20. Isabel
20
ISABEL
M iguel sighed heavily.
“What does that mean?”
“It means I have an idea.” It wasn’t so much of an idea as it would be a request. He had to stop that bleeding immediately, and I knew damn well we couldn’t waltz into any old hospital and have a legitimate doctor look at him. Eyeing him cautiously, I wondered how he’d react to my next question.
“What?” he arched one brow, watching me with the same skepticism I was likely showing him.
“Are you with the police?”
He hung his head back and groaned up at the ceiling.
“Well? Are you?”
He jerked his head back down and smirked at me. “Why? Why would you think I was a cop? For fuck’s sake.”
I shrugged. “It’s a valid question. It’s either cops or other criminals who have an issue with Louis. Fifty-fifty guess.”
“What would make me look like a cop?” he challenged, not hiding his frustration. “Did I call for backup when I went after that sniper? Did I radio in for a crime scene crew when I killed that man in the alley?”
“All right. All right .” I opened my eyes wide. “Jeez!”
“I just can’t see how?—”
“Then you’re the other one. A criminal.” I looked ahead as the doors were about to slide apart. “Which means you’re not going to want the cops to know where you are, that you’ve been shot, and all the other sordid details of what you’ve been doing for the last few days here.”
“Correct.”
“Which means we need alternative means of healthcare…”
I recalled where that walk-in clinic was and guided him to the front of the hotel. Ordering the valet as we passed, I requested a ride to be called for us.
A taxi pulled up before Miguel could lean on me any heavier. The moment we were seated, I blew out a deep breath of relief at not having to support his bulkier weight.
I asked for the driver to take us to the nearest walk-in clinic, and once we arrived, I was glad it was the one I’d been trying to think of. It wasn’t far, and I prayed that my idea to get us in faster would work out.
“Follow me.” I helped Miguel out of the car. “I mean, follow my lead.”
He furrowed his brow at me, looking ragged, doubtful, and so exhausted.
We entered, and I laid on the waterworks with a side dose of theatrics as I helped Miguel walk.
“Oh, my God,” I called out loud. “My husband! Someone please. Please help my husband!”
I clutched the arm of a nurse as she walked by. She paused, staring at me with wide-open eyes. Seated in the small waiting room were others, all equally shocked by my dramatic entrance.
“He was trying to save me from this bad man, this awful, horrible man who just won’t leave me alone, and now look. Look!” I tugged him closer to me, forcing him to fall a bit from the sudden shift. Hugging him to me, I gestured at his arm. “Look at what happened!” It wasn’t a question or an exclamation but a drawled-out, high-pitched, and hysterical cry for attention.
And it worked. Fast.
Not one but two nurses ran up to us. “Easy, ma’am. Easy.”
“We’ll help.”
“This way. Come on, we’ll go this way.”
Ushered back to a room immediately with Miguel walking alongside me, I kept up the tears and mournful sobs. Because they worked. Crying woman, check. Screeching pleas, check. A hint of hysteria to distract everyone within my radius, check.
No one was going to ask us our names. Or for an ID. Or to verify who we were at all.
When a woman was this distraught, there was no sticking with protocol.
A doctor was rushed into the small room after the nurses. “What’s going on here?”
Oh, he was a young doctor. He wouldn’t be so gullible. I laid it on even thicker, placing my head on Miguel’s good shoulder as the doctor and nurses snapped on new gloves and assessed the gunshot wound Miguel had received on the outer side of his arm.
“My husband!” I cried, letting my natural accent really push through. “My new husband is dying !”
This young doctor would dismiss me as overreacting and too much drama to deal with, but that was exactly what we needed. Already, the nurses were cleaning out the wound while the doctor checked Miguel’s vitals.
Over the doctor’s shoulder, while the nurses weren’t looking at his face, he raised his brows in a silent question that I ignored. I carried on like a sobbing, irrational mess of too many emotions, lying on the spot and concocting a wild, ridiculous story about a lover’s spat and how some thug had shot at us.
When one nurse started jotting things down, vitals and whatnot, she asked for our names.
I laid it on thick all over again, dodging the questions. Each time they asked for more details of how this had happened or where, and each time they requested our names, I turned on the waterworks and deterred them from asking where we were from or what had happened.
If Miguel was affiliated with thugs or criminals, we didn’t need anyone in the law enforcement agencies to be looking for us.
All through getting him stitched up and checked out—which didn’t take too long—I evaded telling them anything useful. But at the end of it, they all seemed eager to just get us out of there. No one wanted a loud, theatrical woman being disruptive.
We exited together, and as soon as we were away from the clinic, I heaved out a sigh and nodded once. “Okay, so that’s done with.”
“What was that?” he asked, walking better. The kind doctor had dismissed his ankle pain as a slight sprain.
“Avoiding giving our names.” I shot him a dubious look, as if that should’ve been obvious. Almost passing right by a store, I put my arm out to barricade him in place. “Now.” I tipped my chin toward the shop. “Now a change of clothes.” Without offering him any further explanation, I led him toward the racks of clothes where we’d be able to get more options to hide in.
“I’m your husband now?” he asked, mildly amused.
I shrugged. “It made for a good story. I emphasized how distraught I was about my husband’s demise so if anyone were to ask them later, they’d recall a married couple, not two people thrown together.”
“I feel like I’ve been thrown into something with you.”
I huffed. “Same.”
I paid in cash. Then while he changed in the men’s room, I switched into a new dress and sandals, braided my hair low, and donned a floppy hat.
We reconvened in the back of the store, and after unplugging the security camera out the back door, we slipped out undetected.
It wasn’t until we walked further from the hotel he’d brought me to that he cleared his throat and peered at me. We paused to get ice cream, too hot in this heat. Lemonade sounded too sticky and we both needed to eat. Somehow, in a mutual but unspoken agreement, we’d decided that it would be better to keep moving than to stop and rest long enough for a meal.
“How are you so good at this?”
I raised my brows and licked my ice cream cone.
He stared for a moment at the rove of my tongue on the tip of the ice cream.
“Hiding. Blending in. You knew to pay with cash. You avoid having your face caught on cameras. You’re aware of where they’re anchored. If I hadn’t already gotten a file on you and known that you’re a mural artist, I’d be wondering if you’re the cop.”
I shrugged. “I grew up with it. Louis?—”
“Why do you call him that?”
I blinked. “Because… it’s his name.”
“You don’t call him Father?”
“Why would I? He isn’t a father to me.” Using his name helped keep the distance between us. “Louis has always been a paranoid bastard. He was afraid of someone coming after him after he was done screwing them over with a deal. He was tense that the cops and Feds would catch him. We moved a lot. We had to go into hiding and stay off the radar. Since I was a kid, he taught me little tips and tricks, and it’s a lifelong lesson that I haven’t forgotten yet.”
Walking again, as we licked our ice cream hopefully faster than it would all melt, I added some more. “He trained me to always be ready to go.”
“What about your mom?”
I shook my head. “She was often in rehab or therapy, and that was where she stayed.” Then I scoffed. “I thought you said you had a file on me.”
“I do. And I saw that she’s in rehab and had been on and off for most of your life.”
Just what the hell is in this file? And who compiled it? Anger relit within me, but I wasn’t completely shocked. Back before I severed ties with Louis, I was publicly known as his daughter. I was afforded no privacy then.
“My mother suffered from the chaotic life of being with a criminal asshole businessman like Louis. She couldn’t handle him, and he never cared about her or what she was doing. He only cared about his power and wealth. And to keep it, he taught me how to hide and avoid the cops when need be. So I couldn’t be taken in and used as a witness or anything. He never, ever shared details with me, especially not when I was a kid, but the fear was out there that someone could use me as collateral damage to get to him.
“What that was back at the clinic was me touching up what I learned in theater classes. When I was young and too na?ve to understand how bad Louis was, I loved theater. I loved being on the stage, almost as much as I loved art. They were times I could pretend to be someone else, someone with an actual family. I could live creatively to escape reality. Those were the best times of my life.”
“Being a kid?”
“Being stupid enough to think I could be happy alone and never need anyone.”
He didn’t reply for several minutes, licking his ice cream and walking with me like we were two normal people out for a stroll along the sidewalk adorned with poinsettias and Christmas trees in front of shops.
Opening up to him that much was a risk. I’d exposed myself, not sexually, but deeper than that.
He took my hand, holding it, and I tried my hardest not to react.
Not to smile. Not to let him see that his taking my hand was quite possibly the sweetest, simplest, and most sincere thing he could’ve done to offer me comfort at what was admittedly a heavy admission to share.
“I’ve come to learn that…” He heaved out a deep breath. “Being alone has become overrated.”
I looked at him, peering into his deep brown eyes. “Agreed.”
“Your file didn’t?—”
“Okay. What’s…” I stopped short, pulling him to cease walking too because he didn’t let go of my hand. “What’s this file? A file from where? Why?” I stared up at him, daring him to evade an answer this time. “Why were you stalking me?”
He stepped closer, trapping me in his intense gaze. “Because someone wants Louis dead.”
I nodded. “Figures. I can’t say he hasn’t had it coming. A long time coming, actually.”
“The hit put on him was canceled at the last minute. He was tipped off and went into hiding.”
I narrowed my eyes, connecting the dots. “You… you were hired to kill him?” I glanced around, almost suspended in disbelief that we were standing in the middle of a busy sidewalk, just a couple staring into each other’s eyes as a single mariachi band member played a trumpet at the street corner, a cup out to collect coins people tossed in when they passed by.
“Yes.” He licked his lips, stalling on the thin cut he’d gotten from one of his fights. “But when he was tipped off and went into hiding, my contact said to go for you.”
I swallowed hard. I’d already suspected this could be a possibility. I wasn’t stupid. I’d known all along that this could be the case.
“To…” I lowered my head and fought the slight stunned feeling of hearing it out loud. Thinking it was one thing. Hearing it was another.
He tipped my chin up with two of his fingers, forcing me to maintain eye contact. “At first, to kidnap you.”
This was surreal, talking with this sexy, strong man who both infuriated me and filled my heart with joy.
“Is that the reason I woke up with cuffs this morning?”
“No. I cuffed you so you couldn’t run away while I was sleeping.” He slid his tongue over the cut on his lip again as he advanced another step into my space. Flush to him, I reveled in the familiar warmth and security of his arm sliding around my back.
“So you wouldn’t leave and prevent us from talking.” He dipped in to kiss me, completely disarming me.
“Oh,” I replied after I kissed him back tenderly. “Talking? Is that what you call this?”
“Fuck, you’re trouble,” he growled as he dipped me back in a deeper kiss. “Fucking irresistible, sweetheart.”
I hummed, kissing him back. It boggled my mind that I was kissing my stalker. A man ordered to kidnap me.
At first.
I reared back, clinging to the thread of common sense I still possessed. “ At first ?”
He cupped my cheek, staring at me like he’d burn the world down for me. Adoration. Admiration. All those things that made me want to swoon.
“Yeah. At first,” he admitted, watching my lips with such hunger.
“What… else?”
“I was hired to kill you, sweetheart.” He uttered it a breath away from my mouth before he laid his lips on them and kissed me until I forgot my damn name.
He had been stalking me to kill me.
A murderer.
A hitman, probably from the Cartel.
“And now?” I dared to ask, panting hard when he released me. I swallowed hard as I clutched the front of his shirt, unable to let go.
I didn’t have to ask if he was still intending to follow those orders. He couldn’t be if he’d gone out of his way—more than once—to keep me alive.
“And now I’ll kill anyone who dares to think of hurting you. Ever.”
He sealed the heady, sinister promise with a brutal kiss that spoke of deep need and unyielding desire.