She smiled, clearly feeling like she’d come out of this little meeting of ours victorious. I still thought she was a total nutter.
By the time I left Valeria I was feeling like I’d just stuck my head in a spin cycle. I wasn’t sure this was going to end well, was actually pretty sure it’d end up in nothing but tears. But who was I to tell these people who were staring down the barrel of disaster that they couldn’t do anything about it? I refused to allow my country to burn, my people to be subjugated, and these people felt exactly the same way. I’d tried my best to make it clear to Valeria that what we were doing was dangerous. That it was very very likely we’d all end up six feet under. But she’d come into this with eyes wide open.
“I’d rather be executed by a snake in the night knowing that I took a stand against our oppressors than live knowing I stood by and allowed an evil man to destroy people,” she’d said.
With that level of determination, I would be consigning them all to certain death if I chose to just stay out of it. At least I could give them a fighting chance. A safe way to communicate if nothing else.
The prospect of going back home and cowering away in my apartment while people like Valeria were out here doing something, however small that was, to stand against Dariel felt wrong. It felt, wasteful. So, I shuffled down the street a few blocks and settled into another, busier cafe with my laptop.
Chapter 11
In the two weeks since I’d found and failed Carro, I had struggled a little bit, to get my head straight. I never knew the man, but that loss hurt. It sliced away at a part of me I hadn't known existed. And in dealing with that jarring loss, the overwhelming sense of failure, I had, admittedly, neglected a few of my other responsibilities. Namely, my friends and family.
My phone rang drawing me back to the colors and the energy of this busy little cafe. Isla DeMarco's name lit up the screen for the third time that morning. I'd been ignoring her calls for days. Unwilling to face the people who needed me, unwilling to do anything but scour the data I could mine for clues about Dariel's camp, for a path illuminated in the darkness which would show me what to do to save my people, I had been avoiding my best friend. And a few other key players as well.
Figuring it was about time to break my seclusion I answered the phone.
"Hey Isla," I chirped into the phone.
I admittedly expected a lecture and was braced for it. What I was not prepared for was my soft-spoken friend shrieking into my ear from the other end of the line.
"Adriana! What the hell is the matter with you chica? Where have you been? Your mother has been beside herself! I was so freaking worried! You just up and disappear on us during all of this? What were you thinking? You better be in fucking Canada laid up with a broken jaw or I swear to God I'm going to flay you."
"Isla! Slow down. I'm sorry, but I can explain."
"Oh, you better explain. I think Estela would love an explanation for the fucking grizzly bear she found hanging out on her porch this morning. Care to enlighten us, Adriana darling, about what exactly you're into?"
What the fuck.
“What?"
“Uh huh, baby girl. You heard me.”
I felt like the floor had dropped out from under me. Since the day we found Carro, Joaquín had been...persistent.
I figured he’d felt guilty about what happened because he showed up at my place two days after he walked away from me at the KHG tower. At the time however, I just wasn’t in a good place. I’ll admit, I may have taken the cowards approach to the situation.
When I got home the afternoon we failed Carro, I got in bed and pretty much stayed there. I dragged my coffee machine into my bedroom and pulled my laptop under my covers and hammered out commands on my computer for two full days.
When someone accosted my door, first knocking, then banging I could have gotten up and stopped him. I probably should have assured him that I was at least alright. I did not do that. Instead I remained hidden under my blankets.
Joaquín showed up a few more times since then, but I ignored him. What was I supposed to say to him? Part of me was insisting that I couldn’t face him because I’d failed his friend. And maybe that was a little bit true, but the more honest part of me chimes in with a more petty explanation. Somewhere, deep inside of me, I blamed Joaquín for the loss of Carro. I still didn’t fully understand where the vision had come from, but I did know that Joaquín had refused to believe, had tried to stop me from getting to Carro.
It was a stupid way to feel, but I still did. And although there was some undeniable thread which connected us, I couldn’t bear to face the alpha.
I glossed over the implications of that feeling to focus on the utter ridiculousness that Isla had just informed me of.
“I’m sorry, you’re going to have to run that by me again. Estela Rojas—my mother—found a what on her what?”
“A Bear. On her front porch. This morning.”
“Before I lose my fucking mind, you’re going to have to a bit clearer.”
I drummed my fingers on the table, suddenly feeling twitchy and paranoid.
"Your mother called me this morning, because of course you—her beloved daughter—are not answering anybody's calls for the last two weeks. And she," a thoughtful pause, "relayed to me," read: she flipped out, "that when she went out to collect the paper this morning, she was met with a grizzly bear, fur and ears and claws and all, on her front porch."
I waited for her to continue, but the bitch just let that hang there.
"And then what happened?" I screamed into the phone, attracting dirty looks from the rest of the cafe patrons.
"Adriana, call your mother." And here comes the lecture. "Will you at least tell me what is going on? I'm really worried about you honey. I even called Emmanuel and he fucking told me you were in Canada!"
I could picture my best friend with frightening detail. She was, I knew, right this very moment pacing back and forth in the kitchen of her small bakery located in the heart of Bogotá. Covered in flour, her curly, white blonde hair tied up in a messy knot on the top of her head, she was probably on the verge of a nervous breakdown because of my inability to pull my shit together and get on with things.
Joaquín had apparently bounced back from the failure. I sure as hell should be able to muster the wherewithal to get out of bed and talk to the people in my life who were worried about me. This was a war. Carro would not be the first body on my conscious. And wallowing here in my own self-pity wasn't going to free my country.
I relayed the events of that fucked up day to Isla. Isla had never been like me. She'd never wanted to save the world. She'd never been a fighter. She made friends wherever she went and spoke kind words to people. She was a baker and her personal mission was to fill the world with sweetness. And I respected the hell out of her for having such an innocent outlook. When she heard about what had happened, she'd been more than willing to accept my apologies for the radio silence.
"Adriana," there was a long pause, "I think you need to talk to this Joaquín. Hell, I think you need to see a therapist. People develop like...PTSD from this kind of stuff!" She interrupted herself as if a thought had just been emblazoned upon her frontal lobe. "You cannot tell your mother. Not about any of this! You know how she gets about you doing your journalism thing...but...no. You can't." She sounded like she was ready to fight me on the subject. "She'd have a heart attack."
"There are no Grizzly bears in the Amazon."
"What?" I'd confused her.
"You said there was a Grizzly bear on her porch. But there aren't any Grizzly bears in the Rainforest. They're Ukuku. Short-faced bears."
"What the hell are you talking about? I don't care what kind of bear they are, Adriana. What I want to know is why they are stalking your mother!"
She had a point. Isla may be sweet and innocent, but she was by no means stupid.
"Well, what did he say?"
"Estela Rojas did not stick around and have a fucking chat with it!" Sh
e was screaming into the phone. Her voice shrill enough that I had to pull my phone away from my face in fear for my eardrums.
"Alright alright alright. I'll deal with this. Message received."
"You're in a foul mood this morning. I’m going to forgive you, Adriana, because of what happened. But don't do that to us again. With everything that's happening we were worried that..." She trailed off, refusing to say what she was thinking. I silently thanked her for the discretion.
"I'm sorry, Isla. I've just been..." I searched for a word that fit. Nothing really did. "working through this. I hate to make you guys worry."
"Liar," she called me out. "You get some sick thrill out of making us worry. Otherwise you'd have taken a nice, normal desk job like everybody else."
"Um, excuse me? That is a lot of judgement coming from a baker."
And just like that we were out of the heavy and giggling like we were fifteen again.
When we finally hung up, I packed up my things and headed back to my place. If Joaquín was sending Bears to stake out my mom's place, he obviously had something important to tell me. There had been no disappearances that I could connect with the Snakes since Carro, so I racked my brain trying to figure out what he must have found to have him making the nearly three hour drive up from the den to Bogotá three or four times in the last week. Why didn't he just call? And then I remembered I'd never given any of them my number that night in the woods. Still, someone could have at least dug up my email address.
Later that evening, after I'd done everything I could possibly come up with in procrastination, I dug through the catch all box in my bedroom where I emptied my pockets every night before bed. I had to sift through a small trove of receipts and handwritten notes to find the business card that Rora had given me right before she sent me traipsing through the Rainforest in the middle of the night. It was miracle I even still had the thing.
I tapped out the number on my phone and she picked up on the fourth ring. She'd waited just long enough for hope to bloom in my chest that she wouldn't answer and I would have a valid excuse to never, ever address another Bear. The moment I said my own name her tone changed, to that of a scorned sister.
"Oh, so you've managed to drag your ass out of hiding."
"I'm looking for Joaquín."
"Funny, he's looking for you, too."
There was more to be read into that simple statement that I had the patience for just then.
"How do I get in touch with him, Rora? He's been here the last few days, but I've been...busy."
She snorted.
"I'll tell him you called."
"Thanks, apparently."
It was that much longer after she hung up on me, that the pounding was back. A thick, closed fist banging on my front door. How was this guy getting around security?
He had to have been in the city to get here so fast. There was no way he could have driven. He was an alpha though; a changeling ruler of a people and the politics of the country were in turmoil. He very likely had business in Bogotá all the time. Or at least it seemed like a viable explanation.
I scraped my fingers through the hair I'd let flow freely around my shoulders, steeling myself against the aggression I could already feel coming through the door.
Standing there in a pair of cut offs, and a baggy band t-shirt, barefoot and strangely exhausted, even though today was the first day in a while that I’d actually gotten out of bed, I opened my front door. That simple act changed the course of my life and, I like to think, of Colombia.
"Hola, Joaquín," I said to a face cut in stone. It felt like I'd opened the door to face an inquisition. I stood in the doorway, clearly barring his entry into my personal space.
I was ready to face the music and talk to him, I wasn't, however, willing to let him into my home. And he seemed to understand that line immediately.
"You gonna let me in, reinita?"
"Nope."
He planted a hand on the doorframe beside my head and leaned in, crowding me.
"You been MIA the last few days."
I crossed my arms over my chest. "Been busy. Seems like you, however, have plenty of time on your hands. I wasn't aware the threat level had been de-escalated." His brows furrowed, but I didn't make him admit his confusion. I wasn't that cruel. Fragile male egos and all. "If you're sending Bears to harass my mother you must be pretty confident in the security of the den."
The smirk that touched his face transformed him from a fiercely attractive male, to a God-like specimen more fit for Olympus than the dirty streets of Bogotá overrun by us mere mortals.
"You were ignoring my other attentions. Figured I had to change tack."
"And you thought trying to eat my mother would work?"
"I had no intention of eating your mother."
This was interesting. I would not have expected the big bad Bear to be running his own errands.
"No, you just thought giving her a heart attack would."
"Give your mamma a little credit, reinita, she's tougher than that."
"Uh huh, yeah, what do need, your Alphaness?"
"Invite me in and you'll find out."
He couldn't be serious. There was no way this was a booty call. I felt a little twinge in the vicinity of my heart at the thought. Ouch.
"Not happening. I distinctly remember what happen the last time I invited you into my home. Let's not repeat the lapse." His eyes immediately narrowed and I knew he had misunderstood me. The lazy-limbed ease with which he'd been claiming my doorstep vanished, only to be replaced by the rigid warrior I'd seen in the jungle weeks ago. I shot down that line of discussion before it had a chance to break apart the delicate hold on my togetherness that I'd been slowly rebuilding over the last weeks. "That is not what I meant. And you know it."
"How would I know anything about you, reinita? You've had a wall up since the moment I met you." His tone held none of the lash I'd expected, but his body held on to the rigid posture he'd adopted at the mention of our...incident.
"I played my part; I failed your pack. What else do you need from me, Joaquín?"
He used that big body to bully me into my flat, his hands gripping my shoulders, and he kicked the door shut behind him. The instant he crossed the threshold, he spun me around, slamming my back against the door, but taking the time to cushion my head with his hand. He locked the door with a resounding snick which echoed through the space. His sudden closeness gave me goosebumps. There was never any denying there was a pull between us. Call it chemistry, call it a bond, call it survivor's guilt, whatever it was...it was strong. But I was not a woman to be led around by my biology. I was a woman who made my own destiny.
"That is exactly why we need to talk, Addy."
I licked my lips, wrenching myself under control. fighting the heat unfurling in my belly at his proximity.
"Then talk." I just wanted this over with. I needed to go apologies to my mother for leaving her to flounder in the dark while I pulled my shit together. Probably should add Isla to that list, too. Couldn't hurt.
"If I hadn't known you'd been hiding here licking your wounds for the last two weeks, I'd think you were a pretty cold bitch."
"Wow, as always, Joaquín, you have a way with words."
He took a breath, collecting his composure. Apparently, I got under his skin as quickly as he got under mine. Again...interesting.
"I still can't figure out how you're able to feel so hard for people so different from you. But you gotta know that you did not fail the pack. I don't blame you, Rora doesn't blame you, fuck, Carro's parents asked me to arrange a meet with you so they could thank you in person."
"Thank me for what?" I threw my hands out to the side, feeling both incredibly vulnerable—which I hated—and violently aggressive. I even confused myself, didn't even want to think about throwing a man into that equation. "For wasting everyone's time? For promising to find their son and handing them back a body?"
His grip on my shoulders tightened.
In that moment my defenses crumbled. I'd never been good at dealing with my 'feelings'. My mother used to tease me, saying my father must have been a little bit robot and she just never knew. But the last two weeks had hit me harder than anything else ever had. I've seen bodies, I've even seen executions. With my job, violence was just part of the game. Wars result in death and that was something I'd come to terms with a very long time ago. I thought I'd been jaded to that part of the human condition. But with Carro, I felt so responsible. Directly responsible. And because of that festering wound on my soul, I let myself expose some of the hurt.
"Then why do I still feel so guilty?"
His auric eyes felt like they were boring through my skull. He slid his big, warm hands down my arms, stop at my elbows.
"Because you care."
"Lot of good that does."
"Come." He tugged me away from the door. "We're going out."
"Why? Out where?"
He shook his head. "Always so many questions with you, reinita."
"I don't want to go anywhere. I got shit to do."
He snorted. The man might have been in a crisp white shirt and suit pants, but he snorted like a commoner.
Fragile Bonds Page 9
