by Kit Frazier
I held Marlowe’s collar with one hand and used the other to pat Ethan’s knee. Both boys were ready to tackle her and take her home.
She looked like she desperately needed to go home or to someone’s home. Faith’s hair was growing back but she looked even worse, if that was possible. Laser scars covered most of her tattoos, and her face was no longer bejeweled. Dark circles punctuated her dark eyes, and her pupils were dilated; not a good sign.
She shook her head. “I hit the security button. Tres and his cuadrilla will be here soon.”
“Tres and his gang?” I said, my voice high, shocked that she’d set the alarm on me. I had taken her to my mother’s house for dinner, for cryin’ out loud. I thought I knew this girl. I shook my head. “Why would you do that? Faith, we’re not here to hurt you we just wanted to make sure you’re okay. Everyone is worried about you.”
“You’re lying,” she said. “He said you would say that. He said you would lie, and here you are, lying.”
“Faith, I don’t know what you’ve been told just put the gun down,” I said, making my voice calm and steady, the way I’d heard Cantu soothe people out of bad situations. “You don’t have to do this. People are out looking for you. Whole search teams have combed the ranch your friends from the club, the girls from your school. My mother and all her friends came out to look for you. I have pictures of people searching for you.”
She faltered. “My mother?”
I blinked, trying to decide what to say that wasn’t a total lie. “Your mother and Pilar are very worried about you. Your mother made a public plea on television for your safe return,” I said honestly.
She made a derisive noise. “Was my mother sober?”
“Are you?” I countered, looking at the trash bin, which was full of Jack Daniel’s bottles.
She took a step back, and I regrouped. “Faith,” I said. “Charlotte Fisher is looking for you.”
Her breath caught. “Llina?”
“She’s very worried about you. The whole school is out looking for you. She thinks you’re in trouble, and I think so, too.”
I offered her the shapeless pink blob of sweater I’d taken from the box Charlotte had kept.
Her eyes welled with tears, and she shook her head. “I can’t go back,” she said. “There’s too much. I’ve done too much.”
“Faith, there are people who care about you. In your heart, you know that.”
Beside me, Ethan looked at his watch. He leaned toward me and whispered, “Six minutes.”
My heart pounded in my ears.
“I am alone. I have no one. I have no money. I have no options.” Her voice caught on a sob. “I have nothing.”
“That’s not true,” I said. “Everyone has options. Granted, you may not have as many as some other people, but you do have options.”
Ethan unzipped his bag, and Faith yelled, “Stop! Stop or I’ll shoot!” Ethan shook his head, his voice steady and reassuring. “I brought you some things.”
He laid the disk on the coffee table, along with a scrapbook he’d pieced together of photos of Faith and Wylie he’d found on the “net.
I stared at him. “How come you didn’t show me that?” I said. He shrugged. “Some of it’s from the Dead Copy file.”
“Oh, jeez,” I said. “If by some twist of fate we make it out of here alive, Tanner’s going to kill us.”
Faith stared at the photo album.
Ethan pushed the DVD into the player. Faith’s breath caught as she watched Ethan’s vision of her spring to life on the screen.
A tight camera angle closed in on Faith’s pretty face, lingering like a loving caress.
The camera dipped slowly from her eyes to her mouth, and there was an ethereal beauty there, a poem in video.
“Two minutes,” Ethan whispered, and Marlowe began to bristle.
Still watching the video love letter, Faith opened the photo album, and there was Puck, smiling back at her from a happier time.
Softly, she began to cry.
Ethan moved across the room and turned the pages to the middle of the album. A page of musical score.
She stared at it. “It’s my song,” she whispered.
“‘Broken Wings’,” he said.
“How ?” she said, and he shook his head.
“It all boils down to math. Just like code,” he said, repeating her own words.
She ran her fingers along the hand-inked musical score Ethan had drawn.
“Magic on paper,” he said.
He turned the page, and her eyes went bright with tears as she ran her fingers across the binary code. “You’re not alone,” he said. “Friends are God’s way of apologizing for the family he gave you.”
She looked at him. “Did you make that up?”
“No,” he said, grinning at me. “I heard it somewhere.”
Her video played on in the background, the desperate lyrics set to haunting music, and we all stood, Ethan and I looking at each other. Less than a minute.
Marlowe growled low in his throat.
The dog glanced up at the trap door and then over at the door near the wall-sized mirror. I tightened my hold on his collar. Beneath my hand, I felt the dog’s muscles coiled, ready to spring.
My heart thundered and a fresh surge of adrenaline pumped into my veins.
Bang!
The door beside the mirror slammed open, and Tres stormed into the room. His cholos dropped into the room through the vent, landing lightly on their feet.
“Well. Trespassing again,” Tres said.
He moved toward Faith as Chino and Jitters flanked the door. As Tres moved further into the room, the small space seemed to fill with his awful cologne.
“I warned you about trespassing.”
I choked down the awful salt pooling in my mouth, trying not to gag.
“Faith is here because she wants to be here,” he said. He took the gun from Faith and held it lightly, almost casually, pointing it toward the linoleum floor, tapping his thigh with the short barrel.
Faith’s gaze was locked on her bare feet, all expression drained from her face.
Near the door, Chino and Jitters stared at me and Ethan like they’d just smelled raw meat. I noticed Jitters’ fingers lovingly tracing the curve of his long gun’s trigger. Tres laughed.
“So you found her. Big deal,” he said. “Who do you think is going to find you?”
Faith had been holding the photo album in one hand and dropped it. The sound of the book hitting the floor echoed against the sound of her singing, still lilting through the speakers near the old television.
As though he’d just noticed the video, Tres said, “What’s this?” His voice was mocking as he leered at the video lilting along on the television. The cholos stood behind Tres, long guns at the ready. Chino stood to his right, just a little back, a portrait in stillness, like a snake before it strikes.
My heart pounded, and my mind flashed back to a time not so long ago, to a similar situation I’d barely survived. I took a deep breath.
“I’m not worried,” I said with a good deal of false bravado. “But Cantu knows where we’re at. I contacted him before we came in.”
“You’re trespassing.” He ran a finger along Faith’s cheek. “Anything unfortunate happens, I’m protecting my property.”
“Faith is not your property,” I seethed. “But that phone call gives him probable cause for a search.”
“Not his jurisdiction,” Tres said and smiled an ugly smile.
E looked at me, brows raised. Yes, we were out of Cantu’s jurisdiction, and I raised a brow. I had no idea if the phone call was probable cause, but it would definitely be probable cause and someone’s jurisdiction if we got killed. Probably best not to bring that up.
Tres shrugged, then recovered. “Cause for what? Faith is here because she wants to be here right, Faith?”
Faith was quiet but her lower lip trembled.
He tipped up her chin, and still she didn’t look
at him.
Rage flashed hard and sharp over his face, and he yelled, “Shut that shit off!”
Tres shoved Faith into the wall and stormed toward the DVD player, picked the black box up over his head, and smashed it onto the cement floor.
Faith and I both jumped at the shattered bits of plastic. Tres snatched the DVD out of the wreckage. Teeth clenched, he took the music in both hands and broke it.
Ethan and Marlowe vibrated with barely controlled anger, and I continued patting both of them, silently urging them not to escalate the violence.
In the corner, Keates thrashed around in his cage, eager to get out, still oblivious that the cage door was open.
Faith let out an involuntary sob.
Marlowe snarled, showing his large, white teeth, and I tightened my grip on his collar.
“She is eighteen,” Tres growled. “She is eighteen. She is here of her own free will.” His staccato words sounded like stones striking the floor, and I wondered who he was trying to convince.
Marlowe growled back.
I shrugged, swallowing the urge to throw up. “Yeah, but the door is open. Events have been set into motion, and there are things you don’t have control over.”
His eyes narrowed to dark, reptilian slits, and I half expected a pointy tongue to come slithering out of his thin lips.
“Those bones buried in your yard? The lab is looking at them right now. We’ve got Tiffany’s last text message. We know the message came from the server at Boner’s the club you own and it is currently being analyzed. We’ll find out where it came from. It’s just a matter of time until we find out who sent it.”
Tres’s eye twitched almost imperceptibly.
“They can’t do that,” he said, his voice hitching.
“They’re already half done,” Ethan piped up, his chest puffing when the subject was his expertise. “You’d be surprised what a good geek can find. You know,” he said, “no email, no text message, no cell phone call is ever really private, and they never go away. You just have to know where to look.”
Tres’s face went red, contorting with fury. “I haven’t done anything wrong,” he roared. “Cats and birds. It’s not illegal to shoot pests on your property. And lots of people have access to my computer. You got jack shit.”
I shrugged, feeding on Ethan’s confidence. “What do you bet at least one of those shell casings matches the one you left with dead canary in my bedroom?”
Faith’s face faded into a portrait of horror. “Tres, you didn’t,” she said, her voice catching.
“Shut up!” he roared, and she cowered, but her eyes were alive now, glittering with hatred and something else I couldn’t identify.
“You killed Charlotte? You killed my bird and sent her poor dead body to Cauley?”
“Yes, he did,” I said. “And he didn’t send the bird to me. He broke into my house and attacked me and Marlowe and the cat. I bet if he moved his hair, we’d see a chunk out of his ear about the size of a small cat’s mouth.”
Faith gasped. “You said a piece of lumber from the studio hit you during construction…”
“She’s lying,” Tres said, the first sound of panic edging his voice. “And,” I went on. “I bet if we take photos of Chino and his buddy, we could do one of two things: we could compare them to the security cameras at the courthouse. I bet with some good forensic work, we’d see it was Chino and his pal Jitters that drove the cab of shooters who killed your brother on the courthouse steps.”
The men didn’t move, but Faith shrunk back.
Tres shook his head. “She’s lying. I love you. I’m the only one in this world who loves you.” He grabbed her and shook her, like he was trying to make his words sink in. The cholos cast each other covert glances.
“Or,” I went on, glancing over at Chino and Jitters, my gaze resting on the scarred remains of their Syndicate tattoos, “I could take the photos to Diego DeLeon. He issued me an invitation to his office a few days ago, and he told me something very interesting.” I continued, gathering courage with each word. “He said that some carnales broke team. He said something about his displeasure with them. He said nobody leaves the Syndicate alive something about blood in, blood out.”
The cholos didn’t move but there was a perceptible shift among them. Apparently, DeLeon had means the police didn’t have.
Chino’s slitty eyes glittered in the near dark.
“And you,” I said to Tres. “Ethan traced that message. We know you set the fire that nearly killed Tiffany. You sent the email that lured Tiffany to Faith’s house the email that set off the bomb. And I bet when they search your house, they’re going to find that you set up the team to kill Puck.”
A stillness fell about the air as I continued. “I saw you that day. You had a handkerchief over your nose and mouth, but in a million years, I’ll never forget your eyes.”
Faith made a small sound like a rabbit when it knows it’s dying. Nobody else seemed to notice.
Beside me, I felt Ethan shift slightly, and I closed my eyes as I realized his hand had dipped into my backpack. Cold fear froze my insides.
Ethan, don’t…I squinted my eyes, trying not to move, trying not to draw attention to Ethan and the pistol he’d just pulled out of my backpack, trying to stop him from doing something stupid with the sheer power of my brain.
Oh, jeez, Ethan, please don’t, please don’t, please don’t…
By my side, Marlowe’s gaze kept lifting to the trap door.
I listened hard in the silence.
Nothing.
In the heavy stillness, Chino took an audible breath in and out, and then a sharp, earsplitting bang! splintered the silence.
I threw myself over Marlowe. Jitters jerked to his side and fell. A horrible crack! rang out as his skull hit the corner of the television cart.
Blood blossomed at his shoulder from Ethan’s shot, and it poured from the open wound in his head. Chino aimed his big gun at Ethan and fired, but Ethan rolled over the sofa and shot again, aiming for Chino’s head. The sharp thwang of a ricocheting bullet echoed in the air.
Chino shot again, and Ethan yelped, falling to the floor.
I started to crawl toward Ethan, and Tres shouted, “Stop!” His voice was earsplittingly loud in the ringing silence. “Stop or I’ll kill her.”
I stopped, saying a soft prayer that Ethan was going to be okay. Tres had Faith by the neck, the gun to her temple. He was backing toward the door.
“Tres, don’t,” I said. “You said you love her. Let her go.”
He shook his head but there was something in his eyes, wild and unreachable. Jitters lay still on the floor. Chino stood, gun out, covering Tres as he and Faith moved toward the door.
“We’re leaving. We haven’t done anything wrong, and we’re leaving,” Tres said.
Panic welled in my chest. “The police may not have any evidence on your involvement yet,” I said, “but your buddies here are in it up to their eyeballs. What do you bet they’re the canaries when Cantu catches up with them?” Beside me, Marlowe began a low, threatening growl that was magnified in the room’s tension.
Tres faltered, his chest moving as he breathed in and out.
“You keep that dog under control, or I’ll kill him the way Hollis and I killed those cats,” he said.
My stomach folded in on itself, and I wrapped my arms around Marlowe, trying to figure out what to do.
Where the hell was Cantu? Had he not gotten my message? Could he not find us? We were in a bunker, underground, and at the back of restricted, wooded property, but he was Cantu…
Tres cocked the gun. “Tres, don’t!” I yelled.
Tres pivoted and shot Chino between the eyes.
Faith screamed and Marlowe snarled, straining against me.
A slight shock registered on Chino’s face. A stream of blood oozed bright down his forehead, then dripped over his nose.
He blinked twice, his gaze on Tres in disbelief.
His knees buckl
ed, and he slid down, falling onto his side. Tres aimed again and delivered two more bullets to Jitters. The vato’s body jerked twice with the impact, then went deadly still.
“No witnesses, no problems.” Tres looked up from the bodies, and a sickening smile spread over his face. “Like my mama used to say, it all comes out in the wash.”
The color left Faith’s face.
Behind her, the bird flung itself against the cage, shrieking like a fire alarm.
Marlowe snarled and howled like he’d gone mad, froth flinging from his fangs. I held him tighter, my body between him and Tres’s gun.
“Shut that dog up,” he shouted, directing his aim at me.
Bang!
Above us, the trap door slammed open, and Cantu dropped lightly on his feet near the ladder, his weapon trained on Tres’s head.
Tres hesitated, then he smiled. “You wanna take a chance, pig?” He clasped Faith’s face closer to his own, moving her back and forth so that Cantu didn’t have a clear shot.
“Behind the couch, Cauley,” Cantu ordered.
A slight edge of relief caught me by surprise as I wrestled with the dog, scooting behind the sofa, heart thundering in my ears.
We scuttled in next to Ethan, who lay crumpled in a heap. “Marlowe, rescue,” I said, and the dog stopped struggling against me. He turned and woofed and curled his fluffy body gently on top of Ethan, lending his warmth. Ethan was breathing but unconscious, clearly in shock. I pressed my fingers against his neck. His pulse was thin and quick.
From behind the sofa, I saw Cantu edging toward Tres.
“Tres, this has all been a misunderstanding. Let everyone go, and we’ll talk about it, just you and me, man to man.”
Cantu held his gun to the side, barrel to the floor. “See? We can do this peaceful and quiet, and nobody gets hurt.” He laid the weapon on the floor beside his foot. What Tres couldn’t see was the pistol at the small of Cantu’s back.
