by Christa Wick
I bit at my bottom lip for a few seconds until I was sure I could ask the next question without my voice trembling. “Can you tell me his first name?”
“Dean.” Reaching across the table once more, she gave my hand a sympathetic squeeze. “Dean Ramirez.”
*****
On your feet, Ramirez!
Dean Ramirez peeled one reluctant eye open, the raspy voice of Drill Instructor Theodore Bayhune echoing in his memory.
You have three seconds to stand up or I’ll send your ass back to the barrio, chico.
High noon in the Sonoran desert, the sunlight pierced Dean’s skull. With his left arm and shoulder coated with congealed blood and debris from the desert floor, he tucked his right arm under his torso and pushed up.
One, chico! You missing your mama’s beans and rice? You want to go home, is that it, boy?
A body’s length in front of Dean, a turkey vulture pulled its head from the chest of Oscar Torres, tearing at the old man’s heart with its hooked ivory-colored beak. His knees and one good hand scraping and dragging over rocks and sand, Dean crawled toward the old man.
Two! This aint no fucking siesta, recruit. Get your ass up, now!
Torres had been cowering, cane in hand, behind his remaining gun man as the last bullets had been fired. Locked in a death grip, his fingers clutched at the silver rooster head. Dean jerked the end of the cane, causing the buzzard to dance in agitation.
He lifted the cane, smashed it down, the sound of dead and drying fingers breaking no more than a whisper on the wind. His hand curled around the center of the cane, Dean jabbed its silver-tipped end into the sand.
A pint or more of his blood stained the ground behind him. His arm shook like an old man trying to rise out of his rocking chair as he pushed on the cane. Knees wobbling, his feet slid away from one another on the loose ground. His left knee gave out, hitting a fist-sized rock and threatening to send him sprawling face first into the bloody, gaping hole that had once housed Oscar’s heart.
Three! I’m kicking your ass all the way back to East Los Angeles if you don’t get on your feet right fucking--
“Now!” Dean lurched forward, cane and arm flailing for a few seconds before the tip struck solid ground. Leaning on the stick, he dragged a ragged breath in, feeling every last grain of sand that clogged his nostrils and throat.
Water. He needed water, needed out of the heat and into some shade. Without either, he’d die before the sun dropped below the horizon. He squinted, head slowly swiveling as he surveyed the area.
The black Mercedes Torres arrived in had burned through the night, the tank exploding from Feo’s last round. That left the blue rusted Ford truck half a football field away as the only way out. Feo was sprawled face first on the ground in front of it, courtesy of Dean’s final shot.
Half a fucking football field.
Thought you were done, chico? Thought it was time to collect that Eagle, did you? No sirree. First you have to cross the Desert of Death.
“Bayhune.” Dean spat a mix of blood and sand at the ground, the spasms in his lungs threatening to turn his legs to rubber once more. Closing his eyes, he could see his former DI -- or at least the ghost of that merciless, tough-as-nails son of a bitch. He was gone now. Dean had helped scrape what was left of him off the Dasht-i-Margo in Afghanistan.
That was the true Desert of Death -- not this place. Half a world away, that hellish plain had claimed the life of more than one Marine. This one would not.
Not today.
Opening his eyes, Dean’s gaze fixed on the truck. Fifty yards, one-hundred-fifty feet, one foot after the other.
Cakewalk.
You want that Eagle, chico?
Eagle, globe, anchor -- he wanted it all. He pushed the cane forward in the sand and then drew his body after it. Slow, single-minded, the pattern of cane-foot-foot repeated as the hours, and the daylight, passed.
He wasn’t going to die here, not today -- not until he’d seen her one last time.
Touched her.
Tasted her.
You want your Eagle, chico? It’s right fucking here. You just have to take it from me.
Reaching Feo’s body, Dean rolled the dead man over. A delicate strand of silver at Feo’s throat led down to a sparkling blue stone splattered with blood. Dean clutched it, jerked once and stumbled through the open truck door and into the cab’s interior.
*****
My first few months in exile, I was sure I would return to my new apartment from one of my two part-time jobs to find Dean sitting on my front step. Around month four, I realized that wasn’t going to happen -- ever. Maybe one day in the far future for a few minutes at a court house right before or just after I testified in the murder of Felix Esposito, I would see him. That was all the hope or comfort I could look forward to.
It took me a week of crying myself to sleep after that realization to come to terms with the fact that, whatever feelings had been given birth to in that Phoenix house, they were mine alone. Those green eyes had never actually warmed. Dean had just been playing a part for two very different audiences -- fucking us both at the same time, just in different ways. For Feo and the others, getting fucked by Dean meant they would spend a very long portion of their lives in prison.
In some ways, I was living in a prison, too -- one constructed of circumstance. I would never again be Garnet Williams, but at least my cell looked out over Monterey Bay and it was filled with books. Lots and lots of books. Weekends and Fridays I worked at the public library. Tuesday through Thursday, I worked at a small bookstore on Lighthouse Avenue. Altogether I managed about thirty-six hours a week, just enough to cover my rent, groceries and utilities and nowhere near enough to consider getting a car.
It wasn’t bad, just lonely. And I’m not ashamed to confess I compensated by checking out a few romances each week from the library. I just wish I could say that the hero in each, no matter how differently described by the author, didn’t inevitably warp into Dean in my mind.
I was re-shelving in the romance section with a few select titles tucked along one side of my cart for home when I heard a small clearing of someone’s throat and realized I was not alone in the aisle.
I turned to find Dean standing there with the same wild curls, just shorter, and the same green eyes, neither cold nor warm, only fiercely guarded. I didn’t gasp or shout -- I merely started to faint.
Dean’s arms were around me in an instant, supporting me as he steered me to rest against one of the bookshelves. Just as quickly, he stepped back once it was clear I wasn’t actually going to faint. Shoving his hands in his jacket, he didn’t say anything, just stared at me.
Heart pounding in my chest, I stared back…
And blinked first.
“How did you find me?” I turned back to the cart as I asked the question, picking up the next book to shelve. “Did Hollman tell you?”
That earned a slight chuckle. “I’m sure she’ll have my balls if she finds out I tracked you down.”
God damn, but hearing his voice felt good. Too good -- more than it had any right to. Focusing on keeping my breathing even, I tried to ignore all the warm spikes of energy his voice had set off inside me. “So, why are you here?”
My voice came out twenty times calmer than I felt. Seeing my hand on the verge of shaking, I shoved the book I was holding in the wrong spot and picked up another, pretending to read the numbers at the bottom of its spine.
Reaching across my shoulder, Dean lifted the book I’d just improperly shelved and moved it one row down. Without saying anything more, he reached back into his pocket, pulled out a small padded envelope and handed it to me.
It was sealed and I turned it over in my hands, examining it. More than sealed, the envelope was metered with my apartment address and new name of April Philips written in a bold hand. My stomach tightened at the realization that this meeting almost hadn’t happened, that he’d been on the verge of dropping whatever was inside into a mailbox and st
aying out of my life until the trial.
I broke the seal on the envelope and shook the contents out. My grandmother’s aquamarine pendant necklace in the antique silver setting fell into my open palm. The last time I’d seen it, Feo had been casually shoving it into his pants pocket.
“I didn’t think I’d see it again.” My hands started to tremble and I felt the fast pooling of tears. “It was my grandmother’s.”
Dean lifted the strands of the necklace gingerly, raising the gemstone, as he had done in the van, until it was even with my head. “Did her eyes match the stone, too?”
I nodded, unable to form a single word as he leaned forward, his hands reaching behind me to fasten the necklace. He ran his fingers under the chain, all the way down to the pendant to smooth the kinks from the metal. His hand paused between the valley of my breasts, the rise and fall of his chest slowing before he made a final adjustment to the pendant and quickly stuffed his hands back in his jacket pockets.
He caught my gaze again, seemed content just to hold it while he studied my reaction. I had a million questions to ask him, but only one that mattered.
Did you mean it? Did you really desire me or was it all an act?
Even if I could get the question past my lips, I couldn’t ask it here. A library patron was starting down the row, her toddler trailing behind her.
“I need to talk to you.” I glanced at the woman and back to Dean. “But not here.”
He dropped his gaze, the sigh leaving him so reluctant that I was sure he would deny me. Feeling my cheeks color, I told myself I was a hundred shades of foolish. He was here to return the necklace, nothing more. Taking a ragged breath and holding it, I turned back to my cart.
The woman passed us, her little boy looking back to notice the first tear sliding down my cheek. His face grew sad, his little hand creeping up to wave at me.
“Tonight…after sunset.” Dean pressed something cold and metallic against my palm and then he brushed a strand of hair from my cheek. “Your place.”
I turned just in time to see him exit the row and make a hard right toward the front door. I looked down at the object in my hand -- a silver rooster’s head, its interior hollowed out to slide over the end of a walking stick. Realizing I’d seen it before, I tightened my grip. My other hand darted up to cover the pendant of my grandmother’s necklace.
Feo and his boss were dead.
*****
I went straight home from the library, my mind racing ahead of my feet. Inside the apartment, I flitted around, my attention drifting time and again to the patio’s sliding glass door and the patch of sky I could see through it as I waited for the sun to sink below the horizon.
With no social life, everything in the apartment was already clean. I made a light dinner but found myself picking at it. With my nerves in ruin, I gave up trying to eat, bound my hair in a knot and took a shower hoping the heat would ease some of the tension running through me.
Half an hour after sunset, I sat at my small dining table and stared at my front door for at least another thirty minutes until a light knock sounded at last.
“It’s open.” I forced my hands into my lap, willing them to fold calmly around each other instead of the constant wringing they’d suffered since I got home.
The door opened and Dean stepped through it with a scowl on his face. Shutting it quickly, he turned the deadbolt and threaded the security chain. Seeing the patio door open, his scowl deepened. He cut through the small living/dining room and secured the patio door before drawing its curtains.
A few more steps brought him to the table where he stood glaring down at me. “Don’t do that again.”
Stunned by his reaction, I brushed nervously at a wisp of hair before I met his gaze. “I didn’t think there was anyone alive to come after me. Was I wrong?”
His face relaxing, Dean pulled one of the chairs away from the table, pointed it in my direction and sat down hard. He brought one leg up, his ankle resting atop the opposite knee as his hand squeezed his shin. “Not exactly. Every man in that house but me is dead. I told them I killed you because you fucked up on the delivery.”
I shifted in my seat, my gaze dancing around the room, meeting his for a second, moving away for a few more seconds before returning. I’d been too shocked seeing him at the library to notice any changes other than his hair being shorter. Now each glance revealed something new. A small line had been gouged into his right cheekbone. Half an inch below the right corner of his mouth, another new scar ran a thin line to disappear under his chin. A certain gauntness hid just below the surface of his muscles and the hollow of his cheeks.
He was still drop dead sexy, maybe even more so, but it was clear that not all of the last six months had been kind to him. I wanted to ask him if he was well, but I wasn’t sure I wanted him to know I cared enough to ask. I chose another question instead. “How is that ‘not exactly,’ then?”
“They might have thought I was lying, that the press reports were faked. They could have had their own contacts in WITSEC or the DEA. They certainly knew I was lying at the end.”
The end…I drew a deep breath in. “How did they die?”
“Painfully.” His gaze shut down and I knew that was all the information he would give me on the topic.
“You could have told Hollman--”
“No, and you won’t tell her, either, not until I’m sure you’re safe and don’t need WITSEC.” He ran his hand along his shin, his fingernails dragging along the denim of his jeans so hard they would have dug burrows if it had been his skin. “And I wanted to make sure you’re doing okay.”
“She could have told you how I was doing.” I was glad he hadn’t asked anyone in WITSEC, but I was desperate to know if his visit was more than some kind of health and welfare check. I pressed my hand against my stomach, as if that could stop the knots twisting through it.
Dean’s hand balled into a fist and he shook his head. “She could tell me you’d found work, that you had an apartment in a safe neighborhood…she couldn’t tell me whether you’re adjusting, if you’re thinking about going back to school…if…”
He finished with a shrug and a fresh scowl.
Something was gnawing at him, but he seemed reluctant to let it out. That meant it was gnawing at both of us. I gave him a little prompt. “If what?”
His gaze skipped around the room. There was little to see. I’d furnished it with mismatched pieces from Goodwill and other second hand shops. There were no pictures, certainly no photographs. A few books from the library rested on a bookshelf next to a few I’d picked up from a used bookstore. The apartment looked like what it was -- a way station, not a home.
“If you’re making friends, opening up--” His attention jumped back to the bookshelf, his right brow lifting slightly.
Making a quick mental inventory of my to-be-read pile, I felt a rush of blood to my face. I put my hands on the table, hoping to divert his attention. “Some acquaintances from work. It’s hard to make friends when I’m trying to concentrate on remembering what name to answer to.”
Frowning, I tilted my head to the side. “But I guess you know what that’s like, Dino.”
The little twitch of his mouth and the way his eyes slid back in my direction told me he was no longer thinking about the hot little romance on my bookshelf.
“So, now you’re all up to speed.” I finished with a flat little smile.
“You said you had questions.” He tossed the smile right back at me, his gaze still shuttered. “What do you want to know?”
My question hadn’t changed, neither had my inability to ask it. Was it all a game or did you want me -- do you want me now?
Lifting my shoulders, I looked away. “You’ve answered them already.”
“All of them, lit--” He froze and I felt my heart do a back flip.
My eyes slowly shut, heat instantly coalescing low in my stomach at the words he had just stopped short of saying. Little dove.
“Have I a
nswered all of yours?” I whispered, my eyes still shut.
“All the ones I’ve asked.”
How the hell could he sound so self-possessed when I was splintering inside? I looked at him knowing I was starting to cry but unable to stop the tears. “What haven’t you asked?”
“Do you hate me?” His voice was level but both of his hands gripped his leg, one at the knee and the other wrapped around his ankle, the knuckles white from how hard he was squeezing. “Do you think I made the wrong choice?”
I blinked at the question. “Do I think saving me was the wrong choice?”
What kind of question was that!
“How I saved you,” he corrected. His voice had finally started to crack and he shut his mouth with a snap, his jaw flexing as his teeth started to grind.
My expression widened, the muscles around my eyes stretching as far as they could go. “You had another option?”
When he shrugged, I wanted to hit him.
“Answer me!”
His mouth opened then closed, making him look like a fish that had just jumped from its bowl. Seeing him flounder sent a small thrill shooting through me. Whether as Dino or Dean -- Ramirez was a man who knew the right word and when to use it. He’d had mere seconds to save me from Feo. He’d stared down Jefe after the door had been busted in and walked me out of that drug house with a duffel full of the old man’s heroin. He’d clearly fought other battles in the months since we parted and he had survived.
Yet here he was…at a loss…at last.
I repeated my demand, gently this time. “How can I answer you, Dean, if you don’t answer me?”
Dean shook his head. “I don’t know if there was another option, I’ll never know. What I did wasn’t based on training or reason. Fuck, thinking wasn’t part of the equation.”
He put his foot on the floor, braced himself with a hand on each knee and stared straight into my eyes. “It was pure impulse spurred by desire.”
I gave one slow nod as the answer sank in and then I closed my eyes. I couldn’t look at him and still say what I wanted to say. “You want me to forgive you?”