Chapter 27
DIEGO
That was too fucking close.
She has no idea what I want to do to her. What I'd do for her. Both of those things are problems and I don't have the bandwidth to untangle them right now.
My phone buzzes. Ma.
"Hey. How's it going?"
"Good, mijo. Can you grab groceries on your way home?"
"Yeah. Send me the list."
"Thank you. I'm hurting today." A pause. "When will you be home?"
I exhale slow, keeping it out of my voice. "Give me an hour, Ma."
"Okay, mijo. I love you."
"Love you too."
I pocket the phone as Raul's Cadillac pulls up to the facility. He climbs out with a pill bottle and passes it over. "For your mom. I was told to give you these."
"Yeah, I'm grabbing her groceries too. Thanks."
"Of course." He nods toward the storage unit door. "How's she holding up?"
"Which one?"
He grins. "Goldilocks."
"Honestly? I don't know what I'm doing anymore. Can't let her go. Can't keep her here."
"You want me to handle it?" He says it casual, like he's offering to fix a leaky faucet.
My neck prickles hot. "What does that mean?"
"I mean I can make her disappear. If that's what you need."
I shove him. Hard. He stumbles back two steps and stares at me. "I will kill you if you touch her."
"Damn." He rubs his chest, glaring. "Just trying to help. You like her."
"I don't know." I press my hand to the back of my neck. "I don't know. This wasn't supposed to get complicated."
"Hey." He reaches for my arm. I pull it back on instinct. "You okay? Because you never lose your head over anyone like this. Not once, not ever."
He's not wrong. I haven't wanted anything that stuck since high school. One-night stands, nothing that followed me home. And now I can't stop thinking about a woman I've got chained to a couch in a storage unit, which is not a situation I have a framework for.
"I can't stop thinking about her," I say. "Can't let anything happen to her."
Raul nods slowly, something shifting in his expression. "We'll figure it out."
"What does that mean?"
"I'm not sure yet. But my guy on the inside says her going missing just made her the top suspect. They think she skipped town." He pauses. "Her parents are looking for her too."
"Fuck."
"Getting her on our side is the play. If we're not letting her take the fall, she needs to be with us, not against us."
I don't answer. He turns and walks back to his car without another word, doesn't look at me, just peels out into the street.
I stand there for a moment. Then I get in my truck and drive.
The grocery bags rustle on the passenger seat as I pull up to the house.
Peeling paint, sagging chain-link, the screen door Ma has been meaning to fix for two years.
Her silhouette moves slow behind it. Slower than yesterday, I think, and I carry the bags and Raul's pill bottle inside without letting myself measure the difference too precisely.
"Mijo!" Her face does what it always does when I walk in, lights up before she can help it, but the lines around her eyes are deeper today and she's got one hand braced on the counter and the other pressed to her lower back.
"Hey, Ma." I set the bags down and kiss her cheek. She smells like vanilla and lavender. "Got everything. And these." I hold up the pills.
She nods and winces sharp when she tries to straighten, hand flying to her back, breath hissing through her teeth.
I guide her to the chair. Watch her lower herself inch by inch, slow and painful, and unpack while she settles. Arroz, frijoles, a ripe pineapple. "Take these first." I shake two pills into my palm and hand her the water.
She swallows, grimaces at the bitterness. Then watches me put the groceries away with those eyes that have always seen more than I want them to.
"You look tired, DJ. The new job treating you okay?"
"Yeah, Ma. Just busy."
"Linda called." A pause. "Said you dropped off a girl Friday night. Everything okay?"
I keep my hands moving, folding the paper bag. "We were out, someone was in trouble. Raul and I stepped in. It was nothing."
"Mm." She pats my hand when I come close enough. Her fingers are gnarled and warm. "You eat yet?"
"I'm good."
"That's not what I asked."
I pull up a chair and sit with her while she starts on dinner, or tries to, until I take over without making it into anything.
The truth is I can't eat. My stomach has been knotted since I left the storage unit, thinking about Harvee alone in there, the chains rattling when she shifts, waiting in a room that smells like rot and old concrete.
"You carry too much, Diego." Ma's voice goes soft the way it does when she's not lecturing, just seeing. "Like your father." A waver underneath the words. "Promise me you'll let God help carry some of it."
I squeeze her hand. "Promise."
The motel lot is rain-slicked and gleaming under the vacancy sign when I drop her off, puddles catching the neon and throwing it back broken.
Ma eases out of the truck with a muffled groan, every step its own negotiation.
Left foot dragging, right hip hitching high to spare it, hand white-knuckling the doorframe.
Linda is already at the office door, arms crossed, her no-nonsense squint softening when she sees us.
"Diego! This rain flooded half the rooms again."
"Brutal out there." I keep my voice easy, light, Ma's pride a wall I know better than to push against. "Donut shop was dead too. Nobody wants to go out for sweets in a tropical storm."
Linda laughs and glances at Ma, concern carefully veiled. "Tell Rachel I want her cinnamon twists next time."
"Done." I hug Ma quickly. Bird-boned and fragile under my arms, smaller than she used to be. She shuffles inside.
I watch the door close behind her and sit with the particular weight of that for a moment.
Then I put the truck in gear and pull out.
Her pain doesn't fade with the distance.
It rides along, a hook behind my ribs, working deeper with every mile.
The money from the hit is sitting in a tote bag in my closet.
It should be enough to start getting her real help — a second opinion, possibly surgery, something beyond managing symptoms with pills that keep getting cut and refilled and questioned.
But first I have to figure out what to do with a woman in a storage unit who is smarter than the situation I've put her in and is already working every angle she can find.
I drive toward the facility through the rain, trying to think like someone who already had a plan.
But the harder I pushed, the more my thoughts unraveled.
Then my phone lit up the dash.
Jackson Memorial Hospital?
What the fuck?