Ana’s brows knitted. “I don’t understand.”
Justine raised her hand. “Seriously. You’re not the only one.”
“What are you talking about—” Barrett said.
“Just hold on a second. Let me back up for a moment,” Carly said.
A stern look from Collette got them to chill. The women quieted and let Carly continue.
“You asked to be jumped out of the gang, Ana, but they didn’t want to let you go, correct?”
“So what? That wasn’t unusual. They considered me family. And Miguel wanted to keep me safe. He thought the best way to do that was with the gang. But after I told him I was resolved, that leaving the gang was the best thing for Gloria, he relented. He made sure the jumping-out ceremony was scheduled.”
“It’s an ugly ritual. For the rest of you, let me explain: she got beaten twice—once for herself and once for Gloria.”
Ana shifted uncomfortably when she felt the eyes of her teammates on her. “That’s right.”
“But Miguel insisted that Gloria be there. To see what you were willing to suffer for her. And the beating had already started when gang members from Devil’s Crew broke in. Had you seen them before?”
“Yes. Especially the one named Pablo. He’s the one who gave me this scar. He and several others came in shooting. Someone next to me dropped his gun. I had a split second to act, and I chose to shoot Gloria myself, in the shoulder, so she’d fall to the ground.”
“You mean gangbangers wouldn’t shoot someone who’s down?”
Ana answered Barrett’s question. “Depends. Sometimes they don’t. But she had a greater chance of survival if she was down rather than standing up.”
More shots had been fired after that. She still remembered the screams. People ducking for cover. Blood. She’d lost track of time and space and what was real and what wasn’t. Her last clear memory was cradling Gloria’s blood-soaked body in her arms, rocking her sister, begging her to live.
Miguel had stood protectively over them.
Then they’d heard the sirens.
Helmeted cops burst in, wearing bulletproof vests, heavy weapons cocked and blazing. A deafening fire-fight broke out and she’d been arrested. She’d fought them at first, panicked about who would care for Gloria, but Miguel screamed that he would watch out for her. The memory was painful.
“What are you getting at, Carly? Because I know for a fact none of you were there,” she said to the other women in the room.
Barrett spoke again, jolting Ana out of her memories. “I was in New York seven years ago, but I wasn’t anywhere near a gang shooting. You’ve been misinformed, Carly.”
“I agree.” Justine came to standing, one hand firmly on her hip, the other clutching a glass of wine she must have sneaked into the room. “I happened to be in New York around then, too. As a rule, I’d have to call myself a not-so-innocent bystander, but nothing like that happened to me. I’m sure I would’ve remembered.”
Ana turned to Collette. “What about you?”
Collette nodded. “I was close by when the shooting occurred, but I want to hear what Carly has to say. I want to know how she knows all this.”
“Because I was there. At least I should have been,” Carly confessed. “I was a junior FBI agent attached to a secret unit, and had infiltrated a gang—the Devil’s Crew—when I learned of a hit about to go down on a member of a rival gang. I warned my superiors, but they demanded I stand down. The hit was to continue as planned.”
Ana gasped. “Why?”
“Let’s just say that even before vampires were officially discovered by the FBI’s Strange Phenom Unit, the FBI was acting on information about them coming through Devil’s Crew. And they were already putting things in motion to work with them. Collateral damage—as in human life—was deemed worth the cost to get what the FBI wanted from them. But more than one life ended that day and that’s why you’re all here.”
Carly gave them the specific date. Understanding began to dawn.
“What I did and didn’t do mattered terribly,” she said. “In my own way, I’m trying to make up for it.”
“My mother …” Justine whispered.
“When the shoot-out happened,” Carly said, “one of the gangbangers tried to flee in a car. He crashed into another driver, a teenage girl, killing her mother instantly.”
Across the room, Justine gasped, and sank back into her chair, her face pale.
Carly continued. “Another girl was out with her older brother, having insisted he take her for an ice-cream sundae before returning to his military post. Innocent enough, right? Until he collapsed in front of her with a massive heart attack. He was only twenty-eight but he had an undiagnosed cardiac anomaly. The ambulance dispatched to rescue him got caught in the traffic snarl caused by the shootout. He died before EMTs could even reach him.”
“And that would be me,” Barrett spoke, her voice calm and cool. Only the way she gripped the armchair, tight, her hands in claws, betrayed her emotion.
“I was there. I’d tried to help the wounded,” Collette said. “My father was a pastor. I was serving in a soup kitchen run by the church when I heard shots.”
Ana asked, “Was your dad killed? Is that how you’re linked to Justine and Barrett and me?”
Collette shook her head, her lips in a tight line. “No. I tried to help one of the injured gangbangers. He was scared. He had a knife. I lost a lot of blood. Needed a transfusion. The blood was clean. Everything should have been fine. But I’m sick. I get weaker every day. The doctors don’t know what I have. Or how long I have until …”
Barrett gasped.
Justine cursed.
“You’re dying,” Ana said flatly.
So many lives destroyed. Her story had just been the beginning—and not as bad as the others. She couldn’t have known what suffering she’d cause by asking her gang, the people she’d thought of as her family, for a fresh start.
Gangs were not family. They pretended to be, tried to act as protectors, providers.
But in protecting their members’ lives, gangs took their souls.
She’d known all this before. And nothing had changed, she realized.
It didn’t matter that vampires existed, that Carly had hired four women connected by a gang shooting, or that Ty was a vampire himself, bent on self-punishment. Or revenge.
Bottom line, Ana was still going to do what Belladonna wanted her to do for one reason and one reason only: Ana was going to save her sister.
She summoned up the nerve to back Carly into a corner. “So you knew there’d been a hit ordered. Was I the target?”
“No. Your sister was.”
The shock was a one-two punch to Ana’s system. “Gloria? But why? Who ordered the hit?”
“Your friend Miguel.”
CHAPTER
THIRTY-ONE
You’re wrong, Ana wanted to say. No way would Miguel do such a thing. Not in a thousand years.
But by now she knew the futility of arguing with them. Carly had her intel and contradicting her wouldn’t make an iota of difference.
“Fine,” Ana said, standing up. All she wanted to do was get out of there. Forever. “Sounds like everything’s tying together all nice and neat. And maybe there is actual evidence to back up your information. Hope we find it.”
She walked toward the library door and froze when Ty suddenly appeared.
He stared at her but spoke to the intercom. “I got your text, Carly. You’ve heard from Mahone?”
“Yes,” she said softly. “This information just in, people. Special Agent Kyle Mahone has information that will help us. Or hurt us, depending on how you choose to use it.”