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“And how exactly do you expect me to do that?”
I shrugged. “Just look at them. You’ve spent years in Mexico, right? Maybe you recognize one of the victims or a background or… fucking anything, Leeri. Someone sent all those pictures to your brother with a symbol pointing right at you. If it’s not because of Domínguez”—which I still thoroughly believed it was—“then maybe there was some other reason someone thought you could help.”
She stared back at me, her expression a complete blank. I had a feeling whoever had trained her—FBI, ATF, or any other three-letter government agency—had done their job well.
Eventually, she sighed and gave one curt nod. “Fine, I’ll look at them,” she said, “but I’m not making any promises.”
She leaned down and grabbed a handful of photos from the box, and instead of glancing at them blankly this time, her eyes were narrowed as they took in every inch of the top photo in her hand, inspecting it, hopefully searching for every tiny clue. For all I knew, it was just an act, but it was more cooperation than we’d managed to get from her thus far.
Instead of sitting there idle, I started to flip through the photos in my hand, though what I hoped to find was beyond me. I’d analyzed every one of them and come up empty-handed.
After a few photos, she set them aside and moved down onto the floor, reaching into the box and pulling out another handful, and then another. She scrutinized each one, then sorted them into two piles, which from what I could see, merely separated them by male and female victims.
“Why did you leave?” I asked.
Leeri looked up at me long enough to cock a quizzical eyebrow before she turned back to the photos.
“When you were younger, I mean.”
“How is that any of your business?” she asked, though there wasn’t the same bite in her words at the moment.
I shrugged. “It isn’t. I was just curious.”
She sighed and sat back, untucking her legs from under her and stretching them out. “I hated ‘the life’—my dad’s club where girls were nothing but showpieces and receptacles. All the violence, the crime. I wasn’t supposed to know about it, of course—not only was I female, but I was a kid too—but that didn’t stop me from seeing things, you know?”
I nodded, trying to interpret how a young girl might feel, watching leather-clad bikers coming and going, toting guns and God only knew what else.
“I loved Brute, but dad was grooming him to be just like him. I figured he wasn’t going to be Brute much longer.”
“I didn’t know your father, but I don’t think Brute’s like him,” I weighed in, though I’m sure my assessment wasn’t exactly welcome. “He killed him—did you know that?”
Leeri’s head shot up; she looked at me like she was trying to see behind my eyes. After a moment, she licked her lips, then shook her head. “No, I didn’t,” she said, her voice quieter than usual. “Once I left, I tried not to look back.”
“And that’s why you went the Fed route? To be nothing like your father?”
It still felt like she was trying to see behind my eyes when she nodded. “Something like that,” she said. “I went ‘that’ route to put men like my father where they belonged. I’m still on that route,” she said, her voice full of caution.
I nodded. “Si, I know this is a temporary ceasefire, not a truce.”
“He warned me about you—Javier, I mean. He said you and the people you work with are trouble like I’ve never seen.”
I scoffed. “The Lucianos?” I said, my voice full of doubt, because I couldn’t imagine how the Lucianos were any more “trouble” than the Costas or the Lucas or any other family whose life was steeped in the criminal world.
But she shook her head. “I don’t think that’s what he meant.”
If not the Lucianos, then what—
Oh shit.
“Leeri, did you bring us to Domínguez’s attention, or did he bring us to yours?”
She shrugged. “He did.”
And that meant Domínguez hadn’t just jumped on board at the chance to sink the Lucianos. He was out to sink me and “the people I work with”. Like Gabe and Deo. Like Nacio Morales? And everyone else who’d had a hand in stopping scumbags likeEl Víbora.
“He’s not trying to help you take down a crime family, Leeri. He’s trying to stop this,” I said, motioning to the box.
“Morbid photo collections?” she said dryly.
