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She almost kissed Teddi.
Not only that but she did it over some of the worst news of her life and the reality that a serial killer may be hunting people just ninety minutes away.
Rubbing her hands down her face, she stifled a groan. Her world couldn’t fall any further off its axis and then this. Teddi. Teddi and her smile and her mouth and the way she made everything feel simultaneously easy and terrifying.
“Fuck.” Standing abruptly, she stumbled over her feet before jogging down the hall. Anything to get out the zinging energy she felt going from one end of her body to the other. It was jittery and anxious. It was an electric current with no way out.
Turning into the dark bedroom, she found Ximena with her nightstand lamp on, phone in hand as she leaned against the headboard. She looked haggard, the long tendrils of her hair matted against the skin of her neck from sweat.
“Hey, what’s wrong?” Taking a seat on the edge, Vera began rubbing her knee beneath the fluffy blanket.
“No one is talking about him,” she cried, her voice cracking as tears ran down her face. “No one is talking about Alex being missing or that he’s… gone. I posted about it on the search group and not a single person has said anything. Why is no one talking about it? I don’t get it. Why doesn’t anyone care? So few people even helped with the searches.” She tossed her phone with a sob. “Even you weren’t here and now… now he’s never coming back.”
Like the lash of a whip, pain sliced through her. She hadn’t been there for the foot searches, the reporting, let alone the moment they found Alex’s information on the missing person’s database. She’d been somewhere else when they printed posters and handed out flyers to local businesses. She’d missed it all and Ximena had leaned on everyone else to help carry the burden. A burden that was hers to share. The return of shame made her shift uncomfortably.
“Mimi,” it was a broken, desperate whisper. How did she excuse the last few months? How could she make her sister understand what happened? How far and deep she’d fallen from grace, how wrong she’d been about everything she once believed in.
“Where were you? Why weren’t you here?”
“I-” She swallowed the lies working their way up her throat. “Mimi, I couldn’t be here, ok? I told you I was working and I couldn’t come home…”
“Don’t, ok?” She cut her off. Her voice was a fanged bite. "I don’t wanna hear any more lies about why you weren’t here.” She laid back down, turning her back to Vera.
She didn’t want to lie to her but she couldn’t tell the truth. Those were words that would lay beside her in the grave. Her hands lifted towards her as if she could shake her sister and make her understand that there were some things she didn’t want to know.
“If your job is so important to you, do it and find out what happened to Alex. He didn’t kill himself and he didn’t do drugs. I know it just like I knew it was going to be him in that morgue today.” She wiped away a tear angrily. “Do that much. Just do something.”
There was no one to blame but herself as she watched her sister shut her out.
The gun that went off three months ago was still tearing through all the layers of her life, breaking them down to one single moment. The bullet seemed to lodge itself in her chest as she realized how deeply she’d damaged the relationship with the most important person in her life. There was no cauterizing the wound between them, no mending the torn skin and trust.
She could find out what happened. She could do the bare minimum. Maybe she would forgive her one day for not being there when Alex disappeared, and maybe not. At least she could do her job, with or without her badge. She stood to leave.
Looking back at her small form curled up in the king-sized bed, she pushed down feverish shame.
Down she pushed and shoved until something else rose up in its place.
Spite. For whoever took Alex from them and whoever kept taking whatever was left between Ximena and her.
She would find out what happened to Alex. And she’d do whatever was necessary to make them pay.
Chapter 8
Vera
Despite the golden beams of morning sunlight passing through Ximena’s kitchen, the room was as cold as the morgue. The clank of their utensils was the only language spoken between them.
Ximena sat two chairs down the bar, clad in the pair of hot pink fleece pajamas Vera bought her a few years ago. She looked as haggard as she felt.
“Are you going back?” They were the first words Ximena had spoken to her since last night. She was relieved by the break in the silence, that she wasn’t so far gone that the silent treatment was prescribed. At least, not permanently.
“To Sylen?”
“Yes.” Ximena shoved toast into her mouth, staring forward at the wall.
“I’m going back.” With the entire night to mull it over, Vera planned out what she needed to do. It may very well put the final nail in her coffin at the FBI but she couldn’t let Alex’s murder go unanswered. She couldn’t watch him become another unsolved mystery, just some Latino kid no one cared about getting justice for.
She needed to be there, not trying to imagine herself there through blurry map images and shoddy police reports. Building a case up brick by brick was second nature. Find a way in, wrangle a pivotal confidential informant, and collect evidence like her life depended on it. She’d done it too many times to count because her life had counted on it. And now Alex was counting on her.
