Rodrigo
Mooki came back with photos on his phone, screenshots from a nurse he’d paid off on the NICU floor.
Two security guards, both private, rotating shifts outside the baby’s room.
He’d gotten their names, their schedules, and their home addresses within forty-eight hours because Mooki was worth every dollar I paid him.
“The baby is still in the NICU but the mother got discharged,” Mooki said, scrolling through the images. “Her and Quest are staying at the Ritz-Carlton in the Inner Harbor. Ten minutes from the hospital. Security at the hotel is lighter than the hospital. Two guys on rotation.”
“Can we get the guards pulled away?” Gabriel asked from his chair. He was leaning forward with his elbows on his knees, already thinking tactically.
“That’s what I’m working on,” Mooki said. “If we can figure out who their people are, wives, girlfriends, kids, we create a distraction that pulls them off post. A phone call about a family emergency, something that would make them leave. Even a thirty-minute gap gives us a window.”
“Do it,” I said. “Get me names on their families by tonight.”
Fosso was pacing behind us, wired, jaw grinding, pupils like saucers. He’d been snorting since dawn, and the energy coming off him was unstable enough to make everyone in the room keep one eye on whatever he was doing.
“Fuck all this planning,” he said, his voice too loud for the room. “I’ll go right now. I’ll walk into that hotel and shoot that bitch and her baby. Right now. Tonight. I’ll end this whole thing myself.”
Gabriel shook his head slowly and looked away. The disappointment on his face was so clear he might as well have said it out loud.
“Fosso, sit down,” I said.
“Nah, I’m serious, Rodrigo! They killed Manny. They killed Mateo. They blew up our shit. And we’re sitting here looking at pictures and making plans? For what? Plans don’t work against these people. Action works.”
“Sit. Down.”
He stopped pacing but he didn’t sit. He stood there vibrating like a man who was being held together by cocaine and fury and not much else. Gabriel looked at me and the question on his face was simple. What do you want to do?
Before I could answer, my phone rang.
It was LaLa.
I looked at the screen and for half a second my chest loosened. She was checking in from Colombia. She was safe. The kids were safe. In the middle of everything falling apart, at least they were out of reach. I answered and put it on speaker because Gabriel had been asking about Paco earlier.
“LaLa, how are you? Is Paco okay?”
The face on the screen wasn’t LaLa.
Quest was holding her phone, looking directly into the camera with an expression that carried no anger, no heat, no emotion at all. He was sitting in what looked like LaLa’s living room. Behind him stood a tall man I didn’t recognize, arms crossed, watching the door.
My blood went cold.
“Rodrigo,” Quest said. His voice was flat. Conversational. Like he was confirming a dinner reservation. “I made a mistake by letting them live the first time. I’m handling it now.” He paused for exactly one second. “Then I’m gonna find you.”
He turned the phone around.
LaLa was on her knees in the middle of her own living room.
Paco was next to her, pressed into her side, his small hands gripping her shirt.
Her face was streaked with tears and mascara and her mouth was moving but no sound was coming through because she was beyond words.
Paco was staring at the camera with wide, frozen eyes.
He was nine years old. He looked like Mateo.
“Rodrigo, please!” LaLa screamed. “Please, he’s just a boy! He’s your nephew! Rodrigo, please do something! PLEASE!”
Two shots. Fast. One after the other. LaLa went down first. Paco went down half a second later. The phone hit the floor and showed ceiling for a moment before Quest picked it up and turned it back to his face.
“You’re next,” he said.
The screen went black.
The phone slipped out of my hand and hit the table.
I barely made it to the trash can before my stomach emptied itself.
Everything came up, coffee, bile, the empanada I’d eaten an hour ago.
I braced myself on the edge of the can and heaved until there was nothing left.
Then heaved some more because my body was trying to purge something that wasn’t in my stomach.
It was in my head. LaLa on her knees. Paco’s eyes.
The sound of those shots, quick and efficient, the sound of a man handling business he should’ve handled the first time.
Gabriel was on his feet. His face had changed for the first time since Manny died. Not grief this time. It was fear exuding from him.
“He’s in Colombia,” Gabriel said quietly. “He flew to Colombia.”
“He flew to fuckin’ Colombia!” Fosso screamed. “This nigga flew across the hemisphere to kill a nine-year-old and his mother on camera! What the fuck are we dealing with?!”
I wiped my mouth with the back of my hand. My legs felt hollow. My head was spinning. Paco. My nephew. Nine years old. Gone. Because I’d started a war I couldn’t finish against a man who had no lines he wouldn’t cross.
“That’s it,” Fosso said. His voice had shifted from panic to something harder.
Something that had made a decision. “That’s fuckin’ it.
I’m done waiting. I’m done with plans. I’m done with drones and nurses and distractions.
” He grabbed his jacket off the chair and checked the gun in his waistband.
“I know where she is. The Ritz. I’m going right now.
I’m going to kill that bitch and then I’m going to the fuckin’ hospital and I’m going to kill that baby. Tonight.”
“Fosso, wait,” Gabriel said.
“For what? For him to show up here next? For him to call Mamá’s phone and make us watch while he shoots her too?” His eyes were wild and wet. “Manny is dead. Mateo is dead. LaLa is dead. Paco is dead. I’m not sitting here waiting to be next.”
He walked out before anyone could stop him. The door slammed. His footsteps faded up the stairs. A car engine started outside, tires hit gravel, and then he was gone.
Gabriel looked at me. I was still leaning over the trash can with vomit on my chin and tears I hadn’t given permission to fall running down my face.
“He’s going to get himself killed,” Gabriel said.
I didn’t answer because Gabriel was probably right. But the part that scared me most wasn’t that Fosso was about to do something stupid. It was that somewhere between the vomit and the tears, a part of me hoped he succeeded.