Chapter 7
Alice
The ride to Gael’s church roughly thirty miles outside of San Diego was supposed to take about two hours. Less if I stepped on the gas. Instead, I find myself slowing down as we near it.
Nico’s SUV has been in my rearview for the entire ride, like a massive black shadow, never dropping back so far that I couldn’t see it. Which is quite a feat, since I weaved through the heavy traffic where he could not.
I still don’t know if it’s a good idea that he’s here with me. I’m still fearful that his presence will make this already very hard task even harder. But I can’t deny that it feels good having someone here with me.
My heart starts racing for no good reason as I near the site of Gael’s church.
It’s standing on a lot just outside a smallish town, surrounded by dried-up earth and tiny trees trying to survive in this arid land.
Those trees are just like the girls Gael abuses.
Just trying to survive. I was like that too.
Skinny, fearful, shy, wishing I could just fold in on myself most of the time.
I ride past the church, speeding up until I reach the edges of the town of South Cave. I stop in the parking lot of a mall that’s seen better days and wait for Nico to pull up beside me.
The asphalt of the parking lot is cracked, black tar lines as thick as my wrist the only thing holding it together in many places, stretching across it like rotted veins.
Kind of like me. I’m as cracked as this asphalt and the toughness and roughness holding me together is just as black as these lines.
“All right, so what’s our next move?” Nico asks as he joins me. “A nice lunch while we go over the plan?”
I snap my eyes to his, wondering if he’s just another black line in the making.
“I’m not really hungry,” I say. “We should get rooms and then start working.”
Nico looks around the area we’re in, his eyes catching on the motel a little way up the road. The Desert Rose.
“I hope you don’t mean that place,” he says, pointing at it, his face contorted in disgust.
“Yes, I mean that place,” I say. “It’s perfectly located. Near enough to the church, but still far enough so we’re not right on top of it.”
“Come on, I’m sure there’s something better to be found around here,” he says. “That place looks like it’s falling down. And that’s the best thing I can say about it.”
“I know you’re used to the five-star treatment everywhere, but I don’t think you’re gonna find that around here,” I tell him, using Sarge Alice’s voice. “Besides, I did tell you to turn back. You still can.”
His eyes light up with something that I can only describe as heightened interest in me, but his voice is level and kind of hard as he says, “I’m not turning back.
Come on, let’s get those rooms. And then we are going to find the best restaurant this town has to offer and go over the plan. I’m starving.”
He strides back to his car without waiting for me to say anything, leaving me just standing there torn between doing as he said and telling him off for daring to order me around.
I’m the one giving the orders. It’s been years since that wasn’t the case.
So why am I so willing to just do as he says and let him take the reins?
But that’s a question I’ll have to unpack some other time, because he’s already pulling out the parking lot. So I just get on my bike and follow.
The Desert Rose motel is comprised of two three-story buildings facing each other.
And as we reach it, I see he had a very good point about maybe finding somewhere else to stay.
The windows of the rooms on the second and third stories of the building closest to the road are boarded up and the outdoor hallways leading to them are sagging so badly that it looks like the whole structure is about to come down.
But reception is on the ground floor of this building and they wouldn’t have it there if the building was unsafe, would they?
I find Nico standing by his car in front of reception staring dubiously at the sagging hallways. “Are you really sure about this?”
“It’ll be fine,” I say and stride into reception, the bell over the door so loud it practically pierces my eardrums.
I’m not at all sure about staying here, but I need to take my power back, because just the thought of giving it up even a little bit scares me to my core. That power, that command I have… those are the black tar lines holding me together, only as strong as I am strong.
The receptionist—Betty—is a kindly older woman, who tells us all about her three grandchildren, a girl and two boys, as she books us in for a week. She gives us two double bedrooms next to each other on the ground floor facing the street.
“And don’t worry about how the building looks,” she says with a wide smile. “It’s perfectly safe.”
Even as I pay for the rooms, glad Nico isn’t pulling out his own wallet to do it, I’m not sure we’ll be staying here for the whole week. But I want Betty to have the money, this whole place looks like she desperately needs it.
“All right, so what’s next?” Nico asks once we’re back outside, looking down at the key in his hand like it’s poisonous. “Get settled in and then lunch.”
I look up at him because I have to do that since he’s always standing too close to me and he’s so much taller. “Going forward, I’m going to be the one calling the shots. That’s the only way this will work.”
That look of heightened excitement is back on his face, bright as the morning sun. Whatever that means.
“All right, Boss,” he says. “I’m just here to help.”
But that’s not the only reason he’s here.
I hear that plainly in his tone, see it in his face, feel it deep in my chest where I usually don’t feel much at all.
Unless it’s a panicked fear that I’ll be cornered like Gael cornered me, tricked then hurt in ways that still makes me wake up in a cold sweat in the middle of the night whenever I dream of it. Which is almost every night.
“Don’t call me Boss,” I say and walk over to my bike, then roll it to a spot just outside my room.
“We’ll meet out here in ten minutes,” I say. “Then we’re going to check out the church. Then maybe we’ll have some lunch.”
“Yes, Boss,” he calls after me and I can clearly hear the smile in his voice.
I don’t know how to react to that, so I don’t. I just enter my room, close the door behind me and hope everything will get easier and less confusing soon.
But before that can happen, I have to focus on Gael and bringing him to justice. And nothing else.