Barefoot With a Stranger (Barefoot Bay Undercover Book 2) (32 page)

“I know what Gabe does.”

“Then why not use his services? Why not have him get you a new ID and a new life? Disappear if you have to. Get away from this Roger Drummand guy who has it out for you. Start over and…and…”

He waited, half dreading, half aching to hear what she’d say next.

“Find someone,” she finished.

I found someone. I’m walking next to her. I’m half in love with her.

Holy, holy hell. He was in trouble. “It’s not that simple,” he said. “Gabe helps people hide from bad guys. I’m hiding from the good guys.”

She blew out a frustrated breath. “Yeah, well, they don’t sound so good to me.”

“They aren’t all good.”

“
Could
you ever have a normal life? You know, not look over your shoulder? Not be on the CIA shit list? Could you ever…”

He stopped walking for a second and turned to her. The need to set her straight welled up in him. “Logistically? Technically? Physically? Yeah, there is probably a way for me to live a little less on the edge of doom, and maybe Drummand will outgrow his hate-on for me, and maybe I could find a place where I’m someone else, doing something else, even though I’d really rather just be me doing what I was trained to do.”

It was her turn to stare at him, mouth closed, but eyes wide as she waited for what he had to say.

“But I can’t just…love someone.”

Her mouth opened, dropped into an O of disbelief. He closed it for her, touching her chin and making sure she didn’t eat any more bugs.

“You want to know why?”

She nodded, her eyes just a little bit damp, which scared him and touched him and kind of amazed him. Did she really care that much?

“I can’t really tell you why. I just know that I’m not meant for that. Every time I’ve given a person a chance, they screwed me over. Starting with my mother, who spent my childhood screwing me over, and a couple other women here and there, and even Alana…”

“So you
were
romantically attached to her,” she said.

“No.” He shook his head. “I swear, we were friends, but even that friendship, she used me, and then…” He turned, looking toward the distant lights of the town of El Salvador. “She had to have kept the money. She was the only person who knew where it was in the first place. And that’s made my life even shittier.”

“While we’re there, why don’t you ask her about it?”

He shrugged. “She’ll just deny it. And what am I going to do? Implicate her? I served my time, and I saved her kids.”

She reached for his arm. “And that amazes me,” she said. “So why don’t you save yourself?”

And ruin her life? “I wouldn’t even know how to settle down, Chessie. I know what your plan is, and I’m not the man for you. I’ll always have a record. I’ll always be an embezzler. That’s not what you want, is it? A guy who’s done time at Allenwood?”

Her eyes flashed hot in the moonlight. “Can’t I be the one to decide that? Can’t I know whether or not that bothers me?”

“It has to bother you,” he insisted. “In your perfect family of law-abiding, crime-fighting, good-doing heroes, you want to drag an ex-con who did time for stealing half a million from the US government to Christmas dinner?”

When she didn’t answer, he nodded, hard, and gave her a nudge to keep walking. “I didn’t think so.”

“But I know the truth! You didn’t do it. You took the blame to help her.” She marched next to him, her white high-top sneakers caked in mud and splashing more with each angry step. “It’s so damn unfair!”

“I’ve accepted the unfairness of it.”

“Not that! I could fix that. I could prove you’re innocent, and you know what? It wouldn’t matter.”

“It would matter. It would mean I spent four years of my life in vain. She still has kids. They’d still be taken from her.”

“Oh please.” Disgust darkened her voice. “You could be cleared of everything and free to have lunch with the freaking president of the United States, and you’d come up with some bogus reason why you’re all wrong for me, because, you know what, Mal?”

He had a feeling she was about to tell him.

“You’re
afraid
of love. You’re
terrified
of the real thing. You don’t think you’re worthy of it, so you build some kind of wall and move every four months and do undercover work that keeps you from being real, because you’re just so damn scared of someone leaving you or hurting you.”

He just closed his eyes and huffed out a breath. “I’m not having this fight here. We have to—”

“Find that kid and get home,” she finished. “I can’t get away from you fast enough.”

The announcement smacked him, so far from what he was feeling and how she looked. “That’s the adrenaline dump talking,” he said.

“It’s my
heart
talking,” she shot back, walking so fast now he had to work to keep up with her. “My bruised and lonely and really stupid heart that picks the wrong guy over and over again. Like I can fix him or something and make him…not quit.”

“Not quit?” The indictment stabbed like a steely knife.

“Yeah. You know my plan? My silly, 1950s innocent life plan? It requires a man who doesn’t give up when the going gets tough.”

“Is that what you think I am?” he asked, his gut burning. “A quitter?”

“You’re giving up on your life and happiness before you even have it, so yeah. And I don’t like that. I don’t like you.”

Somehow, they’d gone from
we can make this work
to…
I don’t like you
.

“Which is exactly the rule we set, remember?” he reminded her.

“I remember. Like it was yesterday. Come to think of it, it practically was. Come on, let’s move it. I want to find my nephew and get home.”

Her shoulders hunched, her head down, her hair falling in her face, Chessie walked on like a prisoner who had…no hope.

Taking that from her was his worst crime. He was innocent of embezzlement. But he was one hundred percent guilty of stealing all the light, hope, and heart from Francesca Rossi.

And he hated himself even more for that.

* * *

The tension between them stretched like a steel wire that could snap at any second.

Chessie stayed perfectly silent, focused on the plan of the moment: find that child. She could be on a plane tomorrow morning.

Her little hopeless interlude end in failure, but the mission would not.

She peered into the blackness, following the beam of Mal’s flashlight.

Alana Cevallos lived in a small house tucked into dense woods at the end of a dirt road. Mal scanned the place with the small light that highlighted a well-kept front yard and a recently painted home that had a welcoming feel, except for the utter blackness of everything.

“This whole freaking island is dark,” Chessie said. “It’s like the land of blackness.”

“True enough,” he agreed.

“Wouldn’t there be a light on somewhere? It’s only nine or ten o’clock.”

Mal didn’t answer, his eyes narrowing as he looked around. “Yeah, I’ve been here this late before, and she had working electricity, and there’d been plenty of activity in the house.”

Working electricity, which Chessie now knew was not always the case in rural Cuba. Did Alana Cevallos have some special deal? Or…a lot of money? Money that was “never recovered”?

“I want you to wait out here, over there.” Mal aimed the light to a clearing about fifty feet from the house. “I don’t know what I’m going to find when I get there.”

“I have a better idea,” she said. “If this somebody who’s following you is in there and I knock on the door, he won’t know me. I’ll say I’m lost or my car broke down or something. If he’s not, I’ll tell her that I’m with you.”

He cut her with a look. “Not a better idea. A really dumb idea. Whoever it is knows we’re together. You’re going to stay hidden. With this.” He held out the gun to her, barrel down. “You know how to use it?”

“In my family? That comes before riding a bike, but you need it. I’ll stay out of sight, I swear.”

He moved suddenly, turning toward the road, and a second later, Chessie saw a beam of headlights and heard the hum of an engine. A sizable engine, possibly a truck.

“Someone’s turning in.” Mal gave her a solid nudge to the side, making her take the gun. “Hide in the bushes back there. Stay there until I tell you.”

“Mal, I—”

“Holy shit,” he murmured, staring at the double headlights turning into the drive. “That’s a Gitmo van. Go.” He gave her a gentle push. “Hide and stay out of sight, no matter what you see or hear.”

She didn’t hesitate, darting away before she got caught in the lights. She practically dove into a thicket of bushes, not caring that they scratched as she found a place where she wouldn’t be seen. She squinted through the darkness at Mal’s shadow, watching him hang just outside the beam of light as the van approached and stopped. The door popped open, and Chessie instantly raised the gun, ready to shoot to defend Mal.

But the woman who climbed out of the driver’s seat didn’t look like she’d hurt anyone. Small, wiry, with enough wear on her forty-some-year-old face that it was clear she’d been through plenty of hell but had landed on her feet.

“Alana,” Mal said, making no move toward her. “Where are the kids? What are you doing in a detainee van?”

“Malcolm.” Alana didn’t exactly exclaim his name, more like exhale it in sheer frustration. She muttered something in Spanish. Then, “My car was taken away by the government. They are still watching me, Mal.” She spoke accented English, crossing her arms and shrinking back in a little as he approached her. “Sorry. I’m sorry.”

Chessie didn’t know the woman, and she had to remember she wasn’t speaking her native language, but she didn’t sound sorry.

“Where are the kids?” he repeated, more edge in his voice.

“My mother has them because I had to work late.” She sounded scared. Tentative. Mal moved one step closer, cautiously, it seemed, as if he sensed the same thing.

Of course! The little boy. She probably guessed that’s why he was here and felt protective about him. Chessie wanted to just come forward and tell her story, explain who she was and see the child. But she’d promised Mal she wouldn’t, so she hung back and listened.

“I need some information, Alana. And I need it now.”

“I…I…can’t do this.” She looked from one side to another, her voice cracking. At the sound, Chessie’s heart did the same thing.
She’s not going to give him up.

“I’m not asking you to do anything.”

“But he is,” she hissed in a whisper.

“Who?”

Chessie cursed the sudden uptick of her heart and the pulse in her ears. She wanted to hear this.

Alana walked toward the house, muttering. “It’s not enough that you went to prison,” Chessie caught her saying. “Not enough that you protected me when I needed it the most.”

Mal turned and signaled to Chessie to stay, then followed. “Alana, I understand you adopted an orphan.”

Alana slowed, glancing back at Mal with a strange look. Guilt? Surprise? Chessie couldn’t tell from this distance.

“Isadora Winter’s child?” he prompted.

She let out a long, slow sigh. “He is over there now, in the field.” She pointed to the bushes, not far from where Chessie stood, then pivoted and walked into the house.

Mal froze for one second, then he asked, “What?” as if he couldn’t believe what he’d just heard.

“Come in here. I’ll tell you.” And he stepped inside, the door closing behind him.

Chessie looked at the wide-open area free of bushes or shrubs about twenty feet away. No structure, no place for a child. What was…in that field?

Deep inside her, somewhere dark and shadowy and sad, Chessie knew. But she walked there anyway, slowly, with the pistol at the ready.

Once there, she could barely make out anything in the dim light, just about eight or nine large rocks, evenly spaced, slightly off the ground.

Oh no, they weren’t rocks…they were grave markers.

“No.” The word slipped out of her mouth as she rushed closer, all thought of staying hidden forgotten as the very real possibility of what
in the field
meant slammed her heart.

No, it couldn’t be. It
couldn’t
be.

“No!” She practically flung herself on the first stone, flattening her hand on the name and moaning in relief.

Jorge Mario Cevallos 14 octubre 1967—3 abril 2009

Her husband? A brother? It didn’t matter. It wasn’t him.

She leapt to the next stone and squinted at the name.

Roberto Jesus Cevallos 21 agosto, 1943—15 diciembre 1993

Older, maybe that was Alana’s father. There were only six more stones. Six more.

She moved a little more slowly to the next one.

Elia Maria Cevallos 14 junio 1945—29 marzo 1995

A tendril of hope wrapped around her heart as she crawled on her knees to the next one. She had to have misunderstood. He couldn’t be…

She just stared at the words carved into the stone as another set of chills tumbled over her. Her breath caught as she tried to inhale, her heart beating too wildly for her to get any air.