I’m pretty sure.
I frown as I stare out at the ocean, swallowing the pill of this reality. Deep down, I know she’s my one way out of this whole fucking mess. Well, probably, at least; I’m still working that out in my head.
"So, any idea how two people with no passports leave Aruba?"
She looks at me, her brow knitted in this adorable way that I try to ignore; "I was hoping you knew. I mean you got in here without one."
I laugh coldly; "Yeah, but it involved killing two assholes with guns and stealing a boat."
"Oh." Her eyes linger on me, and a shadow of a look that might just be fear crosses her face.
“They were about to throw me over the side to die in the ocean; don’t get all touchy-feely about it sweet cheeks.”
Her gaze lingers a moment longer, but she drops her eyes to the ground and kicks a rock with her sandal.
“OK so maybe I know a way off.” I flash her a grin and wink at her; “You’ll just have to ask me nicely I guess.”
She sighs and looks up at me, clearly wrestling with something behind her eyes; "Look, are you going to be like this?"
"Like what." I say evenly, knowing full well what an immature dick I'm being about this.
"This…just-"
"OK fine, yes."
She frowns; "Yes you're going to keep acting like an asshole?”
"No," I roll my eyes and smirk at her; "I mean yes I know how to get us out of Aruba. I know a guy with a plane who owes me a favor or five."
"Where?"
"A ways," I look across the mostly empty street at an old jeep standing empty by itself; “Think the C.I.A. would mind if you added ‘cars’ the the list of stolen vehicles so far?”
We drive to the airport in the Jeep in total silence, with Javier brooding behind the wheel and me chewing on my nails as I stare out the passenger window. That vortex of regret and confusion inside is still raging, though now at least there are trails and tendrils of coherent thoughts trickling through.
Coherent thoughts like me wondering why I allowed that to happen. I mean, I don't do "flings on the beach" like some sort of sorority girl on spring break. Not ever, and certainly not with criminals like Javier Toro.
God, is that colluding? I think to myself, shivering at the thought.
Why couldn’t I say no to him? More importantly, why couldn't I say it to myself? Why couldn’t I say no to the pure need I had for him
The thought occurs to me that I still wouldn’t trust myself to say no even now; not when it comes to this man with the almost frightening and dangerously magnetic draw sitting next to me.
I've had to think for myself for longer than I should have had to do. Quinn and Reagan were already older when our dad passed, and it's not like I wasn't amply provided for, but I guess I just went inside my own head more often than not. I've made all the right choices, gone to all the right schools and programs, and aced all the tests to get to where I am today with the Agency.
So why do I slip up now?
I think back to Javier teasing me about joining because of my dad. Truth be told though, he was right.
*****
I'm not supposed to be in here, but my aunt is out late and the household staff is already gone for the evening.
And honestly, he's been dead for a year; at the risk of being insensitive, I don't think my dad will be upset that I went into his study.
I'm not even entirely sure what I'm looking for when I push open the heavy wooden doors and step into the musty oldness of the room. It smells like him in here, and I feel a pang in my chest at the still fresh hurt of his passing. I trace my fingers over books that line the shelves; some that I remember him reading to us, some that I remember him reading to himself there in his reading chair, and some I just plain don't know.
I take one down at random and sit in my father's chair. Again, I’m unsure why I’m here, even if I know it’s probably just to try and keep him close though he's gone. It's as if wrapping myself in his life and the scent of him keeps me close to his memory.
The book is Mark Twain's "War Prayer", and what starts as me leafing through the forward ends with me curling into a ball in the chair and reading the whole thing straight through.
“If you would beseech a blessing upon yourself, beware! Lest without intent you invoke a curse upon your neighbor at the same time.”
I go to close the book, but a piece of paper tumbles from the last page into my lap:
33 - 19 - 7
Years of treasure hunts, mystery books, puzzles, and brain twisters with my father have me grinning as soon as I see the numbers; I know exactly what they are.
My eyes drag up to the combination safe sitting darkly in the corner of the room beneath a mahogany table covered in maps. I've have no memory of my father being anywhere close to that safe, and in fact I barely remember noticing it before this very moment. But I'm stepping towards it, slowly, reverently; the page of scrawled numbers held tight in my hand.
I'm not sure what I’m expecting when the dial clicks for the third time. Money? Jewels? Horrible family secrets?
Certainly not books; twelve of them, to be exact.
They're all bound in the same leather, and marked with the same stamp across the cover: “W.A.” I pull one from its forgotten tomb and bring it into the light. It's when I open to the first page that for the first time since entering the room, I start to cry.
They're diaries; all twelve of them are my father's diaries.
It's everything we never knew about what it is he did. Our father's company historically sold weapons, but it was a subject he always hated to talk about. For all his traveling to conflict zones- well, we put two and two together and got "making deals."
Except they weren't the deals we all thought, as I learn in the books; not by a mile. They aren’t deals of war at all.
He was dealing peace.
The diaries tell of building hospitals in war-torn areas; orphanages in places of sickness and strife, wells where there was no water. Logan and Hudson and Bryce are in there as well, off with him changing the world across the pages of his life sitting in my lap, as I cry here in the now.
So why is it a girl like me, from a family like mine, ends up in the C.I.A.?
Because my father wanted to save the world, in any way he could.
And apparently, so do I.
*****
"Oh, she's not as scary as she looks from the outside."
Esteban, Javier's pilot friend pats the fuselage of the rusted-looking single-engine plane with a big grin on his round, friendly face; "She flies like a dream; you won't feel a single bump.”
I can hear Javier snort behind me; right.
Esteban and Javier move off to the side, embracing again and cracking jokes as I skeptically eyeball the rickety-looking plane again. But hey, beggars can't be choosers, as they say, and Esteban was perfectly willing to take us out of Aruba and fly us to Venezuela without asking so much as a single question.
We've already established on the drive here that that it'd be best to keep the nature of our relationship - or, lack thereof - away from Esteban; or who I am, for that matter. He’s hardly prying, but as far as the portly pilot knows, his old pal Javier the criminal needs a lift under the radar to the mainland, and I'm just his - what, accomplice?
His girlfriend?
Don’t be weird.
"He's not really a questions guy, anyways," Javier says on the drive over; "We go way back; he owes me one.”
*****
"So how do you know Tio Torito?”
So much for not being a questions guy.
I start to respond, yelling and still not even hearing the sound of my own voice over the loudness of the prop engine, before Esteban grins and reaches over to turn my headset on. The sound of his friendly laugh coming through my headphones signals they're on.
“What?”
He snorts a laugh, grinning and shooting a quick look back at Javier sleeping in the cramped backseat o
f the plane behind where I sit up front with Esteban; “His- how do you- his nick name? My kids call him that. It means Uncle little-bull literally, but I think it loses something in translation.”
I grin, allowing myself to laugh into the mouthpiece which helps my nerves with the wild shaking of the plane; “I don’t think it loses a thing in translation, actually,” I say, laughing; “And I guess it’s complicated," I finish with a small smile and a shrug; “How I know him.”
He laughs, "Yeah, that sounds like Javier." He rubs his chin and grins to himself, as if reliving old times.
"So you guys are old smuggling buddies?" I cringe a little as the words tumble out of my mouth, wondering if I've just crossed some sort of criminal code by even asking.
Esteban just chuckles though and shakes his head; "Me? No, no, no, that’s not my business. I mostly do commercial jobs. Todo en los libros; everything on the books. It’s all on the level.” He grins, pantomiming a straight line with his hand; “No bandito stuff for me, but sometimes, an old friend like Javier asks me to fly something, and I just decide not to look at what it is." He turns to me, his wide face smiling; "I thought it might be rude this time to ask you to sit in the cargo-hold." he says with a wink.
"He helped me, you know,” He says after another minute of rumbling, shaking silence in the plane.
"Hmm?"
"Javier; thats how we know each other." Esteban nods slowly to himself; "He was in Peru, during the uprising when the Communists were fighting the government. My wife and I and our three girls were hiding out by the docks, apparently in one of his holding warehouses. But when he found us, it wasn't even a question. He was small-time, back then; tiny boats, no planes, none of the tricks he used later. He was there to bring some crates of whatever he was moving then onto that boat and get away before the rioters got to the port, but he took us instead; no questions asked."
Esteban smiles to himself; "I asked him for a long time what was in those boxes that he'd left behind when he took us; you know, to pay him back. But he never told me, and that son of a bitch never lets me pay him back a penny." He turns to me with a shrug; "So, that's how I know him."
"I didn't know that part of him, I guess." I say quietly, turning to look out the window at the clouds streaking past us.
"He's a complex man. He's seen too much, I'll give him that, and he got in deep with the wrong people a few years ago, when he was up in New York."
He got in deep with the wrong people a few years ago, up in New York. Like, around the time he started pressuring Logan with blackmail and ended up kidnapping him and my sister Quinn?
"In another world? In some other reality with different circumstances?" Esteban jerks his thumb over his shoulder at the sleeping Javier; “He'd probably be president somewhere, or a Saint."
I bite my lip as I turn and let my eyes linger on the man sleeping behind me; the man who's got me turned around and inside-out in ways I've never felt before.
"So, you two are…" Esteban trails off and gives me a conspiratorial wink.
I blush furiously and shake my head; "Oh, no, no nothing like that," I say, way too quickly as my cheeks burn.
Esteban suppresses a knowing grin and just shrugs; "Hey, it’s none of my business, señorita. But as a friend to him?" He turns, looking into my eyes; "Be nice to that one. He's a better man than you’d ever know by just looking at him; remember that.”
If I was confused about everything with Javier before, I don't know what to think after talking with Esteban. It's a side of Javier I've never even considered. I mean, in my mind, he's a villain. I might've been having ridiculous thoughts as of late of him being my villain, or whatever, but a bad guy he remains in my head.
Except the story from the plane changes all that. The selfless, charitable Javier? I'm not sure I've ever met that side of him, and suddenly I'm curious what else there is to know about this man - this criminal - that he's managed to bury so deep.
We say goodbye to Esteban at a small airfield cut into the forest that can only be a remnant of Javier's smuggling days, and hop into one of the beat-up pickup trucks parked near the end of the crude runway.
We sit in silence as we drive through the trees. My mind is a blur as it spins with all the new thoughts and opinions about the man sitting next to me, and this whole crazy adventure we've been on for the last few days. And that’s what it is, really; a fantasy adventure. This whole beach-life existence of being on the run, with the threat of danger and the thrill of the unknown around every corner and in every shadow has been a fantasy. It's been like a joy-ride of avoiding real life and avoiding the inevitable for the last few days, and somehow that ride has culminated into crashing into one another in ways I don't think either of us expected.
Javier Toro is literally the last man on Earth I should have ever had anything to do with, let alone sleep with. I want to blame the craziness of our shared experience, or the adrenaline thrill of the chase, or hell, the tequila. But I know none of that's fair to blame for this.
Because really, I don't even know if "blame" is the right word anymore.
Maybe it’s “thank”.
He's like an onion, and I just keep pulling back layers to see just how deep this man goes. And just when I think I have Javier pinned down and figured out, I get a story like Esteban's about his past, and everything gets shaken up all over again.
I'm still stewing about the whole thing when we pull up to a hotel by the beach. I'm silent as he signs us in, paying with probably the last of his stolen cash. I say nothing in the elevator as we slowly rise. I can't talk, because I don't trust myself.
I don't trust myself to deny that I still want him, however wrong it may be.
My mind is honestly made up before we even make it off the elevator, but it's not until he closes the door to the room behind us that I turn on him.
Javier looks stunned as I shove him back against the door, hard, and slink into him as I mash my lips to his. It's fevered, and full of lust and pure need as I kiss him with everything I have; just needing to escape back into him and the fantasy he brings.
He growls suddenly and shoves me away from him, his eyes blazing as he wipes my kiss from his lips with the back of his hand; "Fuck you," He mutters, his gaze burning intently at me.
"Well fuck you too!" I explode at him. My pulse is pounding through my veins as I tense every muscle in my body.
“I’m not going to play this bullshit back and forth with you, Chelsea,” He says, his teeth bared and his eyes leveled on mine; “I’m not going to play ‘guess the fucking mood of the hour’ with you.”
“You know what, forget it,” I spit out; “Fuck you for bringing me into all your bullshit, for bringing me into all this," I choke out a harsh laugh as I jut my jaw out at him; “And fuck you for invading my life!" I hate him, and I also want him with every piece of my being, and the war between the two is making my whole body spin wildly out of control.
"Oh, I invaded your life?!" He roars; the muscles of his arms bunching and tensing; "Just who walked into who's life here, Special Agent Archer."
He steps forward suddenly, snakes his hand into my hair, and pulls me into him as he kisses me. His lips and his mouth devour mine, and for brief half-second I melt into him before the rage comes rushing back like a flood and I shove him away.
"That is exactly what I mean!" I yell at him, pointing my finger into his chest; "You can't just fucking kiss me you prick! It doesn’t work that way!”
Scorch: A Soldiers of Fortune Romance (Military Bad Boy Romance) Page 12