Zaul nudged me, awaiting my response.
I brushed him off. “Yeah. I’m good.”
He knew better. My face betrayed me. I was a long way from good. Even an inexperienced player like Zaul could read that bluff. I had to tell her. If I wanted any relationship with Leena, I needed to open the door on the closet in me that held this secret. Watching her dance and twirl and sweat and sing, I realized how completely I’d fallen for Leena. Evidence to the depth of my fall was my 180-degree gut reaction, which was not to keep my life a secret, but to tell her everything. Tell her now so there’d be no chance that I couldn’t and wouldn’t hurt her later.
I made up my mind that when the right chance presented itself, I’d open the door and turn on the light. Tell her everything. And save her from the truth of me.
Problem was, I never got the chance.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
I’d often heard the warning but never really understood: For every action, there’s an equal and opposite reaction. Valle Cruces was holding a funeral for one of Nicaragua’s most beloved farmers. Word spread. Carrying with it the news that two gringos—one young with tattoos, recovering from a beating—were on the mountain and had been instrumental in this. Evil men reacted to that news differently from the majority of the population. You’d think that after looking over my shoulder for more than a decade that I’d have thought about that, but I had not. It had never crossed my mind. And while the majority of Nicaraguans joined the party and filled themselves at the table and drank their fill and laughed and sang and danced, others were not quite so happy. And those select few hid beneath the mango trees.
I never saw them coming.
* * *
Paulo waved me toward the punch table, where they’d run out of punch. I grabbed two five-gallon buckets and headed to the well. Zaul followed a few steps behind. Just beyond the lights of the festivities, where the road narrowed and leveled out slightly, I heard a shuffling. I thought maybe Zaul had stumbled but he had not. When I turned around, he was smiling. Whistling even. Stepping from rock to rock in the moonlight. I thought it might be kids playing in the trees. It was not.
Three muscled bodies appeared in front of me, one on either side made five, each held something in his hands that looked like a stick of some sort. Maybe one carried a machete. Without so much as a sound, the guy in front of me—either the leader, the most brazen, or both—swung for the bleachers, threatening to send my head with it, but I ducked, turned, and told Zaul, “Run!” When I did, two more appeared behind me—their silhouettes suggested they were bigger. While the first guy had acted prematurely and mistimed his swing, they were patient and timed theirs perfectly. The next blow took me off my feet and I felt something break in my face. The pack quickly followed and pounced on me. I felt something slice the side of my head, then again on my face, followed by a third deeper cut above my eye. I tried to stand, to make an escape, but my eye had swollen shut so fast I couldn’t see. Something hard smashed down across my collarbone, snapping it and dislocating my shoulder. I rolled, pushed myself up on my good arm, but I couldn’t see out of either eye. They used my hesitation to their advantage, regrouped, and somebody struck me from behind.
You know all those movies where the outnumbered and overmatched underdog gets hit from behind and then manages some Herculean return to stand back up, fend off, and conquer the marauding horde? As if the head-splitting concussions and consequent beating only served to make him more mad, more dangerous, and finally release the superhuman character that’s resided in his soul his entire life? Well, forget that. There’s a reason Hollywood deals in make-believe and all the fight scenes are staged. I didn’t know much about my present situation, but I did know that there were too many. They were too strong. And they’d gotten the jump on me. A quick inventory told me that I wanted no part of them. Further, following the skull-splitting pain from my shoulders up, all I wanted to do was crawl in bed and pull the covers over my eyes.
Then they hit me again, and I didn’t have much choice.
* * *
When I woke, people were screaming and I had a sense that lights were shining on me, but when I tried to focus, to open my eyes, I could not. I could move my fingers and toes, but my head was splitting and I could not stay conscious. I kept fading in and out. Someone was cradling me, screaming incoherently, holding my head while someone else was putting pressure on my face. In the background, I heard a truck engine. Leena’s voice sounded close in my ear. She was saying, “Stay with me,” but I had no control over my ability to do so. My mind was a fog. Her voice was cracking, and I felt like someone was pouring warm water over my head. Finally, I heard Zaul. He was screaming. Crying.
I reached out a hand, and somewhere in the dark, he took it. He couldn’t stop apologizing. I tried to quiet him but he was inconsolable. Finally, I pulled him to me, put my hand on his head, and pulled his hair, bringing his face inches from mine. “Zaul!”
“Uncle Charlie, look what they—”
Leena was whispering to someone over my shoulder. I think it was Paulo. She was in midsentence. “…die in Managua. They’re not qualified to—” Some screaming drowned them out. “…bleed to death on the way there.”
Chaos had set in all around us. “Zaul….Call your dad. Send the jet.” Blood puddled in my mouth, making it difficult to talk. “Land it”—I pointed west—“on the highway.” I spat. I meant to say “Get me to Miami,” but the only word that actually made it out of my mouth was “Miami.”
Leena understood that I was actually making pretty good sense. If he made the call, I could be in Miami in three hours, and if we started driving now, we wouldn’t be in Managua for almost four with no guarantee that they’d admit me or even be able to see me when I got there. Knowing what I was trying to do, she turned her attention to him.
“Zaul, call your dad.”
I turned toward Leena’s voice. Something was choking me so I again said one word, “Miami?”
She was crying now, too, and shaking her head, “Charlie, I don’t—”
I heard a ruckus a few hundred yards off. It sounded like a lot of men hollering in very loud voices. In a few short minutes, I’d lost a lot of blood. I pressed her hand against my face. “Just keep me—”
“I don’t—” She wasn’t making much sense, either. No one was making sense.
I was growing dizzy, and it was getting more and more difficult to focus. I reached in my pocket, fumbled for my phone, and offered it to whomever. A hand took it from me. Leena’s, I think. And I tried to recite Colin’s number.
I passed out shortly thereafter.
Details are sketchy after that. I remember a bumpy ride in a truck and something cold on my head and face. I remember Leena wrapping my head in something. I remember Isabella crying and I remember the sound of Paulo’s voice, but I couldn’t hear what he said. I remember bright lights, the feeling of being cradled in someone’s arms, my head pressed to their chest, and the sound of their heart pounding real fast in my ear. I remember a voice whispering to me, but I couldn’t understand what it said and I’m not sure I could make out who the voice belonged to—though it seemed familiar. Then I remember the feeling of being carried, lying down flat, and then the floor tilting up and my being pressed back hard against the floor. Leena was crying, pleading with anybody who would listen, and her voice was cracking. Urgency rippled through the air like electricity.
In a final moment of lucidity, aided by what was probably my last shot of adrenaline, I placed my finger on her lips to quiet her. Leena pressed her face close to mine and held both my cheeks in her hands. I felt her breath on my face. She was shaking and her hands were slippery. “Sometimes, we pay for our sins.”