No Way Back: Part 2 of 3

Table of Contents

Title Page

Lauritzia

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Wendy

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Eighteen

Chapter Nineteen

Chapter Twenty

Chapter Twenty-One

Chapter Twenty-Two

Chapter Twenty-Three

Roxanne

Chapter Twenty-Four

Chapter Twenty-Five

Chapter Twenty-Six

Chapter Twenty-Seven

Chapter Twenty-Eight

Chapter Twenty-Nine

Chapter Thirty

Cano

Chapter Thirty-One

Chapter Thirty-Two

Chapter Thirty-Three

Chapter Thirty-Four

Chapter Thirty-Five

Chapter Thirty-Six

Chapter Thirty-Seven

Chapter Thirty-Eight

There is No Way Back

About the Author

Novels by Andrew Gross

Copyright

About the Publisher

CHAPTER NINE

“Jamie, Taylor. Can you move forward, please?”

Lauritzia Velez got the kids’ attention as they waited for the elevator on the third floor of the Westchester Mall.

Not her kids, actually. The Bachmans’. Lauritzia had only taken care of them these past two years. Taylor was nine, and was texting her friend Cameron, all excited about running into Michael Goldberg at the Apple store in the mall, and Jamie, eleven, was already completely obsessed with the new PlayStation 3 game he had just bought with a birthday gift certificate.

“You know, when we get back home, that game is on the shelf until you finish your homework.”

“But it’s Peyton Manning,” Jamie muttered, his eyes still glued to the box.

“And you too, Miss Fancy Fingers.” She pushed Taylor forward, the girl’s fingers continuing to text at warp speed.

A heavyset woman carrying two shopping bags next to Lauritzia smiled at her sympathetically, as if to say, It’s no use. I’ve got my own.

Lauritzia was twenty-four, dark-haired, with pretty dark-brown eyes that were the color of the hills at dusk where she was from, and she had worked for Harold and Roxanne Bachman since she had moved here from Mexico two years earlier. For the first time, she’d been able to put the hardships of the past few years behind her. She loved Mr. and Mrs. B; they’d been so good to her. They treated her like part of their family. They took her on vacations, encouraged her to call them by their first names, which she still wasn’t comfortable with. They even paid her tuition at the community college where she was taking classes. Maybe one day she would have a degree. In retail merchandising. Perhaps she’d even open her own store. In the meantime, she looked at Taylor and Jamie as if they were her own. Like her younger cousins, whom she had always taken care of back home. With what had happened to her own family, they were practically all she had now. For the first time since everything started, she actually felt she had a new life. A life she trusted. Not to mention a home.

The elevator door had opened, but the kids just stood there.

“Let’s go, Jamie, please.” Lauritzia pushed them forward. Out of the corner of her eye she noticed a Hispanic-looking man in sunglasses leaning against a railing. She thought he seemed to be watching them. Things like that always gave her a shudder. “Taylor, take my hand.”

They stepped inside, along with the woman with the shopping bags and two or three others. The doors closed and the elevator stopped at the second floor. A young couple got on, along with two black guys in the usual team sweatshirts and baggy pants.

“Kids,” Lauritzia said, pulling them to the rear, “let everyone in.”

“Lauritzia, can we stop at Five Guys?” Jamie asked. His favorite burger place.

“We’ll see.”

The doors closed and the elevator went down to the first retail floor, then on to Level 1, where they had left the car. Lauritzia let her mind drift to what she would make them for dinner. The Bachmans said they were going out. She had some chicken she could thaw. And there was leftover macaroni.

Maybe Five Guys wasn’t the worst idea …

The doors opened on the ground level. “C’mon, guys.” Lauritzia placed her hands on their shoulders and started to push them forward.

That was the moment when her life was rocketed back to her own private hell.

A man stood in the doorway. A man who looked like a thousand men she had seen in her past: dark skin, black hair knotted into a roll, sunglasses; the all-too-familiar tattoo running down his neck.

She saw him reach inside his jacket.

Lauritzia knew. Even before she watched him search through the elevator for her eyes, scanning through the other people getting off.

Before she saw him pull out his weapon.

She knew.

And in the horror of what she knew was about to happen, her thoughts ran to the one thing she knew she could not lose.

“Taylor, Jamie!” As they stepped forward, she lunged for them, pulling them behind her as the first deadly pops rang out.

People began to scream.

The chilling sputter of the gun was a sound that had riddled through Lauritzia a thousand times back in her own town, as common as church bells. A sound she knew all too well, and that had cost her everyone she once held dear.

If this is my time, let it be so, she said to herself. But Jesus, Mary, please, not the kids.

The familiar sounds of panic rang all around her. The gunman was quick on the trigger and did not wait. Jamie and Taylor screamed, not fully realizing what was happening. Lauritzia forced them to the floor, pressing herself on top of them, praying that whatever evil was being done, it would leave and not take them.

Just spare the kids, she begged God. Please, do not take these kids!

She pressed her face against Taylor’s, saying her own prayers, and tried to stifle the girl’s cowering sobs. Someone fell in front of her, and she waited for the bullets to hit, for the end to come.

But suddenly there was a different sound. Not the ear-splitting sputter of a machine pistol. But two loud pops.

Then there was only silence where a moment before there had been mayhem. Silence and that awful, smoke-filled smell that always came before the wails.

She looked up. The tattooed young killer was on his back, dead, his semiautomatic pistol at his side. A young policeman came up with his arms still extended. What happened next was the aftermath she knew all too well: the awful smell of lead rising like smoke. The anguished screams and moans. The hushed murmurs of shock and disbelief.

The woman with the shopping bags who had smiled at her was dead, her once kindly eyes frozen and wide. One of the black guys was moaning, his T-shirt soaked in blood. The young man who got on with his girlfriend on Level 2 was holding on to her body, moaning in disbelief. “Kelly … Kelly …”

Beneath her, Jamie and Taylor were sobbing.

The policeman finally took his gun away from the shooter. “Is everyone all right?” Then, shouting into a radio, “Emergency. Emergency! Shooting at the Westchester Mall. Level One. We need EMS immediately—everything you’ve got. Suspect down.”

Other people wandered up and began to help the shell-shocked people out of the elevator. Lauritzia lifted herself up, and then the kids, who were whimpering in shock. I have to get them out of here, she knew. Before anyone comes.

Before they ask her questions that she did not want to answer.

“Is it over? Is it over, Lauritzia?” Jamie kept muttering.

“Yes, yes,” Lauritzia reassured him. She hugged them with all her might. “You are safe.” But she knew it wasn’t over.

Only then did she feel the burning on her face and put her hand there and notice the blood. Her blood.

“Lauritzia, you’re hurt!” Taylor yelled.

“We have to go!”

She pressed their faces close to her as they stepped over the bodies to shield them from the horrible sight.

“Everyone wait over there,” the policeman instructed them. “EMS is on the way. You too,” he said, guiding Lauritzia.

But she could not wait.

“Come!” she told them, lifting them off the ground and carrying them past the swarm of bodies. They were trembling and whimpering—who would not be?—but there was no time to delay. She took a last, quick look at the shooter. She had seen his face a thousand times. The tattoo. Only by the grace of God had they been spared.

But these others … She glanced back sadly at the heavyset woman’s frozen eyes. Dios toma ellos almas.

God take their souls.

But by the time the police came she had to be long gone.

“Children, quick!” she said, dragging them toward the garage. “We must get out of here now!”

CHAPTER TEN

Thirty minutes later, the tears ran freely in the Bachmans’ kitchen. Tears mixed with horror and elation.

“You saved their lives,” Roxanne said as she dabbed Lauritzia’s cheek with a cloth and hugged her. Held her as warmly and gratefully as if Lauritzia was one of her own. “There’s nothing we can do that can ever thank you enough.”

Mr. B rushed home. They told Lauritzia over and over that she was a hero. But she knew she wasn’t a hero. She knew she was anything but that.

Still shaking and in tears, Jamie and Taylor sat in their parents’ arms and told them how Lauritzia had pulled them to the elevator floor before they even realized what was happening, and how she had covered them with her body as the shooting broke out, shielding them from harm, and then got them out of there.

“It must have been so horrible,” Roxanne said over and over, tears in her own eyes, unable to let them out of her arms.

“It was. It was,” Taylor said, her face buried in the crook of her mother’s arm. “Mommy, I saw this woman and she was—”

“Don’t talk about it. Don’t talk about it, honey.” Roxanne pressed her daughter to her cheek, stroking her hair.

Jamie, still white as a ghost, could barely speak at all.

“Maybe we should contact the police,” Mr. Bachman said. He had rushed home from his law office in Stamford as soon as his wife called. “You got a look at him, didn’t you?”

“Not a good one,” Lauritzia said. “I was on the ground. No, please, no police. That is not a good idea.”

“Maybe later, Harold,” Roxanne said. “You can see how they’re all still rattled.”

“Yes.” Lauritzia nodded. “Maybe later. If they need me.”

“Anyway, there were witnesses all over,” Roxanne Bachman said. “We don’t have to involve the kids.”

Mrs. B was tall and pretty, and usually wore her shoulder-length blonde hair in a short ponytail. And she was very smart; Lauritzia knew she had once been in the financial investment business. That was how she and Mr. B first met. Now she did a lot of charity work for the school. And did yoga and ran marathons. And was the president of the neighborhood in Old Greenwich, where they lived.

“It’s just all so horrible.” Roxanne couldn’t stop squeezing her kids.

“They’re saying it was some kind of drug thing,” Harold said. His prematurely gray hair always gave him an air of importance, and Lauritzia knew he was important; he was a senior partner in a big law firm. “There was no immediate connection to any of the victims, but one of the people who was wounded has a record for selling drugs or something …”

“Sí, it was horrible,” Lauritzia agreed. They would never know how horrible. Yes, those poor people, Lauritzia knew, feeling ashamed.

“You ought to get that looked at,” Roxanne said of her wound. “I can take you to the emergency room—”

“No, the blood has stopped. It’s nothing.”

“Anyway, you should lie down. You’re still in shock. I’ll look in my medicine cabinet. I might have something.”

“Yes, I think that would be good.” Lauritzia nodded.

Roxanne put her hand to Lauritzia’s cheek. “Look how close this came … We can never make up to you what you did for us today.”

Soon the phones began to ring.

Mrs. B’s parents. Judy and Arn. Roxanne had called them, having told them the kids were heading to the mall, and knowing they would hear about it on the news. And then their friends. Then Jamie and Taylor’s friends. Soon it would be chatter on Facebook. After that, maybe local reporters. They’d want to hear their story.

And maybe hers too—the one who saved the kids!

Next it would be the police.

In her room, Lauritzia lay on her bed. She was growing more sad than she was afraid. Sad that it had come to this. That she had never been completely truthful with them. Or told them anything of her past. Except a made-up story, about how her father was a cook in the village where she came from. That had once been true. And how she had come here to visit her sister. That was partially true as well.

Before the nightmare began.

Now she knew she could no longer stay. They knew. They knew where she was. She could not put the family in any more danger than she already had. She could not do that to them. People she had grown to love. Anyway, once the truth came out, they would lose all trust in her. They would ask her to leave.

A drug thing. That’s what Mr. B claimed that it was …

It is always a drug thing, Lauritzia knew.

La cuota. That which is owed. To the familia, the cartel. A tax to the grave.

For her, what she owed was clear.

She had seen them. Through the maze of people. Before dragging Jamie and Taylor to the ground and burying her face in their trembling bodies. She had seen the shooter’s face and the dull, businesslike indifference in his eyes. The tattoo that ran down his neck. There was no attempt to hide it. The skeleton’s head that brought back all the terror and fear she had prayed she had forever left behind.

She knew who they were and where they were from.

And worse, Lauritzia thought, pressing the photo of her dead brothers and sisters to her pained heart, she knew exactly why they were here.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

Lauritzia knew she had to leave. Leave now. She could not put them in danger another time.

There was just nowhere in the world for her to go.

Only back home, she realized, though that would be a fate of certain death for her. The day she left, she knew she could never return. She no longer had a home. Except here, while it had lasted. The Bachmans had given so much to her. She would miss Taylor and Jamie as if they were her own. But she could not put them at risk. She had lived two years in the fantasy that she had somehow escaped her fate. Part of a new family. Going to school. Pretending there was an outcome for her except that which she knew would ultimately find her.

Maybe that was someone else’s dream. Like the one of her own store. And surrounding herself with happy things. She perfectly understood this, as she took her bags from the closet.

La cuota.

It had found her. And it would have to be paid.

Two mornings later she made breakfast for the kids, as she did most every weekday. She had waited for them to feel fit and ready to go back to school. Mrs. B had met with the principal the day before and decided it was okay for them to return. The two were strangely quiet and withdrawn on their ride there, as if they somehow suspected something. Maybe they were just nervous to face the many questions about what had happened and have to recount their frightening tale. Maybe it was something deeper—the violence always did that to children. Why would they understand? As she drove up to the school and they were about to run out, Lauritzia reached over and held them.

“Wait a minute,” she said. “I want a hug. An extra-special hug this morning. For friends forever.”

They looked at her as if it seemed a bit peculiar.

“I think I’ve earned it,” Lauritzia said, flashing them her happiest smile, trying not to show her sadness, which was killing her inside.

“Okay,” Jamie mumbled, and tilted his head against her arm. Taylor gave her a real hug, which Lauritzia put her whole soul into in return.

“I’ll see you soon,” she called after them. Then quietly to herself: “Quizá un día.”

Perhaps one day.

Back at the house, she hastily packed her belongings into her bags. Her clothes, many of them the fine things Mrs. B had given her. The pictures she had kept of her family. And ones with her new family too. A wooden carving of Santa Bessette that her sister Maria had given her, which now meant more to her than anything in the world. Sadly, Lauritzia put her textbooks aside on the night table.

She would not need them anymore.

When she was done, she dragged her bags out to the foyer and called for a taxi. Roxanne was at exercise class, and that gave her about half an hour. She sat at the kitchen island and tried to put her thoughts down in a note. To all of them. She told them how much she loved them all and how they were like family to her now, her only family, and always would be. But that she had to go back home.

“Lives here are not like where I come from” was all she said. The words were hard to get out. “There, they are not fully your own. I wish you all the love of God. You will always be in my heart. Each of you. Every day. You treated me with love and made me part of your life and for that it is I who can never repay you enough, not you me.”

She felt herself starting to cry.

Mercifully, she was saved by the sound of the cab honking outside. She brought her bags to the step and asked the driver to wait. Just a few moments more. She ran upstairs one last time, to the kids’ rooms, and placed a flower from the kitchen on each of their beds.

Where she was from it meant someone would always watch over you, no matter where in life you went.

As she finally went out the front door, carrying her bags to the taxi, she took a final look at the house that had given her a home for a second time.

Then she went down the stairs, wishing someone had put a flower on her pillow too.

CHAPTER TWELVE

Roxanne parked the Range Rover SUV in front of the three-car garage and went in through the kitchen. The bar method had been a real killer today. Jan was the instructor, and she always made her do things she didn’t think she could. Things no body was meant to do!

She had a crazy day ahead of her. There was the spring fund-raising lunch for the kids’ school, then a 2:00 P.M. meeting with a prospective new landscaper for the home owners’ association where they lived. She had a session planned with a trauma psychologist for the kids, so she had to pick them up herself; Harold said he would join. She had just put in a call to the school to check on how they were doing, and the principal said, while it was still early, so far everything seemed fine.

They’d been through hell, and Roxanne didn’t want to rush getting them back to normal.

“Lauritzia!” Roxanne called out as she came in, opening the fridge and grabbing a coconut water container. She took out her vitamins, magnesium pills, and fish oil. “Lauritzia, are you here?”

No answer. Maybe she was at the store. She took her iPad and sat down at the counter, thinking about her day.

That’s when she saw the note.

“Mr. and Mrs. B …”

As soon as she read the first sentence, which took her by surprise, her heart began to crumble.

“This is so difficult for me to write … , ” the letter began. “I have to go back home.”

Back home. Roxanne was dumbstruck. She was certain Lauritzia didn’t have any family there anymore. She had never completely spelled out the details, but she always said there was nothing for her back home anymore.

“You and your kids, you have been like a true family to me … You spoke of this after the terrible thing we witnessed the other day. But it is I who can never repay you, not …”

“Oh, no, no, no, Lauritzia …” Roxanne felt herself almost start to cry.

She didn’t know what could have caused Lauritzia to panic so. Obviously it was connected to what had happened at the mall. That had triggered something. She and Harold had noticed that Lauritzia hadn’t seemed herself since. But to leave like this. Out of nowhere. Without even saying good-bye. And to go where? Back home … back to a place where she had nothing. Running away as if she was in fear. Running from what? The kids would be brokenhearted.

The note made it seem as if she felt she had no options. But she did. She did have options.

Roxanne ran into Lauritzia’s room. The bed had been made, her textbooks piled neatly on the night table. How proud she had been the day she came back with them! The closet was cleaned out. Roxanne checked the bathroom. Empty. She sat sadly on the bed.

Oh, God, Lauritzia. Why?

It was clear she could only have left just a few minutes earlier. She had driven the kids to school. And the Ford Escape, the car she always used, was still in the driveway, so she must’ve called a cab.

Roxanne punched in the number, already sure where Lauritzia would head. She glanced at her watch. She knew she only had minutes.

“Riverside Cab.”

“Hi, this is Mrs. Bachman, at 230 Brookside. I think our nanny just left in one of your cars?”

“Yes, Mrs. Bachman.” The dispatcher paused, checking. “She should be just arriving at the station now.”

“Can you raise the driver? Can you tell him to tell her to wait for me? Tell her not to get on that train. I’ll be right there!”

She ran back into the kitchen and pulled off the Metro-North schedule that was pinned to the bulletin board. It was 9:32. The next train to New York was 9:45. Thirteen minutes. That didn’t give her much time.

Grabbing her bag, Roxanne jumped back into the Ranger Rover and backed out of the driveway. It was ten minutes to the station. If she didn’t get there, Lauritzia might well be gone, out of their lives forever.

She couldn’t let that happen. Not without letting her know, whatever it was, whatever had suddenly scared her, that she did have options.

She drove on Riverside, heading toward the station, and punched in Lauritzia’s cell on the Bluetooth.

No answer. She wasn’t picking up. Roxanne wasn’t surprised. The voice mail came on. “This is Lauritzia …”

“Lauritzia, this is Roxanne. Hon, I know you’re at the station. I’m headed there right now. I read your note. I know you feel you have to go, but whatever it is, I want you to wait for me. Just to talk, before you go. Will you wait for me, please! I’m on my way.”

She drove a little crazily, barely stopping at the signs on Riverside Avenue and Lake, then wound around the traffic circle into the station.