Chapter Fourteen
Jordan
I didn’t know how to tell Chase that I had received a text from Salina and Salvador asking me to go hang out with them. My initial response was that I couldn’t go. But, when Salina texted me back and asked me to go again, I felt like I should at least think about it. She was the only person outside of Chase who I had met in the States. I needed to make an effort to get to know someone.
The last few days had been such a whirlwind of excitement, and I was pretty tired, though. I just couldn’t decide what I wanted to do.
“Chase,” I said as I came out of the shower wrapped in my towel. “Salina texted me and asked if I wanted to meet her for some bowling.”
“No,” he said firmly.
I had been prepared to tell her no again. But I had planned on saying it because I thought Chase needed me to help take care of him. The way he responded just put my defenses up right away. He wasn’t interested in discussing anything, he just said no at the first mention of her name.
“Well, I wasn’t exactly asking your permission.”
I stormed off toward the bedroom and put my clothes on. There was just something that I didn’t like about being denied something. It wasn’t as if I was asking his permission. I just wanted to talk the idea over with him. But for him to be such a jackass about it and outright tell me no, I couldn’t go? Well, that did not sit well with me at all.
“You don’t know who she is. You don’t know anything about her. She could work for Escabar for all we know,” Chase said from the living room.
“That didn’t seem to bother you when I flew halfway around the country to meet you. I didn’t know you, either. Yet I still came.”
“Jordan, it’s a bad idea.”
“I think there’s more to this story than you are telling me. Either you tell me why this Escabar guy is such bad news, or I’m going to go bowling with my new friend.”
He sat there and defiantly refused to talk. He could have confessed to what was really going on. He could have apologized for how he had talked to me. But he didn’t do any of that. I started to wonder if this was the Chase that I really hadn’t known yet. Was this the guy who had a hard time keeping a girlfriend? I could see why! No woman wanted to be with a controlling man who didn’t even want her to have friends.
I waited for him to sweetly ask me to stay. If he had said he needed help getting around the house or if he had said he was in a lot of pain, I would have gladly stayed to help him. But he didn’t. Instead, he turned mean. I waited for him to make any effort to show that he knew what he was doing was wrong. But he didn’t even make the effort.
“You are not going anywhere, Jordan. You don’t understand the dangers that are here in America.”
“Chase, I’m not stupid. And, in fact, being with you these last few days, I have gotten to experience more dangers than I could have ever imagined.”
“Don’t go.”
“I’m not going to stay here just because you don’t like the idea of me having a friend outside of you. This girl was just some woman new to town I met at the store. There is no reason to get all worried about her. I’m going to meet her at Kings Bowling Alley.”
I had had enough. I didn’t like the way Chase was trying to control me. It didn’t seem like something that he normally did with women, and I just couldn’t figure out why he was acting like that with me. But no matter what his reasons were, I wasn’t sticking around to argue with him. I hardly knew him at all, and I certainly wasn’t going to let him boss me around.
“Jordan, you won’t be able to find your way back here. Please, don’t leave. I’m sorry I argued with you,” Chase said as I opened the door.
“I’ll only be gone two or three hours. I’ll make sure to watch for anyone following me, and I promise I’ll be able to find my way back here. I have the GPS thing on the phone you gave me, so I’ll just punch the address in.”
I made my way out to the car and left without another word.
I felt bad for arguing with Chase, especially since he had recently had such a horrible day. But I didn’t want him to think he was going to be able to control my life. If things were going to work out between the two of us, then there needed to be some rules for how he was going to treat me. The number one rule had to be that he wasn’t going to boss me around or think that he could control my life. That just wasn’t going to happen.
As I drove away, I was scared to death that I wasn’t going to be able to find my way back. Chase was certainly right about that. It was starting to get dark out, and the road was hard enough to see in the light. But I made sure I had the address in my phone and just hoped that I would be able to find my way back using the GPS.
It was about more than me going to have fun with a friend. I hated that Chase was trying to boss me around. That just wasn’t the kind of guy I wanted to be with. I didn’t see why he was so worried about me. Obviously, I could take care of myself. I had made it all the way from Liechtenstein to Atlanta without dying. I was pretty sure I could enjoy an evening of bowling and make it back to him just fine.
***
I pulled up to Kings Bowling Alley on the west side of Atlanta. It was a really nice place, and any trepidation I initially had disappeared as I walked into the building. It wasn’t some dive of a location. Instead, the bowling alley looked like it was using state of the art technology and had a ton of families hanging out and enjoying their day.
“Jordan, over here!” I heard Salina call from one of the lanes.
She was sitting there with Salvador, but he seemed preoccupied with trying to set up the game on the high-tech electronics.
I was excited to see the two of them and already felt like we were friends. It wasn’t that often women actually came up and talked to me back home. Most of the time, they thought I was stuck up or that I was too pretty for them to talk to. I loved that Salina wasn’t afraid to talk to me and had gone out of her way to ask me to come hang out. It felt like a great start to a new friendship in America.
“Hey, how are you?” I asked.
We hugged and then sat down in the chairs behind Salvador. Salina was wearing a pair of jeans and a gray t-shirt, and she had already put on the bowling alley shoes. Salvador was still wearing his street shoes and didn’t seem interested in putting on the assigned bowling shoes, as they were still sitting on the chair behind him.
“I’m so good. We were just coming out to bowl tonight, and I told Salvador we had to invite you.”
Salina was extremely full of energy, and I was tired just listening to her. I just wasn’t the type of girl who was all bubbly and smiles all the time. Originally, when I met Salina, she didn’t strike me as that type, either. But as I listened to her talk, I was clearly wrong about her. She smiled and bounced with each word and seemed extremely chipper and happy.
“Thanks. I had a rough day. It is nice to get a little bit of a break,” I said, as I tried not to be too much of a downer.
We started our bowling game, and Salina and I took the time in between our turns to talk. She was a really nice woman, and I felt like we could actually be good friends. She wasn’t anything like Ana, so it was weird to be sitting and talking with Salina. Most of the time, I just kept thinking about Ana and wondering what she was doing and if she was all right.
“I work as a hair designer. You should let me do your hair for you some time,” Salina said as we watched Salvador bowl.
“Oh, yes. I would love that. I don’t usually do too much with my hair. Back home, I never had enough money to even get it professionally cut.”
“Where is home? You said you lived in Europe, right?”
Salina continued with her turn to bowl, and I sat and watched as she threw the ball perfectly and took down all of the pins. She seemed to be an expert at bowling, much better than I was. I had only been to a bowling alley a couple of times during my nursing training. It wasn’t a really popular activity back home. But I knew enough so I didn’t look totally clueless as I took on my turn throwing the ball down the aisle.
“Yes, I actually come from a very small country called Liechtenstein.”
“Oh, that’s cool,” Salina said as she sat down and sipped on her diet cola.
It was interesting that she didn’t have more of a response to hearing my country name. Typically, even very well-educated people didn’t really know that there was a country called Liechtenstein. I had expected her to at least ask me more about it, but she just continued on as if I had said I had been living in London or something.
I thought maybe she didn’t know what I had said and was just trying to be polite. Sometimes, people who weren’t familiar with my country just pretended as if they knew what I was talking about to avoid looking like they had no idea what countries were in Europe. Either way, we continued on with our game and our small talk.
“So, how did you two end up in Atlanta?” I asked.
“Oh, Salvador had a change in his work, and we needed to move here. You know, anything for your man.”
“I understand. A man’s work is very important to him.”
“What does your husband do?” Salina asked me.
“Oh, I’m not married. My boyfriend works for a manufacturing company in town. Nothing too exciting.”
I didn’t really think of Chase as my boyfriend or anything like that, but it was much easier to call him that than it would be to explain everything. To try and describe that I had met him on a dating site and flown in from overseas all in the last week seemed a little too much for anyone to understand.
“Is he nice? Have you been together long? Does he have money?” Salina asked.
Her questions came one after another without giving me anytime to answer them. I suddenly started to get worried about who Salina and Salvador were. Why did they care so much about my boyfriend and whether he made a lot of money or not?
It was the first time I had a really bad feeling about what was going on. Salina seemed really interested in my personal life, and Salvador had also stopped bowling and turned around to listen to our conversation.
But before I could answer Salina, she started to apologize.
“I’m sorry. I’m being nosy. I didn’t mean to ask so many questions. I was just trying to get to know you more.”
“It’s all right. I’m just not use to having to answer questions about Chase,” I said.
“Oh, your boyfriend’s name is Chase? That’s a cute name.”
I laughed. I never thought of his name as being cute. I guess it wasn’t really a manly name, but it did seem to suit him just fine.
“Yes, he’s a pretty good-looking guy,” I said as we both laughed.
I watched as Salvador pulled Salina toward him and whispered something in her ear. It didn’t seem to be anything good, because her smile turned to a frown rather quickly. Salina continued to listen to Salvador, and I just watched them for a minute to see what was going on.
“Salvador says he heard a guy named Chase Foster was working with a Mexican cartel in town here,” Salina said with a serious look on her face.
“You know Chase?” I asked Salvador.
“No, ma’am. I don’t know him personally. I just heard he was working with those guys. You better be careful. I heard he got on their wrong side and they were after him.”
“Some Mexican cartel is after him?” I asked.
I swallowed hard as I took in all the information that was coming at me. I still didn’t know who Salina and Salvador really were, but it was starting to worry me that they knew of Chase, or anyone from the Mexican cartel.
“I guess. I heard he stole the black book from one of the lead guys. There was a bounty on him for like a million dollars or something.”
I just sat there and looked at Salvador, and then over at Salina. If what they were saying was true, Chase was in a lot more trouble than I could have imagined. But how did these two even know anything about the cartel at all? They said they had just gotten to town.
The whole situation started to make me feel really uncomfortable. Something about the way Salvador and Salina were looking at me made me feel like I needed to get out of there and back to Chase.
“Did you see a black book around him lately?” Salina asked me.
My heart sank when I looked into her eyes. She didn’t want to be my friend at all. Chase was right about them. Salina and Salvador worked for Escabar, and I was stuck sitting there with them.
They could have killed me if they wanted to, but they didn’t. That seemed promising. They needed information from me. I thought back to every crime television show I had watched, while I tried to think of how I could get out of the situation without getting hurt. I certainly didn’t want any broken ribs like those that Chase had.
I shook my head back and forth to indicate that I had not seen the black book. But my mind raced back to the safe room and being stuck in there holding the black book while Chase was beaten up. My heart raced, I didn’t know what to do. I also had no idea where the black book was anymore. I assumed Chase had it, but I really didn’t know. For all I knew, it was still back at his house in the safe room.
“Jordan, you’re in danger with Chase. You should come with us. We can protect you,” Salina said as she stood up and put her arm around my waist.
I felt the cold barrel of a gun on my back, and I knew they weren’t asking me to go with them. They were kidnapping me. My mind raced as I tried to figure out what I should do. We walked up through the eating area and suddenly it hit me. I knew exactly what I should do.
I flung myself onto the floor and started pulling down everything I could from the tables around me. If they were going to kidnap me, they were going to have to do it with me making a huge scene. I knew enough about kidnapping from watching television shows, and I knew that I should not leave the first location if it were at all possible.
My body continued to kick and roll around the ground, and I knocked over as many tables and chairs as I could. There were drinks and food all over the place. I was trying to make as big of a scene as possible. I hoped that Salina and Salvador would just leave me alone. But as I looked up, I saw Salina standing over me. Eventually, the manager came up to us, and he grabbed my hand and pulled me up.
“I’m sorry, sir. She has seizures. I’ll get her out of her. She needs to rest,” Salina said to him. “I’ll kill you right here if you do something like that again,” she whispered in my ear.
Again, I felt the cold gun at my back, and I heard her cock the barrel back as we walked. I decided it probably wasn’t the best idea for me to fight anymore.
“I don’t know anything. I’m not going to be of any help to you,” I said as we moved out of the building and to the car that Salvador had waiting for us.
“Another scene like that and I’ll shoot you,” she said as she pressed my head down and pushed me into the car.
I wasn’t going to make another scene at all. It was too late now; I was in their car. Every television show and movie I had seen told me that I was going to be killed by the two of them. I wasn’t of any use to them at all – there was no reason for them to keep me alive. I knew what they looked like and who they worked for. It was all over for me.