"Sorry about that." Jamie walked with me to the front door. "Every so often she gets a little obsessed with my dad. Maybe it's because he has moved on and she hasn't. Either way, don't do her any more favors."
"You got it, man." I'd been awkwardly trapped in the middle of the airing of dirty laundry and I couldn't get out of that house fast enough.
I left Silverwood with a lot more questions and very little answers. Talk about one crazy fucked up family.
****
I spent hours on the Internet, searching for something. Anything to do with Carina. Madelyn said it would be there. I didn't know what to put in my search. I tried a combination of things. Searching a Mexican database was difficult, especially when I didn't speak Spanish.
Then I came across a photo that nearly knocked the wind out of me. It was a mugshot of Carina. Her eyes were puffy and red as if she'd been crying. Then I went through database after database and couldn't figure out what crime she had been charged with. She had been in trouble with the law down there, and there was no way to tell if it had all been resolved. She could have even been in prison that very moment. My woman could be sitting in a Mexican jail cell as I sat there staring at her mug shot. Was that
what she didn't want me to know? She could have told me that on day one, and it wouldn't have made a difference. I would have still wanted her.
I continued searching, obsessed with finding out more. At one point I even looked at flights to Guadalajara, the city where the mug shot had been listed. If I couldn't find her on the Internet, maybe I could go there and look for her. I noticed a news story on the second page of my search results. It was in Spanish, so I kept skipping over it. Finally, I copied the first paragraph into a translator.
American wounded in shooting, five arrested.
I repeated the headline over and over in my head. An American had been shot. An American? Shot? I continued translating the article. It mentioned the shooting occurred in Guadalajara. The date of the story had been almost a year old.
Mexican officials arrested Miguel Leon-Martinez in connection with the shooting of two police officers...
The story went on to outline that Leon-Martinez had been a known criminal and the shoot-out had been triggered by a dispute over territory with a rival gang. Two officers were wounded but not killed.
The next line of the article was what threw me for a loop.
An American woman believed to be the mother of Leon-Martinez's child was wounded and taken to the hospital for treatment.
An American woman believed to be the mother of Leon-Martinez's child...? Mother of Leon-Martinez's child?
I sat there trying to process it all. Carina had a scar on her thigh that could have been from a gunshot. The injury had healed as neat as could be expected. Possibly the result of having access to the best surgeons. Her family was rich.
What I couldn't get my head around was the part about the child. Carina was a mother? Surely, she would have mentioned a kid. Why hide it? More importantly, why would she hide it from me? I couldn't wrap my mind around it all. Did Carina have a child with a Mexican gang member who almost killed two cops, and had she been shot in the shoot-out?
A kid? Where was it? How old? A boy? A girl?
Fuck. I needed a drink.
****
I came awake with a start. The noise sounded again, and I realized it was the doorbell. I rubbed my eyes and sat up. My head pounded, reminding me I'd drunk a lot the night before. One of Todd's house parties had been in full effect. I remembered going out into the living room, grabbing a bottle of whiskey, and downing it. It wasn't the good stuff either, but it was all I could find. The kind I thought I'd sworn off for good. Oh, and Rosie was there.
I was sitting on the edge of my bed rubbing my face when there was a knock on my bedroom door. I looked down, noticing I was only wearing my boxers. After grabbing a pair of basketball shorts from a pile on the floor, I unlocked the door and pulled it open. Carina was standing there in the hall looking nervous.
"Hi," she said, with a shaky smile. "Todd let me in..." Her voice trailed off as she briefly lowered her eyes. "Do you have a minute to talk?"
I was at a loss for words. After looking for her for an entire week, she found me.
"Yeah," I said, finally finding my voice. "Come in." I opened the door and stepped aside. Though I was still half asleep and a little hungover, my body reacted to the sight of her. Carina stood in the middle of the floor as if she were trying to decide what to do with herself. "Here. Sit." I straightened out the comforter and patted a spot next to me, then I used my foot to close the laptop still open on the floor. She sat and turned to me.
"I have something I want to tell you..." She stopped speaking when the bathroom door opened, and Rosie walked out rubbing her eyes, wearing one of my T-shirts. Carina and I both snapped our heads to look at her and then at each other. Rosie's groggy face transformed to a look of surprise. The three of us all looked around the room wide-eyed and confused as fuck. Carina was the first to snap out of it. She got to her feet and rushed to the door.
"I'm sorry. I didn't know..." She pulled the door open and ran down the hall.
"Wait, this isn't...Carina!" I called after her, chasing her through the living room, through the front door, and down the sidewalk. Fuck, she was quick. If I hadn't had a woodpecker trying to punch a hole behind my eyes, I might have been able to catch up to her. I ran every day, for fuck's sake, but then there was the bright ass sun. "Carina! Stop!"
She was gone by the time I'd been able to open my eyes again, using my hand to shield some of the brightness. I hurried back into the house for my phone to call her. At least I had her number. Todd emerged from his room with a toothbrush in his hand.
"What?" he asked innocently around a mouthful of foamy toothpaste bubbles.