Last Breath

Sixteen

Daniel

REGAN IS QUIET AS WE order breakfast at the cleanest cafe I can find within walking distance. Maybe she’s thinking about what the hell happened back in the dingy hotel room. It’s all I can think about. Her smell is on my skin, and the sun is baking it into every pore in my body. I don’t know if I will ever regret it though. If this is all I carry with me when we part, isn’t it enough? It’ll have to be. “This is very, um, ordinary,” she says, forking a bit of scrambled egg into her mouth.

“I thought something familiar might be appealing about now.” I smothered my eggs with hot sauce, and I used to love the spiciness of chorizo sausages, but right now all I can taste is the tang of Regan’s pussy as she pressed her fingers against my lips. The only thing I really want to eat right now is sitting across from me, her legs tucked primly to the side. Consuming food is reflexive at this point. My body knows it needs fuel, so I’m shoveling in the protein and carbs as fast as possible. But my head is back in the hotel room, and we aren’t having a mutual masturbation scene. Oh no, I’m fucking her. I’m driving deep inside her cunt and feeling her slick juice lubricate every thrust.

“How do you know Daisy and Nick?” Regan’s question shakes me out of my fantasy, and I drag my attention back to the table and her question. Be a human being and make conversation, I order myself.

“Ahhh, through friends,” I say vaguely wondering if I could avoid the topic of Vasily Petrovich forever. Russia is one of the leading exporters of flesh, although the home of the brave isn’t so far behind. “You?”

“Daisy answered my ad for a roommate. She’s fresh off the farm. I’m worried about her. You know she hadn’t left her town in years because her dad was a big agoraphobic? She was running away from home at the age of twenty.” Regan laughs a little self-consciously, tucking a lock of hair behind her delicate ear. If I were a soldier home for a couple weeks of furlough and had run across her, I’d have been on her like gravy on biscuits. Hell, I’d have had to fight off some of my squad mates to get to her. And now I’d had a taste of her. I’d heard her sexy noises as she got excited, the soft, wet sounds as her fingers worked her pussy, the moans of relief and satisfaction when she came. And I’m gone again.

“Daisy seems . . . trusting.” Daisy and Nick were perfect for each other. He was a crazy psychopath, and she didn’t know any better that he wasn’t normal. I vaguely remember giving Nick dating advice at one time. He’d laugh—if he knew how—if he saw the state I was in.

“Yeah, too much so, I guess.” Regan sighs and then pushes her eggs around on her plate a bit. “I called my boyfriend when you were in the shower.”

Boyfriend? Oh right, the Mike dude who can’t keep it up for more than five seconds. That’s deflating. I’m cooking up fantasies about the fifty ways I could make Regan come, and she’s worried about calling the guy who’s never given her an orgasm. “That’s fine. Phone’s a burner.” I wondered if she was worried that we were going to get tracked down. “You should call your parents.”

“What can I say to them? I’m here in Brazil, but I’m on the run because some crazy guy with a blonde hair, green-eyed fetish is preventing me from flying home? And by the way, Mike’s already moved on to my girlfriend Becca.”

“Sounds like she’s not much of a girlfriend.” I try to hide my satisfaction that Mike’s not in the picture. I wonder if I should off him, though. Just for being a douchebag. I think the world can only sustain so many asswipes, and I’d be doing a favor making sure the scales were even.

“Yeah,” she answers glumly.

I wonder if she’s the most torn up about Mike or Becca or her parents? Girl has a lot on her plate. Guess she has the right to be upset about any and all things. I make what I hope is a sympathetic face and continue eating. It’s either that or get on a plane and shoot Mike in the nuts.

“I’m in college, you know. I’m working on getting my CPP.”

Taking the last bite of my chorizo, I look disapprovingly at Regan’s nearly uneaten plate. I wonder if she doesn’t like the food or the company. Too bad. She needs the fuel. “Start eating. We have places to go.”

She frowns but mechanically starts eating again.

I lean back into my chair and stretch my legs out. Man, I’m tired. Regan and I need to get to Luiz, and then we need some serious sleep. Or I’m going to make a mistake—like touch her the next time she licks my neck. My fingers curl into my coffee cup as I think about that and her wet body and her pussy-slicked fingers pressed against my lips. That non-sex was just about the best sexual encounter I’d had in far too long.

“What about you?” She gestures toward me. “Did you always want to be a gun-toting maniac?”

“Nah. Thought I would go home after I got out of the army and help my dad out on the ranch.”

“So why aren’t you?”

“Because I was a hothead. I got into a fight my senior year with some guy, and I broke a few ribs. Jackass was making fun of my sister. Judge told me I could have a blot on my record or I could go enlist for four years. I choose enlistment. My dad was pretty pissed off, and we exchanged some angry words about me not being good enough to run the ranch and him being too much of a control freak. I ended up staying in the army and then . . .” I trail off. “Then something happened, and I haven’t been able to go home. But once I right that problem I’m heading for the ranch, and I’m not leaving.” I change the subject because I’m done talking about me. “What’s a CPP?”

“Certified Payroll Processor. It’s a pretty intensive certification program that you take so you can work in accounting and human resources. Once I’m certified, I have a standing job offer from a company that provides payroll services to Fortune 500 companies."

“And you are going to do what?”

She shrugs. “Nothing anymore. I’m not going to be able to take the test in time, which means all my prep classes are wasted, which means I won’t be able to start my job, which means . . . I don’t even know anymore.”

“This is a fucked up world, darlin’. That you’re still breathing oughta be counted as a win.”

“It’s . . . how do I go back to that?”

“To what? Your dick-for-brains boyfriend? Your job that you talk about with all the enthusiasm of a goat herder?” I’m getting angry, and I can’t even pinpoint the real cause. Is it because I am pissed off that she still cared enough about her boyfriend to contact him? That she actually called him a boyfriend? That she didn’t care enough about herself to be with a guy who could give her a real life orgasm? That she is thinking about going back to Minneapolis, the coldest tit a witch ever froze, to take up a job that would turn her into a zombie in under three years? Or that she is so achingly goddamned beautiful, and that I want her so much my balls might fall off?

Even though my external word vomit doesn’t match my internal bloviating, Regan still looks taken aback, but she rallies quickly.

“You know, I’ve gone through a lot and am still standing, so you can dial back on the Robin Williams Die Hard inspirational speeches. You suck at them.”

“It’s Bruce Willis, and I know.” I grin at her because I’ve never been one to stay angry long and her confusion between Bruce Willis and Robin Williams is funny as shit. “Let’s go, fighter.”

“Fighter. I like that. You can keep calling me that one.”

“How about baby fighter? Or fighter doll?” I tease. I pay the bill and gesture for Regan to step out in front of me.

“You staring at my ass? Is that why you always want me to go first?” She sasses back, whatever hurt my incautious words may have caused apparently gone.

“You do have a fine ass, fighter baby,” I whistle. “It’s plump and bitable like a juicy piece of Brazilian fruit.”

“Yet you haven’t even attempted a taste. Maybe you don’t like Brazilian fruit?” she sashays out in front of me, her ass swinging back and forth, looking like a true Rio native. All the ladies in Rio seem to have a special hitch in their step that makes people-watching down here almost mandatory. But right now my eyes are glued on this one Minnesotan’s prime real estate, and my head’s reeling from her very obvious come-on. I don’t really know what to make of it.

“I love fruit,” I say. “I never like to eat where I’m not invited.”

“What kind of invitation is it that you need then? An engraved one with gold lettering?”

I want to pull her aside, maybe push her up against one of the concrete walls of the buildings lining the Rua Visconde de Pirajá and test out that invitation. She laughs and then snaps her fingers. “Better close your mouth, baby boy, or flies will land there.”

Snapping my jaw shut, I hurry to catch up with her. Who said we needed sleep when we got done with Luiz? I’m thinking there are a dozen other things we could be doing in a soft, warm bed between some cool, clean sheets.

Whistling, I wink at Regan, and she gives me a big smile in return. Life is easy when you don’t think about anything but the moment. We’ve got to get Regan papers, and then we’re checking into a decent hotel room.

“This is a pretty nice place,” she says as we walk down an avenue full of luxury brand stores. “I mean, I think these are nicer stores than we have in Minneapolis.”

“Ipanema is the second-wealthiest neighborhood in Rio.”

“And we’re going to see a forger here?” she asks.

“Maybe it pays well?” I stop at the address that Pereya gave me. It’s an art store—a high-end art store.

“This?” Skepticism drips from the word.

Opening the door, we step inside, the air conditioning almost too cool for our skin. Regan shivers noticeably, and I wrap an arm around her instinctively. She leans into my embrace. For the warmth, I remind myself, but I find myself pretty damned pleased.

“Tudo bem?” A lithe, model-tall woman walks toward us, her dark hair caught up in a heavy braid that lies like a thick snake on her shoulder.

“Just awesome,” I lie. “Look, I could give you a big song and dance complete with code words and shit like that, but I need to see Luiz. Pereya sent me.”

A speculative glint appears in her eyes, and she says, “Wait here.”

“Is this the place?” Regan whispers after the leggy brunette disappears into the backroom.

“Hope so.” I force myself not to follow the brunette into the back. Shifting our heavy bags over one shoulder, I try to relax. The artwork on the wall is stunning, but clearly directed toward tourist tastes with iconic shots of Sugarloaf Mountain and the Christ the Redeemer statue. In the middle of the room on a pedestal is a crystal sculpture that looks like a futuristic piece of kryptonite, only it’s not green, just clear glass. After a moment, the attendant waves us in the back.

Luiz is a small man, barely coming up to my chest. Or maybe he was once taller, but he’s so spent so much time bent over a table, his natural height reduced about four inches by the forward roll of his shoulders.

“What do you need?”

“Credit cards, passport.”

“For who?”

“Two blondes.”

“This one?” He points to Regan.

“Yeah, and one more.”

“Do you have a picture?”

I do. “It’s twenty months old though,” I caution. Pulling out my wallet, I lift out the picture I’ve kept in a vellum envelope in an interior pocket. I’ve had this picture with me for a long time, just for this purpose. When I first started out in mercenary work, I hadn’t realized how important false identities were—being able to change your name and move throughout countries with ease is something of a necessity in my line of work. I have dozens of identities but none for Regan. I have a couple of stolen identities I carry around for my sister, but I might as well have something made up for her while I’m at it.

Luiz nods and takes the photo with tweezers. I can tell by his meticulousness that our papers will be flawless.

“It will be two weeks.”

Regan, silent the whole exchange, finally speaks up. “Two weeks?”

“Tomorrow,” I say implacably and pull out a wad of cash to sweeten my demand.

Luiz shakes his head. “Detailed work takes time.”

Regan makes a distressed sound, and I shove the cash at Luiz. “Tomorrow.” At his hesitation, I draw a gun and everyone ducks, but I aim it toward the crystal sculpture of Sugar Loaf Mountain sitting in the middle of the showroom. “Tomorrow,” I repeat.

Luiz looks at me, the heavy bags at my back, and then the cash. “Tomorrow then.” He gestures for Regan to stand against one empty space of white wall and takes her picture.

I holster my gun and shove the cash in his hand. Gesturing toward the door with my head, I urge Regan out.

“Why not now?” She looks like she doesn’t want to leave without the papers, but I don’t want to piss off Luiz anymore. I drag her out of forger's office and into the street. She looks unhappy, and I miss her sunshine-like smile from earlier this morning.

“Let’s go get our stuff and then check into a better hotel. I feel like I need another shower after lying in those sheets.”

“Who’s the girl?” she says.

“The girl?” I’m not sure I follow her. What girl? She’s the only girl I’m with.

“The other girl. The one with her picture in your wallet? Who is it?”

“My sister.”