Mission Road (Tres Navarre #6)(52)

Alex shrugged, trying to look modest, which immediately ruined his resemblance to Frankie. “As you heard, it’s important for people to see that Mr. White is still in charge.”

“No,” I said. “I think it’s important for you that they see firsthand how weak and old he is. And they see you walking behind him, directing him, calling the shots.”

“I help as much as I can.”

“And when the old man dies, there’s Madeleine. Marry her off to the right man, and the dynasty could be on a solid footing again.”

“Stranger things have happened.”

“Unless she doesn’t want to.”

“Choices,” Alex said regretfully. “We never really get to control our own choices, do we?”

“I hope they find your corpse floating in the river someday.”

Alex clapped me on the shoulder as if we were old friends. “If you’ll excuse me, Navarre. As Mr. White said, tonight is about appearances.”

I MET MAIA AT THE BOTTOM of the landing.

She was watching the party guests circulate across the lawn, chatting and drinking and pretending they weren’t freezing their asses off.

“Why do I keep listening to you?” she asked.

“My intoxicating charm,” I guessed.

She was as beautiful as ever in a blue wool dress, her hair loosed from its ponytail, falling in a silky sheet down her back. She had a bandaged cut on her face from her gunfight with Roe. She’d arrived at the mansion not realizing she had a two-inch splinter sticking out of her cheek, just below her eye. The bandage made her look a bit like a refugee, a noblewoman fleeing a war, battling to maintain her composure

“Ralph is down there killing a man I delivered,” she said. “If he doesn’t finish the job, one of White’s men will. Tres, you have to get out of here now. With me.”

“I can’t leave Ralph.”

“Ralph’s a criminal. He belongs here.”

“Where would we go, the police?”

She looked like she was contemplating socking me in the gut. Instead, she wrapped her arms around my waist and pulled me toward her.

She was shivering.

The familiar scent of her hair made me wish I could leave with her—head up to Austin and forget everything, especially my old friend in the sauna room with the borrowed gun.

I told her about my day—Madeleine, Zapata, Sam and Mrs. Loomis. She told me about the old scrapbooks she’d looked through in Lucia DeLeon’s garage, the women Guy and Frankie White had casually destroyed, the murder of the medical examiner Jaime Santos, the fry cook Mike Flume who’d had a crush on Ana’s dead mother.

I thought about it all, trying to put the pieces together. The pieces didn’t cooperate.

I tried to stay focused on Frankie White’s murder, to imagine the nightstick that had clubbed him to death, but I kept coming back to what Ralph had told me earlier in the evening—that I had stayed away from Ralph, not the other way around.

I remembered his wedding reception. I’d stood next to Lieutenant Hernandez, watching the newlyweds cut the cake, and I’d heard him mumble, “This is a bad idea.”

As Ralph’s friend, I should’ve risen to his defense. One look at Ralph and Ana and you could tell they were in love. They shouldn’t have belonged together. Their worlds should’ve exploded on contact. But you looked at the two of them, feeding each other cake, and you couldn’t help having a sense of wonder, as if you were watching a juggling act with flaming torches—some impossible number of dangerous variables held aloft without a mishap.

I should have pointed that out to the lieutenant. Instead, I looked at his worried expression and a moment of agreement passed between us. The marriage was a bad idea.

It would never last. The pressure would be too much. Ralph would get restless. Ana would lose her job. Something would go wrong.

But really, those weren’t my objections.

The marriage changed Ralph. It changed one of the constants in my universe, and it made me wonder if I would have to change, too.

Ralph was right. That had scared the hell out of me.

A bitter wind blew through Mr. White’s party. Out on the lawn, guests moved toward the heated pavilion while mariachis belted out a ranchera version of “Silent Night.”

“I have to tell you something,” Maia said. “Something that might make a difference.”

Her tone was like the edge of a thunderstorm. It made my senses crackle. I remembered our conversation in front of the Southtown office, what seemed like a lifetime ago—the desperate look Maia had given me.

“There is something wrong,” I said.

“God, I wish I knew if it was wrong, Tres. Do you remember, a long time ago, I told you about my mother—”

She was interrupted by a woman’s scream. Down on the lawn, the crowd parted. A bedraggled, bloody man had burst from the kitchen’s service entrance and was loping across the property. He wore a torn flannel shirt and jeans, cut pieces of rope dangling from his wrists. Titus Roe.

Several of White’s security men started to converge, but the crowd worked against them. The tuxedoed guests were surging away from the man and White’s goons couldn’t very well muscle their way through. Long before they could close the distance, Roe had reached the back of the lawn and disappeared into the woods.