Chapter13
Kelissa stood nervously in the foyer, waiting for David’s parents to come up the walkway, surrounded by men in black fatigues and wearing bulletproof vests. But it wasn’t the men with guns, the fact that the two older people were wearing protective gear, or the fact that Kelissa’s nerves were still frazzled even after a good night’s sleep. It was the fact that she was meeting David’s parents for the first time. As ready as she was to run away and never look back, she still cared what they thought about her.
They smiled when David opened the door to greet them, but they didn’t stop for hugs until they were completely inside the house and the door was closed behind them. Once they were within the safety of David’s home, they hugged David enthusiastically, then pulled Kelissa in for a hug before she realized what they were about to do. She hugged them back; first the older, frail father, then the boisterous, petite mother.
“We’ve been waiting for this day for a long time,” David’s father said.
“I’m happy to meet you, Mr. and Mrs. Rogers.”
“Please, call me Bill and call her Marta.”
“Thank you,” Kelissa said, introducing herself and making pleasantries with the pair, even though she was eager to get through this afternoon.
The stress was unreal, and waiting to find out the truth was eating her alive.
David must have felt her tension, because he looked at her and smiled gently, then motioned to his parents.
“I hate to rush the small talk, but there’s something we need to take care of, and I have lunch waiting in the formal dining room.”
“I hope it has a good view,” Marta said. “I’m a little tired of looking at our privacy fence in the safehouse.”
Marta sat down at the table, choosing a seat next to Kelissa instead of next to her son. Bill sat with David, who was sitting next to Kelissa. Kelissa felt Marta’s hand take hers, squeezing reassuringly, even though she appeared focused on the horse barn in the distance and the acres of open land.
“This view is perfect,” she said. “I haven’t seen anything like this in a long time.” She looked back at David, leaning in, her excitement obvious. “I can’t believe that they finally caught Chacon. I feel like freedom is almost within reach. I can’t wait to leave this damn witness protection.”
“That’s actually what I needed to talk to you guys about.” David looked at his father. “I know this is a lot to ask, but Kelissa ended up getting swept up in this mess and she almost died. I promised her that we would tell her everything, from the beginning, and then she could decide if she wants to stay here.”
“Are you two an item?” Bill asked.
“That’s up to Kelissa,” David said.
“I understand,” Bill said softly. “Well, I guess there’s no sense in beating around the bush. Do you want to ask questions, or should I just tell you how I remember it?”
“I’d like to hear the story behind all this,” Kelissa said. “I don’t even know what I would ask and where I would start. I want to know why David was involved with a drug cartel, and how I ended up in the trunk of a car in Tijuana, fighting for my life. I need those answers before I can move on.”
“Then, I should probably tell you everything,” Bill said, taking a sip of his wine and popping a piece of cheese into his mouth, then leaning back. “It all started when I went to work with my best friend Roy as a salesman at his dealership. The money was great and for the first time in my life. It took me a long time to realize that there was more going on than just selling cars, and I have to admit that I ignored my suspicions for a long time before I finally confronted Roy. When I found out that he’d paid for our relatively crime free existence on National City Boulevard by allowing the cartel to ship drugs in the trucks that brought our cars in, I was furious. It had started innocently enough, with the cartel just doing it, then offering to repair their ‘mistake’ by protecting us from break-ins and vandalism.”
“But it’s never that simple,” Kelissa offered.
“You’re pretty street smart for a young girl from Iowa,” Bill said.
“I’m originally from Chicago.”
“That explains it. Like I was saying, it started off with Salvador Chacon acting like it was an honest mistake and offering to make it up to Roy. Roy had just lost a bit of inventory to vandalism, and he was one more incident away from declaring bankruptcy—”
“I’m sure they did that on purpose.”
“Right again, but at the time, Roy didn’t even consider it. He was a good, honest man. It never occurred to him that people did dishonest things so that they could pretend to do honest things.”
Bill cleared his throat, taking a sip of the sparkling water instead of the wine, then clearing his throat again and continuing.
“When I confronted Roy, he told me he would put a stop to it. I believed him, and things were quiet for a long time. For years, actually. During that time, I met Marta, we had David, and life was too busy for me to watch Roy’s every move. I think my inattention was what did Roy in, because he started to change, little by little. Looking back, I realize that he was using some of the product, and that was bound to go over poorly with Chacon and his people. But at the time, I had no idea that he was going further off the deep end.”
“Addicts are usually master deceivers. Short of you watching him do a line of cocaine, there’s really no way you could have known.”
“That’s kind of you to say, Kelissa. But I should have known. He was my best friend since junior high. I had an obligation to him, just like we all do when we’ve been friends for years like that. I let him down, and I resent myself for failing him.”
Bill’s hand was shaking. He noticed Kelissa noticing his tremor and smiled apologetically.
“I’m almost seventy,” he said. “Things start to shake, rattle and roll when you get to be my age. But I’m also sad, remembering a good friend who went the wrong way. I buried my best friend when my son was only ten, and I had no idea that he’d left me everything. When I found out, I was sad, elated, worried, and just all around struggling to figure out how I felt. He left me an already lucrative business, and once it was handled properly, it turned into a multi-million-dollar business.”
Marta squeezed Kelissa’s hand again, and Kelissa knew that the story was about to get more intense.
“They left me alone for a long time, and even though I wasn’t providing them anything, the gangs were afraid to touch the business. You’d be amazed how much power Chacon has just by association. I wasn’t working for him, but I had in the past, and that was enough. Right around David’s sixteenth birthday, Chacon appeared again. Same ridiculous claim that they had accidentally put their shipment on my truck, and if I could overlook it, he would be forever in my debt.
I told him I wasn’t buying his bull, and that didn’t go over too well. I was about to threaten to call the cops when David pulled in his new car, beside himself about a scratch he’d gotten at the high school. Chacon had one of his men buff it out right then, like it was no big deal and we were all just hanging around, being car guys. David left, happier now that his car was pristine again, and Chacon dropped a bomb.”
“He threatened David,” she said.
“Exactly. I couldn’t risk my child, so I did what they asked, and I let things go that I shouldn’t have. I didn’t touch the stuff, and I was never directly involved. But I knew it was happening, and I didn’t stop it. It wasn’t until I was ready to retire and David was so eager to step in that I had to come clean with my family. David was almost twenty, and he was doing amazing things. Under any other circumstances, I would have been happy to give him the dealership. But I didn’t want to risk him getting involved, and after he pushed me incessantly about the dealership, I lost my temper and I blurted out everything.” Bill looked at Kelissa with sad eyes, remembering that day. “You have no idea how it feels to look the woman who you love and who has trusted you in the eye and tell her what had been going on. She fled Mexico to escape the cartels, and I brought her right back into it. But the disappointment on David’s face was the worst.”
David was still sitting quietly, but the more Bill talked, the more Kelissa realized that David had been honest when he’d downplayed his role with the cartel. Yes, he’d done something criminal and profited off it, but did he have any choice?
“When David took over the business, he had a meeting with Chacon, completely unfazed by the man. I’ve never been so proud in my life than I was in that moment. He told Chacon that they were going to make a plan to end the partnership, and Chacon told David that he was his partner until the business was sold or it was my head. David, being the smart man that he is, tolerated Chacon and his men until he found the perfect buyer. A man with loads of disposable income that would demolish the building almost overnight.
The man paid almost double the asking price in order to speed things along, giving David some extra money to work with, without Chacon being any the wiser. David waited until after Christmas, when Chacon was known to disappear for a few weeks to celebrate with his family, and then he went into action. He sold the business, sent the cars to auction the same day and he watched the man bring in a wrecking ball and tear the entire place down in one afternoon.
By the time Chacon got word, the building had been razed and any drugs that were hidden in it hauled off with the debris. They were laying sod when Chacon returned from his holiday, and he was furious. Without public record of the amount the buyer paid, Chacon believed David when he told him that he sold the land for one hundred thousand and had another one hundred thousand in profit after he sold off his inventory.
Chacon took all two hundred thousand and change, not realizing that David had sold all but two cars before the auction, plus the extra the buyer paid. That left David more than twice what he paid Chacon, and it ended our family’s obligation to Chacon, or so we thought.”
“The obligation never ends,” Marta said quietly. “The cartel takes and takes until people have nothing to give.”
Bill nodded in agreement with his wife.
“The payment David made to Chacon helped, and he thought it was settled, but Chacon is known to go back on his word.”
“And that’s how you ended up here,” Kelissa said.
“It is.”
Kelissa sat there for the longest time, letting it all sink in. As much as she hated to admit it, she had overreacted. David wasn’t involved in the way she’d thought he was, and in all reality, he’d saved his family and ended an involuntary partnership with a cartel. That was impressive, and far from criminal. She’d been wrong about the extent of his involvement, and she needed to apologize for that.
“I’m sorry about the things I said about the cartel and you being a criminal,” she said, and she saw David’s body flood with relief. “But, that doesn’t change the fact that I was in danger, and instead of being upfront with me, you decided to hide the truth. You had good intentions, and I know you thought you were protecting me, but I’m not some damsel in distress. In my career and my love life, I’m looking for a partner, not a protector. You made a choice for me that almost cost me my life. I know that’s not what you meant to do, but it doesn’t change the fact that you didn’t trust me.”
“I trust you,” he said, clearly confused.
“No, you didn’t. You had a problem, and that problem involved me from the beginning, right?”
David nodded.
“He made threats towards you with that first letter.”
“Which means he was watching you for a long time. He knew from day one that I was here, and you could have told me then that there was something from your past that could become a problem. You didn’t have to scare me right out of the gate, but you could have prepared me. If you would have told me that you had to do what needed to be done to protect your parents from a situation that a friend got them in,
I would have understood. But you didn’t trust that I could handle it. You were too worried that I would be traumatized or triggered or whatever, and you took away my choices. You left me vulnerable and worse yet, you left me completely ignorant to the danger I was in.
That, more than the cartel thing, is what gets me. David, I can’t have a man in my life that would rather let me be in danger than trust me to be an equal partner and to step up. I would have stood beside you and we would have been a united front. But you had me playing a bit part in my own life, and I can’t accept that.”
“What are you saying?”
“I’m saying that I need you to understand why I’m mad at you, and what you did. It’s not about the drugs or the kidnappings, or the fact that a man that I almost killed with a wrench was shot to death in front of me.”
“All that?” Bill said, shocked.
“All that in two days,” Kelissa said. “That’s the thing. All this could have been avoided, or I could have been ready. But you had to be the super hero. I like a man’s man, but I’m my own woman, and I need you to remember that.”
“I understand,” David said solemnly.
Kelissa looked at David’s parents and smiled.
“Y’all are great, let me tell you. I really like you both, and I’m glad you told me the story, because David did right by you, and I like that in a man. But I’m going to have to leave and I wish you both the best.”
“Where are you going?” David asked.
“I need some space to think about where I’m going from here,” Kelissa said. “There is a lot in my head, and I have to sort that out before I can do anything else. So, I’m going to use that ticket and go home and spend the holidays with my dad like I should. I shouldn’t have left him alone and it’s only a few weeks ‘til Thanksgiving.”
“Will you be back?” David asked.
“I don’t know. I’m sorry that I don’t have a better answer, but I just don’t know. I have all these thoughts and feelings spinning around inside me, and I just need to breathe, and I need to sleep without wondering if some drug dealer is going to kill me in my sleep or kidnap me again. Again,” she said for emphasis.
“I really do understand,” David said. “What about your stuff?”
“For now, I think I’m going to leave it, if that’s alright with you.”
“It’s fine with me.”
“That doesn’t mean I’m coming back. But I don’t know what I want to do, and I don’t want to lug around a bunch of suitcases while I figure myself out.” She looked at him, pity on her face as she watched the emotions play across his handsome face. “I’m sorry that it has to be this way, but I would like it if you took me to the airport.”
“I will,” he said. “When?”
“Tonight.”
“I don’t agree with this, but I understand. I don’t know what to say.”
“Don’t make me feel bad for leaving.”
“I won’t.”
“And that’s good enough. You don’t have to say anything else.”
He nodded, looking like he wasn’t sure how he felt, but he respected her choice and that was what mattered to Kelissa. More than anything, she needed to know that he respected her decisions.
She turned to his parents, who were standing nearby, Marta looking forlorn, and Bill just looking incredibly sorry for his part in everything. She hugged them both, lingering with Marta and inhaling the scent that only a mother could have. There was something besides the perfume, shampoos, and body washes that clung to a mom. Her own mother had the same quality, and hugging Marta reminded her of her own mother.
She was sad that she couldn’t stay longer.
David was silent as he helped her pack, then carried her bag to the Jaguar and got into the passenger seat.
She smiled, getting into the driver’s side and firing up the engine.
“I’m going to miss this car slightly less than I’m going to miss you,” she said, smiling even though she was dying inside.”
“You’re going to miss me?”
“Of course, I am,” she said, taking his hand and kissing his knuckles as he had so many times over the past two weeks. “But I need to work on myself before I can think about doing anything else, and right now, I’m not myself.”
She put the car in gear and took Sweetwater Road to Highway 54, then headed north on the I-5. They rode in silence, each lost in their own thoughts, and neither of them looking forward to saying goodbye.