dylan duffy opened the door for them with dripping wet hair and a towel around his waist. He apologized, saying he just got home from work, invited them in, and offered them a seat on the couch in the living room. He introduced them to a girl of about ten or eleven lying on the floor with a pillow over her face.
“That’s Jaylin. Jay, say hi.”
Jaylin gave a wave, kept the pillow over her face.
“I’ll be right back,” said Duffy. “Do you want anything to drink?”
Cap said no thanks, and Vega shook her head.
Duffy jogged out of the room. Cap and Vega sat on the couch, which had wicker armrests, patterned with big tropical flowers. It squeaked under their weight.
Cap watched the girl on the floor. Her legs were crossed at the ankles, relaxed. Cap turned to Vega, but she wasn’t looking at him or the girl. She was surveying the room, taking in the nubby carpet, the soft IKEA bins filled with magazines, shoes, markers, papers.
“You talk,” said Vega.
“Sure.”
Another few minutes passed, and Duffy returned in jeans and a muscle tee.
“Sorry,” he said, putting his hand through his hair. “I work for a tree doctor. I’m a real mess when I get home.”
“Thanks for taking the time,” said Cap.
“Sure thing,” said Duffy. “I want to help. Like to get the guy who put me out of a car.”
“So the police didn’t tell you the conditions in which they found your car?” said Cap.
“No, just said it was part of an investigation, like evidence, so they had to keep it. Insurance is getting me a loaner. I’m not sure how it works.”
Duffy nodded as he talked, his hair dripping onto his shoulders. The girl on the floor uncrossed her ankles.
“Mr. Duffy,” said Cap quietly. “Could we speak to you alone for a minute?”
Duffy appeared confused. Cap nodded toward the girl.
“Oh, yeah,” said Duffy, realizing. “Jay, go practice in your room awhile.” Then, to Cap and Vega, “She’s really into sensory deprivation.”
The girl removed the pillow from her face and stood up.
“Now I have to start over,” she said to Duffy.
“They’re with the police,” said Duffy emphatically. “Official police business!”
The girl remained unimpressed. She glanced back at Cap and Vega and left the room, dragging the pillow behind her.
After she had gone, Duffy said, “You were saying, about how they found the car?”
“They found a body in it,” said Vega.
“No shit,” said Duffy with an appropriate degree of awe. “That’s fucking crazy, excuse me.”
“Yeah,” said Cap. “We don’t know if the thief is the murderer but he is certainly a suspect. And we have reason to believe he knew your car would be unlocked.”
Duffy nodded at him and kept nodding as the idea snaked around his head.
“Wait,” he said. “My car wasn’t unlocked. I always lock my car.”
Cap continued: “There wasn’t any substantial evidence of forced entry, and we have an eyewitness who says the thief opened the door without a problem.”
Duffy stared at Cap, his hand on his head, processing. Cap could see him start to question himself.
“Look,” he said hoarsely. “If I didn’t lock my car, it would’ve been the first time, okay?”
“So you think the thief got lucky?” said Cap, only a little skeptical.
“No,” said Duffy, sounding pained. “I don’t know. I know it doesn’t make sense.”
Cap smiled at him. He sounded honest and confused.
“That’s why we’re here, Mr. Duffy,” he said. “To try and figure it out. Why don’t we start somewhere else? Why do you park the car on the street to begin with and not in your garage or your driveway?”
“My wife, she’s an RN, she works second shift. I don’t want to block her—I like her to park her car in the garage so she can come straight into the house. I don’t want her walking around outside at midnight, one a.m., you know?”
Then he turned to Vega.
“It looks like a nice neighborhood, but we had a lot of crime the last couple of years. Carjackings, stuff like that.”
Vega gave him a small commiserative nod.
Then she said, “Could we talk to your son?”
Duffy looked from Vega to Cap and wiped his hands on his jeans.
“My son?” he repeated.
“Yeah, your son,” said Vega. “He’s about fifteen, right?”
“Um, yeah. But he’s not here—he’s at a friend’s house, you know?”
“When will he be back?” said Vega.
“I think he’s sleeping over, so tomorrow morning probably,” Duffy said, squirming around in his chair. “He doesn’t even drive yet. I don’t know what he could tell you.”
“Probably nothing,” said Cap generously. “Sometimes we notice things and we don’t realize we’re noticing them.”
Duffy smiled, grateful.
“We’ll come back then,” said Vega, standing up. “Tomorrow morning.”
“Oh, okay, sure thing,” said Duffy, jumping to his feet. “I’ll, uh, walk you out.”
He followed them to the door, and they all shook hands and said goodbye. The temperature had dropped at least ten degrees, the sun rolling down fast, sky lit up with pinks. Cap waited until they were in Vega’s car to speak.
“How’d you know he had a son?” he said. “I didn’t see any Shakespeare.”
“The paper recycling outside,” said Vega, starting the car. “I saw it as we went in. There was a drug-test box in there, over the counter. I don’t think it’s for the girl.”
“No,” said Cap. “And not for the parents. But how’d you peg fifteen-year-old boy?”
“Figured it was a teenager under sixteen because police might have covered that if there was another licensed driver in the house,” she said, pulling away from the curb. “Had to be a boy.”
“Why?” said Cap. “Girls smoke pot, too.”
Vega peered at the upcoming intersection and moved her jaw from side to side.
“Teenage boys, even the smart ones, are led around by their dicks. Unless they get into drugs. Girls are more likely to binge-drink and have eating disorders.”
Cap almost began to argue and then thought better of it.
“Goddammit, you’re right.”
Vega rolled down her window and stuck her hand out, wiggled her fingers in the warm air.
“You think Duffy’s telling the truth?” she said.
Cap thought about it, remembered the eager nods, the genuine shock.
“I do.”
“I do, too,” said Vega.
“So first thing tomorrow morning we go back?”
“Yeah.”
“And wait for the Bastard,” Cap added.
“Heard from him already,” Vega said, glancing at her phone. “Got some addresses. X-ray tech, Antonio LoSanto, in Santee—suburb of San Diego. Dr. Scott Miller’s in Escondido—nicer suburb.”
They stopped at a light, and Vega leaned back, stretched her neck out, took her hands off the wheel.
“We could split up tonight and go see them,” she said. “If you think you can stay awake.”
Cap turned to her and saw she was giving him a side eye, waiting for his response.
“I truly appreciate your concern,” he said. “I think I can handle it.”
She nodded, didn’t smile but didn’t scowl, eyes on the road. The light changed to green, and she drove.
Cap didn’t tell her he actually did feel the weight of the jet lag coming down on him as if it were the end of the night on the East Coast and not the beginning on the West, his lower back and foot arches aching, throat scratchy, eyes dry and heavy. But being with Vega while her brain snapped and curled like flames in a fireplace was enough to keep him awake for at least the next few hours, he thought. Better than Red Bull.
Vega got to Santee around eight. The sun had just slipped down, the air light and cool. The X-ray tech lived in a condo complex on a quiet block. Vega parked in a spot marked SUNRISE TRAILS APARTMENTS—VISITOR, got out, and began to look around.
Vega walked along a small paved path, saw the flickers of TVs through windows, noticed all the ground-floor units had small walled decks; second- and third-floor units had narrow balconies. The X-ray tech’s condo was on the ground floor. Number 107. Vega followed the path to the door, thought she smelled something sweet. Powdered sugar and frosting floating around the air like in an amusement park.
She pressed the bell, heard it buzz inside. When there was no answer, voice, footstep, she buzzed once more. Then she knocked, lightly at first with a tap of her knuckles, then pounded her fist. Still no one, nothing. She tried to peer along the sides of the synthetic bamboo blinds hanging in the window.
A text from Cap came through: “Here. No one home. Staking out.”
Vega backed up off the path, thought about how long she wanted to wait. She tilted her head and let her eyes drift to the three-sided cinder-block wall to the side of LoSanto’s condo, which, Vega assumed, must be surrounding LoSanto’s deck.
She crossed the small strip of grass separating the path from the parking lot and came to the deck wall, about six feet tall. She reached up and touched the top. It had been a long time since she went up a wall, but the principles had to be the same. Run, drive hard through right leg and push, grab the top, jam, and run up with the left leg to avoid the dead hang.
Then she heard a cough.
“Hello?” Vega called.
There was no answer.
“Mr. LoSanto?” she said, stretching her hand up and waving so that whoever was on the other side of the wall could at least see her fingers.
Vega could sense motion. Then she heard the catch of air through the person’s nose, the scrape from a patio chair on the ground.
“Who’s there?”
The voice was female, young, high-pitched.
“I’m looking for Antonio LoSanto,” said Vega.
“He’s not here,” said the girl.
Vega took her wallet from her pocket.
“I’m a private investigator with the SDPD,” she said, holding up her PI license.
She didn’t flash it often. Usually there was no need if she could see the person’s eyes, and the person could see hers. Usually people just tended to believe her.
The girl paused, then said, “Come around front.”
Vega went around, across the grass to the path, up to the front door. She heard the snap of a sliding door, footsteps, lock clicking open and then the door.
The girl was in her twenties, Latina, pudgy in a babyish way with a round face, hair pulled tight back. She held a phone, earbuds still connected and dangling.
“Sorry I didn’t hear you. Headphones,” she said, holding them up.
Vega nodded with a tight smile.
“Alice Vega. Is Antonio LoSanto here?”
“No, he’s not home.”
“Do you know when he’ll be back?”
“In a while,” the girl said. “He’s at work.”
“Can you tell me where his place of business is?” said Vega. “I need to speak with him right away.”
The girl flipped her ponytail up, as if it had been caught inside the collar of her hoodie. She laughed nervously.
“I’m just, I’m really not supposed to bother him at work.”
“Got it,” said Vega. “If you have a minute, could I ask you a couple of questions?”
“Me?” the girl said. “I don’t know anything.”
Scared, thought Vega. Be nice. Cat with a feather.
“Look,” said Vega, bending her knees, letting her head fall an inch to one side to appear casual. “I’m staying out in El Centro. Do you mind,” Vega hedged. “Just a couple of general questions, and then I won’t have to come back and bother either of you?”
The girl blinked a few times, eyelashes fluttering.
“They’re just some timing questions, like when he worked certain places.”
The girl turned her phone around in her hands.
“You wouldn’t even have to tell him about it,” Vega added.
“What’s it about?” said the girl shyly.
She was almost there, thought Vega. Saying to herself, This is something I can take care of, take a load off his tense shoulders. Which meant she, the girl, thought of other people before herself, at least sometimes. So make it easy for her. No big deal.
“Taxes,” said Vega. “One of his past employers may not have paid all their taxes. We’re questioning all the employees, see if they have any knowledge of it either way.” Vega shrugged. “Just standard procedure.”
The girl nodded, seemed pleased at how standard it sounded. She opened the door and let Vega in. The furniture was nice enough but not a lot of it. Suede couch, low table with unopened mail, flat screen, handheld Nintendo. Clean beige carpet. Blank walls except for a big framed watercolor of the ocean crashing onto a beach. Blurry blue swirls on a tan swath.
The girl sat on the couch, and Vega stood, staring at the painting. The girl glanced at a vape pipe on the table, a small pink bottle next to it. She seemed self-conscious, maybe embarrassed about vaping in front of someone official.
“You can, um, sit,” she said. “Do you want a Diet Coke?”
Vega shook her head and sat, pulled out her phone and scrolled through her emails, pretending to read and remember things.
“So let’s see,” she said. “Your name, please.”
“Sarita Guerra.”
“Ms. Guerra. You’ve been living with Mr. LoSanto how long?”
“Oh, I don’t live here,” she said emphatically. “We’re just boyfriend-girlfriend.”
“Okay,” said Vega. “That makes sense.”
She kept scrolling down the screen, squinting. She took the pen from her inside pocket and clicked it. She had a feeling Sarita wouldn’t notice she didn’t have anything to write on. Nervous respondents just want to talk and defend themselves; they are not noticing details.
“So did you, were you together with Mr. LoSanto when he worked at Bay Free Health Clinic over on Mission?”
“Yeah,” Sarita said. “Well, we met, like, six months ago, so I didn’t know him when he started that job but I knew him when he quit.”
She nodded along with her own memory. Truth, thought Vega.
“Okay,” said Vega. “And do you remember when he left that job?”
“Yeah, it was like, right before Easter, so April, I guess?” Sarita said, ending with a question to herself perhaps.
“April, okay,” said Vega.
Then she looked up, cocked her head to one side, and feigned confusion.
“Why did he leave?” Vega said.
Sarita stared at her blankly.
“Seems like a good cause and everything,” Vega added with a shrug.
“I don’t think they gave him enough hours?” Sarita asked again.
Vega nodded, in case the girl was asking her if that was a sufficient answer.
Sarita went on: “He just bought this place and wanted to pay some of it off, and he was only part-time at the clinic, I think.”
Vega tapped the pen on her phone, gave the girl time to think about it.
“He really didn’t say,” added Sarita.
“And he didn’t mention anything strange he noticed when he worked there?”
Sarita shook her head, crimped ponytail swinging.
“No, I don’t think so. He liked some of the people he worked with. It just seemed like regular…”
She paused, searching for the right word.
Finally: “Um, work.”
Vega’s eyes drifted up to the watercolor above Sarita’s head. Sarita kept chattering nervously.
“He works hard, you know?”
The painting was big, probably three by three and a half feet, and set squarely in the middle of the wall.
“Now he can get a double shift if he wants overtime,” she went on.
“And where’s that?” Vega asked, still staring at the painting.
“Kenner Orthopedic?” said Sarita. “It’s in La Jolla.”
“Uh-huh,” said Vega. “Can I use your restroom?”
“Oh, yeah,” said Sarita. “It’s, uh, down there,” she said, pointing to a small hallway off the living room.
Vega nodded and left, eyes combing the off-white walls as she went. At the end of the hall were the bathroom and the bedroom, side by side, both doors wide open. She stayed in the hall and peeked inside the bathroom, where it was peach and beige and relatively clean. She left the door open a crack and peered toward the living room, unable to see Sarita, which meant Sarita could no longer see her.
She stuck her head into the bedroom—standard queen bed, white sheets, turned down and messy. Small bedside table with just an alarm clock. Dresser with a lamp on top.
Nothing on the walls.
Vega walked on the balls of her feet back to the bathroom, stepped inside and flushed the toilet, ran the water in the sink for a few seconds. Then she went back to the living room to ask Sarita one more question.
Sarita still sat on the couch, sucking on the vape pipe. She pulled it from her mouth as soon as Vega emerged, like she’d been caught in the stall in high school.
“I’ll get out of your way,” said Vega.
Sarita stood up and smoothed out the legs of her pink sweatpants.
“Can you tell me, though, how long he’s had that painting?”
Sarita corkscrewed her body around to look at the watercolor. Then she turned back to Vega.
“Um, I’m not sure?” she said.
“Take a second,” said Vega, brisker than before. No need for the IRS taxman act anymore.
Sarita looked at the painting again for clues.
“Maybe a few months ago?” she said.
“Maybe around April, when he quit the clinic?” offered Vega.
“Oh yeah, I think so,” said Sarita, remembering. “He said he was tired of staring at the wall.”
Vega came closer so she stood next to Sarita, the couch between them and the wall. Vega glanced at the girl for only a moment, and Sarita backed away, a flicker of fear passing through her eyes.
Then Vega removed her gun from the holster, kept her eyes on the painting.
“Wait,” said Sarita, breath catching in her throat.
Vega ignored her and flipped the gun in her hand so the nose pointed down, grip up. She stepped onto the couch, the cushions depressing under her weight, wound her arm back, and brought it forward hard like she was pitching a ball, cracking the butt of the gun on the glass of the painting. The sound was not loud but blunt; Vega could feel resistance from the other side. The canvas was not hollow.
Sarita let out a small scream and covered her mouth right away.
The glass had cracked, not shattered, a ring of crumbled bits and spiderweb threads splintering out from the center.
“What, what are you doing?” said Sarita, voice shaking.
Vega continued to ignore her and put the gun back in the holster. She grasped the sides of the frame and carefully lifted it off the wall, stepped down from the couch, and laid the painting down, back side up, on the table.
The back of the painting was covered with brown paper and crisscrossed with packing tape. Vega ran her fingers over the paper and pressed lightly along the edges.
“Do you have any scissors?” she asked Sarita.
Sarita was in a state of stun, her hands in a knot under her chin.
“Sarita, scissors,” said Vega. “Could you get some?”
“Yeah,” said the girl, and she hurried into the kitchen, running into the counter on the way.
Vega heard her opening drawers and rummaging. Then Sarita started to run back, scissors in hand.
“Don’t run,” said Vega softly.
Sarita took the order and stumbled to a walk. She held out the scissors to Vega, handle first. Vega took them and held them over the painting, pointing the blades near the top left corner. She punctured the paper with a quick stab.
Sarita made a squeak but didn’t move, rapt.
Vega sliced the paper at the top of the canvas, then a few inches down either side and peeled back the paper.
There was money there, twenty or twenty-five stacks, small denominations, wrinkled, bound by rubber bands. Vega continued to tear the paper off, saw that the stacks took up about three quarters of the canvas hollow. When she was done she stood with the paper shreds at her feet and what she estimated to be a few thousand dollars in dirty bills in front of her.
Sarita’s face appeared to expand, her eyes and mouth opening up in disbelief.
Vega paused before telling her this was probably a good enough reason to bother her boyfriend at work. Might as well let her have a minute to come up with it on her own.
It had been a while since Cap had been on a stakeout. It was dark now, the temperature down a few degrees, the air smelling sweeter and feeling somehow even more pleasant on his face than it had been during daylight. Cap sat in his car with the window open across the street from the house of the former clinic doctor, which was similar to every other house on the upper-middle-class block, two floors, ivory façades with sandy red roofs. The houses on either side of the doctor’s had cars in the driveways, lights on inside, but the doctor’s was dark, driveway empty.
Cap sipped an iced coffee, cracked his neck both ways, remembered he used to listen to Books on Tape in the old days when he’d stake out skips and cheaters. Nonfiction mostly, American history—civil war, lives of presidents. All about little decisions and big mistakes.
He wiped the condensation from his drink on his pant leg and wrote a text to Nell:
“Hope you’re asleep already but if not good night!”
He sent it, and immediately the three dots flickered back.
Then, her response: “Almost. What’s happening with the case?”
Cap smiled. He couldn’t help having pride in a girl he’d raised to ask infinite questions even if sometimes those questions made him want to stab himself in the eye with a number 2 pencil.
“Nothing yet. On a stakeout. Boring,” he sent back.
He glanced up at the house and the quiet street. Heard crickets and a strange bird. The phone buzzed in his palm.
“How’s Alice?”
He typed and sent: “Good. The same.”
The three dots flickered for only a moment, and her response came back:
♥
If that was meant as a sentiment from Nell to him directly, or as a reaction to him describing Vega, he didn’t know. He decided to change the subject.
“Hey—is ‘emoji’ plural?”
A brief pause, then, “Good night, dad. xoxo.”
Cap grinned and set his phone down in the cup holder under the HVAC knobs. He waited. Every once in a while a car cruised by, and he ducked his head. It seemed like the type of neighborhood where a strange guy waiting in a parked car might get noticed.
Around ten he saw a dark SUV approaching in his side mirror. There was a reflective sunshade covering the windshield—odd at night, he thought. He started to slide down in his seat but quickly realized whoever was driving would easily see him if he was looking. So Plan B—Cap brought up Google Maps on his phone, put on a brow furrow like Bert from Sesame Street, and made like a lost tourist.
The SUV passed, and Cap watched it turn the corner up ahead. Then he waited some more.
Nine became ten, which was 1:00 a.m. on the East Coast, and Cap felt it in every muscle and joint. He sucked whatever moisture was left on the bottom of the iced coffee cup and rubbed his face up and down with his open palm.
His phone read 10:11. He opened up the CNN app and attempted to read. The letters crowded one another, and the glare from the screen stung his eyes. His reading glasses lay in their case on the bed back at the Hampton Inn.
He shut his eyes and pinched the bridge of his nose, tears beading at the corners of his lids, and his mind wandered quickly, breathing in the fragrant air nice and deep, thinking about how loud those crickets were, strange that he could hear them from his bed at home in Denville, window closed and the AC whirring. How he’d finally managed to hit the perfect temperature with the central air he had no idea—not too cold, not too hot, gentle fanning breeze on his face. Was that Nell on the phone in the next room, whispering, upset?
Cap shook himself awake.
The doctor was home.
Cap sat up straight and leaned back, staying hidden. The doctor, wearing a dark suit, and a woman in a blue evening gown with her hair pinned up in a delicate twist stood on either side of a silver Audi, doors open. It was the woman (the doctor’s wife, Cap assumed) whose voice had spilled into Cap’s half dream. She was whispering, but her voice was raised and strained. Instinctively, Cap pulled his pocket DVR from his jacket and rested it on the window runner. It was a holdover from his older PI days of tracking cheaters—always have tape. He considered himself old-fashioned, didn’t want to rely solely on his phone.
The doctor tried to take his wife’s arm as they walked up their driveway, but she yanked it away and stumbled. Cap couldn’t make out exactly what she was saying, but he pulled the focus on their faces as tight as it would go, figuring later he could read her lips and jack up the sound. He wasn’t sure but he thought the end of her sentence was “Trust you.”
Now this really did remind him of the old days. Lovers’ spat, faithless spouses, cuckolds, and “How dare you make a fool out of me.” That always surprised Cap—when he broke the news Hubs or Sweetums was cheating, how the sharpest sting for the cheated-on was not actually being cheated on but the embarrassment, the shame, feeling stupid, silly, old.
The doctor got ahold of the wife’s arm at the elbow. Cap couldn’t quite read the expression on his face. It was blanker than he would’ve expected, like this was something rote. Business as usual.
The wife tilted back on her heels and then steadied herself. She struggled against the doctor for a moment but then didn’t fight, allowed him to guide her. Motion lights flicked on at their feet as they proceeded up the path to the house. The doctor unlocked the front door, and in they went.
Cap tapped Pause on the DVR and checked his phone. 11:09 p.m. But also a text from Vega, which had come through twenty minutes earlier, when he’d been dozing.
“Brake on the doc. Got something here.”
There was a photo. It appeared to be a box or a bag ripped open with a bunch of money inside. Cap chuckled to himself.
He wrote back: “That is something. You need backup?”
Her answer shot back quickly.
“No. Get some sleep.”
Cap tapped the screen. Miss Vega doesn’t need your help, thanks for asking. He stretched out his arms and legs quickly, like an oversize starfish, and released. Slapped his cheeks a little bit to get the blood flowing and started the car, turned on the GPS audio, and let the nice lady tell him how to get back to the hotel. He sped down the empty streets and spare freeways, his rental cutting through the warm air like a skiff on a river.
Sarita sat on the couch vaping sadly, wiping away the occasional tear. Vega stood with her back flush against the kitchen counter. Both of them stared at the money. Sarita had stopped speaking about a half hour before, after furiously texting and leaving multiple messages for LoSanto.
And then the shine of headlights flashed through the sliding glass doors. Sarita sat up at attention.
“That’s him,” she said.
Vega nodded and kept her eyes fixed on the front door. She heard a car door slam outside, then running steps, and then the door flew open.
Antonio LoSanto came inside, short and stocky with a buzz cut, dressed in navy blue scrubs. He was breathing heavily, his eyes bouncing from Vega to the money to Sarita, who didn’t move.
“Sarita,” he said between gasps. “Go in the other room.”
Sarita stood and walked past Vega to leave the room. She peeked at Vega once, and then her head dipped down as she hurried away. You don’t have to do everything he says, girl, Vega tried to tell her in the second their eyes met. But then she was gone.
Vega heard the bedroom door shut, and then she and LoSanto stood looking at each other some more. The scent of cotton candy stayed in the air. LoSanto’s breathing slowed down, and he ran a hand over the back of his neck.
“You have a warrant, I’d like to see it,” he said finally.
“I don’t need a warrant. I’m not a cop,” said Vega.
LoSanto moved his hands to his hips, stood up a little straighter. Gonna get tough now, thought Vega.
“Then I could call the cops right now. You’re trespassing.”
“Your girlfriend invited me in and offered me a Diet Coke,” said Vega.
LoSanto didn’t flinch.
“Who are you, then?” he said.
“Name’s Vega.”
“What do you want, Vega?” he asked, eyes drifting.
Vega followed his gaze to the money.
“I’m a private investigator working with the police,” she said.
LoSanto sneered, bristling at his options.
“Then I could call the police right now and tell them you conned your way into my house, they gonna know all about you?”
Vega waited a second before answering.
“Yes, that’s right.”
“I don’t have to tell you a damn thing,” he said, as if he were convincing himself of the truth of the statement.
“Sure,” said Vega. “You don’t have to talk to me or the police or a lawyer or a judge.” She nodded to the rows of money in the cut-up canvas on the table and continued: “You let the prints and serial numbers on those dirty dollars do the talking, and you can keep quiet when you’re in Lompoc and the boys are arm-wrestling over who gets a shy flower like yourself first.”
LoSanto froze, and he unlocked his gaze from Vega’s. She sensed the intensity in the room siphoning out like a tire’s slow leak. LoSanto ran his hands over his hair and sighed. His limbs seemed to loosen up as well, and Vega knew he was about to start talking. Sometimes all it took was a little hit of truth.