Look For Me (Detective D.D. Warren #9)(111)

Roxy, crying harder now. “What did you do, Mike? Tell me. What did you do?”

Silence. Absolute silence. Which said enough.

“He killed your fucking family!” Anya snarled, clutching her shoulder. “I knew it. I told Roberto there was something wrong with you. You fucking homicidal idiot!”

I couldn’t help it. I swung around and slapped Anya across the face. My shoulder flared to angry life. It was still worth it to watch her collapse in stunned silence.

“You did this!” I snapped at her. “You and Roberto and your reign of terror. You tortured little kids. Then they grew up and decided to fight back!”

“Manny . . .” Roxy was murmuring, her voice thick. “My mom. Lola. Charlie . . . Mike, how could you?”

“Bright, bright light,” he said. “You got away. You came back. And there’s no brightness anymore. You love them. You give, give, give. All that brightness away. To a mom, one bad day from returning to the bottle. To Lola, one small push from breakdown. To Manny, who loves but doesn’t understand, so you have to protect him even more.

“I saw you once.

“I knew you once.

“I wish I could see you again.”

“They were my family!”

“And you are my family! My only family! So I protect, too. I protect you. Roxy saves Lola. But I save you!”

“By killing my entire family? Then attacking Hector and Las Ni?as . . . By murdering Roberto. By . . . by . . .” Roxanna pointed wildly at Anya. “By taking out Anya next?”

Mike had tracked Hector to the coffee shop that day, I realized, maybe, like me, after hearing reports of the dogs being found there. He’d wanted revenge on the man who could’ve saved Roxy and Lola from foster care if only Hector had come forward at the courthouse. Just as Mike had gone after Las Ni?as Diablas for luring Lola into the gang lifestyle, then pressuring Roxy to follow. So many wrongs in Roxy’s life. Mike had taken it upon himself to avenge all of them—even the crimes committed by her own family.

“It’s what you were going to do,” Mike said now.

“No, I wasn’t! This is wrong. All of this, it’s wrong! We’re supposed to be better than them, Mike. We’re supposed to be better.”

“There’s no better. Only weaker. I don’t want to be weak anymore.”

His arm was starting to tremble. The strain of holding the gun, the toll of the conversation, watching his best friend dissolve into tears. I should act. Three quick steps . . . Assuming he didn’t pull the trigger first . . .

I caught a movement out of the corner of my eye. D.D. shaking her head slightly at me, as if reading my mind. She had drifted to the right, I realized. Where she now had a line of sight on Mike Davis.

“Do you know what I remember most about this place?” Roxy said abruptly. She looked hard at her best friend, bear spray on one side, fisted hand on the other.

Mike stared at her. Even Anya, sprawled with her bruised face and bloody shoulder, was fixated on her.

“I remember running the catwalk with you. On the ground, you’re always so jangly. But up there . . . you moved so smoothly, so gracefully. You could go everyplace, anyplace. I loved racing with you around the catwalks. Our own little world, where we were the ones in charge, and no one could catch us.”

Mike smiled, faint, sad.

“You kissed me. Do you remember that afternoon? My first kiss. I was happy that day, Mike. You made me happy.”

“My first kiss,” Mike agreed.

“But we didn’t do it again. Because the real world still existed. And I had Lola to take care of and we all had Anya and Roberto to survive. I carried that memory, though. Thoughts of you. So many moments with you. You made it all okay. You were the only person who tried to help me. The only person I ever . . . I’m sorry, Mike.” And now Roxanna was crying again, head up, tears staining her cheeks. “I’m sorry I never told you more. I’m sorry I never returned for you, after my mom took us away. I’m sorry I never let you know everything you meant to me. I’m sorry . . . So sorry I have to do this now.”

She moved; she aimed the bear spray and squeezed the nozzle. And she hit him square in the face. He didn’t duck, didn’t flinch. Didn’t reorient the gun he was holding or pull the trigger. If anything, I watched him turn into the spray of capsaicin, open his mouth, take it all in.

Drawing the pepper spray deep into his lungs . . .

The next moment, I was racing toward the choking, stinging cloud.

“Call nine-one-one,” I yelled. “Call nine-one-one.”

Then I was shoving Mike out of the noxious fumes, trying to roll him into cleaner air, as his face turned bright red, his eyes swelled shut, and his lips turned ominously blue. All the strength of the pepper spray straight into the lungs. Mike started to gasp, then convulse, his heart already fluttering like a trapped bird against his rib cage as I searched for a pulse.

Roxanna Baez lowered the can. She stood alone as D.D. jumped up onto the stage and joined me in starting CPR.

“Fucking losers,” Anya Seton said. Too late, I realized she’d crawled across the stage and now had her hands on Roxy’s original firearm. Anya raised her bound arms triumphantly. Pointed the gun straight at Roxy.

We were too far away. Nothing we could do.

Anya pulled the trigger.