, wiping the tears that had begun to cascade down my cheeks.
"Are you in some kind of trouble?"
I crossed my arms, looking toward the ground in shame. He seemed like a really nice guy. The kind of guy, that in another life, I would've wanted to go out with; maybe a nice dinner and, if he was charming enough, a movie. But this wasn't another life, and in this life, I wasn't free to make the kind of choices afforded to regular women.
"Why do you care?" I asked.
"Why won't you answer me?" he asked, reaching for my wrist.
I backed away. "I don't owe you anything. Don't touch me."
"Well you owe me for this knot I have on my forehead. So why don't we start with your name?"
I looked at the sincerity in his face. No one ever asked what my name was. It was always just her, hey, or that bitch. Funny how a little kindness could make a girl like me feel as awkward as the day was long.
Indecency: A Bad Boy Romance Page 2