“Ah, bonita,” he said.
It was a bit shocking to hear someone describe her thief as pretty, but Chrissy went along with it. “Sí,” Chrissy said. “Muy bonita. ¿La ha visto?”—Have you seen her?
“Se fue,” he said—She’s gone. He then went on to say she’d moved out two days earlier; he’d seen her packing her things out. Chrissy tried not to show her disappointment as she looked back toward the doors of the apartments. All this and she hit a dead end? Already?
“¿No sabe a dónde fue?”—You don’t know where she went?
“No,” he said, shaking his head. He pointed to the left. “El dueño.”
Chrissy nodded and headed toward the manager’s office. “Gracias,” she said, even though she wasn’t sure she wanted to see the manager. However, the groundskeeper was watching her. She looked over her shoulder and smiled at him one last time before turning a corner. He smiled too.
When she reached the door marked “Office” she took a quick peek at the emergency evacuation plan screwed into the wall. It showed the different floors of the complex and how they were oriented. Relief settled into her stomach and she indulged in a brief feeling of success as a plan began to formulate.
Chapter 67
Was this the view you wanted?” the manager asked, a white woman who looked as if she’d been meant to have a normal height and weight, but had somehow gotten stretched an extra foot. She had to be at least six foot two and was painfully thin. Chrissy could only imagine the pair they presented—the manager Gaylynn, tall and shapeless; Chrissy, short and squat. What a picture.
Chrissy walked to the windows that lined the front of unit 232. This is where she had lived, where she had orchestrated the events that had sent Chrissy’s life circling the bowl. She swept over the floors with her eyes, looking for something, anything. In the movies people always seemed to find matchbooks or business cards. Was that so much to ask—one stinkin’ matchbook for all her efforts?
“It’s perfect,” Chrissy said, looking at the waves roll onto the shore and feeling her anger rise even more. The other Chressaidia had really lived it up, hadn’t she?
“I’m really sorry it’s not cleaned yet. Like I said, the previous owners only left a couple days ago. The other apartments I was telling you about are ready to go.”
“But this is exactly what I wanted,” Chrissy said, continuing the explanation that she had started in the office where she had half a dozen reasons to narrow down her interest to only one apartment—232.
“Well, it’s just over eleven hundred square feet,” the woman explained. “With a gas stove and central air conditioning. You have beach and pool access, as well as wireless Internet capabilities.”
“Oh, wow, a pool,” Chrissy said. “What’s the pool like?”
As the woman went on and on, Chrissy walked the perimeter of the room, still scanning, still looking for something, anything.
“Could I use the bathroom?” Chrissy asked, interrupting a fascinating relay of how the pool had been retiled last summer.
“Oh, sure,” the woman said.
Chrissy went into the bathroom and turned on the fan to mask any noise she might make, then she opened every cabinet and drawer. Nothing but some hair.
Hair! That meant DNA.
Feeling foolish, yet driven, she dug in her purse for something she could put the hair in. She found a piece of gum at the very bottom and she unwrapped it, folding the piece into her mouth while smoothing out the wrapper. Very carefully she picked up each strand of hair she could see and put them in the gum wrapper, then folded it up neatly and put it back in her purse. She was heading over to flush the toilet when she thought of the shower drain. She always had hair in the drain after a shower, and sure enough, this Chressaidia did, too. She dug in her purse and found a travel pack of tissue. She unwrapped the gum wrapper and put the other hair inside it as well, layering the hair between two sheets of tissue. Gross!
And yet, she exited the bathroom feeling very triumphant. CSI, eat your heart out!
Chapter 68
Chrissy had just settled into the car when her cell phone rang. She lifted it and immediately recognized the number. They’d only traded calls for a little over a week, but she’d saved his number in her phone as Mmmmmm and had smiled each time he’d called. She wasn’t smiling right now, though, and wondered why he was calling at all. Had he forgotten an insult and wanted to make sure to work it in? She hit the end button, sending him to voice mail. She was a rock. She needed no one. A minute later her phone beeped that a message had been left. She fumbled to call her voice mail, disgusted with her need to hear what he had to say.
“Uh, Chrissy, this is Micah. I just talked to Amanda. I’m on my way to Salt Lake to catch a flight to San Diego. Call me. I have some information.”
“What?” she said out loud, pressing the repeat button and hearing him again. He was coming here? What the heck for? She hung up from voice mail and immediately dialed another number she knew by heart.
“What on earth are you doing to me?” she yelled as soon as Amanda picked up.
“Calm down,” Amanda said. “Did you talk to him?”
Chrissy took a breath and explained the voice mail. “You set this up. I know you did, and it was a horrible thing to do. He doesn’t want to be with me, okay? I’ve accepted it. You need to accept it as well.”
“You don’t understand,” Amanda said. “Someone’s using his name again. They tried to rent a house in San Diego. He’s going out there to figure it out, just like you did.”
Chrissy paused. “So this has nothing to do with me?”
“It has everything to do with you,” Amanda said. “He was really worried about you on Sunday and now his name has been pulled into it again. Face it—your paths are connected. He’s realized that.”
“This doesn’t sound like the Micah I know,” Chrissy said, fumbling for something to say.
“You don’t know him as well as you think you do. Be grateful for his help and try not to be too big a pain in the neck, okay?”
“Amaaaaaanda,” Chrissy whined. “How am I supposed to act, huh? As if this isn’t hard enough.”
“Why don’t you ask him how you should act. You guys have some stuff to work out, and this will be a perfect opportunity.”
Stuff.
She made it sound so easy.
Chapter 69
Where are you?” Micah asked when she answered her phone around 8:20 that evening. Chrissy’s heart thudded a little at the sound of his voice, and she berated it for its treachery. She’d argued with Amanda for almost twenty minutes, getting most of the irritation out of her system. Then she’d sent Micah a text message saying she’d come to the airport to pick him up. He texted back that he’d be in the Delta terminal at 8:00. Texting instead of calling meant she could put off the stuff a little longer.
“I’m on the freeway,” Chrissy said, scowling at the other cars around her, all of them moving slower than she could walk. “There’s road construction.”
“How far away are you?”
Chrissy looked ahead. “The good news is I can see the airport,” she said. “The bad news is that doesn’t mean much. I haven’t moved a full block in the last fifteen minutes.”
“Okay, call me when you get here.”
Another half hour passed before she pulled up to the curb. Micah opened the back door, threw in his bags, and got into the passenger side. He didn’t say anything. Chrissy was at a loss, so she just focused on her driving and tried not to think about the toe-curling kiss and him holding her so tight she could barely breathe. They were quiet for at least five minutes, the discomfort not the least bit appeased by their silence.
“Amanda said you slept in your car last night,” Micah said, lifting his hat for just a moment before repositioning it on his head. She’d known she’d been right about him hiding his receding hairline under his hats when she saw him on Sunday, but hadn’t thought that was a good time to mention it. Right now didn�
�t seem like such a great time either.
“If this had taken place in LA or further north, I’d have a dozen people I could stay with. Unfortunately, I could never afford the southern California lifestyle, and my friends here haven’t yet won the lottery or invented the newest must-have push-up bra. It wasn’t so bad, though.”
“I’m not a car-sleeping kind of guy,” Micah said. “If we can find a hotel, I’ll get us some rooms.”
“I’m down to just over three hundred dollars,” Chrissy said. “I can’t afford a hotel room.”
“Don’t worry about it,” Micah said, looking out the passenger side window.
For whatever reason his statement lit her fire of frustration all over again. “I don’t want your money, Micah, and I don’t need your charity.”
He turned toward her and she saw his jaw clench. “Will you stop being so dang stubborn!”
“Will you stop being so dang dominating!” She dropped her voice and muttered in Spanish about how ridiculous this was and how she’d be a lot better off on her own.
He softened his voice when he spoke again. “Look, they’re using my name again. They tried to rent an apartment. We have a common interest, and working together will bring it to a closure sooner than if either of us were doing this alone.”
“Fine,” Chrissy said, taking a right onto the I-5 south freeway, still looking for a way to get an upper hand in the conversation and privately making plans to egg Amanda’s house when she got back. “But don’t kiss me again.”
He turned to look at her. “Me?” he said, reminding her of the fact that she had been the one who had not only initiated the kiss, but had run after him to do so.
This wasn’t going well and yet she couldn’t turn her mouth off. “We’ll be alone together, and I’ve still got some virtue to protect.”
“I’m flattered you think so well of me,” Micah said in a flat tone, looking forward again and shaking his head slightly. “But your virtue is not what I’m after.”
“I was teasing you,” Chrissy said without humor, now wishing she’d said nothing at all. “You made yourself perfectly clear that your interest lies elsewhere.” How petty of her to have brought that up, but she couldn’t help it. She was a very petty person.
“Can I be completely honest with you?” Micah said after a few more awkward seconds. He wasn’t looking at her. Instead he was turned toward the passenger window. He looked very uncomfortable, and she found herself not wanting to hear the stuff after all.
“Does the fact that you need to ask permission to tell me the truth mean that you’ve been lying to me up to this point?”
He turned to look at her, but she kept her eyes on the road. “I’m trying to be serious and get some things settled, okay?”
“Okay,” she said, feeling reprimanded. She changed lanes, but they were still in the construction zone, so the freeway was a crush of cars.
“My ex-wife just got a legal separation from her second husband. I need to be there for my kids—all there. I can’t afford to be distracted by anything—anyone—else, no matter how much I might enjoy their company. Does that make sense?”
Chrissy was quiet, absorbing what he’d said as her righteous indignation fractured into a very different array of emotions. “That’s why you broke our date?” she asked after digesting his words.
“Yeah,” Micah said, then let out a breath. “I don’t know if this will make sense, but when Natalie and I got a divorce, I felt so free. It was as if I could live my life all over again. But these last few years have been different. My kids are growing up. In five years they’ll all be adults and I wonder—what have I given them? I’ve thought that at least with Natalie in a stable marriage, they’d have that example, but now it’s messier than ever, and I feel . . . almost consumed by the responsibility to make the years left with them important ones. To make sure they know they matter, to be honest with them about the mistakes their mom and I made, to have a good enough relationship with their mom that they don’t feel pulled between us. And then you happened and—”
“I happened?” Chrissy cut in. “Yikes, I sound like an earthquake or a traffic accident.”
“Well, that’s kind of what it was like,” Micah said.
Chrissy looked at him, deeply offended. “What?”
“Not something bad,” Micah said quickly, meeting her eyes for the first time. The traffic was practically at a standstill. “Just that you’re like . . . I don’t know, intense. After that first date I couldn’t stop thinking about you. That had mostly faded until I saw you at Amanda’s one day and then it started all over again. I kept thinking I saw you at the grocery store, and I’d wonder when I might run into you again. And then you were suddenly there again, in my life, and I had this opportunity to pursue it, and I thought maybe . . .” He paused and let out a breath. His voice was softer when he continued and he straightened in his seat. “Maybe I could do both—be a dad and spend time with you. It was exciting to have someone I wanted to be with, and a little scary. The next thing I knew, Natalie was telling me her marriage was over, and my kids were stuck between trying to convince themselves it wasn’t a big deal and knowing that it really was. And I was in the middle of it, knowing I couldn’t give them my all if I was dividing my time between them and you.”
He looked out the window again, seemingly absorbed in a Hummer that was parallel to them in the next lane. He shifted away in his bucket seat as if afraid he’d said too much. “Sorry,” he said quietly after a few seconds had passed. “That was the long story. I didn’t mean to get into all of that.”
Chrissy took a breath and let what he’d said settle. He did feel something for her. It wasn’t only in her head and her heart. Even all the roadblocks he’d just mentioned didn’t rob her of the thrill of knowing she was not alone in her feelings. However, the relief didn’t move the roadblocks out of the way, and that was depressing. She couldn’t help but remember her own childhood and the changes Livvy’s kids were dealing with. If she could take herself and her own feelings out of the equation, there was no question of whether he’d done the right thing. Dang it anyway!
“You made the right choice, Micah.”
He glanced at her quickly, his eyes questioning.
She checked her mirrors and moved into the left lane, where the traffic was moving faster.
A few minutes passed without any words, but the traffic compressed once again and they made very little progress. Chrissy wondered if it wasn’t meant to be that they have this conversation. A celestial traffic jam of sorts.
Chrissy cleared her throat. “My mom remarried a year after my folks divorced. She shipped us to my dad who had moved in with a woman with four kids of her own. For the next few years, our parents were always arguing about whose turn it was to have Livvy and me. Finally, Abuelita gave us a stable home. She took us to the Catholic church, introduced God into our lives, taught us the beauty of our Mexican heritage. She changed my world, and I’m so very grateful to her for the sacrifices she made for us, but it didn’t disguise how unimportant we were to our parents.”
“She did a good job,” Micah said.
Chrissy shrugged and changed lanes again. “She’s remarkable, but we still suffered for the choices our parents made. I think Livvy answered her insecurity with boys, and then men. She is so hungry to belong somewhere that she’ll do anything to be important to someone else. She has a good heart. She’s not evil or selfish—she’s just terrified of not mattering. I, on the other hand, seem to have defined myself with needing no one. So here I am, thirty-five with no one to show for it.” She smiled at her own joke, then wondered if Micah thought she was taking some kind of jab at him.
She swallowed the lump rising in her throat before she continued. “I wonder, if either one of my parents had put us first, had done what it took to ensure us a stable place where we felt important—where would Livvy and I be? Would I have a family, despite the risks of being hurt sometimes? Would Livvy be comfortable by herself? Or
would she have found a healthier relationship to make a life with?” She shrugged. There were no answers. “You’re a father, Micah,” she said. “I would never in a million years expect you to make a decision that might somehow hurt your kids. But I appreciate you explaining it to me. You didn’t have to.”
Micah was silent, and now Chrissy was the one shifting uncomfortably in her seat. She might not like playing games, but being so blatantly honest wasn’t easy, either.
Micah cleared his throat and spoke again. “I enjoyed your company, Chrissy,” he said. Hearing him say her name made the lump in her throat a little thicker. “It just seemed best to end what hadn’t started yet so I could do what I knew was the right thing.”
Chrissy reviewed those moments of listening to him explain why they couldn’t go out, how much they had hurt, how many expectations they had shattered. It would have helped if he’d told her his true reasons. Then she remembered what she’d done next. “And then I chased you down and . . .” She relived the kiss yet again and wondered if he was doing the same. “Sorry about that.”
Micah grunted and nodded, half his mouth pulling into a smile as he looked over and met her eye. “That’s when I knew you were the devil.”
Chapter 70
San Diego, California
Who is he?” Detective Long asked after staring at the body and getting a feel for the trajectory of the bullets and placement of the shooter. Execution style, but not in the typical fashion. The smell wasn’t too bad yet, though the beginnings of decomposition were definitely there.
“Frederico Ramirez. Guatemalan-born, but legally immigrated nine years ago. Alone.”
“Record?”
“Nothing serious. However, we received a tip several months ago that he’s part of a militant faction in Guatemala. We’re pretty sure he’s running drugs—but we’ve poked around and haven’t found anything substantial.”
“Looks like he was using,” Long said, taking in the graying fingernails and dark fingers. Meth rotted its users from the inside out, turning their eyes and skin gray and ashy-looking once it really had its hooks in a person.
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