Authors: Tina Brooks McKinney
Deep Deception 2 (11 page)
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
TILO ADAMS
I leaped up from the bed in a cold sweat, shaking from head to toe. My eyes swung around my hotel room, frantically looking to see who or what had scared me so badly. I was trembling. I held my hands in front of my face, and they looked like they didn’t even belong to me. I didn’t want to admit it, but I was losing touch with reality. My life had become a series of bad dreams and sullen memories. More than anything, I wished I could have a do-over. If God granted me one, I was certain I would do things differently.
“This shit has got to stop,” I said out loud. Every time I closed my eyes it was the same damn thing and the shit was old, but I didn’t know how to make it stop. The sleep that I managed to get was sporadic at best. It took me hours to fall asleep, but when I did I was tormented with dreams, visions, and other unspeakable horrors.
I never imagined life as a criminal would be so hard. Now I understood what it meant to be on the lam and it was not a pleasant feeling. My cell phone sat on the vanity but it was just a paperweight because there wasn’t a single person listed who I could call just to get me through times like these. My mom thought I was dead. With the exception of Moses, everyone else did too.
“I need to get away.” It was time to make a move. I had been saying this every morning for the last two months, but I had yet to act on it. I was still holed up at the Omni Hotel in Atlanta. Fear kept me there. I was afraid to trust the fake ID and passport that I obtained, even though I’d gotten it from a reliable source. “Bitch, stop talking about going away and do something about it.” Talking to myself had become second nature. It didn’t bother me that I was having a full-blown conversation with myself. With the nightmares I was having, it was a miracle I wasn’t walking down the street babbling like an idiot.
I walked into the bathroom to pee. I was so exhausted. I flopped down on the toilet seat and rested my forearms on my thighs. I peed like I hadn’t used the toilet in a month. I was so tired, I didn’t have the strength to stand up. As I rested my head on my knees, I drifted off to sleep. My nap, however, was cut short by another scary image of Victória’s face after I had shot her brother.
“Shit.” I wiped my cootie and pulled up my underwear. I went over to the sink to wash my hands. As the water got hot, I grabbed a washcloth from behind the door. The water felt good on my face and soothing to my eyes. For a moment I considered using it as a compress and crawling back to bed, but I was sick of the nightmares, and I was truly ready for a change in scenery. It was time that I did something about it. It didn’t make sense to have all this money and be afraid to leave the hotel. I tried to leave the bathroom without looking at my face, but my eyes had a mind of their own. The vision before me repulsed me. My eyes were bloodshot as if I’d been crying, and the dark circles underneath my eyes looked like I’d been in a fight and lost.
“Damn, girl, you’ve got to pull your shit together.” I threw the washcloth in the basin and left the room. It was time I did something about my situation. Before I had a meltdown, I had a plan and I was about to execute it. To make money, you had to have money, and I was about to make mine work for me.
I had always wanted to go on a cruise. Now that I had money, I was going to treat myself to one. I booted up my laptop and did a Google search for “cruises.” The list was seemingly endless, and I was about to give up my search. I didn’t want just any old cruise. I needed to get away and anonymity was key. I refined my search to “celebrity cruises” because I knew they weren’t traveling on the average cruise ship. Bingo!
“‘Aw, sookie sookie now.’” I clapped my hands with enthusiasm. Suddenly things were looking brighter. I looked at the different videos and decided I was going to take a world cruise. Mapping out the different cities I wanted to visit, Cunard Cruise vacations, based out of England, seemed like a great choice. I saved the trip to my Yahoo! Trip Planner and looked at the logistics of getting there.
“This bitch is going to set me back about thirty stacks, but it will be worth it. At least I won’t have to worry about running into anybody I know. Hell, I might even see Oprah on the ship.” I was giddy with the possibilities, but I was also grateful for the break from my reality. Planning the cruise allowed me time to plan for a future and to forget the past. I double-clicked on the
Queen Mary 2
and pulled up the 2011 itinerary.
Queen Mary 2
and pulled up the 2011 itinerary.
“Oh shit, they have a cruise leaving on April thirteenth from New York.” I pulled out my BlackBerry and checked the date. Being locked up in this hotel room, I’d lost all concept of time.
It was March twenty-fifth so it only gave me a few weeks to get to New York and purchase some clothes for my upcoming trip. I spun around in my chair and started to check out flights to New York. If I could get out of Atlanta today, I was going for it. I’d been pushing my luck by staying in the city anyway. It was time for this eagle to spread her wings and fly.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
VERÓNICA RAMSEY
I didn’t want to admit it, but I was slightly relieved that Victória didn’t want to stay with me. I loved my sister and I was glad she was home, but I was still learning how to be a mother and balance my life. It also didn’t help that Moses and I were still getting to know each other. In fact, I was learning something new about him every day, and if I was truly honest, not all of them were good.
I felt a little guilty for not sharing all the dynamics of my relationship with Victória, but she had enough on her plate without carrying around my bullshit, too. Things between Moses and me had gotten better, but we were not the same two people who fell in love.
“Hello?” I could hear the television in the living room, but I needed to get a grip on my emotions before I went to check on the rest of my family.
“Yeah.”
I was a little put off at Moses’ greeting. He used to say “hey, beautiful” when I walked into the room, but I guessed now that he had me he felt he didn’t have to do and say all the things that made me fall in love with him in the first place. If Victória had been with me, I would have felt compelled to explain our evolution.
“Is everything okay?” I tried to keep the pain that I felt in my heart out of my voice.
“Yeah, why wouldn’t it be?”
Part of me wanted to pick up this ball and run with it, explaining to him all the things that could have gone down while I was away, but I didn’t want to spend the rest of the night arguing with him. Luckily, my father moved into Madre’s house so we didn’t have that added pressure to deal with, either.
“I didn’t mean it that way. I turned my phone off when I was in the hospital, so I wanted to make sure you weren’t trying to reach me.”
“If I needed you, I would have left you a voice mail.”
I ignored what I felt to be sarcasm in his voice. I let out a heavy sigh before I continued. “Where is the baby?”
“Walking down 285,” Moses responded.
Despite my resolve not to let his lack of enthusiasm bother me, I started to get mad. “Dammit, Moses. Would it hurt you to take your eyes off the television and pay me some attention?”
“What is wrong with you? Are you on your period?”
I wanted to hit him. Why do men think the only reason we argue with them is because we’re on our periods? Was it too much to ask that he at least acknowledge my presence with a kiss or something? Hell, he could have told me to kiss his ass and take the trash out on the way to doing it. Something. Shit.
“Never mind.” I started to walk away but he grabbed my hand.
“No, seriously, what’s up?”
I had his full attention now, but I didn’t know what to do with it. He’d made me mad and I wasn’t ready to get over it. I yanked my hand away. “Nothing. I’m going to take a walk on 285.”
“Aw, man, it was a joke. Don’t tell me you are going to take me seriously and shit. What happened to the woman who used to laugh at my jokes?”
“I don’t hear anything funny.” I folded my arms across my chest. I was still a tiny bit annoyed, but starting to come around.
“Where’s your sister?”
“She might not be staying here after all. She went by her apartment to see if her stuff was still there. If it is, she said she’s going to stay there.”
“What? She didn’t want to come play house with us?”
I laughed for the first time because of something Victória had said about the baby crying all night. “I guess not. How long has the baby been asleep?”
“That boy must have known you left the house because he cried almost the entire time you were gone.”
This was not what I wanted to hear, and I immediately started to panic. “Is he okay? Do you think he has a fever? Should I call a doctor?” I was throwing questions over my shoulder as I climbed the stairs.
“Honey, stop. He’s fine. I was just fucking with you.”
“Moses, that’s not something to joke about. Do you even know how hard it is for me to leave my baby? Don’t play around like that.”
“Honey, chill. I’m sorry.”
Even though I accepted his apology, I still went to check on LM. When I was satisfied that he was okay, I went back to the living room where Moses was watching the news. “How was your day?” I was trying to get things back on an even keel, and hopefully Moses and I would spend the rest of the night like the young lovers we really were instead of the boring parents we’d become.
“Huh?” Moses’ eyes were glued to the television, and he really wasn’t paying attention to me again.
Once again my feelings were hurt. I tried not to take it personally but twice in less than thirty minutes was a little too much for me to take in my moody condition. “Forget it.” I started to go into the kitchen to figure out what to fix for dinner. This was another thing I was rapidly getting tired of doing. I felt more like a fucking maid, but this maid wasn’t getting paid.
“Wait.” Moses pulled me down in his lap. “I just want to hear the rest of this story.”
I turned toward the television. A commercial was playing so I didn’t know what had captured his attention.
He started kissing a trail of kisses from my cheek to collarbone. “Mmm, you smell so good.” His lips acted like fire to brush, lighting a passionate flame that burned throughout my body.
“Ah,” I murmured, but Moses pumped the brakes when Barbara Walters came back on for her special report.
Thirty Days and Thirty Nights
was the name of the special. It wasn’t so special to me. I wanted to get back to the kissing, but Moses appeared to have lost interest.
Thirty Days and Thirty Nights
was the name of the special. It wasn’t so special to me. I wanted to get back to the kissing, but Moses appeared to have lost interest.
He said, “Have you been following these stories?”
I wanted to tell him what I really felt but I bit my tongue. “No.” I was pouting and didn’t give a fuck what was on television.
“I have. The violence in Mexico is out of control. Ever since the raid on the Cali Cartel happened here, the drug violence over there has gone through the roof. They are cutting off people’s heads and leaving them in the streets with notes on them and shit. It’s crazy.”
He piqued my interest. Moses eased me off his lap while we both watched the set.
“How long has it been on? Did you record it on the DVR?”
“Sorry, babe, I didn’t even think about it.”
I got the remote off the table and started recording the show. I was sure Victória would want to see it when she was ready to catch up on the news.
The TV anchorwoman said, “The bodies of eighteen men were found in a mass grave in South Acapulco. Authorities suspect the bodies to be those of the missing members of a group of men who vanished while vacationing on September thirtieth—” The TV screen went to an emergency test broadcast.
“Nah, are they serious? I wanted more information.”
“Yo, this is crazy. What the fuck were eighteen men doing together on vacation? That’s what I want to know.”
“Eww, Moses, that’s just nasty.”
“I’m just saying. I don’t know ten motherfuckers willing to go on vacation together, let alone eighteen.”
The show came back on. “Gunman kills fifteen men at a carwash. Thirteen of the men worked at the carwash but they also were clients of a drug rehab center. Mexican authorities have apprehended a single gunman responsible for this latest massacre.”
“Damn, sounds like a pissed-off woman to me.”
Moses didn’t say anything, his eyes glued to the television.
The anchorwoman continued. “The case of the eighteen dead men doesn’t add up. Authorities say relatives of the men insist they were ordinary guys with no affiliation to the bloody drug wars plaguing Mexican cities. Police are skeptical about what the travelers were up to.”
Moses said, “But it’s more than that, boo. Mexico is showing its ass. Let me show you a chart I’m working on.” Moses moved, but I didn’t pay attention because I was so surprised by what I’d been watching on television.
As a nation we did not act like the people I saw looting and protesting in the streets. I could not imagine what could have happened to push them to the streets. Moses grabbed my hand and pulled me away from the set.
“Enlighten me because I don’t understand.” I was hurting inside for the state of the world. Tears rolled down my cheeks as I tried to forget the terror on the faces of the Mexican people.
“Honey, don’t cry. I probably shouldn’t have even let you see that with all that we’ve been through. Things are definitely getting out of hand over there.”
As we sat down at the kitchen table, I could hear LM beginning to stir around through our monitor.
“I’ll get him,” Moses offered.
I was glad because I really didn’t feel like dealing with him at the moment. I looked through the papers that Moses had given me. The pages extrapolated five years of violence and what appeared to be six months and counting of retaliation. The citizens of Mexico were fighting back, which made sense since Padre said the leaders of the cartel were leaving Mexico in droves.
“Do you see a trend to the violence?” Moses asked when he came back with LM.
“I see that the citizens are angry about the violence and they are fighting back. What do you see?” I already knew I had missed something fundamental, and I needed Moses to help me focus.
“So much of the violence is centered around the police. Yeah, there are some random shootings, but most of it is stemming from the people being tired of a corrupted government.”
Moses was so animated it was contagious, but I didn’t see where he was going with it. Why was it so important to him and he never lived there? I was watching Moses intently when a thought hit me so powerfully I felt like I’d been slapped. I didn’t even want to say out loud what I was thinking because I didn’t want it out in the universe, but I didn’t have a choice.
“This is about Tilo, isn’t it?” I wanted him to tell me that I was wrong. I was praying that he would say I was tripping, but his brilliant smile confirmed what I feared the most. My heart felt like it was skipping a beat.
“Yeah, I think so,” he whispered.
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