Chapter 11
ELEVEN
Then he saw the front door.
It wasn't just open. It was shattered, the frame splintered inward where something heavy had met the wood, and the sight of it emptied him out so fast he forgot to put the cruiser in park. The vehicle rolled forward a foot before he caught it, jamming the gearshift with a hand.
“Jessica?” He drew his service weapon. It felt heavy in his hand, but it didn't make him feel brave.
He stepped over the threshold, his boots crunching on the remnants of the ceramic lamp Jessica had kept on the entryway table.
He moved down the hall, toward the bedroom.
The air was thick with the sharp, acrid tang of gunpowder, and beneath it, something else. Blood.
His first thought was the sick feeling of guilt that Jessica was dead somewhere inside.
Then he saw the handprint. The man was slumped against the baseboard near the closet, clutching a shoulder that had been turned into a jagged mess of red. His shirt had ridden up, and there it was—the black hand, fingers splayed wide across his chest.
He knew that tattoo because he'd seen it up close a week ago, in the basement of a gambling den while the man who owned it had made him beg for his life. And pay for his freedom with Jessica's identity.
After that incident, he'd spent the following few days on edge, tensing at every sound outside. Expecting the door to be kicked in at any moment. Then, after nothing had happened, he'd told himself that it must have all blown over.
He'd almost believed it. He'd had a whole week of almost believing it.
The enforcer's eyes flickered open, tracking Trent's movement. He let out a wet, rattling wheeze. “You...”
The word landed like an accusation, because it was one.
Trent's hand shook as he leveled the pistol at the man's head. “Where is she?”
The enforcer tried to laugh, but it turned into a cough that sprayed red onto his chin. “She's gone, Oficial. Your little bird has claws.” He winced, shifting against the wall. “She shot me. And then El Fantasma came.”
She shot him. Jessica—who flinched at fireworks, who once made him clear a spider from the bathroom at two in the morning—had shot a man.
“He took her,” the enforcer whispered, his head lolling back against the wall.
Trent stared at the man, and for a long, sick moment the only thing he felt was the full weight of what he'd done.
He could see it all now, the way you could see a car accident after the fact and trace every small decision that fed into it.
The gambling. The debt. The men in the back room of the poker den.
His own pathetic, animal terror, and the name he'd thrown at them like something to hide behind.
The guilt sat in his chest like nausea, and for about ten seconds, he let it.
Then the rest caught up.
Because she wasn't just gone. She was gone with him.
Castano. Dante. Whatever the fuck he was calling himself now. The man whose name Jessica never said quite right, but with the kind of deliberate indifference that only came from something she was still trying not to feel.
The jealousy settled into place like it had never left.
The gun was on the floor near the closet door, a compact 9mm, matte black, not anything Trent had ever seen in the duplex. He picked it up, turned it over in his hand. Jessica had a gun he didn't know about.
He stood there holding it, thinking of her crouched in the dark with a weapon she shouldn't have needed, alone and terrified in a home he was supposed to have made safe.
She hadn't asked for his help. She hadn't trusted him to handle it.
She'd armed herself in secret, like all the protection he'd could have given her was nothing.
Like his badge on the nightstand was decoration. Like he wasn't enough.
The gun itself had no serial. It was unregistered—the kind of thing that definitely didn't come from a store. Someone had gotten this for her. Someone who knew how to acquire things like that.
Trent's grip tightened. Castano. Of course.
“We'll find them,” the man panted, his voice fading. “LMN doesn't forget.”
“You won't find anything bleeding out on my carpet,” Trent said. He knelt down, ignoring the blood soaking into the knees of his uniform pants, and reached into the man's pocket. The burner phone came out slick with sweat. “But I can find them. I know where he's going.”
The enforcer looked at him through glazed eyes, something between contempt and curiosity.
“I want him dead,” Trent whispered, leaning close. “And I want her back. You tell your people that I'm the one with the lead. I know where he's taken her.”
He stood there, the burner phone in one hand, Jessica's gun in his other.
The screen lit his face in a pale glow—a list of numbers with no names, just sequences and timestamps.
His thumb hovered. He opened the most recent thread and started typing.
Castano's alive. I know where he'll go.
He stared at the message, then added:
You want him, you go through me.
He hit send before he could think about it.
Then he slid the phone into his pocket and looked down at the bleeding man.
He tossed Jessica’s gun at his feet, as a symbol of how unafraid of the guy he was.
A sudden surge of bravery made his voice come out steady—made him sound almost gangster: “Now, get the fuck out of here before I finish the job.”
The motel room hadn't changed. Ferrera stood near the window, one hand holding the curtain back an inch, watching the parking lot without really seeing it. Cars came and went. A woman loaded suitcases into a sedan. A kid chased something across the asphalt that might have been a lizard.
He was waiting.
The Sicaria's phone buzzed once on the table.
She picked it up and read the screen without expression, then turned it slightly so he could see.
Castano's alive. I know where he'll go. You want him, you go through me.
The message had come through on Ramos’ line, the enforcer burner. But this wasn't Ramos. The syntax was wrong, the tone was wrong, and Ramos wouldn't have written in English.
Ferrera read it twice.
“Someone took his phone,” the Sicaria said.
“Or he gave it up.” Ferrera let the curtain fall and turned from the window. Either way, Ramos was out of the picture—dead, arrested, or too badly hurt to matter. The job had failed. What he hadn't expected was someone picking up the pieces and trying to sell them back.
He crossed to the table and took the phone from her, reading the message again. You want him, you go through me. The phrasing stuck on him. Whoever had written this was trying to establish value, which meant they had something to trade and needed something in return.
“Who has access to Ramos?” Ferrera asked.
The Sicaria considered it. “Whoever was at the apartment. Police, most likely, if they responded to the scene.” She paused. “But a cop responding to a call doesn't take a cartel enforcer's burner and start sending messages on it. That's personal.”
Ferrera sat down across from her. “Someone who was already connected to the woman,” he said, thinking aloud. “Someone who found Ramos, took the phone, and decided to make contact.”
“The boyfriend,” the Sicaria said. “The one who gave up her info to pay his debt.”
Ferrera turned that over. That was a man who'd already been compromised long before tonight and was now trying to ride the current instead of drown in it.
“He says he knows where Castano is going,” the Sicaria said. “Could be bluffing.”
“Could be,” Ferrera agreed. “But look at the message again. He doesn't say he knows where Castano is. He says he knows where Castano will go. That's not a guess. That's someone who knows enough about Castano's connections to predict his next move.”
“Or someone who wants us to think he does.”
Ferrera looked at her. “What does he gain from that?”
The Sicaria tilted her head, acknowledging the point. A bluff only worked if the bluffer could survive being called on it. Whoever this was, he believed what he was selling, or was desperate enough that the distinction didn't matter to him.
“He's jealous,” Ferrera said, the certainty settling into place as he said it.
“Listen to the message. You want him, you go through me.
He's not offering information about the woman.
He's offering Castano. He wants Castano specifically dealt with, and he's willing to hand him over to make it happen.”
The Sicaria pocketed the knife. “A cop with a grudge and a dead man's phone. That's either an asset or a trap.”
“At this point, what's the difference?” Ferrera leaned back in the chair. “We need a direction. He's offering one. If he's real, we get Castano's location. If he's not, we've lost nothing but a day.”
“So you want me to make contact?”
Ferrera nodded. “And don't give him anything. No confirmation of who we are, no names, nothing he could record or hand to someone above him.”
The Sicaria left, pulling the door shut behind her.