Above and Beyond (3 page)

Ramon’s alarm went off at 6:30. It was the earliest he’d woken up in almost two months. More often than not, he was only just settling into bed at this hour. He was not bothered by the time, though. Waking up early isn’t nearly as bad as waking up with a crushing hangover, and the strangeness of clarity was not lost on him when he sat up in bed with a clear mind.

He’d been shown another room on the top floor of the house that was effectively his. He was expected to stay in the tiny quarters across the hall from Lena when she was in the house, but when she was asleep, off of the compound, or otherwise not in need of his services, he would be allowed full access to the room upstairs.

He walked up the creaking flight of stairs and at 6:33 stepped into the shower. He dragged a razor across his face and stood under the hot water like a priest in salvation. The new accommodations were good for him, he thought. The girl would be trouble, and if he wasn’t careful, her family would be real trouble. But getting paid to live in a mansion and having a professionally enforced sobriety, well, it was hard to beat that. Not that it would be easy. Ramon had been sober many times in his life. At first, he cherished the freedom of mind, the ease at which he could navigate the world with a clear head and a strong body.

But without fail, insidious cravings set in and got stronger and stronger until he could not resist them any more. Once things got to that point, it was too late. Ramon bottomed out quickly, whatever life he’d made in his brief respite from madness was destroyed inside of a week, and he’d find himself living in solitude, drinking away whatever he’d saved.

And then he’d end up on his ass.

Gabe had intervened just in time. Normally the fall was a lot harder. This time, he had a hell of a cushion. Maybe it would be the break that Ramon needed to turn things around, to really get a grip and pull himself up. It was a nice thought, but he didn’t believe it.

Anyway, that didn’t matter right now. He had a job to do, and he was going to wake up every day that he could and do the job in front of him until it was over or he couldn’t do it anymore. Don’t fuck up. That’s all he had to do. He dried himself off and tried on the suit that he’d borrowed from Gabe. It was a little tight across the chest, and the pants dug into his stomach. Ramon never understood how he managed to gain weight even when there was nothing in his fridge.

Hopefully that would change too. He’d noticed that the Buldova family had a very nice gym, and the women in the kitchen offered to make him anything that he’d like. With resources like that, it wouldn’t be hard for him to get back into fighting shape.

He walked downstairs. It was not yet seven o’clock, and there were no signs of life on the residential floor of the house. The kitchen was bustling, Tia and Michaela were already hard at work preparing the day’s meals and cleaning the house. He said good morning and tried to engage them in friendly conversation, but Ramon was never very good at friendly conversation, and the women were quite busy. Michaela did bring him a heaping plate of eggs with two delicious breakfast sausages and a wonderful glass of orange juice that he’d watched her squeeze herself.

Not bad at all
he thought to himself as he ate. He went back upstairs, stopping on the way to help Tia move the sofas so that she could sweep the floors. It was 7:15 and the sun was coming up. There was still no sound coming from Lena’s room, so Ramon retrieved the paper he’d bought from a gas station outside Miami and took a seat outside Lena’s bedroom and waited for her to come to life.

Ramon read the entire paper three times before Lena walked out of her room just before noon. She did not seem entirely pleased to see him. He followed her at a distance, watching as she went about her day, looking for anything that could spell trouble for her. Her meals were safe enough, Ramon figured. He’d have to talk to Michaela about where their groceries came from, but once they were inside the house, it would be a challenge for anybody to tamper with them.

The living room was problematic. It was covered by huge open windows on two sides. The compound had high walls around the perimeter, but anybody who could climb a tree and hit a human target at one hundred yards would find little trouble in artificially shortening Lena’s lifespan. As he sat at the table in the dining room, Ramon noticed that a more skilled marksmen could climb onto the guardhouse out by the road and would have a good shot of anybody at the dinner table. It was nearly a thousand feet away, but the right equipment in skilled hands would not be troubled by the distance. He made a note to advise Zeus on a nice pair of curtains, at the very least.

After breakfast, Lena went for a swim. The pool was less problematic. Anybody who wanted to do her harm there would have to get very, very close. It was unlikely that they would be able to achieve such a thing without getting on Ramon’s bad side. The walls there, however, did not make ingress into the compound much of a challenge. Grown on the other side was thick, a man could easily climb to the top of the wall and would have no obstacles keeping him from lowering himself down inside. An immense amount of landscaping would add a layer of difficulty, but Ramon decided he would advise Zeus on a spiked parapet. It wouldn’t keep would be invaders out, but it would ensure that they had to content with a much longer drop onto the concrete below. One that would be either inconspicuous or good for their health.

There was also the apparently problem of Lena’s proclivity for nudity. It wasn’t a direct threat to her health, per se, but anybody with a camera and a crooked moral compass would be able to secure a good deal of leverage against her father, provided that he did not wish the entire world to know how his step-daughter kept her pubic hair. Ramon felt bad enough that
he
knew. His presence was obviously a source of displeasure, and he didn’t want to invade on her privacy any more than was necessary to do his job. He hadn’t considered that she might want to go skinny dipping, or how difficult it might be to resist the urge to pay slightly closer attention to her when she did.

Thankfully, her swim did not last long. Ramon let out a deep breath when she climbed out of the pool and went inside, although he did wish that she would improve her attitude towards him some. Being a bodyguard isn’t the best work in the world, but it’s a lot better if your clients don't resent your presence. Lena went inside and watched some TV that did nothing to improve Ramon’s opinion of her, and rather than melt his own brain, he took a closer look at the house, the windows, and the various points of entry and means of defending them. The windows were his biggest concern. They were so big that boarding them would be ineffective and they exposed a good chunk of the living area to danger from literally tens of acres of relatively untamed swampland.
Definitely curtains.
Lena tried to slip upstairs while he was outside making considerations about the front of the building. He followed her upstairs but she went to her bedroom. Ramon had established with her father that it would be unnecessary for him to invade her space there, and he was happy to give her some privacy, and to give himself a break from her.

              Lena quickly got bored of hiding in her room and called for Tia to discuss the newest development in her life. Tia joined her with some lunch and the two women sat down on Lena’s bed to eat and talk.

              “I can’t believe Zeus is doing this to me,” she said.

              Tia was not convinced.

              “I can’t believe your bodyguard is such a
hunk
. I wish I had a man like that following me around.”

              “Gross,” Lena said, giving Tia a look that told her that the younger woman was not interested in discussing that subject with the woman who she considered in many ways to be her mother.

              “What bothers you so much anyway?

              Lena released an exasperated sigh.

              “He’s always right behind me. He’s like a little lost puppy, with big lost puppy eyes. And he’s such a wimp. Always ‘yes sir, no sir, yes ma’am no ma’am’, it’s pathetic.”

              “You know, in my day we called that manners,” Tia said. “And it’s his job to follow you around. The rest of us around here don’t have any choices about doing our jobs, you know?”

              “I know,” Lena sighed. “But I don’t
need
him. I don’t even want him. You and Michaela are family, he’s like a creepy uncle,”

              “What does that make your creepy uncle then?” Tia whispered conspiratorially.

              Both women laughed and for a moment forgot about men and the trouble that they had brought them.

              “What do you want to do when you get out of here?” Tia asked.

              “Ugh, I don’t know.”

              “Come on, there must be something. A girl as smart as you can do whatever she wants in the world.”

              Lena blushed. Tia held the girl in high regards, and she sometimes worried that she’d never live up to the image that her surrogate parent had for her.

              “I just don’t know. I don’t want to stay here, but I don’t know where else to go or what I’d do.”

              “What about college?”

              Lena had been so frustrated by her time at the boarding school that she’d honestly never given university a thought.

              “Maybe I could go to get my MRS,” she said.

              “Masters of…”

              Lena laughed.

              “My missus degree, auntie. I could go to meet a nice boy.”

              Tia smiled, but did not share Lena’s sentiments.

              “You want to meet a nice boy? Why not start with the new
man
in the house?”

              “Oh Tia
no
! He’s awful!”

              “I don’t think so,” Tia said. “I don’t think you think so either.”

              Lena did think that Ramon was awful, but that didn’t mean that she wasn’t interested either. He was different from the goons that her father normally hired, and although she was not interested in his quiet subservience or his impossible distance, she did want to know what made Ramon tick.

              “I don’t want him anywhere near me.”

              That much was true, but only in a very narrow sense.

Ramon was going to need some more clothes and a few comforts of life. Zeus had given him his first paycheck up front so that he could get settled into the house. Zeus knew that nobody would run off with his money without first doing the job that they were paid for.

He picked up his cell phone and called Gabe.

“Ramon, how’s it going man?”

“Not too bad,” Ramon said. “You didn’t tell me this guy was for real though.”

“You’re a smart boy Ramon, I knew you’d figure it out. You aren’t scared are you?”

“Not of the old man,” Ramon laughed. “But this girl scares the piss out of me.”

“No shit? Never thought I’d hear Ramon Sanchez afraid of some girl.” Gabe regretted saying it as soon as he did. In this context, he was not wrong. Ramon did not have a history of being socially or romantically intimidated by women. But in a broader sense, girls were often the subject of Ramon’s nightmares, for reasons that Gabe understood as well as anyone.

But Ramon played it off.

“I swear to God brother, she’s out to get me. She hates me like whoa.”

“Yea?”

“Today, she goes around all day pretending I don’t exist. Literally says not one word to me. When she’s talking to other people, she calls me names like I’m not sitting right there, and she does this thing where she puts on awful TV with the volume up way high. I don’t know how she takes it. But I swear man, she’s fucking with me.”

“That doesn’t sound so bad.”

“It gets worse. She goes out for a swim this morning in a tiny little bikini and makes a big fucking show of oiling herself up. I’m trying to ignore her as best as I can, and she comes over and asks me to get her back.”

“Oof, ya man she’s playing you.”

“It gets worse. I turn around a minute later to ask her a question and her bikini is sitting on her chair, and she’s in the pool just drifting along on her back with her tits hanging out.”

“Oh brother you lucky sonofabitch, is she fine?”

“I don’t want to think about it man. I thought I was going to die out there.”

The two friends commiserate for a while longer before Ramon got around to giving Ramon his shopping list. They said goodbye, Gabe made plans to stop by in a couple of days. The drive from Miami was a couple of hours, but Gabe would be happy to make time to see his old friend.

Lena was still in her room, and Ramon found himself with time to kill. It would be time for dinner soon, and he’d hoped that Lena would make herself available. He’d got a good sense of the compound and of the unique problems that it presented from a security standpoint, and he was ready to have the initial meeting with Lena about what needed to be done to ensure her safety.