Outside the door that I believed to be Nidia’s, I tried the remaining two keys, the second of which slid easily into the lock. I took a deep breath and opened the door.
Nidia was in bed, her back to me, under the covers. The TV set was flashing, but without sound. In her position, I’d try to sleep most of it away, too.
But she wasn’t asleep. She rolled over and saw me.
Her green eyes had deep purplish shadows underneath them, and when she saw me in the doorway, gun in hand, her expression was one of amazement but not of relief. She didn’t seem to understand what she was seeing.
“You’re safe now,” I said. “We’re leaving. Get dressed.”
She stared.
“Andale,” I prompted. “Tenemos prisa.” Come on, we’re in a hurry.
Finally getting it, she scrambled up from the bed.
When Nidia saw Payaso, ski-masked, armed, and standing over the tape-wrapped, bloody-faced form of the soldier, she jumped and nearly backed into me, frightened.
I said, “Esta bien, he’s with me.”
Payaso hastily ripped off the ski mask and echoed me: “Esta bien, no tenga miedo.”
So much for protecting Payaso’s identity, I thought, seeing the soldier get a good look at his face. But it was clear that Payaso’s main priority was reassuring Nidia. He was staring at her: beautiful despite the shadows under her eyes, and real to him for the first time. If he’d had a hat to tip, he would have.
I looked at Nidia, then nodded at the tunnel rat. “You want to kick him in the ribs?”
“Como?” she said, confused.
“Go on,” I urged her, “it’ll be cathartic.”
She just stared at me. I realized I was pretty jazzed on adrenaline and success. I mean, little Nidia Hernandez was not going to kick this guy in the ribs, and it wasn’t just because she didn’t know what cathartic meant.
“Never mind. Let’s go,” I said.
The soldier’s nose had stopped bleeding, and his eyes had stopped streaming from the pepper spray, and as we left, he found his voice and his bravado, calling after me.
“You’ve signed your own death warrant, bitch,” he said coldly. “I recognize you now. We know who you are.”
I stopped in the doorway, then looked at Payaso. “Go on out to the car with Nidia,” I told him. “I’ll be right there.”
Payaso wasn’t sure. “Cuidado,” he said, but he took Nidia out.
When they were gone, I walked back to the tunnel rat and sat on my heels. It’d been a long time since I’d felt this way, high on adrenaline, sure of myself, full of purpose. It was making me overconfident. I knew it was pointless to engage with this guy any further, but I just couldn’t help myself.
“You guys know who I am?” I said. “I know who I am, too. I’m Staff Sergeant Henry Cain’s daughter. And to clarify, you’re the fuckup who just let a one-hundred-thirty-five-pound bike messenger kick your ass and take Mr. Skouras’s unborn grandkid away from you. You think there’s a Christmas bonus in your future?”
He snarled, “You’ll be dead by Christmas. You have no idea how badly you’ve fucked yourself up here.”
I let him have the last word.
thirty-seven
Skouras’s SUV was the last thing we wanted to be driving with his men looking for us, so we only took it to the end of the driveway. I was silent on the drive down, thinking about my own vanity. I’d given Skouras’s machine another clue to my identity, telling them my father’s name and that I was a bike messenger. It probably didn’t matter. It wasn’t like they couldn’t find out where I came from, not if they wanted to know. Which now I was sure they would.
As we got into the Bronco, Serena hailed me: “Insula, do you read? Over.”
“This is Insula. Mission accomplished.”
“I’m looking at the three of you right now, man,” she said. “I don’t fucking believe it.”
“See you on the main road. Over.”
Even then, I’d probably known I was speaking too soon.
Serena was in Payaso’s GTO. She’d driven it carefully off road and over field land to the surveillance spot because we hadn’t had time to mount a sophisticated operation that would have entailed Serena hiking in from the distance that I had.
I turned the wheel and the Bronco trundled in a U-turn, and I headed back the way we’d come.
I told Payaso, “When we get down to where we left the guy driving the SUV, keep an eye out. He’s unarmed, but if he got free… I don’t know what he might try, just be looking.”
“He didn’t get free,” Payaso said. “I did him up good.”
But the danger rarely lies where you think.
There was about ten miles of long, lonely back road ahead before we’d get to Highway One south, along which we’d probably fall in behind Serena, or she behind us, depending on how fast we each were traveling. The single-lane road, shrouded on each side by pines and underbrush, was very lightly traveled. That was the reason I’d been able to lie by the side of the road in our ambush plan without first drawing the attention of some poor horrified local.
It was also why, when a sleek silver Mercedes carrying two people shot up the road toward us, I tensed. But that was all. It happened too fast. I was going about sixty, so was the other guy, and we were on top of each other right away.
The passenger was a man I didn’t see clearly. The driver, whom I did, was Babyface. In that split second, I knew that he had time to see me, Payaso, and worst of all, Nidia.
“Oh, fuck,” I said.
“Who was that?” Payaso said.
“Enemigo,” I said.
Maybe he didn’t see. Maybe he didn’t. Maybe he didn’t. Eyes glued to the rearview, I willed the Mercedes to keep going.
Its brake lights flashed red, and I knew it was going to turn around. I pushed the accelerator to the floor. With my right hand, I grabbed the radio. “Warchild,” I said, “we’re being pursued. It’s a silver Mercedes, California plates.”
“Insula, I’m two miles to Highway One. What’s your twenty?”
“About five miles out,” I said. “Just stay clear of us, okay? I’ll catch up with you when I can.”
He was gaining fast. I had less than a quarter mile on him when I gained Highway One, braked hard, and swung the Bronco into the southbound lane at about thirty miles an hour. That might not sound like a lot of speed, but it is for a right-angle turn, when you’re carrying a pregnant woman. In the rearview, I saw Payaso wrap his arms protectively around Nidia.
I jammed the accelerator down again, picking up speed.
I should have listened to Serena. I should have gotten the fastest goddamned car CJ’s money would buy. I was an idiot.
If I stopped, could we win in a shoot-out? Who was the other guy in the car? Was that guy armed? That Babyface was strapped was a given.
We were both doing 110 miles an hour, and I was glad that we were passing through a quiet stretch of Highway One. Peace, privacy, and not a lot of cross-traffic: convenient for those rare times when a white homegirl needs to blast through at a high rate of speed, pursued by a mobster’s henchman in a Mercedes.
I wondered if I could lose Babyface just long enough to dump Nidia out somewhere. Not only would this mean she and her baby would be safe, but I’d also kind of decided that she was my bad-luck charm, because every time I was in a car with her, shit like this happened.
Then I was distracted by a blur of motion in the bushes off the road, a flash of red lights. It was a highway patrol car, all lights and siren, coming out of his speed trap.
Payaso cursed in Spanish, then apologized to Nidia.