Chapter 20
TWENTY
This room, this nightmarish room again. The red blinking light. The cup of water. The scarred table. The smiling assassin carved onto the table. The word “ME” scratched above it.
Someone had cleaned up her sick from earlier, but she could still smell it. Her eyes felt swollen; she dipped her fingers into her cup and pressed them to her eyelids.
When she squeezed her eyes shut, she could see it all play out in her mind’s eye.
Sebastián’s body hitting the ground. A moment of suspended animation when no one seemed able to move.
But she had. Maybe it was her quick-twitch dancer’s muscles or maybe it was just her desperation, but she’d made it to his body before anyone else did.
Saw the gaping, sucking hole in his chest, the blood, the blood.
It had already soaked through his t-shirt and was gleaming on the gravel.
She’d been useless, of course, unable to do much but hover her palms pointlessly over the wound, like some kind of faith healer. Too scared to touch him in case that would make the damage worse. As if she hadn’t done enough of that already.
He just stared up at the stars, gulping air in breaths that grew shorter and shorter.
Someone had hauled her off him and applied actual first aid. She’d heard Weck’s voice, and the dreadful woman had dragged her away and bundled her into a car.
She opened her eyes and ran her hands over her face. Looked around the tiny room. Now she wanted to be anywhere but here.
The door opened and Weck entered, clutching a brown paper bag and her best friend, the binder.
Julia kept her eyes on the table, tracing the stick figure with the gun. “Is he dead?” she asked dully.
Weck came to stand by the table but didn’t sit down. “He’s in surgery. The bullet punctured a lung and there are some fragments near his spine.” She paused, then added, “The doctor said he was very lucky to be alive.”
Julia snorted. “You mean, he’s lucky you people didn’t kill him.”
Weck said nothing. She didn’t even have the decency to look guilty about what had happened. In her mind, she probably thought she wasn’t.
The special agent placed the paper bag on the table and pushed it towards her. It had the name of a fast-food joint on it and smelled greasy. “You should eat.”
“I’m not hungry.” She sat back in her chair. “I did what you wanted. I gave you your probable cause to arrest him. Your Consolidated Priority Target, or whatever the hell you want to call him to dehumanize him some more—”
“Castano isn’t the CPOT,” Weck interrupted.
“Terry Bidois is. He’s a high-ranking underboss in La Eme.
Shot-caller for the whole Chicago operation, from importation to distribution.
Answers directly to Mexico. We’ve been wiretapping his phone for months but haven’t been about to make any headway on how he’s getting the heroin into Chicago. ”
She placed the binder on the table, but Julia interrupted her before she could open it and show her any more of the horrors held within.
“I’ve seen him. He came to Daniel’s trailer once when I was there.
” She swallowed, remembering her glimpse of him over Daniel’s shoulder as he was stashing her in his wardrobe.
“Big white guy. Scary looking. A spider web tattoo on the back of his head.” She sighed, massaged her temples. “Daniel told me about him.”
“Perfect.” Weck pulled out a chair. “Now you can tell me about him.”
Julia looked down at her hands. The ring that Daniel had placed on her finger only that morning caught the light, glinting crimson. She thought about Sebastián’s blood shining on the stones where he lay. And the look Daniel had given her, like she’d just ripped the heart right out of his chest.
Weck noticed her looking at the ring. “And then,” she said, “we’re gonna go pay a little visit to your fiancé.”
* * *
Eight plastic chairs sat in empty booths facing thick plate glass.
The telephones hung from their cradles like dead weights, beneath stern signs warning that all conversations were being monitored.
From beyond the concrete walls came the muffled echoes of barking orders, angry shouts, and the occasional clatter of something heavy hitting the floor.
The no-contact visiting area of the Metropolitan Correctional Center in downtown Chicago was every bit as bleak as Julia had imagined.
She sat stiffly in one of the chairs, her pulse quickening with every second that passed. Her eyes locked onto the reinforced door in the concrete cubicle beyond the glass. The air here was thick with disinfectant and desperation.
When the buzzer sounded, she nearly jolted out of her skin.
Daniel shuffled through the doorway, a guard close behind him.
Her breath caught in her throat.
He wore the standard-issue orange jumpsuit, but it wasn’t the uniform that made her stomach twist, it was the way he moved. Slow. Tense. Like an animal on a short chain, his hands balled into fists at his sides. Then she saw his face.
His left eye was bloodshot, the surrounding skin already darkening into an ugly bruise. A fresh cut split through his eyebrow, the same one that had already been scarred before. His bottom lip was cracked, a smear of dried blood catching in the scruff along his jaw.
Even battered, he was still the most beautiful thing she had ever seen.
But he wasn’t looking at her. His gaze stayed pinned to the floor as the guard gave him a sharp shove toward the chair.
“Daniel,” she whispered, forgetting for a moment that the glass swallowed her words.
She pressed her hands against the cold barrier between them, as if she could somehow make it vanish, as if she could reach through and touch him. For all her longing, though, a sliver of hesitation coiled deep in her gut.
I know he would never hurt me.
Weck’s voice came slithering back. Honey, a woman can never know a thing like that. That’s the problem.
She forced herself to move, unhooking the phone from its cradle. She kept one hand against the glass. For a long moment, he simply stared at her palm.
Then, finally, he reached for the receiver on his side. His movements were sluggish, as if even this simple action drained him.
When he lifted it to his ear, she didn’t waste time.
“Sebastián got out of surgery a few hours ago. They say he’s going to be okay.”
The lie tasted bitter on her tongue, but it was all she had to give. They hadn’t said he’d be okay, only that he’d survived.
Daniel said nothing.
Her gaze drifted over his bruises again, then lower, to the cuts on his hands. Some were still raw, blood smudged against the ink on his knuckles. L-M-N-1-3.
How long before this place broke him? Or worse? Would his own people turn on him? Would he survive long enough to even stand trial?
He followed her line of sight and gave a wry, humorless smile. He lifted a hand, fingering his split lip. “Apparently, I don’t got a lot of friends in here.”
Her stomach twisted.
She leaned in, slow, cautious, as if he might bolt. Now was the time to make her pitch. Or rather, Weck’s pitch.
“The DEA doesn’t want you, Daniel. They want Terry. If you testify against him, they’ll cut you a deal. Protection. A fresh start somewhere new. Just like we always talked about—”
“No.”
Desperation prickled beneath her skin. “If you don’t cooperate, they’ll throw everything at you. You’re looking at a life sentence.”
Still, he said nothing. He wouldn’t even look at her.
Julia clenched the phone tighter. She knew she should stick to the script, but the need to explain herself clawed at her. “They told me… They showed me what you did to Floyd. That you shot him. And then…”
The words dried up in her throat. Her vision blurred.
At last, his gaze snapped to hers, copper-green, sharp as broken glass. A fierceness she’d never seen before burned behind them.
“If you want me to say I’m sorry for that,” he bit out, “I ain’t.”
Her breath hitched.
“I’d do the exact same thing again to any other man who laid a hand on you.”
Instinctively, she flinched.
Weck’s voice whispered in her mind. Volatile. Possessive. Dangerous.
No, she shot back. Not possessive. Protective.
Please, let there be a difference.
Her throat tightened. She forced herself to ask the question she had been dreading. “Why did you come to my house that first time?”
The anger in his eyes wavered, replaced by something raw, something unguarded.
He exhaled sharply. Looked away. Shook his head.
“The first time,” he admitted, voice hoarse, “I went there to scare you. To make sure you didn’t go to the cops.”
Julia shut her eyes. Nodded. She had already known the truth, but hearing it still stung.
“Why didn’t you?” she asked.
His voice was quieter now, almost a whisper. “Because as soon as I saw you again, I knew I could never hurt you.”
For the first time since she’d sat down, warmth flickered in her chest. A sliver of hope.
But then, just as quickly, the light dimmed. His jaw worked, and that same fire flared behind his eyes. “I just wish that went in reverse.”
The words struck like a blade between her ribs.
She inhaled sharply. “Daniel, please. Take the deal. If not for yourself, then for Sebastián. They said they’d help him, too.”
His voice turned to a snarl. “Jesus fucking Christ, you don’t get it, do you? They ain’t gonna help him. They fucking shot him.”
He ran a hand down his face, exhaling harshly. When he resurfaced, his expression had hardened. The cold glint in his eyes sent a shiver down her spine.
“You told them everything, didn’t you?” he asked. “Everything I told you. About the heroin. The pipeline. InterTruck.”
She swallowed something sharp. Nodded.
His lips curled into a humorless smile. “Well, I ain’t no snitch. If they kill me, they kill me. But at least I’ll die knowing that.”
Her grip on the phone tightened. She could feel something unraveling, something slipping through her fingers.
Hope.
Tears burned in her eyes. She thought of the way he had looked at her when she’d said yes to his proposal. Like she had just lit a fire in a world that had been nothing but dark.
That was the man she loved.
Or had, anyway.
When she met his gaze again, his expression was desolate.
And in that instant, she saw him—really saw him. The eight-year-old who had declared his love to his babysitter. The eleven-year-old learning to drive his dad’s old Chevy. The teenager who had been forced to survive in a world that never gave him a chance.
His voice was hoarse when he finally spoke. “You listen to me. Whatever protection they’re offering you, you take it.”
A chill crawled up her spine. “What do you mean?”
His knuckles whitened around the receiver.
“I mean, you’ve crossed the wrong people.” His voice dropped to a whisper. “La Mano Negra. The Cártel de Sinaloa. Borya Sokolov.”
Her blood turned to ice.
“They will come for you, Julia.” He leaned in, his face inches from the glass. “And when they find you…”
He pushed to his feet so suddenly that the guard behind him tensed. His eyes locked onto hers, burning with something wild.
“You better run, baby.”