He looked at me with a half smile that answered nothing. “Security is posted downstairs and outside the door. You need anything, you call me first.” He opened the nightstand drawer and set the Glock inside. “That’s there if you need it.”
“Quest.”
“I’ll be back in the morning, Peach. I promise.”
He kissed me deep enough to make me forget the question I was about to ask, then grabbed his keys and walked out. The door clicked shut behind him and I sat on the edge of the bed in a luxury hotel suite wearing new clothes.
I looked at the photos one more time. Aziza’s face. Quest’s tear. My swollen eyes and tangled hair and the biggest smile I’d worn in months.
41
Rodrigo
Mooki came back with photos on his phone, screenshots from a nurse he’d paid off on the NICU floor. Two security guards, both private, rotating shifts outside the baby’s room. He’d gotten their names, their schedules, and their home addresses within forty-eight hours because Mooki was worth every dollar I paid him.
“The baby is still in the NICU but the mother got discharged,” Mooki said, scrolling through the images. “Her and Quest are staying at the Ritz-Carlton in the Inner Harbor. Ten minutes from the hospital. Security at the hotel is lighter than the hospital. Two guys on rotation.”
“Can we get the guards pulled away?” Gabriel asked from his chair. He was leaning forward with his elbows on his knees, already thinking tactically.
“That’s what I’m working on,” Mooki said. “If we can figure out who their people are, wives, girlfriends, kids, we create a distraction that pulls them off post. A phone call about a family emergency, something that would make them leave. Even a thirty-minute gap gives us a window.”
“Do it,” I said. “Get me names on their families by tonight.”
Fosso was pacing behind us, wired, jaw grinding, pupils like saucers. He’d been snorting since dawn, and the energy coming off him was unstable enough to make everyone in the room keep one eye on whatever he was doing.
“Fuck all this planning,” he said, his voice too loud for the room. “I’ll go right now. I’ll walk into that hotel and shoot that bitch and her baby. Right now. Tonight. I’ll end this whole thing myself.”
Gabriel shook his head slowly and looked away. The disappointment on his face was so clear he might as well have said it out loud.
“Fosso, sit down,” I said.
“Nah, I’m serious, Rodrigo! They killed Manny. They killed Mateo. They blew up our shit. And we’re sitting here looking at pictures and making plans? For what? Plans don’t work against these people. Action works.”
“Sit. Down.”
He stopped pacing but he didn’t sit. He stood there vibrating like a man who was being held together by cocaine and fury and not much else. Gabriel looked at me and the question on his face was simple. What do you want to do?
Before I could answer, my phone rang.
It was LaLa.
I looked at the screen and for half a second my chest loosened. She was checking in from Colombia. She was safe. The kids were safe. In the middle of everything falling apart, at least they were out of reach. I answered and put it on speaker because Gabriel had been asking about Paco earlier.
“LaLa, how are you? Is Paco okay?”
The face on the screen wasn’t LaLa.
Quest was holding her phone, looking directly into the camera with an expression that carried no anger, no heat, no emotion at all. He was sitting in what looked like LaLa’s livingroom. Behind him stood a tall man I didn’t recognize, arms crossed, watching the door.
My blood went cold.
“Rodrigo,” Quest said. His voice was flat. Conversational. Like he was confirming a dinner reservation. “I made a mistake by letting them live the first time. I’m handling it now.” He paused for exactly one second. “Then I’m gonna find you.”
He turned the phone around.
LaLa was on her knees in the middle of her own living room. Paco was next to her, pressed into her side, his small hands gripping her shirt. Her face was streaked with tears and mascara and her mouth was moving but no sound was coming through because she was beyond words. Paco was staring at the camera with wide, frozen eyes. He was nine years old. He looked like Mateo.
“Rodrigo, please!” LaLa screamed. “Please, he’s just a boy! He’s your nephew! Rodrigo, please do something! PLEASE!”
