Safe Without You

by Ward, H.

  “So in La Palma, I’ll have some kind of story?”

  “Yeah, I’m working on that. I think maybe you’re my fiancé.”

  “Wow, you move quickly.” She fluttered her hand playfully, “Where’s my damn ring?”

  “Okay, maybe not fiancé,” he muttered. “How about common-law wife?” He tickled her side.

  “Buddy, there is nothing common about me.” She gave him a little kiss.

  “No kidding,” Cal said with a raised eyebrow.

  The bus was comfortable enough and air conditioned, and it was certainly a cheap way to travel. They settled in for the ride, and soon the motion lulled Amber to sleep. Her head fell against Cal’s shoulder, her breathing quiet and rhythmic. The next thing she knew, Cal was patting her awake.

  “We’re almost there. You know, you sleep more than any human I think I’ve ever met,” he said.

  “I think it’s some kind of reflex from working the bike tours. We got up early and went late, and so you learned to nap at any available moment. Believe it or not, I can manage really well in a totally sleep-deprived state. I’m like the sleep equivalent to a camel—I seem to keep the excess in some kind of sleep bank.”

  “I don’t think that’s scientifically possible,” Cal said doubtfully.

  Amber shrugged her shoulders, “Just saying.”

  As they got off the bus, Amber felt compelled to be nice to the Hungarians. Denes was a sweetheart, she thought, and Tomás wasn’t a bad guy, only a little full of himself. She had been a cock tease, and she needed to take responsibility for that. She turned to Cal, “Give me just a minute. I really should apologize to Tomás.”

  Cal didn’t look thrilled, but he understood that it’s never good to leave ends frayed when they might be tied up.

  Amber drew Tomás away from his brother, “Look, I behaved badly and I want to apologize. You’re a good guy, really attractive, and I want to say thank you for the nice things you did—the meals, the drinks—I didn’t mean to take advantage. I—I was mixed up. I’m really sorry.”

  Tomás looked at some mysterious point in space as Amber hung her head. He expelled a breath. “Okay, yeah, apology accepted.”

  “I hope you enjoy the rest of your vacation.” Amber meant it genuinely. “Be safe in Darien, keep to the beaten paths, you hear some weird stuff about things along the Colombian border.”

  “Thanks.” Tomás started to walk away, then turned back to Amber. “You have my phone number if you change your mind?”

  Amber had no intention of ever using it, but why rub it in? “Yeah, I’ve got it,” she said.

  “Good luck, Amber.” Denes had hailed a cab, and Tomás went to join him.

  Amber waved good-bye, and then went to where Cal had collected their bags. “Okay, that’s done. I feel better. What now?”

  “We’re going to check into our hotel, have dinner, and relax. We’ll take an early flight to La Palma in the morning.” He shouldered a bag. “Have you ever been to the historic district? I thought we’d stay down there. And I plan on taking my uncommon wife out for a very nice dinner.”

  Amber smiled, “That sounds great.”

  The taxi let them out in front of a colonial looking building in the Casco Viejo, the old city, and soon they had dumped their belongings in the floor of their room.

  “This is nice,” Amber said, “Definitely a step up from the beach bungalow.”

  “Yeah, there’s air conditioning. You want it in the city.” He flipped on the switch. “I’m going to take you to a great place on Plaza Bolivar. You like ceviche?”

  “Heck yes, I like ceviche.”

  “Well they have the best ceviche and tapas and cocktails there.” Cal pulled Amber down on the bed. “It’s very romantic there.”

  “It’s very romantic right here,” Amber said as she covered Cal’s mouth with her own.

  Journal Reflection 9

  Just because I didn’t go to college doesn’t mean I don’t have a life of the mind. I’ve read more classic books than lots of people with college degrees, and probably spent more time thinking about them. When you’re peddling up the Pyrenees, it helps to have something to focus on besides the fact that the top of the mountain is still twenty kilometers away.

  I like novels and stories enough, but I really like a lot of non-fiction too. That’s an interesting term in itself—non-fiction, you would think that the opposite of fictitiousness would be truth, but apparently it’s not. Apparently the opposite of make-believe is not make-believe which makes you think there’s a third category of existence between fabrication and reality.

  Anyway, one summer I got on a philosophy jag, and I read bits from all the classics: Aristotle, Plato, Kant, Descartes, Buddha, Confucius, St. Thomas Aquinas, Marx, Sartre.

  Sartre said, “It is only in our decisions that we are important.” That’s a heavy thought, you know? That our lives only become meaningful through the choices we make, and anything else is just accident or circumstance. For a long time I thought I was defined by the fact I never put down stakes in any one place, but as a child growing up, that wasn’t a decision I made. That was just something I had to face because the Air Force made those decisions—it wasn’t even the Colonel, for the most part. But when I began to choose to be a rolling stone, well, that’s a whole different thing. I could have chosen to go to college, get a job, and settle down in one place—until, of course, some circumstance of fate disrupted that plan, like an illness or an accident. Instead, I chose to peddle through the Pyrenees and read the musings of a French philosopher, but how exactly do those decisions make me important?

  Now I’m faced with this decision about knowing or not knowing and that brings a whole string of other decisions along with it. People talk about the domino effect, as if making one decision decides all the ones that will follow. But it’s not like that; you’re faced with an endless array of choices and decisions that go on for your whole life. And when I start to really think about it, it’s absolutely overwhelming. We never get to stop making decisions. Sartre believed that people were either wholly determined, meaning that if there was some higher power, they had no choice at all, or they were completely free—we can do whatever we want. But if we are completely free, then we are also completely responsible—that even if we want to run away from our decisions and avoid the consequences, we can’t. Sartre said that if we have free will, then we have to bear the weight of the whole world on our shoulders. Even if we choose to be passive and do nothing, that’s still a decision that we will be responsible for.

  It’s one thing to choose to pick up a guy or eat an ice cream or buy a new bikini. Now I’m deciding to lie, and carry pepper spray, and stuff a gun in my bra. Those are decisions, not circumstances. But what happens when other people’s decisions start to intersect with mine?

  And what about fate and destiny and kismet? Somehow I don’t think I’m going to be able to hide behind kisses and ceviche for much longer.

  Chapter 9

  The restaurant was lovely. Amber and Cal sat out on the plaza, enjoying a perfect evening. Swallows flitted around the tops of the buildings, and they could hear strains of music drifting toward them from the distance. It was an elegant restaurant, in fact, the nicest one that Amber had ever dined at without the Colonel paying.

  “This wine is amazing, Cal.” She dabbed at the corner of her mouth with the white linen napkin. He hadn’t let her look at the menu, so she had no idea how much everything cost. “Are you sure…you know, that…you’re not overextending your budget?”

  Cal smiled. “It’s fine. I mean, we can’t do this every night, but I’m good for us to have a nice evening out once in a while.” He reached across the table and took her hand. “I appreciate the concern, but you don’t need to worry about finances.”

  “I’ve…never been a kept woman, you know.”

  “Yeah, I kind of got that. You’re resourceful, but not greedy. I grew up in a family where we shared everything. If I have it and you don’t,
well, it’s not a big deal to me. You don’t have to worry about strings being attached.”

  “Your family is close?”

  Cal nodded. “My mom has been a rock through this thing with my dad, although she doesn’t know all of the details.”

  “What do you mean, ‘she doesn’t know all of the details?’”

  “She doesn’t know my part in it.”

  “Your part in it?” Amber took a drink of her wine, to steady herself. “Is this where you explain to me what the hell you really do?”

  “If I must.” Cal’s face was resigned, but he said it without any exasperation. “But are you starting to get it—guns, money, secrets from my own family? That’s for their protection, not because I’m embarrassed about what I do.”

  Amber drew in a deep breath, “Yeah, okay. I get the seriousness of this, because now, I’m going to become part of the story.”

  “I really do work for the DEA, Amber.” Cal took a drink of his wine, providing a moment for the meaning of his statement to sink in. “But I’m undercover. I’m flying the drugs and money around for a Colombian cartel that’s trading FARC cocaine for weapons and cash.”

  “Holy shit.” The color drained from Amber’s face. “Why would they hire an American to do that?”

  “As crazy as it sounds, there are plenty of people who want to backpack or go game fishing in Colombia’s interior. I drop off and pick up people going on trips with legitimate outfitters. The DEA set me up in business, and then the Colombians recruited me.”

  “And your plane crash?”

  Cal scratched his head. “There was some intelligence about where FARC might be holding some hostages, and I was trying to get a look.”

  “You were shot down.” Amber said it as a statement, not a question.

  “Yeah, but not by FARC—by the competition. There are some right-wing paramilitary groups in Colombia that fund themselves the same way that FARC does—with illegal drug trafficking. Except, apparently, they are even more vicious. I had to run from them for three days before I finally found a Colombian military patrol.”

  Amber shook her head, “So who’s not involved with the drug trade in Colombia?”

  “A lot of average citizens trying to have a life, and a few courageous politicians and policemen and military officers who want to make a difference. It’s fucked up—I give you that. Most of the small coca farmers and the workers on the big cartel plantations are just poor people trying to feed their families.”

  “So you were running around the jungle with your back all torn up, trying to keep both the far right and the far left from killing you?”

  “Yeah, pretty much. So, given my dad’s situation, you could see how my mom might freak out a little if she knew what I was really doing.” Cal said it in an off-handed way, like one would report a baseball score or a forecast of rain.

  “What does she think you’re doing?”

  “Flying charters out of Panama to various tourist destinations in Central America.”

  “And me?” Amber blew out a breath, as the reality of Cal’s existence started to sink in.

  “What about you?”

  “How do you explain me to your mom, the Colombians, the DEA, your clients? And aren’t you putting the fishermen or whoever they are at risk doing this?”

  “To answer the second question first, they aren’t civilian fisherman. They’re military contractors, advisors, officers…and DEA agents who volunteer to go fishing or camping for a week to make the operation look legitimate.”

  “You’re shitting me, right?”

  Cal shrugged. “They figure getting to go fish for paraya for free is worth putting up with a little risk.”

  It all seemed a little surreal to Amber, “So…what’s so great about fishing for paraya?”

  “Have you ever seen one of those suckers? They have six-inch long, teeth like knives on their bottom jaw. They can weigh thirty, or even forty pounds, and they will definitely give an angler a run for his money.”

  Amber squeezed her eyes shut for a moment. She opened them. “How did we just manage to connect plane crashes, dangerous armed organizations, cocaine, and game fishing in one brief conversation?”

  “Just talented, I guess.” Cal smiled gently. “But you have to play dumb bunny about all that—except for the game fishing.”

  “So how are we going to explain me…to everyone?”

  “You’re an English teacher that Cal the pilot met at the beach and decided to shack up with.”

  “Doesn’t that kind of make me sound like a tart?” Amber twisted her mouth as she waited for a response.

  “Isn’t it kind of close to the truth?” Cal picked up her hand and kissed her knuckles.

  “You just did that so I wouldn’t clobber you with that fist,” but Amber smiled as she said it. Her face sobered. “So how does your…work…fit in with your dad’s situation?”

  “Our job is simply to shut down the flow of drugs to the United States by working cooperatively with the Colombians. The fact that FARC is involved in both situations is, well, coincidental.”

  Amber was starting to understand how Cal operated, though. “You requested this assignment, didn’t you? You wanted to be close to what’s going on with your dad.”

  Cal nodded, a little guiltily. “The DEA wasn’t aware of the situation with my dad when they set me up, and they were furious when they found out. They think that kind of thing will affect your judgment…compromise the mission somehow, but they had invested too much in my cover by that time to back out of it gracefully.” He grinned a little as he added that detail. “They’ve threatened the shit out of me, though. If FARC had shot me down, rather than the right wing guys, they would have shipped my ass back stateside ASAP.”

  “And they’re going to be okay with me?”

  “They expect me to be undercover…not celibate.” He waggled his eyebrows meaningfully at Amber and made her laugh. “Who’s going to buy a virile young guy who never has a sleepover?” He pursed his lips slightly, his voice becoming a little rough, “I think maybe we should go back to the hotel so you can help me with that part of my cover.”

  Amber tilted her head, “Undercover under covers?”

  Cal reached across and traced Amber’s mouth with his fingertip as he wet his own lips slightly with his tongue. “More like…overheated.”

  Folding her napkin neatly and placing it by her plate, Amber stood up. Cal could see the curve of her butt cheeks through the flimsy cotton of her skirt. He glanced at the check, threw cash on the table, and slid an arm around Amber as he joined her on the plaza. They ambled in the direction of the hotel, taking their time as they strolled, allowing the heat between them to build. In the shadows of an old building, Cal trailed his fingers over the swell of Amber’s butt, the ticklish sensation that reached her nerve ends through the gauzy fabric making her crazy. Suddenly, he pulled her up a cobblestone alley, and pushed her into the cove of a locked and darkened doorway. He pinned her hands above her head, his other hand snaking up her skirt and around to the bare skin of her backside exposed by her thong. His fingertips danced across the soft, sensitive skin, and then his strokes began more firm as he pressed his crotch into hers. Cal’s hardness made Amber gasp, as he ground against her, his breath hot against her neck.

  Amber wanted to unzip Cal, to hike up her skirts and let him have her there in the alley, but with her arms imprisoned over her head, all she could do was squirm against his hardness, trying to rub herself against the curve of his bulging cock. He pulled back, and smiled at her wickedly, “My…aren’t we…eager?” he whispered. He released her arms and in one motion, spun her to face away from him. His hands reached around and under her tank top to cup her breasts, his thumbs and forefingers finding her hardening nipples through the sheer fabric of her bra. Knowing how she loved for him to play with her nipples, he resisted the urge to give them the attention she craved. His stayed fingers poised and ready and she pushed back against him, her breath coming
in heaving waves. “What do you want?” he breathed in her ear.

  “Be explicit,” he added, as he traced the line of her neck with the tip of his tongue.

  “You know what I want,” Amber whimpered, “Do it.”

  “Do what?” Cal teased. He acted as if he was going to take his hands away from her breasts.

  “That…”

  “Just say it…don’t be afraid of your desire. There’s no right and wrong here.” His hands cupped her breasts again, and he caressed the tips of her nipples to attention.

  “Damn it already…pinch them, play with them, bite them, I don’t care, you know my nipples are hardwired to my clit.”

  He rewarded her by rolling her nipples between his thumbs and forefingers with varying amounts of pressure, “What else?”

  Amber panted, “For god’s sake, Cal, if you don’t start fucking me in the next thirty seconds, I’ll never speak to you again.”

  Cal turned her around, his mouth coming to hers, as he unzipped his pants. Amber freed Cal’s cock, and he pushed up her skirt, and ripped down the tiny thong. He picked her up to straddle his cock, cupping her butt with his hands as she wrapped her legs around him and they used the wall for leverage. His cock felt deliciously hot and hard as he thrust into Amber’s warmth. She bit the top of his shoulder to keep from crying out, knowing that someone might hear them. The tantalizing pain of her teeth on his skin enflamed Cal even more, and he stroked inside her only a half dozen times more before they both came, trying to muffle the vocal outpouring of their pleasure.

  Amber rested her face on his shoulder as he held her for a few moments, their breathing gradually slowing. He gently set her down, and pulled up her panties, before tucking himself back in and straightening his clothes. Their bodies felt limp, and their eyes were shiny. A moment later, a group of bubbly tourists passed the mouth of the alley, pink-cheeked and happy from an evening of good food and drink.

  “Damn, girl,” Cal murmured, “They almost had dinner and a show.”