Fight For You (2 page)

But I’m not sure there is enough love in the world for that. Enough love to make up for Todd’s smile. Enough sand in the hourglass to make me forget that I went to the mat with evil and evil won.

But there might be enough hate.

Hate enough to make me strong, hate enough to turn a wound into a weapon.

I hold Todd’s gaze, memorizing the exact curve of his lips, silently promising myself that one day, not too long from now, I will wipe that grin from his face. I will show him what it feels like to have every scrap of dignity, safety, and happiness stripped away and to be left twisting in the wind while the vultures swoop down to feed.

I’m silent in the car to the hotel my mother, father, and I have been staying at for the past few weeks. I stare out the window, ignoring my father’s assurances that we’ll appeal the court’s decision, get a better lawyer, sue the bastards in civil court, do whatever it takes to make things right.

Things will never be right.

And I’m not going to beg for scraps of mercy or justice anymore.

I should have known better than to think a court and a bunch of anonymous jury members would take my vengeance for me. They don’t understand. They can’t see through my eyes, breathe my breath, or walk the dark, desolate halls in my soul that didn’t exist before last New Year’s Eve. No one can and no one ever will.

This is too personal, these crimes and the hatred they have left behind.

Violence creates a terrible intimacy between perpetrator and victim. For the past six months, I’ve rebelled against that intimacy, doing everything I could to distance myself from the pain and the boys who inflicted it. But now, I tear down the braces holding my feeble defenses in place. I close my eyes and let the memories sweep over me, drowning me in a flood of hurt, baptizing me in hatred and sealing it with a poisonous kiss.

By the time we arrive at the hotel, my decision is made.

I wait until my parents are distracted at the checkout counter, arguing with the clerk about whether we should be charged for the next two nights even though we’re leaving early, and I step outside.

I walk calmly across the parking lot, get into my car, and pull out onto the highway. I head east and drive straight through the night, stopping only for gas and coffee. Around midnight, I turn off my ringer. Come sunrise, I chuck my phone out the window near the Texas state line.

I don’t look into the rear view mirror or let regret creep into my heart.

I don’t think about how devastated Danny will be when he realizes I’ve disappeared or how scared and worried my family must be.

On this new road, there is no room for compassion. There is no room for love or the softness and vulnerability it brings. There is only where I must go and the steps I will take to get there.

Deep down, I know this won’t end well. I know I’m dooming myself as surely as the men I mean to destroy, but I can’t stomach making another choice. I can either let my wound become my weapon or I can limp through life a broken person, bitter and jaded, haunted by the ghost of my innocence

Either way, the people I love are better off without me. I will never live, laugh, or love the same way again. I will never be what I was and I refuse to be the broken creature Todd and his friends created. I will forge myself anew.

I will pass through the fire of my hatred and emerge as something stronger. I will give myself time to cool and the steely edges of my new self time to harden, and then I will teach Todd, Jeremy, J.D., and Scott a lesson.

I will teach them that there is danger in preying on the weak.

You never know when a lamb will become a lion or a kitten will grow ten-inch claws.

And you never know when the person you’ve broken will reach down, pick up a sliver of their shattered soul, and use it to open your throat.

CHAPTER TWO

One year later…

Sam

“We are our own devils; we drive ourselves out of our Edens.”

-Goethe

Someone’s following me. I’m sure of it.

I pause at a vendor’s stall in the Liberia Centro to survey her collection of mango wood candleholders and cast a glance over my shoulder, discreetly searching the press of humanity filling the open air market. There is a fairly even mix of locals and tourists at the market tonight, but all of them seem too swept up in their own dramas to pay any attention to mine.

There are couples arguing or stealing kisses under the multi-colored lights strung between stalls. There are groups of girls holding up dresses and jewelry, giggling over shared jokes, and herds of young men drenched in cologne roaming the periphery, clearly more interested in the girls than the shopping. There are loud, eager vendors shouting out to passersby, old women hunched wearily on stools at the back of their crowded stalls, and younger merchants with pinched expressions, jealously observing the antics of those lucky enough to be off work and out on the town.

There are even a few women like me—twenty-somethings in khaki shorts, tank tops, and hiking boots, toting backpacks through the market, on the hunt for last minute, eco-friendly souvenirs.

I could be one of them, except that I’m not here on vacation and my backpack holds one of the world’s smallest, most lightweight sniper rifles broken down into its various parts for easy transport.

But I know how to put it back together again.

I’ve learned a lot about the care and shooting of firearms in the past nine months. Once I’m alone in my room, I’ll be able to make something deadly with the pieces I purchased from the scary man in the tattered straw cowboy hat. I’m not worried about that.

I’m more worried that my gun smuggler isn’t the sensible businessman my connection in Miami assured me he was. I knew when I left my hotel with two thousand dollars in cash rolled up in an old sock that there was a chance I’d be robbed. Or robbed and shot and left in a Costa Rican alley to bleed out. I’ve taken self-defense and mixed martial arts and put on thirty-five pounds of pure muscle since last summer, but there’s only so much a person can do when she’s bringing fists to a gunfight.

Still, Carlos let me walk away, down the alley and back into the crowded Friday night market. If he’d planned to take my money and keep his gun, I don’t know why he would have allowed me to surround myself with people.

I shift to my left, looking for signs of the gun and drug smuggler, but there’s no one tall enough or broad enough.

The crowd is filled with soft, non-threatening looking people. Even the groups of boys with their aggressive cologne don’t seem dangerous. They’re hopeful teenagers looking for a hookup with a pretty girl, not predators.

But I’m sure with my newly blond hair, sun-pink cheeks, and girl-next-door face, I don’t look like a predator either, and I could have any one of these people unconscious at my feet in ten seconds.

It’s best to be careful and to take nothing and no one at face value.

I circle the market another time, keeping a careful eye out for any familiar faces, but I still can’t locate the source of the prickling between my shoulder blades. Finally, I order a small paper bag of cheesy
bizcochos
from a vendor and wind my way out of the market onto the brightly lit streets of the town center, taking the long way back to my hotel.

Liberia, Costa Rica, is a college town, far safer and more tourist-friendly than the bustling city of San Jose to the south. But the drug cartels are still active here.

The men in my gun club in Miami say the Mexicans smuggle drugs from ports near here to the U.S. inside frozen sharks. Meanwhile, the Columbians hide their cocaine in shacks inside Costa Rica’s famous national parks and grow marijuana in the valleys where eco-tours fear to tread. There is danger simmering beneath the country’s natural beauty and criminals lurking in the shadows of this colonial town with its bright white buildings and tidy city parks.

I toss my grease-stained paper bag into a trash can at the edge of one such park, pausing to watch a couple arguing in a gazebo across the lawn. They’re a good distance from the road, but their raised voices carry on the wind.

My Spanish is better than average, and these days I have no moral issue with eavesdropping or much of anything else. I stay long enough to realize the man and woman are fighting about where to have their wedding reception—at his parents’ house, to save money, or at the bar where they met—and turn to leave. Arguing before the wedding doesn’t bode well for their Happily Ever After, but the woman doesn’t seem to be in danger. It’s a nice change of pace.

Back in Miami, almost every time I stopped to take the pulse of a situation like that one, I ended up placing an anonymous call to the police. I always called, even if I wasn’t the only witness, because I knew no one else would.

Most people are happy to avert their eyes and keep walking, as accustomed to ignoring violence as they are to expecting it.

The thought reminds me of my stepbrother, but Alec’s face flits through my mind and disappears into the darkness without triggering an emotional response. I’ve prodded all those hurtful places in my memory so many times in the past year that my pain receptors have become calloused and numb. I don’t experience any emotion the way I used to—positive or negative—but I was still glad to learn Alec wouldn’t be joining the rest of his fraternity brothers on their graduation trip to Costa Rica. It helped confirm my decision that his name doesn’t belong on my list.

He may have closed his eyes and pretended not to hear me scream, but he didn’t actively participate. He’s a coward, but I knew that the night I walked into the fraternity house beside him.

Alec’s always been a coward and a liar, never one to admit his faults or acknowledge his weaknesses when he could pass the blame and squirm free of responsibility. I should have known better than to expect him to do the right thing. My own naiveté is as much to blame as Alec’s cowardice and my vengeance is only for those who dirtied their hands.

I slip my backpack off my shoulder and clutch it to my chest, relishing the feeling of all the hard pieces nestled inside.

I have the gun and a few hundred rounds of ammunition. Now all I need is a little time to practice with my new weapon in an abandoned patch of jungle outside of town, and I’ll be ready. By the time the Sigma Beta Epsilon brothers touch down next week, I’ll be checked into the neighboring resort, have scoped out the perfect spot to lie in wait, and be ready to pick them off, one by one.

I know at least Todd and J.D. love to play golf.

As I climb the cracked marble steps to the hotel, I imagine how satisfying it will be to shoot them both through the chest as they’re arguing over their score. I’m distracted by bloodlust—the only desire I’ve allowed myself to embrace in the past year—and not as focused as I should be.

I don’t realize that the prickling feeling between my shoulder blades is back until I’m reaching for the door leading into the hotel lobby.

As soon as I sense eyes on me, I turn, searching the street in both directions.

To my right, there is a homeless man dragging a battered red wagon between a pair of garbage cans. To my left, a couple walks down the sidewalk hand in hand, a woman with a red shawl tied over her hair leans against the bus stop sign, and a flash of movement at the end of the block blurs the air as someone darts out of sight. I’m left with the vague impression that the person was tall and male, but that’s it. I didn’t look in time to see his face or clothing or anything that will give me a clue to his identity.

For a second, I’m tempted to run after him—if I’ve acquired a tail, I need to know who it is, what he wants, and how to make him go away and leave me alone—but my gun is still in pieces and the streets get darker and more dangerous in that direction.

I can’t afford to get into trouble while I’m in Liberia. My only chance of getting in and out of Costa Rica without being charged with multiple counts of murder is to be sure no one learns my name or remembers my face.

I’ll just have to wait, keep my eyes open, and be ready to quietly confront my stalker if he shows up again.

Cursing beneath my breath, I continue into the lobby, where an ancient air conditioner groans from the window near the front desk. The night clerk is reading something on her phone. After a glance my way and a fleeting smile, she returns to it, paying me no further attention as I cross the lobby and start up the stairs to my room.

The reviews for the hotel were critical of the lack of staff support and assistance in planning tours or navigating the city. That’s the reason I chose it. I don’t want support or assistance. All I want is to be ignored.

Since leaving L.A., I’ve mastered the art of being invisible. After a year in Miami, only a handful of people knew my name and it wasn’t the one I was given at birth. I paid for my studio apartment in cash, worked under the table for a restaurant laundry service, and kept to myself. I made connections, not friends. I dyed my hair, wore a ball cap pulled low over my face, and checked to be sure I wasn’t being followed when I went outside, just in case.

None of my family or former friends knew I was there, but there are a good number of street web cams in Miami. It would be easier to end up on camera and noticed by someone using facial recognition software than one would think. I didn’t think even my stepmother—the only one of my three parents with enough money to hire a high-priced private detective—would go that far to find me, but I took steps to protect myself all the same.