The phone rang several times before Mrs. Saldana picked up. I’d expected to find her there. She was the kind of mother everybody wanted and damn few people got. I had a great one of my own, but I didn’t get to keep her long.
“Oh, hello,” she said when she recognized my voice. “I know Jesse will want to speak with you. He’s been very fretful when his meds wear off.”
Well, yeah. He had to be worried. Even with a bullet hole in him and shot up with meds, he still had room in his heart for me. Maybe I’d fought the idea of falling for him because he stood for everything good and decent—and, well, I didn’t. If the past left a mark on one’s soul, mine resembled an old road map covered with dirty footprints, ashes, and spilled wine that looked like blood.
Yet maybe it was time to let the guilt go for good.
“Corine?” He sounded fucking stoned. “You okay? I keep telling them they hafta let me out.”
“And they’re not going to listen,” I heard his mother say firmly. “Not until the doctors release you, and then you’re going straight into protective custody.”
“I’m fine. Just do as Glencannon asks. . . . I’ll be all right. This once, let the damsel save herself.”
The phone clattered, and then Mrs. Saldana spoke. “He’s a bit out of it still. Are you working?” Her tone implied that was the only acceptable reason for my not being at her son’s bedside. The truth would likely make her head explode.
“I’m sorry, yes.” It wasn’t a complete lie, and I couldn’t explain that hanging around his room guaranteed more harm to come.
If I stayed away and caused trouble elsewhere, Montoya and his men should be too busy beating the bushes for me to think about the cop who got away. That was the plan, anyway. I made an excuse about getting back to my job and hung up. Lying to Jesse’s mom made me feel lower than a worm’s belly, but nothing could alter my circumstances.
To get my mind off Jesse, I e-mailed Chuch. He showed up within the hour, sooner than Escobar’s boys. I ushered him into the safe house and he assessed the place with an approving eye.
“This is a great setup. Would take a small army or highpowered explosives to get in here. A Molotov won’t do the job. It’d just burn the paint off the cement.”
“Good to know,” I muttered.
He spread his hands with a cheerful grin. “We all have areas of expertise, right? What’s the plan?”
I filled him in on what I had Escobar’s crew doing. “And so I’m waiting for them to report back. Two houses, two nights running, and I had them leave a calling card.”
“You’re doing that for me and Eva, huh? Hitting him where he lives and all.”
“Yeah. Jesse too.” And Ernesto and Señor Alvarez. For the fact that Shannon and I are now homeless. Oh, yeah, Montoya had given me many, many reasons to fight.
“You got a good head for battle, prima.”
“I want him shaken.” I sighed softly. “I’m not thrilled with hiding while I send other people to do my dirty work, but—”
“It’s better than dying,” Shannon finished.
Chuch nodded. “Nothing wrong with delegation. Speaking of which, you never did tell me how you swung an alliance with Escobar. He never sees anybody. Dude’s crazy cautious.”
“He tested me and found me worthy.” I refused to say more.
The time I’d spent with Kel was too personal to share, even with my friends. I couldn’t let myself think about him right then, where he was, whether he was lonely or loathed his orders. I would later, no question. Kelethiel, son of Uriel and Vashti, had forged a path in my heart that nobody else could tread.
“Claro,” he said, as if that were the natural outcome. “So what’s my part?”
We didn’t have Chance to dowse this time, even if we got a list of properties from Escobar. After our last raid, I doubted we’d have it so easy if we attempted a frontal assault, and with his son or daughter about to be born, I wasn’t sending Chuch into battle anyway. The current plan must stand.
“I need you to use your contacts to get a message to Montoya’s people. I don’t want you carrying it yourself. But you know people who can.”
“That’s it?” His offense was obvious.
“It’s crucial. Now that I’ve done some damage, I need to talk some shit and up the stakes. But I can’t come into the open prematurely.”
“What do you have in mind?”
“For the message? I’m a ghost; he’ll never catch me—I’m unkillable. Maybe even that I’ve made a deal with the devil.” Considering what I’d done for Maury, that statement was closer to the truth than I liked. “Oh, and that anytime he wants to surrender in person, he should drop me a line.”
Chuch laughed softly. “Damn, cuz. That’s gonna burn right into his brain. He’ll probably kill the chingado who brings him word.”
“It’s a risk you take working for crazy-ass cartel bosses,” Shannon noted.
“So can you find someone to carry the message?”
Chuch considered. “Yeah, but you’ll have to write it down and seal it. Otherwise, nobody’d be dumb enough to take that shit to Montoya.”
“I can do that. And I’ll send this along as my calling card.” I held up the red hair extension. In this light, it was so obviously fake it wasn’t funny.
Rummaging turned up a pad of paper, and I always had a pen in my purse. I scrawled my comments in particularly taunting cursive, and I didn’t sign it. The red hair would do that for me.
Shannon watched, half-horrified, half-amused. “I hope to God Escobar knows what he’s doing.”
“Me too.” I abhorred bullbaiting, but we were doing exactly that to Montoya. Only I didn’t feel sorry for him at all. However this ended, he had it coming.
Chuch stood. “Do you want me to come back after I get this done?”
I considered. The less traffic here, the better, so I shook my head. “Just e-mail me a simple confirmation.”
After he’d gone, I realized I’d treated him like one of Escobar’s men. Find a Chuch-shaped task and aim him at it. I almost called him back to hug him or something. I didn’t want to start seeing people as useful. Christ, that would make me just like Escobar—worse, even, because I knew better. I’d been a better person once.
“What can I do?” Shannon asked. Not her too. But the truth was, I had an idea, and she read it in my expression. “Spill!”
“Since I don’t know much about Montoya and nothing about his sorcerous brother, I can’t target them. The spells my mother left me rely on personal experience or sympathetic magic.”
She nodded. “Right. You need hair, blood, or nail clippings. I’m familiar with the process.”
“Without those components, I need to know where they are and what they look like. So even if I was an experienced, well-trained witch—and I’m not”—frankly, I wasn’t sure what I was, and right then it didn’t matter—“it would be unlikely I could get a spell to work.”
“I get that. How can I help?”
“The pants I wore the night Jesse was shot are bloodstained. Two of the shooters died at the hospital.” Surely she’d see where I was heading with this.
“And you want me to try to use that to call one of those ghosts.”
“Not if you don’t want to. But we might be able to use his spirit in lieu of scrying. Find out how Montoya is handling the stress, which would offer insight on where to strike next. I want to break him, so he’s ready to act on Chuch’s message when it arrives. I want him frothing at the mouth at the prospect of killing me himself.”
“What if he does?”
“Kill me? He can’t. Heaven doesn’t want me and hell can’t handle me.”
She smiled at the stupid line. As I’d known she would, she said, “I can try.”
“You have your radio, right?”
“It’s in my bag. I never leave it behind.”
She’d carried it away from the ashes of her old life in Kilmer; it had belonged to an elderly man who spent his life fixing broken things. Too bad he’d died before he could take a crack at me.