Unbalanced, my body thudded into the plastic barrier. Out! Out! Get out! I kicked against the front seat and propelled myself out the window. Every instinct screamed at me to go, but I reached out to Lathos. Out of the green-gray water, his hand snatched mine, pulling me back into the car. Full-out panic twisted his face. Clawing at me, he dragged me downward.
I raked my nails over his hands. But he wouldn’t let go. Desperate, I clawed at his eyes.
And that’s how I killed him.
He gasped, water filling his lungs. His eyes rolled back in his head. He let go.
Horror rushed through me. I jerked, fighting contradictory urges: save him, save me.
Freed from his weight, it felt like I was flying. The car slipped into the murk below. I couldn’t help it; my lungs were bursting. My body took over. I had to leave him!
Frantic for air, I kicked hard and split the surface of the water just as my breath gave out. I gasped, then took in water, gagging and coughing. Shouts exploded in front of me.
Automatically, I swam toward the sound, my strokes awkward, fueled by the pure need to make one more pull, one more kick, one more … Somehow I flopped onto hands and knees in the muck. Someone took hold of me, pulling me forward. Everything swirled gray and black around me, formless shapes. The stench of waterlogged weeds and stagnant mud choked me. I tried to stand, but my legs wouldn’t hold me. I gave up and let myself be dragged.
When my body hit dry ground, I pulled loose, hunched over, and retched. I tried to gesture to the water behind me, but dizziness swept up and over, made me concentrate just to stay conscious. Between heaves, I finally croaked, “Someone … still trapped. Inside the car—” Exhausted, I fell forward and curled up in the grass.
I have no idea how long I lay there. People moved around me. One came closer. Hands rolled me on my back. Something soft fell over my torso, and warm fingers tucked me in.
A shaft of sunlight fell over me. I closed my eyes and covered my face, vaguely aware that someone prodded me, as if looking for something lost. Sirens blared closer, and I felt myself being lifted in someone’s arms. We rushed into the night. I landed, seated, on something hard, then tumbled against a warm, solid chest. Hands moved up and down my arms, warming me.
“Chica?” a deep voice said into my ear. “Come back to me. You’re going to be okay.”
Nestor! I collapsed into him, burying my head in his chest. The shouting increased, and I looked up to see a fire truck bounce onto the grass in front of the water—one of the canals off the river—followed by an ambulance. Several men stood by the water. One slogged into it up to his knees and snatched a man’s jacket that had floated to the surface. He trudged out, and I grimaced as he dropped the fabric to the ground with a wet smack.
“I killed him,” I heard myself say. My stomach, still tight with the strain of vomiting, roiled. My head pounded so hard I felt my flesh pulse. My brain knew it was Octaviano Lathos who’d died, but my memory conjured up images of the overeager face of my brother’s friend, Alfie, which made my cowardice seem all the more personal and utterly despicable.
A large, pale man, a medic with bulging arms and a shaved head, knelt before me. “Let’s take a look.” His voice was calm, and his hands were warm as he touched the side of my face.
Panic, fury, guilt, pain, it all burst out of me as overwhelming rage. I lunged at the man, slapping and screaming. “Don’t touch me!”
Nestor pinned my arms to my side and dragged me back. My screams spewed on and on, emptied me, and stole my strength. I sank to my knees.
The paramedic’s dark eyes blazed at me. Nestor hugged me to him and put up a hand to stop the man. “It’s all right. I’ve checked her out. No broken bones, she just—”
“She’s fucking crazy,” the paramedic said. “Fine. You got her.” He stalked away.
Nestor turned me to face him. He wore jeans and a black shirt, no uniform. “Dios, chica. That’s enough,” he said. “You need to get control—”
My body trembled. “You don’t understand.” I flopped down on the concrete bench.
Nestor wrapped me in a coat. Sitting close, he pulled me to him, again rubbing my arms and back. He looked out at the water. “Who was in the car?” he said in a strained voice. Alerted, I picked my head up, and the tense look on his face brought me up short. Rather than the typical calm, even bemused expression he usually wore, his pupils were wide, the large, black circles almost subsuming the chocolate brown of his irises. His flesh gleamed with sweat, and his gaze darted about, scanning the landscape. Then, as if sensing my concern, he dropped his eyes to mine and gave me a forced smile. “It’s okay. You’re safe. Tell me who was in the car.”
For a second, it felt like I had awakened from a drugged nightmare; I couldn’t make my thoughts come together. Then, mercilessly, they coalesced. “It was Lathos.”
The breath rushed out of him, but I couldn’t tell if in relief or distress. He nodded and rubbed my arms so vigorously it almost burned. “It’ll be okay,” he said without conviction.
“No. I tried to pull him out, but he wouldn’t let go. He was like a child begging for help. But I hit him. I killed him!” My throat closed up and despair overwhelmed me.
As if suddenly waking himself, he pulled his attention back to me. His arms gripped mine. “No! I’m not going to have this, do you hear me? Hey!” He captured my face between his hands. “You listen to me. You didn’t kill him.” He licked his lips, and his face was set with determination. “Whoever put him in that car is the guilty one.”
I scoured the tears off my face with the back of my hand. “So many innocent people: Lathos, Mr. Keeper, Mrs. Naidenheim, Jake. Why is this happening?”
Nestor scratched at his chin as he looked toward the canal. The man who had strode into the water walked by, his wet jeans slapping against his legs. “Divers are on the way,” he said, nodding to Nestor in passing. He was some kind of off-duty cop or fireman, I supposed.
Nestor nodded back and then muttered. “This is getting out of hand.”
“He didn’t deserve to die. None of them do. They’re innocent—”
He shook his head. “No such thing … innocent.”
I yanked my hand free of his. “Are you saying these people deserved to die?”
He turned toward me, lips tight. “Calm down. I’m not saying that. But it’s time to face facts. Lathos climbed out of the cradle and headed straight into jail. He was hardly an innocent. And, like it or not, Jake is no angel.” His gaze bore down on mine. “No one is innocent here.”
I shot to my feet, anger warming my chilled flesh, his coat dropping off my shoulders onto the cold cement bench. “You’re blaming Jake?” I glared at him, angry and betrayed by his callousness. How could I have been so wrong about him?
Nestor looked at me as if confused by what I was saying. Then he took a deep breath. He reached out, a pained look on his face. “Chica, I’m sorry. I’m out of line, I know. But think about it: the attempt on Jake’s life? That ambush was deliberate and well planned. When somebody wants someone dead that bad, there’s a reason.”
Gritting my teeth, I tried to fight the emotions swirling in my head, tried to deny what he was saying. “Who do you think did this? Tina? The man from the hospital? The bomber—”
His body went rigid. “What do you mean?”
“Uh, what do you mean, what do I mean?”
“You said the man from the hospital was the bomber.”
I blinked. “No, no I didn’t. It was just two sentences close together.”
“Why do you think they’re the same person?”
“Nestor, I, I don’t—”
“Did you see him? Was he at Jake’s office?”
“What? Who?”
“A guy who runs the business across the street gave a description of a man who matched the one at the hospital. Madison, look at me. This is important. Have you ever seen the man in the hospital before?”
I shook my head. “No.”
“Are you sure? Are you absolutely sure?”
“Well, I mean I suppose I might have seen him in passing. I guess that’s possible. But, I have to think that if I’d ever seen someone that sick and evil, it would have registered. Could Lathos have been conspiring somehow with the guy from the hospital?”
Nestor looked out at the water and took a step closer. “It could be a coincidence.”
“I’m not following you,” I said, but he didn’t seem to hear me. I raised my voice. “Hunter thinks the office bomb might have been meant for me.”
That got his attention. He looked back at me and snorted. “Hunter’s an ass. Don’t listen to anything he says. Hunter’s not the point. The point is that you got lucky—”
“Lucky! I almost died! And Lathos did.”
“Which makes you lucky and him not.” Nestor stroked my arm as if in sympathy, but I tensed under the touch. He sighed and dropped his hand. “Listen, serious shit is happening. But do you take the warning? No. You go back to the scene of the ambush—”
“How did you know where I went?” A prickling wariness flowed up my spine. Come to think of it, how had Nestor known I was in that car?
He hesitated. “What?”
“How did you know I went to the alley? And how did you end up here?”
He gritted his teeth. “Is that important now?”
“I want to know.”
“I was following you, okay? I was worried about you.” A grimace creased his features. “I know I shouldn’t … get involved, but, well, you’re really kind of an idiot.”
My eyebrows climbed high on my forehead in surprise. I didn’t get that very often. Smart-aleck, know-it-all, yes. But idiot?
He put out a hand as if in appeasement. “Not idiot in the traditional sense. You’re just … naive. You’ve spent too much time in your ivory tower, and you don’t know how to watch your back. But you’re not a bad kid.”
Again with the diminutives!
“Actually, I was following Hunter, following you.” He smiled crookedly. “I’ve got a mole in his office. It bothered me that he was shadowing you, again.”
“He said he was just—” I stopped as my brain registered what he’d said. “Wait a minute, what do you mean, again?”
“He watches you. A lot.”
I jerked, the standard mule-kick-to-the-heart reaction to being stalked. “He does what?”
“He’s always looking at you when your back’s turned. Do you remember two weeks ago Tuesday, when you were with Jake at the courthouse?”
I nodded, my attention riveted to Nestor’s every word. “Yes, Jake took me with him routinely, ostensibly for training, but I think it was so he had someone to fetch coffee and donuts. He was staying behind to wait for Hunter. They were supposed to meet for lunch, I think.”
Leaning in, he said, “I was there. I saw you go to the bus stop. I didn’t see Jake, but I saw Hunter follow you out. He stood in the shadows staring at you until the bus came, just staring.”
A stiff breeze wrapped my hair around my face, and I shivered, but not from the cold. The fear is primal in women, the fear of being man’s prey. It often comes too young to a girl, a brute blow to the mind, a brutal clubbing of the consciousness, when first she realizes that some daddies and uncles, brothers and cousins, friends and strangers want, and what they want, they’ll take, and if it hurts, that’s how it is, and if she screams, that’s better.
Nestor’s words seemed distant. “—this look on his face like—”
I glanced at him sharply. “Like what?”
“Like he couldn’t figure out what he wanted to do to you.”
I stumbled back a step, edgy and angry at that familiar twitching need to watch for shapes in the shadows. “What am I supposed to do with a statement like that?”
Nestor shrugged. “Maybe he likes you.”
“Sure, except that he doesn’t.”
“Maybe it’s nothing,” Nestor said. “But I don’t want you getting into a car alone with him again. You hear me?”
I nodded. Why was he telling me this? Was he really worried? Or did he just want to make as much trouble for Hunter as he could? What makes him, Nestor, the one to trust? I peered up at him, watched him frown and flex his big hands before him, as if trying to work out an ache. The fresh scrapes on his knuckles—red, raw reminders of his battle the day before—caught my attention. Without thinking, I said, “Do you hate Hunter?” I said.
Nestor’s lips curled in disdain. “What? No. He’s not that important to me.”
“Lilly seems to think you’re still carrying a grudge from some past incident.”
“It was nothing. Hunter threw down with some guy in a bar once, something to do with a case he was on. Rasmen and I got called in to break it up.”
“And?”
“I felt I had to arrest him, and he felt he had to resist.” He paused. “Only Jake called in some favors and got him released almost before we finished booking him.” He shook his head. His eyes narrowed, and he looked down at his sneakers. “Jake shouldn’t have done that.”
I couldn’t help but feel suspicious at that, even though I knew it might only be my paranoia prowling about, looking for something to snack on. “Did that make you angry?”
“Not angry, disappointed. But Jake was always saving Hunter’s ass from a proper whipping when they were partners.”
“Is this one of those stories you mentioned at the hospital?”
Nestor nodded. “Among others. Rumor has it some real serious shit happened when Hunter and Jake were both cops. There’s a reason that they both ended up in Chicago.”
“The reason is?”
“I don’t know,” he laughed once, humorlessly. “I was hoping you did. I’m surprised you never heard more about what went down between them.”
“Jake didn’t tell me, and Hunter won’t talk to me, except to insult me.”
“Well, you can’t rescue everybody, chica. I’ve found that out the hard way.”
“What do you mean?”
He flexed his hands again, staring at the ripped flesh. “I tell you what—we can have a nice, long talk about me someday over a cold beer.” His cell phone chirped. “Yeah?” He paused. “No, she’s fine. How’d you hear?” Pause. “Lathos was in the car. He’s dead.” He lowered his voice and paced a few steps away from me. “I will.” More darkly, he added. “I said I would. Chill. I gotta go.” He thumbed the off button.
“That sounded tense.”
“Lilly. And it was. But you can’t really blame her, what with people ending up dead everywhere. But we’ve got bigger issues now. Lathos wasn’t in this alone because he sure as hell didn’t put himself in that car.”
Grimacing, I tried to ignore the flashes of memory. “Tina,” I said thoughtfully.
“What?”
“Tina. He called out her name. I got the impression he thought I was her at first.”
“Or maybe he was telling you she put him there.”
“What if she’s a co-conspirator? Will the killer go after her next?”
“Damn good question, chica. Everyone’s looking for her. We were hoping to get a lead from someone in the neighborhood. We came up empty. And Lilly really wants to crack this. She thinks it’s her last chance at promotion. She’s more pissed than ever, especially at you.”
Wonderful. Another shadow to jump at. “What did I do to her?”
“She thinks you disrespected her, sneaking off with your cowboy friend when she was trying to help you.”
Irritated, I said, “That’s not what happened. She’s being ridiculous.”
“Welcome to my world,” he said with tired derision.
“Why is she not here?”
Nestor pointed to his clothes. “We’re off duty, but she volunteered for another shift.”
I nodded. “That’s Lilly, always volunteering.”
“That’s a fact.”
“Something wrong?” I asked, raising an eyebrow to his distinctly snarky to
ne.
His face softened, and he looked chagrined. “She’s a good enough sort. It’s not what she does, it’s why she does it that upsets me.”
I nodded. “So you’ve said.”
He cocked his head, as if perplexed. “I’ve never said that to you before.”
Oops. No, not to me. To her. While I was eavesdropping from the next room. But maybe best not to admit to that. “It could have been Jake who said it.” It wasn’t, but, hey, it could have been. “But what did you mean by it?”
“She volunteers to lead a lot of things and sure as hell makes certain the bosses know about it. But she pushes the actual work on to other people. And sometimes … well, let’s just say she almost always benefits in some way or another. She’ll put together a charity event, all right, but it’ll end up at the ritziest hotel in town, and damned if she doesn’t have to stay over-night—at taxpayer expense, mind you—so that she can oversee preparations. And rumor has it she’s spent a lot of those nights with one committee chair or another.”
“Rumor?”
He sighed and rubbed the back of his neck with his hand. “More than rumor, I guess. Hell, I’ve tried to tell her how that kind of thing looks, but she just makes excuses. She’s convinced that as long as the powerful committee types are singing her praises that’s all that should matter.” He dropped his arm to his side. “She’s smart but doesn’t get that people see right through her and that’s why she’s not getting traction with the bosses.
“Aw hell, it’s not up to me to judge, and a lot of people are better off because of all her crusades. But I get sick of hearing her whine about how she’s not getting her due.” He rubbed his hands over his eyes for a few seconds. I noticed he was looking unusually flushed, and his face seemed years older. “I’ve got other things to worry about. And it’s not like I have to put up with it outside of work. She’s not family.”
“Family can be as big a source of misery.”
He stopped and stared hard at me, disapproval carving creases around his mouth. “Family is what’s important. They are truly God’s gift. No matter how fucked up they are.” He looked into the distance again. “Family is what you live for. What you die for. What you …”
The Last Best Lie Page 12