Stranger Danger

by Lee Ann Sontheimer Murphy

  The sun dropped behind the trees to the south and the shadows thickened as she waited. About the time she considered revising her idea that he’d return, she heard the truck. A few moments later, she saw the headlights as he wound down the lane and rattled it to a stop within five feet of the porch. The harsh words Sara had prepared burned in her throat and she stood up, ready to deliver them.

  Santiago climbed out of the truck with agile grace and faced her. Then he grinned, his full-wattage, complete smile and the radiance from it dazzled her despite her irritation. His grin erased years from his face and trouble from his eyes. It was his old smile, a rakish, carefree expression and the prickly barrier she’d erected around her heart collapsed. The man who walked toward her was no stranger but familiar and infinitely precious. Santiago was oxygen for her lungs and sustenance for her soul. She forgot her anger, released her fear, and stood up with a glad cry. She loved him and he said he loved her and he was here, in one piece.

  “La muñequita, I thought I’d be back before you woke up.”

  “Where’d you go?” She kept her tone level to hide the worry and fear and anger his absence caused.

  “Recon,” he said. “I wanted to see where we are. It was late when we arrived and I think I was probably in shock. I needed to get my head wrapped around our location in case we have to leave in a hurry. Besides, I had to see if I could drive or not.”

  She opened her mouth to say something light, almost teasing, but she lost emotional control and wept. Her eyes bubbled over with tears and a ragged sob caught in her throat.

  “Que te pasa?”

  “Everything,” she sobbed. “Nothing.”

  With sympathy, he asked, “Which is it, Sarita?”

  “Both.” She pressed her face against his chest and he held her.

  “I’m sorry if I scared you,” he said after a few moments. “I didn’t mean to, Sara.”

  On a deep level, she knew. “But you did.”

  He looked deep into her eyes as if he searched her soul, then nodded. “It’s all too much, too fast, isn’t it? I show up, we traipse down Memory Lane, someone shoots out your bedroom window, and we take off on the run. Then you have to patch me up after I get shot and here we are, together in one hell of a mess.”

  “It’s a lot,” she agreed but one word carried the most importance – together.

  “If it wasn’t necessary, querida, we wouldn’t be here.”

  “I know.” Sara took several deep breaths and stepped back. “So, I guess you were able to drive.”

  “Si, but it made my shoulder hurt. I think it bled, too.”

  “Let me see!”

  Santiago put an arm around her. “Let’s go inside, get something to eat, and then you can take a look. It’s nothing major.”

  For the first time, she noticed the light blood stains on his shirt, more pink than red, through the layers of gauze. “I’ll redress it first, then we’ll eat.”

  “Let’s eat first – I’m hungry.”

  After a basic meal of homemade quesadillas and more beer, Sara tackled his bandages. The wound had bled but not enough to cause any concern. After applying more antibiotic cream, she replaced the bulky gauze with a pair of large adhesive bandages she’d bought at the supermarket. “It seems clean,” she said. “I don’t think there’s any infection. You don’t seem feverish, either. How do you feel?”

  “Good but tired.” He stretched out on the couch in what appeared to be a favorite position. “I’ll talk, if it’s what you want.”

  “You mean you’ll tell me who’s after you and why?”

  “Si, la muñequita, I will.”

  Sara had waited for this moment, but now she almost feared it. Whatever the truth was, she would possess it, good or bad. “Now?”

  He sat up and stared at her. “Is it not a good time? I didn’t plan to tell you to keep you safe, Sara, but you need to know. You’re involved now and that makes you a target.”

  She sat down in the old swivel rocker near the front door. She had to see his face as he talk, be able to read his expressions. “Then tell me,” she said.

  Santiago sighed and began to speak. Sara listened, aware they’d jumped head first into deep water and that they would either sink to the bottom or stay afloat, together.

  Chapter Seven

  Before he spoke, Santiago dug into a zippered pouch of his bag and pulled out a long, thin cigarillo. “Do you mind?” he asked. “I smoke when I’m tense but if you’d rather I don’t, I won’t.”

  “No, go ahead. I actually like the smell.” Rich, fragrant tobacco smoke, as deadly and damaging as it could be, always evoked her earliest years when her grandparents served as her daily babysitters. Her grandfather smoked as he read the morning paper and sipped his first cup of coffee. Sara, from birth until she began kindergarten, often rested on the couch nearby, so the aroma always filled her with a sense of comfort and happiness.

  He fired his smoke and drew deep, then exhaled. “Gracias. I’ll start with what happened when I was still with the LAPD…”

  “You’re not with them anymore?”

  “No.” The way he spat out the single word indicated something both complicated and somehow unpleasant.

  “What happened?”

  He smiled and blew a perfect smoke ring. “That’s what I’m going to tell you.”

  Sara settled back. “Okay, I’m listening.”

  “All of this began more than two years ago, in the summer. A perfect coastal breeze was blowing and I wanted to go to the beach, not work. I almost gave in to temptation, but I went on duty anyway. Maybe if I hadn’t, none of it would have happened.”

  Her mouth went dry. “What did, Santiago?”

  He waved one hand. “Let me tell it. This isn’t easy, la muñequita. My partner, Ted, had less than forty days left until retirement. We both expected a routine shift, and I remember being hopeful it would be. But, around ten that morning, we got a call about an altercation at one of those cheap motels, the kind you rent for the week or month, so we responded. By the time we arrived, it had escalated into a fight. I jumped into the middle of it, telling them to quit and most of them did. Ted hung back, more scared than me to get involved, but he had my back. The fight ended so all the druggies and gang bangers wandered off. I thought it was over until I heard her scream.”

  Intrigued and yet horrified by Santiago’s first person account, Sara asked, “Who?”

  He shrugged. “I didn’t know her. She was Hispanic and ran toward me, screaming, asking me to help. She said some dude had her baby. When I glanced up, I saw him, some guy stoned out of his head on the second floor of the motel. He had the kid on his hip and was leaning over the railing like he was about to take a header. There wasn’t much time so I ran up the steps toward him, weapon drawn. I asked him to hand over the boy, but he refused. He told me to fuck off, then climbed onto the rail like a monkey.”

  Santiago’s eyes darkened as he recalled the terrible moments. “I could smell him, the rank, horrible stench of a user, and I knew I had to do something or he’d go over, with the kid. In the parking lot, the woman kept wailing and screaming, so I snatched the little boy from him. I didn’t even think about it, just did. I put him down and the guy pulled a knife. He waved it at me and so I shot him, drilled him through the head with one shot. Blood spattered on me and everywhere around, blood and worse, then he went over and hit the ground.”

  “Oh, Santiago.”

  His lips twisted together. “Yeah,” he said. “I put up my Glock and bent down to the kid. He’d stopped crying by then. I think it scared the holy crap out of him. I talked to him in Spanish, and he let me pick him up. I took him down to his mother, and then I bolted into the alley. I puked until I couldn’t bring up anything else and left Ted to deal with calling it in. I’d killed before, in the line of duty, but not like that. It had always been a clean shot and with more justification. I knew my judgment would be questioned and figured I’d be investigated. And I was, but Sara, I
couldn’t have been sure I saved the kid otherwise.”

  Sara listened until he’d finished. A few tears crept down her cheeks. He crushed out his smoke and met her gaze. “I’ve done ugly things, no?”

  “No,” she said and meant it. “You did what you had to – you saved the little boy. The druggie didn’t give you a choice, Santiago.”

  He shrugged. “That’s what I thought, then. By the time all the investigations were over, though, I hardly knew my own name. Force Investigation Division, the Chief, Office of the Board of Police Commissioners, the District Attorney, and the Justice System Integrity Division all had to determine, one bunch at a time, whether or not I was in compliance with the LAPD use of force policy. I was on administrative leave on half pay for almost a year while they made up their mind.”

  Bitterness tainted his tone and she knew, before she asked, what his answer would be. “So did they clear you?”

  Santiago shook his head. “No, they didn’t, not at first. I was on unpaid leave for months. After that, they decided I could return and I did, but then Areli was killed...”

  Shock overruled manners and she interrupted. “Killed? Your sister was killed?”

  “Si, I thought I told you.”

  “You said she died.”

  “She did,” he said in a crisp voice. “Mara Salvatrucha gang bangers killed her.”

  “What happened?”

  “Her novio met her at the hair salon where she worked and they left together, to go somewhere to dinner or a club,” he said, his voice as dead as his sister. “It doesn’t matter which because along the way, a four door, dark colored sedan pulled up beside them and shot them both. Areli tried to flee, but they cut her down.”

  Sara could envision the woman she’d seen once with Santiago riddled with bullet wounds all too well. If she hadn’t misjudged their relationship, she might’ve been friends with Areli, maybe even family. “That’s awful,” she said, knowing no word existed to reflect the true horror of the event. “Why, Santiago?”

  “Ramon, her novio, resembled a drug player, looked enough like him he was mistaken for him and executed,” he said. “Or so the official ruling said.”

  The deep frown dividing his forehead told her he didn’t agree. “That’s not what you think, is it?”

  “No. I think he was a member of M13 at one time. He’d left the life, though, and was working in construction. But maybe he knew too much or someone thought he did. So he died and so did my sister.”

  Words would never express the compassion and sympathy but she tried. “I’m so sorry, mi corazon.”

  Distance stretched between them, miles more than the floor space, and his eyes darkened to midnight black as he nodded. “Me too, querida, all the more because I took the call on my first week back.”

  He didn’t have to tell her or describe what he’d seen, because she read the anguish in his eyes. Though as he did, she listened because as much as he needed to tell, she had to hear him.

  “By then, Ted had retired and I had a new partner, a rookie named Lucy Alexander. She asked a lot of questions, but I didn’t really mind. Going back to work didn’t seem so different, even after such a long time. I got back into the groove until we took the call, shots fired and at least one civilian down. When we answered the call, I never imagined it would be my sister.”

  Sara could hardly imagine. She ached to comfort him but something about the harsh expression he wore warned her to keep her distance for now.

  Santiago lit another smoke and exhaled. “We got out of the cruiser and I walked over. I knew it was Areli as soon as I saw her by the hair, the poofed up pompadour she wore with a bow. She was face down in a puddle of blood, and I knew she was dead before I checked her pulse. She’d had a hard life. I’d tried to help her so much, but seeing her dead, it hit me. I cried right there at the scene, tears running down my face. My partner didn’t know what to do, didn’t understand at first it was personal. I couldn’t even touch Areli, cover her up or move her.”

  He paused and a single ragged sob burst from his mouth. Then he sighed, crushed out his smoke and finished the story. “I got my shit together, though. Called it in, waited for backup and all that. They took me off the case as soon as they realized the victim was my sister. I made the arrangements for Areli once the medical examiner released her body. I took care of the funeral and saw her buried. The official verdict named M13 as responsible. Two weeks later, they announced they wanted some Hispanic officers to go into an undercover operation to infiltrate the gang. I volunteered so I could pay those bastards back for Areli. And to make a difference if I could. I failed to save my sister, but I thought maybe I could save someone else’s.”

  “That was two and a half years ago,” he said. He held another cigarillo between his fingers, but didn’t light it. “I became Javier Morales. I spent the first six months establishing a life for him and becoming Javier. I have documentation, everything from a birth certificate and driver’s license to a work history. I started hanging out where M13 people hang and then I got in, became part of it as Javier.”

  When he spoke of his undercover alter ego, his face shifted. He wore a harsher expression than any she’d seen, and his eyes glittered, sharp as a knife edge. “What’s it like?” she asked in a voice so hoarse her throat ached. “Are Mara Salvatrucha as bad as I’ve heard?”

  “Worse,” Santiago said. “It’s beyond anything you can imagine, la muñequita. They live for blood, for violence, for death. There’s no commandment they don’t break a hundred times a day, nothing they respect but the gang and their code. A pack of wolves has more honor, more respect. They kill for sport. Plus they use drugs, drink, and any available body for cheap thrills. Money and power are their gods. If you don’t watch your back, there’ll be a knife in it. I could trust no one.”

  Sara couldn’t imagine anything worse. “It sounds like hell,” she said “How did you live like that?”

  He smiled but without mirth, a wicked, cruel grin. “I did everything they did,” he told her. “I was one bad hombre.”

  Her blood dropped below freezing. “You killed?”

  “Si, I have,” he said. “I’m not proud of it, but I did. I’ve beaten men, stolen, cheated, lied, and broken the law.”

  “Did you fuck women, too?” She threw the question at him with force.

  Santiago stared at her and beyond his grim facade, she saw the man she knew. “Not often,” he said after a long silence. “It meant nothing to me, nada. And it doesn’t touch what we have, what I feel for you. You have to know that, Sara.”

  Images of his nude body skin to skin with stranger’s bodies rushed through her mind, so vivid she thought she’d puke. Then she thought of Erik and their intimacies, acts which never touched her love for Santiago, and she searched her heart. “I do,” she said. “I can’t believe I can say so, but I do. Were you in LA most of the time?”

  “Until six months ago, yes,” he told her. “Then they told me to come to Arkansas.”

  His lack of names struck her as odd. “Who told you?”

  “I won’t tell you who. You’re in danger now, because of me. If you know names, you’re in much more trouble. I was sent here to be muscle. Do you know what that means, Sarita?”

  Her throat burned, dry as a Nevada desert during a drought. “I think so. They send you out to beat up people, hurt them, or kill them, right?”

  Santiago nodded. “Si, that’s pretty much it. Sometimes I could persuade them. Fear is one hell of a motivator.”

  She tried to imagine him as a ruthless enforcer, as someone who would take life without remorse and act with cruelty. Sara struggled, the nature of the man she thought she knew as well as herself held in comparison against what he described. As her thoughts spun in wild circles, he threw down his cigarillo and stalked across the room. He knelt in front of her chair.

  “Say something,” he said, his voice a plea. “No tengas miedo, la muñequita, por favor.”

  He shocked her, but she
wasn’t afraid, not of him. “I’m not,” she told him. “I’m just trying to process everything, but I love you, Santiago, no matter what’s happened. Whatever you did, I suppose you had to. It’s hard to take in, a little, but you don’t scare me.”

  His taut face sagged with relief. “Te amo. Yo haria cualquier costa por ti.”

  Sara never doubted he would. “I’d do anything for you, too.” She put her hand on his shoulder and he lifted it to his mouth. He kissed the back of her hand, light and gentle.

  “You already have, Sarita. I tore your life to hell when I knocked on your door, but you’re here, with me.”

  She laughed. “It wasn’t much of a life anyway. The only thing I miss is my shop.”

  Seconds later, realization hit with the force of a delivery van. She’d forgotten Posies and Pretties. For the first time since she’d bought the business, she hadn’t notified staff. On the rare occasions she’d missed work, she had always called Catie, her assistant. Catie must be frantic, wondering where I’m at. “Oh, sweet Jesus,” she exclaimed. It wasn’t a prayer.

  “What?”

  “I forgot about the shop! I should’ve called Catie, let someone know I won’t be in for a few days. If my staff heard about the shooting at the complex, they’ll be crazy.”

  His sigh echoed through the room. “You can’t call them, Sara.”

  “I’ll have to get in touch tomorrow.”

  “No.”

  She shook her head. “Santiago, it’s important. It won’t take long.”

  “M13 has people who can trace the call. If they do, they find us. I’m not in shape yet to fight, la muñequita. You can’t use your phone, not now, not at all. Don’t even answer it if it rings.”