22. Deacon #2
After a while, she continues. “You have been restless too.”
“I am often restless.”
“You went to Chicago three times in the last two years.”
The glass stops halfway to my mouth. I recover as smoothly and swiftly as I can, resuming its track and taking a healthy swallow.
Fuck. It was only a heartbeat. But it was enough for one as sharp as her.
She blinks, catlike eyes that remind me of Reva. “I had no missions on record for you there.”
“I do not record every breath I take.”
“You record the useful ones.”
“Chicago has old contacts.”
“Names.”
I almost smile. “If they had names worth giving you, I would have given them.”
“You expect me to accept that?”
“I expect you to know I dislike wasting your time.”
That pleases her. Slightly.
Compliments do not soften Isabel. They only remind her of the hierarchy she built and the debt expected from everyone living inside it.
“What did you want there?” she asks.
“Information.”
“About?”
“A courier route that went dead after Katrina and reappeared through Chicago.”
Her eyes stay on me.
It is a good answer because it is partly true.
An old route did reappear. I did trace it.
I also used it as cover to spend four hours outside Reva’s apartment while she slept behind a third-floor window with one lamp on and a baseball bat propped beside her bedroom door.
A guy she’d gone out with exactly once had turned obsessive and didn’t like the word ‘no.’ I made sure he gained new respect before I went back to Louisiana.
That time.
Isabel taps one finger against the arm of the chair. “Three trips for a dead route.”
“Two trips for the route. One because the man I was tracking lied.”
“And?”
“He died.”
That earns the smallest smile. “Useful.”
“Eventually.”
She studies me long enough that I feel every old lesson settle back into my bones.
Do not over-explain.
Do not fill silence.
Do not show which wound matters.
“You have always been efficient,” she says. “That is why your sentiment disappoints me when it appears.”
“There is no sentiment in a dead courier route.”
“No.” She leans back. “I suppose not.”
The fire snaps.
Then she says, “Tell me about Ruben.”
The name hits with the force of a fist. I lower the glass.
Inside my head, a hallway appears. Dark wood. Blood on the banister. A child’s breath behind a closet door. Ruben’s hand reaching for the knob while he laughed under his breath because he liked fear best when it was small.
I killed him before he touched the handle, leaving Reva on the phone in that closet for the paramedics to find. To rescue. To deliver to Cal.
Then I carried Delia through the back of the house with my hand covering her mouth so she wouldn’t scream and give us both away.
That is the messy truth.
The official story is cleaner because it gave the police a monster.
Murkier because the monster was already dead when they found him.
They never figured out who put the bullet in Ruben’s head, but once ballistics tied his gun to the rounds recovered from the victims, no one pushed the question very hard.
“Ruben was slow,” I say. “A cop shot him.”
“Yes,” she says softly. “I remember the report. It’s confusing, though.”
I wait. She has read that report more than once. I know her questions.
“Ruben was never careless,” she says. “Or particularly slow.”
“Everyone is careless once.”
“Not Ruben.”
“He was dead. That limited my ability to question his process, but I feel like he must have been careless if the police got him.”
Her mouth curves, but the humor does not reach her eyes. “The police came. You told me the girl called the police.”
“She must have done so. That’s the only way they’d have known to come.”
“The younger one.”
“Yes. Not that thirteen minutes difference matters, but I had Delia—”
“Seniority matters. After Ruben found her?”
Before.
I see him again. One hand on the closet door. Pistol loose at his side. The house full of sirens still distant enough that he had time.
Kill the younger girl.
Delia was downstairs, crying soundlessly beside a dead man and a dead little girl, but something had given Ruben pause. Something in the mother’s expression, or maybe Delia had said something…I don’t remember what it was.
All I remember is Ruben cocking his head in that way he had when he latched on to something and thought himself incredibly bright. He’d squinted at the photos we’d been given, compared them to both children, and chuckled to himself.
“Aren’t you the lucky lady?” He gave Marisol Hart an open-handed slap that had her crashing to her husband’s body. “Take care of this one while I find the younger one. She’s here somewhere.”
“That’s not her?” I pointed to the child he’d just killed, the one I hadn’t been able to save in time. That one would always haunt me.
“Nope.”
“No! No-no-no-please!”
Marisol’s wails were lost as he walked away.
Reva had been silent behind the door as Ruben’s footsteps shuffled closer, his voice crooning, “Come out, come out, wherever you are…”
She was a smart child. A terrified child. Mine to bury or save in the space of one breath.
“I don’t know when she did it. After he searched the house, I presume, but before he found her,” I say.
Isabel’s head tilts. “That is not the same answer.”
“Probably because I don’t know when she called the cops, Isabel. I was under the impression she was already dead.”
“Deacon.”
Her voice is gentle. That is when she is most dangerous. She doesn’t raise her voice. She does not need to. Her authority sits in the room like a third presence, older than either of us and far more patient.
“You gave me a timeline,” she says. “Ruben entered. Killed Hart and the girl. And then…somehow…the girl called the police. The police arrived. Ruben fired. They returned fire. Do you understand why I am confused?”
“Yes. It was a confusing night. We thought the child that Ruben killed initially was the specified target. As we later—much later—learned…she was a different child.”
Lie. Lie. Lie. Isabel doesn’t call me on it, though.
“And you were where?”
“Clearing the back.”
“Why?”
“The mother ran in that direction.”
“And did you clear it?”
“Yes.”
“Before or after the police arrived?”
“Before.”
“Then why leave Ruben inside?”
“Because the sirens were close, and Ruben didn’t take direction well once excited.”
“That much is true.” She looks toward the fire again. “He was a pig.”
I say nothing. A pig with a gun and a kill order. A pig I put down myself.
“But useful pigs are still useful,” she continues. “His death cost me.”
She rises then. Slowly. I straighten without meaning to. I hate that she can still pull that from me with movement alone.
Isabel crosses the room and stops at the bar. She doesn’t pour a drink. She only touches the neck of the decanter, turning it a quarter inch so the crystal catches light.
“You were young then,” she says.
“I was old enough.”
“You were obedient.”
I don’t answer. Defending my obedience would send the wrong signal.