Gosh dang it. I knew the minute I turned around, there was going to be someone holding a gun pointed right at me.
Maybe it was the tone of voice, maybe it was just pure instinct. I can’t say for sure.
Or maybe it was because I’d been down this road before. But the last time I heard that tone, I woke up with duct tape on my hands and tied to a chair.
Not coolio. I’m a little over being held hostage, thank you very much.
And sure enough, as I whirled around, sending a sting of agony through my butt cheek, I confronted my pistol packer.
Good gravy, the second gunman I’d encountered in my life was a really big guy. Far bigger than the last—if his shadow was an indication of his reality, that is. Much larger than his picture led one to believe and at least a half foot taller than I was. He outweighed me by at least a hundred pounds.
No bueno.
Because you know what that means, right? It means I’m going to take a licking before I get out of this—if I get out of this.
“Back it up, lady!” He barked the order, waving the gun at me in choppy stabs of the air. “And throw me that phone, now!”
I did as I was told, minus throwing my phone to him, in the hopes I could distract him. My heart pounded in my chest as I smacked into a tombstone with a wince.
“Who are you?” I called out.
“Stevie, do exactly as he says,” Win said in slow words, as though my comprehension levels had gone down.
“I am doing as he says, Win!”
“But you didn’t give him the phone.”
“Win, zip it already. I got this!”
“Who the hell is Win?” the strapping silhouette yelled back.
Now, look. I get that I play with fire a lot. I’m impulsive. I create some unnecessary problems with my wagging tongue. I’m prone to jumping in feet first without checking the water temperature. But here’s the thing. If there’s one thing I learned last round with a killer, it was this: Be the crazy.
Be the craziest mutherfluffer in the whole room.
Or in this case, the boudoir of the dead.
Be crazier than the guy waving the gun in your face. Distract. Deflect. Pretend like it’s not your fault you’re crazy and that his threats are nothing compared to the nutballery living inside your head.
It threw them off balance. This guy, if he was who I thought, was already shaky, probably even a little remorseful. If I could just keep him like that long enough to either get help or run, I might leave here with my life intact.
So as I backed up farther, I ducked under a shadow from a tall oak just sprouting its leaves, stepping into the dark abyss to hide. Then I stripped my white rain slicker off, a sure beacon of my location, shivering from the chilly air.
The shadow came closer, his tall frame growing bigger, his feet crunching the newly growing grass. “I said, who the hell is Win? Where is he?”
Swallowing the lump in my dry throat, I responded, “Well, to be fair, you didn’t really say it, you growled it. And Win is my ghost, of course.”
“Your what?”
“You heard me. My ghost. He talks to me all the time.”
“You’re crazy, lady!”
I rolled my eyes, even though he probably couldn’t see me, and began sliding out of my heels. I wish sometimes I’d get just a little warning before being held at gunpoint. I’d plan my footwear better, for sure.
“Hah! That’s so original. You don’t suppose you’re the first person to call me crazy, do you? I have a list as long as my arm of people who’ve called me crazy. Go directly to jail, do not pass go.”
“Stop provoking, Stevie. I’m begging you. You’re not trained for this type of tactic.”
I rolled my eyes again, backing up even farther and almost tripping on a bouquet of flowers. “Do more sit-ups, Dove. Stop eating all that junk. It’s bad for you. Bloody hell, Stevie, your body is a temple, not a bodega,” I mocked in full British accent with a jut of my chin.
“Stevie—enough!” Win shouted at me, the concern in his voice obvious.
I raised my hand, smooshing my fingers together and making a duck’s bill, and quacked at him. “Stevie this, Stevie that. Always with the advice. Yak-yak-yak! Get off my back, would ya, Crispin Alistair Winterbottom.”
And then suddenly, the man was in front of me. Big, hulking, angry, his eyes flashing brilliantly in the dark. “Shut your mouth! Stop talking!”
Aw, no. I wasn’t shutting up. No, I would not. The instinct to clench my eyes tight when he rammed his face into my personal space was fierce, but nope. Not gonna do it.
Instead, I looked at him with wide-open eyes. “Stop yelling. You’ll wake the dead!”
Then I snickered—making myself appear, I’m sure, that much crazier. But as I did, and as the gunman’s eyes went wide with shock, probably because I’d chosen sarcasm over fear, I took another swift step back and to the left, and suddenly broke into a run, toward where I’d seen a really tall tombstone. Likely it was for someone important, but it was definitely big enough for me to hide behind.
I ducked down and pressed myself to the cold granite, making myself as small as possible.
“Come back here!” he bellowed.
“Well played, Stevie! Disorient the perp. I’m impressed,” Win whispered, his voice deep in my ear just as the wind began to howl.
“I told you I listen to you,” I hissed back even as I preened at the compliment. “Why don’t you ever listen when I say I listen? You’re like having a husband without the dirty socks in a pile in the bathroom!”
“Oh, I don’t know. Maybe because you cheat on your workouts.”
“I don’t cheat. I aid, thank you very much. What made you think an out-of-shape ex-witch was going to be able to do one hundred sit-ups the first go, or even twenty, for that matter?”
As the wind abated momentarily, I realized my gunman was closer.
“Come out or I’ll start shooting, and I’m not gonna stop until you’re dead!” the gunman yelled, his voice coming closer still.
I dropped to the ground and curled into a ball, rolling behind the tombstone two doors down. It wasn’t as big, but I could probably get most of my body behind it. My hair is dark, so if my head peeks out, I should be okay until I find another alternative.
I reached into my pocket and dug out the foil wrapper from my mid-afternoon Pop-Tart, scrunched it up and prayed my old softball days would work in my favor. Hopping up, I lobbed it at his head, just four tombstones away.
“What the?” he yelped when it beaned him on the forehead.
“You know what I don’t get?” I shouted, watching from behind the tombstone as his head turned in my direction.
“Stop talking!” he screamed into the velvet of the night, scanning the area.
I hunkered down farther and used my hands and feet to sneak over one tombstone and down three, closer to the entryway where I’d driven in earlier.
If I could just keep him talking a little longer, keep him thinking about something other than whacking me, I could silence my phone and call 9-1-1 and maybe make a run for it—because wowee, now my butt, no longer medicated with ibuprofen, screamed in protest from all this cardio.
Thus, I needed to buy some time while I prepared for my great escape.
“Hey! My friend Win the ghost has a question. How is it that you don’t have an accent? Not even a hint of one?” Dragging my phone from my pocket, I felt for the button to silence it and dialed 9-1-1, stuffing the phone into my bra.
“What?” he called in a clear state of confusion.
“You’re from Mexico, aren’t you? Why don’t you have an accent?”
And that was when the arm snaked around my waist and hauled me backward, crashing me hard up against my attacker’s robust chest. “Because I’ve been living in America for a long time and my lying, cheating wife told me to learn in order to blend in! It took some time, but look at me now,” he chuckled against my ear, pushing the gun into my ribs with a forceful jab.
See this? This right here is one of those times when I should just shut my yap, but my curiosity and my crazy desire to know all aspects of a criminal’s mind had my gums flapping away.
Trying to keep my teeth from chattering, I nodded. “Good job. So, are we going to dispense with the pleasantries and get right to the heart of the matter?”
He tightened his hold on me, moving his arm from my waist to my neck. A neck that was just on the cusp of healing, daggone it all.
The gunman’s hot breath rasped against my ear. “For someone who’s going to be dead in about two seconds, you sure do talk a lot.”
“You don’t want to do that,” I threatened, trying to keep my voice steady and reasonable. “If you shoot me, that gunshot will arouse suspicion and you’ll have to run to get away. Then you’ll get all out of breath because of your asthma, won’t you?”
“How do you know about my asthma?” he spat against my face, his cold lips sticking to my cheek.
I didn’t bother to struggle and Win took note. “That’s right. Nice and easy, Stevie. Wait until you catch him off guard and make a break for it. The second he loosens up—”
“I asked, how do you know about my asthma?” He began dragging me backward, so I went totally slack, making his job harder, if his grunts were any indication. It took all I had not to fight him every step of the way.
I knew exactly where he was headed. Tito’s freshly dug grave. No one would be the wiser if he lifted some of the dirt, deposited my body in it and covered me back up.
“I saw your inhaler, of course. I saw the pictures of you on your son’s page. You know, the one with you and Esperanza and Carlito at some amusement park? It was right in your pocket, wasn’t it Miguel Valasquez?”
* * * *
“Isn’t that your name?” I taunted, feeling just a little secure about poking him since I’d dialed 9-1-1 and help was likely on the way. “How could you do this to your son? He’s in jail as we speak, terrified, and you’re letting him take the rap for Tito’s murder!”
Flinging me to the ground, Miguel shook with rage, his face red even in the dark, the hand with the gun fisting it tightly. “He’s not my son! Don’t call him that! All these years, all these years Esperanza lied to me!” he spat, the gun currently wobbling wildly in his hand. “I found a letter from her to Tito! How could she lie to me for so long? She slept with Tito! She’s dirty, a filthy woman!” he screamed, his anguish crisp, ringing out in his hoarse cry.
So he’d been the one to open the letter. Carlito had been telling the truth.
And then he began to pace, the gun still in erratic motion. “But it all makes sense now. Why I couldn’t understand Carlito. I tried. Ay, Dios mio, I tried! It explained why we could never get along, always butting heads. And why he was always defying me at every turn! He’s nothing like me, but he’s just like Tito!”
Why wasn’t I hearing sirens yet?
The only good news here: Miguel’s inhaler had fallen out of his shirt pocket and to the ground.
Miguel’s hand snaked out so fast I was unprepared for him to grab the front of my dress, the tear of material echoing in the air, but as he did, I swept my bare foot over the inhaler and knocked it away, into the darkness.
He hauled me upward as though I weighed nothing more than a feather, which, rest assured, isn’t what my scale tells me.
He backed me against a tree and planted me there with a rough jerk, the coarse bark scraping my bare legs as his hand wrapped around my overly abused neck. He pressed the gun into my gut, the menace of the barrel ramping up my heart rate. Now, it was fair to say, I was a little panicked.
So I talked. Because it’s what I do when I don’t know what else to do.
And I really wanted to know how Miguel knew Carlito was just like the Taco Man. What was Miguel’s connection to Tito?
“What do you mean he’s just like Tito? How do you know anything about Tito?”
Looking up at me, his hard face full of suppressed rage, he inhaled, his wide chest heaving with the effort.
And he wheezed. I heard him wheeze.
“Because Tito was my best friend! Amigos for life, we used to say—until he slept with Esperanza!”
“Well, hellfire,” Win muttered.
Yeah. That.
My hand went around his thick wrist, my neck, already bruised from my run-in with Jacob, now aching again with a hot throb. “Your best friend?”
Whoa. Blindsided meet gobsmacked.
“Si, senorita,” he snarled, his accent beginning to thicken, the memory of their friendship so visibly painful. “We went to school together. We shot cans in the desert together. We chased girls together until one day, I met Esperanza and fell in love. She was my fiancée, my intended, the one woman in the world he should have held sacred!”
Oh, Taco Man. You really put your foot in the kitchen with this one.
Again, I forced myself not to struggle and remain slack, fighting the instinctual desire for flight. Not just to engage him, but to keep from further damaging my neck. “But if he was your best friend, why would he do something so awful?”
Miguel’s face grew tight with sorrow, his eyes sad, desperate, but he kept the gun pressed into my stomach. “Because we had a fight—I’ll never forget it. Just one month before our wedding. We had a lot of fights back then, Esperanza and me. But this time, we had a horrible fight. I was drunk and I yelled at her. She wanted to leave, but Tito wouldn’t let me take her home because I’d had too much tequila. I was too drunk to drive. So I let him take her home and all the while, he’d planned to steal her away from me!”
“Stevie, he’s tiring. When the iron is hot, I’ll yell strike,” Win assured me, remarkably calm.
From the corner of my eye, I took note of a branch, one I could grab onto and maybe swing up over if the timing presented itself. If I could just get him riled up enough to have an asthma attack…
But I stopped my crazy escape plan. Talk about putting the cart before the horse. I was thinking like a spy without the strength and the skill of one.
So instead, I did something else Win often accuses me of being good at. I poked. “But he didn’t steal her away, Miguel. She married you. Tito was a good man. You killed a good man!”
Miguel’s head fell back on his shoulders as he howled his pain, his mouth opening wide when he bellowed, “Nooo! He was a liar! Esperanza knew Carlito wasn’t mine! She pretended all these years he was my blood. Even when Carlito was born, she lied! She told me he came a month early. I should have known she’d betrayed me. I should have known what they did that night! I should have killed him then, but he left—left and I never heard from him again. I didn’t understand. All these years, I mourned my friend. My brother! Until two days ago, when I found him and made him pay!”
Shaking my head, I soothed, “But he didn’t know, Miguel! He had no idea about Carlito.”
But Miguel was no longer listening. He was too lost in his grief, or whatever this was. He was back at the scene of the murder, reliving the horror as tears began to fall down his face.
“I asked him why, why would he do this? How could he do this with my wife? My best friend for so many years, my brother. Do you know what he told me? What his excuse was? He told me it just happened! He took my wife to his bed and it just happened?” he screeched on a heave of stuttered breath, as though this were still too much for him to digest.
My teeth were doing their best to chatter, so I clamped down hard, my jaw stiff. “So you drowned him in cheese?”
I still couldn’t believe Tito had aspirated nacho cheese.
“We were fighting, our fists up. Two old men sparring. I waved the picture of Carlito and me in his face—to show him who his son was—what he looked like. I wanted to hurt him!”
Well, that explained the picture and whom the other person covered in cheese was.
“I punched him and he fell into the cheese,” Mateo howled. “So I held him there as he struggled. He deserved to feel pain—to hurt the way he hurt me! But he got away. I saw him fall from the truck before I went out the passenger door!”
Still trying not to squirm, I lifted my chin and said, “But you hung around, didn’t you, Miguel? You hung around to see if your friend was okay. I saw you climb through the fence. You didn’t want to kill Tito, did you? You wanted to hurt him, but you didn’t want him dead.”
He shook his head, his breaths raspy as his body began to wilt. “I came here tonight to tell him. To ask for his forgiveness.”
Upon his confession, the rain started. A pounding, driving rain. But Miguel paid no mind to the fat droplets as he let my body slide slightly down the rough bark.
He gripped my neck tight again when he whimpered, “Why? Why would he hurt me like this?”
“I don’t know, Miguel,” I said with a soft tone. “Maybe he left because he was ashamed. Let me go and we can talk about it. You can tell me everything that happened.”
The moment I thought he might ease up was the moment Miguel shook his dark head of thick hair, beginning to stick to his forehead as the rain picked up. “No! You have to die!” He looked upward, his eyes wild and frantic. “Do you see what you do, Tito, mi amigo? Now I have to kill her so no one will ever know what I’ve done!” he sobbed in a ragged plea. “You should have shut up! You shouldn’t have said all those things, called me all those names, told me I was no good for Esperanza! You made me so mad, Tito!”
Now my pulse began to race. There was no way out. No one else knew what he’d done but me. Meaning, in his mind, I had to go.
“But what about Carlito, Miguel? Surely you love him. Surely you don’t want to see him in jail, do you? To go to prison for killing Tito?”
He softened further then, his face melting. “Of course I love Carlito, even if he’s not my son! We’ll get him a good attorney. There’s no evidence—the charges won’t stick. I will protect the boy, but you know too much!”
Speaking of charges, where the heck were Simone and Sipowicz, for heaven’s sake? Hadn’t it been at least five minutes since I’d dialed 9-1-1?
Miguel began to sob openly, his rasps for air with each breath becoming shallow and harsh. “I didn’t want to do it! But he made me! He made me! You made me do this, Tito!” he cried, followed by a harsh cough.
“Stevie, now’s the time! Strike!”