[English] The Viper

Author: Kele Moon

Garnet County
January 1, 2014
A Garth Brooks song played on the radio. The windshield wipers worked overtime pushing away the snow as Katie drove back home after the New Year’s Eve party held at her brother’s place. The roads were empty at two a.m. Not that they were ever too crowded in her small hometown of Garnet.
Katie had gone to her brother Chris’s just in case her ex tried to stop by the house after he sent her flowers for New Year’s Eve, asking for a second chance. Her divorce had been two years of hell, and Grayson still didn’t want to let go.
Now she was stuck driving back home through the early stirrings of what looked to be a nasty winter storm. Damn Grayson. She would’ve been happier spending the night on her couch with a bottle of wine and Ryan Seacrest to keep herpany.
Determined to enjoy the first vestiges of the New Year, she turned up the radio. She started thinking of her mother and deliberately sang along. Her mother used to love Garth Brooks.
Katie didn’t notice the blue car behind her until it was practically on top of her. That little car just seemed to appear out of nowhere. It had to be doing ninety at least. On a snowy, two-lane road that was nothing but sharp turns. Were they crazy?
She expected them to pass her. Even if it was a two-lane road, people did it all the time. Katie certainly wasn’t going to speed up in a snowstorm to make a lunatic driver happy. A chill ran down her spine when the driver continued to ride her tail rather than pass. For one moment she thought it could be Grayson, but this driver was noticeably swerving. Grayson didn’t drink.
She slowed down, hoping the driver would pass, but they just remained plastered to Katie’s bumper in a way that made her feel bullied. Her instincts were...

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Chapter One

Garnet County

January 1, 2014

A Garth Brooks song played on the radio. The windshield wipers worked overtime pushing away the snow as Katie drove back home after the New Year’s Eve party held at her brother’s place. The roads were empty at two a.m. Not that they were ever too crowded in her small hometown of Garnet.

Katie had gone to her brother Chris’s just in case her ex tried to stop by the house after he sent her flowers for New Year’s Eve, asking for a second chance. Her divorce had been two years of hell, and Grayson still didn’t want to let go.

Now she was stuck driving back home through the early stirrings of what looked to be a nasty winter storm. Damn Grayson. She would’ve been happier spending the night on her couch with a bottle of wine and Ryan Seacrest to keep her company.

Determined to enjoy the first vestiges of the New Year, she turned up the radio. She started thinking of her mother and deliberately sang along. Her mother used to love Garth Brooks.

Katie didn’t notice the blue car behind her until it was practically on top of her. That little car just seemed to appear out of nowhere. It had to be doing ninety at least. On a snowy, two-lane road that was nothing but sharp turns. Were they crazy?

She expected them to pass her. Even if it was a two-lane road, people did it all the time. Katie certainly wasn’t going to speed up in a snowstorm to make a lunatic driver happy. A chill ran down her spine when the driver continued to ride her tail rather than pass. For one moment she thought it could be Grayson, but this driver was noticeably swerving. Grayson didn’t drink.

She slowed down, hoping the driver would pass, but they just remained plastered to Katie’s bumper in a way that made her feel bullied. Her instincts were on high alert. It was clear this person was trying to scare her.

And they were obviously drunk.

She turned on her blinker, intent on pulling off the road, but before she could, the driver sped up and finally made the move to go around her. Katie looked at the driver, but in the darkness all she could make out was the long hair and slim frame of a woman. She also couldn’t help but notice being flipped off when the strange woman stuck her hand out of the open sunroof. Maybe if the driver had been paying attention to the road instead of giving Katie the middle finger, she would’ve seen the white pickup truck coming over the hill. As it was, the woman didn’t even try to slow down.

As if caught in a nightmare, Katie watched the truck swerve violently to avoid the blue car suddenly in their lane. The last thing Katie heard before her world exploded was the blaring of a horn and the skid of tires against icy asphalt.

Glass was everywhere. The sting of it was in her face and neck. She could feel the warm trickle of blood running into her eye, but all that was nothing but sensory annoyance next to what was going on with her left arm. The agony was so extreme she wouldn’t have been able to comprehend it before this moment. A scream burst out of her as the shock of getting hit cleared between one heartbeat and the next. She tried to tug her arm free from where it was pinned by the twisted metal that was once her driver’s side door.

She nearly blacked out from the pain. She started hyperventilating as the smell of smoke filled her senses. She was claustrophobic in the best of circumstances. After five years in a mentally abusive relationship, Katie didn’t like feeling trapped. She was in such a freak mode, she found herself trying to steel herself against the pain and willing the strength to attempt jerking her arm free again…even if it caused more damage.

She needed out of her car.

“I’m calling 911!”

Katie heard the voice from somewhere. Low and gruff, vibrating with panic. She blinked, focusing on it.

“Stop moving. I’m getting help.”

Katie hadn’t realized she’d been fighting to get out until the passenger side door was abruptly opened, and the blast of cold air hit her. She blinked at a tan face. Light blue eyes swirled with concern, hidden partially by locks of dark hair. As insane as it was, this man was so handsome that for the pulse of one second she forgot the pain, but in the next breath, it slammed into her with such force it wouldn’t have made a difference if it was Bradley Cooper sitting himself in the passenger seat of her car.

The handsome stranger was talking rapidly on his phone.

She started crying. Embarrassing. Ugly crying. Punctuated by really dignified statements about her predicament like, “Ow, ow ow.”

He asked her questions. She thought she answered them correctly.

She couldn’t believe this was how she was starting the New Year.

As she sat there, trapped, in pain and shivering in shock and cold, he took off his jacket and put it around her. “They’re coming,” he told her, sounding concerned as he held the phone to his ear. “Mrs. Wellings says they’ll be here in three minutes or less.”

Katie nodded, feeling a little better and a lot warmer. “That’s Jules?” She struggled to stop the tears and speak clearly. “Can you tell her it’s Katie Foster so she can call my brother?”

Katie actually heard Jules’s screech through the phone. Jules Wellings had been Katie’s attorney for the divorce and one of her only true advocates. A very busy woman and a mom of twins, Jules rarely worked 911 dispatch these days, even if her twin brother was sheriff. It was a small stroke of luck.

The world hazed out in relief then. Knowing it was Jules sending help eased some of her panic, and this handsome stranger sitting in Katie’s mangled car had kind eyes. He had even given her his jacket, and it left his arms bare to the cold—really big arms. He had tribal tattoos on his biceps, and a large snake inked into the corded muscles on the inside of his right forearm. She’d never seen tattoos like that up close. They made him look undeniably dangerous, but for some reason she wasn’t nervous in his presence. She focused on him because there was nothing else but the pain to set her attention on.

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He cursed when his phone died. “Hijo de la gran puta!”

“A-aren’t you cold?” she stuttered as she stared at those bunched, tattooed muscles rather than think of the agony in her arm.

“I just slammed into your car two hours after New Years. You should want my ass to be cold.” He let out a bitter laugh full of self-hatred as he turned to her in concern. “I’m sorry about this.” He shook his head. “Coño. That sounded lame, huh? You can’t just say sorry for something like this.” He rubbed a hand over his face. “This is my worst nightmare. It was the last thing I ****ing needed on my conscience.”

“I know it wasn’t your fault.” More tears rolled down her cheeks. “T-there was nothing you could’ve done.”

“I could’ve swerved the other way.”

Well, there was that.

“I had a couple beers when the ball dropped. I don’t even know why I hung around Chuito’s when I should’ve left for Miami yesterday morning. I just hadn’t seen him in so long. Hell, I thought I was sober. I waited a couple of hours before I headed back home, but obviously—” He paused and then picked up Katie’s good hand, squeezing it tightly. “I really am sorry, Katie Foster. You seem like a sweet girl, and you didn’t need my **** luck rubbing off on you.”

“My luck isn’t all that great either,” she confessed as she squeezed his hand back rather than pull away. “Obviously.”

“Feel better. I promise you a messed up arm’s gonna end a lot better than what this accident is gonna do to me. You’ll get your revenge, chica.”

She heard the nervousness over the drinks he had. He was likely facing a DUI. He could’ve taken off like the other driver. Instead he was sitting there, jacketless, holding her hand.

“You should leave,” she whispered. “Go, and I’ll forget what your truck looked like. See if it’s still drivable.”

“I’m not leaving you.” He snorted as if the thought were ridiculous.

“But the drinking?”

“Your friend, Jules Wellings, she knew it was me who called 911. I met with her a couple of days ago hoping to get sponsored by the Cellar. Hell, I was staying with Chuito Garcia. He lives above her offices. She knows where to find me. I promise.” He gave her a sad smile, showing off white teeth. The bottom ones were a little crooked, making it obvious he hadn’t suffered through four years of braces like Katie had, but somehow that just added to his charm. “So we’ll just sit here together and face the bad luck head-on. That’s what I usually do. This time I got company. It’s all good.”

She looked back to this stranger with no little amount of admiration for his courage. He was a fighter. Even if he hadn’t just admitted to it, he had the look of a man who spent his days working out in the Cellar.

The Cuthouse Cellar, Garnet’s one claim to fame, was a state-of-the-art MMA training center in town. Every day it seemed more up-and-coming fighters chose the Cellar as their training camp. It was clear he was one of those men who came here looking for fame and glory, but unfortunately for this one, his life collided with hers instead.

What a shame.

She was still staring at him in amazement. Her intrigue with him was enough to keep her from crying. The pain still throbbed in her arm, radiating out to the rapid thump, thump, thump of her heartbeat, but with him near, it was almost as if that crazy strength it took to be an MMA fighter was rubbing off.

“Does it work?” she whispered.

He frowned. “Does what work?”

“Just f-facing it head-on?” she clarified. “The bad luck?”

He seemed to consider that for a moment before he grinned. “At least you know when the next punch is coming. Nothing worse than getting blindsided, right?”

“Right,” she agreed softly, looking down to her arm, trying to see how bad the damage was. All she saw was the blood. It made her stomach lurch, and she looked over to the fighter once more. “I’m gonna try that. F-facing things. Not hiding from my problems anymore.”

“Where I come from, teenagers would **** with me when I was young. Hard kids. Thugs. Nothing fazed them. They’d use anyone to get the job done. They’d make eight-year-olds run their drugs if it kept the heat off them, and I wasn’t ready for all that. Then I figured out it was harder for them to threaten me if I was looking them dead in the eye.” He squeezed her hand once more. “That’s the one thing they can’t take from you. Your courage.”

“I’m not courageous,” she admitted, feeling her cheeks heat despite everything. “I’m the exact opposite o-of courageous.”

“You seem pretty brave to me.” He tilted his head to look at her with noticeable admiration. “All the girls I know would be freaking out and screaming their heads off right about now.”

The wail of sirens had him jumping out of the car before she could respond. He faced a possible DUI head-on, without even flinching. She watched him wave down Sheriff Conner, who beat the ambulance to the accident site. The sheriff came flying out of the car. He didn’t pay more than a passing glance to the young fighter other than to say, “Don’t you be going anywhere, boy.”

Then he was crawling into the passenger side of her car, filling up the small space with his powerful presence. She always forgot just how big the sheriff was until she was next to him. He was one seriously large fella, but Katie’s mind was on her fighter standing out in the snow without a jacket.

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The sheriff touched the pulse point at her neck and shined a light in her eyes as he asked, “How ya doing, Katie?”

“O-okay. Listen, Sheriff—”

“Jules is calling your brother. She wanted me to tell you that she’ll make sure he meets you at Mercy General.” The sheriff leaned over her, shining his flashlight toward the door that held her arm trapped. “We need to make sure you don’t move until Tommy and the fire department get out here.”

“Yeah, but Sheriff—”

The sheriff picked up the radio on his hip and started speaking into it. Most of what he was saying was police jargon, but she got the gist of it. They needed bigger equipment out here to cut her out of this car. The fear washed over her in icy-hot waves. She used her good hand to pull the fighter’s jacket tighter around her, seeking comfort from it. Her instinct was to start crying again, but she realized now why her thoughts were scattered in other directions besides the pain. Extreme shock had settled in at some point. Her arm was still hurting, but her acknowledgment of it had faded to the background.

More sirens wailed in the distance. Help was coming. She should be relieved, but instead she looked back to the fighter, standing there illuminated by her headlights. The snow was falling in his dark hair and resting on his broad shoulders.

“It wasn’t his fault,” she said quickly to Sheriff Conner, wanting to get it out before the fire department showed up. “There was another car. This crazy woman swerved into his lane right as he was coming over the hill. None of this was his fault, Sheriff. It was just b-bad luck.”

“Okay, darling.” The sheriff squeezed her good hand. “Just focus on breathing easy and not moving until we can get you out. Can you do that?”

Katie took a deep breath and nodded. “Yeah, but about—” She paused, realizing she’d never asked his name. “The m-man out there.”

“Don’t you worry ’bout Marcos. He’s a big boy, and there’s not a scratch on him.” The sheriff squeezed her hand once more. “You’re the one we’re gonna focus on right now.”

“It was just bad luck,” she repeated, thinking of not just the accident, but a long string of rotten luck and getting the impression she wasn’t alone as she stared at the fighter again. “It wasn’t his fault.”

Rather than respond, the sheriff got out of the car to meet the fire truck that pulled up. Katie got the distinct impression the fighter, Marcos, was low on his priority list, but Katie still worried about him.

The entire time they worked at cutting her out of the mangled mess of her car, she thought of Marcos. She would look for him, her gaze searching the accident site when the fear or pain got too much. She’d usually find him standing out of the way with a brown blanket over his shoulders. She wished she could hold his hand again, but there were firefighters everywhere. Tommy, the paramedic, sat next to her taking her vitals, talking in that calming voice of his that made it obvious why he was good at what he did. He had put a brace around her neck. He was getting her ready for the stretcher as the horrible grinding of metal being cut away made the hair on the back of her neck stand on end.

She was shaking. The shock was still clouding her brain. It blocked out some of the pain, but still she fought for clarity as the relief of finally being free made her vision haze. The world started to spin as they put her on a stretcher. Tommy had to take extra time with her arm, splinting it on a board. Katie didn’t have the nerve to look.

“I-I need the jacket,” she told them, knowing it had been tossed aside somewhere. She didn’t want it to end up at the tow yard. “P-please. I need to take it with me to the hospital.”

“Sure, darling.” Tommy gave her a warm smile that made more than a few Garnet women weak-kneed.

The paramedic was one of their most eligible bachelors, but Katie was still worried about her fighter. She breathed a sigh of relief when Tommy put the jacket over her as they wheeled her toward the ambulance. She was just starting to think everything might be all right when Sheriff Conner’s voice drifted over from the other side of the street.

“Have you been drinking tonight, Mr. Rivera?”

She wanted to scream at him to lie.

Instead she heard her fighter face it head-on. “Yeah, Sheriff, I had a few beers at midnight.”

She found herself staring at the roof of the ambulance before she could hear how it all played out. The sirens came to life. Tommy, the handsome paramedic, alternated between checking her vitals and writing things on his chart. All the while he laid on that charm he was famous for, obviously very accustomed to making horrible situations a little easier with the good looks God gave him.

Yet all she could think about was Marcos, the mystery fighter with kind eyes, dangerous tattoos, and a horrible case of bad luck almost as epic as hers.

Chapter Two

Miami

April 2014

The only good thing to come out of Marcos’s fated trip to Garnet County was getting out of that town without a DUI. Once the sheriff gave him the all clear, Marcos promptly headed back to Miami and attempted to forget everything about that week. To be safe, he went ahead and moved just in case the sheriff decided to change his mind and pin something on him.

Marcos’s past made him more than a little paranoid where the police were concerned. The old apartment had been a ****hole anyway. Not that the next place was much of an improvement, but sometimes any change was good. A new place, a new job, a new cell number, a new life.

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That had been his grand plan after his dreams of being a professional fighter had officially ended the moment he ran into Katie Foster. More than losing the fighter spot at the Cuthouse Cellar, it was the accident itself that disturbed him.

He remembered the young, pretty brunette with no small amount of regret. There was something about those wide, honey-colored eyes framed by long, tear soaked eyelashes that haunted him. Her hair was the same shade of light brown as her eyes, long and wavy, the kind a man longed to touch just to see if it was as silky as it looked. Everything about her was soft and innocent in a way the women he knew weren’t. She’d been so pale in the night, making the blood stand out starkly on her cheeks and forehead. He’d seen a lot of terrible **** in his life, but that image disturbed him more than most. Perhaps because someone like Katie Foster was never meant to bleed like that, and knowing it had been his fault had him waking up at night in cold sweats.

That accident was churning up a ****load of posttraumatic stress.

Even if Chuito had assured him she was recovered, he couldn’t shake the guilt or the strange pang he got in his chest when he remembered how she’d actually been concerned about him that night. Even with painful injuries, she had been willing to cover for him, and it just furthered his determination to stay out of trouble once he got home. He didn’t want to run into another Katie Foster again, and he was officially tired of the fast lane. He could work hard, keep his nose to the grindstone, and stay out of trouble long enough for life to somehow forget guys like him weren’t designed to grow old and live off a pension.

His intentions had been good, but it didn’t take long for it all to go to hell.

“You can’t fire me.” Marcos glared at his boss of the past several months, his eyes narrowed in disbelief. “I’m the best guy you got.”

Sebastian sighed and lowered his head as he mumbled, “You know the heat’s been sniffing around my place ever since you started. We’ve had four salvage inspections in the last three months. The cops came back last night. I can’t do it anymore. I’m sorry.”

Marcos felt that familiar white-hot rush of shame and anger wash over him. He couldn’t argue with that reasoning. If he were in Sebastian’s place, getting shaken down every few weeks by the cops, he’d probably fire the ex-con putting a target on his back too.

Even if he was the best body man in Miami.

“Yeah, whatever.” Marcos turned his back on him, determined to gather up his things and then go and get drunk.

**** it, what the hell was staying on the straight and narrow doing for him anyway? Clearly life didn’t want him to stay out of trouble.

“Tell your tía I’m sorry.”

Marcos winced, hating the reminder that his aunt—one of the only relatives he still had left—had to turn to an old boyfriend to get him the job in the first place. Something nasty and cutting was on the tip of his tongue. Once upon a time, he’d been guilty of being a mean mother****er when it came to **** like this. He’d likely have punched this pendejo for even mentioning his aunt, but now he just walked out of the office without a backward glance.

With his tools in the back of his pickup, he peeled out of the parking lot of Sebastian’s Auto Body, being sure to leave his mark on the asphalt. He picked up his phone, paging through his old contacts as he kept one eye on the road.

Of course, there was traffic, and he silently fumed as he listened to the phone ring.

“Oh wow.” He threw up his hand after someone cut in front of him. When Marcos missed the light, he cursed, “¡Coño!”

He laid on his horn, hoping the dickhead who cut him off could hear it. He didn’t even notice that the phone had been picked up until his friend Luis laughed in his ear. “Road rage, bro. I thought you were changing your ways.”

Marcos just shook his head. “I just got fired—again. **** changing my ways. It never works out.”

“No ****?”

“No ****. Heat’s been shaking down Sebastian since I started. He finally got sick of it. I was lucky I kept the job that long.”

“Come down to the warehouse and hang.” The hope was heavy in Luis’s voice. “It’ll be a party. Old school. Just like back in the day.”

Marcos hesitated, because it was tempting to touch those wild, free days of his youth again. It was that long-ago dream that always got him into trouble, because the memories weren’t all bad. There was a time when being part of Los Corredores meant everything to him. It made him invincible. Untouchable. Dangerous. The days before the darkness. When the gang stood for respect and unity instead of revenge and money.

The days before Marcos’s mother and Juan died.

Before Chuito left.

And Angel took over.

“You know he’d take you back,” Luis cut into Marcos’s private thoughts. “He owes you. We all do. Big-time. He’ll literally pay you twenty times what you were making at Sebastian’s. They’re tagging you anyway. Might as well benefit off it.”

“Yeah, might as well,” he agreed in Spanish, feeling a little apprehensive talking about this over the phone.

He wasn’t real sure what the Spanish was going to hide; most of Miami spoke Spanish—cops included.

“And no one can do what you do,” Luis went on. “You’re a ****ing artist.”

That was true, and it was nice to hear someone recognizing it again. He gave up the respect of being a lead member in Los Corredores to spare himself looking over his shoulder every five seconds, but what the hell, he was being hounded anyway.

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“I got to go back home first. Take a shower.”

“I’ll tell Angel you’re coming. You staying the night?”

“Probably.” Marcos honked his horn again when someone cut him off. “Carajo, I need to get the **** out of the 305. These pendejos can’t drive.”

“That didn’t work out so good the last time you tried it. I can’t believe that cop let you off a DUI. I think Chuito paid him off.”

“Some puta got in my lane that night and then took off without stopping. I blew under the limit. Way under,” Marcos said defensively. He did not like talking about that night. “I got off because that accident was not my fault. Chu is still giving me **** about it. I don’t need to hear it from you.”

Luis chuckled in disbelief. “That’s why you strip the cars instead of boost them.”

“We’re on the phone.” Marcos held up his hand. “Are you blitzed right now or what?”

“A little.”

Marcos grunted in annoyance, still wound tight and desperate to change the subject. It must have been more than obvious.

“Sounds like you need a party. A few bottles, a few blunts, you’ll feel better. Come hang with your bros and remember where you came from.” Luis sounded sincere. “Make some real cash for once. Get out of the ****holes you’re always staying in.”

Marcos winced. That was hitting way below the belt. He didn’t like being broke, and it hadn’t been easy, especially since more cash was always there if he wanted it. The past few months hadn’t been the first time he’d tried honest work since he’d gotten out of prison; it’d just been the longest he’d managed to hang in there before he was forced to start stripping cars to pay the bills.

“Stick to what you know,” Luis went on. “We can’t all be UFC champions, right?”

“No, I guess not,” Marcos agreed, because he’d certainly tried for that ticket out of the hood.

He’d been fighting at his cousin Chuito’s side all the way back to grade school. They’d competed in the same underground matches since they were young teens. He’d just had the misfortune of being in prison the night World Heavyweight Champion Clay Powers showed up at an underground fight and pulled Chuito out of the dark recesses of gang life and into the spotlight, effectively saving him from the destiny they all shared. Thug life usually ended in a coffin or jail. Marcos wasn’t as deluded as the rest. He knew it would end badly for all of them eventually. Serving eighteen months did nothing if not provide a little perspective on things.

He’d been trying to save himself from the agony, peacefully distancing himself from assholes like Angel, and more so, from friends like Luis. He couldn’t bear to bury another one after doing it so many times already. He wanted an escape like Chuito—a way to forget the connection long enough that maybe it wouldn’t hurt so bad when the next bullet found a friend.

He’d tried to get out, but the fighting spot at the Cellar was a long shot for an ex-con, and that had been before he’d smashed into Katie Foster on New Years.

He felt so much older than he should.

Before Marcos could come to his senses and start figuring out a way to find legit work, someone else cut him off in traffic. He was wound so tight, stressed about money, about telling his aunt he’d lost another job, about the cops that hounded him no matter where he went because of his connection to Los Corredores. Not selling out his friends had earned him a lifetime target on his back from law enforcement. If he wasn’t with the cops, he was against them, and the heat reminded him of it every chance they got.

Marcos rolled down his window and shouted in Spanish, but it did nothing to dispel the anxiety.

Luis laughed again at Marcos’s road-rage issues. “Six o’clock. We’ll party.”

The right thing to do was to hang up and spend the night searching online for a job, but instead Marcos agreed, “Six o’clock.”

Right then it looked like he was screwed. He couldn’t keep a legit job even if he managed to talk some fool into hiring him. He’d tried off and on for over four ****ing years now. He might as well just accept that life didn’t want him to be law-abiding.

So he’d live hard instead.

The next funeral could just as easily be his, and maybe it was better that way.

There were no miracles for Marcos Rivera.

Chapter Three

Garnet County

Shock was a handy thing.

It created an oddly hazed, almost romantic memory of a horrible car accident. A handsome fighter silhouetted by moonlight and snow. Courage. Kindness. Kinship. Marcos Rivera was burned in her brain—a tanned angel with strange light eyes and dangerous tattoos. The man himself was as much a mishmash of darkness and beauty as the memory.

If only the rest of the journey had been so pretty. Two surgeries. Hours of agonizing physical therapy. The panic attacks. Being forced to take the medicine just to function past the pain those first many weeks. Being forced to get off the medicine in order to crawl out from the covers, get back to work, and start living again. Reality waited for no woman.

Now spring had arrived.

Her arm was scarred but healing. There were still a few dull aches, but if she got a rare stab of pain it was cured by a few ibuprofen.

The break would be here before she knew it, and Katie ended the last class of the day in a very good mood.

“Don’t forget your final projects on ancient Egypt are due Friday. I’m excited to see how they all turn out.”

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Most classes would groan, but this was an eleventh grade AP History class. These were the type of students who shuddered over the destruction of the Ancient Library of Alexandria whenever they studied it in class. All that history lost. Katie understood their pain. She still spent nights looking at her ceiling, wondering what knowledge that long-ago fire destroyed.

She was a geek.

Which was why she shouldn’t be in mourning over the memory of a fighter, long gone—a smoky mist in Garnet’s history like the lost Library of Alexandria. So much about him Katie would never know. He was gone by the time she got out of the hospital. She knew because she’d looked for him. Dazed with pain, eyes glassy from the pills, she had her sister-in-law Lily drive her to Chuito’s place above Jules’s office, remembering Marcos’s mention of the famous fighter that night. Chuito had informed Katie that Marcos had gone back to Miami. That was all she had ever been able to get out of him. Chuito had been annoyingly tight-lipped about contact information.

That was strange.

Katie knew for a fact Marcos didn’t get a DUI. She had a copy of the police report. He’d been below the legal limit. The phone number was disconnected by the time she called. The address on the police report was no good. All her letters got returned. Why run off and disappear like that? And why all the secrets?

Katie had even taken to posting on craigslist, short messages sent out to Miami with the vain hope of Marcos seeing them and contacting her. All the effort got her was an inbox full of messages from weirdos, but she still posted at least once a week. At the moment, it was the only way she had to reach out to him.

She didn’t like that Chuito.

Not at all.

The two of them had been glaring at each other every time they crossed paths over the past several months. His contempt for her was every bit as potent as hers for him, with all his secrets and dark looks. She was strangely fearless of the light-heavyweight UFC champion. She knew he recognized Marcos’s jacket that she wore whenever it was cold. Which had been always since January. She didn’t care. Let him think what he wanted.

Chuito wouldn’t even give her a damn cell phone number. Jules certainly didn’t have Marcos’s contact information, and had largely discouraged Katie from seeking him out.

“Turn that one loose,” Jules said when Katie sat in the chair behind Jules’s desk and complained about Chuito’s silence on the subject. “He’s probably doing you a favor. We wouldn’t have sponsored him at the Cellar even if he hadn’t taken you out two hours after New Years. Checkered past is an understatement.” Jules glanced at a file on her desk and mumbled to herself. “Dunno why Chuito recommended him in the first place.”

Katie snorted in disbelief. Jules’s own husband had been in prison. Everyone knew it, and she would have called the pretty lawyer on it if the phone hadn’t rung. Jules held up her hand and answered it, which led to a long conversation about taxes and accounting that made Katie’s eyes glaze over. Numbers reminded her of her ex-husband. She quietly excused herself and left.

But she was due back at Jules’s desk, to glare a little at Chuito, who was always underfoot there considering he lived in an apartment above Jules’s law office, and argue some more with Jules. The last time she was there, she’d noticed Chuito had the same snake tattoo on the inside of his forearm that Marcos had. That was very curious. They had to be close friends. She was going to ask him about it the next time she saw him.

This accident had made history geek Katie Foster downright bold, and she liked the change in herself. Life had taught her nothing if not that time was fleeting and a wasted chance was nothing but a potential regret. Screw that. She had enough regrets for a lifetime.

The AP students crowded around her desk to discuss their end-of-the-year projects.

She answered their questions as she pulled on Marcos’s jacket and retrieved her purse from her bottom drawer. She’d already told Principal Jenkins she was leaving early once school let out. Jules Wellings owed her a conversation that she had been avoiding with impressive skill for almost four months. Now it was time to hit her when she least expected it.

The last of the students cleared out. Katie gathered her papers to grade, taking the time to neatly organize them in the soft-sided leather briefcase her mother had bought her the day she had gotten the job at the high school. Her mother died three months later of a rapidly spreading cancer.

Katie took very good care of her briefcase.

Which was why she didn’t appreciate it when she slammed into Grayson before she even had the chance to close the classroom door. Katie’s ex-husband frowned down at her. “Heard you’re blowing off the staff meeting.”

“Physical therapy appointment,” she lied as she dropped down to pick up the briefcase he had knocked out of her hand, and then spent the time to reorganize the papers. Fuming.

He had the good grace to bend down and help her pick up the papers from her earlier classes, but she noticed he didn’t apologize about the briefcase as she sat there brushing it off. She rubbed at a scuffmark on the corner, trying to decide if it had been there or if Grayson had caused it.

“This boy is hopeless,” Grayson mumbled, reading one of the papers in his hand. “Look at that grammar. You’d think after failing algebra three times he’d at least know how to spell.”

She jerked the paper out of his hand. “That’s mine.”

“Dumb jocks. Why the hell did we decide to stay in Garnet to teach?” He shook his head, obviously expecting understanding. “They still plague us, Katie girl.”

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“Don’t call me that.” She put the paper back into her briefcase along with the rest. “I like Jason Clover. He tries hard, and Ned said he does amazing things in auto body. We can’t all rule the world through calculus.”

“Oh, a math jab.” He grinned rather than rise to the bait. “You’ve been spunky since the accident. I like it.”

“Gross.” Katie shuddered as she stood, unable to fathom that once upon a time she’d thought the sun and the moon rose over this man’s shoulders. He’d been so different from the other boys in their town. Grayson understood her love of academics, even if their interests were vastly different, and she’d gotten married without a second thought as a sophomore in college. How utterly stupid. “I have to go now.”

She’d take a jock any day over a math geek. Grayson had burned her for her own breed—likely forever.

She walked out of the room without looking back.

Ashley, the cheerleading coach, who was in the hallway instead of on the field, bumped into her before the door had even clicked closed, but this time Katie had a firm grip on the handle of her briefcase out of anger.

“Excuse you,” Ashley huffed indignantly.

Katie didn’t like Ashley when she was the head cheerleader of their graduating class. She liked her even less now. The only difference was, Katie wasn’t intimidated anymore. She just looked the striking blonde in the eyes like Marcos had told her to do and arched an eyebrow.

She might have made a snarky comment, but making fun of jocks was something she had struck off her list. It was called being an adult. Not all cheerleaders turned into washed-up, broke twentysomethings who spent their weekends at the bar hoping the bottom of her beer bottle would somehow help her reclaim the glory of eighteen.

Just this one.

She actually smiled as she brushed by Ashley. Katie wasn’t perfect. Her arm was scarred to hell and back, but she had paid off the few college loans she had since getting the new teaching job. She wasn’t hiring their local lawyer to fend off all the cre***ors.

Yes, Katie had looked at Jules’s desk when she she’d gotten up. Terrible of her. Oh well. Ashley had made her life miserable since grade school. If Katie got a small amount of pleasure knowing the washed-up cheerleader was living with her mother again and had lost everything due to outrageous cre*** card debt, she just chalked it up to karma.

* * * *

“I’m sorry, but I’m not helping you with this delusion. Let it go.”

Katie glared at Jules across her desk, but it did little good. This woman once held a spot on the US Olympic team for judo. She was a sheriff’s deputy in her younger years and was now the only lawyer in all of Garnet County. Plus there was that incident a while back where she and her husband faced down a whole crew of real-life mafia guys and lived to tell about it—those mafia guys hadn’t been so lucky.

Jules Wellings was not an easy person to intimidate.

“Please,” Katie whined out of desperation. “I just need a phone number. I know your friend Chuito has it. If you could just—”

“No,” Jules repeated as she glanced up from her work with a frown. “And what the heck makes you think he’s gonna give it to me even if I did ask him for it?”

Katie gave Jules a look, because they both knew Jules usually got whatever she wanted if she put her mind to it.

“Please,” Katie repeated.

“Okay, let’s actually discuss this.” Jules pushed aside her file and gave Katie her full attention. “What is the obsession with Marcos Rivera?”

“He was nice to me.” Katie shrugged self-consciously. “I never got a chance to thank him.”

“He crashed into you and ruined your New Year. You have the scars to prove it,” Jules said slowly, looking at Katie like she’d lost her mind. “He may have been below the legal limit, but he did have alcohol in his system. What the heck have you got to thank him for?”

“That wasn’t his fault,” Katie argued. “If you’d seen how that woman was driving—”

“He has a record,” Jules cut in before Katie could finish. “He served time for stealing cars. Did you know that?”

Katie stared at her, knowing she should feel more apprehension than she did. It wasn’t a huge shock. Jules had claimed before that Marcos had a colorful past. “That doesn’t mean—”

“Bull****.” Jules cut her off before she could finish. “You know exactly what it means, Katie.”

Before she could stop herself, Katie blurted out, “Didn’t your husband do time?”

“We’re not talking about me.” Jules’s glare became icy, making it obvious Katie had stepped into dangerous territory. “But for the record, the situation with Romeo was unfair and unavoidable. Your fella Marcos served time for stealing not one but several cars. He was caught hacking them up for parts in an abandoned warehouse. Does that sound like someone you wanna get mixed up with? What if it was your car that was stolen? You think you’d still be wanting to get in touch?”

Katie folded her arms over her chest, knowing it seemed childish, but she just couldn’t forget Marcos at the crash site, willing to face a DUI head-on rather than abandon her. That sort of integrity was intriguing, and she’d be lying to herself if she didn’t admit she’d been attracted to him, but this quest was about more than her long-dormant *** life. She wanted a chance to talk to him once more. That’s it.

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“You’re not a college student anymore. You’re a teacher now,” Jules reminded her before Katie could put words to her convictions. “You cannot afford to get mixed up with someone like Marcos. He’s states away. Be thankful for it and move on with your life.”

Jules’s reasoning made sense. Katie knew she should do just that, but for some reason, everything felt unfinished. She needed closure.

Grasping at straws, she huffed, “But I still have his jacket.”

“Consider it his gift to you for totaling your car.”

“I have resorted to posting notes to him on craigslist,” Katie admitted with a blush of embarrassment. “You should see my inbox. It’s full of messages from every weirdo in Miami.”

Jules shook her head and laughed. “You honestly think a fella like that spends his Saturday nights reading the personals on craigslist?”

Katie shrugged. “Maybe.”

“If that boy had to read the personals for a date, you wouldn’t be coming in here every other day asking for his number. He’s good-looking, I’ll give ya that.” Suddenly Jules frowned and leaned past her desk. She narrowed her eyes at the staircase as if her cop senses were on high alert and called out, “In or out. Stop eavesdropping.”

“Oh God.” Katie resisted the urge to drop her head to Jules’s desk.

She knew who’d been listening to their conversation without having to look to see who came down the stairs. Her skin prickled with apprehension. Even without two UFC championship belts, Chuito “The Slayer” Garcia would have made her jumpy. He screamed danger, and Katie thought it was mighty rich of Jules to be giving her hell about trying to get in contact with Marcos when a fella like Chuito lived in the apartment above Jules’s office.

Maybe, by some small stroke of luck, he hadn’t heard the last bit of their conversation.

“Craigslist, huh?”

Katie stiffened at the rough sound of amusement in Chuito’s voice as he came up behind her. Her cheeks flamed, and she cursed her light coloring because she knew it had to show.

She turned around in her seat and glared at Chuito, who was almost as good-looking as Marcos. He didn’t have the light eyes that made Marcos’s features so startling, and Chuito was a little taller. His shoulders were broader, but the two of them still looked a lot alike, which always gave her a strange mental whiplash.

“What?” Chuito’s smile faded, and his shoulders grew tense under her scrutiny.

“Nothing,” Katie said quickly. “I was just thinking you and Marcos look alike. Strangely so.”

“Well, duh, we’re cousins.”

“Oh, really?” Katie was genuinely surprised. “I didn’t know that.”

He snorted in disbelief. “What? Did you just think we all look alike?”

“All?” Katie frowned for a moment, and then gasped in understanding. “I would never think that. I’m not ignorant. I know not all Cubans look alike.”

Chuito narrowed dark eyes at her. “I’m Puerto Rican.”

Katie winced, hearing the insult in his voice. “I’m sorry, I assumed since you were from Miami and—”

“Just stop,” Jules mumbled under her breath.

“I apologize, but it was an honest mistake,” Katie snapped as she turned back to Jules. “He is trying to make me uncomfortable on purpose so I’ll drop this. He’s baiting me. I know, because I was married to a man who used to do it all the time.” She turned back to glare at Chuito. “I don’t care if you bully me. I’m not letting you win.”

“Chica, I’m not bullying you. I’m telling you flat out. Drop this thing with Marcos ’cause I’m sure as **** not giving you his number when he went out of his way to change it after the accident. I dunno what he said to you that night, but let it go.” Chuito’s laugh was bitter. “You’re not the first woman to fall for his bull****.”

“Did you tell him I was asking about him?” Katie asked, not sure what she wanted the answer to be. “Does he know I still have his jacket?”

“Why don’t you give me the jacket, and I’ll get it back to him?” Chui*****ggested, his tone still biting and sarcastic. “Since it’s so important to you.”

Katie snorted. “Not likely.”

Chuito mumbled something in Spanish under his breath and looked toward the ceiling fan in Jules’s office. “This **** could only happen to Marcos. This is the reason he’s been getting it since he was thirteen. Unbelievable.”

“Thirteen?” Katie repeated in disbelief.

She glanced at Jules for confirmation, seeing that she had a look of surprise on her face too.

“You’re a liar,” Katie decided as she turned back to Chuito. “And I don’t like you.”

Jules laughed, but then coughed when Chuito drew himself up to his full height obviously offended.

Jules cleared her throat and said earnestly, “Look, Chuito, can’t you just—”

“No, I can’t. Marc’s trying to forget that accident.” His eyes were still narrowed at Katie. “The last thing he needs is a call from her.”

“Well, what if Katie gave you her number—”

Katie gasped and turned back to Jules. “What?”

“And he could give it to Marcos,” Jules finished diplomatically. “That’s a fair compromise.”

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“Well,” Katie considered that. “Maybe.”

“No.” Chuito shook his head. “I want nothing to do with this gringa.”

Katie straightened in her chair and looked at him directly just the way Marcos had told her to. “Why do you think it’s okay to insult me?”

“It’s not—” Chuito started and then stopped. “You know what, never mind. Believe it’s an insult.” He rolled his eyes as if she were completely clueless and turned to leave. “Later, Jules.”

“Chuito—” Jules called as he walked to the entryway.

“No,” he repeated as he grabbed his jacket off the stand by the front door. “Do your friend a favor and hook her up with a nice, church-going guy here in Garnet. Ask Alaine to help. She knows plenty.”

As if on cue, Jules’s assistant, Alaine, opened the front door. She had a stack of papers in her arms as if she had just gotten back from the courthouse.

Alaine gave Chuito a bemused smile. “Help with what?”

He paused, looking down at the pretty redhead and considering her for a long moment. When he spoke, his tone was softer, endearing in a way Katie wouldn’t have thought possible. “Help her stay away from mean hijos de putas like me.”

Chapter Four

Miami

This warehouse was, by far, Marcos’s favorite. He was going to be very sad when it was lost to the inevitable police raid, because it was a cool place to hang out. Los Corredores had had it for over three years, and Marcos, always the cynical one, had been mourning its eventual demise for a while now.

The top floors had been converted into bedrooms. Two of the rooms had black lights. One had a foosball table. There was no heat or central air, but they had window units and space heaters. Flat-screen televisions, leather couches, and lots of dark corners.

By eight o’clock Marcos had two rum and Cokes and four different phone numbers in his pocket. Why the hell was he avoiding this anyway? He conveniently forgot the wide-eyed innocence of Katie Foster and her blood on his hands. Instead he danced with Mia Fuentes, who was a new face and his age, when lately the girls had been getting younger and younger at the warehouse. Of course, most of the guys there were younger than him too.

At twenty-six, he should’ve been dead or in prison.

There weren’t many of their old crew left. It was a better reason to leave than the image of Katie Foster the night of the accident, but the rum was doing away with his common sense. Mia had nice curves. Marcos had never liked them too thin, and she had a great ass.

“I’ve heard things about you. They say you’re different.” Mia leaned into him when the music turned soft and sensual. She pressed her lips against the curve of his neck. “Tell me why.”

Marcos laughed, because he knew what she’d heard.

“My mother raised me with manners.” He looked up at the stars as the two of them danced on the flat slab of cement behind the warehouse. “Unlike the rest of these pendejos, I respect women. That’s it.”

Her smile was wide and amused. “You got game.”

“Yeah, sometimes,” he agreed as he returned her smile.

“If you need somewhere to sleep tonight, I could hook you up. I’m staying here now.”

He raised his eyebrows. “Are you?”

“I’ve been helping Angel wash titles for the cars they steal. I got the best room.”

“I heard he’s been getting a lot of luxury cars. I thought he was boosting them for the parts, not selling them as is.” Marcos couldn’t hide his surprise. “How do you wash the titles?”

“Say you buy a Benz that’s totaled in an accident from Gus’s Junkyard. All you have to do is steal one that’s the same make and year. You switch the vin numbers on the cars, get the title on the totaled car changed over to your name, and you got a new, clean car to sell.”

“And you do all that? Get all the paperwork done and make the car legal?” Marcos was seriously impressed, because that sounded like a very complicated job.

“I spend half my time at the DMV,” she told him confidently.

“No wonder you have the nicest room.” Marcos pulled back, silently thinking about that. He’d heard of organizations as elaborate as that, but he hadn’t known Los Corredores had moved past simply stripping the cars for parts. “Does he get good money for them?”

“Yeah, we’re dealing in mainly luxury cars now. We have buyers who ship them overseas.”

“Do the buyers know they’re hot?”

“Yeah, but they don’t give a ****. Once they’re out of the country, it doesn’t really matter.”

The paperwork aside, it was delicate business working on a car you wanted to sell rather than strip. Luxury cars were designed to be thief proof. Stealing was one thing, reworking them was another. Not many could pull that off effectively.

“Who does he have switching the vins?” he asked before he could stop himself.

“Hopefully you.” Angel gripped Marcos’s shoulder as he walked up. “I’m tired of Luis ****ing them up.”

Marcos turned to him in horror. “You’re letting Luis cut into luxury vehicles?”

Angel shrugged. “He’s the only one who knows where to find the vins.”

As a lover of fine cars, Marcos couldn’t help but wince at the idea of Luis hacking into something shiny and new. He let go of Mia to shake his head at Angel. “Estás del carajo. He’s the worst one to do it. He’s too impatient.”