Stranger Danger (11 page)

Sara couldn’t
imagine anything worse. “It sounds like hell,” she said “How did you live like
that?”

He smiled but
without mirth, a wicked, cruel grin. “I did everything they did,” he told her.
“I was one bad
hombre.
”

Her blood
dropped below freezing. “You killed?”

“
Si,
I have,” he said. “I’m not proud of
it, but I did. I’ve beaten men, stolen, cheated, lied, and broken the law.”

“Did you fuck
women, too?” She threw the question at him with force.

Santiago
stared at her and beyond his grim facade, she saw the man she knew. “Not
often,” he said after a long silence.
 
“It meant nothing to me,
nada.
 
And it doesn’t touch what we have, what I
feel for you.
 
You have to know that,
Sara.”

Images of his
nude body skin to skin with stranger’s bodies rushed through her mind, so vivid
she thought she’d puke.
 
Then she thought
of Erik and their intimacies, acts which never touched her love for Santiago,
and she searched her heart.
 
“I do,” she
said. “I can’t believe I can say so, but I do. Were you in LA most of the
time?”

“Until six
months ago, yes,” he told her. “Then they told me to come to Arkansas.”

 
His lack of names struck her as odd. “Who told
you?”

“I won’t tell
you who. You’re in danger now, because of me.
 
If you know names, you’re in much more trouble.
 
I was sent here to be muscle.
 
Do you know what that means, Sarita?”

Her throat
burned, dry as a Nevada desert during a drought. “I think so.
 
They send you out to beat up people, hurt
them, or kill them, right?”

Santiago
nodded. “
Si,
that’s pretty much it.
Sometimes I could persuade them.
 
Fear is
one hell of a motivator.”

She tried to
imagine him as a ruthless enforcer, as someone who would take life without
remorse and act with cruelty.
 
Sara struggled,
the nature of the man she thought she knew as well as herself held in
comparison against what he described.
 
As
her thoughts spun in wild circles, he threw down his cigarillo and stalked
across the room.
 
He knelt in front of
her chair.

“Say something,”
he said, his voice a plea. “
No tengas
miedo, la muñequita, por favor.”

He shocked her,
but she wasn’t afraid, not of him. “I’m not,” she told him. “I’m just trying to
process everything, but I love you, Santiago, no matter what’s happened.
 
Whatever you did, I suppose you had to. It’s
hard to take in, a little, but you don’t scare me.”

His taut face
sagged with relief.
“
Te
amo.
Yo
haria cualquier costa por ti.”

Sara never
doubted he would. “I’d do anything for you, too.” She put her hand on his shoulder
and he lifted it to his mouth.
 
He kissed
the back of her hand, light and gentle.

“You already
have, Sarita. I tore your life to hell when I knocked on your door, but you’re
here, with me.”

She laughed.
“It wasn’t much of a life anyway.
 
The
only thing I miss is my shop.”

Seconds later,
realization hit with the force of a delivery van.
 
She’d forgotten Posies and Pretties.
 
For the first time since she’d bought the
business, she hadn’t notified staff.
 
On
the rare occasions she’d missed work, she had always called Catie, her
assistant.
 
Catie must be frantic, wondering where I’m at.
 
“Oh, sweet Jesus,” she exclaimed.
 
It wasn’t a prayer.

“What?”

“I forgot
about the shop! I should’ve called Catie, let someone know I won’t be in for a
few days.
 
If my staff heard about the
shooting at the complex, they’ll be crazy.”

His sigh
echoed through the room. “You can’t call them, Sara.”

“I’ll have to
get in touch tomorrow.”

“No.”

She shook her
head. “Santiago, it’s important. It won’t take long.”

“M13 has
people who can trace the call.
 
If they
do, they find us.
 
I’m not in shape yet
to fight,
la muñequita.
You can’t use
your phone, not now, not at all.
 
Don’t
even answer it if it rings.”

 
Sara said nothing.
 
Then she sighed. “Okay,” she told him but
with regret. Surely one call wouldn’t be so bad or easy to track, but she’d do
what he asked. She wouldn’t even turn it on, she thought, to avoid temptation.

 
“
Gracias,
”
he said, accepting her answer as agreement.

“Is your arm
sore?” she asked, eager to switch the subject. “You said you’re not in shape to
fight yet.”

“It hurts,
yes,” he said. “It’s not as sore as it, was but I’m not at my best.
 
Give me at least two days and I will be.”

“How long do
you think we have until they come after us?”

He shrugged.
“Not long, probably.
 
As soon as they can
find us, they’ll hit us and if they can, they’ll kill us.”

Such a dire
prediction disturbed her. “But you won’t let that happen, right?”

Santiago
offered a lethal smile. “Not if I can help it, no.
 
Do you want the rest of the story, why I
showed up at your door?”

Sara nodded, a
breath caught like a fish bone in her throat. “Yes.
 
Tell me.”

And so as time
moved forward, from the late hours of night into the early morning of another
day, he did.
 
He wove his words together
one by one, each embroidered with emotion as she moved from chair to floor to
sit cross-legged facing him.
 
Her
attention never wavered as she listened, chest tight and heart pounding with
anxiety, intent on what he told.

Chapter
Eight

“When I was
summoned by a
Capitan,
high up in the
M13 ranks, I had no idea what would go down,” he said. “I thought then maybe my
cover had been blown.
 
After all,
although LA is a big place, a lot of people know who I am and would know I
wasn’t Javier.
 
But it was home turf for me,
and I figured I could get lost if they found out I was a cop.
 
Instead, they said I would be sent to
Arkansas, as muscle here. I wasn’t very happy about it,
querida,
because I knew nothing about the state.
 
I thought it would be all hillbillies like the
Clampett clan or else like Mayberry from those old Andy Griffith television
shows.”

Sara
nodded.
 
She’d thought the same until she
met Erik.
 
“Did you know I lived here, in
Bentonville?”

Santiago shook
his head. “No.
 
All I remembered was
University of Arkansas at Fayetteville.”

“You could’ve
asked my mom or someone.”

“
De ninguna manera,”
he replied.
“Remember, I’d been undercover, living as Javier for two years.
 
I was in deep.
 
I haven’t seen my mama or Luis or Gabi for a
long time.
 
And when I did, it required
some major planning.”

“Wait a
minute. You haven’t seen or talked to your family in over two years?” The Ruiz
family had always been closer than most, so she found it difficult to imagine.

“I didn’t say
that,
la muñequita.
 
It’d been awhile, though.
 
Sometimes Luis drove down to San Diego and so
did I to meet on the pier there.
 
Gabi
brought Mama to Las Vegas for a long weekend and I met them, but I had to be
very careful.
 
They don’t even know I’m
in Arkansas.”

“Or
in danger.”

“
Si,”
he said. “And the less they know
the better
.”

“
What about me?”

Santiago
rolled his eyes. “When you didn’t know, you were safe,
chica.
 
Not long after I
arrived here, I saw you and figured out you lived in town. I kept my distance,
for your sake, not mine.”

He’d reached the
first part she didn’t like. “But you watched me like a stalker. You could’ve
said ‘hi’ or something.”

Before she’d
finished, he was shaking his head. “No, I couldn’t.
 
I wanted you safe.
 
Besides, you know me, not Javier.”

Point
taken and understood.
“Okay, that’s
true, but you must’ve followed me around to find out where I lived, about
Pretties and Posies.”

Strange to
think he’d been in town for six months before she knew it.
 
He’d inhabited the same space and she hadn’t
been aware.
 
I should have known, suspected, felt something.
But she hadn’t as
she plodded through her routines.
 

“I did,” he
said in a soft voice. “And you never noticed.”

Sadness tinged
his voice and she wondered if he’d hoped she would. “I didn’t, though...” Her
voice trailed into silence as invisible fingers crawled up her spine.
 
Until now, she’d thought little about it, but
there had been two incidents, moments when she sensed someone watching.
“Santiago, did you trail me to Crystal Bridge?”

The world
class art gallery, a gem tucked away in the wooded hills on the edge of
Bentonville, ranked high on her list of favorites.
 
She remembered one bitter winter afternoon
when cabin fever drove her from the confines of her apartment to wander through
the exhibits.
 
A sense of being watched
haunted her from gallery to gallery.
  
More than once, she’d whirled around, certain to find someone she
knew.
 
She recalled the familiarity of
the unseen gaze, and when he flushed, she smiled. “It
was
you! I should’ve known.”

“I thought I
was invisible.”

Other
incidents leapt from memory. “And you were at War Eagle, too.”

He grimaced at
her mention of the mega arts and crafts fair held at a working water mill each
fall. “
Si,
I didn’t like that one,
much.
 
It’s not my thing – too country,
too Ozarks for me.”

Sara laughed.
“Some of the crafts are cute and besides, the War Eagle bread mixes are good.”

“So maybe you
did notice, a little.” Little lines at the corners of his eyes, ones he’d
gained during their time apart, crinkled and a light in his eyes kindled her
inner fire.
 
As much as she wanted him,
though, Sara needed to hear the rest of his story.

“Yes,” she
said. “You’re stalling.
 
Just tell me.”

Santiago
shrugged and spread his hands apart. “Whatever.
 
So I was here for six months, living in a crappy old mobile home with
six other Hispanic guys.
 
Two of them
were involved in the gang, too, but the others worked at some chicken plant.”

Her curiosity
prompted her to ask. “Where was the trailer?”

“Over at Pea
Ridge,” he said. “It was in the old part of town – if you can call the place a
town out toward the battlefield.
  
All
the video stores, the sub shops, the fast food, and discount stores were on the
other end where all the Yuppies live. Anyway, everything went south a couple of
days before I came to your apartment.
 
I
had made my bones, so to speak, and followed orders so they trusted me.
 
The local lieutenant called a meeting with a
lot of players to talk about getting all the local drug traffic, not just a
piece of it.
 
I was there as muscle and
as a bodyguard for Enrique.”