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Days passed. Then a week.
Nothing.
I couldn’t figure it out. We’d gunned down two of their guys; we should’ve seen the beginning of World War III by now. Never mind that the assholes had broken a three-year treaty by shooting one of our own – that wasn’t going to stop them from getting revenge. If you fucked with one Santa Muerte, you fucked with them all.
And yet, they didn’t do shit.
I thought about it a lot. Seeing as the body shop lost every single restoration and major job we had, and the only two clients we got over the next week were oil changes, I had more than enough time on my hands to chew it over.
In fact, the only thing I thought about more was Fiona, and that wasn’t by choice. She was an obsession I didn’t have any control over.
Never thought I’d say this, but I was actually glad I had a bunch of murderous assholes to take my mind off her.
And the Santa Muertes were murderous, all right. Even if the top brass had arranged the robbery/hit, they wouldn’t have cared that it failed. They would have used their two dead buddies as an excuse for massive, over-the-top retaliation.
And yet, ten days passed… and still nothing happened.
I didn’t go anywhere near the Seven Veils or the Roadhouse – I wasn’t about to let Lou gloat over his fucked-up little victory – but Kade kept in touch with other members of the group, and nobody reported a single run-in. Not even a rumor of one.
After two weeks, I was half-insane. Between my constant fantasies about Fiona and the mystery of why the Santa Muertes hadn’t come for revenge, there wasn’t much else going on in my brain.
So it was probably unavoidable that my two obsessions started to overlap.
Fiona was a PI, I thought, and that led me into a daydream of tracking her down in LA… showing up at her apartment at night… then ripping off her clothes, slamming her against a wall, and fucking her till she screamed from coming so hard. Making her squirt, over and over –
It took a while to get my mind off of that one.
When I finally got back around to the Santa Muertes, I thought, She knows detective shit. She might be able to help me figure out what the hell is going on.
Almost immediately after that, I thought, HELL no. FUCK that bitch.
I wasn’t that desperate for help… although I was getting there.
If the Santa Muertes never came for revenge, then Dan Peters would never feel the heat from the mayor and city, and I would lose my only chance to separate Lou from his bought-and-paid-for protection.
I felt bad that I kept waiting for a bloodbath, but mostly I was just bewildered.
What the fuck was keeping them from retaliating?
After a few more sexual fantasies involving detective stake-outs, I thought to myself, If she WAS here… and if I ever wanted to see her backstabbing ass again… how would she help me?
She’d go undercover like she did with the Midnight Riders.
I grunted. THAT didn’t turn out so good.
Well, she WASN’T here, and there was no way I was going undercover. I didn’t have any spies I could pay off, no connections to any of their rank and file. Hell, the only Santa Muertes I knew were the people at the very top – Rodrigo and Hector Reyes, the President of the North American chapter. About the only fucking thing I could do was call them up and ask them directly.
My eyes went wide.
That’s fucking insane, I told myself. And it was.
But after two weeks of endless frustration, so was I.
19
“You got a lot of fuckin’ balls, ese. I’ll give you that,” Hector said with a nasty smile.
We were in a diner in Lancaster, California, an hour north of LA. Hector and Rodrigo sat on one side of the booth, me on the other. I’d wanted a public place with a lot of witnesses because that was the only way I could be sure they wouldn’t try to kill me.
