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The building looked like an apartment complex, four stories tall and in desperate need of renovation. Half the windows on the first floor were boarded up, and even a few on the second had planks of wood across them. If she didn’t know any better, she would’ve thought it was abandoned.
Someone emerged from the front of the building, looking agitated. When he stepped onto the sidewalk, he threw both middle fingers up at someone inside. Harris squinted, trying to make out his face. When he turned and leaned against the building, pulling a joint out of his pocket, she caught a good glimpse of him.
“Armando?” she asked. He looked up at the sound of his name, the joint halfway to his lips. “Armando Carrera?”
That was all the prompting he needed. Armando flicked the joint into the street and took off. Harris’s reaction was immediate. She’d been trained to go from zero to full speed at the drop of a hat. “Stay with the car!” she called over her shoulder. Hearing Cassie’s protests, she ignored them.
The kid was fast, she’d give him that. And he knew these streets better than she did. But he was used to making a quick getaway and hiding until his pursuers gave up the chase. All she had to do was keep him in her sights and run him down. She didn’t do cardio six days a week for nothing.
Armando also made the mistake of looking over his shoulder every ten or fifteen seconds. It slowed him down considerably, and at the junction of one street and th
e next, he almost ran head first into an elderly man in a suit. The kid dodged out of the way at the last second, eliciting a sharp curse from the man. Harris didn’t bother apologizing on his behalf. Leaning into her sprint, she knew that every mistake he made closed the distance between them.
Harris wondered if he recognized her from the jewelry shop, or if he was running because that was the smartest thing to do when someone called out his full name. She’d sounded too much like a cop, and it had intimidated him.
Coming up on another street corner, Harris could feel her body adjusting to the pace. Her lungs were just starting to burn, but the real problem was the cold air hitting her eyes and making them water. She blinked away the tears, afraid that if she took her eyes off Armando for a split second, he’d disappear, and she’d never find him again.
It was that panicked thought that drove Harris forward, pushing her legs past her limit and hoping they’d hold out. She was a strong runner, built for distance more than speed, but even she had her breaking point. And Armando was proving to have as much stamina as she did. Taking a sudden left, he ran through traffic. Cars honked and squealed their tires as Harris followed. But where he had found an opening to dash between vehicles, she had to dodge and swerve, pausing in the middle of the street while an old man shook his fist at her. When Armando made it to the sidewalk on the other side, he ran about a hundred feet back up the street and slipped into an alleyway. Harris yelled in frustration, then followed in his wake, ignoring the people yelling at her from both inside their cars and on foot.
There was nothing like a jolt of anger for that extra boost of speed. Sometimes it was even better than adrenaline, and Harris relied on it to get the upper hand. As her feet hit the pavement in time behind him, Armando made the mistake of looking over his shoulder one more time to see how far away she was. Tripping on a pothole, he stumbled. He recovered, but it had closed the gap between them considerably.
And as they reached the end of the alley, Harris reached out her arm to grab the back of his sweatshirt just as a gold Toyota Corolla hopped the curb and cut them off. Armando slammed into the car and tumbled over the hood, then hit the sidewalk on the other side. Harris jumped just in time to slide across the front of the car, dropping down next to him and grabbing a fistful of his shirt before he could hop up and run away again.
When the driver’s side door opened, Cassie stepped out, grinning from ear to ear. Harris couldn’t help the frustration that mounted inside her chest. “Didn’t I tell you to stay with the car?”
Cassie still wore a shit-eating grin on her face. “Technically,” she said, gesturing to the car, “I did.”
19
Cassie returned to the steering wheel after Harris shoved Armando into the backseat and slid in beside him. She had no idea where they were going and didn’t bother asking. It was better if it looked like she knew what she was doing. Besides, she needed to get the car off the sidewalk before the cops showed up.
Looking at him in the rearview mirror, Cassie could see how much Armando looked like the older woman they’d seen the night before. Their eyes were the same shape, as were their noses and lips. There was no doubt this was Mrs. Carrera’s son, but the real question was whether he took after her in other ways. Would he shut down like his mother did when they asked questions?
As soon as Armando got to the other side of the seat, he reached for the doorhandle. But Cassie was faster. Locking the doors, she turned on the child lock for good measure. When he glared at her, she gave a sheepish smile in return.
“This will go much smoother if you cooperate,” Harris said.
“I’m not telling you shit,” Armando said, sounding much tougher than he had the other day in the jewelry store. “Arrest me. I don’t care. You’ve got nothing on me.”
“Oh, we’re not going to arrest you.” Harris’s grin stretched her whole face. “We’re taking you back to your mom’s place.” She turned to Cassie. “Remember how to get there?”
“Oh yeah.” Cassie didn’t remember how to get there, but she pulled her phone out of her pocket and figured out an approximation of where to go. Then she pulled into the street and merged with the flow of traffic. Staring at Armando through the rearview mirror again, she said, “Twenty minutes, give or take.”
Armando’s eyes went wide. Looking over at Harris, his gruff exterior fell away. “Come on, lady. What’d I do to you? Please don’t take me back there. She’s gonna whoop my ass.”
“We’ll drop you off wherever you need to go,” Harris said, “as long as you answer my questions.”
Armando groaned. “I don’t know anything.”
“I’m sure you know something.” Harris’s grin never faded. She was enjoying messing with him like this. “Do you recognize me?” She pointed at Cassie. “Either one of us?”
“Yeah, you were at the jewelry store.”
“So were you. Why?”
Armando shrugged and stayed cautious. “Just doing my job.”
“And what job is that?”
