Nearly twenty-four hours after his little trip to St. X University, Daniel smacked the Valencia file against his desk and leaned back in his chair, causing the springs to squeak mightily. Oscar Valencia. He’d been about the same age as Daniel and his identical twin brother, Patricio, but Daniel couldn’t remember their ever knowing a Cobra named Valencia.
The fact was, Daniel hadn’t been a Cobra for all that long. He and Patricio had been orphaned at age eight, separated from their older brother, Joe, and baby sister, Sabrina, and adopted by the Rodriguez family, all in the space of one very traumatic year he didn’t like to dwell on. The whole transition from being “the Lopez twins” to “the Rodriguez twins-whose-birth-parents-were-murdered-isn’t-it-horrible?” had left them with big emotions they’d been too young to name, much less deal with. So they’d turned away from the wonderful people who were trying to fold them into a new family and adopted a family of gangbanger “brothers” instead. Daniel had naively thought the Cobras, those powerful young men with their slicked-back hair and cocky struts, could help him find Joe. Patricio thought the Cobras could help him fight through the pain. Only Patricio had been correct.
Daniel had run errands for the older boys in the gang—generally transporting mysterious, tightly wrapped packets from one end of the city to another. Patricio had acted like one of the older boys from the get-go. And the first time Daniel saw his twin with a switchblade flashing in his hand, circling another boy until attacking with the full sound and fury of his deep, deep anger, was the last time Daniel had called himself a Cobra. At age ten, Daniel had gotten out, and he’d spent the next decade of his life trying to convince Patricio to follow.
Patricio had been out for eleven years now—he’d left when he and Daniel were nineteen, and he hadn’t looked back. And though Patricio had built himself a respectable life since then, the old anger was still there, simmering beneath a surface of calm and self-loathing. Every birthday the twins had was a milestone, a reason to celebrate because Patricio was still here.
Daniel scrubbed a hand across his eyes, which felt dry and gummy from hours of poring over the backload of cases he and Lola were assigned.
Correction, from hours of poring over the case, not cases. Something about the Valencia file was nagging at him, and he wouldn’t stop worrying the various elements of the grisly murder until the pieces had started to slide into place. Valencia. Oscar Valencia…
In an almost subconscious movement, his hand shot out and grabbed the telephone receiver on his desk, and he used a slightly chewed Lou’s Garage pencil to dial his brother’s cell phone.
Patricio answered before Daniel had even heard the phone ring. “Yo, Danny Boy.”
He had no idea why Patricio called him Danny Boy—it wasn’t like they were the least bit Irish. But now was definitely not the time to discuss stupid nicknames. “You busy?”
Daniel heard Patricio chuckle softly on the other end of the line. “I’m always busy.”
“Yeah?” Daniel leaned back once more in his chair and caused the hinges to shriek again in protest. “What is it today, Hollywood? Extreme skiing or freestyle rock climbing? Or maybe you decided to jump out of an airplane with nothing but a bedsheet and a roll of duct tape?”
“Fun-n-n-ny. You’re a funny guy, bro,” Patricio responded as snatches of several conversations taking place around him seeped through the phone. “Just having a drink with Mr. High-Maintenance and a woman he picked up from makeup. No big.”
“Drinks?” Daniel sat up abruptly, causing the chair’s back to smack him in the back half a second later. “Be careful there.”
Patricio just sighed. “I’m having a Coke, madre, so chill. And how about telling me what you want? I have to get back to my esteemed employer. I’m off duty, but you know how he is.”
Daniel felt a smile tugging at the corners of his mouth. Patricio ran a bodyguard service to the stars, one so successful, he didn’t even need to advertise. Word-of-mouth brought him plenty of L.A.’s elite in need of safeguarding from stalkers, overeager fans or jealous rivals, and Patricio protected them better than a portable, bulletproof bubble—with a lot more discretion. He didn’t talk to the press, didn’t gossip with his friends, and didn’t let his attention waver for a second.
At the moment, he was on a temporary assignment in Washington State, watching the back of one of Hollywood’s most famous action stars. Jack Donohue had been Patricio’s favorite movie hero, until he’d met the guy and found out Jack was afraid of everything—dogs, mean fan mail, the thought of the other actors in his film conspiring against him, spiders, heights, water and the occasional kitten. (“It had sharp little claws.”) And, he had a thing about compulsively washing his hands that creeped Patricio out. Five months of working with the guy had finally culminated in Patricio dubbing him “Mr. High-Maintenance,” quite possibly the only unprofessional thing he’d ever done since starting his business. Apparently, Jack Donohue out-diva-ed the hundreds of Hollywood divas Patricio had protected over the years.
But enough of that. If Daniel stayed at work any longer, he’d still be there at the start of his next shift. He took a slug of the lukewarm coffee sitting on his desk, then asked, “You ever hear of a guy named Oscar Valencia?”
“Nope.”
“You sure? About our age, average height.” Daniel took a deep breath. “He’s somehow connected to the Cobras.” Using the pencil to flip open the file, Daniel shuffled through the papers until he found a photo of Oscar Valencia taken before the fire, while he’d still been alive. “Had a shark tattoo on his left forearm.” He squinted at the picture and brought it closer. “Weird.”
“What?” Patricio asked.
“The shark is smoking a cigar. Shouldn’t that be in its gills rather than its mouth? I mean, if you want to be anatomically correct and all.”
He heard his brother’s sharp intake of breath through the phone line.
“O.T. Mejia.”
“O.T… Oh, my God.” Pulling the photo closer to his face, Daniel studied the man’s features. Comparing them to the Cobra’s former first lieutenant, Daniel realized that if you took away the lines around Oscar’s eyes and mouth, shaved off the mustache and wrapped a bandanna around his head in place of the conservatively short haircut, he was the spitting image of O.T.
In fact, he was O.T.
“He changed his name,” Daniel said, and it was a statement, not a question.
“Yeah,” Patricio responded. “After the Sanchez trial, I bet. Look, I have to—”
“I know. Back to Mr. High-Maintenance.” It didn’t surprise him that his brother didn’t display even the mildest curiosity over why Daniel had brought up O.T. after all these years. Patricio didn’t like to talk about that time. Ever.
The two brothers hung up simultaneously, leaving Daniel to mull over O.T.’s—or Oscar’s—file.
He drummed his fingers on the desk, looking at the pieces in front of him. O.T.’s brutal murder. The infinity symbol. The fire. O.T.’s double identity. The killer knowing Celia’s name. The infinity symbol. The fire.
That Sanchez thing.
And suddenly, it hit him with the force of a two-by-four to the chest, and he launched himself out of his chair, sending the papers inside O.T.’s file flying in all directions. They floated to the black-and-dingy-white tiled floor. Daniel ignored them and shuffled through another pile of folders on his desk, examining and then tossing them across the wood surface at a dizzying speed. And then he found what he was looking for.
With the address of a mysterious house fire that had occurred two weeks ago in hand, Danny tore out of the Robbery and Homicide Division station and got into his unmarked Crown Victoria, flipping on the siren and shooting the portable flashing red light onto the roof before he’d even put the car into Drive.
A few minutes and several traffic violations later, he pulled up before a house in East L.A., or what was left of it. Yellow crime-scene tape surrounded the few blackened foundation bricks and piles of thick gray ash that were left. A jagged portion of the front wall and a single rose bush remained standing, though the wall looked like it could come down at any minute. The rest was a story for the insurance companies. But Daniel wasn’t interested in what had burned.
He flicked off the car lights, and the ruin faded into the darkness. The fire department had ruled the fire that had destroyed the house arson after finding traces of accelerant in an area in the back. According to the officers who’d been on the scene, evidence pointed to a cut-and-dried case of gang rivalry. Though the family members who had survived denied any gang affiliation, the kids had juvie records a mile long and neighbors claimed they ran with the Spanish Kings. Normally, a case like that wouldn’t have come near Danny’s desk, but he’d known the family a long time ago. Truthfully, the file had been about to come off his desk, until now.
Taking a flashlight out of his glove compartment, he switched it on and walked around the yard, shining the beam onto any flat surface that wasn’t covered with grass or garbage. Across the sidewalk, on a pile of wooden crates, up the trunk of a fairly young oak tree, on the beat-up car left behind in the driveway. The light on his car was still flashing, bathing everything in front of him in a soft, pulsing red glow.
A quick glance at his watch told him it was 10:45 a.m. In the distance, he could hear people shouting, the strains of mariachi music playing from a scratchy turntable, blaring television sets, slamming doors. The houses around him were small and cheaply built, so it seemed like you could eavesdrop on any conversation going on in the neighborhood without too much effort. The words “la hada,” gang slang for “police”, echoed from more than one house as people warned one another that Daniel had arrived, and closed their windows and doors to him.
Soon, a bubble of quiet surrounded the ruined house, and Danny worked in silence, searching. After more than half an hour of poring over the site, he hadn’t discovered anything beyond your ordinary, run-of-the-mill arson on his first sweep. But it had to be there—his instinct was screaming that there was more to this fire than he’d first thought. He ran the flashlight beam across the property once more. Sidewalk. Crates. Tree. Car.
Back to the crates… Back to the tree. Something caught his eye, and he stepped closer to the skinny oak. Someone had taken care to heap a small pile of mulch around its trunk, but it didn’t quite cover what he’d seen at the base. He crouched down, aiming his flashlight close to the ground.
Tell me I’m dreaming. Tell me I’m wrong. Daniel prayed silently that the pieces in his head weren’t about to fit together the way he’d feared. He reached out and fingered a deep, curving slash carved in the bark of the trunk, the wood underneath shining bright yellow in the flashlight beam. Then, brushing aside some of the mulch, he uncovered a teardrop shape, tipped on its side. And then another.
Dios mío.
Someone had carved the infinity symbol into the wood. The same person who had painted it above Oscar’s burned body, who had called Celia by name and had knocked her unconscious.
Daniel swore sharply, scrambling to his feet. Like a child’s puzzle, the pieces fell easily and irrevocably into place before he’d even reached the car, confirming his worst fears.
He had to get to Celia.
WHEN CELIA OPENED THE DOOR to her condo, she had to fight the urge to close it again once she saw who was standing there. Without speaking, she leaned against the door frame, effectively blocking Danny from entering her apartment instead of inviting him in—and fighting the urge to pelt him with holy water and garlic. Unfortunately, past experience reminded her that when Danny Rodriguez wanted to talk to you, he didn’t give up. Ever.
He mimicked her folded-arm stance, also leaning against the door frame. The result was that he ended up way too close for her comfort, looking straight into her soul with those golden-colored eyes of his that had always made her crazy. In fact, if he took one step closer, she’d be face-first in that broad chest of his, with those solid arms around her, and… Celia caved a lot sooner than she’d intended, pushing herself backward and breaking the silent standoff between them. “They couldn’t have sent another officer, huh?”
Danny tugged at the collar of his white dress shirt, and it was then that Celia realized he was wearing a suit, not the blue uniform of the LAPD she’d once found so handsome on him. “What, you’re not a cop anymore? You went all stockbroker on me since last night?” But he’d been in a suit last night, too….
“I made detective,” he said quickly. “So, I need to talk to you about Oscar. Do you—?”
“You did?” Without stopping to consider what she was saying, Celia gave in to the burst of joy and pride that overcame her. “A detective with the LAPD? Omigod, Danny, you’ve wanted that since we were kids. That’s incredible. That’s—” Celia cut herself off abruptly, annoyed that she’d suddenly time-warped back to 1993, the year before Danny Rodriguez had ceased to exist as far as she was concerned. “Great,” she finished coolly, toning down the Laker Girl enthusiasm in her voice and carefully schooling her features into her best attempt at sophisticated aloofness. “What did you need from me?”
And then Danny Rodriguez, damn his whiskey-brown eyes, started laughing softly, and she knew exactly which gutter his thoughts had descended into at the mention of how she could fulfill his needs.
“You are a jerk of the lowest order, and I hate you. Please ooze your way out of my doorway and back to the slime-mobile you arrived in.” With that oh-so-mature comment, also obviously circa 1993, she reached back for the heavy wooden door and started to swing it shut. What was it about the man that made her feel nineteen again?
“I’m sorry, Celia. Celia!” He jammed his foot into the increasingly small space between the door and the jamb, preventing her from shutting the door in his face with one shiny, size-eleven dress shoe. So she did the only thing she could think of to do—she stomped on it. When she took her foot away, a light, dusty sandal print marred the glossy black surface of Danny’s shoe.
“Come on, Cel,” he said in response, not in the least bit angry. “You weigh, like, ninety-eight pounds. That didn’t hurt.”
She stomped again, harder this time, trying not to show how flattered she was that he thought her size-eight figure weighed ninety-eight pounds.
“Still didn’t hurt.”
“Por el amor de Dios, would you go away?” A few stray black curls fell into her eyes, and she blew them back in a huff. She waved him away with both hands. “Go. Shoo. Flee.”
“I have to talk to you. About Oscar.”
Celia froze in mid-shoo. Her ridiculous behavior was probably hampering Danny’s investigation, and that wasn’t helping Oscar any. She lifted a hand to squeeze the bridge of her nose in an attempt to stave off a sudden headache. “I already told Officer McManus and Detective Ibarra everything,” she said into her hand. “The last time I saw Oscar was around 8:00 p.m. when he went into the basement with his mop and bucket, and I never heard anything suspicious. It was just the…smell.” She dropped her hand and looked back up at him. “Why would someone want to kill Oscar, Danny?”
Danny ignored her question, all business now. She might as well have been any old interview subject, rather than the ex-love-of-his-life. Then again, maybe she hadn’t been an ex-love at all. The way he’d treated her, she was probably more of an ex-lukewarm-interest.
“Did you know Oscar Valencia used to be a Latin Cobra known as O.T. Mejia?” Mr. Bigshot Detective Man asked.
“Yeah, I knew.” She savored the way Danny’s eyebrows rose in sudden surprise. Gotcha, Rodriguez. “St. X has a rehabilitation program for ex-juvenile offenders. Oscar was only seventeen when the Sanchez murder happened, and he wasn’t one of the Cobras charged with directly killing Sonia. My father used his influence to get Oscar a job here after the trial, and he’s been here ever since.” She examined her smooth oval fingernails for a second, lost in thought. “Jay Alvarez, Mateo Garcia, and Antonio Rincon are here, too. Antonio is a hall director in Aquinas Hall, Mateo cleans the chapel and is getting his Master’s in education, and Jay teaches set design in the theater.”
“They change their names?”
“Nope. Just Oscar.”
“You need protection,” Danny said abruptly.
Celia just laughed, with only a touch of bitterness. “From you? Like I need a proverbial hole in the head, Holmes.”
“Holmes?” Danny questioned, but then immediately answered himself. “Ah, Sherlock. I get it. Ha.”
Celia shrugged.
Then, Danny’s expression grew even more serious, if that was possible. He reached out and touched her arm. She stared pointedly at his hand until he dropped it. “Johnny Menendez died in a house fire two weeks ago. Arson.”
Celia felt her knees buckle ever so slightly at the mention of the former Cobra’s name. Danny obviously thought he’d found a pattern, and she didn’t like where he was going.
“Cel, Marco Sanchez was released from prison last month. He’s coming for the nine involved in his sister’s death. And since you’re the daughter of the attorney who plea-bargained seven of them down to misdemeanor charges, I think he’s coming for you, too.”