“What the hell are these? Huge oysters?” He picked up one of the three flat gray discs on the plate just set down in front of him. “Frisbees? UFOs?”
“They’re gorditas, silly, made from blue corn.”
He tilted his head at her. “Pretty sure I’ve never been called silly.”
“I just mean, they’re obviously not oysters because they’re soft. UFOs.” She shook her head with a chuckle and dug into hers.
For a moment he was caught up in her smile and the way she sank into the pleasure of her food. Before she caught him, he picked at the round gray things, watching her tear it open to reveal chicken and red and green peppers tucked inside. She lifted it up and made its mouth open. “See, no aliens inside.”
“That you know of.”
She laughed then, pretending to scrutinize the interior. “Green pepper alien? Onion aliens? I don’t see any eyes looking back, so I think we’re good.” She made its mouth move. “Come on, eat me.”
Damn, if some of his brothers were here, they’d have lost themselves on that potential verbal bomb. Him, he’d never have any untoward thoughts like that.
The proprietor came over and asked hesitantly, “Is everything okay?”
Now Rath and Neesa both laughed. They’d obviously worried the guy. “It’s delicious!” she said. “We’re just playing.”
Relieved, he went back to the hut. Rath was a little startled at the fact that they had, indeed, been playing. Possibly flirting, but he wasn’t so sure of that. Nah, let’s not go there.
She took another bite, simultaneously brushing a strand of hair from her face. They’d chosen a seaside restaurant—okay, that was a loose word for what was essentially a shack, but that’s what she called it—right on the beach.
He dared to take a bite before she ribbed him for being a wuss. He could see it was coming, her grin as she watched him.
It was good, an explosion of flavors, corn and chicken and spices just shy of being hot. He hunched over his plate as some of it fell out. Thankfully at that moment, she’d glanced out over the immense stretch of golden sand, watching the scattered people wandering around. The guy behind the counter, and cook as well, had said that they were about to enter into high season. But the travel advisories cautioning international tourists against visiting the region hung over everyone’s head. From what they’d seen so far, the place seemed pretty safe, with no shady characters. Just people trying to sell you food and hair braiding—yeah, even him—and jewelry.
“I just want to be a tourist tonight,” Neesa had said as they’d approached the shack. Sometimes she looked as carefree as one, taking in the sights and lifting her face to the breeze as she was now. Other times she looked pensive, worried.
He sort of had the same back and forth going on, he realized. Enjoying the teasing moments with her when he forgot why he was there. And what he was really doing there. What he wasn’t telling her.
They finished their gorditas and the bowl of elote corn they’d shared, and he threw away the garbage as she stepped farther onto the beach. She’d removed her sandals, and they were now looped over her fingers as she sank her feet into the sand. “You need to feel this sand,” she said when he stepped up next to her. “It’s so warm and soft.”
He kicked a little with the toe of his boot. “Yeah, nice.”
She frowned. “Stick in the mud.”
“That’s me. I’ll tell ya, I’ve been stuck in a lot of mud in my lifetime.” Also had my share of sand in the desert. I hate sand. Big time. But he pushed away those images and tried to embrace his role as a tourist with his girlfriend.
“Let’s go walk the escollara.” She started heading away.
Of course, he followed. “The what?”
“It’s a pier that juts out into the water. We spent a lot of time there when we visited. My father rented fishing gear, and we spent a day catching fish and giving them to the locals.”
He could see two rocky lines that made a channel leading out to the Gulf in the distance, a fishing boat coming back between them. They passed a booth where a woman waved a deep green dress at them. “Senorita, this will look beautiful on you. Only ten American dollars.”
As soon as Neesa paused, the woman pretty much pushed it into her hands and held out the edges to show her the tie-dye pattern. “I don’t know,” Neesa said. “I only brought practical clothes on this trip.” But she was holding up the dress, taking it in with a hint of longing.
“We’ll take it,” he said, pushing a twenty at her. “Keep the change.”
“Gracias! You may put the dress on here, in the back.”
Rath walked to the makeshift dressing room with her, checking it out subtly before giving her a nod. Neesa met his gaze. “Gracias,” she said to him, disappearing into the folds of fabric. When she came out, the flowy dress grazing her at mid-thigh, he had to catch his breath. Well, damn.
She had her shorts and shirt bundled in her hand, but the woman raced over with a plastic bag for her to put them in. “So beautiful!”
Rath caught himself nodding in agreement. Because that’s what a boyfriend would do, least he guessed it was. Neesa spun around, watching the uneven hemline flow out. “I love it.”
She put the sandals in the bag, too, and he took it as they headed back on their mission. “I haven’t felt feminine since I got here.” She kept fluffing the soft fabric. “This is nice.”
“It looks good on you.” Really good.
She walked down to the water line and splashed in the surf, looking like a tourism advertisement. Seabirds ran back and forth with the waves, scattering around Neesa before taking up their search for food in the wet sand again once she’d passed. She tucked her hair behind her ear as she looked at him, a reasonable distance from the waves. “I suppose you won’t get your feet wet either.”
“You suppose correctly. I’m a backwoods guy, not a beach guy. Mud, all day long.”
“Well, you could try being a beach guy, just to see if it feels good.”
“This feels good right here.” Watching you with the late afternoon sun picking up the red highlights in your hair, the glow of your skin…
She shook her head. “A pity.”
Heh, if she only knew. He walked even with her as they approached the esco-whatever. Jumbled boulders flanked the red concrete walkway leading far out into the water, setting a line between the blue water and the darker water of the pass. She put her sandals back on when they stepped onto the walk, and they moseyed on down like the others sprinkled along the way.
“I advise my clients to look at a vista like this and breathe into it, to feel the expansiveness fill your soul. To, in fact, feel your expansiveness meld into it.” She widened her arms to encompass the sky, or the, uh, expansiveness. Then she held onto his arm to stop him. “Take a deep, slow breath and become the sky, Rath.”
He gave her his what the hell look, but she was too busy expanding or whatever she was doing. He watched peace and joy transform her expression as her chest filled with her inhalation. She held it for a few seconds before releasing it. Weirdly, watching her gave him a feeling like a balloon filling in his chest. Maybe that was what she was talking about. It didn’t help—or maybe it did—that she was still holding onto his arm.
She released the last of her breath and turned to him. “Did you feel it?”
“Yeah, I did.”
She narrowed her eyes. “Did you do it?”
“Something like it.”
“It’s a start. Do you ever loosen up? Just let go, have fun. Be silly?”
“I let loose by rolling down the highway on my Harley at ninety miles an hour, the wind buffeting me, feeling free.”
She was studying his face in a way that made him want to twitch. “Yes, there it is. Now, can you get to that feeling without attaching it to anything?”
“Nope. I can think of a few things that make me feel that way, but I can’t think of no thing that makes me feel that way. If that makes sense.” He put his hand on top of hers and started walking toward the end of this thing again. “Like watching you in that dress, for example. Not in a leering kind of way, just the bounce in your walk and the contentment on your face and the way your hair flows in the breeze makes me feel good.”
A mix of emotions crossed her face as she seemed to absorb his revelation, luckily none shocked or insulted. Just a soft “Mmm,” as she looked out over the blue waters. “Is that why you bought it for me?”
“Yep. I could see that you wanted it. But you probably wouldn’t buy it for yourself because you’re here for serious business and that dress is not serious. I think there was maybe a part of you that needed that dress.”
Now she turned to him. “You’re pretty insightful.”
“For a backwoods guy,” he added with a grin.
“Nah, just for a guy.”
It was nice, being silly and playful. He’d never been this way with a woman before. He hated to admit that most of his encounters were pretty straightforward with no foreseeable outcome.
And it’s the case here, too, idgit, just in case you forgot how you’re lying to her.
Yeah, yeah.
But he’d started this walking with her arm tucked under his thing, and they’d fallen into a comfortable silence as they walked the ever-loving long path to the end. He hadn’t even thought about what he was doing; he’d just done it. It had felt natural, involuntary. Good.
But reaching the end where it widened into a rectangle, a lighthouse-type tower in the center, seemed the logical place to release her. Large concrete squares surrounded this section, maybe to keep people from getting into the water or fishing, but that sure as heck wasn’t stopping the three guys precariously picking their way along them with fishing poles in tow.
“It’s gorgeous!” She spread her arms and spun in circles, her face to the sky.
He watched her until she came to a stop, once again caught up in her just being in the moment, then went back to surveying the people around them. A family with two kids, an older couple holding hands, and the teenagers who were fishing. She studied each group, the peace momentarily gone. Was one of these people here grab her? He hated that she was probably wondering that. But he’d already assessed them. No threat here.
He sank to one of the benches where it was easier to observe. A few minutes later, she sat beside him, stretching out her legs.
“No one’s going to grab you here.”
“What?”
“Looked like you were worried.”
She relaxed back against the bench. “Sometimes, like when we were walking across the beach, I can forget what happened. But then it comes back like a wave washing over me. One of those boys was looking at me, and it triggered me.”
“Well, you’re pretty, so you’ll get looks. And logically, grabbing you and dragging you all the way back would be quite a feat. But you can tell what people’s motives are. If someone’s up to no good, he or she will have this dark intent in their eyes, and they’ll be taking in not only you but everything around you. They’re calculating how they can approach, and they’re rehearsing what they’re going to do.”
She shuddered. “I guess you’ve done a lot of assessing.”
“A lot. My brother was good training early on. Was he going to attack me? Was my pa going to bang my head against the wall? How much had he had to drink? Sometimes I could see the tension escalating between my dad and my mom, and I knew she’d be about to say something that would set him off. Like that Cherokee spirit would fire up in her. But when it wasn’t the time for her to take a stand, I’d divert her.”
“You were a good son. How old were you when she passed?”
“Twenty-two. I wasn’t there when she died.”
“That must have made you feel awful. Guilty.”
Damn, she was good at extracting things out of him. And if he were honest, something about her made him more open. “As hell.”
She dug inside her purse and pulled out a baggie with two white cookie things in it. She opened it and held it out to him. “Do you like coconut?”
“I suppose so.”
“Here, have one. I made them at the house. They’re cocadas, shredded coconut, sugar, milk, and cinnamon. My mamá and I cooked together, and she taught me her Colombian favorites. She wanted to preserve her culture within herself and with me. We’d make patacones, which are fried plantains, fried fish and beans and rice, and she’d talk about the little seaside restaurants in Cartagena, shacks really, that she loved to go to, where you’d eat fish that had just come out of the ocean, with your toes in the sand. Like we just did, without the fish. I’m so glad I have those memories. When I was a kid, we had a Sunday morning tradition of making pancakes together. We’d try different shapes, mostly animals, and she’d make me guess what each one was. I’m not sure if it was my guessing skills or her pancake drizzling skills, but I was wrong most of the time.”
“Which obviously didn’t matter because you enjoyed it anyway,” he said, taking in the soft glow on her face.
“Ah, it frustrated me when I was a kid, but looking back, all those wrong guesses don’t matter a bit. We’d laugh at how off I was. She sprinkled sugar and cinnamon in the batter, and they tasted so good that I forgot about being wrong. How about you? Any special memories with your mother?”
He remembered how Neesa had told the hotelier that the loss of their mothers bonded them, and she was right. Her sentimental memories made him think of his own. “When my younger brother came along, she would hold me and tell me I was still special, even though I was now a middle kid. She’d tell me how important I was, like the lunch meat in the sandwich. She would get me involved in Carroll’s caretaking, making me feel part of it, closer to him. Me and Sam fought like dogs, all territorial. Ma didn’t want me to feel usurped the way I guess Sam did when I came along.”
“She sounds like a good woman. I’m sorry you lost her.”
He only nodded, realizing he didn’t let himself think of her too often. Getting sentimental wasn’t his thing. That moving forward philosophy of his. “Me, too.” To distract himself, he took a bite of the cookie, a different kind of explosion of flavors. “It’s good.” And as important as it had been for her to take them with her, she was sharing one with him. “Thanks.”
While he finished the cookie and just sat there enjoying the atmosphere and her company, he was able to push out all the bad stuff in his head. The reason he was here, his deception, and how complicated it was going to get if they found Dan Federson. And if he was guilty of treason.
Two raccoons emerged from the concrete squares, ambling toward them. “Uh oh, we have company,” she said with a grin. “I remember that people fed them.” She leaned down as the two gray critters came up close, polite bandits in this case. She fished in the bag and handed one a piece of cookie. It took it in a clapping sort of way with its paw-hands. The second one came close now, and Rath picked a piece of his cookie and handed it to the raccoon. When they were finished, they looked at them, as though asking more?
“Sorry, we’re done,” she said with a shrug.
She twitched at the sound of Carlton’s voice saying, “Hey, it’s your lil’ bro! I’m calling, so quick, answer! Hurry up, before it goes to voice mail. I sure ’nuff don’t want to end up there.”
He lifted his phone to show her. “My brother recorded his own ring tone for me.” He accepted the video call because he couldn’t not answer his little bro. “Hey, what’s up?”
His round, happy face filled the screen. “We shot a buck today! Look!” The camera panned to the deer, hung up in the backyard. “I shot him, Rath! Me!”
“That’s great. You go with Sam and Pa?”
“Yep, but it was me that got the kill shot. We’re gonna make sausage, and I’m saving you some. I’m hiding it,” he added in a whisper. “So’s they don’t eat it all. They’ll just think I ate it.” He grinned.
Dang, Rath loved this kid. “You’re the best.”
“How’s it going in Mexico? You found that guy yet?”
Rath knew it was pretty safe to let Neesa hear anything on the call since no one knew enough about what he was doing to out him. “We got some leads, but not yet. This is where I am.” He stood and panned around to show Carlton the Gulf and the pier.
“Wow, purdy!”
“And this is the man’s daughter, Neesa.”
“Wow, even purdier!” He waved exuberantly. “Hi, Neesa! I’m—”
“This is my baby brother,” Rath cut in. Since his name was Carlton.
She waved the same way back. “It’s nice to meet you.”
“This is the deer I shot.”
She tried to hide her pity for the beast beneath an impressed nod. “Very nice.”
“You can have some deer sausage, too. You’re coming back with Rath, right?”
“Um, probably not, but thank you all the same. You’re a good brother.”
“Aw, thanks. Rath’s the best. He’s going to move me away from here when he’s done. Exceptin’ if he dies.”
At her alarmed look, Rath added, “You know, every mission can be the last.”
“Nobody better with a rifle,” Carlton said with a deep nod. “Good thing he’s got ice cold runnin’ through his veins, or he’d have shot Sam probably a hundred times by now.”
“He ain’t wrong,” Rath muttered to her.
Carlton looked behind him, then back. “Pa’s coming. You want to talk to him?”
“No. We have to go anyway.”
“Bye, Rath. I love you.”
“Love you, too, lil’ bro. Be safe.”
“Bye, Neesa!”
He disconnected, and Rath turned to see a mushy smile on her face. “He brings out the soft in you.”
He wanted to dispute it, but heck, it was true. “He had a TBI—traumatic brain injury when he was fifteen. My shitball brother Sam took him on a wild ATV ride in the woods, and Carroll got thrown and hit a tree headfirst.”
“Oh, no.”
“Had to split open his skull to ease the swelling. But as with a lot of TBIs, he’s never been the same. As you can see, he has the personality of a ten-year-old.”
“I’m so sorry. Your brother must feel guilty.”
“Nope.” Rath felt his mouth tighten with the old anger. Yeah, the seed of it buried deep inside him. “He pretty much blamed my brother for not holding on tight enough. And we all had to lie to the hospital staff that Carroll had taken the ATV out by himself.”
She scooted just a little closer, her thigh pressing up against his. “That must have made you angry on so many levels.”
No use denying it to a therapist. “’Bout a hundred.”
“Have you talked to your family about it?”
“They’re lost in all their excuses and justifications. Whenever I bring it up, they say I’m the one, as you said, holding onto the past. But you’re right. When something’s not resolved, it’s hard to let it go.”
“You have to forgive them to release it.”
“No way. Not until they make it right.”
She put her hand on his thigh. “And how could they do that?”
“By Sam admitting he was at fault. My dad admitting he was wrong for covering it up. That’d be a start.”
She leaned against the back of the bench, pulling her hand away. “Do you feel at all responsible?”
“I wasn’t even there.” But he took a breath to soften the hardness of those words. “Yeah, maybe. Because I wasn’t there. I’d gotten the hell away by then, enlisted.”
“Maybe you start with forgiving yourself, Rath.”
“You’re good, Neesa.” He stood, needing to stop this conversation that was getting way too personal. Too close. “Your clients are lucky to have you. Ready to go?”
“You don’t have to shut me out just because I got too deep.”
“But I do.” He tempered that with a soft smile. “I’m just not an opening up kind of guy.”
“Really? I’d never have guessed.”
“Being with someone who can read me so well is damn disconcerting.”
“Sorry, I can’t help myself. I want to help people, even the ones who don’t come to me for it. I’ll try to hold back with you.”
“Thanks.” I’ll try to hold back with you, too. He wanted to say that for some reason. Thankfully, he held back.