I feel my stomach flip when I read the details. How could Juan be this person the reports talk about? I can’t picture him as a drug lord, sitting in some sleazy room somewhere, counting out cash and distributing heroin and meth to teenagers who then go out and spread the poison to other children and junkies.
The disparities between the Juan I knew growing up and the Juan in those reports are more than my mind can process. Juan was scared when his mom got deported, yes. He was lonely and worried during those days he stayed with my family, but how could he have been so desperate he’d turn to complete strangers? Strangers who a kid as smart as Juan had to have known would get him involved with very dangerous things? As much as Juan has tried to explain it away, I know it makes no sense. I know that what my family so easily accepted seven years ago isn’t the truth—or at least not all of it. I need a new way to get to the truth. I need fresh eyes, a creative approach to the puzzle, and I know exactly who can give it to me.
Uncle Max isn't really my uncle, but he's known me and my brothers and sisters since we were born. My dad's best friend from Mexico, Max came to the US just a few years after my dad and managed to get a law degree while he went through the process for citizenship. It was Max my family turned to when Juan's mother was deported. It would have been Max who braved the INS to try to stop Juan's deportation if Juan had let him.
I walk into Uncle Max's offices late in the day, hoping to catch him after he's done most of his work. His secretary, Isabella, looks up from her desk and smiles indulgently. "Well, look who wandered in off the street. How are you, mija?"
I lean over and give Isabella a kiss on the cheek. "I'm good. How are you?"
"I can't complain, but don't tell Max that. I like him to think I'm always slightly unhappy so he'll do things like give me longer lunches or pay for my health club membership.” She winks, and I laugh.
"Speaking of, is he around?"
"Sure. Just go on back. And I'm heading out in fifteen minutes, so I'll see you soon?"
"You got it, Isabella."
I walk down the carpeted hallway past the offices of Max's two partners and reach his corner suite, where the door is ajar. I knock twice.
"Uncle Max?" I poke my head in to find Max in his shirtsleeves, leaning over a conference table with stacks of papers and open books spread all over. "Uh oh. Looks like you're busy." I can't keep the disappointment out of my voice.
"What?" Max looks up as though he's been in a different world. "No, no. Come in, mija." He walks over and grabs me in a big bear hug. "I'm so glad to see you. Your timing is perfect. I've been looking through the documents in this case for hours. I can't do it another minute. Come in. Sit down. What brings you by?"
I sit in one of the big armchairs facing the desk while Max goes to the bar fridge in the corner of the room and takes out two bottles of water. He hands one to me before sitting in the other armchair.
I place my hands in my lap, take a deep breath, and jump in, telling Max everything I know about Juan, his last seven years, and the conviction. When I’m done, Max sits quietly, nodding for a moment.
"So what we all assumed about why he ran to the RH—that he was scared of getting deported—you don't believe it anymore?"
I look at Max, his astute gaze boring into me. And I realize he never believed it.
"You don't either."
He shakes his head, seemingly deep in thought for a moment. "I've never had any real proof. It was a hunch based on something his madre said to yours years ago."
"Maria? What did she say?"
"She told your mom that she could never go back to Mexico because of Juan's father. She said he was a dangerous man and she'd taken Juan and run from him when Juan was a baby."
"So he was probably abusing her." I gnaw on my lip for bit. "You think she told him his dad was dangerous and that's why he was desperate not to go back?"
"It certainly makes sense," Max replies.
I stand and pace up and down the length of the office. "So she was scared he'd find them and hurt her or Juan. And I can understand that when Juan was a child, but by the time she got deported, he was seventeen. I mean, doesn't it seem a little excessive to be that worried about your grown son and the father he wouldn't even remember? And obviously the guy hasn't found her, because Juan told me she's near Monterrey and fine."
Max shifts in his seat. "I agree. It seems excessive, but it's like she'd put the fear of God in Juan. He was really damn desperate to stay out of Mexico, no?"
Something in my gut kicks up a notch. Desperate is definitely the word for it. Juan's desperation was apparent in his decision to join the RH, and it’s apparent now in his refusal to accept any help or consider the possibility of another way out of his situation. Could an abusive father he's never known really make him this desperate?
"This is a clue, Max," I say definitively, coming to a stop in front of his chair. "But it's not the final answer. We need to find the answer. I can't just let him disappear again."
Max sighs as he leans forward and places his elbows on his knees. He looks tired and every one of his fifty-something years, but he’s nothing if not loyal to his best friend's family. He's never had a wife or children of his own, just his law practice and the annoyingly loyal Isabella. He's always had an extra-soft spot for me, something I’m afraid I know and use to my advantage.
"All right, mija. You know I can't deny you much of anything." He runs his hands through his hair before standing. He walks over to the large conference table and starts stacking papers up, slowly clearing half the surface. "Bring all those documents here and we'll sift through them, see what we can figure out. You're going to be spending a lot of nights and weekends here for a while. Hope you like whatever Isabella orders to eat. The woman tortures me with crap from that vegan place down the block whenever she gets the chance."
I laugh and wrap my arms around Max's ample middle. "Thank you, 2Tio," I say softly. "This means a lot to me."
"Eh. Thank me after we've actually figured something out. I have a feeling it's not going to be that easy."
* * *
1 Hermanita = little sister
2 Tio = uncle
AFTEr my meeting with David, Beth doesn’t come back, and I realize just how much I wish she would. It’s wrong, selfish, destructive, but God, how I wish she would. I'm lonely in a different way than I have been in years. In the RH, I had people to talk to, spend time with, distract me. In prison, I had my life to protect constantly, and that leaves very little energy to be lonely. Now, I have time in a safe place, and I have a vision—a vision of Beth and David and the life I once thought I'd lead. It makes me miss people and things that I haven't in years. It makes me so lonely that I physically ache inside.
Then, out of nowhere, on a sunny Friday afternoon, as I’m walking around the corner of the yard, bringing some fertilizer to put on the rosebushes, there she is.
Her hair is loose, a few little pieces blowing gently around her face. I see her reach up and pull a strand away from her lips where it’s stuck in her lip gloss. She’s wearing a pair of cut-offs and a lacy, white top with ruffles and tiny straps. It ends a good couple of inches above the waistband of her shorts and I can see her smooth, tan skin there, beckoning me like a sweet piece of caramel. The urge to lick that little strip of flesh is so strong that I have to stop walking for a moment and take a deep breath.
When I look up, she’s watching me, the expression on her face so serene and beatific that I momentarily think I must be looking at an angel.
“You came back,” I say softly as I step closer to her.
“I told you I wasn't going to let this go," she tells me matter-of-factly.
"I thought, once David explained everything, you'd get some better sense." My words are harsh, but my tone is tender, because I realize that, even if I was furious with this woman, I could never speak harshly to her. She will always be that gorgeous little girl in the floral sundress I need to protect above all else.
"I
have plenty of sense." A tiny smile turns up the corners of her lips. "What I don't have enough of is men I care about and want to keep in my life."
"Ah, linda." I sigh. "You're killing me here. You know that, right?" I move a bit closer to her now, almost near enough to touch.
"Then stop fighting it," she whispers.
I take the last step, leaving only an inch between us, head to toe. I can see the shine on her sweet cherry lips and smell the cinnamon in her hair. "It'll never work. I'll never be free, and I won't bury you with me."
She gazes up at me, and there's so much trust in her eyes, so much faith and pure devotion, that it literally steals my breath away. For a moment in time, everything stops. The birds in the trees, the cars rolling by on the street, the sun beating down on my skin—all of it just stops as if someone hit the pause button. I look into her eyes, and I can't fight it any more than I can fight the gravitational pull that keeps my feet on the ground.
My head tilts incrementally to one side and lowers bit by excruciating bit until her breath feathers across my face and my lips meet hers. I press against their softness, hearing the tiny gasp that she makes. The lip gloss is slick, and I can't help but think of all the other places on both her body and mine that I'd like to make slick. I feel my breathing ratchet up a few dozen notches as my mind goes to static. I haven't kissed a woman since the night before I went behind bars, and my engine is revving at full throttle.
But Beth is special—beautiful and strong. If there is one thing I've learned working for the RH and living behind bars, it's how to control myself. When so much around you is out of control, you realize quickly that self-control is one of the best weapons you've got. As much as I want to press Beth up against the wall of the house right now and drive every part of me into every part of her, I don't. I stand stock-still, hands fisted by my sides, and I gently, ever so softly, kiss her.
It's electrifying. Like someone just took a defibrillator to my poor, shriveled lump of a heart. It surges to life and screams for freedom—freedom from the past, freedom from the sins, freedom to love this woman. I start to pull away, knowing that touching her more will only make the inevitable loss that much harder, but her hands snake up around my neck, and against my lips, she murmurs, "No."
"Beth," I gasp. "We can't."
She opens her eyes, lips millimeters from mine. Her long, dark lashes sweep up and then down once as she says, "Yes. We can."
Before I know what's happened, we're together from knees to lips, her warm, giving curves molded against me in places that haven't felt this in so long they've forgotten just how amazing it can be.
I put my hands on her waist, willing myself to keep them there. Her fingers play with the short hairs at the nape of my neck, and even as my dick swells and turns hard as a rock, some kind of tension releases from me at her touch. Her soft fingers soothe and entice at the same time. My tongue seeks hers, and when she opens her mouth to me, I stroke along her perfect, white teeth. She tastes like the cherry lip gloss and I know that cherry candy will now be my favorite flavor until the day I die.
I can feel her nipples harden against my chest, and I push my hard-on into her, desperate for relief. She groans and stands on her tiptoes, grinding her pelvis against me as she does.
My hands move up her sides, my thumbs finding the underneath of her breasts. If there were a form that was considered geometrically perfect, the curve of that sweet spot where her breasts meet her chest would be it. That curve should represent the most complex mathematical equation there is, and God, how I'd love to be the one man to solve it.
A car on the street honks, and I'm broken out of my spell. I pull back, breathing hard, my eyes searching her face for any sign of what she's thinking.
"I'm sorry," I say, quickly taking a step back. "I shouldn't have done that."
She has that look, the one where she's about to give me hell. If I weren't so embarrassed by my actions, I'd have to smile. As it is, I steel myself for her anger.
"I'm not sorry," she says. "We did that, not you. I kiss who I want, when I want, how I want." Her voice grows husky. "And I want you. To kiss—and a whole hell of a lot more."
I turn and pace a few steps away, running my hand through my hair. "But you shouldn't, linda. And you shouldn't say shit like that to men, especially not dangerous ones."
"You're not dangerous," she huffs out as she folds her arms across that perfect chest.
I feel a surge of adrenaline and stride forward until I’m looking down at her, her defiant stance mirroring my harsh one. "I am, little girl," I tell her firmly. "Not in the obvious ways. I would never raise a hand to you or any woman. But make no mistake—I'm dangerous as hell to you."
We freeze there, in a standoff of wills, and as committed as I am to protecting her, I also know, deep inside, that I can't deny her anything—even when that anything is me.
"Why did you join the RH?" she asks softly, breaking the stalemate.
I blink a couple of times, trying to let my body and my heart catch up with my brain. Shit.
"What?" I ask, stalling.
"Why did you join the RH?"
"You know the answer to that. I didn't want to get deported. They gave me forged papers, if you need me to spell it out."
"You wouldn't have been deported," she says confidently.
I scoff. "You don't know that, and I sure as hell didn't know it at the time."
"So"—she steps away and walks past me onto the patio—"you thought joining an organization that would almost certainly end up getting you killed or put in prison would be better than getting sent back to Mexico to live with your mom?"
I'm unable to respond. I am clearly fucked at this point. My jaw opens and closes, but no words come out.
"I mean, I can't believe that your mom would have thought it was better for you to be in prison than poor in Mexico. Right?"
I scratch my head and look down at my ankle with its big, plastic cuff. I hate this fucking cuff. It's almost harder having freedom right outside the door but not really within reach.
"Look, it was a long time ago and what's done is done. All I can do now is work with what I've got. Which ain't a hell of a lot, and that's why you can't be in the middle of it."
"Too late, vato. I am in the middle of it, and after a kiss like that, there's no way you're going to chase me off now." She stalks back to me, placing her hands on my chest, her palms pressing heat into my skin even through my T-shirt. "See, you gave yourself away with that kiss. No man kisses a woman like that unless he really feels something for her."
"I've never denied that I feel something for you," I whisper.
"Then you can't deny me. You can't tell me to lock my feelings away and pretend this isn't something important."
"Please don't do this, Beth. You know I can't resist you forever."
She nods, a devilish smile playing around her lips. "Exactly," she murmurs as she reaches up and initiates another steaming-hot kiss. When she pulls back, I'm dizzy with the closeness of her. My hands are on her arms, and I can't stop myself from running my fingers up and down her silky skin.
She looks down at my left arm. "Is it her?" she asks softly.
My eyes follow hers. The picture inked into my skin was copied from a newspaper, and it looks like a photograph, the details fine grained and multi-dimensional.
"Yeah," I say, my voice rough. "Amanda Johnson. This was her first-grade photo that they took in school the year she died."
I see Beth's eyes mist up. "Why? Why did you get this?" she asks, her voice trembling.
"So I'd never forget. So I'd always remember the price that's been paid for me to have a life, no matter what kind of a life that might be."
"You didn't kill her," she states factually, laying her head against my chest as my arms move to her back and rub gently.
"Does it even matter if I did or not? I'm as guilty as anyone. Anyone who was in the RH is equally guilty. The entire way of life is guilty. That poor kid was doomed th
e moment she was born into a gang family. You can't know what that's like, Beth. The gangbanger life is encoded into DNA or something. You're born to it and it'll find you one way or another. She never stood a chance. Just like I didn’t."
She looks at me closely. "No. You're not going to waste yourself like you intend. I know you're keeping something from me—from all of us. I know it's what will save you, so I'll find out what it is eventually. Until then, I'm going to keep coming to see you. I'm not going to leave you here alone. I'm coming back soon with my sister and her boyfriend. Then, when you get your cuff off, I'll be here and we'll figure out together how to keep the RH from taking you back. We lost you once, Juan. I lost you once. I won't let it happen again."
She gives me a sweet, chaste kiss on the cheek then walks next door, leaving me with an aching dick and a tangled mind.
Later that night, I open the envelope Father Jorge gave me. It's already getting worn from the hundred times I've looked at the contents. I pull out the newspaper clipping from the San Antonio Express. The photo is too small to see the man's face very well. He is wearing Aviators and a business suit as he walks through the airport, his well-toned physique clearly evident under the expensive fabric. His hair has only a small amount of gray at the temples, and like everything else about him, it's styled perfectly. He looks like a CEO or a movie producer.
I read the caption below the photo. Purported 1Santos Mexicanos leader Miguel Ybarra arrived in San Antonio yesterday for what he is calling "personal business." Authorities did not respond to inquiries from the Express about what the cartel boss could possibly be doing in the US. Ybarra has been banned from the country for over twenty-five years, but he recently got a reversal of the decades-old decision against him.
I lie on my bed, the newspaper clipping over my heart as I stare up at the drab ceiling. I measure out my breaths, that thing I do when everything around me feels so out of control. I can always control myself, and that’s what I’ve come to rely on. But now I’ve encountered two things that are wrecking that self-control I’ve relied on for so many years—Beth Garcia and Miguel Ybarra.
Buried (Hiding From Love #3) Page 6