Chapter 21
TWENTY-ONE
They were the last words Daniel ever spoke to her.
Three days later, they cornered him in a prison shower stall. There was nowhere to run. Nowhere to hide. The blade punched into the side of his neck, swift and deliberate, severing his carotid.
His blood spilled out in thick ribbons, swirling into the drain with the dirty water. The last of him, washed away like nothing. His killer had a black handprint tattooed on his chest.
Sebastián never woke up from surgery. He lingered for three weeks in a sterile hospital room, tethered to a bank of beeping machines, before they finally shut him down like a faulty piece of equipment. No legal status. No insurance. No family.
No reason to keep him alive.
When he died, the only person in the room was the nurse who flicked the switch.
Julia was taken to a safe house somewhere in the city’s southwest. A converted warehouse near an industrial park, faceless and gray, indistinguishable from the empty lots and shuttered buildings around it.
Inside, the only things that stood out were a single bed with a wafer-thin mattress, a strip of green and orange carpet worn down to its threads, and a water stain blooming across the ceiling like an old bruise.
She spent most of her time lying on that mattress, staring at that stain.
At first, she cycled through memories of Daniel, playing them over and over until they lost their shape—his voice turning unfamiliar, his touch fading into something half-remembered, like echoes from a dream she couldn’t quite hold on to.
Then, even those memories slipped away, replaced by nothing.
She lay there, hollow, her will to live drifting like a tide pulling further and further from shore.
The will to live is the will to die. Una paradoja.
Searing light cut into her eyelids. She opened them and blinked, squinting against the sudden brightness in the room. Weck was standing by the curtains, silhouetted by the daylight now streaming in the window.
She went to Julia’s bedside and looked down.
“The good news is, your intel was solid. We took it to a grand jury, got indictments on eight members of LMN-13. Yesterday, we raided InterTruck and arrested Terry Bidois, Milo Bidois, Paquito Vasquez and Che Cardenas. They’re being held at MCC.
There are warrants out for four others.”
Julia stared up at the ceiling and said nothing.
Weck went on, “U.S. federal agents and their Mexican counterparts raided that old dartboard factory in Jua?rez that Castan?o told you about. They arrested Jose? Ferrera. Cut off an entire arm of Sinaloa’s heroin operation.
Not the head, but still.” She paused, then added, “We wouldn’t have had any of that without you. ”
Julia did not know why this woman was telling her this. Like she cared. Like it fucking mattered.
“I just got off the phone AUSA Oates,” she continued. “He said the Attorney General is ready to sign off on your application for the federal witness security program.”
Another long pause.
“You just have to say the word.”
Julia said nothing.
Weck sighed. “This story only has two endings, Julia. One where you take what’s being offered here. Or one where you leave here and in a few weeks’ time, I have to watch as they dig your body parts out of a dumpster in Canaryville.”
Her words bounced harmlessly off Julia’s brain.
Weck leaned closer to the bed. “Listen, I know you wanted a different ending here. One where you got to live happily ever after with Castan?o.”
She swallowed, feeling a couple of hot tears leak out the side of her eyes.
She closed her eyes, and she could see him as clearly as if it were right in front of her.
His bright hazel eyes, his dimples, the way his expression could shift from guarded to open on the turn of a dime.
She could still feel the heat of his skin, what it had felt like to rest her chin on his chest. The smell of him, the taste of him.
She remembered the way he laughed. Few people made laughter sound sad, but he’d had that rare ability.
Weck sighed. “But when it came down to it, he didn’t choose you, did he, Julia? He didn’t choose his brother either. He chose the gang. A gang that stabbed him in the back of the neck in a shower stall.”
She inhaled as pain, sharp and real, sliced through her. When Weck had told her about Daniel’s death several days ago, after having first told her of Sebastián’s, she had felt nothing. She’d been numb from head to toe. Now she could only wish for such numbness.
“A gang,” Weck continued, “that’s put out an order to kill you on sight.”
As much as her mind tried to rebel against what Weck was saying, her words still sent a shiver down Julia’s spine. She heard Daniel’s voice again, and this time it frightened her.
You better run, baby.
“And I know this is hard for you to get your head around. Especially because you probably still think of Castan?o as having been your protector. Your knight in shining armor. The one who came to your rescue in that trailer when no one else did.”
Julia finally found some words to say. “He’s dead,” she croaked. “So what difference does it make to you what I think of him?” She turned her head to Weck. “Unless you want to destroy my memory of him, too.”
“No,” Weck said. “I want you to question your memory of him. Of everything that happened. Julia, you survived a traumatic experience that night with Monaghan. And trauma can manifest in all kinds of ways. One of those ways is forming strong bonds and attachments to people who we view as having saved us. I think that’s what happened to you. ”
Julia just shook her head. This woman was trying to make out that her entire relationship with Daniel had just been some kind of prolonged PTSD episode.
And it hadn’t been. It had been real.
Right?
“What I do know is that you need to talk to someone about what happened to you. Someone who can help you process it. There are people who can do that, people who specialize in this kind of thing.”
Julia swallowed. Recalling that night in the trailer always filled her with panic. But there was a part of her now that also felt like it might be a relief. Painful, but necessary. Like the closing of a wound.
The special agent looked down at her. “You need to be the one to save yourself this time, Julia. You got a shot here. For a new life. A fresh start. That’s what you wanted, isn’t it?”
Hoy vamos a comenzar una nueva vida, carino.
Today we start a new life.
She looked up at Weck, tears falling freely now. She took a shuddering breath. And even though the movement took an excruciating amount of effort, she nodded.
Weck smiled, and it seemed genuine. “Good girl.” She stood up.
“It might not feel like it now, but someday you’ll look back and realize this was the best decision you ever made.
” She took her phone out of her bag. “I’ll get someone from OEO down here for a preliminary interview, then hand you over to the marshals. ”
She paused tapping in numbers into her phone to look down at Julia. “They know what they’re doing. They’ll keep you safe.”