And she waited. If the soldiers charged, it would end in seconds. If she fled, the end would be delayed-perhaps for moments, perhaps forever-but at least the end would come on her terms. That was worth something, wasn’t it?
You will do this, Maria. You must do this. These people are more important to my boss than you are.
As Veronica’s word replayed through Maria’s mind, she remembered the glare of the agent’s eyes. The coldness of them. All of those meetings they’d had exchanging information, all those friendly chats, she realized now had never been about friendship. They’d never been about good triumphing over evil. In the FBI agent’s mind, it had only been about a job. It had been about getting a conviction against Felix Hernandez. Maria was important only so long as she was useful.
And she didn’t doubt for a moment that Veronica Costanza and her FBI would hunt her down and see that she was killed if she did not do exactly as she had been told.
And so Maria waited for the American fugitives who were more important than she.
“You were a fool to be a patriot,” she said aloud. If there were listening devices, so be it. Let there be a record of her final thoughts.
Saying those words aloud, though, made her cringe. This had never been about patriotism. It had never been about justice or about returning her beloved Mexico to the way it used to be. From the very first days, it had been about revenge.
Maria closed her eyes and forced herself to recall the images that she had spent so many years pushing away. She made herself look once again at her big brother Jaime, and the gaping wound in his throat, cut all the way back to the bones in his neck. She remembered the dullness of his once-bright brown eyes, lifeless under their drooping, half-open lids. She remembered the brightness of his blood-soaked T-shirt. He was only sixteen when Felix’s men murdered him and left the body on the hood of her father’s car, a piece of paper stuffed into his mouth, scrawled with the word, ladrón-thief. Skinny and awkward, he’d been seeking respect when he began running money for the drug lords. One day, he took enough pesos for himself to buy a sandwich and a Coke.
For that, they took his life.
For weeks afterward, men stalked Maria on her way to and from school. They wanted her to know that they were watching, and that she would live or die at their whim. They wanted her to know that they were above the law-better still, that they were the law-and that murder was but one of the enforcement tools at their disposal. That was twelve years ago. She was only ten years old, but like everyone else in her neighborhood, both her virginity and her life were as fragile as the desires of the men who paid allegiance to Felix Hernandez.
After Jaime’s murder, Maria’s parents had moved her away. Her father was an engineer by training and education, but to be an engineer one had to live in the city, and where there were cities there were drugs. So they moved to the country, where her father dedicated himself to farming, yet nothing grew at his hand. When her mother died of a heart attack two years later, the pressure and the stress became too much for Papa. Maria was only sixteen when he hanged himself in the barn. His note apologized for his weakness. Apologized for leaving her alone in the world.
Terrified of a life on the street, Maria turned to the convent, but her anger burned too deeply. Even as she prepared to take her vows to God, she found herself vowing to seek revenge on Felix Hernandez, who had killed not only her brother, but by extension her mother and father, as well. He’d murdered her entire family, and she was going to hurt him.
Maria had heard her entire life how beautiful she was, and sometimes she could even see the beauty herself in the mirror. With no money and no education, and with a future as a nun shut down by her heart, she turned her beauty into a weapon.
Everyone knew that Felix Hernandez liked his mistresses young and beautiful. Though well into his forties himself, he was never seen in the company of a woman older than twenty-five, and occasionally his tastes ran to those in their early teens.
Getting close to him had been surprisingly simple. With short enough skirts and enough cleavage showing, it was just a matter of being seen.
Felix liked coffee, and he liked to take it in the same café every morning. To launch their relationship, Maria made sure to be there at the same time he was. She made eye contact and looked away, and that was all it took. Felix sent a henchman to her table.
“That man over there is Felix Hernandez,” the henchman said. “He would like you to join him at his table.”
Maria made a show of looking over there and then said with as much disinterest as she could muster, “I know who he is. Tell him that only a coward sends a surrogate to ask such a thing. If he wants me to join him, he may ask me himself.”
The henchman looked horrified.
“Are you afraid to repeat my words?” Maria pressed. “If so, send Mr. Hernandez over, and I will be happy to tell him myself.” It was risky to say such a thing, but her mother had told her that to be of value, something-some one-must be difficult to obtain. Maria wasn’t interested in a one-night stand. She wasn’t interested in being one of many mistresses. Her plan from the beginning was to win her way into Felix’s inner circle where she could do as much damage as she possibly could. In order for the plan to work, he needed to feel that it was his idea.
The henchman didn’t appreciate the affront to his masculinity. “I will tell him,” he said. “It is your life to lose.” He returned to Felix’s table, and Maria forced herself to return her eyes to the newspaper from which she hadn’t read a word.
She heard laughter from Felix’s table, and then about a minute later, a shadow fell across her paper. Its owner said, “Excuse me.”
Maria looked up to see Felix Hernandez looking down at her, his arms folded across his chest. “May I sit down?” he asked.
Maria folded her paper to make room and gestured to the chair opposite hers. “Please,” she said.
Felix pulled the chair out and sat, his forearms resting on the table. He leaned in close. “My friend tells me that you know who I am,” he said, “yet you are unimpressed.”
“If that is what he told you, then your friend is a coward.” She had never been in such close proximity to a murderer before. She’d expected the eyes of a beast, of a predator, but instead saw amused softness.
Felix smiled. “So, coward is your word of the day, is it? First you use it in reference to me, and now you use it in reference to my friend.”
Maria gave a coy smile. “So he told you,” she said. “And you are here. You have proven me wrong twice.”
He laughed and sat back in his chair. He crossed his legs and folded his arms again. Maria would later come to recognize this as his most thoughtful pose. “You are a beautiful woman,” he said. “And though I might not impress you, I assure you that you impress me. What is your name?”
“Maria Elizondo,” she said. The name was pure fiction, adopted in case Felix actually remembered any of the names of the children he’d murdered.
“A beautiful name,” he said. Then he stood. He bowed slightly from the waist and said, “Maria Elizondo, would you please do me the distinct honor of joining me at my table for coffee?” There was no hint of threat in his tone. In fact, he seemed genuinely charmed.
Maria stood and-
She jumped as the phone in her hand rang. Snapped back to the reality of the present, she wondered if she’d perhaps fallen asleep. It rang again. The incoming number was blocked from her caller ID. Maria slid the phone open and brought it to her ear. “Hola.”
A woman’s angst-filled voice said, “Oh, dear God, please tell me that you speak English.”