by Camy Tang
“Brady, are you all right?”
Brady grimaced and rolled toward him. The pale sleeve of his button-down shirt was soaked with a wet, warm patch, dark and running from his shoulder to his elbow.
Blood.
* * *
Liam applied pressure to the knife wound on his brother’s shoulder with shaking hands. It had been one thing to have a gun pointed directly at him; it was another thing entirely to watch Brady bleed all over his driveway.
The strange peace he’d felt only moments ago, when the man had aimed the gun at him, had completely deserted him now. He would do everything he could to stop these men, to prevent something like this from happening again.
The police came up the driveway, sirens screaming. As an officer walked toward them, the front door opened and Debra ran out of the house with Ryan in her arms. “Help us! Help!” The officer went to intercept her.
“Call the paramedic!” Liam shouted.
A second officer nodded and spoke into his radio.
His brother’s eyes were open but bright with pain, stress lines visible along the side of his mouth.
Liam forced himself to speak with a teasing tone. “You’re such a wimp.”
Brady grimaced, but then he smiled. “I’ve had worse. Remember the time Shaun dared me to climb on that tractor and I fell and gashed open my leg?”
Liam winced. “I can’t believe we were ever that stupid.”
When the paramedics arrived, they worked on Brady while Liam and Elisabeth gave their statements to the officers.
“Were these the same men from the gas station earlier today?” The officer taking Liam’s statement had also responded to the gas station attendant’s 9-1-1 call.
“Yes, one of the men was Lamar Garcia. I don’t know about the other two—I didn’t get a good look at them.”
They’d been lucky. It had been just himself and Elisabeth against three men. They’d also been able to surprise them since the men had obviously thought they’d only had Debra and Ryan to deal with. God had been watching out for his family tonight.
Debra had taken one look at Brady’s arm and blanched, so she spent most of her time, after giving her statement to the police officer, pacing in front of the house with Ryan in her arms. Except for one moment, right after the officer had finished taking Liam’s statement.
She marched up to Liam. “You did this.” Her voice was full of venom, and her eyes were wild. Her hysterical mood had affected Ryan, who was crying. “You brought those men to our home. You’re the reason Brady is injured. I hope you’re happy.” Then she stalked away.
Liam had stood there a moment, surprised at her attack, which cut deeply because he knew she was right. He should have prevented this. He shouldn’t have assumed there were only two men. He should have worked harder to fight the big man off and secure the gun.
Elisabeth came up to him then. “Stop it.”
“What?”
“Stop blaming yourself. You couldn’t have predicted what would happen.”
He could have. He was sure of it. She was trying to make him feel better, but he knew this was his fault. And only he could fix things.
The paramedics took Brady to the hospital, and Liam drove Debra, Elisabeth and Ryan there in Debra’s car. While Debra was with Brady and the doctor, Shaun arrived.
“How’s he doing?” Shaun was serious but calm, in contrast with how agitated Liam felt.
“Paramedics said they think he’ll be fine. The wound wasn’t deep.” Liam frowned. “Did you bring Dad?”
“No, I left him at home, but I asked Nathan to stay and watch over him and Monica. And Detective Carter sent a police officer to watch the house, too.”
Liam sighed in relief. After Brady’s attack, the last thing he wanted was to worry about one of the gangs going after his father. He realized that he felt guilty not only for the attack at Brady’s house, but also for the fact that these events would only worry Shaun and his father, both of them already stressed by Dad’s chemo treatments. Hadn’t his whole intention been to not burden his family, not with his own mental problems, and certainly not with an investigation?
“Do you think they’ll attack Brady or Dad’s house again?” Shaun asked.
“Who knows? Although they got onto Brady’s property pretty easily.”
Shaun frowned. “I keep telling him to get that security system in place. He’s always saying he’ll do it soon, but he’s been busy with work lately. And...” Shaun cut himself off, his eyes flickering to Liam.
“Yeah, I asked him about Debra, but he didn’t want to talk about it.”
Shaun blew out a frustrated breath. “I wish he’d just talk to us. We’re his family. We might be able to help.”
Liam snorted. “O’Neill men are not great talkers. You know that.”
Shaun smiled ruefully. “Well, he shouldn’t have to deal with this alone.”
“It didn’t help that I asked him to move in with Dad for a few days. Debra almost bit my head off.”
Shaun’s eyes narrowed. “She might think differently now. Want me to talk to her?”
“Could you? I’m not her favorite person.” The echo of her words still had the power to cut him, like little razors over his skin.
Shaun nodded and headed to Brady’s bedside. Liam went back to the waiting area.
Elisabeth sat with her laptop. “I hope it doesn’t seem callous of me to be working, but I figured since we were waiting...”
“It’s great. The sooner we can figure this out, the better.” It was the only way he could think of to keep his family safe. “Found anything?”
“I’m doing more research into Faye, Joslyn’s cousin, and her Tumibay connections. I think I found one of the men who attacked us.” She showed him a candid photo of the man at a club in San Francisco.
“That looks like the big guy who attacked me. What’s his name?”
“The website only gives a nickname, Sneezy.”
Liam groaned. “Seven Dwarves, really?”
“My FBI contacts have told me that every gang has members nicknamed after the Seven Dwarves.”
It was nice to joke with her like this, to alleviate the strain of the past couple hours. To forget about Brady’s blood, Debra’s barbs.
At that moment, her cell phone rang. She blinked at the caller ID. “It’s Mariella. Hello?” She listened for a few moments, then suddenly straightened in her chair. “What?...How did you—?...Are you sure?”
“What is it?” Liam asked. He wished she’d put the call on speakerphone.
Elisabeth then gave a rueful smile. It brought a rose color to her cheeks. Liam wanted to touch her face.
“All right,” she said to Mariella. “I’ll tell him. ’Bye. And thanks.”
“Next time—”
“I know,” she interrupted him. “Next time I’ll put it on speakerphone. You guessed right. Mariella didn’t listen to you. She went looking into the information we found out at the club.”
Liam groaned. “I wish you hadn’t told her what those gang members said to each other in Filipino.”
“Well, in this case, it paid off. She found the Pansit.”
Liam gaped. “How?”
“It’s like we were suspecting, someone kept it off the shipping records. But Mariella has a second cousin’s roommate who’s related to someone who works at the port authority—something convoluted like that—and she found out that the Pansit originated from the Philippines. There’s no documentation on it in the U.S., but she verified its arrival through the documentation in the Philippines. And, Liam, the Pansit docked two days after Joslyn’s father was killed.”
That couldn’t be a coincidence. “So that shipping container that Tomas lost—was that related to the murder? Was Joslyn’s father involved somehow, and killing him caused Tomas to lose it? We’ve been thinking, from what Joslyn told you and the women at the shelter, that she was running from Tomas because of her father’s murder. But what if it was something else, somet
hing to do with that shipping container?”
“We’ve also been assuming Tomas needs Joslyn for some reason. What if she did something against the gang, and Tomas wants her back for revenge?”
Liam had a sinking feeling in his gut. “If that’s the case, then finding out the truth about the murder isn’t going to give us anything we can use against Tomas—or anything to stop the Tumibays.”
Elisabeth’s chin firmed. “We have to find a way to stop both gangs, or we’ll be running from them forever, and the threat to your family won’t go away.”
“Maybe we can still find some proof to pin the murder on Tomas—no matter what his reasons, he still did kill a man. And then we can find something else to get the Tumibays off our backs.”
“To stop them, we need to know why the Tumibays want Joslyn. We have to follow her trail from when her father was killed until she came to the shelter. From what those gang members said, Joslyn had to have interacted with the Tumibays at some point.”
At that moment, Shaun appeared, carrying his nephew, asleep on his shoulder. He gestured with his head to Liam.
“I’ll be right back,” Liam told Elisabeth, and approached his brother.
“Brady’s going to be fine.” Shaun kept his voice pitched low so he wouldn’t wake up Ryan. “He had a nasty cut, but they’ve sewn him up and pumped him full of antibiotics. They’re going to discharge him soon.”
“Good.” Liam sighed. It had been so much blood...
“I also convinced Debra to stay with me and Dad.”
“How did you do that?”
Shaun grinned. “My infamous charm.”
“It’s probably because you’re not me,” Liam said drily.
“Actually, she was pretty eager to move to Dad’s after what happened.”
“I wish she’d agreed earlier. Then Brady wouldn’t have gotten hurt.”
“Hey.” Shaun clasped Liam’s shoulder. “None of us could have known they’d do that. It’s useless playing ‘what if.’ What we need to do now is take precautions to protect ourselves.”
Liam pressed his lips together and nodded. He’d do everything he could to stop these men. He had to protect his family.
Shaun went back to Brady and Debra, and Liam told Elisabeth about Brady’s family staying with his dad.
“That’s great,” she said enthusiastically. “Because I’ve found a new lead.”
His heartbeat quickened. “What?”
“Do you remember when Nathan told you about that policeman reporting that he’d seen Joslyn at that bus stop a day after the murder?”
“Yeah, in central California somewhere.”
“Paso Robles. She didn’t get back on the bus. Guess where Faye’s mother lives? After she was forced to leave the bus, I’m guessing she went to her aunt to help her travel north.” Elisabeth gave him a smile. “Want to go on another road trip?”
ELEVEN
The next morning, as they drove south toward central California, the greater distance from Sonoma seemed to enable Elisabeth to distance herself from the conflicting feelings she’d been having.
She had told Liam not to blame himself, and yet the guilt weighed on her, too. Her involvement with Joslyn had brought all this trouble on Liam and his family. She shouldn’t have agreed to work with him. If she’d left him alone, he’d have dropped Patricia’s case once he knew she wasn’t Joslyn’s sister, and the gang would have left him alone.
Wouldn’t they?
At the very least, the Tumibays wouldn’t have attacked his family’s homes. And she really liked his family. They shared a closeness she’d never seen with other people she’d known. They were committed to each other. They loved each other.
That kind of love was so foreign to her. While she’d been with the O’Neills, she’d started deceiving herself into thinking she could have a love like that, too, a family who would care about her. She’d been forgetting the hard lessons she’d had to learn at the hands of her father, and then her ex-boyfriend.
As she drove from Sonoma, the reality of her past, her life, came back into focus. Who was she kidding? She couldn’t have that. She wasn’t made for that. It was better to remain alone and safe.
She glanced sideways at Liam, taking his turn driving her car. He was a better man than most of the people she’d known, but she still shouldn’t rely on him too much. Depending on people had only gotten her hurt, and she wasn’t about to subject herself to that kind of pain all over again.
Blanca Torres’s home was a remodeled barn on the edge of a large vineyard. Chickens scattered in front of the car as they drove up to the house. Although they were not turned on, Elisabeth could see Christmas lights lavishly strung from the eaves, around windows, even around the front door. An artificial tree sat in front of the house, heavy with lights and multicolored ornaments.
They parked alongside a large pen where a dozen goats stared at them as they got out of the car. The smell was ripe and musty and grassy at the same time, and Elisabeth coughed.
“This is a long drive for one conversation,” Liam muttered as they looked around the deserted yard.
“I do better with face-to-face talks, especially if the person isn’t likely to want to help me.” Elisabeth caught sight of movement on the other side of the goat pen. “And something tells me Joslyn’s aunt isn’t going to want to admit she had any interaction with a niece wanted by the police for questioning.”
They headed toward the side of the house, circling the goat pen. The smell of goat was strong, but as they kept walking she began to be aware of a pungent, fishy smell that hung heavy in the air. It reminded Elisabeth of British fish-and-chips from a diner she’d gone to once, and it also brought up an older memory, something that teased the back of her mind. It made her think of the old calamansi lemon tree that had grown in her mother’s backyard, the big plastic doghouse she’d commandeered as her playhouse, the clotheslines strung from the aluminum patio roof to the fence where her father’s white undershirts swayed under a hot California sun.
They turned a corner and saw a weathered Filipino woman in a faded cotton apron sitting on a low wooden stool. In front of her was a propane burner with a large metal wok, filled with oil. She was frying fish.
Elisabeth didn’t want to startle her, not with the wok of boiling oil in front of her. “Mrs. Torres?” she asked quietly.
But the woman must have seen their car come up the driveway, because she didn’t even turn to look at them. “What do you want?” Using long metal tongs, she flipped a piece of fish.
Elisabeth switched to Tagalog. “My name is Elisabeth Aday, and I’m a friend of your niece, Joslyn.”
The brown hand holding the metal tongs paused, then she continued flipping the fish in the wok. “What do you want with me?” Her voice was more wary, but she responded in Tagalog.
“I can assure you, we’re not the police.”
At this, Mrs. Torres glanced at them, her beady black eyes studying Liam for a long moment before she turned back to her fish.
Elisabeth continued, “I know you have no reason to believe me, but Joslyn came to a shelter I work at in Sonoma, and I helped her escape her ex-boyfriend.”
Mrs. Torres swiveled fully around on her stool. “Let me see your card.”
Elisabeth fished out a business card from her purse and gave it to her. Liam followed suit. The woman studied the cards with a frown creasing her tanned face.
“What’s the name of the shelter?” Mrs. Torres suddenly asked.
“Wings shelter. It’s not very well-known because it’s for women escaping especially dangerous abusers.”
At the name, Mrs. Torres’s strong fingers twitched. If Joslyn went to her aunt for help, there was a good chance she’d mentioned the name of the shelter she was trying to reach.
“I’ve heard of it,” Mrs. Torres said. Was there a softer tone to her voice? Then she remembered her fish, and with a little yelp, she grabbed her tongs and checked them. She began stacking the pieces on
top of each other in the wok.
To drain the excess oil. Elisabeth suddenly remembered her mother doing the same thing, except she had used an electric burner sitting on a cinder block rather than a propane burner. There had been a heavy-duty electrical cord running from the inside of the house, through the crack in the sliding screen door. The images came to her in a flash, along with the remembered smell of frying oil and fish.
“My mom used an electric burner to fry her fish,” she said to Mrs. Torres.
The woman’s eyebrows rose. “Propane is hotter. Did she use a wok?”
“No, a cast-iron pot.”
Mrs. Torres nodded thoughtfully. “That works, too. What kind of fish?”
“Whatever she could get. She liked pompano the best.”
“Pompano is always the best.” Mrs. Torres looked approving. She laid her fried fish in a metal baking sheet lined with paper towels, then turned off her burner. Gathering up her fish and tongs, she rose. “Come inside for coffee.”
Elisabeth let out a low, relieved breath, then followed Mrs. Torres into a side door into the farmhouse.
The interior looked like a classic farmhouse, except that religious pictures of crosses and Jesus dotted the walls and sat on bookshelves. Bright red and green Christmas decorations were hung around the room—wreaths on the walls, garlands over doorways and a Christmas tree in the living room with a worse-for-wear angel at the top that was tilted sideways because it was a little too tall for the ceiling.
Mrs. Torres had them sit at a worn wooden table in the kitchen while she set the fish on the counter to cool. She started the coffeemaker and set out some homemade paciencia, Filipino meringue cookies, on a plate in front of Liam and Elisabeth.
Elisabeth hadn’t had paciencia in years. The sweet meringue crumbled and melted on her tongue.
“You’re a good cook,” she said to Mrs. Torres.
Mrs. Torres waved a dismissive hand to her, but Elisabeth caught the pleased smile on her face.
“My mom used to make paciencia the week before Christmas.”
Mrs. Torres nodded. “I always make for Christmas.”
