Torres blinked, seeming genuinely taken aback, and then snorted out a laugh. “You federal agents. Always searching for conspiracies where none exist.”
Charles propped his forearms on the table. “You said it yourself—dead men don’t need passports.”
“The Esparzas have never had friends in Western Mexico or California,” said Torres, unimpressed. “If Raúl Esparza were indeed alive and in need of assistance, he would find no help here.”
“He might,” Charles said, “in exchange for, say, enough money to bribe military officials to divert a shipment of fully automatic M4s.”
Torres tightened his jaw, regarding Charles with flat, cold eyes. “That’s a very serious accusation, agent.”
“About as serious as being caught red-handed with said weapons.”
“No money was exchanged,” Torres said. “I had no idea my business associates would have illegal firearms in their cars. I would, of course, have informed the appropriate authorities at the earliest opportunity.”
“Of course.” Charles smiled. “I’m sure your business associates will corroborate your story.”
They were interrupted by muffled raised voices from the other room. Charles shot an irritated glance at the two-way mirror, which gave Torres the moments he needed to regain his self-assurance.
“You’re very interested in why this passport was in that car,” Torres said when Charles turned back. “Have you considered how?”
Charles raised his eyebrows, inviting Torres to continue.
“Someone paid to have the papers made. Someone put them inside the car. And you can be certain that neither of those people were me. Wouldn’t your questions serve better pointed in a different direction?”
Of course they’d considered how the papers had gotten into the car, but Buzz—the highest-ranking Jackal present at the meet—was in the hospital, undergoing surgery on his shot-up knee. Every other Jackal had flat-out insisted that they had no idea the papers were even in the car, let alone where such documents could have come from.
Charles opened his mouth only to be interrupted yet again by an angry shout coming through the wall. He exhaled slowly and then rose to his feet. “Excuse me for a minute.”
“Certainly,” Torres said with a smirk.
Thrumming with irritation, Charles returned to the viewing room to find an incensed Ángel facing off against Ed and Eva, who both looked like they were at their absolute wit’s end. Charles could empathize.
“What the hell is going on in here?” he snapped. “You understand I’m trying to conduct an interrogation next door, right?”
“I understand that nobody here is interested in listening to a single fucking thing I have to say,” Ángel said.
“That’s not true, Medina,” said Ed. “I appreciate that you have good reason to have such a strong emotional reaction to all this, but it’s not helpful. We have to consider all angles—”
“Oh, do we?” Ángel’s tone was so sarcastic it bordered on insubordination. “Then why don’t you consider this? If Raúl used his real passport to enter America and is hanging around here to stalk me, why would he have a fake passport smuggled back into Mexico when he’s not even there?”
They all fell silent.
“Raúl Esparza is not alive,” Ángel said, a little calmer now that he had their full attention. “The stalker got their nose into this investigation through the surveillance they had on me, which we already knew was a possibility, and they’re fucking with me—with all of us. If we focus on searching for Raúl instead of what possible reasons someone could have for perpetrating this ruse, we’ll miss important details.”
“Nobody’s saying we can’t consider the case from multiple angles simultaneously,” said Eva.
As she and Ángel fell back into arguing, Ed gestured for Charles to step out into the hall with him.
“I need you to take Medina home right now,” he said once he and Charles were alone.
“What? Why?”
“He’s exhausted and distraught.” Ed rubbed the bridge of his nose, looking pretty exhausted himself. “I’m happy to give him a little leeway, considering the circumstances, but soon he’s going to say or do something stupid I can’t ignore.”
“No, I understand why you want him gone,” Charles said. “And I agree. Why have me take him, though? I thought nobody was supposed to know where he’s staying anymore.”
“Honestly? I don’t trust that he’ll actually go home if I make him leave right now.” Ed shrugged. “But you know him better than I do. What do you think?”
Charles paused, debating his options, though he didn’t have any real choice but to tell the truth. “He won’t go home. He’ll go looking for whoever he thinks can answer his questions.”
“That’s exactly what I’m afraid of. Even leaving aside Medina’s personal involvement, our jurisdiction here is murky at best. The last thing I want is to start a turf war with the FBI.”
“All right, I’ll take him to his motel,” Charles said. “I can’t guarantee he’ll stay there, though.”
“That’s all I can ask,” Ed said, slapping Charles’s back.
It took ten minutes and a threat of suspension from Ed to get Ángel into Charles’s car. Ángel spent the entire drive in moody silence, which Charles appreciated. There were certain conversations he wasn’t equipped to have at 5 a.m.
When Charles parked at Ángel’s new motel—managing a spot up in front this time—Ángel finally said, “We have to talk to Buzz. There’s no way it was a coincidence that those papers just happened to be in one of the dozen cars he could have brought to the meet. Someone put them there on purpose, and he’s the most likely suspect. He may have even had direct contact with the stalker.”
“He’s in the hospital, Ángel. He’ll be questioned as soon as it’s feasible. And I can tell you now that it won’t be by you.”
With a noise of deep disgust, Ángel unbuckled his seat belt and reached for the door. Charles grabbed his arm.
“Promise me you’re going to stay here and get some sleep,” he said.
Ángel looked at him steadily and said nothing.
“Christ,” said Charles. “You can’t be serious. You’d be risking your life; you’d definitely lose your job—”
“So fucking what?”
Charles was startled into silence. “You love this job,” he said a moment later.
“I loved this job,” Ángel said. “Past tense.” He yanked his arm out of Charles’s grip and got out of the car.
Charles didn’t even think before pulling the keys from the ignition and hurrying after him. He caught up with Ángel at the door to a first-floor room not far from where he’d parked.
“I’m not letting you leave this motel,” he said.
“What are you going to do, tie me up?” Ángel said as he slipped the key card into the lock.
“Wouldn’t be the first time.”
Rolling his eyes, Ángel opened the door and flipped on the lights. Charles followed him into the room—and Ángel leaped back against him with a shriek, even as Charles’s heart slammed against his rib cage and all the air in his lungs deserted him in one sickening rush.
Paul Warner lay dead in Ángel’s blood-soaked bed, wrists and ankles bound to the posts, his sightless eyes staring up at the ceiling and his mouth half-open in a scream.
“Oh my God.” Ángel lurched toward the bed, stumbling over his feet until he fell gracelessly onto his knees beside it. “Paul. Paul!”
He pressed his hands to Paul’s face and then his throat, searching for a pulse even though he knew Paul was dead. Paul’s skin was as white as the sheets beneath him had once been; now they were drenched red with his blood, and more was spattered over the floor and walls. His bound, half-naked body was scored with deep cuts, mottled with bruises and burns.
Nobody could survive this.
A harsh sob tore Ángel’s throat. “No. Paul, no, please—”
“Ángel,” Charles said, cro
uching beside him and taking hold of his shoulders.
Ángel shook him off violently and reached for the ropes slicing into Paul’s wrists. Charles grabbed his hands, pulling him back.
“Baby, you can’t touch him. You’re contaminating his crime scene. We need to leave right now.”
That got through to Ángel as little else would have. He let Charles haul him to his feet; when Charles drew a sharp, sudden breath, Ángel glanced at his stricken face and followed his eyes to the far wall, which had been painted with Paul’s blood.
YOU CAN’T HIDE FROM ME
Ángel let out a low moan and slumped against Charles’s chest. Charles half carried him backward, retracing the path they’d taken out of the room and onto the sidewalk outside.
As the fresh predawn air hit his face, Ángel shoved Charles away, staggered to a nearby trash can, and collapsed against it seconds before he vomited. The brutal spasms shook his entire body, bile scorching his mouth and throat. He clung to the metal edge once it was over, not trusting himself to stand.
“Come here.” Charles slipped an arm around Ángel’s waist and led him to a bench at the edge of the parking lot. “Sit here for a minute. Don’t move, okay?”
Charles stepped away, pulling his phone from his pocket. Ángel propped his elbows on his knees and buried his face in his hands.
Paul’s dead. Paul’s dead. Paul’s dead Paul’s dead Paul’s—
You can’t hide from me.
The next thing Ángel knew, a blanket settled over his shoulders. “You’re shivering,” Charles said when Ángel looked up at him incredulously.
“¿De dónde sacaste esto?” Ángel said, not realizing the words were in Spanish until they’d already left his mouth. It didn’t matter with Charles, though, so he just pulled the edges of the blanket tighter around himself.
“It’s part of a standard car emergency kit.”
“Charles,” said Ángel. “Nobody actually has a car emergency kit.”
Charles shrugged and offered him a bottle of water. Ángel accepted it, using the first mouthful to rinse and spit onto the pavement.
“I knew Paul was going to die,” he said. “The moment Eva first told me he was missing, I knew. I just— I’d hoped it wouldn’t be like . . . like that.”
“I’m so sorry,” Charles said, sitting beside Ángel on the bench.
Ángel picked at the bottle’s plastic label with his fingernail. “It would have taken him a long time to die that way.”
“You don’t know—”
“None of those wounds would have been fatal in and of themselves,” Ángel said. He met Charles’s eyes. “Some of those injuries were days old, and the ones that were fresh . . . He died of cumulative blood loss over time. It was slow, and it hurt, and he would have been so afraid—”
“Don’t,” said Charles, wrapping an arm around Ángel and pulling him close. “Don’t do this to yourself, Ángel, please.”
Ángel rested his head on Charles’s shoulder and closed his eyes, silent tears sliding down his cheeks.
The police showed up minutes later, the FBI right on their heels. Soon afterward, the motel parking lot was a jumble of swirling red and blue lights, shouted voices, and bodies rushing back and forth. The motel’s other residents spilled out of their rooms to cluster around the police barricades.
Throughout it all, Ángel remained on his bench, answering questions with a numb sense of depersonalization. The only detail he held on to was that Charles stuck by his side the entire time.
Charles shook Ángel’s shoulder gently, and Ángel lifted his head, startled to find Charles standing in front of him and the parking lot bathed in early-morning sunlight.
“We’re free to go,” Charles said.
“Really?” Ángel looked over to where Mina Sadir was deep in conversation with two San Diego Police Department detectives. “They don’t want to arrest me?”
“No, of course not.” Charles squatted down so they were at eye level. “The coroner’s early estimate for Warner’s time of death is between 2 and 3 a.m. You’ve been in the company of dozens of federal agents since just after midnight. Alibis don’t get much more rock solid than that.”
“Oh,” Ángel said, dazed. “Okay.”
He was walking away from the scene of Paul’s murder. Paul had been killed for the sole purpose of tormenting Ángel, and whoever had done it was still out there, and Ángel was literally turning his back on him and walking away. He was—
Ángel blinked, and found himself sitting in Charles’s agency-issued car, his seat belt buckled, already on the road. He rubbed his eyes and asked, “Where are we going?”
“Back to the office,” said Charles. “Ed called an emergency team meeting.”
“I need coffee.”
Charles frowned. “I don’t think it’s a great idea to put caffeine in your body right now.”
“Then I guess it’s a good thing you’re not in charge of what I put in my body,” Ángel said.
Sighing, Charles hit the blinker and pulled into the right-hand lane, heading for a nearby McDonald’s.
“Ángel,” Charles said as he turned off the car and unbuckled his seat belt. “We’re here.”
Ángel didn’t respond. He hadn’t moved for the past ten minutes—hadn’t even sipped his coffee once, just held it in his lap while staring off into space with glazed eyes.
Charles leaned over and took the coffee out of Ángel’s hands, setting it in the cupholder. Ángel didn’t so much as twitch.
“Ángel,” Charles repeated, snapping his fingers in front of Ángel’s face.
Gasping, Ángel jerked backward, then glanced around in bewilderment. He clearly had no idea where they were.
“That’s it, I’m taking you to the hospital,” Charles said, already reaching for the keys.
“No.” Ángel’s blank voice didn’t do anything to allay Charles’s concerns. “I’ll be okay. I’m just . . . dissociating a little. It’s not an uncommon response to trauma.”
“I know what dissociation is,” Charles said. Ángel might be the one with the master’s in psychology, but Charles had at least been trained to handle victims and witnesses of violent crime.
Charles unbuckled Ángel’s seat belt and took both his hands, squeezing until Ángel looked at his face.
“Tell me where you are right now.”
“Um . . .” Ángel cleared his throat, then said, “The parking garage at the office.”
“What day is today?”
“Friday—no, I guess it’s Saturday now.”
“The date?”
“September 12, 2015,” Ángel said, his voice much stronger.
Charles stroked his thumbs over the back of Ángel’s hands, watching his eyes sharpen and focus. “And who am I?”
“Charles.” Ángel’s mouth tilted in a half smile. “Never Charlie.”
Charles’s throat ached, but he swallowed past it and said, “Now, I’m not gonna ask you if you can do this, because I know you can. We’re just going to have a brief meeting, and then you’ll be able to rest. All right?”
Ángel nodded.
They were the last ones to arrive in the conference room, where Ed and their team sat at one end of the long rectangular table. The others’ greetings were uncharacteristically subdued, and they regarded Ángel with sympathy as he took a seat. Charles sat next to him, keeping an eye out in case he started to dissociate again.
Jade slid a box of pastries down the table toward them. Charles shook his head, but Ángel plucked a cinnamon roll out of the box, placing it on a napkin and toying with the crust.
“We were all very sorry to hear about Agent Warner,” Ed said to him.
“Thanks,” Ángel said, staring down at his pastry.
“Agent Sadir has promised to keep me updated on the progress of her investigation. While we have no jurisdiction to investigate Agent Warner’s murder or abduction, we can pursue the lead created by the papers Charles found, since it’s tied directly to ou
r own case.”
“We’ll put feelers out to the local forgers,” Eva said.
“Good. And the weapons?”
“I’m tracing them now,” said Jade. “If they did come from a military installation, I’ll find out which one.”
Ed turned to Ángel. “Medina—Ángel. My first concern here is how the murderer managed to find your new motel so quickly when nobody but you knew where you were staying.”
Ángel pulled his cell phone out of his pocket and tossed it onto the table.
“Your phone was clean,” Ed said, frowning. “Forensics literally took it apart. It hadn’t been bugged or hacked.”
“They didn’t need to do either of those things,” Ángel said. “This phone can be accessed from the ATF servers.”
A frisson of tension went around the table. “Are you suggesting there’s a mole in the agency?” Eva asked.
Peeling away a layer of his cinnamon roll, Ángel said, “No. I think the stalker has been using Paul’s access to track my cell phone.”
Ed waved a hand. “That’s impossible. Agent Warner’s access was suspended the moment the agency knew he was missing.”
“Um . . .” Jade said.
Everyone turned toward her. The nape of Charles’s neck prickled at the expression on her face.
“At least twelve hours passed between the time Agent Warner went missing and when it was reported,” she said. “I hadn’t considered this before because it’s so unlikely, but technically, that would be enough time for someone with the skills or resources to use his server access to create a backdoor they could continue using after the access had been suspended. Tricky, but it could be done. It’s just . . .” Jade hesitated, glancing at Ángel. “They would have had to get the information out of Warner first. And they would have had to—to keep him alive, to show them how to use it. The database isn’t intuitive; agents’ names and their cell phone IDs aren’t directly linked.”
“Paul was tortured,” Ángel said flatly. “The stalker tortured him for access to the servers, to my lockbox, and then kept on torturing him for God knows what other reasons. The trackers in my clothing were either for redundancy or to throw us off. They’ve been using Paul against me this whole time.”
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