3. Eve
3
EVE
I t’s two a.m., and I can’t sleep. I’m lying underneath the covers in total darkness with all four walls closing in on me. Seventy-two hours have passed since my ordeal, but I can’t stop reliving it in my head. Everything about that man was wrong. He shattered my life with his appearance, and now he’s tormenting me with his memory.
I lied to the cops. Who the hell does that? I gave them a false description of the dark-eyed devil who abducted me at gunpoint and left me stranded in a private hangar on the edge of Miami Beach. The man whose aircraft I’d stood and watched fade into the night sky until there was nothing left to see except a flashing tri-color blur.
I told them he was five-seven with light brown hair and blue eyes—a complete contradiction to the heartless criminal, the trained killer, the man who didn’t think twice about forcing himself on me.
My cell beeps. It’s Anna:
You still awake, babe?
I glance at the clock on the nightstand. Her shift at the bar must be nearly done. She volunteers at an animal shelter by day and transforms into a cocktail-shaking vixen at night. She’s a hot blonde with a heart of gold, and people love to tell me how she adds extra shots of tequila to their margaritas.
I message her back right away:
Friends reruns are for life, not just for insomniacs x
Another lie. I haven’t switched on my TV for days.
A few seconds later, my cell rings.
“That bad, huh?” says Anna with a sigh. “You wanna come down? I’m not supposed to finish my shift for another thirty minutes, but I reckon I could duck out early if you want me to. My boss owes me.”
I smile at the concern in her voice, but I’m turned off by the loud voices and beats in the background. The aftermath of my abduction has left me suspended in this weird, alternative universe where all I want to do is hide away.
I don’t want to be the center of attention.
I don’t want to face her probing questions.
“Maybe some other night, Anna. Do you mind?” I chuck in an elaborate yawn that makes the sides of my jaw ache.
There’s a pause. “You still thinking about him?”
All the damn time.
“I’m worried about you, Evie,” she says, breaking my silence. “You haven’t been yourself since it happened. You’re safe now. You know that, right? The cops will hunt him down and lock him up. ”
No, they won’t. It doesn’t matter what I told the cops. This devil has been playing on the wrong side of the law for years. Evading capture is a sport to him, not an inevitability.
“Are you chewing on your thumbnail again?”
“Nope,” I lie, whisking it from my mouth. It’s a cute habit leftover from my childhood that all my friends tease me about. I do it when I’m uneasy, and that man is making me edgy as hell.
“Have you thought about talking to anyone?”
I finger the outline of a business card on my nightstand. “The cops gave me this number to call…”
“Then call it,” she urges. “Promise me, Evie. First thing tomorrow. If anything, you’ll get a couple of Xanax out of it.” A voice starts talking to her in the background, asking where the juice mixers are kept. “Look, I gotta run. I’ll call you in the morning, okay?”
“Don’t worry so much, I’m fine…really.”
But she’s not convinced. “Promise me you’ll call that number…”
“I promise,” I lie.
“Do it.”
“Okay, okay, I’ll do it!”
She laughs. “You know you look sweet when you pout, right?”
“Bye, Anna.”
I hang up and stare at my cell. I don’t want to talk to anyone about what happened. I’m scared I’ll let something slip and implicate myself… and him.
Why do I feel this way?
Why do I feel the need to protect this man ?
That kiss changed everything.
Is this lust? Hate? Some kind of messed-up fusion of both? I’m frightened by the pull of emotion I feel, but I’m strangely curious about it too. Have I really existed for twenty-five years without experiencing this crazy firebrand before?
One kiss.
That’s all it was.
My cell phone shatters the silence again.
I pause before answering. No Caller ID. What if it’s him? What if he’s tracked me down? What if he’s returning to finish what he started?
With a shaking finger, I hit the green button before it rings out. Right away, my mom’s voice is filtering down the line.
“Hi, honey, did I wake you?”
“No, I was just chatting to—”
“Oh jeez, I’ve just seen the time.” She sounds weird and distracted.
“Mom, what is it?”
“I’m so sorry, Evie…” Her voice turns into a sob. “It’s Dad. There’s been an accident. I thought you should know.”
Shit, shit, shit. I fumble for the light switch, my heart pounding like a drum. I’ve been dreading this call for weeks. I’m the daughter of a DEA special agent, and the streets of Miami are a war zone right now. Two gangs are fighting over territory, and my dad and his team keep getting caught up in the crossfire.
The same evening that I was abducted, he was on duty about half a mile away. He was following a tip-off and lost two colleagues in the ensuing gun battle at a local nightclub .
Twenty-eight dead.
That number still shocks me.
Twenty-eight lives lost needlessly, twenty-eight lives destroyed, twenty-eight families wounded forevermore by the events of that night.
Up until three days ago, I’d been covering the story for my paper. Now, I can’t look at my laptop. I can’t concentrate. I barely eat. But outside, the war is raging on just as fiercely.
One family, the Garcias, are chancers and risk-takers—determined to gain power and notoriety by any means necessary. Their rivals are the Mendozas, with connections to the notorious Santiago Cartel from South America, who rule the southern states with an iron fist. The Santiagos are faceless strangers. Men who prize their anonymity above everything.
You could say I have a vested interest in all of this. I hate narcotics with every fiber of my being. I’ve seen what they do to people, what they did to my brother. I’ve been fighting my own private war against the illegal drugs trade in the US for years. Trying to expose the ringleaders and bring them down, one newspaper article at a time.
“What sort of accident?” I manage to croak. “Is Dad going to be okay?”
Mom stifles another sob.
Crap, it’s bad.
“He’s been shot, Evie. I’m at the hospital. They’ve just taken him down to the operating room.”
“Oh my God. I’m coming straight there. I’ll be with you as soon as I can.”
I hang up and dress in record time.
Not Dad. Not my wisecracking lion-hearted bear of a father who never misses a football game or the chance to tell his only daughter how much he loves her.
This can’t be happening. I won’t let it. If I force my mind into a state of vacant limbo, I can ward off all the painful thoughts that are closing in on me.
I focus on zipping up my boots and grabbing my car keys and cell, and for the first time in three days my focus shifts to someone other than him .
I reach the E.R. at around four a.m. Dawn is still evading the skyline above the big gray building in front of me. The temperature is cooler than I find comfortable. I pull my denim jacket tighter around my shoulders as I lock the car and hurry toward the entrance.
The sliding doors drift open as I approach. Inside, the lobby is a chaotic mix of people and gurneys, a discordance of noise and sharp unfamiliar odors. Twilight hours are never defined in a place where the sick and injured have no schedules.
A distant bell rings, and a young nurse pushes past me in the direction of the noise, her green eyes opaque with tiredness. The security guy surveys me wearily and jabs a finger toward the front desk. I slide my gaze away and take a step in that direction. The bright lights are forcing me to focus. My fears are threatening to consume me again.
Dad has to be ok...he has to be ok...he has to—
“Evie?”
I don’t recognize Mom at first. She’s a Southern Belle, the very definition of grace and composure, but tonight’s events have distorted those virtues. Worry is etched into the soft lines around her mouth and forehead, her eyes are red-rimmed, and her make-up is non-existent. It’s been a while since I’ve seen her in such a bad way.
“He’s out of surgery, Evie. He’s in recovery.”
Tears of relief cloud my vision as I step forward to accept her embrace, surrendering to it completely like I used to when I was a child.
“He’s going to be okay, sweetheart,” she whispers, brushing stray wisps of hair away from my face.
“I can’t believe someone tried to use him as target practice,” I mumble into her shoulder.
“I can’t believe he didn’t duck.”
Our bittersweet laughter turns to fresh tears, and we hug each other a little tighter.
“One of his colleagues called me,” she explains, wiping her eyes. “They went down to the quays to check out a suspect container and were ambushed. He took two bullets to his arm and one to his shoulder, but I’ve just spoken with his surgeon. There’s no reason to suggest he won’t be making a full recovery.”
I take a moment to digest this. “Why was he out working a case so soon after the other night? Why would he take that risk?”
“He told me something in confidence before he left, Evie…” My mother glances away. “He heard a rumor that a Santiago was right here in Miami. He was following up on a lead.”
I stare at her in shock as she pats the skin under her eyes, rubbing away the last traces of smudged mascara. Mine and dad’s inexorable quest for my brother’s justice takes a heavy toll on her sometimes.
This is big. No, it’s huge. A Santiago here on our home turf? No wonder dad was so determined to find out more.
I feel a fierce love and pride for him then. Destroying the cartels is personal to all of us. Not only was tonight a chance to take down one of the chief perpetrators, but a chance to take down one of the men responsible for Ryan’s death.
I know my dad. He’ll be devastated when he wakes up. He’ll blame himself for getting shot down when he was two-thirds to victory.
“Can we see him?”
“Of course, though he won’t be awake for a little while.”
She takes my arm and leads me along a twisted maze of hospital hallways. Now that my immediate, breath-stealing heartache has passed, I find I can endure people’s curiosity again. What greets me is a whole spectrum of human emotion—from mirror images of my own relief to the anguish of the alternative—emotions that could so easily have been ours if the bullets had struck higher. The same emotions we faced together as a family five years ago.
Mom ushers me into a private room, and I gaze down at the unconscious figure in the bed, mentally phasing out all the wires and tubes and scary, bleeping machinery. Dad looks fragile. Broken…
“That’s three lucky escapes for my family this week,” I hear my mother say, pulling up two chairs for us. “Stay safe, sweetheart. I don’t think I can take any more drama.”
I hold my breath and wait for the follow-up. Mom hates my job. She’s been like this ever since my brother died. If she had her way, I’d be a bored housewife in Suburbia with a kid attached to each hip.
“Perhaps it’s time to reconsider a few things, Evie. There are safer ways to earn a living, you know.”
Predictable.
“Mom, I’m a reporter—”
“Who writes inflammatory words about dangerous criminals!” Mom’s anger burns bright, but it fades just as quick. “It could have been men like that who attacked you the other night…”
I say nothing. She’s skirting dangerously close to the same conclusion I’ve come to myself. Even so, I refuse to walk away from my job. It’s the last piece I have left of my former life.
“Perhaps this isn’t the best time to be having this conversation,” she concedes, heading for the door. “I need to have a word with the nurses. There was talk of moving him up to a new floor.”
“Okay, Mom.”
I acknowledge her exit with a tight smile before turning back to dad.
I stare and stare.
Who did this?
Who pulled the trigger?
Was the tip-off a ruse?
The DEA have been circling the major cartel players in Miami for a while now. Three shipments have been intercepted in the last month. Millions and millions of dollars-worth of cocaine seized, and my dad’s been heading up the operation.
I pull my chair closer to his bedside, deep in thought. Was he getting too close? Has he irritated the wrong people? Has he finally caught the attention of the Santiagos ?
All of a sudden, there’s a strange prickling sensation on the back of my neck. I’m being watched. No, it’s more than that, I’m being consumed .
I turn to the doorway and quickly rise to my feet, my chair falling backward in my haste to stand. I barely hear the crash. My mouth is frozen in a silent scream. I can feel myself falling, falling…
It can’t be.
The same devil from my dreams and my nightmares is standing right in front of me. Seventy-two hours fall away to nothing. It’s as if they never existed. He’s dressed in black again, his dark eyes are burning with vengeance, and there’s a gun in his hand…
A gun that’s pointing straight at my head.