16. Isabel
16
ISABEL
“ G et down!”
Miguel forced me off of him so violently, I held my breath. He didn’t just push me aside. The big man rolled over with me, smashing me down to the sand.
What the fuck?
He wasn’t being playful. This wasn’t more of that dominance he exuded when we’d had sex. Nothing was sexy about this.
Not the order in his tone. The stark fear in his eyes. Nor the strength and bulk of him covering me. This time, he wasn’t lying over me to cuddle. Tucking down, his shoulders hunched as he curled over me, he shielded me.
I coughed once at the blur of motion. My heart jackhammered so fast. My pulse hadn’t slowed at all yet from coming. I had yet to come back down from that rush, and now?—
A whistling sound pierced through the air.
“Fuck. Fucking—” Miguel gathered me up in his arms. “Let’s go!”
I scrambled up with him, confused and panicking primarily because he was. Together, we got to our feet. With him hovering over me, blocking me, he hurried us over to a beach stand across the sand.
“Stay down,” he ordered as more of those whistling sounds shot through the air. The thunder had faded, but past my fast breath, I couldn’t really understand what he was rushing us away from.
His big hand stayed on my back as he urged me to crouch with him under this wooden stand. As far as shelter went, it didn’t seem that strong. I’d follow his lead, though, because as I turned back—instinctively—to look at where we’d had sex on the beach, another sound came. With it, a spot of sand burst up.
“Is someone shooting at us?” I gaped at Miguel as he scanned the buildings along the street.
“Not us.”
I clamped my mouth shut.
“ You ,” he clarified, making eye contact with me. “When you sat up, I saw a sniper sight lining up with your head.”
“What… I… What ?” I couldn’t think straight, much less speak. “Someone wants to shoot me ?” It was ludicrous, so far out there, I failed to comprehend. I was an artist, a mural painter who minded her own business. Just an ordinary woman who…
Happened to be the daughter of Louis Flores.
I hate you. I hate you.
While he’d taught me how to hide and blend in, that sneaking around business, I never, ever thought someone would actually come after me like this!
“Take my card.” Miguel didn’t look at me as he grabbed his wallet, still glancing up over and over again to watch the distance while we hunkered down under this beach stand. “Go to my room and wait for me.”
“No, I?—”
He thrust the card in my hand. “Listen to me, Isabel.”
I detested being told what to do, but I was also scared of what was happening. I still couldn’t believe we’d had sex. Like that. So fast and so primitively wicked. I’d never had sex in the wide open public, where anyone could see. No one was out, but it wasn’t a private spot in the dark of the storm on the beach. I’d never just let a man tell me how it’d be and then have him prove to me just how good it was.
But being shot at? This trumped it all. My options to this danger were to fight or flee. Running was the wiser choice, because unlike Miguel as he got a gun out from the back of his shorts, I was unarmed and unprepared to fight at all.
But that meant?—
“No. What do you mean, wait for you?” I grabbed his forearm. “Where the hell are you going?”
“Go to my room, Isabel. And wait for me.” He looked at me expectantly, counting on me to listen and obey. Disobedience was more my style, but having sex on the beach with a stalker, then getting shot at, was definitely not my style at all.
“Go!” he yelled, holding his gun and volleying his gaze toward where he must have assumed the shooter had aimed from.
“Stick to that retaining wall and go.” He urged me to walk out, near the structure he referenced. As I went, with him backing up and still covering me, I swallowed hard and willed myself to just trust him, to believe that he’d know what he was doing and would keep me safe.
He already had.
He killed for me.
He’d saved me once, and that was the reason I could take this leap of faith to listen to him and run.
I sprinted, clenching my teeth and pushing through the panic of a shot hitting me. Of a bullet tearing through me. This retaining wall wasn’t a structure like a fortress, but Miguel had chosen well, on the spot, to direct me to escape this way.
Just who the hell is he?
Military? A cop? Someone from the Cartel?
I literally couldn’t tell, but as I reached the safety of his hotel lobby then rode the elevator back up, I caught my breath and knew that this sexy, rugged stalker knew what he was doing. He had experience. He was armed. He was a good fighter and a skilled spy.
But what I didn’t know was how well he would be able to survive a sniper out on the beach.
Worry engulfed me as I entered the room I’d fled from. The last time I was in this modernistic living room, we’d been arguing about whether I knew anything about what Louis was up to. And if that other man was also someone looking for me versus an opportunist hoping to rape and kill a woman…
I exhaled long and hard, standing in his room and staring straight ahead. For the first time in a long while, I had no clue what to do. He’d told me to come here and wait, but the problem with that was that I sucked at it. I wasn’t obedient by nature, and being ordered to come here and be patient for his return wouldn’t end well.
Concerned about him out there, I paced through the room and tried to tamp down the panic. I fought the confusion. Back and forth, I wore a path on the carpet as I waited.
And waited.
Worried and waited.
Stressed and anxious, I passed every excruciatingly long minute eager for his return with too many questions that I couldn’t answer. They bombarded me, pinging at me and making me more confused and lost than before.
Miguel hadn’t been quick to agree with me that the man he’d killed in the alley only wanted to rape me. He was stuck on the thought that the man could’ve been following me too.
But I would’ve noticed. And if Miguel was following me, he would’ve noticed that man too.
Now with another source of danger aimed at me, a shooter firing at me from afar, I was further from understanding what this could mean.
All I knew, without a shred of doubt, was that it had to be connected to my father.
Ever since I walked away from him, emancipated and no longer interested in being in his life, I gave myself a chronic case of feeling like I was a piece of something bigger. Like I was always missing something that should’ve stayed with me—a family. My mother had never lasted long and was always in and out of rehab and therapy facilities. Without her, it was just me and Louis. My father. Instinct led me to dismiss this gnawing feeling that I was missing out as a silly and fanciful whim, but now, I had to reach out.
I had to take the initiative to sleuth this out and find a clue or answer that could justify and explain what the fuck was going on with this vacation.
I bit my lip as I picked up my phone, unsure how to reach him. He constantly changed his numbers, paranoid of calls being bugged or anyone tracking him down. Between using burner phones and having rerouted lines, he wasn’t an easy man to find a number for.
Even family. I’d cut ties with him, but he and I were the last parts of what could’ve been a family. Since my mother?—
My mother!
Bayshore Residences could have some kind of a contact for Louis. Even though he cut her out of his life the same as I had him, he’d still have some kind of a means of communication with the place where his wife was placed.
I unlocked my phone and paced as I called Bayshore.
The call dropped.
I tried again. And again.
Nothing.
Stymied with the crappy reception, I picked up the landline in Miguel’s room and dialed it directly.
The woman who answered was kind and sweet, looking into my request for a number from the emergency contact list for Esmeralda Flores. This receptionist had spoken with me a few times, and she was the only one who never got snippy with me.
“There you go,” she said cheerily after she gave me the number that was after mine on my mother’s emergency call list. It was my cell or this number, and that almost saddened me. That she had no one.
After I disconnected with her, I sat on the edge of the bed and dialed the number she gave me.
Three times I called, and three times I lost hope.
No one answered. No one picked up to provide me with answers. Relief and disappointment mixed and swirled within me at the lack of a reply, but I couldn’t dwell on it.
Before giving up, I dialed the last number I’d found for my father, back when I was going through with the process of cutting ties with him.
Again, nothing.
I sighed, leaning back and closing my eyes at the headache that threatened to build stronger.
I had no answers. Worry gripped me, knotting my stomach. All my muscles ached with the systematic stress that I couldn’t release. After that mind-blowing orgasm on the beach with Miguel, I should’ve been so sated and happy. Relieved and relaxed. I felt neither.
Closing my eyes, I tried to tune out the negativity and not let myself be obsessed with worry.
Confused and overwhelmed, I kept my eyes closed and tried to slow my breath, to force myself to be calmer, because maybe then, I could think. I could plan and scheme—anything to avoid being idle and concerned about the man who was out there trying to be my hero again.