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“You’re crazy, you know?” I said.
She crossed her arms over her chest and assumed a bored expression. “Because I take risks you don’t like?” she said, like she’d heard it all before.
I shook my head. “No. Because you think I’m going to let you walk out of here and do crazy shit on your own. I told you, darling, I’m not finished with you yet.”
Her brow furrowed. It was cute. It wasn’t often I’d seen Greta look confused. “So, you plan on coming along after saying this is too dangerous… all because you haven’t finished fucking me out of your system yet?”
“That’s right.”
“And you’re callingmecrazy?”
I shrugged. “Never said I wasn’t. But maybe before running off to Lázaro Cárdenas like a pair of walking bull’s-eyes, there’s something else you might want to try first.”
Chapter Twenty-Three
Greta
I’m not sure in which universethiswas a good idea. Nor was I at all certain how Brute had managed to talk me into it.
And yet, here I was, standing outside the cactus’s door, ready to go another useless round.
“Don’t interrogate her; talk to her.”That was Brute’s stellar plan. He was convinced that if we could just get past her outer wall, there’d be a real human behind it. I wasn’t entirely convinced.
I walked into the room. She was sitting at the edge of the bed, just like she’d been the last time I’d left her. Instead of getting close, I closed the door behind me and slid down the wall, sitting with my knees pulled up and my arms dangling over them.
She didn’t move; she just stared.
All right, so “talk to her”. About what?
“I was in a bar in Mexico,” I said, the words began spilling out like some part of my brain knew which direction to take the conversation. At least someone was at the helm here. “It was one of those shitty bars where you know they’re offering a littleextrain the back.”
I looked down at the floor in front of my feet while I spoke, but an image of the bar sprang up behind my eyes.
“I knew there was something not right as soon as we walked in there. That feeling in the pit of your stomach?—do you ever get that?” I asked, aiming for some kind of reciprocal conversation, even if it was just the occasional nod.
But Leeri didn’t answer, nor did she move her head at all.
I shrugged. “I suppose you do. You’d probably make a lousy law enforcement agent otherwise. Anyway, we ordered drinks—Deo, Vito, and I—and then these four guys walked in, guns in hand. I swear, if you threw some cowboy hats and boots on them, it could have been a scene right out of the old West—Central American-style, of course.”
I shook my head, remembering every detail; the scars on their faces, the faded T-shirts and jeans, the MP5 submachine guns in their hands. The way the entire room froze for just a moment.
“Bullets started flying, people started running,” I went on. “A girl fell right in front of me—a pretty girl, barely dressed, bullets in her torso. There was no way she was walking out of there, nothing I could do to help her. But she asked me for something.”
Leeri opened her mouth; I could see some cold quip dancing on the tip of her tongue, but she slammed her lips shut and said nothing.
“She said that she and her father had been taken; she was forced to work in that bar or they’d kill him. She asked me to stop the man responsible for it, Leeri. She asked me to stop Domínguez.”
Her shoulders stiffened and she drew her spine up straighter.
“He’s going to do it again, Leeri. And again. It doesn’t end until someone ends it.”
“That’s a tragic story, Greta,” she said, shaking her head, “and I don’t doubt that it’s true, but whoever that girl was, she gave you the wrong name. Javier isn’t the villain you think he is. You’re after the wrong man.”
God, this asshole had her brainwashed, but at least, she was talking. “Then help me figure out who did this.”
“You want me to help you?” she said, scoffing at me.
“No, I want you to help them,” I said, nodding at the box of photos. I grabbed a handful of pictures from the box, then slid it across the hardwood floor toward her.
