Uncovered by Truth (16 page)

The fear in her eyes tells me this is way more serious than a random person coming to the door. She shakes her head. “No, I saw them through the window. They’re circling the house. I don’t know what they want.”

“They? How many did you see?” Grabbing a towel, I dry off quickly and put on my jeans.

“Two.”

After I pull my shirt over my head, I say, “Stay here.” I kiss her as I walk by, trying not to alarm her. I don’t know who the fuck is out there and that’s a cause for concern. No one other than my boss should know where I am or the location of this place. If he was stopping by, I’m sure he would’ve called me.

Careful not to be seen, I keep my back against the wall next to a window and slowly peak around. At first, I don’t see anything, but as I’m about to move, something catches my eye. Angling my head more, I see a guy leaning up against a tree looking around. In his hand is a pistol. I’ve got to find the second guy and hope that they don’t have eyes on all possible exits. I crouch down and go to the other side of the house. The second guy is making his way toward the front porch with a gun drawn.

Fuck.

We’ve gotta get out of here.

Fast.

On the way back to the bathroom, I stop and grab the money, keys, phone, and gun from the kitchen counter. I find Elizabeth sitting on the toilet biting her nails. “Let’s go,” I whisper as I grab her hand and help her stand up. Keeping her close behind me, I look out the back window. Right as I’m about to open it, the first guy walks around the corner of the house. “Get down.” I pull on Elizabeth’s arm as we both go to the floor.

“Shit, we’re not going to make it to the car. They’ll shoot us before I even get the thing started.”

“What are we going to do?” she asks with a shaky voice. I shake my head not sure how I’m going to get us out of here safely.

I pull out my phone and send Turner a text.

SOS

My phone vibrates in my hand immediately.

Sending back up now.

“Oh my God, Alex. They’re going to kill us, aren’t they?” Her lip quivers as she grabs onto my arm.

I grab both of her shoulders and stare into her eyes. “No, they’re not. We’re going to stay right here and we’ll be fine, okay?”

“But they’re going to come in after us. We need to leave.” Her voice rises with urgency and I know I need to calm her down before she does something stupid out of fear.

“Good. Let them come in after us. We know they’re out there. They’re not expecting us to be ready for them. We know the layout of this cabin. They don’t. We’re going to position ourselves in a way that makes it impossible for them to surprise us. In here, we have the advantage.”

From this back room, I have a clear view all the way to the front of the house. Once anyone comes through the front door, they’ll only have to take a couple steps for them to be in my line of sight. And when they are, it’s not going to be pretty.

“Let’s move this couch and get behind it.” We get up and push the couch off of the side wall so that it’s facing the door and we can get behind it for cover. It dawns on me that we’re setting up the same way as when that asshole shot me. I pause for a moment as the memory of the flash from the barrel crosses my mind. I quickly shake it off and concentrate on the situation at hand. “You sit right there and don’t get up unless I say it’s okay, understand?” She hugs her knees to her chest and nods.

It feels like I’m sitting here forever waiting. The moment brings me back to my time in the service when we’d have to wait out the enemy. My ears strain to hear any type of sound, but it’s quiet, almost too quiet. Right after that thought crosses my mind, I hear a crash coming from the front letting me know the door has been busted down. Elizabeth whimpers beside me and I feel her trembling against the side of my body.

The first guy strides into the open and right as he turns toward me, I squeeze off two rounds. Both hit him in the chest and he crumbles to the floor. I keep my gun drawn, waiting for the second guy to enter. Suddenly, bullets come ricocheting off of everything in the room. Elizabeth screams and I throw my body on top of hers to shield her. Debris flies up in the air and it feels like the assault is never going to end. Then it goes quiet again, the only sound is our labored breathing. I place my hand gently over her mouth and whisper, “Shhh,” into her ear.

After a few moments, footsteps crunch over the mangled pieces lying on the floor. Once he stops, I take a deep breath in and let it out slowly. I pop up from behind the couch and squeeze the trigger on my gun once I have it raised, hitting him in the shoulder. He stumbles back a few steps and tries to bring up his weapon, but I beat him to it and put another three rounds into his chest. He drops to the floor with a loud thump. I get up with my gun still out and kick their weapons away before I check their vitals to confirm they’re both dead.

Rushing back over to Elizabeth, I squat down in front of her where she’s still curled up with her eyes squeezed shut. “Elizabeth, you’re okay.” When she doesn’t respond or open her eyes, I cup her face in my hands and say, “Look at me, sweetheart.” Her eyes finally look up at me and all I see is this sweet innocent girl who is scared out of her mind. “Those guys aren’t going to hurt you, okay?”

“Are th-they d-dead?” I almost don’t hear what she asks her voice is so low.

I nod in response, not knowing really what else to say. Yes, you just watched me kill two men, but I’d do it again in a heartbeat. It was either them or us, and I’ll choose them every damn time. I just hope she sees it that way.

Before I can say anything else, I hear cars pulling up, their tires kicking up the dirt driveway. Her eyes widen as soon as she hears it. “Oh, God, they sent more.”

I get to my knees and look out the window to see Turner and one other guy. “No, it’s the cops.”

“The cops? How did the cops get here? Are they going to take you to jail?”

I hold my hands out in front of me to stop her questions. “Relax. I text messaged a friend saying that I needed help. He must’ve called the cops. It was self-defense, so I’m not going to go to jail. Just do whatever the officers ask you to do, okay?” She nods her understanding.

“Police! Put your hands up where I can see them!” Turner shouts. Even though he knows it’s me, he still has to follow procedure to keep my cover.

“Stand up slowly with your hands up,” I instruct Elizabeth. We both rise to our feet, hands in the air. She gasps loudly and starts to cry as soon as she sees the second dude bleeding out all over the carpet. I wish I could shield her from that image and take this memory away.

After we’re brought outside in handcuffs and patted down, they uncuff us to get our stories. “I need you to step over here and tell me what happened,” Turner says to me. He leads me away from Elizabeth so she can’t hear us.

“How the fuck did they find us?” I ask, seething with anger. Then it hits me.

Her backpack.

I never searched it to see what she packed.

“Her bag. She must have a phone or something in there,” I say.

“You didn’t look through it?” he asks in disbelief.

“Everything happened so fast I never thought about it.” Hell, we almost got caught leaving.

“Where’s her bag?”

“Inside the house.” My hand runs down my face roughly.

“I’ll go get it so you can look through it.” He runs back in and I walk over to Elizabeth.

“What did you pack in your bag before we left?” I ask her.

“Just a few clothes, some toiletries, and my cell phone. Why?”

I look down at the ground and shake my head. I’m disappointed in myself for failing to do something that should be routine. “That’s how they found us.”

“But it’s not on.” Her eyebrows dip down in confusion.

“It doesn’t have to be. We need to ditch it before we go.” She nods in agreement, but the blank stare on her face tells me she’s still in shock. Glancing over my shoulder, I see Turner come back out of the house with Elizabeth’s bag in hand. “He has a few more questions for me, but he wanted to get your bag out of the house for you first. I’ll go through it and toss the phone.” I kiss her on the cheek and walk back over to my boss. “This is going to shit quickly, sir. What are we going to do now? We can’t exactly stay here.” My hand rakes through my hair and tugs on the ends in frustration.

“You’ve got some cash, you might have to get a hotel for a night or two while I figure out a place to put you.” I’m about to say something when he nods his head at the person behind me. His partner stands next to us. “What’d you find?”

“These are cartel guys.”

Shit. “How do you know?” If the cartel is after our asses, then we’re in deeper than I originally thought.

“They have ‘Mal’ tattooed on their necks. It’s their signature mark for all members of the Los Malvados gang.”

“Son of a bitch,” we say at the same time.

“I’ll get this cleaned up. You two get the hell out of here.” I don’t waste any time. I wave over Elizabeth, they give her some bullshit excuse about not needing her statement right now since they have mine, and we get on the road.

We’ve been driving for about an hour and she hasn’t muttered two words to me. I’ve left her alone knowing today was probably a lot to take in. “How are you doing over there?”

She turns toward me. “I’m okay, I guess.”

“I know that shit is hard to see, but you have to know that I did what was best for us. I had no ch—”

“Alex, I know. I’m thankful you stopped them. Lord knows I wouldn’t have been able to defend myself. Do you know who they were?” Even a few hours later, the fear in her voice is clear as day.

Keeping my eyes on the road, I shake my head. All she really knows about this whole fucked up situation is that Cal wants me to murder Hutchison. She has no clue about all the other shit, and I plan to keep it that way until all of this is over with.

I drive us another two hours in the opposite direction before my eyelids feel like they’re made of lead and I can’t hold them open anymore. Stopping at the first place I see, I lay down on this lumpy, dusty mattress with Elizabeth in my arms, and the day’s events come crashing down on me. Whenever bad things went down while I was deployed, this would always happen. My brain has too much time to think and process things right before I go to sleep. Maybe that’s why I get nightmares sometimes. I’m replaying everything in my mind and trying to see if it was at all avoidable. I should’ve been on my fucking game and thought to check her bag. Just like before, she clouds my mind and my only thought at the time was getting her the hell out of there. I was sloppy and can’t afford to make mistakes like that again. It almost cost us everything.

“HEY,” I SAY into the phone as I stand outside the hotel room. It’s cold as balls this early and I can see my breath as I talk. Elizabeth is still sleeping, so I want to get this over with before she wakes up and starts asking questions again.

“What’s up, Matthews?”

“Sir, I need a favor.”

“What’s that?”

“I need you to have someone leave another gun in my glove box.”

“Why?” he asks confused.

“I want Elizabeth to have one when I have to leave the motel for shit.”

He lets out a deep sigh. “I don’t think that’s a good idea.”

“It’s not like she’s going to be carrying it and I’ll give her the run down on how to use it. I’d just feel better with all this shit going on if she had it just in case. Can you make that happen?”

There’s a long pause and I’m starting to get pissed knowing he’s about to reject my request. “Fine,” he finally says, much to my relief. “I’ll have someone dump one in there overnight. Just make sure she knows how to use it, alright?”

“You got it.”

“Hang in there, okay? We’re real close to ending all of this.”

I’m kind of tired of hearing him say that. I’m not sure how much longer Elizabeth can deal with this. Shit, it’s starting to wear on me. She’s strong as hell, but I can see the stress is starting to take its toll on her. It’s obvious in the way she worries her lip between her teeth, how she bites her nails, and when she stares off into space in deep thought. I want her to be in control of her life. Not have some asshole like Cal drag her down, drowning her in misery. As long as he’s out there, she’ll have to keep looking over her shoulder, afraid he’s found her. I have no doubts that if he ever locates her, he’ll kill her.