A Jar of Hearts Page 2
Mark nodded and clicked on the first slide. “The Pacheco gang operates at least fifteen miles from the Mexican border in San Diego. At present, there are about two thousand members, making it the city’s largest gang. Now, their influence has spread to other cities. New York, Los Angeles, Las Vegas. You name it.” He rubbed his brow, and then switched onto the next slide. “The Pacheco gang works hand-in-hand with the Arturo Brotherhood in Tijuana, Mexico. Their activities range everything from drugs to murders and pornography. With a strong alliance such as that, The Pachecos make them not only the largest but one of the most feared gangs in the United States.” He paused. “How are you taking it so far?”
Eric shrugged. “Do I get a diploma for passing this test?”
Mark ignored his snide remark and clicked on the next slide. “One of The Pachecos’ major rivals is the Espinosa Cartel based in Baja California. While the front man of the Espinosa appears to be Michael Elizondo, the guy who really runs it is the mayor of San Diego, Trent Harvey.”
“What’s all this got to do with me?” Eric asked impatiently. Was he here for a crash course on gangs or did they want him to do something?
Mark sighed and sat on the edge of a desk. “We want you to join The Pachecos. And once you’ve gained their trust, we want you to take a hit on Trent Harvey.”
“Sounds easy on paper. But how can you be sure I’d be able to do that?”
“The Pachecos are impressed with anyone who can handle a gun. An accurate sharpshooter such as you wouldn’t have trouble rising through their ranks.” He leaned forward. “Until this is over, Eric, you cannot contact Anne or your family. We can promise to protect them so long as you listen to instructions. If you decide to have it your way, we would have to deny any associations with you. Are we clear?”
Eric felt his nerves tensing again. Did he have a choice? He could try escaping again.
“Are we clear, Eric?” Mark stressed again.
“Yes.”
Mark picked up a file and flung it over to Eric. “Get acquainted with the facts. This is an entire new life and you need to know it like you had lived it. From here on, your name is James Connelly.”
CHAPTER 2
Two years later
Anne stood in the backyard of her new house. She heard the waves crashing onto the beach. Seagulls squawked in the distance, their cackling melding with the roar of the waves. A breeze blew over her and a strong whiff of the salt and the sea filled her nostrils.
The air was certainly different from the one in Boston. It was fresh. It was alluring. Perhaps, her father was right. A change would ease some of that torturous pain in her heart. A pain she had bound inside her since Eric had died.
“Miss Anne?” Julia said from behind her.
She turned and made a mouth at her. “Just Anne, Julia. Do you see my father here to chastise you about that?”
“Sorry, Miss… um… Anne. It’s a habit. But why don’t you come inside. The breeze is a little too strong here.”
“It’s nice, Julia. Besides, isn’t it why we came to San Diego in the first place? To breathe this beautiful ocean breeze?”
Her housekeeper threaded her arm around her elbow gently and stood beside her. “Not when it is as strong as this. And I do wish you had chosen to go to another place other than San Diego.”
“And what is wrong with San Diego?” Anne said stubbornly. “It is a beautiful place, is it not?”
“Yes… I suppose,” the housekeeper answered somewhat unsurely.
Anne rubbed the side of her arm to comfort her. “Describe it to me. Tell me how the sands and the sea look today.”
Julia sighed. “Well, you’re right. It is beautiful. The sea is blue. A very beautiful sky blue. The waves are big, but not threatening. In fact, they’re perfect for surfing. There are actually a small group of people out further into the waters, catching those beautiful waves…”
Her voice began to fade into the air as Anne began to recall Eric’s words, drowning her thoughts with his voice.
“Tell me what it looks like,” she whispered. She was filled with awe of all the happy sounds in the party.
“There are Chinese lanterns strung above us,” Eric whispered back. “There are children on the far left playing with balloons…”
“Anne, are you okay?” Julia’s voice came booming through her thoughts and whirling her back to reality.
“Yes.” She nodded and began to turn back towards the house. “I think I need to just lay down a bit. I’m not feeling too well.”
Julia watched her mistress stumble towards the house. She wouldn’t have wanted her help even if she had offered it. Anne could be stubborn that way. She missed the cheery young woman she had met almost fifteen years ago. She had always marveled at the way Anne would continue to face the world with so much positivity despite her disability. But in the past two years she had seen all that hope erode from her.
She had never seen or met the man who had changed Anne’s life. All she had learned was that the day he had died, he had killed Anne’s will to live as well. And there was nothing anyone could do about it. Not even Nicholas Bradley, the man who had once dreamed of making Anne his wife.
She crossed her arms against her chest as she looked out into the roaring waves, remembering exactly when Phillip Mullen had asked her to help Anne.
“I’ll make it worth your while if you go with her to San Diego,” he had said. “I know you have your daughter to think about and so I will offer you this. I’ll pay all the expenses you will need to put her into a good school. Choose whichever you prefer and let my accountant deal with the expenses.”
Her heart had jumped. A good school for Ashley? This would mean a private school with the best teachers. No graffiti stained public schools where kids peddled the halls with drugs and weapons in their pockets. No more fear of her child being attacked or kidnapped on her walk home from school. They would be living in a better house and she would be able to afford better clothes for Ashley. She was eight now and growing conscious of the kind of clothes she wore. Moving to San Diego would help her give her daughter all those things she couldn’t afford before.
The ocean waves crashed against the shoreline, reeling her to the days when she was just a teenager. She had dreams of making a better life for herself and her Mexican immigrant parents. After leaving school, the Mullen job was only supposed to be tentative. She had plans to save her wages and go to college. She wanted to be anything but a maid. She had wanted to wear those fancy formal pencil skirts and matching jackets to a day job. She used to have fantasies of driving through the morning traffic in a beautiful car and to an office in a modern high rise building.
However, one day turned to another, and soon she had spent fifteen years in the Mullen house. When she had met Troy Donner, she had thought things would turn around for her. But Troy ran the moment he discovered she was pregnant. He moved on to another girl and didn’t want anything to do with her child.
Now, at thirty four, she was a single mother, trying to bear it all on her own. But Ashley had been worth all her pain. So what if she could never love again. So what if she still was the poor, life-battering Julia Medina. She had her daughter, and she was determined to make certain that Ashley would never endure the same struggles as she had done.
He stared at himself in the mirror. James Connelly. He repeated the name quietly. He was still the same man with the same feelings, but with a different identity. How could anyone erase a past just like that?
He lathered his cheeks with shaving foam and then glided a shaver down his jaw. His past was gone. There was no Irvines, no Bobby and no history of all those hits he had made as an assassin under the name of Ricky Prescott. The murders were gone, and in its place, he now had a fresh new hit list as James Connelly.
His shaver nipped a bit of his skin and he winced. He dabbed at the small wound with his finger, trying to wash away the blood oozing out of it. But it wasn’t the cut that hurt. It was the wound in his heart he
was trying to block away in his memory that pained him more.
Anne…
He washed off the foam from his face and then dabbed it dry with a towel. She had been wrong for him from the start. He saw the rationality now. If she had known about his past, she would never have fallen in love with him. She was better suited to someone like Nicholas Bradley. He would take care of her and give her the life he would never be able to provide to her.
The last time he had stood outside her house, he had seen Nicholas strolling up her pathway and to her door like he belonged there. Perhaps Mark Dane was right. This was his chance to forge a new life, even if it was under the name of a dead man called James Connelly.
CHAPTER 3
James strode up to the house that served as a local base for The Pachecos.
“Hey, Jamie,” one man greeted him on the way.
“Hey, Roberto,” he replied, giving him a slight nod. He glanced at his bright white sling shirt over his colorful knee length shorts. His white socks were pulled up his leg and almost up to his knees. It was the traditional dress code for most Hispanic gang members. The one thing he had learned in his stay with The Pachecos was that they always stayed fresh, clean and with an admirable sense of loyalty to both their gang and their families. He had once amusingly observed one rugged member, respectably feared by his peers, being cuffed the upside of his head by his very small and petite mother for forgetting to bring back home a crate of eggs. Until he had become a part of The Pachecos, he had always believed them to be merciless humans with no empathy or emotions for anyone other than themselves. They were still cruel bastards, but he couldn’t help credit them for their loyalty to their families.
He stepped into the house and was immediately greeted with chatter and the whirring sound of a tattoo machine.
“Juan,” James said as he approached the man sitting on a chair receiving yet another tattoo in his inked covered body.
“Jamie,” Juan Carlos grimaced.
James grabbed a chair and watched the man who led the The Pachecos skewing his face in pain as the tattooist deftly moved his needle along the drafted design on his skin.
“Why don’t you get one?” Juan said, lifting an eyebrow at him. “You got too clean a skin, man. You need some ink.”
“I don’t like being branded.”
“You don’t like being a Pacheco?” There was a clear hint of suspicion in his voice.
James leaned back into his chair, trying to act as mellow as he could. “I would like to think you can measure my loyalty other than by a bit of ink on my body.”
Juan smirked. “Unlike Little Dimey. He had our brand all over him and yet he ratted us out.”
James shrugged. “Perhaps. My position in the gang is to remain silent and hidden. Any markings would only make me conspicuous. It would make it difficult for me to blend in with the public if anything happened.” He licked his lips. “Besides, I’m not too fond of needles.”
Juan laughed. “You’re scared of needles?!”
James smiled and shook his head. “I had a nagging feeling not to tell you that.” Inside, he was only too glad to diffuse the tension between them. The Pachecos didn’t take betrayal very well. “So what is this new assignment you’ve called me for?”
Juan waved the tattooist away, wincing from the pain in his arm. He stood up from his chair to look over the tattoo in the mirror. “It’s meant to be a Pacheco wearing a sombrero.”
“It’s getting there,” James said, his eyes resting on Juan’s reddened arm.
“Ahh, the pleasure in pain… and the beauty.” He turned back to James with a grin. “We have a training coming up in two days. And we’ve got a former Navy Seal to teach the boys how to properly use these guns. It’s going to be awesome.”
A former Seal? Teaching gangsters how to properly use a gun would be a game changer on the streets. There would be an all out war between the law and the outlaws.
“That is certainly something we needed,” he said aloud, trying not to sound sarcastic. “Who is this guy?”
Juan slapped his shoulder gently. “Brett Johnson. He was a naval special warfare operator. We will be in good hands.”
A nerve beat rapidly in his temples. This was going to be terrible. The chaos unleashed on the streets by a gang who were knowledgeable in the art of using warfare would be unfathomable. Even without that training it was crazy.
“Where is the training?” he asked as casually as he could.
“On a ranch in Mexico. We’d have to cross over to the other side.” Juan slumped into a couch excitedly. “We’ll have fun, esé!”
Eric took the elevator up to the twenty-fifth floor; a route he had taken often in the last two years. He pulled out his key and stepped out into the hallway, heading straight towards his empty office space. He opened the door casually, the scent of raw timber and wood shavings immediately hitting him. Carpentry tools were strewn on a table and air duct pipes lay about the floor. While it was a sore sight, there was little he could do about it. This was how it was meant to be.
He pressed onto a hidden button, opening up a secret panel in the wall. He strolled leisurely into the disguised espionage base. Its occupants sat quietly at their desks monitoring their computer screens, working busily at their assigned tasks.
“Casey,” he greeted one of the women.
She nodded her head and pointed in the direction of another room as she continued to speak into her headset. He ambled on to the room and then knocked softly on the door.
“Yeah, Eric,” Mark said from the inside.
He strolled into the room and dragged a chair. “We have a problem.”
“And what is that now?”
“Juan has upped the level of armed combat by The Pachecos.” He drummed his fingers on the arm of the chair, looking up at the man who cornered him into this job. Tomorrow, he would die and nobody would know. Nobody would mourn his loss. Why would they? He was already dead, wasn’t he? And standing before him was the man who was the reason behind it all. “You might want to sit down for this one.”
CHAPTER 4
James sat on the steps leading up to his back veranda and tied up his shoe laces. The waves were high and crashing loudly against the beach. A light breeze blew over him. He gazed out at the sun and gauged there was still a few hours before it would set in the horizon.
He rubbed his temples. Mark wanted him to go on with the gang and attend the training in Mexico. Why? Why wouldn’t he stop it? Was the mission so important that they would have to compromise the lives of civilians to a bunch of trigger-happy gangbangers?
He palmed his face and stood up. It wasn’t his business anymore. Mark could be accountable for all those lives. He did what he had to do. He couldn’t do more than to follow orders.
He jogged out of his backyard and down to the beach. He needed his run. It was the one thing that had kept him alive so far.
He focused on each step, his breath pulling in and releasing at a steady pace. The ocean breeze kept his sweaty body cool. Jogging along the beach had become one of his favorite things to do whenever he got home. He found he could leave his troubles behind him in his run, drowning them tentatively in the sounds of the sea. Even if his peace was only temporary, it gave him the will to push on with his mission.
He smiled at two women standing on the side, watching him attentively with obvious admiration. He was well aware of the female attention he received whenever he jogged down the sands, but he still had to find the courage to talk to any of them. Perhaps, it was time he should, he contemplated. Perhaps, a little flirtation would abate the constant memory of Anne. After all, Anne had moved on. She was with Nicholas now. She probably must be married too.
He closed his eyes and focused on his breathing again. He had to stop thinking about her or he’d spark that ache in his heart again.
He opened his eyes, his gaze immediately resting on the beautiful blonde woman looking out into the sea. Her golden locks fluttered in the wind, raisin
g them slightly off her shoulders to reveal more of her profile.
He stopped abruptly, his heart pounding against his chest walls. Anne? This wasn’t possible. It couldn’t be her. He had left her behind in Boston. She was just someone who looked like her.
He swallowed, moving closer to her. She didn’t move, continuing to look frozenly onto the ocean. And when he stood just a breath away from her, his heart almost cramped from the pain inside him. Anne…
And for the third time in his life, he stared at her like a man worshipping his goddess. His eyes traced down her face, resting on her lips. He wanted to pull her into his arms and kiss her. He found his fingers reaching out for her hands and instantly stopped himself short from touching her.
“Anne?” someone called out from behind them.
He turned quickly towards the ocean, pretending to stand harmlessly beside her. Anne spun around on the balls of her feet to head towards the woman calling out for her, colliding into him squarely on his chest. She stumbled back with a cry and he grabbed onto her immediately, his arms moving around her waist and pulling her into him. He held her steady against him, unwilling to let her go so quickly. He wanted to run his fingers through her soft hair and crush his lips against hers. Surprisingly, she didn’t move either. She tilted her head up to him, her eyes narrowed with deep thought.
“Anne, are you okay?” the woman interrupted them, breaking his moment with her.
He reluctantly let her go, stepping away from her slightly.
“I am fine, Julia,” Anne said.
The other woman looked at him a little longer than he felt comfortable and he turned to walk away.
“Thank you,” she said quickly before he could leave. “Anne... Anne has poor eyesight. She didn’t mean to bump into you like that.”
“I don’t just have poor eyesight, Julia.” Anne rolled her eyes. “I am blind. I can’t see anything at all.”