by Lili Valente
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 lac
k 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.
I’ve been so careful, and I’m so close.
The fact that I’ve suddenly become a person of interest to some shadowy stranger, days from accomplishing my goal, makes me want to scream.
For the first time in months, I’m consumed with emotion, so angry my hands shake as I open the front pocket of my pack and dig out my key. It takes three tries to get the key into the lock and once I’m finally inside my room, I can’t sit down.
I toss my backpack on the bed and pace the carpet between the bed and bureau, hands clenching and unclenching at my sides. I’m shocked to find myself craving a cigarette and know if I had one, I’d step out onto the pigeon-shit covered balcony outside my room to smoke.
I took up smoking to have an excuse to mingle with the other members of my gun club. I only smoked outside the shooting range and have never had the urge to light up anywhere else. I had assumed I must be immune to the addiction, but maybe I simply haven’t been under enough stress to trigger a craving.
For a moment, I consider hitting the bodega a few doors down from the hotel but dismiss the idea with a sharp shake of my head.
I need to be strong, calm, and focused. I haven’t let myself look further into the future than this summer or imagine who I’ll be or what I’ll do once I’ve finished this, but even in the short term, I can’t afford to let my body be weakened by chemicals or addiction.
I just need to take a deep breath, calm down, and think rationally.
I fetch a bottle of water from the mini-fridge and take a long drink, focusing on the cool flow of liquid down my throat. I relax my shoulders and jaw and let my weight settle evenly between my feet.
Once I’m steady in my body, I let my mind focus on the problem at hand.
Who knows I’m in Costa Rica? Horatio—the man from my gun club who put me in touch with Carlos—and anyone in his organization that he might have mentioned the deal to. Horatio isn’t forthcoming about his alliances, but I’m pretty sure he’s involved with one of the Cuban gangs running South Miami. Anyone affiliated with him would be bad news. Ditto for Carlos and whatever organization he’s affiliated with, which means there is a nearly one hundred percent chance that the man following me is dangerous and that whatever he wants isn’t something I’m going to be eager to part with.
So what does he want?
More money? Does he plan to rob me or kidnap me for ransom or something even more menacing?
If Carlos had a meaningful conversation with Horatio, he should have learned that I’m a loner, not well-off, and don’t have any obvious ties to people with money. That would lead me to rule out kidnapping, but criminals knowing I have no one waiting for a postcard from my trip to South America presents its own problems.
I’ve done what I can to play down my looks—choosing modest, loose-fitting clothing, always pulling my hair back in a tight braid or bun, and limiting my makeup routine to a tube of Chap Stick—but I’m still attractive. When I first joined the gun club, a couple of the regulars tried to start something, but I quickly made it clear that I wasn’t interested in that kind of relationship. I’m not vain enough to believe one of Carlos’s friends took one look at me and decided I was worth pursuing, but they might have taken a look and decided I was worth selling.
The cartels traffic in people as well as drugs and, from what I’ve heard, make a better living at the former. The majority of the people sold into sex slavery are young girls living below the poverty line who have slipped through the cracks in the foster system—or in some cases been forced into the skin trade by their own parents—but I’m not quite twenty-two. Not a girl, but maybe young enough to fetch a decent price on the international slave market.
I move toward the balcony, surveying the street outside through the filmy glass doors.
There’s a lock on the inside I’ve already bolted, but it’s not strong enough to withstand a firm shoulder from someone as large as Carlos. And even if it were, all an intruder would need to do is break one of the glass panes and reach inside to open the door. I’m on the third floor, but there is a fire escape with a ladder that leads to the ground. It would be as easy to come up as it would be to go down.
I noted the flaw in the room’s security when I checked in, but it didn’t worry me before. Now that someone is watching me, however, it would be smart to look into a more secure situation.
Unfortunately, The Allegro Hotel is laid out around a center courtyard. All of the rooms have balconies, so asking for a room change wouldn’t accomplish anything. And assuming my tail has figured out which room I’m in once, he could certainly do so again.
I’m going to have to change hotels, but not tonight. It’s already ten-thirty and I don’t want to be out on the streets alone later than this. The search for another temporary base will have to wait until the morning. I’ll just have to prepare for a potential break-in as best I can and hope I get lucky tonight.
After brushing my teeth and changing into gym shorts, I drag my large, traveler’s backpack in front of the glass doors, giving anyone trying to come in through the balcony something to stumble over in the dark. Then I unpack my smaller pack and put my new toy together. The familiar activity is soothing, giving my mind something to focus on aside from the unease humming through my nerve endings.
I would prefer not to fire the gun inside the hotel, but an intruder won’t know that.
The gun is small for a sniper rifle, but it’s still as long as my forearm. The sight of it alone might be enough to scare him off and if not, the weapon could be used to inflict blunt force trauma as long as I get to my attacker before he gets to me.
After the gun is assembled, I turn on the television and watch the end of a Costa Rican variety show involving a surreal mix of human heads superimposed on cartoon character bodies, dancing girls in bikinis, and bad man-on-the-street interviews. A little after midnight I turn off the set and prop myself up against the headboard with the gun resting lightly across my thighs.
For the better part of an hour, I stare at the doors leading onto the balcony, watching muted orange light sweep across the glass as a car passes by on the street outside, waiting for something to happen. I figure if the person following me has been watching my window, they will wait a decent amount of time after seeing my television set turn off before making a move.
Another half hour passes and the night grows quiet.
The only sounds are the faint droning of the air conditioner far below on the first floor and the breeze tinkling the wind chimes outside the closed shop across the street. The last time I look at the clock, it reads two fifteen. I expect to stay awake to welcome three o’clock, but at some point I must have nodded off.
When I wake up, it’s nearly four in the morning.
The first thing I register is the time. The second is the way the hair on my arms is standing on end.
Even in sleep, my body has sensed that something is wrong. The watched feeling has returned with a vengeance, so strong I swear I can hear another heartbeat thud
ding not far from my bed.
Chapter Three
Sam
Trying not to panic, I mentally check in with my immediate surroundings.
There is no one by the door to the room, so if I need to run, that way is clear. My gun is still on the mattress beside me, just a few inches from my curled legs, so that option is available, too.
Now I just need to find out what I’m up against.
Keeping my lids slitted just enough to see, I roll over to face the balcony doors. I do my best to look like I’m still asleep, keeping my arms and legs heavy, not wanting the intruder to know I’m conscious until I make my move. Once I complete my shift in position, I intend to stay completely still. I am anticipating that the person who has broken into my room will be a man, dangerous and possibly armed, but nothing more.
I have no other expectations or suspicions.
I am entirely unprepared to see him standing on the other side of the patio doors, watching me through the smeared glass.
It’s Danny.
Here.
Close enough to touch.
Close enough to throw my arms around him and hug him breathless.
All I have to do is open the door.
My eyes fly open and my throat locks, strangling the sound of surprise rising inside of me, transforming it into a soft whimper. But Danny hears it, and his gaze shifts, settling on my shadowed face.
“Let me in, Sam,” he says softly. He looks so beautiful, so familiar. Safe, but alien at the same time, like something from another world than the one I’ve been living in for the past year. “I think we should talk.”
Talk.
After a year apart.
After I ran from him and shut him out and severed the connection between us without even a goodbye or a note telling him I’m sorry but that I couldn’t love anyone when I was filled with so much hate. After a year of knowing that he’s looking for me, longing for me, and ignoring it. A year of hiding from him and the memories of the girl I was when I was with him.
