Altered Ch. 04

*All character engaged in sexual activity are over the age of 18, in case it's not obvious or mentioned.

*This is a long story intended to span many chapters, please go back and read the previous chapters or else this won't make a lot of sense. If you are looking for a quick fix this probably won't be for you. This story gets violent and reads like a jumbled mess that is my mind. I hope it's at least entertaining.

*Thanks to Alwaysready64, HellCat_Sundry for their help editing this because we become blind to our own mistakes.

*I will denote that dialogue is in Spanish by preceding it with an [S].

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After a collective sigh of relief, my adrenaline wore off and we talked about what to do next. Running from the Cartel/Illuminati was going to be harrowing. If we didn't keep a low profile someone could get hurt or dead.

My idea of how to get the girls across the border was to have the girls bribe some green card holders into letting them borrow their IDs. We would be escorted by someone they knew and would give that person their IDs back along with a second payment. It was a stupid idea, one that was rushed and not thoroughly thought out, but I wasn't given much time to come up with anything better. Now that we were faced with the execution of said stupid plan, it didn't matter anyway because the shootout closed the border crossing, for the day at least, and no one was getting through.

We had to get out of Tecate and fast so we used Google Maps and noticed they had a bus station a couple of blocks from the border crossing, so we ran over to it.

The buses were comparable to the Greyhound Buses in the States in that they were long term bus rides spanning many cities and Mexican states not just intercity transportation.

"So, is there anything available?" Robin asked, a little worried.

"The next bus out of here is booked solid, maybe we can get a taxi or something," I suggested.

"You have money, right?"

"Yeah."

"OK, I have an idea, follow my lead."

Robin was by far the smarter of the 2 girls and she was more talkative. Not that Tracy didn't talk but Robin seemed to take the lead in what they did and said. Tracy was more of a doer than a talker and she was more playful and affectionate and avoided confrontational subject matters; whereas, Robin was always up for a spirited debate especially if it was political. She would often play devil's advocate if she thought you would agree with her position just to get the thrill of an argument. The thing was, I also loved playing devil's advocate and we often argued for hours on subjects until Tracy would say something like 'get a room you two' or something to that effect.

Robin lead us over to a family of four who were obviously waiting for the bus.

[S] "Hello, Sir. You have a lovely family there."

[S] "Thank you miss," he beamed with pride.

[S] "Your wife is so beautiful and your kids are so well behaved," she schmoozed. "Where are you headed?"

It looked like they just lost their home, they had a lot of bags packed including pots and pans and personal items strapped to the outside of their packs.

[S] "Well, I am a little embarrassed - we were just evicted from our home. You see I injured my leg in a car accident a few months ago and I haven't been able to work since then. We are heading to Juarez to stay with family until I get back on my feet."

I saw where she was going with this and I took over.

[S] "We don't want to cause any problems for you and your family but we need to get out of the city today, I was wondering if we could buy your tickets off of you."

[S] "No, I'm afraid I can't do that sir, you see my kids are hungry and we need to leave today."

I pulled out a wad of cash and said, [S] "I tell you what, how about I give you $5000 dollars, plus I buy your four tickets for tomorrow's bus? I bet you can get a room for the night, feed your family and still have enough money..."

"OK!" he interrupted my salesman spiel.

I handed him the cash and he was very grateful and his hungry kids looked excited. I'm guessing it had been more than a day since they ate. I gave him an extra thousand dollars for the bus tickets and they took off.

Tracy gave me a kiss on the cheek, "You are so generous, they would have taken two hundred dollars easy."

"True, but I..."

"I know," she grabbed my hand, looking in my eyes assuring me that she knew I wasn't being frivolous. "You are generous and kind-hearted, that's very rare these days."

Robin leaned in and kissed my other cheek and gave me a hug from the side. For the first time in days I felt like I did something righteous. I always tried to live a virtuous life but for the past week I felt dragged in the mud, dirty, and although I felt the things I did were justifiable I had blood on my hands and a conscience questioning if could I have done anything differently.

The bus came ten minutes later and we got on the bus. Thankfully the roadblocks the police set up were lax and the bus was never searched on its way out of town. The bus was on route 20 that would turn into Federal Highway 2 which followed the border most of the way, then turn south-east avoiding some rough terrain and desert then curved back north-east all the way to Juarez.

The bus route had a stop on the outskirts of Mexicali, which is where we planned on getting off since it had a border crossing. However, Robin quickly became friends with some of the locals on the bus and found out that Mexicali had recently gotten a lot of raids on its caravans and the coyotes were keeping their heads down and not active. It turned out that Juarez was where a lot of them were going to cross the border and most of the people on the bus were in a group headed to one guy in particular -- called El Lobo (The Wolf).

"I think we should go to Juarez and take our chances with El Lobo. You are a white guy, it's going to be hard to find someone that will trust you even if you are being escorted by two beautiful Hispanic women," Robin stated, gesturing at herself and Tracy as if it were obvious they were beautiful.

The bus had room to squeeze three passengers per seat, and although we bought four tickets it didn't give us any extra room as it was packed to the brim with passengers. There were a lot of seats where kids were on the laps of their parents, at least it wasn't as bad as the buses and trains I have seen in countries like India where they not only stacked them and packed them but they were put up on the roof and hung off the sides too.

Robin was next to the window; Tracy was sandwiched in the middle and I had the aisle seat. Tracy was leaned over sleeping in Robin's lap.

"Yeah, but that's about seven to eight hundred miles from here, it will take about four days just to get there. It will probably add a couple of weeks to my journey home."

"Why would you go home, that's the first place they will look for you?"

"I need to make sure my mom is alright."

"She contacted me a couple of days ago about going to see your grandpa. She heard he was in the hospital."

"What? Why didn't you tell me this before?"

"I assumed you would have known that already," she said, looking perturbed. "Besides, we really never had a chance to since we have been running for our lives."

I thought about it and she was right, I was being short fused with her and she didn't deserve it.

"Sorry, you're right. I guess we will figure things out one day at a time."

Robin reached past the sleeping Tracy and held my hand in comfort; she released me as she leaned into the glass to sleep herself. I handed her a poncho from my pack and she used it as a pillow and thanked me before she drifted off to sleep.

It was dark outside and everyone in the bus was fast asleep, so I pulled out my tablet and connected to the web via satellite phone. I put in an encrypted order to my financial planner to purchase a property for me through a shell corporation that I set up. It needed to be secluded and the deed needed to be transferable to whomever I choose at a later date. He got back to me right away, I being his biggest client, and told me that he wasn't sure how to do that legally but he knew the right people to take care of it. He told me that since I wasn't 21 I couldn't legally own the property; the trust would have to own it but he could buy an investment property and make me the "caretaker" of the "investment". He also reminded me that I just received a quarterly interest payment to my private account of another million. Since he had been reinvesting my funds more conservatively into more interest-bearing investments as well as real estate, it would be easy to hide the transactions and give me more money now rather than later. It wasn't the best long-term investment strategy but he knew I needed access as much of my money now. Once again, he was looking out for me.

The bus took us a long way, through a lot of mountainous paths, some desert and some jungle. We only stopped a few times a day excluding bathroom stops that were no longer than 15 minutes. The longer stops were just enough time for the bus driver to get changed out, the bus gassed and the engine spot checked. The passengers were allowed to use the restrooms, get food and clean up during these stops but they never lasted more than a couple of hours. The passengers comfort wasn't their main priority, getting them to their destination fast so they could take the next batch was job one.

After a day of traveling, Tracy got more comfortable with me and would often alternate sleeping in my lap or Robin's. Tracy interrupted a spirited debate between me on Robin on the Brexit issue in order to play a game. Tracy loved to play games. We started playing a game where someone would call out a word, then the next person had to call out a new word that started with the leftmost middle letter of that word, so not only did you have to know how to spell the word but you only had 5 seconds to come up with a new word. We would play it in Spanish and some of the neighboring children would often join in; Robin would even play half the times especially when the kids joined in - both girls seemed to love children. Everything they did contradicted what my father told me about them.

When Robin was reading or bored Tracy would try talking to me.

"What was it like growing up in California? I always hear it's a great place to live."

"Well I'm not sure really, other than my martial arts training and school I really didn't get out much. I did walk around the neighborhood, go to parks and maybe a trip to the mall with George. My mother was always over-protective of me, which I realize now -- why. Not knowing what I know now, kind of led me to resent her growing up."

"You never got out in nature, went camping?"

"When I would spend my summers with my grandpa, yes. Although, one summer I did go to a survivalist camp and I learned to live in the wild -- but, that was in Africa so..."

"I hear the coastline is just beautiful and their redwoods are majestic -- maybe we can go see it one day?"

"I'd like that," I said smiling at her, and I looked to Robin who just grinned with no jealousy.

When Robin wasn't arguing about politics, she was planning for the future.

"So, Nate, you ever plan to get married? Have kids? White picket fence -- any of that?" Robin asked.

"I used to think about it a lot, actually. I had a dream girl and fantasized about us getting married. Unfortunately, I found out that I am who I am and now all of that seems impossible."

"What about an untraditional relationship? A lot of people these days are having kids and skipping marriage altogether."

"Yeah, I don't know what would work. I mean I think as far as kids go, I might already have two on the way," I said with trepidation and looking at her but she had no judgement in her eyes. "But, with all of these people after me, threatening the ones I love, kidnapping them - it feels like it would be better if I just went solo and kept everyone at a distance."

She went silent for a few minutes then asked, "Well, what if there wasn't anyone chasing you anymore? Would you consider it then?"

"Yeah -- maybe, I mean there are a lot of other things to consider, like what kind of children would I produce. Are they going to be freaks? Will they be accepted by society? And where would I find someone that would love me for who I was?"

"Me and Tracy both accept you for who you are..."

"Yeah, that's true..." I said. "But even with you I don't know if my biology affects you in an unfair way. I told you guys what happened at El Faro Beach. With you, my father specifically designed me to breed you. He probably put some sort of instinctual mechanism in you that make me irresistible to you..."

"Hmmm, I don't know, I think we would like you either way. When I would dream of the perfect man, you check all the boxes. Besides, even if you do begin to affect me I doubt I'll mind..."

"Me either," Tracy quickly interjected, with a smirk; we all laughed.

"What about you? You ever think about the white picket fence etcetera?"

"We didn't have what you would call a normal life, we didn't go to our prom nor high school for that matter. We had to teach ourselves while on the run. We learned a lot of human culture from movies and tv, and a lot of your traditions like birthdays, Christmases, etc. passed us by."

"Is there something that you didn't get to do that you regret?"

"I regret not ever going to the prom... but holidays -- we just learned to party with the locals."

We arrived in Juarez after a four-day journey, one of the passengers promised to introduce us to El Lobo. He insisted he could help us so we followed him to a McDonald's -- El Lobo's office apparently.

If I were to describe El Lobo in three words they would be: untrustworthy, shifty, and weasel. He was wiry with a dark complexion and had a bad habit of constantly checking his cell phone. He was always throwing you a line like he was selling you a car. He spoke in broken English and was consistently saying 'My Friend' overly much as if it would put you at ease -- it put me on edge. But, after hemming and hawing about a lot of details and him finally deciding we weren't cops, he got down to brass tacks.

[I am cleaning up his broken English]

"I can get you passage across the border, the more money you have the safer it will be. I have a guy that can get you new IDs, American passports, birth certificates and social security cards but they are really expensive. Some IDs are more expensive than others, the more legitimate and American they are the more money they cost."

"Fine! I want the safest route and the best IDs available," I said, with another question coming to mind, "How is one ID better than another?"

"Ah, well, my friend, some IDs we make ourselves and are only good to get into a nightclub or someplace where they don't check. Some IDs are stolen without other documentation like birth certificates or social security cards and they have no history. The more expensive IDs you could use to start a new life, get jobs..."

"Where do they get those IDs?"

"My friend, some gringos will sell their IDs on the black market when they leave the country, and sometimes we get them from mortuaries, from bodies that don't have anyone to claim them."

"OK, how much would it be to get three of the best IDs? I need two female and one male -- the works."

"That will cost you 50,000 dollars per person, my friend?"

I negotiated the price down to 45 Grand each, not that I cared but I knew it would make him feel better if I cared how much it cost.

"Fine, when can you have them ready?"

"I have some but not all of them look like you three..."

"OK, what about one that looks like me and two random women's ID's, it doesn't matter if they look like them or not," I said, pointing to the girls.

"OK señor, I'm sure I have one ID that looks a lot like you, and many American women -- I could have it ready for you in a couple of days."

"Great! How much for everything?"

"For you, my friend, 150,000 in US dollars or 165,000 in bitcoins."

With that, I gave him my cell phone number and he said he would let me know when the IDs were ready. His man would have to fly in from Oaxaca; he said he didn't get many requests for legitimate IDs and he didn't handle them directly.

We looked up the best hotels in town and found a four star La Quinta Inn that had all the amenities we needed. When I went to book a room, they only had one room available, so it was going to be interesting; at least it had 2 double beds.

Since we were stuck there for a couple of days, I wanted to do something special for the girls.

"I know I can't take you to the prom but how about I take you out to a nice restaurant, we can go dancing - the works."

The girls got really excited and wanted to buy some new clothes, so we went shopping. I waited outside the stores while they perused and after each shop they refused to show me their finds, they insisted they would model them for me later.

While they were shopping I was on the phone with a Mexican Lawyer who finally got back to me. I wanted to hire him to check in on George and help him with any legal problems. I wired him a deposit and he got to work.

Not long after I finished with my phone call, both girls came out of the last clothing store with huge grins on their faces -- man, I was in trouble.

We decided to finish the day by going to a nice restaurant so we went to the hotel to change into some nicer clothes. Apparently, they got me some nice clothes while they were shopping, I guess cargo pants and a t-shirt weren't good enough for where they wanted to go. I took the hint and looked up the best Yelp reviewed restaurants available and made reservations at 'La Custodia De San Pablo', it looked like it had great cuisine and the reviews were stellar and since it was a weekday it wasn't a big deal to get last minute reservations.

The hotel had a spa, so I had both girls get a full workup, while I shaved and showered and got myself ready. I decided to treat the girls to a limousine and schedule one to pick us up. When they got back they were beaming. I told them about the limousine and they squealed and hurried off to take a shower and get ready. While they were showering, I had room service bring up some flowers and corsages. I had a feeling it had been awhile since they were pampered this way. I wondered if they EVER had.

They surprised me by coming out of the bathroom completely nude and immediately I became hard. I turned red in embarrassment but they had no inhibitions or hang-ups on nudity and didn't think anything of it until they noticed my discomfort.

"What's the matter Nate? Never seen a pair of these before?" Robin teased, grabbing her breasts and squeezing them together, then she bent over and gave them a little shake.

I tried to turn away only come face to ass with Tracy bending over exposing all of her to me. She looked over her shoulder as she reached behind her grabbing her ass cheeks and spreading them to give me a better view of her vagina and rosebud.

"Holy shit, girls... please don't tease me. I have needs and you're making me crazy!" I said, backing out of the bedroom area and into the room's hallway where I could turn my back on them.

All I heard was giggling and laughter, then followed up by the discovery of their corsages, squeals of excitement.

"Is this for me?" Tracy asked, and she ran up to me throwing her arms about me in a hug, pressing her bare breasts into my side.

She didn't linger long and ran back to getting dressed. A couple of seconds later Robin gave me the same treatment except that she kissed my cheek and whispered, "You're so sweet!"

I looked in her eyes and they were welled up with tears. She pulled back to finish dressing but before she could get away I leaned in and returned her kiss to her cheek. She looked back at me and winked.