Three Weeks Later
Crossing the border at Tijuana had not been a problem—Raven was 100 percent right. Mexico seemed eager to have me, and the lone female security guard only gave my passport a cursory glance, even as my heart threatened to burst out of my chest for fear of what would happen if she detained me.
Once across the walking bridge into Tijuana, I wanted to get away from the Baja peninsula quickly—too many Americans—so I caught the first bus south and just kept going until I got to the place I somehow always knew I was destined to be: Puerto Escondido.
The aging bus sputtered into the station just as the sun was starting to set. I walked a few blocks to the beach, bags still in hand. Birds were circling and singing overhead; a warm breeze kept me at just the right temperature. I watched the sun slowly melt into the horizon, and I was hooked. I would never leave.
The village was exactly what I had pictured from high school and more. Out of the way, still with fishermen leaving on boats every morning, but touristy too. It was casual and fun as heck, not as overrun with Americans as other Mexican hotspots. Bars and restaurants dotted the boardwalk and beach, nearly all of them with SE BUSCA AYUDA (help wanted) signs.
The first place I walked up to hired me on the spot. I couldn’t tell anyone how much money I actually had with me—still over $10,000 of Stephanie’s—or I’d be the next dead American tourist, so I lived in a cheap motel, went to work as a waitress, bought another phone, and started refreshing my Spanish. I even got a tattoo—real this time—of a compass. It reminded me to go where the wind blew.
It had been hard to keep up with news about myself and the murder. One, because the news was entirely in Spanish, and two, because I didn’t want to be obvious every time something came on about the high-profile case back in America. I also had a phone that wasn’t very high quality, and service was spotty. From what I could gather through the weeks, investigators had somehow figured out that an imposter was at the conference (I had no idea how they deduced that), and that the person had then gone back to Atlanta. They thought it was likely to be me, but also said they believed Trent had then killed me in a dispute over Stephanie’s money.
Ha! Let them run with that story. They hadn’t found my body yet, but they were sure it was coming at some point. Meanwhile, Trent rotted in jail. It made me smile.
The only fly in the ointment was that some guy with a poodle and a purple cape held his own press conference, dog in hand, to say he saw Stephanie and a woman in a tight top sitting on a bench near Trent’s apartment talking to each other the night Trent got back from the conference. He claimed he had secretly taken a picture of the women from down the street because he had a gut feeling we were not from that area and it would be important.
I remembered seeing the man in purple eye us as I went to hand Raven her money, right at the moment when she hissed at me not to do it there. Now this guy wanted to have his moment in the sun and share this little tidbit. But nothing seemed to have come of it, so I didn’t worry. Besides, an actress from LA was now being reported as missing, and news stations were covering that. I was moving out of the limelight.
As I went about my days in this new paradise, I looked for Raven in crowds and on the beach, just in case, but there had been nothing yet. Meanwhile, everything was so cheap down here, from food to clothes, it made me drool. I finally felt like a wealthy woman, and I loved every second of it.
On my way to work I would pass a small beach shack painted a brilliant turquoise blue. One sparkling sunny morning, an EN VENTA (for sale) sign was on it and I noticed two men inside doing some plastering. Gingerly, I walked up the wooden front steps and poked my head in, calling, “¡Buenos días!”
“Buenos días, señorita,” one of the men said, and then added when he saw me, “¿Puedo ayudarle?” (Can I help you?)
“¿Me permite ver?” (Would you allow me to look around?)
“Sí,” said the younger guy, looking at me eagerly. Even with my dark hair, I knew I looked different from most of the Mexican women down here. My skin was a pearly white, my eyes light.
They went back to plastering, chattering to each other in Spanish and stealing glances at me. I walked around, trailing my fingertips against walls and banisters, peering into a cozy bedroom and an office, imagining myself sitting on the porch gazing out over the sun and sand with a cup of warm, rich coffee. The place was delightful, and I could already see myself filling it with Mexican pottery and rugs, the bright colors so inviting to the eye.
A sea breeze swept past me as I stood at the window, and I knew that this was my future home. Quickly, I walked back to the workers.
“¿Cuánto cuesto?” (How much does it cost?) I asked.
“Trescientos treinta y siete mil” (337,000), said the younger man.
I sucked in my breath.
“Pesos,” he added, and I exhaled, doing the math. I had already learned to make fast calculations as a waitress. That was less than $19,000 US. It was absolutely doable! I could put a down payment on it and start collecting furniture! My eyes glistened.
“¿Americana?” the older man asked.
I hesitated. Should I lie? Yes, I should. The better to put some distance between myself and any questions.
“Canadiense. Soy de Toronto. Muy frío.” (Canadian. I am from Toronto. Very cold.) He smiled and I waved goodbye, visions of the cottage growing in my mind. I was having a blast mentally decorating it already.
At work a few nights later, a TV was on over the bar area, tuned to CNN International but with the volume down. Tourists and locals sat at the square tiki bar, brightly colored lamps waving in the breeze above their heads. Music pulsed from our sound system. Everyone was drinking and talking and having a generally amazing time. I loved this place. It was exactly what I had dreamed of when I left Glenn, exactly what I had hoped for when I followed Stephanie.
Now I had the power, the money, the freedom to make my own decisions. No man in my life, no ties to anything or anyone. Just serving up pitchers of margaritas and bowls of chips with the best guacamole I had ever had, along with fajitas, burritos, enchiladas, and anything else our creative cooks whipped up.
No one bothered me down here. I felt safer and happier than I think I ever had before. Each morning, I would go for a long walk on the beach, stopping to pick up shells, which I kept on the dresser in my motel room. Maybe I would put them together into some sort of collage for the new cottage. I was imagining I could put that down payment on the place within a week or two.
And then …
I looked up at the TV. There was a picture of Raven.
With the volume down and the subtitles on, all I saw were flashes of some Spanish words I knew and some I did not.
Trying to look busy wiping down shot glasses but flitting my eyes back and forth frantically to the TV, I saw enough to know that Raven had been arrested in a passport bust the feds were calling the “Hurricane Passport Ring” in Atlanta. My eyes squinted to read more as the subtitles came flying across the screen.
It looked like Raven had worked out some sort of plea deal by telling police she had gotten me, currently one of the most notorious women in America, a passport to use at Tijuana to cross the border.
The blood drained from my whole being, and I dropped a shot glass, hearing it shatter on the floor. Kneeling hurriedly, I grabbed to pick it up without looking, and a broken shard of glass punctured my finger.
“Shit,” I said and looked down at the finger. No one at the bar area seemed to notice, though. Salsa music continued pumping, and a few drunk tourists were up dancing.
Sticking my finger into my mouth and tasting the metallic tang of blood, I looked at the TV again. A picture of my fake passport was being shown on-screen along with my fake name: Erica Birchfield. Oh no, oh holy hell. This couldn’t be happening. My eyes darted to the name tag pinned to my shirt: ERICA.
How could Raven do this? How could she rat me out? She told me she had my back. She took my money. We had known each other for decades. We were friends. Anger spiraled into my whole chest. I felt like a dragon that could literally spit fire.
Looking at the TV again … there was now a picture of Allison on the screen, taken hours before her death. She was wearing the black catsuit with rhinestones, whiskers perfect, her hair shiny as a mink.
One of Allison’s friends must have taken the picture. How did it get on the news? The only thing I could think of was that Drake’s brother gave it to Raven when he asked her for any tips she might have, and Raven gave it to the police when she turned me in. Raven had never mentioned the photo when she told me about seeing Drake’s brother in the bar. Another layer of betrayal.
But suddenly …
It got worse.
On-screen next was a picture of me from our high school yearbook. The video switched back to the announcer, and she began talking. The Spanish subtitles on the screen started to swim in front of my eyes so quickly that I couldn’t digest them. I couldn’t process what was happening. The room swayed.
Raven. Did. This. To. Me. She. Told. Them. She. Ratted. Me. Out.
Nausea overtook me.
The words Raven had said as we sat on the bench by Trent’s house came storming back:
I do what I have to do to make money … and to keep out of jail. Been there once. I will do anything not to go back, and I do mean anything. I’d turn in my own mother if I had to. It ain’t easy to make a living, but I find ways. Just gotta stay one step ahead of the feds, you know?
She sold me out to the feds to keep herself out of jail. Told them everything. We had been RAJE: Raven, Anna, Jasmine. Now rage was all I felt.
Calm down, Jasmine. Allison’s death was twenty-seven years ago. There’s not one shred of evidence against you, I counseled myself.
But as for Stephanie’s murder? This was very, very bad for me. If Raven shared all of the text messages I had sent her, plus the story of her spiking Trent’s drink and faking pictures at Centennial Olympic Park and the phony passport, I would be in deep trouble.
I had to get out of here, had to change my hair and my name again, to flee as fast as I could.
Where could I go? The passport was no good now. I couldn’t even cross farther south into Guatemala without it likely being flagged. I was stuck in Mexico as a fugitive, a wanted woman, my picture with a black pixie haircut all over the news. It was only a matter of time.
Unless …
I looked over at the drunk tourists dancing, all oblivious to their purses sitting back at the tables off to the sides. A woman about my height caught my eye, arms flailing overhead as she moved. She had short hair like me, but platinum blond and in a different spiky style. It would take a mountain of hair dye, but I could turn black hair into blond if I tried hard enough. If I had her ID, I could do a lot of things, even more with her credit cards.
I knew where she had been sitting because I had served her earlier. I began to drift toward that spot and to her purse, which remained on the table. I kept my eyes on her, but she was oblivious, dancing away. If I could just grab her items … But no, this would never work. She would notice things were missing, right?
Unless …
No, Jasmine, I scolded myself.
You can’t. You are done with that.
But you’re next to an ocean, the other part of me thought. And there’s a luggage store in the shopping district. And a pillow on this woman’s bed in her hotel. Her key card was likely in her purse. Tourists went missing in Mexico on a very regular basis; people would suspect a drug deal gone wrong or a spiked drink from a shifty male bartender, not little old me.
I conjured up the image of a giant suitcase, of shoving her into the ocean, taking her stuff and escaping again. My fingers grazed her purse and tiptoed their way to the zipper, which I began to slide open. She danced on, throwing her head back and laughing.
But just as my hand began descending to the promised land of her wallet, I felt a hard tap on my shoulder.
Somehow, I knew it wasn’t just the bar manager needing something. I turned slowly, my stomach a swamp pit.
There stood two men and a woman.
The men were unfamiliar.
But the woman …
It hit me with such electric force that I felt as if I were taking a bath and someone had thrown in a plugged-in hair dryer.