Chapter 34 Quest
Quest
We showered together and I let her wash my back and I washed hers and neither of us talked about where I was going because she knew better than to ask when my face looked like this.
She’d learned to read the difference between Quest-heading-to-the-office and Quest-heading-somewhere-that-required-a-gun. Today was the second one.
“Look out for Ren when she gets back,” I said while I got dressed. “She went to see Vivica today and that’s never easy.”
“I will.”
“And I want you to start looking at places in the city. Closer to your school and the casino. This commute is killing both of us. Find something you love and I’ll make it happen.”
“You’re telling me to pick my dream place?”
“I’m telling you to pick our dream place. Whatever you want, wherever you want it. Just make sure it’s got enough room.”
“Enough room for what?”
“For whatever comes next.” I kissed her forehead, grabbed my keys, and walked out before she could ask me what that meant. She’d figure it out.
Mateo Rios lived in a six-bedroom colonial in McLean, Virginia, behind a wrought iron gate that was more decorative than functional.
The security system was high-end but not military-grade, which meant my guy had it bypassed in under four minutes.
Cameras looped. Motion sensors disabled.
I walked through the back door like I had a key.
The house was exactly what I expected from a man who moved cocaine and called himself a real estate developer.
Marble floors, imported furniture, art on the walls that he probably bought by the square foot.
A massive kitchen with a commercial range.
Family photos on the mantel. A little boy in most of them, maybe six or seven, with his mother’s eyes and his father’s jaw.
I’d been watching this house for three days.
I knew their schedule. LaLa dropped the boy at school at 8:15 and came back by 9:45 after hot yoga.
Rios left for his office around 10:30. The housekeeper came Tuesdays and Thursdays.
Today was Wednesday. No housekeeper. Just me and Italian marble and patience.
The front door opened at 9:47 AM. LaLa walked in carrying a gym bag and a green juice, hair pulled back in a ponytail, yoga pants and sneakers.
She was pretty. Mid-thirties, light brown skin, a face that won beauty pageants in Bogotá before she married money and moved to Virginia.
She didn’t see me until she was halfway through the foyer.
She froze. The gym bag hit the floor.
“Don’t scream,” I said. “Sit down.”
“Who are you? How did you get in my house?”
“Sit down, LaLa.”
“How do you know my name?”
“I know everything about you. Your name, your son’s name, his school, your schedule. I’m not here to hurt you but I will if you make this difficult. Now sit down.”
She sat. The green juice was still in her hand and she was gripping it so tight the lid was about to pop off. Her eyes were wide and wet and scanning the room for exits or weapons or anything she could use. She wasn’t going to find any. I’d already checked.
“Your husband has been paying a woman for dominatrix services. You know what that is?”
Her face changed. Fear shifted into something else. Confirmation of something she’d suspected for a while. “Yes. I know what that is.”
“He became obsessed with her. Started stalking her. Sending money to her accounts, texting her from different numbers, tracking her movements. When she cut him off, he sent two men on motorcycles to kidnap her. They ran her car off the road and killed her security guard.”
LaLa’s eyes filled. The green juice slipped from her hand and hit the marble floor. She didn’t flinch. She just sat there processing the information through whatever version of Mateo she’d built in her head over the years.
“Did you know about any of this?” I asked.
“No.” Her voice was barely there. “He has secrets. I always knew he had secrets. But not this.”
“I believe you. Now call him. Tell him you’re not feeling well. Tell him to come home. Make it convincing.”
She picked up her phone with trembling hands and dialed. Her voice came out steady enough when he answered. “Mi amor, can you come home? I’m not feeling well. I think it’s my blood pressure again. I’m dizzy.” She paused. “Okay. Thank you. I love you too.”
She hung up. “Twenty minutes.”
“Good.”
We waited. I sat across from her with my gun visible and my eyes on the garage entrance.
She cried quietly for about ten minutes and then stopped and just stared at the floor.
I didn’t say anything because there was nothing to say that would make this better for her.
Her husband was a predator and predators create collateral damage and she was it.
Eighteen minutes later the garage door opened. His car pulled in. Engine cut. The door from the garage to the kitchen opened and I heard his footsteps on the marble, unhurried because he thought he was coming home to his sick wife.
I moved behind LaLa and pressed the barrel of the gun against her temple. She whimpered and her whole body went rigid but she didn’t scream because I’d already told her what would happen if she made this difficult.
Mateo Rios walked into the living room calling out “LaLa, are you okay?” and then he saw us.
His wife on the couch with tears on her face and a gun pressed against her head and me standing behind her looking at him with the expression of a man who’d already made every decision that mattered before he walked into this house.
His hand went to his waistband immediately.
“I wouldn’t,” I said. I pushed the barrel harder against LaLa’s temple and she cried out. “You pull that weapon and the last thing your wife sees is you making the wrong choice.”
“Quest.” His voice was controlled but his eyes were on LaLa and I could see the panic underneath the composure. “This is between you and me. She has nothing to do with this.”
“She has everything to do with this because she’s sitting here with a gun to her head because of decisions you made. Not me. You. You stalked my woman. You sent men to kidnap her. You killed my security guard. And now your wife is paying for it. That’s on you, Mateo. Not me.”
“I’ll fix it. Whatever you want. I’ll leave Dame CoCo alone. I’ll leave the country. I’ll disappear. Just take the gun off my wife.”
“Drop your weapon first. Kick it over here.”
He looked at LaLa. She looked back at him with mascara running down her face and her body shaking under my hand and I could see the exact moment Mateo Rios realized that he wasn’t the most dangerous man in this room.
He’d spent years thinking his cartel connections and his money and his patience made him untouchable.
But he was standing in his own living room watching another man hold his wife’s life in his hands and there wasn’t a single move on the board that didn’t end with her dead if he played it wrong.
He bent down slowly. Set the gun on the marble. Kicked it toward me with the toe of his shoe. It slid across the floor and stopped a few feet away.
“Please,” he said. “Take the gun off her. I’m unarmed. I’m not a threat. I’m sorry about Dame CoCo. I’m sorry about the security guard. I’ll make it right. Whatever it takes.”
Hearing him call my Peach Dame CoCo sent me into a rage. I hated that fuckin’ name because of what it was associated with — other men at her feet. She was mine and that name belonged to them. I wanted to murder everyone in this damn building.
But I kept my composure. I took the gun off LaLa’s temple. She collapsed forward on the couch sobbing into her hands. Rios exhaled and his shoulders dropped and for about half a second he looked relieved.
“I promise to leave her alone,” he whimpered like a little bitch. All that bravado he brought into my office a few weeks ago vanished in a blink.
“Oh I know you’ll leave her alone,” I said.
I raised the gun and shot him in the head.
The sound was deafening in the marble living room.
LaLa screamed and launched herself off the couch and ran to his body and dropped to her knees beside him and grabbed his face and called his name over and over even though he was already gone.
Blood was pooling on that expensive floor and spreading toward the family photos on the mantel and I stood there and watched her hold her dead husband and felt exactly what I expected to feel. Nothing for him. Something for her.
I picked up Rios’s gun from the floor and tucked it in my waistband. Then I crouched down next to LaLa. She flinched away from me, her hands covered in her husband’s blood, her eyes wild with grief and terror.
“Listen to me carefully,” I said. “You’re not going to call the police on me. You’re not going to tell anyone what happened here. If anyone asks, your husband had enemies in his business and they caught up to him. You don’t know names. You don’t know faces. You weren’t home when it happened.”
“You killed him,” she whispered. “You killed him in front of me.”
“And Paco gets out of school at 3:15 every afternoon. I need him to keep getting out of school at 3:15 every afternoon. You understand what I’m saying?”
Her face went white. Whatever fight was left in her eyes died right there. She nodded once and pulled her husband’s body closer to her chest and didn’t say another word.
I didn’t like doing that. Threatening that woman’s child went against everything I believed.
I’d never hurt a kid and the thought of it sat in my stomach like poison.
But Davis was dead because of Mateo Rios.
And he tried to kidnap the love of my life.
And if I left LaLa with the freedom to talk, the next men at my door would be wearing badges and the outcome would be worse for everybody.
I walked out the back door the same way I came in. The yard was quiet. Birds in the trees. A sprinkler running three houses over. Suburban Virginia on a Wednesday morning, peaceful and manicured and completely unaware of what just happened inside a colonial with a three-car garage.
I got in my car and drove home to the woman I’d just killed for. She’d never know the details. She didn’t need to. She just needed to know that Mateo Rios would never text her again and the motorcycles weren’t coming back and she could go to class and sleep at night without a gun on the nightstand.