Dark Vengeance by Kristi Belcamino (electric book reader .txt) 📕

the spiky dreads leaned over. “I’m Matteo. Want some?” he asked, holding out a joint to me. He had a Cockney accent. I smiled and accepted the offering, inhaling and then passing it back.

“You new in town?” the tall woman with braids asked in a friendly voice. I’d been waiting for her to talk.

I nodded. “I’m looking for my daughter.”

It was strange to call Rose my daughter, but what else could I call her?

She’d come to me for refuge when she was eight and INS agents—well—evil pricks disguised as INS, came after her. I’d already made her part of the family before I fell in love with her biological father. And then, for a long while, the best days of my life, we were a family.

I brushed those memories and the heartache they triggered aside. I had to be strong. This wasn’t about me and my grief. This was about me finding Rose and telling her that her father was dead.

A few people exchanged glances. I didn’t miss the zing of alarm that seemed to trickle through the group. Now the ice blonde boy was paying attention. He narrowed his eyes at me.

“We aren’t saying shit to you. This is a free zone. Nobody asks questions. Nobody has a past or any history. We live for the moment.”

“Yeah, man,” one of the Australian guys said, and reached over to bump fists with the ice blonde boy.

I waited a beat and then nodded. “I get it. I’m just here to tell her that her father died.”

The tall woman met my eyes. She stared at me for a long moment. Then she stood.

“Tell me about your daughter.”

I stood, as well.

“Her name is Rose.”

She laughed.

“None of us use our real names around here,” she said, and then looked at my phone which I had been holding in my hand. “Show me a picture.”

I glanced at the group that was still sitting on the sand. They suddenly seemed hostile. The surfers had come in to shore then and walked up the beach toward us, lugging their boards and shaking their wet hair. Two were women, and the others were men.

They wouldn’t meet my eyes. I saw them look at the tall woman with dreads, and she gave them a nod. I could see their shoulders relax. The boy with icy blonde hair sneered and said something I couldn’t understand. He walked back toward the road, mumbling to himself.

“Don’t mind Dre,” she said.

Leaning over my phone, I pulled up a picture of Rose from a few years ago. In this photo, she had black hair down to her waist, and her huge dark eyes made her look like a doll. She was smiling, revealing that dimple I loved, and her white teeth were a sharp contrast to her dark skin. She was wearing Converse sneakers with a short white dress, and her long legs seemed to go on forever. She’d quickly become taller than my five-foot-six-inches.

I had no idea what she looked like now. I hadn’t seen her since her boyfriend Timothy died six months before. She’d left Barcelona with her dog, Dylan, intent on hunting down the Sultan, a religious cult leader freak she believed had been behind Timothy’s murder.

I held the phone out to the young woman. “She probably has a dog with her, as well.”

As I said it, I watched her carefully. At the mention of the dog, she grew stiff. She thrust the phone back at me without even looking at the picture.

“I can’t help you.”

It was less than a second, but I saw it: Her eyes flicked up to the bluff where the huts were. Gotcha.

And then all friendliness was gone.

“Let’s go,” she said to the group. They stood and within seconds all twelve of them were gone, down the beach. At one point, the beautiful petite girl, still flanked by the two boys, turned back to glance at me. She had hate in her eyes.

They knew Rose.

And they were acting really strange. Were they afraid? Or had she warned them about people asking about her? I didn’t know, but I wasn’t going to leave until I found out why.

And I knew where I was going to start. I headed for the road.

I’d seen the tall woman involuntarily look up at the huts on the slight bluff above the beach, tucked back toward the dirt road. I scanned each hut. They all had doors that opened up toward the beach and one small window. As I walked, I kept expecting to see a dark head of hair duck down in a window. But I didn’t see any movement.

I was nearly to the end of the row of buildings when I heard something that made me break into a sprint.

It was a dog barking, furiously, angrily as if it were attacking someone. The sound stopped abruptly.

I raced toward the closest hut and ran past it to the road in time to see a car—the beat-up black sedan I’d hired to bring me here—squeal away down the dirt road, kicking up a plume of dust. Fuck. I couldn’t see inside the back window, but I knew. It was Rose.

Standing in the dirt road, watching the car’s taillights as it slowed to take the steep curve onto the main road, I was stunned.

Rose had run from me.

It stung.

It had been foolish of me to expect her to greet me with open arms. I understood her telling the surfers to act suspicious—she had enemies who would kill her without blinking an eye. But that she would be happy to see me.

I looked around. There was not another vehicle in sight. Did none of these surf rats drive? I would never be able to catch up to her now.

Dejected and stranded, I headed back toward the beach. I needed to ask that group how I could get a ride into town. As I passed the closest hut, I heard a slight whimper.

The door was open. Gently, holding my breath, I pushed the door open. It