Holly Lin Box Set | Books 1-3

by Swartwood, Robert

  Understanding ripples across the old man’s face.

  “So it was really—”

  I nod and cut him off.

  “Yes, it was really the Devil who attacked the Morales compound.”

  “Where … where is he now?”

  “Dead. I killed him.”

  “When?”

  “Two nights ago. He went after Fernando Morales’s wife and son.”

  Espinoza frowns, shaking his head.

  “But there was no body. There were dead narcos and there were my two investigators and a few other bodies, but not the Devil.”

  “That’s because we decided to take the body with us when we left. We buried it out in the middle of nowhere.”

  “But … why?”

  “If the public learned who he really was it might cause too many problems for President Cortez. Besides, the president sounds like a good man. He already lost his son once. He shouldn’t have to lose him again.”

  Espinoza looks from me to Nova and then back to me. He takes a deep breath.

  “If you are going to kill us, then get it over with and kill us.”

  I smile at him and glance back at Nova who has kept his gun trained on them this entire time.

  Nova has a bag strapped over his shoulder. The gun not once wavering in his hand, he lowers his shoulder to let the bag drop to the floor and kicks the bag over to me.

  I stuff my own gun in the waistband of my jeans and then crouch down and zip open the bag. Before I pull out the contents, though, I glance back up at Daniela.

  “Whose idea was it to kill the children, yours or Miguel’s?”

  She doesn’t answer. Her eyes remain flat. Which, in a way, is all the answer I need.

  I pull out the two sets of handcuffs, the two cans of lighter fluid, the pack of matches. I line them out on the floor and stand back up and clap my hands together. I ignore Espinoza and focus all my attention on Daniela when I ask my final question.

  “So, are we going to do this the easy way or the hard way?”

  Coda

  We drive north. The border is maybe six, seven hours away. Time doesn’t seem to have much meaning anymore. I’ve hardly gotten any sleep the past couple days. Which is why Nova drives Geraldo Espinoza’s car. We’ve switched out the plates with one of the other cars at the ranch house just in case.

  We don’t talk much. Hell, we don’t talk at all. It’s been at least two hours since we left the burning ranch house. Two hours since we tied up all the loose ends.

  The silence, it starts to unnerve me, so I decide to break it.

  “I don’t think I would do it.”

  Nova glances at me, says, “Do what?”

  “Kill Hitler as a baby.”

  “Where is this coming from all of a sudden?”

  “I’ve just been thinking about it. It’s been bugging me.”

  “Why?”

  “Because I couldn’t bring myself to kill Morales’s kid.”

  Nova says nothing to this.

  After a beat of silence, I take a deep breath.

  “After I had killed Alejandro—after Morales’s wife had embraced her son and looked at me and said thank you—I stared at them for a long moment. I stared at the woman who had married Morales. Who may have never taken part in the man’s crimes but who was complicit all the same. And then I stared at the boy in her arms. The child whose path was to no doubt take up his father’s business one day. Who might become even more ruthless than his own father. The boy could grow up to become one of the worst drug lords in the country. The boy could be responsible for thousands of deaths and even more unknown terrors. Part of me thought I could potentially save all those people by killing him and his mother. It would be so easy. Just two quick squeezes of the trigger, and thousands somehow could be saved.”

  I shake my head, staring out my window.

  “But then another part of me thought about how the boy could grow up to be completely different. The exact opposite of his father. He might become a doctor. Instead of killing thousands of people, maybe he would help thousands of people. Just because his father was a drug lord didn’t mean he would follow the same path.”

  Nova says, “Do you know what somebody once said about that baby Hitler time travel thing? That maybe Hitler would have grown up being a perfectly normal human being. Maybe he would have been a saint. But then all these time travelers kept showing up trying to kill him, and that soured him on humanity and he decided to be a giant dick.”

  There’s another beat of silence, Nova letting the joke hang there, and then I burst out laughing. I can’t help it. I can’t remember the last time I laughed like this, and it feels good. For a moment I don’t think about the charred bodies of Javier Diaz’s children. I don’t think about Gabriela and her grandmother. I don’t think about Yolanda and Antonio and all the rest of the townspeople of La Miserias. For a moment, my mind is simply filled with the rush of laughter, and it’s bliss.

  Then I wipe at my eyes and settle back in my seat and glance again at Nova.

  “So what’s your plan once we return to the States?”

  Nova doesn’t answer right away, his focus once again on the highway. His grin has faded, and his face has gone all at once somber.

  I say, “Did I hit a nerve?”

  He shakes his head.

  “No. It’s just, well, something happened recently that made me think about my old man.”

  “You know, in all the time we’ve known each other, I don’t think you ever once told me about your parents.”

  “Nothing to tell. My mom died a long time ago. My dad … well, he’s just a son of a bitch.”

  “I’m sorry to hear that.”

  “It’s not your fault. But when Atticus called me about you needing help down here, I asked him to do me a favor.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Try to track down my old man.”

  “You want closure, huh?”

  “Something like that.”

  There’s another lengthy silence. I go back to staring out my window. I know what I need to tell Nova now, but part of me wants to stay quiet. To keep what I need to tell him a secret.

  “Nova?”

  “Yeah.”

  “I talked to him.”

  “Who?”

  “My father.”

  Nova’s quiet for a beat, and then he glances at me, incredulous.

  “You’re joking.”

  “I’m not.”

  “When?”

  “The night after all that shit went down with Zane and Walter’s children.”

  I say it like it happened years ago when in reality it hasn’t even been two weeks. Zane kidnapping Walter Hadden’s children because he wanted me to steal something. I stole that something, but I didn’t give it to Zane. Instead, I killed Zane.

  “Zane had a phone on him. I didn’t tell Walter. I didn’t even tell Atticus. There were three numbers on the recent call list—my apartment number, the number to a cell Zane had waiting for me in my car, and a foreign exchange. After you came to clean up Javier Diaz and his men’s bodies in my apartment building, I went to see my mom before I headed south. But before I saw her, I called that foreign exchange number.”

  “And your father answered.”

  Nova doesn’t bother making it a question.

  I close my eyes and think about sitting in my car outside my mother’s house. Zane’s cell phone to my ear, the phone ringing four times, and then somebody on the other end simply answering Yes?

  When I don’t immediately answer, Nova asks, “What did he say?”

  “Nothing. I did all the talking.”

  “And?”

  “I told him Zane was dead. I told him he disgusted me. I told him he was no longer my father. I told him he should have killed me back in that alleyway in Paris, because the next time we met …”

  “What?”

  I shake my head.

  “That was it. I let it hang there. He’s smart enough to know what
I meant. I disconnected the call and turned off the phone. Then I went and saw my mother and acted like I hadn’t just learned her husband was still alive after all these years.”

  Nova opens his mouth, starts to say something, but then shakes his head.

  I ask, “What?”

  “It’s nothing.”

  “Say it, Nova.”

  “You quit, Holly. So did I. We both walked away from what it is we do best, and now your father is out there doing God knows what.”

  “Your point?”

  “You can’t feel good about that.”

  “Of course I don’t feel good about that. But what do you want me to do? Beg Walter for my job back? He’s not too happy with me right now. Shit, I’m not too happy with him. He knew about my father this entire time and didn’t tell me. No, I think it’s a good thing I quit. Maybe I can actually start having a normal life.”

  Nova snorts at that.

  I give him a dirty look.

  “What’s so funny?”

  “You having a normal life. I’m sorry, Holly, but in case you didn’t realize it, people like us don’t have normal lives.”

  “A girl can dream, can’t she?”

  “Speaking of which …”

  Nova reaches into the backseat, fumbles with the luggage bag, pulls out the Holy Bible, and tosses it in my lap.

  “I think it’s time we find out your new identity.”

  I stare down at the bible. The ID and passport are inside the flaps. All I need to do is tear them out. It would be so simple.

  Nova says, “Well?”

  I pick up the bible. I heft its small weight in my hands, and then I shake my head and toss the bible in the backseat.

  Nova says, “Not ready yet?”

  “Not yet.”

  I settle back in my seat, lean my head against the headrest, and stare out the window.

  I think I’ll stick with being Holly Lin for just a little bit longer.

  For Joseph D'Agnese and Denise Kiernan

  Part One

  Little Angels

  One

  The girl is covered in blood.

  That’s the first thing I notice. This section of town is dark and quiet as it typically is at three o’clock in the morning. The only light streams from a few scattered streetlamps posted along the block, and as the girl passes beneath the closest one, the blood stands out even more, a sharp contrast against her light brown skin.

  She barely looks sixteen, just a kid, and she wears shorts and a T-shirt and carries a duffel bag, but it’s the blood that I focus on, the blood streaking her face and arms and soaking her hair and clothes.

  “Please, help me, please.”

  She mumbles it in Spanish, her words barely intelligible, and now that she’s nearly ten feet away from me, it’s clear that she’s limping. She’s favoring her left leg, barely putting any pressure on it, and now she’s less than five feet away and I can smell her, the blood, yes, but also the defecation. The girl has either pissed herself or shit herself or both, and she moves closer, still mumbling—“Please, please, help”—and she thrusts the duffel bag into my arms and then promptly falls to the ground.

  Five seconds.

  That’s the length of time that’s passed since I first heard the girl call out and turned and saw the blood.

  Five seconds isn’t much in the larger scheme of things, but five seconds can sometimes be an eternity. In my past life, five seconds might be a question of life and death. Countries are saved or lost in five seconds.

  I haven’t moved a muscle in the past five seconds, which is odd, because not too long ago I was very quick on my feet. I didn’t spend too much time deliberating on different outcomes. I just made a choice and went with it and hoped for the best.

  But things have changed, and I’m no longer the person I used to be. That person is long gone, dead and buried, and the person I am now—a bartender, having just closed up the bar and now headed home—doesn’t deal with blood and guns and killing. For this new me, the most important thing that happens in five seconds is listening to a drink order amid loud country music and a chorus of uproarious voices and hoping I haven’t fucked it up when I bring it back to the customer.

  The girl’s on her knees now, still mumbling in Spanish, and I take a quick moment to scan the block. It’s deserted. Of course it’s deserted—this area of town is usually empty during the day, the buildings long since vacated once their companies went out of business, and not once in the past year after I’d left the bar and walked home had I ever seen anybody on this block, let alone a girl covered in blood.

  I realize I’m still holding the duffel bag. It was shoved into my arms so suddenly that I’d held on without much thought. Now I heft it—feels like it weighs fifteen pounds—and glance down at the girl.

  “What happened? Who did this to you?”

  It doesn’t hit me until a second later that I asked those questions in English, so I ask them again in Spanish, and the girl looks up at me, tears in her eyes, her voice a strangled whisper.

  “Help me.”

  Before I can say or do anything else, the girl jumps to her feet. She pushes past me as she hurries down the block, still favoring her left leg.

  The duffel bag in my arms, I turn and watch her, incredulous.

  “Wait!”

  She doesn’t. She keeps going, faster now, and disappears into an alleyway.

  I hurry after her, the thought of dropping the duffel bag not once crossing my mind, and I reach the mouth of the alleyway in time to see the girl has already made it to the other end. How she’s managed to get there so fast, especially with the limp, I’m not sure, but she stands there, her back to me, looking up and down the street.

  I call after her again as I chase her up the alleyway, and I’m halfway there when the girl suddenly bolts into the street—just as the front of a car slams into her and sends her flying.

  Two

  The car screeches to a halt. The doors open, and two men step out. They aren’t frantic like you’d expect men who just hit a girl with their car would be. Instead, they appear calm, looking up and down the street at the dark warehouses, quietly closing their doors, slowly circling to the front of the car to check on the girl.

  Both of the men look to be in their late-thirties, early-forties. They wear jeans and cowboy boots. One of them has on a white short-sleeved button-down shirt tucked into his jeans, the other a blue polo. The one with the button-down shirt also wears a cowboy hat. He’s the driver. He adjusts the hat as he gazes down at the girl’s body.

  “Well shit, there she is.”

  The other man says, “Yep.”

  “She’s still alive.”

  “Barely.”

  “She doesn’t have the bag, though.”

  “Nope.”

  The man with the cowboy hat crouches down beside the girl.

  “Hey.”

  When the girl doesn’t answer—she lays sprawled on the macadam, a broken mess, even more bloodied than before—the man with the cowboy hat snaps his fingers in front of her face.

  “Bitch, you hear me?”

  The girl still doesn’t answer. Even if she wanted to, it doesn’t look like she can. A hoarse wheezing comes from her mouth. Several of her ribs probably shattered on impact. Some of them probably pierced her lungs.

  I’m standing around the corner of the alleyway, still holding the duffel bag, leaning out just far enough to watch these two men and the girl. My first instinct was to rush out immediately, but once those men had unhurriedly stepped out of the car, a red warning light started flashing in my head.

  That red warning light starts pulsing faster when the driver walks back to the car—a piece of silver glinting on his belt—and opens his door and pulls out a black nine-millimeter.

  Guns aren’t rare here in Texas. Alden is a small town compared to most, maybe only a thousand residents, and almost everybody carries a gun with them wherever they go.

  But very few carry supp
ressors.

  Which this man also brings out, casually screwing it onto the barrel of his gun as he returns to the front of the car.

  This entire time—maybe a minute—I’ve been quiet, watching the two men. This section of Alden is deserted at this time of night. People refer to it as the industrial part of town, though many of the jobs have long since packed up and left. So many of these buildings sit empty. I usually walk home after a shift because it’s not far from the bar to my apartment, and besides, I like the fresh air after I work all night, try to get the cigarette smoke out of my hair and clothes as much as I can. The main thing is, there’s nobody around right now. These two men—men I’ve never seen before—seem to know it and don’t care that the girl is writhing in pain on the ground.

  Part of me wants to go out there. Step out from around the corner and approach these men. I don’t have a gun, don’t have a knife, don’t have a weapon of any kind, but somebody needs to help the girl. Somebody needs to step in before the man places a bullet in her head.

  Before I can, though, the duffel bag moves.

  But it’s not the duffel bag—it’s something inside the duffel bag.

  The light isn’t good here in the alleyway, but there’s enough light that when I open the duffel bag I can easily tell what’s inside.

  A baby.

  It looks newly born—no more than a month old—and it has a pacifier in its mouth, the only thing keeping it quiet. Its dark eyes look up at me, searching, and like that, the pacifier falls out of its mouth.

  The baby’s face scrunches up. It looks ready to start wailing—it even sucks in a breath—but I slip my finger into its mouth before it can. Still, it made some noise, just a tiny bit, and I hold my breath, hoping the men didn’t hear.

  For an instant, silence.

  Then one of the men—what sounds like the passenger in the blue polo—says, “Did you hear that?”

  In response, the quiet thut thut of two bullets from the silenced gun.

  Without even looking around the corner again, I can tell the girl’s now dead. Probably shot in the face to put her out of her misery. Not that she couldn’t have been saved. The men could have called for an ambulance. Assuming they still wanted her alive.