Suddenly, a shiny black Hummer pulled up in front of us. I thought for sure it’d hit a person or two, given the way it’d abruptly stopped and how close the cars and pedestrians were, but there was no screaming or bloodshed. I prepared myself to bolt in the other direction, but then Robert opened the back door and urged us to jump in.
I clambered in after Derrick, falling belly first onto the supple leather, my face in his crotch, while Robert climbed into the front seat.
“Where’s your hotel?” he asked. I quickly righted myself and buckled up.
“We’re at Hostel Travesura,” Derrick said, buckling up his belt. “It’s near the Canadian Embassy.”
Robert nodded, as did the driver. I couldn’t see our chauffeur, besides the back of his head, which was dark red. He was enormous. Muscles upon muscles fought to get out of his tight navy blue T-shirt, while a tattoo of what appeared to be names in a stylized script peeked out from beneath his sleeves.
“This is Aaron,” Robert said, slapping his friend on the shoulder.
Aaron gave a curt but friendly wave, not bothering to turn around, though his eyes met mine in the rearview mirror and the corners crinkled in a smile. “Hello.”
“What the hell is going on?” I finally managed to ask, after I’d regained my composure and wasn’t shaking like a leaf in a windstorm.
Robert took a deep breath. “There’s a new drug movement here in Lima, and we’re monitoring it. I’m assuming you know what fentanyl is?”
Derrick and I both nodded.
“Well, there’s a new drug hitting the streets, and it’s laced with fentanyl and cocaine. They’re getting it from China and using Panama and Lima as their major distributing points in Central and South America. It comes from China. They dock down here in the harbor and then send it out into the rest of the continent. They do the same with Panama, because of the big shipping industry and the canal, and distribute it through the rest of Central America and up into Mexico. Though Mexico has its own problems at its own ports.”
I shook my head. “What does that have to do with me, though?”
“Did anyone in Panama ask you to bring anything or smuggle anything in your bag for them?”
I shook my head again. “No. Chase asked me the same thing. No one asked me anything. I mean, this one guy at my hostel in Panama suggested I stay at The Inca Treasure, but that was it. I left him with my bag for all of two minutes when I used the washroom. You don’t think…?”
Both Robert’s and Aaron’s shoulders stiffened, and then they locked eyes for a brief moment.
“What?” I asked, my own eyes shifting back and forth between them. “You think I smuggled something and didn’t even know it? But Chase figures my bag is clean because it didn’t trigger anything in the airport scanner.”
Robert turned around in his seat and gave me a soft but wary look. “Smugglers are getting smarter and more creative. Plus, it doesn’t really concern them if you get caught. Have you been through your bag?”
Both Derrick and nodded emphatically. “We’ve torn it apart a few times, and there’s nothing in there.”
I wondered how I was ever going to get these lunatics off my back if I couldn’t find out what the hell it was they wanted. Had I smuggled fentanyl or some new super drug into Peru and not even known about it?
We pulled up in front of the hostel, and I felt my chest constrict. I didn’t want to leave the safety of the Hummer. I felt safe with all these men, in this giant bulldozer of a gas-guzzler. The bad guys couldn’t get me in here.
“Check your bag again. Really check it. You may need to cut it open and just get a new bag. These smugglers are crafty bastards and have perfected the art of concealment. So be thorough. And then” — he handed me a card — “if you find something, call me. Or call your Canadian friend. We’re all working on the same side toward the same goal. So, if you can’t get me, call him. Okay?”
I took the card and gave him a reluctant smile. Nothing about this was smile-worthy, but he’d saved our hides and was being incredibly patient with us. He could be flying off the handle that we’d defied Chase’s orders and brought extreme peril to ourselves and others. But he wasn’t, so for that he deserved, at the very least, a smile.
“It’ll be okay.” He smiled back. “Call us if you need anything.”
I shook my head, emotion thick in my throat. “Why don’t you just come in and check the bag yourself? End all of this speculation and find out once and for all if I’m a drug trafficker.”
Derrick’s hand fell to my back. I was getting upset again, and my voice was cracking, the words struggling to come out. “It’s okay. That’s not such a bad idea, though, eh? Come and have a look yourself. If you find anything, you can just take it.”
“Not that that will stop the bad guys from thinking I still have it,” I said with a snort. “The only way they’ll leave me alone is if they have it.”
Robert’s face was stoic in thought for a second. “Okay.” He nodded, his lips pinched in a thin line. “I’m undercover, and I’ve already blown it with you guys, so we need to come up with a believable story why I’m escorting you into your hostel.”
I rolled my eyes again. “No, we don’t. It’s a party hostel; no one is going to care why you’re there, not when you look like sex on a stick.”
His face lit up, while Aaron in the driver’s seat guffawed loudly.
“All right, fair enough. Let’s go.”
CHAPTER 7
“ Looks clean,” Robert said after having pulled apart my entire backpack, rifling through my things, including my tampons and underwear. “No stone or thong unturned.” He laughed awkwardly as he gently, with gloved hands, handed me my hot pink G-string.
“Then what are they after?” I asked again, wanting to cancel our trip to Machu Picchu the next day entirely and just head home. Give up on the dream, give up on the plan, on the promise and just get back to reality...not that there was really much waiting back there in reality for me either.
Robert shook his head. “No idea. But for now, keep a low profile. Spend the extra money and hire a driver, not a cab, to take you to the airport tomorrow. Until then, don’t leave the hostel again, okay?”
I nodded. I wasn’t even going to leave my room.
“You should be safe in Cusco. Where are you going, once you return from Cusco?”
“I’m heading to Santiago,” Derrick put in, as we followed Robert back down the stairs, preparing to see him out.
“And I’d been planning to head to either Iquitos or Mancora.”
Robert’s head bobbed, and he tossed his latex gloves in a nearby trashcan. “All right, that should all be fine. But if you can help it, maybe stay out of Lima. Cusco, Mancora, Iquitos, I don’t think anyone will follow you. And certainly not to Santiago. Maybe just getting out of Peru altogether isn’t a terrible idea.”
I let out a weighty sigh. “Thanks.”
His smile was small and genuine, laden with my own fears. For a big burly SEAL (because let’s be honest here, he hadn’t said it, but we knew what he was, and after telling Derrick what Chase had said, Derrick had pretty much confirmed that Chase was with the Joint Task Force 2 or a special Black Ops unit) he was quite empathetic. He seemed to absorb my emotions and wear them right out on his face, in his eyes.
He let a hand rest on my shoulder. “It’ll all work out, Piper, it will. Call me if you need anything, okay?”
I swallowed hard and met his eyes. “Okay, thanks.”
“Hey,” Derrick piped up. He’d been rather quiet, contemplative and austere again. “What are you guys doing down here anyway? Peru has its own armed forces against the guerrilla group and all the drug trafficking. Besides, isn’t it mostly coke that this part of the world deals in?” Mr. Ultimate Traveler Smarty Pants was at it again with his random facts.
Robert’s eyebrows flew up in surprise.
I rolled my eyes. “He’s a journalist, so he knows stuff. But he’s also a big nerd who knows ra
ndom facts about random things.”
That seemed to suffice as a reason, and the big SEAL just nodded. “Normally we don’t get involved, you’re right. I mean on occasion we might, but not usually. We have bigger fish to fry on foreign soil.”
We both nodded, knowing exactly what he was talking about. Drug trafficking was small potatoes in comparison.
“But there’s been a steady increase in fentanyl overdoses back in the U.S. and Canada in the last six months, and now this new drug that’s laced with fentanyl is even worse. They’re mixing cocaine, fentanyl, and other things to create a super drug. People are dying left, right, and center. And as we believe Peru plays a major role, we’re just trying to put our fingers on how. And now, apparently, Panama has a bigger hand in it than we thought as well.”
“Didn’t a Canadian girl die from an overdose here, recently?” I asked. I’d been momentarily scared out of my skin, reading that exact headline at the newsstand as I stood in line at the grocery store just days before I left for my trip, my entire shopping basket loaded with travel-size shampoos and toothpaste, ready to see the world and finally fulfill the promise I’d made to Ray.
Robert nodded. “Yeah, one Canadian girl and four Americans. And that’s just what you read in the news. Before that, it was six Americans who overdosed in a hostel; before that it was four Americans and two Germans. About three months ago, twelve Americans died, as well as several others from various countries. Although they’re claiming it was a building collapse, they were at an underground club. The M.E.’s report, when they arrived back onto U.S. soil, confirmed that the bodies had all been deceased before the collapse and that they’d all overdosed on this new drug.”
“Holy shit,” Derrick whispered.
Robert nodded again. “Anyway, I’ve already said way too much.” With his hand on the doorknob he turned to go, but then he stopped, a small smile on his face, though his eyes held a weighted and strained fatigue, unlike anything I’d ever seen. “And for the record, I actually do like Nickelback.”
I WAS PUTTING all my personal hygiene paraphernalia back into my bag when Elissa and Matt walked in. “What happened?” she asked. “You haven't been robbed again, have you?” Her eyes quickly flew around the rest of the room to check her own bag.
I shook my head as I gathered up all the little white torpedoes and stuffed them back into my toiletries bag. “No, no more robberies...here. We were robbed in the streets today, though. Took my bag.”
She rushed over and hugged me. “Oh no, honey, not again. What did they take?” She smelled like sunshine and chlorine; she must have been up on the pool deck all day.
The tears came before I could stop them. “Nothing really, this time. Just my small day pack. Had some cash and lip gloss in it. But I really liked that lip gloss. It was Burt’s Bees.”
She laughed into my hair. “Oh, I like those too.”
I pulled away and wiped the back of my wrist beneath my nose. Robert had instructed us not to tell anyone the truth. People talked, and even though I trusted Elissa and Matt, they could let something slip, especially if they got too many pisco sours down the hatch, and then word could get out, and our safety inside the hostel would be compromised.
I shook my head. “It’s nothing. Just a little shaken is all.”
That answer seemed to suffice, and she nodded in understanding. “We’re all going to go out for dinner tonight, seeing as it’s our last night before we head back home. You guys want to come?”
I opened my mouth to say something, but Derrick answered for me, “We’re actually pretty beat. It’s been a long and a trying afternoon. And we need to make sure we have everything we need before we head up to Cusco tomorrow. Might do some laundry and stuff…you know, boring adult crap. Plus, I’m still waiting to hear from the embassy about my passport.”
Elissa’s mouth stretched up into a wry and knowing smile. She probably thought we were feigning exhaustion and instead going to spend the night humping like convicts on a conjugal. “All right, then. Well, enjoy your evening. There’s a party upstairs on the pool deck again tonight; the theme is Birfday Smurfday. Everybody is supposed to paint themselves blue.”
I lifted one eyebrow while shaking my head; I was so over all the partying. I’d partied in high school, I’d partied in college, and we’d done two nights of partying here. I was done. “Why blue?”
She started to dab on lip gloss in front of the mirror. “Why not?”
Elissa, Matt and their growing group of fellow backpacker friends left a little while later, all of them already slightly drunk from the beer they’d snuck into our room and had started drinking while playing some card game Einar from Norway had taught everyone.
But I wasn’t in the mood for fun. I was in a foul mood, a self-pitying mood, and I skulked in the corner and watched them all, unable to extract myself from my funk and join in their joy.
“You okay?” Derrick asked. He had a beer in his hand and crouched down next to me. I was laying on his bunk reading my stupid book, though not a word of the last chapter had been absorbed. I hadn’t a clue what I’d just read, what grief step was I on. Bargaining? Denial? No, I’d done both of those things. Purging? Was that a step?
I gave him a sidelong glance. “What do you think?”
“I believe you’re pissed off at yourself because you disobeyed Chase’s orders and then took your hat off when you weren’t supposed to. Now you’re punishing yourself by not having fun. You believe you deserve to be in a time out because you put all those people in the movie theater in jeopardy.”
I propped myself up on my elbow and stared at him. Get the hell out of my head. He just grinned that panty-dropping cocky grin. “I’m right, aren’t I?”
I threw on a scowl for good measure. “Maybe.”
“Move over,” he said as he nudged me to the side, laying next to me on his back. “You want some?” He offered me the big beer bottle. I shrugged and took it from him. It wasn’t great, but it wasn’t sewage either. Drinkable, but certainly no Phillip’s Blue Buck or Lighthouse I.P.A.
“Feel better?” he asked, after I took a couple of sips and handed him back a much lighter bottle.
“A little,” I grumbled.
“I’m right, though, aren’t I? You’re beating yourself up.”
I exhaled and put the bookmark back in my book. “You and I should probably go our separate ways. I’m bad luck. You’re either going to get killed, wind up in the hospital or lose a limb at the very least if you stick with me. I’m a jinx.”
He leaned over and pecked me on the nose. “Are you done yet?”
“Done with what?”
“Your pity party?”
“I'm serious. You’re probably going to wind up in the emergency room with a gunshot wound or a knife in your gut if you keep traveling with me. They’re after me, not you.”
He rolled me over onto my back, and then proceeded to cover me with his body, not giving two hoots that there were half a dozen people in the room, all playing some card game on the other bunk beds. “I’m not going to abandon you. I’m not going anywhere, got it?”
“Why aren’t you frustrated with me for nearly getting us killed?”
He pecked my nose. “Who says I’m not a little pissed?”
My eyes flashed open.
“But not at you.” He grinned. “I’m just as much to blame. Even though it was your idea to go out, I agreed to it. How they found us? I have no idea. But I’m just as responsible.”
I shook my head. “No, you’re not. You’re innocent in all of this; it’s me they’re after.”
“Yeah, but I promised you I’d protect you. I should have known better. We should have just laid low here at the hostel until we headed to Cusco.”
“But you’re not mad?”
He shook his head. “I’m not mad. And I’m not going anywhere. You’re stuck with me, got it?”
I swallowed the hard lump in my throat. “Got it.”
“Good.”
IT WAS CLOSING in on eleven, and even though I was dog-tired and craving sleep, I was having a hard time letting it claim me, due to the pumping bass up on the pool deck and the never-ending parade of worries marching through my brain. Derrick and I had taken advantage of the empty dorm room once again, exploring one another’s bodies with unhurried ease and the growing familiarity of seasoned lovers. But we’d finished, showered and turned out the light, not interested at all in the whoops and hollers and inviting music from the ruckus going on upstairs.
We were snuggled up under the blanket, neither of us actually asleep, just dozing, when the door burst open and light sliced through the darkness like a broadsword.
“Come on, Papa Smurf and Smurfette, let’s go party!” And without being given time to protest, or even put on more than the skimpy PJ’s we had on, we were whisked away by a group of unidentifiable blue people all laughing and chanting and smelling strongly of beer and body paint.
They ushered us up the stairs, following the bass just like the Pied Piper’s rats, until we emerged on the pool deck, the floor thumping, the lights flashing and a sea of blue people undulating and rocking to the sick beat.
Both Derrick and I were tossed down onto two lounge chairs, while someone, I’m thinking possibly the Finnish girl with the atrocious pants, brought over a small bucket and a paint brush and began painting my limbs, chest, and face.
Another girl painted Derrick while he laughed and smiled and accepted the beer and the shot someone offered him. “Come on, Piper, smile! We only live once. Let’s make the most of it. Let’s live, let’s have fun.”
Where was this sudden zest for the nightlife coming from? Earlier that morning he’d been complaining about the millennials and practically yelling at the kids to get off his lawn. What had changed?
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