Page 151 of South Beach Bodyguards

Mickey was the kind of man who didn’t doubt himself. His confidence was boundless and that had served him well in business. He was also shrewd. So I trusted his assessment of any situation. “So we have a couple of things going on here.” Mickey took another drag on his cigarette and rocked back in his chair.

I sat across from him and I waited, restless, running my palms down my thighs. I wasn’t going to like whatever I was about to hear, I was convinced of it. “What’s up?”

“So the house is a dead end. It’s owned by some bullshit LLC that has only been around for two months and has no other transactions. I’m going to see who owns it but right now that information is hidden by a fake name that holds an additional LLC. So they have buried it a little, but there is always a way to get to the bottom of the hole.”

I nodded. That sounded actually worse than what I was expecting. It meant my suspicions were on point. Something was off in that house. “What’s your take on surveillance equipment being there?”

Mickey just shook his head. “No point in speculating.”

It was hard not to do just that. I couldn’t imagine what Miranda might be involved in. She hadn’t even been in town for years. So I didn’t think it had anything to do with her, which made it unnerving. I didn’t want her to be collateral damage for something shady she wasn’t even a part of. “So that’s it?” I asked, and I realized I sounded impatient, frustrated.

Mickey dropped his cigarette onto the tile of his office floor and twisted his boot into it. There was still a cloud of smoke lingering in front of his face and I was slightly bewildered as to what the hell was going on with him but I wasn’t stupid enough to ask.

“No, that’s not it.” Mickey shot me a wry look. “I found your brother. He’s living in Texas on the Mexican border, working at a hotel. His name is Miguel Gonzalez and he spends a great deal of time with a well-known drug gang. He also crosses the border daily, claiming to be a Mexican citizen with a day visa to work in the US.”

For a second, I wasn’t even sure how to feel. I had known Max was alive. I was completely convinced of it. Yet hearing confirmation of that didn’t give me the feeling of relief that I expected. I had thought that I would feel triumphant that Max was the manipulative piece of shit I had always known he was. Like hearing he was alive and just skipped would give me the proof I had always craved. All those years of everyone believing he was a charming guy and now I could say definitely that they were wrong.

Yet I just felt… flat. It didn’t matter if people had ever believed me. It wasn’t and had never been my job to go around warning everyone what an asshole Max was. His life was his to fuck up and the people he surrounded himself with now were most likely his evil counterparts. They didn’t need a warning from me.

But Miranda. There was Miranda.

A week ago I would have given anything for her to admit that Max was not all Mr. Nice Guy and she had, although reluctantly. But now? After a full week of spending time with her, of loving both her body and her spirit, freely, without guilt, the last thing in the fucking world I wanted was for her to be hurt. Even if that meant I wouldn’t be right.

“Any chance of him being on the move any time soon?”

“I doubt it. It looks like he’s been there almost four years. He seems entrenched and since he is playing an illegal, he doesn’t have much freedom of movement. He has to cross back over the border every night or lose his day visa.”

“Except that once in the US, he can assume his real identity at any point and no one will be able to do anything about it, or hell, even be able to prove he was living as Miguel Gonzalez. There are only about a million guys with that name.”

“That’s true. Was he wanted as Max Garcia?”

“No. If he was, the cops would have been at my door right away.” It didn’t make any sense to me why Max would ditch out on everything in order to live the life of a day laborer in Mexico and Texas. There was no heat on him in Miami that I knew of and if he wanted to tell Miranda and my parents to fuck off he could have. I seriously doubted that any sense of guilt would have sent him fleeing versus just being honest about his lack of interest in a further relationship. “Are you sure you have the right guy?”

Something was off. Max wasn’t known for being a hard worker.

Mickey shot me a look. “You doubting me?”

“No, I just don’t think my brother would be cool working as a grunt. It’s not his style.”

“Then I would say he’s hiding from something. The question is, what?”

That was the million-dollar question. “I have no idea.”

“By the way, I looked into your girl.”

That made me frown. “Why? I didn’t ask you to do that.”

“I had to. She was connected to him. Looking for him meant looking into her.”

A niggle of concern made my chest tighten. I didn’t want my fantasy shattered. Though I couldn’t imagine what he would tell me that I didn’t already know. Miranda was genuine in her belief that Max was dead. “And?”

“There was some kind of incident where a gun was fired… drugs all around. But there were no charges filed.”

“Drugs? That can’t be right. Miranda doesn’t do drugs.” That seriously bewildered me. “Possession? It must have been my brother’s stuff.”

“Someone broke in, presumably to steal the drugs, but Miranda fired at them. The reports are very vague but for whatever reason no charges were filed against Miranda.”

I had no clue what to make of that. It seemed to me like my brother’s dirty hands were all over the situation. But it made me wonder what Max was doing and what exactly Miranda knew.

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