Mission Road (Tres Navarre #6)(37)

Ever since her first visit, White’s men had been shadowing her. They appeared while she was shopping, or baby-sitting her little cousin, or taking flowers to her mother in the nursing home.

They never threatened her, never spoke. But she knew who they were.

We are as close as your jugular vein, they seemed to say. Don’t ever forget that.

Two weeks, three days, eleven hours since the attack. She’d been shattered like a vase, glued back together imperfectly. She could still feel his fingers tightening around her wrists, his whiskers scraping against her throat. She could still taste the blood—first from biting his arm, then from his fist against her mouth.

She couldn’t let him get away with it.

She’d spent two years fighting for other people’s rights in California. She’d marched with César Chávez, blistered her feet on the dusty roads of the Central Valley, helped translate the stories of migrant workers for the media.

At New Year’s, full of optimism and hope for the future, she’d come home to Texas to fight for La Causa. In that rush of confidence, she’d visited a South Side bar and felt comfortable rising to the challenge of a gringo who found her attractive. Why the hell not?

AN OFFICER ESCORTED HER INTO A green-tiled room with harsh fluorescents. At one end of the table sat a grim-faced detective, smoke curling from the cigarette in his hand. At the other end of the table, he was there, looking the same as the night he’d picked her up—clean, elegant, commanding. To his right sat another well-dressed man, the lawyer who’d visited her a week ago to explain how much she had to lose.

Mr. White has a wife and little boy, he’d told her. Do you want to embarrass a man with a family?

Since then, the losses had been piling up. First, her new job. Her boss at La Prensa let her go, mumbling something about budget problems, but she’d seen the fear in his eyes. Then she’d lost her lease. She was given one month to move out, no explanation. Most of all, she’d lost her privacy. White’s men were everywhere she went.

She shouldn’t have agreed to this meeting. They couldn’t force her to make a statement with her attacker present. But even the police seemed to be playing by Guy White’s rules.

“Miss Montoya.” The detective was a grizzled man with a military haircut. The razor stubble on his cheeks was like frost. “We’ve made Mr. White aware of your accusations. We need to know now if you still want to press charges.”

His voice sounded weary, like he’d done all this before.

White’s eyes were a horrible blue.

If he’d shown any anxiety, she might’ve found her own strength. But there was nothing in his eyes but calm anticipation, as if he were patiently curious about what form of destruction she would choose.

She’d heard rumors about the previous victims. She knew she was only the latest in a long line of amusements. He had knocked her down the way a boy knocks down sand castles on the beach—just because he could.

She remembered his fingers around her throat, the taste of blood in her mouth.

Yesterday Delia had taken her seven-year-old niece to the playground. There’d been a man on the park bench, smiling at them. His eyes were dull with cruelty. Delia was certain the lump in his jacket pocket was a gun.

She remembered the lines White’s lawyer had suggested. All you have to say . . .

She couldn’t let him get away with it.

“It didn’t happen,” she muttered.

Silence. Cigarette smoke curled into the ugly lights.

“Excuse me?” the detective asked.

“I made it up to get attention,” Delia said. “He never touched me.”

She was conscious of the detective studying her—her stitched-up lip, the blue bruises under her eyes.

Please, she thought. See that I’m lying.

The detective looked down. He gently closed the file in front of him, rested his hand on it like a Bible.

“Well,” Guy White said breezily. “That is that.”

LATE THAT NIGHT, DELIA SAT IN her bathtub, warm water lapping against the porcelain, a candle burning on the sink. She watched the watery reflections of flame dance off her shower curtain and felt herself floating away.

She had betrayed herself.

No amount of washing could cleanse her. There was no way to stop the poison White had planted in her. Nothing to do but cut it out.

She used a razor—a momentary sting, then no pain in the warm water. She closed her eyes and willed herself not to cry, the water spiraling red around her na**d body like firecracker smoke.

Chapter 9

MAIA WAITED BY THE CONCRETE PIG.

It was one of the more ridiculous places she’d ever been asked to rendezvous—a fifteen-foot-high grimy pink goliath of pork at the edge of the diner parking lot.

She glanced at the brown Acura parked across the street and prayed her police tail wouldn’t decide to take her picture. Her only consolation was that the cop inside the car was probably as cold and bored as she was.

After eleven minutes, the old fry cook Mike Flume emerged from the diner. He wiped his hands on his apron and trudged toward her.

“Sorry, I got busy,” he said. “Here.”

He tossed her a house key rubber-banded to a slip of paper and started walking away.

Maia caught his arm. “Whoa, wait a minute.”

“I got less than a minute, miss. There’s nobody watching the oil.”