Authors: Julie Leto
“I did what I thought was right,” Marisela told him. “Doesn’t mean I’ll do it again.”
He didn’t look half as unnerved by this conversation as she felt. “I don’t want to risk my
culo
trying to catch a killer if you’re going to turn around and let her win because you think she should.”
His words hung in the air between them, amid the highpitched trumpets of a mariachi band playing on the terrace of a restaurant above them and the thrumming bass from hip-hop riffs blasting from a nearby car. Marisela had no argument. He was right.
“We were hired to find the assassin, discover who paid her, and stop her from killing again,” she concluded. “That’s what I intend to do.”
Frankie nodded. Her promise was all he needed.
They continued down the street, watching out for somewhere to pick up a cold drink before they headed back to the hotel. About a block from where they’d parked the truck, they jaywalked across the street, leaping over the unused streetcar tracks that ran down the middle of the road.
“Do you think she’ll give up?” Marisela asked.
“She’s not done.”
“She can’t get to Craig Bennett,” Marisela reasoned.
“There’s still Bradley Hightower.”
“If she hasn’t already killed him.”
“Then she’ll stick around here to finish her job. Brynn insists she won’t quit until she has them all.”
Inside the bodega, they bought a pair of Havana Colas, the next best thing to a Cuba Libre without the rum, popped open the tops with a bottle opener the owners kept tied with a string to the cash register, and exchanged some small talk with the cashier. This time, Frankie didn’t flash the picture, but he asked if anyone had seen a woman, a stranger, who fit Yizenia’s description—including her tattoo. The owner’s wife had a field day speculating on why anyone would mar their skin that way, causing Marisela to slip her hand into the pocket of her jacket. She hadn’t traveled thirteen hundred miles from Tampa to get a lecture she’d already heard from her own mother.
They left, with no more knowledge than before.
As they closed in on their truck, Frankie suddenly grabbed her arm. What was up with everyone pawing her today? She would have complained, but she saw a man dressed in dark clothes lingering near the front end of their F150, his movements jittery. Marisela quickly downed a swig of soda, then tipped the bottle so the rest poured free. She hated losing her delicious drink, but she wasn’t going to pull her gun just because someone was acting weird. A tall glass bottle made a great weapon in a pinch.
Frankie stuck his hand beneath his jacket, and pushing her slightly behind him, shouted to the guy near the car.
The guy took off running. Marisela hurried to the truck only to see wires and cables hanging from beneath the chassis. Without hesitation, Frankie and Marisela took off after the guy in black, following him down an alley that skirted a playground. Marisela hopped the fence, running beside the jungle gym which loomed like a multicolored monster among the deserted concrete and fencing. She pumped her arms hard. Ever since she’d lost the battle with Yizenia, she’d been itching for a fight.
Now she had one.
Frankie caught the guy, no more than a kid, before he slid into a dark alley on the other side of the playground. The brick apartment buildings on either side captured the sound of Frankie’s voice and echoed back his anger. “What the hell were you doing to my truck?”
Marisela skidded to a stop a few feet away. She opened her mouth to announce her presence when she was rushed from both sides.
The attacker on her left was skinny, not much of a challenge. The guy on her right, however, easily weighed two-seventy and smelled like pepperoni. She managed to elbow the lankier attacker in the chin, but the other, easily double her size and weight, cold-cocked her across the jaw.
While she was dazed, they each took her by an arm. The skinny guy grabbed her hair and yanked her head back so that Frankie could see the carved-handle knife he held across her neck. The fat one then reached under her jacket and removed her 9 mm from its holster.
“Let him go!”
Gordo
demanded of Frankie, his bulbous arm jiggling as he aimed her weapon at Frankie’s skull. “Drop your gun or he’ll cut her fucking head off.”
Marisela swallowed, the action painful as the movement caused her skin to slice against the sharpened blade.
Frankie pushed the kid away so that he crashed against the wall. Seconds later, the kid ran out of the alley as if his pants were on fire, leaving two against two. Only she’d been disarmed. And while Frankie’s gun remained heavy in his hand, his eyes wide and wild, she knew his hesitation on her account would cost them.
The fat guy jabbed Marisela’s gun into her side, a cruel punctuation to his threat. The skinny one didn’t move, the blade ice against her skin. Frankie dropped his weapon.
“Kick it over here,” the fat guy ordered. “Do it!” He bounced on the balls of his feet, shifting his considerable weight. Marisela could feel his impatience vibrating off him.
Frankie kept his hands out, his fingers outstretched—the closest thing these assholes were going to see from him in terms of surrender. His eyes flashed at Marisela and she held her breath. He moved his leg to punt the gun, at the last minute kicking up with enough force to bash the
cojones
of the guy with the knife. Marisela slackened her body, ignoring the painful pull the fat guy still had on her hair. Once on the ground, she executed a spinning kick that dropped the fat guy to his knees.
He dragged her down with him, the gun still jabbing into her side. “You’re not going anywhere, bitch,” he prophesied.
“Wanna bet?”
She grabbed his gun wrist and twisted. His fingers, caught in the trigger, snapped. He howled and dropped the rest of the way to the ground. Marisela spun to aim at Frankie’s opponent when she realized the guy Frankie fought might not have weighed more than a flea, but he was keenly effective with a knife.
Slashed across the chest, Frankie’s white T-shirt flapped, tiny red drops of blood marring his dark skin. Marisela sucked in a breath, resolved to fire the minute the man circled around and gave her a clear shot.
A noise to her side caught her attention, so she swung right just as the fat guy rolled toward her. She fired, but he knocked the barrel sideways, deflecting the shot. He dragged her down and tackled her, his putrid flesh enveloping her in sweaty anger.
“Get the fuck off me!” she shouted, pushing fruitlessly at his blubbery body.
He grunted and cursed, trying to grab her gun. Unable to fire again without risking shooting herself, she used the 9 mm like iron knuckles, wrapping her hand tightly around the grip and pounding into his temple with her reinforced fist. He pushed away, but the glint of his knife caught her eye just before he sliced open her brand-new leather jacket.
“Fucking son of a bitch,” she muttered, rising to her feet and roundhouse-kicking him square in the cheek with the heel of her boot. Bones crunched. He fell forward, the gash across his face oozing bright red.
Behind her, Frankie went in for the kill. Even as the skinny guy’s knife tore across Frankie’s arm, he threw a succession of heel-palmed punches that splattered the skinny guy’s nose and dropped him to his knees. Frankie grabbed the knife and pressed it against his assailant’s neck.
“Why’d you jump us?” Frankie demanded.
He sputtered, blood coating his teeth, mouth, and lips. “Fuck you.”
Marisela slid to Frankie’s other side and pressed the barrel of her gun to the skinny guy’s temple. She cocked the hammer. The guy flinched and terror sped across his eyes.
“Try again,” she ordered. “Why did you jump us?”
“Paid to,” he croaked.
“By who?”
“Don’t know. Danny did the deal.”
His gaze darted to the fat guy on the ground, only he wasn’t horizontal anymore. He held Frankie’s recovered Glock in his hands. Marisela jerked to aim and fire, but a shot popped in her ears seconds before hers rent the air.
Danny’s body jerked, vibrated, then collapsed.
On shaky legs, Marisela stepped closer and saw the bullet hole in the back of the fat guy’s neck, clearly slicing straight through his spine.
The work was unmistakable.
She slammed up against the nearest wall, her gaze scanning the buildings across from them. “Sniper!”
The skinny guy on the ground scrambled like a crab until he was out of sight. Frankie retrieved his gun. Lights in the building across the open courtyard flashed on and someone yanked up a creaky window and screamed.
“Help! Police!”
Frankie grabbed Marisela’s hand and yanked her farther into the inky alley. An iron gate stopped their direct escape route, but Frankie launched himself to the top, then pulled Marisela over with him.
“What the hell was that about?” he asked, panting, once they were on the other side.
“I don’t know,” Marisela said, her equilibrium still wavering. “But I think Yizenia may have just saved our lives.”
Eleven
FRANKIE EYED MARISELA
with utter disbelief. “Have you lost your mind?”
Marisela stalked away from him, her entire body shaking with adrenaline. Breathlessly, she paced circles in the dim lighting from a busted streetlamp, only half listening to the scream echoing from the courtyard near the alley. The body had been found.
Yet Frankie looked like he’d just strolled off the dance floor—heated, but cool.
Marisela, with blood still smeared on her face, blended into the shadows near the stoop of a walkup brownstone while Frankie phoned Max.
The police roared past them, and yet, for the split second that the blue and red lights flashed over Marisela’s skin, her breath caught in her throat. They needed to get the hell out of here.
The Titan cavalry arrived in a dark sedan. Dressed in grimy T-shirts, jeans, and ball caps, the Titan investigative team looked like any other guys about to work on a buddy’s car. Marisela dashed across the sidewalk and slid into the backseat of the sedan, waited for Frankie to climb in after her, then sucked in a calming breath when they finally tore away from the curb.
“Interesting night?” Max asked from the driver’s seat, reaching over to hand Marisela a box of antiseptic wipes before handing Frankie the plug end of the universal charger he’d already connected to the sedan’s conduit. Frankie immediately pulled out Parker Manning’s phone.
“Seems someone doesn’t like our sniffing around,” Marisela replied as she wiped blood off her face, hands and neck.
Frankie leaned forward to address his question to Max. “You think Yizenia could have hired muscle to get us to back off?”
“Were they Latino?” Max asked.
“No,” Marisela answered.
Frankie stared at her. “My cousin, Segundo, has red hair and green eyes,” he reminded her.
“Your cousin Segundo is a freak,” Marisela replied, though her opinion had nothing to do with Segundo’s lack of typical Hispanic features. At three years old, he’d become famous in the neighborhood for biting the heads off of lizards. As he got older, his taste for blood only got worse.
“Not arguing with you on that, but you had no idea if those guys were Latino or not.”
“Do you think they were?” she challenged.
Frankie smirked. “No.”
“Then I doubt Yizenia was involved,” Max concluded. “I’ve been checking up on her. She doesn’t trust easily, especially not people who aren’t Spanish-speaking. That’s probably why she’s set up shop in Jamaica Plain.”
“Yizenia was there tonight,” Marisela insisted. “I can feel it. She shot that guy. She saved our asses.”
“Marisela,
por favor
.
No hables como una loca
,” Frankie insisted. “Why would she help us?”
“I don’t know.”
“Then drop it,” Frankie ordered. “Yizenia wasn’t the shooter. Not this time.”
“Then who was?” she countered. “Some friendly neighbor who just happens to have a precision rifle propped beside their floral curtains? Just because Yizenia helping us is unlikely doesn’t mean it isn’t true.”
Frankie didn’t argue farther. He couldn’t. The mystery shooter had saved Frankie from a bullet. Marisela couldn’t buy that this was some random act of violent kindness. The hit was too precise.
“What’s
this
about?” Max asked.
Frankie cursed, but didn’t respond, eyeing Marisela with a challenge. If she wanted to pursue her theory, she’d have to do the explaining. She couldn’t deny that her theory was a wild one. But Marisela had seen Yizenia’s work twice now, first with Craig Bennett and then with Evan Cole. She was starting to recognize Yizenia’s style. The angle of shot she preferred. The sound of her weapon.
“So these guys jump us,” Marisela began, leaning forward between the sedan’s bucket seats. “It was a total setup—the kid messing with the car, the friends waiting in the dark alley. They take our guns right off the bat, but don’t try to shoot until they’re getting their asses kicked. Seems to me that they didn’t plan to kill us, that they were just supposed to deliver a message. Scare us off.”
“Or they could have been neighborhood thugs who didn’t like us sniffing around their turf,” Frankie offered.
“Or they could have been hired by someone who doesn’t want us sniffing around the death of Rebecca Manning,” Marisela countered.
“Or maybe Yizenia broke with tradition and paid off some local thugs to try and scare us off her tail,” Frankie shot back.
Marisela shook her head. “By shooting one of her own guys? Look, we came to Jamaica Plain to find Parker Manning. Maybe he didn’t appreciate my disappearing act at the bar. Maybe he figured out that I swiped his phone. He had plenty of time to call in some friends. Maybe he already had them on call and was just waiting for us to harass him again. Yizenia couldn’t have set this all up. She had no way of knowing where we’d be.”
Frankie’s grin was infuriating. “Exactly. And if she didn’t know, she wouldn’t have been there to pop that jerk before he had a chance to shoot me in the back.”
“Unless she caught wind of us looking for her. Maybe she was tailing us the whole time and we didn’t know.”