by Whitley Cox
I nodded. “Yeah, I’m fine.” Our vehicle came to a sudden stop, and both Chase and the driver got out. The driver, whom I hadn’t caught a glimpse of until now, was just as big as Chase, maybe bigger, and had the most luscious head of shaggy blond surfer-bum hair. He caught my eye as he walked past my window and flashed me a panty-dropping grin before he and Chase continued walking behind the SUV. “What the hell are they doing?” I asked, unbuckling my belt so I could pivot around in my seat completely.
“Get back in your seatbelt!” Derrick ordered. “If they all of a sudden come rushing back in and gun it, I don’t want you getting hurt.” My head snapped up to his face at his harsh tone, and even though his voice was rough, his eyes held sadness, a plea almost, if I wasn’t mistaken. He wasn’t really telling me to do something; for once, he was asking me, practically begging. I did as he asked and buckled my belt.
“What do you think they are doing?” I asked again, more cautiously this time. Something was going on in his head. He’d shut down last night after we’d talked about what was going on between us. Right after I’d told him I was heading home today, he had a chip on his shoulder again, the walls were back up, and he wasn’t letting me in, so I needed to tread lightly.
He ground his molars together. “I don’t know, but you need to duck down.” He did the head push, only there was nothing sexy about it, forcing my body to double over, my head in his lap. He draped his coat over my body until all I could see were his big booted feet on the ground and darkness. Damn, even his coat smelled amazing. I grabbed the edges of it and pulled it tighter around me, so it felt like Derrick was protecting me, and not just his coat.
Suddenly there was a loud and jarring noise outside, and on instinct I threw the coat off me and sat up, coming face to face with Chase and the blond guy duking it out, punching and kicking street-fighter style, with two men in leather jackets and ripped jeans. Chase and his companion had at least a hundred or more pounds on their opponents, but where the bad guys lacked strength, they made up for it in dirty fighting. Both had knives and were wielding them around like swordsmen.
“We have to help them!” I turned to Derrick, whose eyes were as wide as dinner plates. “They could die!”
He grabbed my head and pushed it back down into his lap, snatching his coat off the floor and throwing it back over my head. “They’ll be fine; they’re SEALs or Joint Task Force or something…though I’m going to guess Chase and that blond guy are Black Ops. They seem too funded to be Joint Task Force.” He shook his head and turned back to look out the window again. “Those guys out there are after you, Piper. If they see you, you’re in trouble. So stay hidden and keep quiet.”
I did as I was told, the grunts and snarls of the fight outside making me jump and wince. The sounds of fists hitting faces making me cringe and pray that it wasn’t Chase or his friend’s face. There were sirens off in the distance, but they were growing closer; someone had called the police. But if the police in Cusco were anything like the police in Lima, we were better off getting out of Dodge and taking off. We heard some more grunts, a cry of pain, and then suddenly two car doors opened and slammed shut, followed by the engine revving. And then we were moving again. I motioned to pop my head up, but Derrick’s hand was pressed firmly down on my neck, keeping me in place.
“They’re going to follow us, aren’t they?” Derrick asked.
“There were four of them,” the driver said, his voice was a lot more chipper than Chase’s, so it was easy to tell the difference. “We incapacitated the first two easily, as they were unarmed, but the other two proved to be more challenging. It’s only a matter of time before the cops come after us and/or they all come to track us down.”
“So…what do we do?” Derrick’s voice was a boon of comfort above me.
“We’re going to get you guys on a plane out of here,” Chase said. “We’ll make sure the guys know Piper doesn’t have the envelope. We’ll dangle it in front of their face if we have to. And then you two board your plane, and Heath and I will take care of the rest.”
Heath, the driver’s name was Heath. I liked that name. It was strong but friendly, just like him. I pulled the edge of the coat off my face so I could see out, my head still snuggly in Derrick’s lap. “Hi, Heath.”
He turned around for half a second in his seat and flashed me another giant smile. “Hi, Piper, nice to meet you.”
Chase made an irritated noise in his throat. “They’re together. Stop flirting.”
Heath gave Chase a mock face of surprise. “I wasn’t flirting. I was simply saying ‘hello.' He smiled back at me again. “Ignore my asshole brother. He’s always this grumpy. Probably because he hasn’t gotten laid in like forever. Dude, I keep telling you, there are some lovely women down in Mancora, and you don’t even have to pay for them. They’ll sleep with you for free because they want to. You just tell them you have a big willy and say something dirty to them in Spanish and they’re chomping at the bit to get your pants off.”
Derrick snorted above me, while Chase shot his brother a deathly stare, but Heath was all grins and started laughing. That’s when I noticed the red, what would soon be a big ugly bruise on his cheek, and the cut lip. I took in Chase’s appearance, and he was a tad beaten up too, but I’d guess the other guys looked a whole lot worse.
“All right, we’re here,” Heath said, the car coming to a stop once again. “Alejandro Velasco Astete International Airport.”
Derrick’s hand on my neck relaxed, and I started to pop my head up, grateful that we’d managed to make it to the airport with only a minor inconvenience along the way. The only thing left was getting inside, getting on the plane and then getting the fuck out of this country.
I was just reaching to unbuckle my belt when I looked out the window past Derrick and saw it. A car coming full speed and straight for us.
“Look out!” I cried, but it was too late, and the medium-size sedan, which was going a million miles an hour, or so it seemed, T-boned us on the passenger side, right where Derrick was sitting.
I screamed as my body was rocked and jostled around the SUV, the world spinning out of control around us as the car did donuts in the parking lot. When we finally stopped, I took a quick ten-second inventory of my limbs and body; nothing felt broken. I could move my neck, my arms and my legs; everything was good. Then I looked for Derrick. He was slumped unconscious in the seat next to me, a gash on his head from some broken glass, but otherwise, he seemed okay. Chase and Heath both moaned in the front seat, but I saw their bodies moving, and neither had flown out of the vehicle. We’d all been belted in. We were all okay.
“Everyone all right?” Heath asked woozily.
Chase groaned. “Yeah.” His head lolled to the side, but he opened his eyes, and they still seemed bright and aware. “Piper, you all right?”
“I am, yeah. Derrick’s unconscious, but I think he’s okay. He has a gash on his head from broken glass—”
“They’re coming,” Heath said, cutting me off.
Chase sprang to life in the front seat and then spun around to face me. “When I say ‘go,’ you grab your bags, and you and Derrick go. You run for the airport as fast as you can, got it? You hide until your flight is called.”
I swallowed and nodded, gently tapping Derrick’s cheeks to wake him. “Come on, Derrick, wake up. You need to wake up.” He stirred slightly, and then one eyelid lifted just a fraction. Oh, good, his pupils weren’t dilated; he didn’t have a concussion.
“What happened?”
“We were T-boned.” I tore the bottom piece of my undershirt off and held it against his forehead to stop the bleeding. Head wounds bled like a bitch.
Noises outside the car caused my head to spin around, and then Heath’s door was opened from the outside, and fast and angry orders in Spanish were barked. I heard Heath’s voice, and he was speaking perfect, fluent Spanish back.
I saw the handle on my side of the car move and hastily locked the door before anyone
could get in. Derrick’s door was completely smashed in and useless. The only other way out would be through the sunroof or the hatch in the back.
“When I say ‘go,' got it?” Chase’s eyes locked on mine. I nodded. He gracelessly crawled over the gear-shifter and into the driver’s seat and then outside. We heard more arguing in Spanish, and then my door was unlocked from the outside by the fob. I knew that it was either Heath or Chase and didn’t bother to lock it again. Instead I continued to try and rouse Derrick, grabbing both of our backpacks from the back seat and strapping them to our backs, thanking God for tinted windows and that no one could really see what I was up to.
“Derrick, you need to be ready to run. When Chase says go, we have to jump out and run for the airport, okay? Can you run?” He nodded and then blinked a couple of times as he winced and put his hand to his head.
“Yeah, I can run.”
They were still arguing, loud voices and heated threats, and we heard more fighting, fists colliding with faces, followed by loud and close-by sirens. The flashing lights of the approaching police sent a frisson of fear up my spine, settling at the base of my skull. And then, suddenly, my door opened, and Heath was standing there nodding and telling me to get out. “You guys need to run.”
I shook my head. “I…I was told to wait until Chase said ‘go.’”
He nodded impatiently. “Yeah, well, my brother is currently otherwise occupied.” He helped me climb out. At that moment, I saw Chase being handcuffed at gunpoint and led away by the Cusco police.
“What the hell is happening?” I made to lunge for Chase, only to have Derrick and Heath both pull me back before I even took a step. Derrick seemed to have composed himself and was set to run.
“He’s turning himself in as the trafficker,” Heath said. “He’ll be okay. We’ll get him out before anything bad happens to him. This was the only way to get the henchmen off your back, keep the drugs from getting distributed and the cops from going after you guys. He’ll be fine.” He started to usher us toward the “Departures” wing of the small airport.
But I dug in my heels, my head shaking until my neck hurt. “But we can’t just leave him. You can’t just leave your brother. We need to help him.”
A firm hand came up under each of my triceps, and they flanked me, lifting me up until my feet dangled, and they carried me off into the airport.
“Do you know what they would do to you in prison here?” Heath asked gruffly, suddenly reminding me more of his stoic brother and less like the cheerful jokester he’d been earlier. He was worried about his brother as well but trying to keep it together.
I swallowed and shook my head in ignorance.
“Chase is way safer going to prison here than you are. And if you try to help him, you’ll end up in prison too. He’s trained in this…he’s a…” Heath paused for a second, considering his words. “And you’re a foreigner. You’re a woman. You’re beautiful.” He sucked air quickly in through his teeth. “That doesn’t mean I don’t think you’re tough as nails…it’s just, well… He can hold his own, I promise. I’ll even have him call you when he’s free, okay?” We stepped inside, and they finally put me down. I shot them both a menacing glare. Heath’s mouth twisted, but he couldn’t quite muster a smile. “Get on the plane, Piper.”
Derrick grabbed my hand. “We need to go.”
I clenched my jaw and looked up into Heath’s eyes; they were the most intense midnight blue I’d ever seen, with flecks of white, like stars against the backdrop of a crystal-clear night. “You have him call me.”
His mouth jerked again at the corner, and this time he managed a small smile. “I will, I promise.”
20
“We need to get your head looked at,” I said as we sat at our gate in the airport, both of us quiet, tense and introspective. A lot had happened in the last few hours, in the last few days. Hell, this week had been insane. And now it was over; it was all over. Chase was going to prison for me, the drug dealers would no longer be after me, and Derrick and I were flying back to Lima so that he could catch his flight to Santiago and I could board the plane bound for Vancouver.
“It’s fine,” he said grimly, using a shirt to stop the blood flow. But his face was pale, and there was blood all over his collar. Derrick’s current appearance earned him a fair few puzzled looks and concerned faces from passing passengers. A couple of people even went as so far as to move seats, giving us a wide berth, as if the gash on his head made him suddenly contagious and everyone would catch a head wound.
I was thankful that no airport staff had approached us, and it seemed as though the police outside had been content with taking Chase and didn’t feel the need to come looking for me. But I wasn’t ready to let down my guard. For the moment, I allowed myself to focus on Derrick, instead of constantly checking for an ambush behind me.
Ignoring Derrick’s protests, I brought out my emergency first aid kit and started cleaning him up. The cut was deep, but I wasn’t sure it would require stitches. I cleaned it up as best I could, using the disinfectant wipes I had, and then put a couple of butterfly bandages over it to close up the skin. All the while he barely looked at me, which was a challenge, given I was right in front of him. What was wrong now? What had I done?
I finished with his injuries and then went to the bathroom to wash my hands. Only then did I notice the big bruise on my cheek. How did I get that? Had my head hit something? I whipped out my makeup and touched up my face. It didn’t look great, as I had minimal supplies to work with, but it looked better.
A rush of nostalgia hit me in the chest as I made my way back to sit next to Derrick. This was how we’d started, and this was how we were going to end, sitting in an airport not speaking to one another, but with an abundance of emotions and unspoken feelings passing between us. Only this time, instead of wondering what his touch, his kiss, his body felt like, I knew. And it was all I could do to keep myself from crying at the thought of never getting to feel his lips against mine, his body covering mine ever again. I bit the inside of my cheek until I tasted blood and stared out the window at the taxiing planes, determined not to let him see me cry.
It wasn’t a long wait; we killed a lot of time driving around Cusco trying to lose our followers, so within the hour we were called to board the plane. Unlike the flight to Cusco, where we’d talked about all the dirty things we wanted to do to one another, and the excitement of Machu Picchu was still before us, now we were heading back to Lima and getting ready to part ways. There was nothing exciting or remotely uplifting about this flight. We were flying back into the mouth of hell, only this time I’d be forced to face any demons I came across alone.
I wanted to talk to him, ached to hold his hand one last time, to rekindle just a glimmer of what we’d shared over the last seven days. Oh, my God, had it really been just seven days? It felt like I’d known him for so much longer. The things we’d shared, what we’d been through — talk about skipping a few steps when it came to dating and getting to know someone.
I tried several times to catch his attention or start a conversation, but every time I opened my mouth or went to reach for him, I stopped myself. He’d closed himself off for a reason; he’d said before he was a private person, so he’d put up these walls on purpose. I didn’t know him well enough, had only known him for a week, so I had no right to make him tear down those walls for me, to tell me what was on his mind, as much as I wanted him to. So we sat there for the entire flight in painful, gut-wrenching, heartbreaking silence.
We unloaded from the plane, but only I had to go and grab my bag to re-check it. He was just being transferred to another jet, one bound for Santiago. While I was bound for home. Boring, unfulfilling, jobless, husbandless home.
I exhaled and looked up at the digital flight board; his plane wasn’t for another six hours, mine wasn’t for another eight. We still had time. Time for what, though? Could we sneak off into a bathroom for another quickie? Grab a hotel room nearby? I wasn’t ready for t
he sex to end. I wasn’t ready for the dream to end. I wasn’t ready for us to end. But he’d already pulled away; he’d already ended it.
“So…what time is your flight?” He looked down at me, big bags having suddenly appeared under his eyes while his throat bobbed with strain.
I swallowed, my own throat feeling tight. “Um…it’s not until 1:20.”
He nodded. “Mine’s at eleven-thirty.”
“I, uh…I see that.”
“So, home, eh?”
Oh, my God, what the hell was going on? It was if we’d just met and hadn’t spent the last week running from bad guys and fucking one another senseless. I went to open my mouth and ask him why we weren’t off making out in some random corner, but I stopped myself and let out an exhausted sigh. “Yeah…home. I need to decompress.”
He nodded but averted his eyes. “Yeah, me too. That’s what Easter Island is for. You can’t get any farther away from your problems and the hustle and bustle of life than the most isolated island in the world.”
My chest quivered, and tears stung behind my eyes. Was this how we were going to leave it? “No…I suppose you can’t.”
He looked back up at the schedule board for a moment and then down at me. “Come with me.”
A quick gasp had me coughing for air. When I finally didn’t feel like I was going to choke on anything, I looked back up into his eyes, stormy and gray and chock-full of conviction, full of promise and need. “What?” I shook my head, hoping that I’d heard him correctly, but not wanting to count my chickens.
He nodded again. “Come with me.”
I shook my head. “No... I… I can’t.”
“Why not?”
“B-because… this is…” But I didn’t have a good answer; I had no answer.
“Piper.” His tone held so much authority my head snapped up to look at him before I knew what was happening. His face was so focused, so resolute. But when he saw my wariness, they softened just a touch and he gently cupped my cheek.