Dez. The nickname had been reserved for the inner circle. And three years ago, Strike had called him “Mendez,” just as she had used “Snake,” trying to remind herself what he really was. Poisonous. A manipulator.
Hearing the nickname now meant . . . Jesus, she didn’t know what it meant. But her instincts said Strike was telling her the truth.
They lied.
Her breath rasped in her lungs and the world took a big spin around her.
Dez was alive. Holy. Shit.
The blond cop said softly, “He was more than a paycheck to you, wasn’t he?”
Strike glanced at her, surprised, then looked back at Reese more closely. “No shit. What were you? Friends? Lovers?”
“We were . . .” What? She didn’t even know anymore, couldn’t think, could barely even breathe. Shock loosened her tongue and she blurted, “We knew each other as kids, as runaways. We watched each other’s backs. At least we did until that night in the storm. After that . . .” Getting dizzy now, she pressed the back of a hand against her mouth. “Could I . . . Shit. I need a minute.” Heart hammering sickly in her ears, she gestured back the way she had come, toward the restrooms she had passed on the way in.
“Of course.” The cop shifted on her feet, like she was going to offer to go with her.
Reese waved her off, swallowing hard. “I’ll be right back.”
As she headed for the ladies’ room, struggling to hold it together, she felt twenty-some pairs of eyes follow her across the tacky-assed chapel and through the door to the hallway beyond, which took her out of their line of sight. Then, with tears blurring her vision, she bolted past the restrooms. And straight out of the hotel.
Fresh air. She gulped it, feeling like she was drowning while pedestrians skittered around her like rats, glaring and squeaking when she interrupted their flow. Then, blindly, she headed for the nearest alley.
She might not know Cancún that well, but she knew cities. She knew the taste and smell of them, knew their dark underbellies, and the creatures that ruled them. She also knew that if Strike and his crew went looking for her, they would start with the airports, buses, and hotels, all the normal places that normal people went. So, heart thudding in her chest, she headed for what her gut told her was the bad section of town, moving through a warren of narrow streets that rapidly dwindled to alleys, losing layers of respectability in the process, and coming to look like a thousand other alleys in any one of a hundred cities she’d worked in over the years.
Scrawny cats and lean, hard-eyed mutts of both the human and animal variety slunk in the shadows. And, as she worked her way deeper into the maze, moving fast but not too fast, she was aware of beady eyes watching her from shadows, and the way they shifted, sending a silent message flashing ahead: Grab her, we’ll share.
A minute and three alleys farther in, a lean-hipped youth with shark-dead eyes and a four-inch blade dangling from one hand moved out from behind a Dumpster and gave her a spittle-flecked “Hey, baby, you looking for me?” in English rendered almost singsong by his thick accent.
She rattled back in varrio Spanish, “Get these cops off my ass and you can have whatever you want.”
“Fuck that.” He disappeared, and the shadows melted away. They wouldn’t stay gone for long, but the threat of the cops had bought her a few minutes, a little space to think.
Not that she wanted to think. It hurt too damn much.
Dez. God. Throat so tight it hurt to swallow, she kept going until her gut told her she had gone far enough, and then picked out a narrow, open-ended alley that smelled pretty much like every other alley on the planet—a mélange of piss, body odor, and rot—with a spicy overtone that said she was far from home. Putting herself about halfway down the alley, she scoped out her exits, both horizontal and vertical, and leaned back against a padlocked doorway hard enough that her .38 dug into her lower back. Then she braced her hands on her knees, let her head hang for a second, and concentrated on not losing her shit.
Dez was alive. Which meant... “Nothing,” she told herself, hating that her voice cracked on the word. This didn’t change anything.
She couldn’t let it change anything. He wasn’t her cowboy or her white knight, wasn’t her best friend, wasn’t her partner, wasn’t anything. She had saved his life by putting his ass in jail long enough for Fallon to get the guys who were gunning for him, and then cutting the deal that had gotten him out again. Word had it that he’d even straightened up—to a point—while he’d been inside. She doubted he had found God, but she had hoped he had found some perspective, and maybe even a few shreds of the guy he’d been at twenty.
That had evened them up. A life for a life. Which meant she didn’t owe him anything.
Her stomach rumbled. Some people snacked when they were bored. She binged when things got out of control.
This isn’t your problem. She didn’t need to get involved—hell, she shouldn’t get involved. She should pass along the info, and let the task force decide what—if anything—to do about it. And if the thought brought a twist of grief and regret, she made herself ignore them both as she dug into her carryall, going for the false bottom where she kept a second set of IDs and a credit card that ought to keep her off the radar unless Strike and his people had major clearance, or a big-assed back door into the system.
Given that they were looking for Dez, the latter seemed a far stronger possibility. He hadn’t been—wasn’t?—an acronym kind of guy.
Dez. God. Could he really be alive? Her throat closed and a sob rattled in her chest, but she made herself keep going, her fingers shaking as she popped the bottom of the carryall. But then a strange tickle shimmied down the back of her neck and her instincts kicked hard.
Her heart lunged into her throat as she spun in a full circle without seeing a damned thing out of place. But then an electric crackle laced the atmosphere, displaced air whoomped, and Strike freaking materialized right in front of her.
As Reese stared in shock, he glanced around, locked on her, and looked profoundly relieved.
Relieved? What the hell?
She went for her .38 as her mind scrambled, but before the gun was clear of her waistband, his expression shifted to one of fucking-get-it-done determination. Moving fast, he grabbed her wrist, twisted and chucked her gun, and then said, “Sorry about this.”
Sudden vertigo slammed into her, tunneling her vision.
“What . . . ?” She reeled, tried to run, and staggered drunkenly instead.
Her brain went fuzzy and she felt herself falling, felt strong arms catch her in an impersonal grip. And the world went dark.
CHAPTER THREE
Some immeasurable time later—maybe a few minutes, maybe a few days—Reese struggled back to consciousness. But instead of making it all the way there, she found herself caught, vulnerable, in the woozy dream state between asleep and awake, where she knew she should be afraid but couldn’t muster the energy for panic.
Even more disconcerting, she wasn’t alone inside her own skull. There was a strange presence there with her, controlling her. An unfamiliar voice echoed in her head, saying: Show us.
She was dimly aware that she was lying on a couch in a room that smelled spicy, like scented candles or incense. Strike was there, along with a younger, sharp-faced man who stared down at her, his gray eyes so intense they seemed silver. He was the presence inside her, she knew, without knowing how she knew it. Show us the night of the storm, he whispered in her mind.
She didn’t want to go back there, didn’t want to remember. But without meaning to, she did.
The images unspooled: She saw Dez, his eyes hot and wild as he kissed her and carried her to his bed, saw the lightning, heard the thunder, felt her body go cold as he headed for the door. Then things sped up in a scatter shot of images and sensations: She heard Jocko’s warning; felt herself racing through the storm, only to arrive too late. She saw the mad glee in Keban’s scarred face as he leaned over Dez, gloating; felt the pain as he turned and shot her. Then there was Dez’s rage. Chaos. Lightning. Thunder. Screams. Things happening that couldn’t be real.