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‘What lesson?’ I cried. ‘What lesson!?’
‘An important lesson. Are you ready?’
I didn’t answer. I was reeling.
‘Don’t ever try to tempt fate,’ Emilio said coldly. His words barely broke the surface of my reality. Because there was a fucking suitcase on my kitchen table with a dead baby inside it.
I dropped the phone, and the screen cracked, turning black. Guillermo’s fingers were on my arm, I realised, digging in painfully. I looked down at his hand as if I were moving in slow motion, feeling the way he trembled violently against my flesh.
‘I didn’t sign up for this,’ he said hoarsely. ‘Nah, man, no fucking way. I didn’t sign up for this.’
I tilted my head to the side, getting a better look at the baby boy.
Button nose.
Dark hair.
Rosebud lips.
Dead.
I reached my hand out to touch his cheek, knowing it’d be cold but unable to stop myself. I was a mother, after all. My instinct said to nurture, to protect, even if this child was toofar gone. Guillermo tugged my arm back forcefully before I could make contact.
‘What?’ I asked dumbly. That ringing in my ears – the buzzing noise that wouldn’t go away for weeks after Murphy – it was back. It filled my head with a reverberating whine that was as excruciating as it was bleak.
A car revved loudly outside, and Guillermo left the suitcase long enough to peer out of the window next to the front door.
‘He’s gone,’ he said.
Emilio had gotten what he came for. My horror. My screams. Now he could continue his day, having ticked the boxFuck with Mariana’s head.
Guillermo slowly folded the suitcase lid shut, the tiny body disappearing from view.
‘Wait,’ I said weakly. ‘We have to call the police.’ An image of Lindsay Price floated somewhere in my racing thoughts, the FBI agent who’d accosted me in the women’s showers at my gym. I had to call him.
Guillermo glared at me with bloodshot eyes. ‘The fuck did you just say?’
‘The police. The FBI. We have to call someone. Guillermo, it’s a baby!’
He eyed me wearily. ‘You want to get killed?’ he asked, abandoning the suitcase midway through zipping it up.There was a baby in there.Fuck. The room was starting to spin and I wanted to be sick.
‘Please don’t close it,’ I whispered.
‘What the fuck is wrong with you?’ Guillermo snapped. ‘You want to get him out and read him a fuckin’ bedtime story before we put him in the ground? He’s DEAD.’
I knew it was illogical, but . . . ‘If you zip it, he won’t be able to get any air.’
‘Get in the car,’ Guillermo hissed. ‘Now. Kid’s cold. He’s been dead for hours. Days, even. He ain’t ever gonna need fuckingair.’
‘Wait,’ I stalled, desperate. ‘Why are we going in the car? Where are we going?’
Guillermo looked like he was about to rip my head off. ‘We gotta get rid of this, Ana. Your DNA’s all over it. Mine, too. If this is a set-up, then they set us up good. No cleaner purification than fire.’
‘We’re going to set him on fire?’
Guillermo made the sign of the cross and murmured some silent prayer to the ceiling. ‘Crematorium.’
Oh.
