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‘See these striations? They’re rare.’
Lindsay’s ears pricked up. ‘How rare?’
The guy grinned. ‘Only four hundred and twenty of this model were ever made with the extended barrel.’
It was like fucking Christmas.
Lindsay almost forgot to ask. ‘What’s the bad news?’
‘They’re made in Italy. There’s only ever been a few recorded in the United States. Course, doesn’t mean it didn’t come here illegally.’
Like Christmas and a blowjob all at once. He knew a man who favoured Italian weaponry. His name was Emilio Ross. Could it really be that easy?
Il Sangue.Of course. The very people who’d no doubt been depositing money into Allie’s bank account.
A quiet sense of excitement began to build in Lindsay’s chest; the thrill of the chase in these cases was addictive. It was what he lived on. It was the thing that kept him going throughthe long nights and the harsh realities and the midnight autopsies.
Having someone to chase.
‘What does the gun look like?’ he asked, almost breathless.
The tech clicked around a few more pages and pulled up a picture that made Lindsay’s dick want to go hard.
The bullet striations. A rare handgun with a wooden inlaid grip. The Il Sangue Cartel.
Lindsay Price knew exactly where he’d seen a gun like that before. In a gym locker in Santa Monica.
Seemed a visit to Mariana Rodriguez was long overdue.
CHAPTER TEN
MARIANA
‘You ever think about leaving?’ I asked Guillermo, as we sped down the freeway some twenty minutes later, headed back to the apartment minus a box of ashes, a funeral procession without a body.
Guillermo reached a hand out without warning, grabbing my upper arm. Not rough, but insistent.Stop. I felt his fingers dig into my skin as I squinted against the harsh sunlight, trying to make out his expression.
‘These are dangerous times, Ana,’ Guillermo said, his expression grave as he watched the road in front of him. ‘Dangerous times. He’s testing you, don’t forget. He wants you to fail. He wants you to run, so he can aim at your back and pull the trigger.’
I nodded, crossing my arms against my chest as I remembered the box of bones and ash. It was sad, how little remained after you burned an infant child to cinders. It was barely enough to fill a box the size of a coffee mug.
‘Where’s John?’ I asked.
‘Being the fucking prez, now that he knows you’re okay. I had to stop him from coming in and getting himself killed by your beloved.’
I snorted. ‘Who, Dornan? He’s hardly my beloved anymore. Not after everything he’s done.’
He must have heard the violent reality behind my words. ‘It was bad, huh? In Colorado?’
I opened my mouth to answer him and a sob came out. Just one. An overflow of emotion, and then I caught it and shoved it back down where it needed to stay. ‘He’s not the man he used to be,’ I said, staring out of the window as Los Angeles passed by in a blur of asphalt, overpasses, and randomly spaced palm trees. ‘There’s killing someone and there’s murdering someone. You know?’
Guillermo nodded, and I suddenly remembered what he had gone to prison for. Killing his wife for betraying him. ‘I didn’t mean–’
‘It’s okay,’ he said, cutting me off. ‘Don’t worry about it. I don’t.’
‘Did you know Stephanie?’ I asked him. I thought of her, the woman I had never known except in myth, as the woman Dornan had first loved, and then in death, as I greeted her bloody corpse in a bathtub in Colorado.
I’d never seen Dornan so indifferent in the face of death. When he’d killed the woman in the backseat of his truck, he had cried. Wept as he pulled the trigger and delivered the bullet that ended her life. I’d seen the anguish in his eyes, seen the devastation that engulfed him. Now he seemed almost bored with the fact that he’d just killed someone. And not just anyone. He’d loved her, once. That was the part I found thehardest to accept. He’d loved her, and she’d left, and this was what happened when you left a man like Dornan Ross and never came back.
