The Lost

by Vicki Pettersson

  Kit held her breath. It felt like the oxygen had been expelled from the car anyway. She took a hard right. Almost there.

  “What the hell’s that mean?” Grif finally said.

  “It means,” Kit said, the grit in her voice matching his, “that if I do as you ask, do nothing, then I’ll always wonder if I could have stopped it. And you will, too, because unlike Marco and Yulyia, and the violent paths they’ve chosen, this man is innocent!”

  She let that hang between them as they waited for the light to turn green, and when it did, she followed Yulyia Kolyadenko’s instructions: she kept looking forward. Moving through the intersection, picking up speed as Grif remained silent, she navigated the most direct route to Little Havana.

  Choose our fates before they’re chosen for us.

  Well, Kit thought, maybe Yulyia had a point. And maybe, if they arrived at Little Havana first, they could do just that.

  Something is going to happen. The woman knows it like she knows the beat of her own heart, because that is her gift, and so she begins to prepare. The only reason she takes time to answer Tomas’s call is because she knows he has related information. Even the stupid Anglo can be used by the saints to carry her a vital message. That is the greatness of their strength.

  “Don’t tell me you’ve lost the reporter,” she says in greeting, slipping her beaded necklace over her head.

  “No, but I’ve had to pull back.” Tomas’s voice is unusually strained, causing the woman to look up from the table where she’s gathered herbs, mini-sculptures, and bowls. “I’m using a tracer on her car instead of visual. That man who’s with her, Griffin Shaw, he’s sharp.”

  “And the problem?” Because this man only calls when there is a problem.

  Tomas’s swallow sounds loudly over the line. “They’re on the move now . . . and I think they’re headed back to Naked City.”

  And there it is. The knowledge inside her forms into a hard ball of certainty, rising in her chest like it has wings, and she is suddenly blessed with clarity. This is how it will happen: the two nosy investigators will arrive. There will need to be a prayer offered up to the orishas before that, then a ritual to ensure that her divine actions are concealed from the outside world. But then a deep cleansing can take place. The evil spirits that have beset her household of late will be banished, and the saints will finally be appeased.

  “Want me to stop them?” Tomas asks, still under the illusion that this is a worldly concern. But Josepha Baptista has the gifted awareness of a high priestess. She can hear the saints calling to her, their voices slipping into her ear like the warm wind of her homeland. Sure, she wants to act quickly as well, but Josepha hasn’t grown this old, this powerful, or this feared by giving in to impulse.

  “No. Enough is enough. Let them come if they’re intent on doing so. Today they will have the answers they seek. They won’t like them, they certainly won’t live to tell them, but they will know.”

  And then they will offer up their blood as a cleansing rite to her beloved Chango.

  “I’ll call the others,” Tomas says in a voice so cowed that Josepha wonders if he’ll come at all.

  “Yes, do that” is all she says, because it doesn’t matter. The orishas will deliver Tomas to her, too. “Meanwhile, I will end this once and for all.”

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  The front entrance of Little Havana was draped with a construction canopy and scaffolding. Usually meant for customers, it was blocked off for now, so Kit eased the Duetto around the corner for a look at the back, and the service entrance. The tall, dented steel door stood in stark contrast to the gleaming black stretch limo that was parked diagonally across the lot. It was out of place in this neighborhood, but even more noteworthy was the way it was being studiously ignored. All the curtains and windows and blinds were closed tight in the surrounding homes.

  Grif shook his head and Kit kept driving, bringing the car to a stop two blocks from the restaurant. Silence engulfed them when she cut the engine, and she turned to Grif. “So what did you see?”

  “Plasma spinning around the building like a cosmic web of silk.”

  Kit waited. Grif clenched his jaw, because he didn’t want to say, but she already knew there was more. “And two Centurions on the roof.”

  She let her eyes close for just one moment, the knowledge that two deaths were imminent sinking in like quicksand. Grif thought it might give her pause, yet when she opened her eyes again, her hand immediately moved to the door. Grif settled a hand on her shoulder and pulled her back. “Did you hear me? There’s plasma everywhere—”

  “And Russians with guns,” she added coolly. “And a Cuban drug lord likely inside. And Dennis trapped somewhere in between.”

  “You forgot something else,” Grif told her.

  “Did I?” she snapped back.

  “The fallen angel who is stalking you.” He shifted, squaring on her despite the confines of the car. “You can’t be injured, Kit. Scratch will know. You can’t get emotional. It will use it, and once it’s in you . . . I don’t know if I can get it out.”

  They stared at each other for a long time after that, or maybe it just felt that way. Loaded moments always did. Grif’d known enough of them in his two lifetimes, so he finally just swallowed hard, gripped the back of Kit’s neck, and kissed her hard enough to have explosions going off behind his eyelids.

  But not hard enough to displace the plasma toying with the strands of her raven hair.

  When Grif pulled back, he tried to smile. “Stay away, baby. Stay safe. And remember”—he chucked her under her chin, hoping to lighten things up—“mind that temper.”

  Slipping from the car before either of them could change their minds, Grif could only pray the reminder that Scratch was angling to possess her would keep her safe. Meanwhile, with Yulyia holding court out back, he was going to have to enter Little Havana through the front entrance. With any luck, the Russians hadn’t gotten inside yet.

  So, licking the taste of Kit from his lips, he used her flavor to fortify himself as he ducked low and rushed across the scarred pavement. Hidden by the scaffolding and tarp, he waved his hand across the restaurant’s front door, and the lock snicked open. A moment after that, he was inside.

  Kit’s gaze remained on Grif’s back until he disappeared around the block. Then she got out of the car. Nothing had changed about the neighborhood since their last visit. Glass shards still winked up at her from weed-choked lots, and the pool at the Shangri-La apartments was still murky, sparkling with heat.

  The only real difference, Kit decided, was the people. Or lack thereof. Because while the rubberneckers had been out in force the day they’d found Jeannie and Tim, the street was strangely silent now. One might blame it on the heat, but not with the activity going on behind Little Havana. There was a limo nobody could miss, yet everyone was pretending not to see it. If a turf war was about to begin, Kit didn’t want to sit here blind. She’d rather see it coming.

  So she left the car where it was and headed in the direction of the back lot. Spotting a pair of Dumpsters belonging to Little Havana, she decided she could watch from there, and call the police—or Grif, already somewhere inside—if need be. She made it just in time, too. The driver’s door of the limo finally opened, and Kit imagined the neighborhood holding its breath. A man in a black suit, liveried but bulky and carrying a pistol in one hand, stepped from the car, glanced around, then held open the car’s rear door.

  A moment later, Yulyia Kolyadenko emerged, lovely in a lavender pantsuit, gold winking at her neck and wrist, and holding a small dog. She certainly hadn’t dressed for murder, Kit decided, and for some reason the thought struck her crazily, and made her want to giggle. That’s when Yulyia shifted, and Kit’s manic nervousness froze in her throat.

  Yulyia did not wrinkle her beautiful nose at the boiling stench wafting from the Dumpsters, and her face remained placid as she scanned the nearest homes, even though a few curtains had shifted. Her pre
tty mouth twitched upward at that, and she tilted her head to the sky, and inhaled deeply.

  Kit watched her, amazed. Yulyia had said on the phone that what differentiated her from Kit was that she acted when Kit did not, but that wasn’t it at all. Kit acted—she was doing so now—but the woman before her did so without fear, without conscience, and without emotion. Kit, on the other hand, was like the dog in Yulyia’s arms. A shivering thing, all emotion, all the time.

  Because of that thought, Kit’s gaze was glued to the dog as Yulyia placed the shivering creature back in the limousine right next to another of her possessions. This one was bound and gagged, with a bright red, swollen eye that shifted to follow the Russian, as attuned to the danger around him as the dog that disappeared into the car’s long belly.

  Kit let out a relieved sigh. Dennis was alive.

  A second man emerged from the car, and Kit waited for more, but Yulyia snapped instructions to both him and the driver, pointing in opposite directions. The men split, one to the building, the other to the trunk. The driver carried a crudely hewn plank, which he wedged between the door handle of the restaurant and the pavement. A rudimentary tool, but effective. When he yanked the handle, it didn’t move.

  He nodded back at Yulyia.

  Meanwhile, the second man reemerged with two large plastic fuel containers, one in each hand. While Yulyia strode forward and tested the jammed door herself, the two men split and began dousing the building.

  I’ll burn him from the inside out.

  Kit searched frantically around her for her own rudimentary tool, one that could cut Dennis’s bindings, and fast. A few long nails and large octagonal bolts lay at the edge of the Dumpster but—surprise, surprise—no knives or box cutters. Leaning to the far side, she spotted something shiny, though, wedged under the corner. A scrap of tin of some sort, maybe from the roof or a kitchen hood. Grasping it with both hands, she tugged it from the weight of the Dumpster, careful not to make it squeal as she pulled. The scrap tore and left her with little more than a comb-size, jagged piece of metal.

  It would have to do.

  Glancing between the unguarded car and the jammed door where Yulyia stood guard, Kit figured if she slipped around the Dumpster’s edge, she’d be in Kolyadenko’s blind spot. It was her chance to act, Kit thought, and when the men disappeared around opposite sides of the building, she did just that.

  Bent low, Kit swallowed down her fear, and ran as fast as she could. She had opened the door and ducked into the still-cool limo within seconds. Kit shushed Dennis, who’d startled and turned, eyes growing saucer-wide when he saw her. Bound body weight, Kit soon realized, was like dead body weight, and Dennis outweighed her by almost a hundred pounds. He tried to help, inching backward caterpillar-style, but it was a struggle to lift him and still remain low. Showing Dennis the makeshift knife, Kit pressed it on the thick duct tape between his hands, yet the little fur ball rat-dog kept biting at her as she worked the metal.

  “Stop it,” Kit hissed, pushing the dog away. She could smell the gasoline now, its oily potential thick in the summer heat. Dennis must have smelled it, too, because he suddenly angled away, and shook his head. Go, he mouthed through the material pulling at his cheeks. The little dog head-butted her shoulder. Kit gritted her teeth and kept cutting.

  Suddenly, the opposite door jerked wide, and arms stronger than hers yanked Dennis back. It was the driver, steely-gazed as he locked eyes with Kit. Barking guttural Russian, he bared teeth.

  Kit hurried out the other door of the limousine, emerging with one hand cupped around the little dog’s belly . . . and the other around its throat.

  Yulyia stiffened in surprise when she spied Kit. Not such a big difference between us after all, Kit thought.

  “Let him go,” Kit said, heart thudding as she backed from the car.

  The driver spat something unintelligible and began dragging Dennis backward.

  But Yulyia yelled, “Stop!” and Kit thought, How odd to care more for a dog than a man.

  “You want a trade, is that it?” Yulyia said, stepping away from the building.

  Kit’s pulse beat so hard it almost burst behind her lids, and the small animal’s shaking had somehow transferred to her limbs. She wondered briefly if fear was an emotion that Scratch could use against her, and had to quickly push the thought away. “Yes. The man for the dog.”

  It was an insane trade, but then Yulyia had just killed an entire family. Kit wondered if the woman had been holding her dog while doing so, and that’s why the animal trembled so. Yulyia’s pretty blue eyes flickered, and for a moment it looked like she would agree. But when she only lifted her chin, instinct told Kit to turn around.

  He was a dark blur in full sprint, but Kit recognized the second Russian just as he seized her, gasoline-soaked hands embracing her from behind. Yulyia screamed something about the dog as Kit fell, and he jerked her violently so she landed on her side, the dog safe. Then he whipped her back upright like a puppet, tucking the now-whining animal beneath his other arm.

  “Good, Sergei.” Yulyia reached for the plank beneath Little Havana’s door handle and said to Kit, “Looks like there will be no trade after all.”

  “You don’t have to do this,” Kit tried, feet trailing for purchase as the Russian dragged her forward. Her eyes met Dennis’s, and she saw the fear she felt laid bare in his gaze.

  “Of course not,” Yulyia said coolly, regarding them both. “I don’t do anything I don’t want to do. It is a good position for a woman, no?”

  Kit shook her head. “Please—”

  Yulyia scanned the empty parking lot as she stepped aside. “Throw the man in with Baptista. I want them to long for the flame even as it burns around their ears.”

  Kit had no idea what that meant, but she could intuit Sergei’s response. And this one?

  Yulyia waved her hand, gold bangles catching fire at her wrist in the sun. “Put her anywhere. She will escape . . . or she won’t.”

  “No—!” Kit struggled, as the driver and Dennis disappeared inside, but even one-handed Sergei was too strong for her. Catapulted over the oily threshold, Kit landed in the dank hallway with such force she heard the crack of bone. Pain shot through her core and for a moment she could only curl into herself and relearn how to breathe. Then, moaning, she looked back at the open doorway.

  “You disappoint me, Ms. Craig.” Yulyia pulled out a lighter as Sergei rejoined her side.

  “Please,” Kit whimpered. “No . . .”

  Yulyia withdrew a gold cigarette case from her pocket. “I have read your paper and thought you were smart in your own way, but as your man would surely tell you, smart isn’t enough. This world requires a realist. By the way, where is Mr. Shaw?”

  Kit didn’t answer. Sergei, still holding the small dog tight, grunted and stepped toward Kit, but Yulyia halted him with a hand on his chest. “Maybe in your next life you will get to choose your own fate, Ms. Craig.”

  Flicking open the lighter, which flared in a slim scarlet glow, she smiled as she lit her cigarette. She must have expected Kit to flee into the belly of the building, but Kit remained frozen in place, her gaze newly fixed on the figure rising behind Yulyia and Sergei.

  Specifically on the semiautomatic splitting their silhouettes in two.

  Sergei sensed the danger first and drew his weapon even as he turned. A single gunshot cracked through the neighborhood. Yelping, the little dog slipped from Sergei’s grasp, paws splashing fuel as it hit the ground and barely missed being crushed by the falling Russian. A red flower bloomed in Sergei’s chest, opening quickly. The dog fled past Kit into the building, and Yulyia barely caught herself as she made to lunge.

  Though she straightened, her pretty features were blasted wide as she watched the dog disappear. Without one glance at her fallen comrade, she slowly turned.

  Now Kit began edging backward. Forget the petrol shining like black death in front of her. A dozen Cubans fanned the doorway in a lethal arc. Yulyia turned to fa
ce them alone.

  “So we finally meet,” she said as the woman in the middle stepped forward.

  “And for that you can thank Ms. Craig,” Josepha Baptista said, giving Kit a closed-mouthed smile. “After all, she’s the one who led me here.”

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Josepha is a master at reading the power, or ashe, stoking any situation, and immediately sees what Yulyia Kolyadenko has in mind: a fire that will consume Little Havana, and—whether the Russian knows it or not—half the neighborhood with it.

  Normally Josepha wouldn’t object to a little flame. Fire is her greatest natural ally in her work as a priestess. She is adept at reading the light in candles, and using that power for spiritual cleansing and magical spells. She is a master at mixing incense and salts and herbs and oils to magnify the ability to control human behavior, but most of all, she enjoys the sizzle of freshly spilled blood fueling a leaping flame. It is a powerful way to transfer magic from the divine orishas to herself, and a purifying tool as well.

  But Josepha knows she is not in control of this potential fire—not yet—and she has to tread softly in this situation. Her dear Marco is somewhere inside Little Havana.

  “Come to see our little kitchen, Kolyadenko?” Josepha says.

  Yulyia takes a long drag, then leans against the doorframe, cigarette dangling low. “Nyet. I thought I’d do the cooking today.”

  Josepha has to give it to her. Outnumbered ten to one, and she still acts as though the saints favor her. If only all of Josepha’s men had such balls. “But you’re burning everything, you stupid bitch.”

  “I didn’t say I was good cook.” Yulyia shrugs, then purses her lips like she’s just had an idea. “But we could ask Marco to teach me. He’s just inside, you know.”

  Josepha’s gaze drops to the ash lengthening on Yulyia’s cigarette. Damn Marco for being so lazy, cooking the shit every Monday afternoon. It makes him predictable. But the pendejo can’t get up in the middle of the night to work. Has to drink his cerveza and grab his crotch and watch those reality shows where nothing is real. How many times has she told him, habit is what defines a person. His reply? Stop reading all those self-help books.